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could devise blasphemer, hypocrite, infidel, atheist. Perhaps, we should dig up the old cross, and make a new martyr of the man posterity will worship as a deity. It is the men who are up that see the rising sun, not the sluggards. It takes greatness to see greatness, and know it at the first; I mean to see greatness of the highest kind. Bulk, anybody can see; bulk of body or mind. The loftiest form of greatness is never popular in its time. Men cannot understand or receive it. Guinea negroes would think a juggler a greater man than Franklin. What would be thought of Martin Luther at Rome, of Washington at St. Petersburg, of Fenelon among the Sacs and Foxes? Herod and Pilate were popular in their day,- men of property and standing. They got nominations and honor enough. Jesus of Nazareth got no nomination, got a cross between two thieves, was crowned with thorns, and, when he died, eleven Galiicans gathered together to lament their Lord. Any man can measure a walking-stick, so many hands long, and so many nails beside; but it takes a mountain intellect to measure the Andes and Altai.

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Railroads and Recreation.

By CHAUNCEY M. DEPEW, of New York.

(Born 1834.)

AM glad to see that your numbers have increased so much since I was here one year ago; whether it is because you have all joined since then, or you were not all here at that time, I don't know, but I take it that it is because of the additions to the association.

Our chairman was too modest to-night when he spoke of the ten years since this organization was founded, because without him it would not have been created, and except for his constant aid and advice it would never have reached the position which it has attained to-day; and when I look forward to the next ten years, to the usefulness, the enormous growth, and the influences which are to spring from the building upon the corner yonder, also built by Mr. Vanderbilt, I believe that the effect of the work in that building on the intellectual, moral, and physical health of the men belonging to the various railroads that center at the Grand Central station will extend to every railroad in the United States, and that the managers will see to it that an institution so useful, an influence so grand, shall be established on their own lines, and buildings of the same character erected out of their own funds at all the principal centers where their men gather.

I was struck with one remark made this afternoon in a conversation with Mr. Morse, the Secretary of the International Committee, which looks after this branch. He said that since this room was opened the influence had been farreaching, embracing not only the men employed here, but the management of other roads themselves; and alluded to the establishment of branches elsewhere as a result of the success which has been attained here. It impressed upon my mind the thought that has been there a long time, that there is but one railroad. in the United States the New York Central-and that all the others are branches.

The last time I met Morse was in Germany last summer, and like all good Americans I wanted to go to Strasburg and see the wonderful clock in the famous cathedral. You know about that clock; it strikes, and the apostles come out. They belong to the mechanism which is wound up to go nine hundred and

ninety-nine years, and not to stop till the last moment of time. Whether it will fulfill its inventor's claims I do not expect to live to see. Well, I went on the railroad from Baden-Baden with my family to see that clock. We had fifteen minutes leeway when we arrived, and it took seven minutes to get from the depot to the cathedral. When half-way to Strasburg I discovered that we were twelve minutes late, and I offered the German conductor a month's salary if he would make up the time. He told me the next day when I went back that he did not get the idea through his head till he came down the next morning. He would never do for a conductor on the New York Central. You know how it is with German railways — they are run by the Government. There are some people who want the railways run by the Government here. Well, a railway run by the Government goes this way: an express train makes twenty miles an hour, and stops every twenty minutes for refreshments; and a way train runs twelve miles an hour, and stops from thirty to sixty minutes at each station. When we reached the depot we had just five minutes left. I had telegraphed for a carriage, and I tumbled my wife and her mother, and "little buster" and myself into it, and the courier got on the box and told the coachman to go ahead, and then he waved his umbrella and shouted to all the people to get out of the way. The first dog that saw us coming gave a yelp, and that started all the dogs in Strasburg barking and running after us in full chorus; people jumped to one side and shook their heads, and we got to the door of the cathedral just as the crowd was coming out it was all over. When I got inside, the first man I saw was Morse; he was smiling at me like a brightly shining tin-pan on a farmer's fence, because I got left. He said: "Depew, when I want to get anywhere in time, I go over night." He would not do for a conductor on the New York Central.

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Now, very few of us appreciate precisely the amount of growth that starts from nothing and in ten years reaches sixty associations and ten thousand members; but it is like everything connected with the railways in this country for that matter, with everything else in this country a marvelous growth. It is difficult to understand or comprehend that it is less than sixty years since the first locomotive was seen in America; less than sixty years since the first one was built by that grand old American, Peter Cooper. Uncle Peter saw the locomotive that was brought over here from England, and keeping alert, as he always did, and up with the progress of the times, he thought that whatever an Englishman could do an American could do a great deal better. And so he built his locomotive- the "Tom Thumb." The stage-coach was not going to give up so easily, and they put a swift horse on and beat him the locomo

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tive ran by a band passing around a cylinder, and the band slipped off — but that is the last time for sixty years and forever, that the stage-coach will outrun the locomotive. There were only thirteen miles of railroad then in the United States; now there are one hundred and thirty thousand. A fifty-ton engine takes seventy-five cars of twenty tons each and draws them along without an effort; and as for speed, Mr. Vanderbilt and I ran all day long, a short time ago, making an average of fifty-four seconds to the mile, running time, and without apparently going at half the speed.

But the greatest, the most satisfactory, feature of railroad development is the men engaged in operating the roads. With those who are actually in the service, and those who contribute by supplies, one-tenth of the working force of the United States is in the railroad service; and that tenth includes the most energetic men and most intelligent among the workers of this magnificent country. There are ten million workingmen in this country, and six hundred thousand are directly employed in the railway service. With their families they constitute a larger population than the largest of the States. They are a republic in themselves, and yet they are the most loyal, the most law-abiding, and most useful and patriotic of citizens. They do not seek aggrandizement themselves; they do not seek by secrecy and force to accomplish selfish purposes or to do injury to anybody; they simply try to live in a brotherly way among those who are engaged in other pursuits, and to labor for the improvement of the country and the elevation of themselves and of their brethren. Now if this republic of railroad men, in these days when all classes of labor are organizing, should organize, with their societies, their pass-words, their officers, their signs, and their grips, they would constitute one of the most powerful as well as intelligent forces in this Republic for good or for evil. They must necessarily, on account of the business they do and the responsibilities which devolve upon them, be men of character, men of intelligence, and men of health; for upon them devolve a larger responsibility and a greater duty than upon any of the workers in other pursuits. Men who are engaged in tilling farms, in manufactures, or other lines of business, are all dependent upon the railroads. The railroad man is in a sense the servant of them all; he it is that makes the farm worth anything; to him are intrusted the products, the goods, and the lives of the people of the country; it is necessary that he, above all others, should be a man upon whom reliance can be placed a man of character, of courage, of strength.

The railroad is a republic which refutes the theories that come from longhaired men who never work themselves. The worst service that is done to the

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