- ..s 



beyond this, use is needful as beauty, and 

 more needful, if all the truth be told. Use 

 and beauty must not be thought of as enemies, 

 but friends. The cooking stove is quite as 

 essential as clematis. They cherish no 

 antipathy. Use is lacking in the picturesque ; 

 but drudgery must needs be for the world's 

 bettering. A railroad, while anything but 

 beautiful, is the chore-boy of civilization, the 

 stevedore that carries our burdens from 

 wharf to wharf and from hold to dock, and 

 with prospect of neither emolument nor de- 

 light serves all save itself. Such service, 

 free-handed and free-hearted, always compels 

 my regard. I half venerate it, as I do a 

 mother of many children, whose hands are 

 worn to scars and hardness by much toiling 

 for the ones she loves. Who serves, God 

 loves. The road gives its wealth of labor as 

 uncomplainingly as a mother to her daughter. 

 Let no jest nor sneer be directed toward 

 those whose sweaty shoulders bend to the 

 burden of world's work ; let us rather requite 

 such sturdy toil with appreciation which is 

 better far than gold. The railroad track is 

 to me the embodiment of uncomplaining, 

 unacknowledged toil whose praises are in no- 

 body's mouth. 



However, I have found that if the railroad 

 is itself lacking in beauty, it affords shelter 

 for the beautiful. Any one who has been 

 much out of door? in our later days, knows 



