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1The whistle of the locomotive penetrates my woods summer and winter, sounding like the scream of a hawk sailing over
2some farmer's yard, informing me that many restless city merchants are arriving within the circle of the town, or
3adventurous country traders from the other side. As they come under one horizon, they shout their warning to get off the
4track to the other, heard sometimes through the circles of two towns. Here come your groceries, country; your rations,
5countrymen! Nor is there any man so independent on his farm that he can say them nay. And here's your pay for them!
6screams the countryman's whistle; timber like long battering rams going twenty miles an hour against the city's walls,
7and chairs enough to seat all the weary and heavy laden that dwell within them. With such huge and lumbering civility
8the country hands a chair to the city. All the Indian huckleberry hills are stripped, all the cranberry meadows are
9raked into the city. Up comes the cotton, down goes the woven cloth; up comes the silk, down goes the woollen; up come
10the books, but down goes the wit that writes them. When I meet the engine with its train of cars moving off with
11planetary motion,--or, rather, like a comet, for the beholder knows not if with that velocity and with that direction it
12will ever revisit this system, since its orbit does not look like a returning curve,--with its steam cloud like a banner
13streaming behind in golden and silver wreaths, like many a downy cloud which I have seen, high in the heavens, unfolding
14its masses to the light,--as if this travelling demigod, this cloud-compeller, would ere long take the sunset sky for
15the livery of his train; when I hear the iron horse make the hills echo with his snort like thunder, shaking the earth
16with his feet, and breathing fire and smoke from his nostrils, (what kind of winged horse or fiery dragon they will put
17into the new Mythology I don't know), it seems as if the earth had got a race now worthy to inhabit it. If all were as
18it seems, and men made the elements their servants for noble ends! If the cloud that hangs over the engine were the
19perspiration of heroic deeds, or as beneficent as that which floats over the farmer's fields, then the elements and
20Nature herself would cheerfully accompany men on their errands and be their escort. I watch the passage of the morning
21cars with the same feeling that I do the rising of the sun, which is hardly more regular. Their train of clouds
22stretching far behind and rising higher and higher, going to heaven while the cars are going to Boston, conceals the sun
23for a minute and casts my distant field into the shade, a celestial train beside which the petty train of cars which
24hugs the earth is but the barb of the spear. The stabler of the iron horse was up early this winter morning by the light
25of the stars amid the mountains, to fodder and harness his steed. Fire, too, was awakened thus early to put the vital
26heat in him and get him off. If the enterprise were as innocent as it is early! If the snow lies deep, they strap on his
27snow-shoes, and with the giant plow, plow a furrow from the mountains to the seaboard, in which the cars, like a
28following drill-barrow, sprinkle all the restless men and floating merchandise in the country for seed. All day the
29fire-steed flies over the country, stopping only that his master may rest, and I am awakened by his tramp and defiant
30snort at midnight, when in some remote glen in the woods he fronts the elements incased in ice and snow; and he will
31reach his stall only with the morning star, to start once more on his travels without rest or slumber. Or perchance, at
32evening, I hear him in his stable blowing off the superfluous energy of the day, that he may calm his nerves and cool
33his liver and brain for a few hours of iron slumber. If the enterprise were as heroic and commanding as it is protracted
34and unwearied! Far through unfrequented woods on the confines of towns, where once only the hunter penetrated by day, in
35the darkest night dart these bright saloons without the knowledge of their inhabitants; this moment stopping at some
36brilliant station-house in town or city, where a social crowd is gathered, the next in the Dismal Swamp, scaring the owl
37and fox. The startings and arrivals of the cars are now the epochs in the village day. They go and come with such
38regularity and precision, and their whistle can be heard so far, that the farmers set their clocks by them, and thus one
39well conducted institution regulates a whole country. Have not men improved somewhat in punctuality since the railroad
40was invented? Do they not talk and think faster in the depot than they did in the stage-office? There is something
41electrifying in the atmosphere of the former place. I have been astonished at the miracles it has wrought; that some of
42my neighbors, who, I should have prophesied, once for all, would never get to Boston by so prompt a conveyance, are on
43hand when the bell rings. To do things "railroad fashion" is now the by-word; and it is worth the while to be warned so
44often and so sincerely by any power to get off its track. There is no stopping to read the riot act, no firing over the
45heads of the mob, in this case. We have constructed a fate, an Atropos, that never turns aside. (Let that be the name of
46your engine.) Men are advertised that at a certain hour and minute these bolts will be shot toward particular points of
47the compass; yet it interferes with no man's business, and the children go to school on the other track. We live the
48steadier for it. We are all educated thus to be sons of Tell. The air is full of invisible bolts. Every path but your
49own is the path of fate. Keep on your own track, then. What recommends commerce to me is its enterprise and bravery. It
50does not clasp its hands and pray to Jupiter. I see these men every day go about their business with more or less
51courage and content, doing more even than they suspect, and perchance better employed than they could have consciously
52devised. I am less affected by their heroism who stood up for half an hour in the front line at Buena Vista, than by the
53steady and cheerful valor of the men who inhabit the snow-plough for their winter quarters; who have not merely the
54three-o'-clock in the morning courage, which Bonaparte thought was the rarest, but whose courage does not go to rest so
55early, who go to sleep only when the storm sleeps or the sinews of their iron steed are frozen. On this morning of the
56Great Snow, perchance, which is still raging and chilling men's blood, I hear the muffled tone of their engine bell from
57out the fog bank of their chilled breath, which announces that the cars are coming, without long delay, notwithstanding
58the veto of a New England north-east snow storm, and I behold the ploughmen covered with snow and rime, their heads
59peering, above the mould-board which is turning down other than daisies and the nests of field-mice, like bowlders of
60the Sierra Nevada, that occupy an outside place in the universe.
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