itself? Bless your heart, you dear women live right in the present all
the time–but a man, why a man lives—-
“In the future, Beriah? But don’t we live in the future most too much,
Beriah? We do somehow seem to manage to live on next year’s crop of corn
and potatoes as a general thing while this year is still dragging along,
but sometimes it’s not a robust diet,–Beriah. But don’t look that way,
dear–don’t mind what I say. I don’t mean to fret, I don’t mean to
worry; and I don’t, once a month, do I, dear? But when I get a little
low and feel bad, I get a bit troubled and worrisome, but it don’t mean
anything in the world. It passes right away. I know you’re doing all
you can, and I don’t want to seem repining and ungrateful–for I’m not,
Beriah–you know I’m not, don’t you?”
“Lord bless you, child, I know you are the very best little woman that
ever lived–that ever lived on the whole face of the Earth! And I know
that I would be a dog not to work for you and think for you and scheme
for you with all my might. And I’ll bring things all right yet, honey–
cheer up and don’t you fear. The railroad—-”
“Oh, I had forgotten the railroad, dear, but when a body gets blue, a
body forgets everything. Yes, the railroad–tell me about the railroad.”
“Aha, my girl, don’t you see? Things ain’t so dark, are they? Now I
didn’t forget the railroad. Now just think for a moment–just figure up
a little on the future dead moral certainties. For instance, call this
waiter St. Louis.
“And we’ll lay this fork (representing the railroad) from St. Louis to
this potato, which is Slouchburg:
“Then with this carving knife we’ll continue the railroad from Slouchburg
to Doodleville, shown by the black pepper:
“Then we run along the–yes–the comb–to the tumbler that’s Brimstone:
“Thence by the pipe to Belshazzar, which is the salt-cellar:
“Thence to, to–that quill–Catfish–hand me the pincushion, Marie
Antoinette:
“Thence right along these shears to this horse, Babylon:
“Then by the spoon to Bloody Run–thank you, the ink:
“Thence to Hail Columbia–snuffers, Polly, please move that cup and
saucer close up, that’s Hail Columbia:
“Then–let me open my knife–to Hark-from-the-Tomb, where we’ll put the
candle-stick–only a little distance from Hail Columbia to Hark-from-the-
Tomb–down-grade all the way.
“And there we strike Columbus River–pass me two or throe skeins of
thread to stand for the river; the sugar bowl will do for Hawkeye, and
the rat trap for Stone’s Landing-Napoleon, I mean–and you can see how
much better Napoleon is located than Hawkeye. Now here you are with your
railroad complete, and showing its continuation to Hallelujah and thence
to Corruptionville.
“Now then-them you are! It’s a beautiful road, beautiful. Jeff Thompson
can out-engineer any civil engineer that ever sighted through an aneroid,
or a theodolite, or whatever they call it–he calls it sometimes one and
sometimes the other just whichever levels off his sentence neatest, I
reckon. But ain’t it a ripping toad, though? I tell you, it’ll make a
stir when it gets along. Just see what a country it goes through.
There’s your onions at Slouchburg–noblest onion country that graces
God’s footstool; and there’s your turnip country all around Doodleville–
bless my life, what fortunes are going to be made there when they get
that contrivance perfected for extracting olive oil out of turnips–if
there’s any in them; and I reckon there is, because Congress has made an
appropriation of money to test the thing, and they wouldn’t have done
that just on conjecture, of course. And now we come to the Brimstone
region–cattle raised there till you can’t rest–and corn, and all that
sort of thing. Then you’ve got a little stretch along through Belshazzar
that don’t produce anything now–at least nothing but rocks–but
irrigation will fetch it. Then from Catfish to Babylon it’s a little
swampy, but there’s dead loads of peat down under there somewhere. Next
is the Bloody Run and Hail Columbia country–tobacco enough can be raised
there to support two such railroads. Next is the sassparilla region.