Speaking of trains reminds me that I have been scooting around the country lately on mixed and accommodation trains.

They are a good style of conveyance in some respects. For instance, if a man has a car-load of wheat that he wants to run into St. Paul with and sell, he can have it attached to the mixed train, and then he can get into the coach and go along with it, and attend to it personally. But where a man's time is worth $9 a moment, as mine is, it is annoying.

At first I couldn't get accustomed to it. I couldn't overcome my inertia when the car started or stopped, and it kept me worn out all the time apologizing to a corpulent old lady in the third seat from me. Had I been given a little time to select a lady whose lap I would prefer to sit down in, there were a dozen perhaps in the car more desirable than this old lady, but in the hurry and agitation I always seemed to select her.

Finally the conductor said that kind of business had gone far enough, and he tied me into my seat with a shawl-strap.

The train was very long, and when it got under full head-, way it was almost impossible to stop it at the various stations. We either stopped out in the country prematurely or passed the station at the rate of nine miles a minute, and then repented and came back. I was struck with the similarity of the first five or six towns on the line and spoke of it to a friend who accompanied me.

It seemed to me that Clarksville, Mapleton, Eldorado Junction, Pine Grove and Brookville had been planned by the same architect, but my friend only laughed and showed me that we had been switched and side-tracked for two or three hours at the first-named place.

We stopped in the woods once and I went out after butternuts.

It was a lovely autumn day, and after the thick nutritious air of the car, it was paradise to get out into the forest, where the fresh, sweet odor of the falling leaves was everywhere, and the hush of nature's annual funeral checked the thoughtless word and noisy laughter of the invader.

I wandered on, thinking of the brevity and comparative unimportance of our human life. How short the race we run, and how unsatisfactory our achievements at last. How like the leaves of the forest we spring forth in the early summer of our existence, nod pleasantly to our fellows a few brief mornings, and then die.

Thoughtlessly and aimlessly I had wandered on until I came to a large butternut, which I climbed with the old and almost forgotten enthusiasm of boyhood. At the top I tried some of my old and difficult tricks, and just as the train moved silently away I was going through the difficult and dangerous act of hanging to the upper limb of a butternut tree by the seat of the pants, and waiting patiently for the bough or the cassimere to yield and let the artist down into the arena by force of gravitation.

Dear reader, did you ever go through this thrilling experience? Did you ever feel the utter insecurity and maddening uncertainty which it yields? If not, then these lines are not to you?

Gently the tree swayed to and fro with the motion of the autumn breeze. Sadly the pines were sighing like lost souls, and the dead leaves fell softly to the ground, like the footfalls of departed spirits. I began to wish that I could fall softly to the ground like the footfalls of departed spirits, too.

I began to get bored and unhappy after awhile. My feet and hands hung in a cluster, and the position seemed strained and unnatural. I began to yearn for society, and the comforts of a home. I mentally calculated the distance I would have to fall, and wondered which of my bones I would shatter the most, and what the doctor's bill would be.

All at once I heard what seemed like a sound of smothered laughter. It was no doubt nothing but a sound which my fevered imagination had conjured up, aided by the torrent of blood that rushed to my head and thumped so loudly in my ears, but it maddened me, and I summoned all my strength in the mighty struggle to free myself. Finally, there was a short, sharp crash, and I felt myself rapidly descending through space. I fancied that I was an acrobat, and had fallen from the center pole that holds up the sky. I thought I lay in the dust and sawdust of the ring in a shapeless mass; and over all, and above all, there was the maddening sensation that my wardrobe was not complete. In my tortured imagination I could hear demoniac laughter, and occasional words of derision. They became more pronounced and distinct at last, and I fancied I heard one of these grinning imps saying:

"How peaceful he looks, and how young and fair. See how carelessly he has inserted his nose in the moist earth. He must have suffered a good deal through life, and yet his face is calm and happy in its expression. His general appearance is that of perfect rest, and the glad fruition of every hope.

"Let us go up into the tree and get the rest of his remains, and send them all home together."

This last speaker reminded me of the conductor, and the similarity struck me even in my trance. Slowly I opened my eyes. It was he. I almost wished that the fall had killed me. I did not fall from the tree to be humorous, but if I had I should have considered it the crowning triumph of an eventful career.

Most everyone from the train was there, and several from the nearest towns along the line. I bowed my thanks in silence, and backed over to the car. I got aboard and sat down. I found that I attracted less attention when I was sitting down, and I never cared so little for public notice in my life as I did that day.

It seems that the train had gone away some distance, but when it got by itself it remembered that I was not on board, and the peanut boy remembered seeing me get off at this point. So, as the train was already two weeks and four days behind, the conductor decided to go back. He says now that he does not regret it. He says that the life of a conductor at the best has but few bright spots in it, and the oases along the desert which he treads are widely separated, but he told me with tears in his eyes that Providence had made me the humble instrument for great good, and he felt grateful to me.

When he breaks out into a glad ripple of childish laughter now without any apparent cause, he takes a piece of checked cassimere out of his pocket and explains how he got it, and tells the whole story to his friends, so there are a great many people along that line of travel who know me by reputation although they have never seen me.