sleeping car of to-day and nearly as high; in fact, so high and so wide
was it that there were no railroads on which it might run, and when
Pullman pleaded with the old-time railroad officers to widen the
clearances, so as to permit the Pioneer to run over their lines, they
laughed at him.

"It is ridiculous, Mr. Pullman," they told him smilingly in refusal.
"People are never going to pay their good money to ride in any such
fancy contraption as that car of yours."

Then suddenly they ceased smiling. All America ceased smiling. Morse's
telegraph was sobering an exultant land by telling how its great
magistrate lay dead within the White House, at Washington. And men were
demanding a funeral car, dignified and handsome enough to carry the body
of Abraham Lincoln from Washington to Springfield. Suddenly somebody
thought of the Pioneer, which rested, a virtual prisoner, in a railroad
yard not far from Chicago.

The Pioneer was quickly released. There was no hesitation now about
making clearances for her. Almost in the passing of a night, station
platforms and other obstructions were being cut away, and the first of
all the Pullman cars made a triumphant though melancholy journey to New
York, to Washington, and back again to Illinois. Abraham Lincoln, in the
hour of death--fifty years ago this blossoming spring of 1915--had given
birth to the Pullman idea. The other day, while one of the brisk Federal
commissions down at Washington was extending consideration to the
Pullman porter and his wage, it called to the witness stand the
executive head of the Pullman Company. And the man who answered the call
was Robert T. Lincoln, the son of Abraham Lincoln.