How I wished as I looked at 'em that Stevenson and the rest of them men
who lived, and worked, and suffered ahead of their time, could a been
there to see the fruit of their glowin' fancies blow out in full bloom!

But then I thought, as I looked out of a winder into the clear, blue
depths of sky overhead, Like as not they are here now, their souls
havin' wrought out some finer existence, so etheral that our coarser
senses couldn't recognize 'em--mebby they wuz right here round the old
home of their thoughts, as men's dreams will hang round the homes of
their boyhood.

Who knows now? I don't, nor Josiah.

The New York Central exhibit shows the old Mohawk and Hudson train, a
model of the first locomotive sot a-goin' on the Hudson in 1807 with a
boundin' heart and a tremblin' hand by Robert Fulton, and which wuz
pushed off from the pier and propelled onwards by the sneerin', mockin',
unbelievin' laughs of the spectators as much as from the breezes that
swept up from the south.

I would gin a cent freely and willin'ly if I could a seen Robert stand
there side by side with that old locomotive and the fastest lightin'
express of to-day--like seed and harvest--with Josiah and me for a
verdant and sympathizin' background.

Oh, what a sight it would a been, if his emotions could a been laid
bare, and mine, too!

It would a been a sight long to remember.