"Brakeman" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... looked up at me, pitiful. You know, the way you reach down, and pat 'm on the head, and say, 'Nice doggie, nice doggie, old fellow,' even if it is a street cur, with a chawed ear, and no tail. They growl and show their teeth, but they like it. A woman—Lordy! there comes the brakeman. Let's beat it. Ain't we the ...
— Roast Beef, Medium • Edna Ferber
... the crowded car, also carrying a number of packages. I leaned forward and asked Mrs. Peet to sit by me; it was a great pleasure to see her again. The brakeman seemed relieved, and smiled as he tried to put part of his burden into the rack overhead; but even the flowered carpet-bag was much too large, and he explained that he would take care of everything at the ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... The brakeman, when he came in from his run, was located and he joined in the blockade that was conspiring ...
— Amarilly of Clothes-line Alley • Belle K. Maniates
... it," remarked a plaintive voice, as a fat face appeared around the corner of the porch. "I want to be a brakeman." ...
— Grace Harlowe's Fourth Year at Overton College • Jessie Graham Flower
... brakeman with a dirty blue bandana knotted about his brown throat, waved to them and shouted something which they could not hear. He held aloft a white stick from which he had peeled the green bark, pointed to it, then cast it back towards them ...
— Every Man for Himself • Hopkins Moorhouse
... too small. The turn-down Collar was four inches high, and he wore a navy-blue Cravat with a copper Butterfly for a Scarf-Pin. Furthermore, he had a Suit of Clothes that was intended for a gentle Brakeman. On his Lapel he had a Button Photograph of the Girl who ...
— People You Know • George Ade
... my big three-pound pistol, splitting his head open; and next I made a lunge for the third man, cutting him over the forehead so that he fell through a rack of glass, and when he raised up I struck him with my head. The conductor and brakeman interfered and took the ruffians out. There was a quart of blood on the floor; and at the first station they sent out and procured sticking-plaster. I paid the porter $12 to sponge up the blood and get the ...
— Forty Years a Gambler on the Mississippi • George H. Devol
... The brakeman and conductor came running in to see what was the matter. Nobody knew why the train had stopped. It was several minutes before they discovered the cause, but I had found out while Stuart was climbing back to bed with me. Swinging by her hands from the ...
— The Story of Dago • Annie Fellows-Johnston
... was not a long one, and within two hours of the time they had left Long Lake the brakeman called out the name of the county seat. Eleanor and the two girls, with Rogers carrying their bags, moved to the door, and, as they reached the ground, looked about eagerly ...
— The Camp Fire Girls in the Mountains - or Bessie King's Strange Adventure • Jane L. Stewart
... was that he was carried past his stopping place, and the station at which he was set off was a few miles nearer Philadelphia than he had hoped to get. But the brakeman told him that the Quaker City was still fifty ...
— Two Boys and a Fortune • Matthew White, Jr.
... became too dense. A short, thick-set fellow with an evil dark face coolly thrust his heel through a window. The conductor, who, with the brakeman and baggage master, was seated in the baggage van, heard the jingle of ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White
... have to be freshly dressed. This takes till midnight, perhaps longer, and the surgeon must be on the watch continually, for on him falls the responsibility, not only of the welfare of the men, but of the safety of the train. There is a conductor and brakeman, and for them, too, there is no rest. Each finds enough to do as nurse or assistant. In the morning, after a breakfast of delicious coffee or tea, dried beef, dried peaches, soft bread, cheese, etc., the wounds have ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett
... the nations where it is the prevailing religion, proves too much. It will work just as well for any other religion as for our own. Its reach is too extended, its conclusion too comprehensive for its purpose. Christianity could not be made its sole terminus. It reminds one of the story of the brakeman who was persuaded to go to church. When he came out his friend asked him how he liked the preacher. He said, "Very well, on the main line. He had good wheels, his track was straight and level, and he carried a good head of steam, but he seemed ...
— Men, Women, and Gods - And Other Lectures • Helen H. Gardener
... late—-perhaps some kind motherly woman would tell her if she were doing right. But they all looked so strange and forbidding, and while she turned the question over and over in her mind, the car stopped, the brakeman called the station and Lennox ...
— 'Way Down East - A Romance of New England Life • Joseph R. Grismer
... complaint Ray's brakemen had to make of him was that he was too fussy about his caboose. His former brakeman had asked to be transferred because, he said, "Kennedy was as fussy about his car as an old maid about her bird-cage." Joe Giddy, who was braking with Ray now, called him "the bride," because he kept the caboose and bunks ...
— Song of the Lark • Willa Cather
... to her, as she swung her heavy suit-case down the rather long step to the ground, and then carefully swung herself after it, that it was strange that neither conductor, brakeman, nor porter had come to help her off the train, when all three had taken the trouble to tell her that hers was the next station; but she could hear voices up ahead. Perhaps something was the matter with the engine that detained them and they had ...
— A Voice in the Wilderness • Grace Livingston Hill
... brakeman thrust his head in at the door and shouted "Bah,"—a mysterious formality observed on American trains as they enter towns,—and an elderly lady, two drummers, and a young man with a satchel got out, followed ...
— Hooking Watermelons - 1898 • Edward Bellamy
... goes by swinging his lantern. The boys would like to ask him what time it is, but for one thing they're too bashful. Being a brakeman is almost as good as going with a "troupe" or a circus. You get to go to places that way, too, Marysville, and Mechanicsburg, and Harrod's—that is, if you're on the local freight, and then you lay over in Cincinnati. Some ways it's better than firing, ...
— Back Home • Eugene Wood
... cooeperation. It means that people in all walks of life are animated by the common purpose to make all their activities contribute to the general good of society. It means that the railroad president may shake hands with the brakeman and talk with him, man to man, encouraging him to aspire to promotion on merit. It means that this brakeman may become president of the road with no scorn for the stages through which he passed in attaining this position. ...
— The Vitalized School • Francis B. Pearson
... he lay. He saw that the stove had charred the wood-work near it; hence the smoke, which escaped through a crack and floated above him. The few people in the car were climbing out of the windows as best they might. A pair of grimy arms reached down to Demming, and he heard the brakeman's voice (he knew Jim Herndon, the brakeman, well) shouting ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 7 • Various
... seen nowhere except in a little town they call Conway. He tried to get beer there, but there wasn't any saloon. Maybe he came in on a freight, but the brakeman hadn't seen him. They couldn't find no letters nor nothing on him; nothing but an old penknife in his pocket and the wishbone of a chicken wrapped up in a piece of paper, and ...
— My Antonia • Willa Cather
... father, his mother and both older sisters did duty as nurses day and night. After that they left town, moved from town to town, that story always following, and finally both parents died. Since then Joe had been a teamster, a clerk in a hardware store, a brakeman, a telegrapher, and last, the assistant editor of a paper in a small town. He had scraped and slaved and studied throughout with the idea of coming East to college. He had come at twenty-two, beating his way on freight trains. On the top of a car one ...
— The Harbor • Ernest Poole
... afternoon. The smoking compartment in the parlour-car was full, and he went into the regular smoker. Across the aisle in the front seat sat a meek, farmer-looking old man with a sickly pallor in his face, and he was holding the door open with his foot to get the air. Presently a big brakeman came rushing through, and when he got to the door he stopped, gave the farmer an ugly scowl, then wrenched the door to with such energy as to almost snatch the old man's boot off. Then on he plunged about his business. Several passengers laughed, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... generally accepted the situation, and complained of me as making matters worse rather than better, by refusing to submit to this proscription. I, however, persisted, and sometimes was soundly beaten by the conductor and brakeman. On one occasion, six of these "fellows of the baser sort," under the direction of the conductor, set out to eject me from my seat. As usual, I had purchased a first-class ticket, and paid the required sum for it, and on the requirement of the conductor to leave, refused to do so, when ...
— Railway Adventures and Anecdotes - extending over more than fifty years • Various
... intruder closed the door behind him, and lit a match. Peering from a knot-hole, Jack saw that the detective's guess was correct. It was a brakeman. ...
— The Young Railroaders - Tales of Adventure and Ingenuity • Francis Lovell Coombs
... stuff you sent me. I guess the brakeman must have used it for a chair all the way. It was pretty well baled but that dont matter. And thanks for the fudge too. That was fudge wasnt it, Mable? And the sox. They dont fit but I can use them for somethin. A good soldier never throws nothin away. An thank ...
— Dere Mable - Love Letters Of A Rookie • Edward Streeter
... alluring, Bertha, her pretty daughter, was day-clerk and general manager. Customers of the drummer type are very loyal to their hotels, and amazingly sensitive to female charm—therefore Bertha, who would have been called an attractive girl anywhere, was widely known and tenderly recalled by every brakeman on the line. She was tall and straight, with brown hair and big, candid, serious eyes—wistful when in repose, boyishly frank and direct as she stood behind her desk attending to business, or smiling as she sped her parting ...
— Money Magic - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... Ogallala Station in September, 1868. The ends of two opposite rails were raised so as to penetrate the cylinders, the engine going over into the ditch and the cars piling up on top of it. The fireman was caught in the wreck and burned to death, the engineer and forward brakeman, riding on the engine, escaped unhurt. The train crew and passengers being armed, defended the train, keeping the Indians off until a wrecking train and crew arrived. Word being sent to Major North, who was at Willow ...
— The Story of the First Trans-Continental Railroad - Its Projectors, Construction and History • W. F. Bailey
... A brakeman leaped from the cab and ran ahead. Stooping, he cursed the corroded lock of the unused switch which creaked and jarred to the pull of the lever as old No. 9 headed wheezily onto the rust-eaten rails of the ...
— The Promise - A Tale of the Great Northwest • James B. Hendryx
... train sheds of his native town of Monroeville, Ohio, than he did at school. At twelve years of age he ran away to join the Union Army, in which he served as an orderly until the end of the war. He then followed his natural bent, became a switchman and later a brakeman, was a charter member of the Brotherhood, and, when its outlook was least encouraging, became its Grand Master. At once under his ...
— The Armies of Labor - Volume 40 in The Chronicles Of America Series • Samuel P. Orth
... left the car, the brakeman found a chair for Bob, and showed him how to work its mechanism so that he could drop it back when he wished to go to sleep, all the while eyeing the poorly-dressed lad with evident curiosity, which finally he could no longer ...
— Bob Chester's Grit - From Ranch to Riches • Frank V. Webster
... brisk conversation, Albert speaking in a loud tone, for he was feeling very merry. "Ha, ha, ha!—but I did think the old fool would hear the brakeman call the station, though. I didn't suppose I could get him any farther than the door. To think of his clambering clear out on the platform, and getting left! He believed every word I told him. What ...
— Tiger and Tom and Other Stories for Boys • Various
... up to the station. There was a flutter of drapery, as a lady with a white French poodle, snapping and snarling at the world at large, and the brakeman in particular, into whose arms it was thrust, ...
— Peggy Stewart: Navy Girl at Home • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... The brakeman caught up the leather bags and jumped from the slowing train. He planked them down regardless of contents, and ran off to the station. It was an old discarded box-car shoved on a siding to do duty ...
— Polly of Pebbly Pit • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... the station. So, abruptly, in fact, did the train start that my last vision of the end brakeman revealed him rolling along the platform in a highly undignified fashion, while the engineer sat at my feet in amazement as I clutched ...
— Mr. Hawkins' Humorous Adventures • Edgar Franklin
... whether they suppose their hearers to be so ignorant of the most common facts as to believe that there is no way of bringing a carriage to a stand but by a sudden jerk, or that God is more stupid than the brakeman of an express train. We will do them the justice, however, to say, that they did not invent it, but merely shut their eyes, and opened their mouths, and swallowed it for philosophy, because they found it in the writings of ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... but, thoroughly rural in his taste for sensation, the baggage-master leaped to the bottom step of the nearest car and spoke to a brakeman. The brakeman glanced at the first citizen with respect. There was a hissing noise and a jerk. When the train rumbled to a stop again under the startled eyes of Lindon, Abner Sawyer was already striding up the aisle. With the intelligent eyes of the young minister upon him, he snatched Jimsy ...
— Jimsy - The Christmas Kid • Leona Dalrymple
... resentment. "Good heap o' work in ye', old chuck; had a master what didn't understand bringing on't out, though!" mutters M'Fadden, as he introduces Harry to the negro car, at the same time casting a look of satisfaction at the brakeman standing at his left hand ready to ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... even a hand-car gone up ahead of us," informed the brakeman in response to his inquiry. "This is the only train ...
— Philip Steele of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police • James Oliver Curwood
... out for Marshallton!" shouted the brakeman, and in half a minute the boys were climbing into a taxi bound for the school; in half an hour they were facing the great buildings which stood for so much learning, and in half a day they had matriculated and were ...
— Radio Boys Loyalty - Bill Brown Listens In • Wayne Whipple
... moves out of the terminal. It moves smoothly and practically without jarring sounds. There is no shrieking of steel against steel. It is as though the rails were made of rubber and the wheel-flanges were faced with noise-proof felt. No conductor comes to punch your ticket, no brakeman to bellow the stops, no train butcher bleating the gabbled invoice of his ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... slept as peacefully as though he were in one of the huge feather-beds at his grandfather's house—slept until the conductor shook him by the shoulder, when he opened his eyes, grunted, and closed them again. The train stopped, a brakeman yanked him roughly to his feet, put a cheap suit-case into his hand, and pushed him, still dazed, into the chill morning air. The train rumbled on and left him blinking into a lantern held up to his face, but he did not look promising as a hotel guest and the darky porter turned abruptly; ...
— The Heart Of The Hills • John Fox, Jr.
... the early freight train on the Old Colony railroad neared the bridge in Quincy, THOMAS ELLIS, a brakeman, raised up for the purpose of throwing off a bundle of newspapers, when he was struck by the timbers of the bridge and knocked senseless upon his car. He wan saved from rolling to the track by TIMOTHY LEE, a paper boy ...
— Punchinello Vol. II., No. 30, October 22, 1870 • Various
... at him; the sailors began to surge forward. Suddenly another door was flung wide; in it stood two or three brakeman, a fireman or so. ...
— Ten Days That Shook the World • John Reed
... only visitors. Everybody seemed to be especially nice to them on that wonderful morning. Even the supercilious ticket-seller at the San Francisco depot had unbent, and wished them good luck. The conductor of the train had shown himself affable. The very brakeman had gone out of his way to apprise them, quite five minutes ahead of time, that "the next stop was their place." And at San Bruno the proprietor of the road-house himself hitched up to drive them over to the lake, announcing that he would call for ...
— Blix • Frank Norris
... woman was just about to ask who Foster was, when the speed of the train slackened, and the brakeman opened the door of the car and cried ...
— Short Story Classics (American) Vol. 2 • Various
... we had come to the car and Pee-wee was the first one to go up the steps. Now I don't know whether maybe it was because we had been talking about railroading that Pee-wee thought he'd play brakeman, but anyway, like the crazy kid he was, as soon as he was on the platform he grabbed the wheel that's connected with the brake and turned it out of its ratchet and twirled it around, shouting, ...
— Roy Blakeley's Camp on Wheels • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... station became at once a place of importance. It takes its name from the neighboring mountain around the base of which winds the swift Rat River. At Sleepy Cat town the main line leaves the Rat, and if a tenderfoot brakeman ask a reservation buck why the mountain is called Sleepy Cat the Indian will answer, always the same, "It lets ...
— The Daughter of a Magnate • Frank H. Spearman
... of Providence which he would be culpable to refuse. Providence had answered his prayer in permitting him to pass the American frontier safely, and Northwick must not be derelict in fulfilling his part of the agreement. The Canadians borrowed the brakeman's lantern, and began to study a map which they spread out on their knees. The one who seemed first among them put his finger on a place in the map, and said that was the spot. It was in the region just back of Chicoutimi. ...
— The Quality of Mercy • W. D. Howells
... a curiosity? We imagine another as finding a moment's pause upon the centre-table of a country parlor. Perhaps a third, hastily bought at a railway station as the train started, and abandoned by the purchaser, may at this hour have entered upon a series of railway journeys in company with the brakeman's lamps and oil-bottles, with a fair prospect of surviving many generations of short-lived railway travellers. We figure to ourselves the heart-breaking desolation of a village-tavern, where, on the bureau under the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 106, August, 1866 • Various
... on to the branch line to await the first train toward Cockermouth. The day was breaking. From the window Paul Ritson could see vaguely the few ruins of the castle. That familiar object touched him strangely. He hardly knew why, but he felt that a hard lump at his heart melted away. By and by the brakeman shouted to the signalman in the gray silence of the morning. The words were indifferent—only some casual message—but they were spoken in the broad Cumbrian that for a year and a half had never once fallen on Paul Ritson's ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine
... Edith and Victor shivered, arrived at the last stage of their journey, they looked out upon the snow-clad hills and leafless trees which fitted out by bare and brown against the winter sky. West Shannondale! the brakeman shouted, and Edith drew her furs around her, for in a few moments more their own ...
— Darkness and Daylight • Mary J. Holmes
... throttle the two twin enemies of the railway man, alcohol, and the freight-car equipment of link-and-pin coupler and hand-brake. It was he who agitated unceasingly for national protection to railway men, and to the brakeman especially. He and his fellow reformers asked for a law compelling the use of a brake which would relieve the crew from such awful exposure and foolhardy risk of life on the icy roofs of the cars ...
— Charles Carleton Coffin - War Correspondent, Traveller, Author, and Statesman • William Elliot Griffis
... exactly her mother, but I'm just the same as her mother. You ast anybody in Calvary Alley. Ast Mr. Burks here, ast Mrs. Smelts what I been to her ever since she was a helpless infant baby. When Bud Molloy lay dyin' he says to the brakeman, 'You tell my wife ...
— Calvary Alley • Alice Hegan Rice
... A brakeman far down the track was flagging the locomotive; it came to a stop, and several men were seen climbing down from the cab. Two of them eventually disengaged themselves from the little group and hurried forward. One was carrying ...
— The Flyers • George Barr McCutcheon
... year before Ed and got a steady job as brakeman on the railroad, over on the Coeur d'Alene Branch. He told me he was going to make railroading his life work and had started in at the bottom, which was smart of him, seeing he'd just come off a farm. They probably wouldn't of let ...
— Ma Pettengill • Harry Leon Wilson
... After asking the Brakeman if he had been to each of the leading churches, the querist finally suggested the Baptists. "Ah, ha!" he shouted. "Now you're on the Shore Line! River Road, eh? Beautiful curves, lines of grace at every bend and sweep of the river; all steel rail and rock ballast; ...
— The California Birthday Book • Various
... have no brakeman. How do you flag the rear of your train if you are stopped from any cause ...
— Toasts - and Forms of Public Address for Those Who Wish to Say - the Right Thing in the Right Way • William Pittenger
... passenger in the car who really interested me was a burly young fellow who sat just ahead of me, and who seemed to be something more than a tourist, for the conductor greeted him pleasantly and the brakeman shook his hand. We were climbing to Cripple Creek by way of the Short Line, but as "the sceneries" were all familiar to me, I was able to study ...
— They of the High Trails • Hamlin Garland
... For I felt absurdly safe with Peter. He has a heart, I know, as clean as an Alpine village, and the very sense of his remoteness, as I'd already told him, gives birth to a sort of intimacy, like the factory girl who throws a kiss to the brakeman on the through freight and remains Artemis-on-ice to the delicatessen-youth from whom she buys ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer
... the roof of the car, they could not have been more horrified than they were at this moment. Meanwhile the train went rumbling on, as it got farther and farther away from the little station. It was now almost dark; the brakeman came into the car and lighted two sickly lamps. Some of the passengers leaned back in their seats and prepared to doze, while others, in heated, angry tones, kept up the discussion as to the battle of Shiloh. The civilian who had hinted that the engagement was not a signal victory for the Confederates ...
— Chasing an Iron Horse - Or, A Boy's Adventures in the Civil War • Edward Robins
... express, why this stop? They were slowing up. It was not time to get to the home station; there were no lights. Murray's mother waylaid a passing brakeman. ...
— The Very Small Person • Annie Hamilton Donnell
... now a dizzy descent to make to Lake Bennett. Conductor and brakeman were on the alert. With their hands upon the brakes these men stood with nerves and muscles tense. All talking ceased. Some of us thought of home and loved ones, but none flinched. Slowly at first, then faster and faster the train ...
— A Woman who went to Alaska • May Kellogg Sullivan
... companions, Miller and Wilson, then in the railway service at Crestline, Ohio. On my way thither, while sitting on the end seat of the rear car watching the line, a farmer-looking man approached me. He carried a small green bag in his hand. He said the brakeman had informed him I was connected with the Pennsylvania Railroad. He wished to show me the model of a car which he had invented for night traveling. He took a small model out of the bag, which showed a section ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie • Andrew Carnegie
... rumbled over a bridge across the Shrewsbury river, which flows into Sandy Hook Bay, and then, after passing a few more stations, the brakeman cried: ...
— Six Little Bunkers at Cousin Tom's • Laura Lee Hope
... sometime TIMES reader, a German brakeman, who had worked in New York and was proud of being able to speak "American," who helped me to slip aboard the military postzug (post train) that left the important military centre of L—— at 1:30 A.M. and started to crawl toward the front with a mixed ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol 1, Issue 4, January 23, 1915 • Various
... New York City. It was on that occasion that he told me that his brother-in-law, James Wells, who resided in Brooklyn, had an acquaintance named Gilly McGloyn, and that Gilly had a brother-in-law named Grady, who was a brakeman on the express train of the New York and New Haven Railroad, which left New York at 8 o'clock in the evening. He also said that Grady wanted McGloyn to get somebody to help throw the safes out of that train. McGloyn went to ...
— Bucholz and the Detectives • Allan Pinkerton
... want to lie like that for, boy?" he demanded. "You know as well as I do that the brakeman takes on five boxes ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street
... been seen nowhere except in a little town they call Conway. He tried to get beer there, but there was n't any saloon. Maybe he came in on a freight, but the brakeman had n't seen him. They could n't find no letters nor nothing on him; nothing but an old penknife in his pocket and the wishbone of a chicken wrapped up in a piece ...
— My Antonia • Willa Sibert Cather
... and rode the trucks to the next stop. There a man with a lantern had searched him out, much as a nigger shines the eyes of a possum, and had dragged him forth. He was dragged forth at the second stop, and again at the third. Finally, the train was halted far out on a lonely prairie and a large brakeman with gold teeth and corns on his palms held a knee upon Mr. McWade's chest until the train started. Ignoring the hoarse warning breathed into his dusty countenance, along with the odor of young onions, the traveler argued volubly, but with ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... to his message, saying that she and Jennie, were coming to Cincinnati and were then on the train, and had the brakeman file it for sending at the first station beyond Clintondale at ...
— A Little Miss Nobody - Or, With the Girls of Pinewood Hall • Amy Bell Marlowe
... She waited at some little distance from the station till the train came up: then, without going upon the station platform at all, she entered the rear car from the opposite side of the road. No one saw her; not even a brakeman. When the train began to move, the sense of what she had done smote her with a sudden terror, and she sprang to her feet, but sank down again, before any of the sleepy passengers had observed her motion. In a few moments she was calm. ...
— Hetty's Strange History • Anonymous
... instant a brakeman hung out from the handrail of a car of the cattle train and swung his lantern. Instinctively Kate and the man with whom she had collided looked at each other in the arc of light. In their haste they had scarcely slackened their steps, and it was only ...
— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart
... dizzy and weak from the bludgeoning he had undergone, unable to help his precarious balance by the use of his arms, doubly bound now by the rope about his middle which the Texans had drawn in running noose. It was Morgan's hope in the first few rods of this frightful journey that a brakeman might appear on top of the train, whose attention he might attract before the speed became so great he could no longer maintain it, or a lurch or a stumble in the ditch at the trackside might throw ...
— Trail's End • George W. Ogden
... great, struggling world of selfishness and sin. The sun shone dazzlingly over wide fields of grain, whose green billows swelled and surged under the freshening breeze; golden butterflies fluttered over the pink and blue morning- glories that festooned the rail-fences; a brakeman whistled merrily on the platform, and children inside the car prattled and played, while at one end a slender little girlish figure, in homespun dress and pink calico bonnet, crouched in a corner of the ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... strain would one of the periodical cooks of mess No. 15 talk to us. He was a tall, resolute fellow, who had once been a brakeman on a railroad, and he kept us all pretty straight; from his fiat there ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... start—beat it while you got time," the brakeman insisted. "The engine's takin' water at the other side. She always ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... dreams, still featuring herself as the star of many adventures, Lorraine followed the brakeman out of the dusty day coach and down the car steps to the platform of the place called Echo, Idaho. I can only guess at what she expected to find there in the person of a cattle-king father, but whatever it was she did not ...
— The Quirt • B.M. Bower
... with the desk crowd, and it was evident from the first minute that he was going to return a plutocrat. He sold a desk to the train brakeman on his way to his field, and another to a kind old gentleman who incautiously got into conversation with him. He raged through four counties like a plague, selling desks in farmhouses, public libraries, harness stores, banks and old folks' homes. He ...
— At Good Old Siwash • George Fitch
... to intentional slights. Having satisfied Nan's curiosity concerning what was in her basket, she stepped forward to the platform and swung the cooler of buttermilk back and forth in the manner of a brakeman with ...
— The Comings of Cousin Ann • Emma Speed Sampson
... railroad management with its yearly tale of bloodshed and dismemberment, its hundreds and thousands of killed and wounded. We cannot pick out and hang a director or president when the dead brakeman is dragged out from between the cars that did not have automatic couplers. The man is dead, is killed, is murdered—but we cannot fix responsibility. Can we arrest for murder the poor mother who is ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... platform beside the track, where a freight-car marked for the Hill Country division of the road, with devices intelligible to the train-men, had been shunted down by a pony engine in obedience to mystical semaphoric gesticulations, from the brakeman risking his life for the purpose among the rails, addressed to the engineer keeping his hand on the pulse of the locomotive, and his head out of the cab window to see how near he could come to killing ...
— A Pair of Patient Lovers • William Dean Howells
... those who gather at the smaller stations to gaze at the passengers, get the papers, and feel the rush, for a single moment, of the world's great life. I love to listen to the smart remarks of some rustic wit in shirt-sleeves, who, if the train should happen to be behind time, intimates to the brakeman that the old horse didn't have his allowance of oats that morning, or commiserates the loneliness of the conductor of a train not crowded with passengers, all of which is intended for the ears of a village girl who stands in the door of the "Ladies' Room," with the tip of a parasol in her ...
— Lessons in Life - A Series of Familiar Essays • Timothy Titcomb
... "Wait a moment." He called to a brakeman who stood at the door, "Go up to the engine and tell the engineer to get to the siding ...
— The Short Line War • Merwin-Webster
... When the brakeman swung back the door and with resonant indifference shouted in Esperanto "Granderantal stashun," Galbraithe felt like jumping up and shaking the man's hand. It was five years since he had heard that name pronounced as it should be pronounced ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... Putchett in some measure recovered his spirits. He introduced himself to a brakeman by means of a cigar, and questioned him until he satisfied himself that the place to which he had purchased a ticket was indeed unknown to the world, being far from the city, several miles from the railroad, and on a ...
— Romance of California Life • John Habberton
... Curly wanted to know. Softly he padded forward, keeping as low as he could till he reached the empty sleepers. A brakeman was just uncoupling the express car when Curly dived underneath and nestled close ...
— Crooked Trails and Straight • William MacLeod Raine
... very thankful for the knowledge of Science I have gained through your book. I want so much to be a Scientist; but we are very poor. My husband is a brakeman on the railroad; and I have very little education. There is comfort in the thought that, if I can't be a Scientist, my ...
— Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896 • Mary Baker Eddy
... was stopped by telegraph near Norwall. The fugitive, assuming correctly that it was slowing down for search, was seen by a brakeman fleeing across a pasture between the tracks and the eastern edge of Haystack Mountain. Several posses have already started after him, and sheriffs all through northern ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... time Dan'l J. was up to Skiplap, there was a swell party on the car—kind of a coppery-lookin' blonde. Allie Ash, the brakeman on No. 4, he tells me she used to be in Spokane, and now she'd got her hooks on to some minin' property up in the Coeur d'Alene. Course, this ...
— The Spenders - A Tale of the Third Generation • Harry Leon Wilson
... mysteries of railway signals, he had been "passed" by the desk examiner and sent out as one of the "scab" train crew to move perishable freight, for the Wisconsin Central was then in the throes of its first great strike. And he had gone out as a green brakeman, but he had come back as a hero, with a Tribune reporter posing him against a furniture car for a two-column photo. For the strikers had stoned his train, half killed the "scab" fireman, stalled him in the yards and cut off two thirds of his cars and shot out the cab-windows ...
— Never-Fail Blake • Arthur Stringer
... have been almost morning when, as they stopped at the last water tank west of Grand Forks, they were aroused from their slumbers by the bright rays shed by a lighted lantern held in the hands of a brakeman who roughly shouted: "Which way, kids?" "To Saint Paul," answered Joe. "Got some money, lads, with which you can square your ride?" inquired the railroad man, as he raised his lantern higher so he could ...
— The Trail of the Tramp • A-No. 1 (AKA Leon Ray Livingston)
... way we always does, mum. Many's the poor brakeman's fingers I've saved by rubbin 'em in some one's thick ...
— Camilla: A Tale of a Violin - Being the Artist Life of Camilla Urso • Charles Barnard
... The brakeman and a kindly-hearted fellow passenger helped the Flopper into the train—and thereafter for an hour or more, in a first class coach, the Flopper held undisputed sway. The passengers, flocking from the other cars, filled the aisle and seriously interfered with the lordly movements ...
— The Miracle Man • Frank L. Packard
... to the crest of this heave of barren land Casey observed that some one at the station was excitedly waving a flag. Thereupon Casey, who acted as brakeman, signaled the engineer. ...
— The U.P. Trail • Zane Grey
... pachydermic collegian, T. Haviland Hicks, Jr., the sunny-souled, irrepressible Senior, danced madly about on the tiger-skin rug in midfloor, evidently laboring under the delusion that he was a lunatical Hottentot at a tribal dance; he waved his arms wildly, like a signaling brakeman, or howled through a big megaphone, and about his toothpick structure was strung his beloved banjo, on which the blithesome youth twanged at times an ...
— T. Haviland Hicks Senior • J. Raymond Elderdice
... nerve—of the right sort!" called a brakeman, and Joe, nodding at him, recognized a railroad acquaintance who had been present at some of ...
— Baseball Joe in the Big League - or, A Young Pitcher's Hardest Struggles • Lester Chadwick
... I chained the monk to a shtick in me yard, and the coal thrains do be passin' all day foreninst, and on iv'ry cairr do be a brakeman. In one waik, begorra, I had two tons of coal in me cellar, and the ...
— Best Short Stories • Various
... "Glenfield!" The brakeman's voice rang clear and sharp through the car. Hilda started, and seized her father's ...
— Queen Hildegarde • Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards
... educational interests in New York to meet one of their number who, beginning life as a telegraph operator out beyond the Mississippi, was at the head of one of the two greatest railroads in the east. Of the guests, one, the president of another important railroad, was once a farm boy, then a freight brakeman in that same western State; another, the president of one of the longest railroads, was the son of a stone-mason out in that valley; another, the head of the Interborough system of New York, also a prairie- born boy; another, president of the greatest southern railroad, was born at ...
— The French in the Heart of America • John Finley
... the care of my friend, two hundred miles away. Hastily, and with trembling fingers, I searched my clothes, the lunch-basket, my linen; not even a pin could I find. I shoved open the sliding door, and swung my hat and shouted, hoping to attract some brakeman's attention. The train was thundering along at full speed, and none saw or heard me. I knew her stupor would not last long. A slight quivering of the lip, an occasional spasm running through the frame, told me too plainly that the stage of frenzy would soon begin. 'My God,' I exclaimed ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten
... been about ten of a dark warm night as we came to a final halt beside a low station marked "Reno," and at the suggestion of the brakeman I called for "the Palace Hotel Bus," although none of the waiting carriages or drivers seemed even remotely related to a palace. My wife, filled with a high sense of our adventure, took her seat in the muddy and smelly carriage, with ...
— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... around much on them Long Island branch lines? Say, it must be int'restin' sport, providin' you don't care whether you get there this week or next. I missed one connection by waitin' for the brakeman to call out the change. And when I'd caught another train back to the right junction I got the pleasin' bulletin that the next for Quehassett is the theater train, that ...
— Torchy, Private Sec. • Sewell Ford
... toward the corner as fast as his rickety old limbs would carry him. When he reached the corner he saw a car standing on the track. There was a brakeman at one end, holding a coupling link in one hand, and a coupling pin in the other, his eye on an engine and train of cars only a rod or two away, advancing to pick up the single car. At the same moment Peter ...
— The Colonel's Dream • Charles W. Chesnutt
... shuffling rapidly into the dining-room, with his huge flat palm inverted high over his head and bearing a colossal tray heaped up with good things for the guest under his charge? And shall I ever forget the grotesque gravity of the negro brakeman in Louisiana, with his tall silk hat? or the pair of gloves pathetically shared between two neatly dressed negro youths in a railway carriage in Georgia? or the pickaninnies slumbering sweetly in old packing-cases in a hut at Jacksonville, while their father thrummed the soft guitar ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... svitches, Till my side ban getting Saxty-seven stitches. Ay hear brakeman faller Say, "Yust ten hours late!" It ban hal, ay tal yu, ...
— The Norsk Nightingale - Being the Lyrics of a "Lumberyack" • William F. Kirk
... fresh flood of tears from all present, and the conductor knelt by her side, and, embracing her wept the reply he could not utter. At this juncture the brakeman called out: "H——." The conductor arose and requested him to attend to his (the conductor's) duty at the station, for he was engaged. That was a precious place. I thank God that I was a witness to this scene, but I was sorry that at this point I was obliged ...
— Children's Edition of Touching Incidents and Remarkable Answers to Prayer • S. B. Shaw
... if you're splintered in place o' bein' clean you don't want him to learn the difference at your cost. If you lose your leg, Mrs. Lathrop, it certainly will be a awful thing for you. A woman can't ever say 's she was a brakeman or in the war, 'n' them 's the only good excuses 's can be give. Then, too, if you have a wooden leg 'n' the wind catches you at it, it'll take you in a way 's 'll make you look more like a scarecrow 'n a Christian. Mrs. Macy says 't she was speakin' ...
— Susan Clegg and Her Friend Mrs. Lathrop • Anne Warner
... instantly by one of relief. Then she passed into the car. She had seen him swing upon the moving steps and had feared for his safety—had shown in her glorious face that she was glad he did not fall beneath the wheels. Doubtless she would have been as solicitous had he been the porter or the brakeman, he reasoned, but that she had noticed him ...
— Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... rear-brakeman Joe, his right-hand man, who had just finished switching their train back on the main track, and getting it again started on its way toward New York. At the sight of Rod, who was of course a perfect stranger to them, sitting on the floor, hatless, covered with dust, ...
— Cab and Caboose - The Story of a Railroad Boy • Kirk Munroe
... railway brakeman," Ventner said, rushing up to the boys with an air of importance, "that the two lads you are in search of were seen leaving a box car at a little station in Ohio. I don't just recall the name of the station now, but I can find ...
— Boy Scouts in the Coal Caverns • Major Archibald Lee Fletcher
... made b'lieve fairies or princes; rather, he was in the secret world of boyhood a soldier, a trapper, or a swing-brakeman on the M. & D. R.R. But he was bespelled by the suggestion of grandeur in the iron fence and gracious trees and dark carriage-shed of the House with Shutters. It was a large, square, solid brick structure, set among ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... we got to the fair grounds and slept until we got to the hill where you first see the farm house. And then when we drove into the lot, my Uncle Henry came to take the horses. And I wondered and asked, "Where's Willie Wallace?" "He's gone to work on the railroad. He's a brakeman now," said my uncle. My heart sunk clear down, for I had expected to go fishin' with him, and ride around the country while he was haulin' corn. And it made me sad to think he was gone for good, and maybe at this very ...
— Mitch Miller • Edgar Lee Masters
... crew ran down to the hut, which was thick with smoke from burnt 'flap-jacks' and frizzled bacon, but found no sign of Jock or Collie. Round the curve they ran, and there, still on the boulder, was Collie, barking, as the brakeman expressed it, 'to ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... the long ride, and just as she was thinking that she could not bear much more of it, the brakeman shouted, "Glenmore! Glenmore!" and the two girls were glad enough to get out upon ...
— Dorothy Dainty at Glenmore • Amy Brooks
... before you got there merely to justify the name. Surely no one would have the temerity to conjure up so beautiful a name for a desert town. Yet, half unwillingly, I thought of a little place I once visited—against my will, since the brakeman put me off there—by the name of Forest City. I remembered with misgivings how there wasn't a tree within something like four hundred miles. But I pushed that memory aside as a lying prophet. I believed in Goodale and beefsteak. Goodale ...
— The River and I • John G. Neihardt
... these kept Evan interested until the brakeman shouted "Hometon next!" Then a lofty and exulting happiness took the place of interest. He looked on the approaching spires and humble cupolas of his home town with an expression possibly similar to that of an eagle in flight over a settlement of earthy creatures. He felt a sudden ...
— A Canadian Bankclerk • J. P. Buschlen
... has fallen to the yellow leaf. The greatest traveler is now the brakeman. Next is he who sells colored cotton. A poor third pursues health and flees from restlessness. Wise men have ceased to question travelers, except to inquire of the arrival of trains and of ...
— Journeys to Bagdad • Charles S. Brooks
... He had promised the Wahoo Fuel Company to see that the work of constructing the trocha was started that afternoon, and when Violet had telephoned to Mechanics' Hall, Grant and a group of men went to the mines to begin on the trocha. They passed down the switch into the yards, and Grant heard a brakeman say: ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... standing as the magic words were yelled in at the front door by the brakeman. Uncle Jeremiah had not been as excited since he heard ...
— The Adventures of Uncle Jeremiah and Family at the Great Fair - Their Observations and Triumphs • Charles McCellan Stevens (AKA 'Quondam')
... The brakeman came through, and I spoke to him about the window. He said, "The first time I see the president of the road I'll tell him about it!" ...
— You Can Search Me • Hugh McHugh
... moment entered a brakeman with a can of condensed milk. "The conductor sent this to ...
— Kristy's Rainy Day Picnic • Olive Thorne Miller
... station of Agapolis, stamping his feet at each turn in his promenade to restore the circulation. His was a fast Express train, and he stood during most of the run, on the alert to guard against accident. There was no more careful engineer on the road. Fireman and brakeman were off for supper in or near the station. He slouched as he walked, his hands thrust deep into his pockets; his overcoat was heavy and too loose even for his bulky figure. He had "taken it off the hands" of an engineer's widow whose husband was dragged from ...
— The Little Gold Miners of the Sierras and Other Stories • Various
... he got it, then," said Tommy Burt. "Used to be a freight brakeman or something out in the wild-and-woolly. When he arrived, he was dressed very proud and stiff like a Baptist elder going to make a social call, all but the made-up bow tie and the oil on the hair. Some change ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... the name of "Makanda." It was some time after midnight when we neared this station, the boys were sprawled out on their seats, and trying to doze. The engine gave the usual loud whistle to announce a stop, the front door of our coach was thrown open, and a brakeman with a strong Hibernian accent called out in thunder tones what sounded exactly like "My-candy!" as here written,—and with the accent on the first syllable. There were several soldiers in the coach who were not of our party, also going home on furlough, and one of these, a big fellow with a ...
— The Story of a Common Soldier of Army Life in the Civil War, 1861-1865 • Leander Stillwell
... their attendant dangers, must be maintained. To avoid all these difficulties, Mr. Hinckley planned the change which is known as the Darby Improvement, carrying the road from Gray's Ferry to Chester over and through the high lands of Darby and Ridley. We shall no longer hear the brakeman shout out "Gibson's," "Lazaretto,", "Tinicum" (called by the Indians Tenecunck), "Crum Creek." We shall no longer wonder that the train should be stopped for so few passengers to get on or off, for in future our car will take ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 28. July, 1873. • Various
... train fur the second time in a place in the northern part of Tennessee, right near the Kentuckey line. I set down in a lumber yard near the railroad track, and when she started up agin I grabbed onto the iron ladder and swung myself aboard. But the brakeman was watching fur me, and clumb down the ladder and stamped on my fingers. So I dropped off, with one finger considerable mashed, and set down in that ...
— Danny's Own Story • Don Marquis
... brakeman, crossing himself, said it was the "unseen hand" that had been stopping the Limited on the Desert. It might be a warning, he said, and walked briskly out on the bridge looking for dynamite, ...
— The Last Spike - And Other Railroad Stories • Cy Warman
... After asking engineer, brakeman, and conductor which they thought the safest car, and getting a different answer from each, she finally ensconced herself in the third car from the engine. Opening the window, her attention was attracted ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 1 January 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... got no monee—not at all! I'm broke it up for sure. Dat's locky t'ing, Napoleon, de brakeman, Joe Latour, He's cousin of wan frien' of me call Camille Valiquette, Conductor too's good Canayen—don't ax me ...
— Humour of the North • Lawrence J. Burpee
... unprepared by any previous experience for the mode of travel, the crowded car and the rough kindness of the people, who liking his curly hair and refined young childlike face would have been of service if he had accepted their advances with any pleasure. Presently, after four in the afternoon, the brakeman called ...
— Westways • S. Weir Mitchell
... the express agent tied hand and foot in the corner of his car, and, telling a brakeman who had followed me to set him at liberty, I turned my attention to the safe. That the diversion had not come a moment too soon was shown by the dynamite cartridge already in place, and by the fuse that lay on the floor, ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds
... starts as fireman on a freight train, advances to a fireman on a passenger train, then to engineer on a freight train, and finally to engineer on a passenger train. A similar sequence is arranged in advancing from brakeman to conductor. Along with seniority the brotherhoods received the right of appeal in cases of discharge, which has done much to eliminate discrimination. Since they were enjoying such exceptional advantages ...
— A History of Trade Unionism in the United States • Selig Perlman
... Mexicans, stalking, red-faced, wicked-looking cowboys, lolling Indians. In the confusion Helen would have been hard put to it to preserve calmness, with Bo to watch, and all that baggage to carry, and the other train to find; but the kindly brakeman who had been attentive to them now helped them off the train into the other—a service for which ...
— The Man of the Forest • Zane Grey
... communities .... Chester Glenn remains for a passing mention. A Yankee of Yankees, this, born on a New Hampshire farm, and to the ordinary traveller on the Wigmore branch of the railroad just a good-natured, round-faced, tobacco-chewing brakeman who would take a seat beside ladies of his acquaintance aid make himself agreeable until it was time to rise and bawl out, in the approved manner of his profession, the name of the next station. Fillmore Street knew that the flat ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... blithely down the Pullman aisle to rejoin the Winnebagos after a sojourn on the platform with the brakeman, whom she left exhausted with answering questions. When Sahwah traveled she traveled with all her might and there was nothing visible to the naked eye that she did not notice, inquire about, and store up for future reference. She observed down to the ...
— The Camp Fire Girls Do Their Bit - Or, Over the Top with the Winnebagos • Hildegard G. Frey
... said. "Dan the brakeman has taken my boat to the Railroad Dock. He will return in an hour. If you are hungry, you can sup with us. Emily, set a place ...
— A Gentleman Vagabond and Some Others • F. Hopkinson Smith
... has changed his occupation of driver for that of a brakeman on the railroad between ...
— 'Lena Rivers • Mary J. Holmes
... place in Germany that his hired girl came from, and Cornes happened to think that he had not collected fare from an Indian that got on at Greenfield with a lot of muskrat skins. In less than four seconds the corpse and parrot were the sole occupants of the car. The three train men and a brakeman met in the emigrant car and looked ...
— Peck's Sunshine - Being a Collection of Articles Written for Peck's Sun, - Milwaukee, Wis. - 1882 • George W. Peck
... by no other common interest than that of journeying quickly from one spot to another, where they disperse never to meet again. My Perry train had an altogether different character. I was late for it, but the brakeman saw me coming and waved to the engineer not to start until my trunk was checked and safely boarded like myself. Then we bumped our way through meadows quickened to life by the soft spring air; we halted at crossroads to pick up stray travelers and shoppers; we unloaded plowing ...
— The Woman Who Toils - Being the Experiences of Two Gentlewomen as Factory Girls • Mrs. John Van Vorst and Marie Van Vorst |
