The Fiery Cabin.

Up in the engine cab are the two men who have worked for years to win to where they are now. The driver, dungaree-clad, his peaked cap low over his eyes, leans out of the window, his hands on the controls, watching the endless path that is being flooded with light ahead of him. The ships and the sea and the long line of breakwater fall away. Furious gusts of smoke, alive with leaping glow-worms, mount into the air. The open furnace door takes great gulps of coal from the fireman's shovel and throws a ruddy aura against the sky. The engine responds to the mounting head of steam and gathers up its power like a runner his muscles. Dark shapes in the outer darkness rush up and flash past as if they are the hurtling denizens of a dream. Through it all runs the rhythmic tattoo of the flying wheels.

There are no speed gauges on the railway engines of New Zealand, since early devices of the kind proved unsatisfactory. Instead, the engine makes its way on the “speed sense” of the driver (which years of practice have developed to a remarkable keenness), under the limits imposed by a carefully worked-out schedule which has taken full account of grades and curves. Although it is necessary for him to observe different speed requirements during the course of a journey, he is able to gauge the progress his page 40 engine is making, and he brings the train into a station right up to time, or within a fraction of a minute of it. Each time, where the tablet system is operating, he changes his tablet before setting out for the next station.

And so the miles are eaten up under the guidance of the driver in his fiery cabin. The men have need to watch their supply of water, which has to be replenished at certain stations. The fireman's shovel works more quickly on the heap of black diamonds in the tender, as the engine gasps for the fuel that will help it up a heavy grade, which it then conquers spiritedly to roar down with zest into a tunnel's mouth. And whether the skies are starry or whether the storm-god screams, the railway engine zooms confidently through the heart of night, with a schedule as its pride.

But even a first-class engine-driver can tire, and the journey is by no means over when the driver and fireman, arrived at one of the stations en route, swing down from their cabin and hand over the next lap to others, while they themselves seek rest. When they have slept, they take charge of a

“Where flowers degenerate man cannot live.”—Napoleon.
The station garden at Mosgiel, Otago, South Island.

train going in the opposite direction, and re-traverse the route back to their homes. And it is to these men and the rest of their division, who have to watch and work while others sleep, that wifely solicitude is the first of life's blessings.