“On fire-horses and wind-horses we career,” says Thomas Carlyle, describing what De Quincey called the "glory of motion." We admire the mighty forces, fire-fed like Enceladus, but we forget the fine fellows who control them in sun-time and in snow-time. The man who guides, and the man who feeds with fuel of flame, the monster of Titanic birth, the Frankenstein monster, with muscles of steel and heart of fire, we regard as if they were mere abstractions, instead of men with emotions, and homes, and wives and children of their hopes and poverty. There are no more dauntless heroes in the world of work than engine-drivers and stokers. To drive an express through the black and bleak winter night, with unknown lurking calamity in the mysterious darkness in front, and with two or three hundred lives unconscious of danger behind, not once only, but night after night, as a daily routine of labour, is an exploit far worthier of reward and decoration than is commonly allotted to it. The sallow, earnest faced man on the engine, with keen, scrutinising eyes, wears no scarlet coat. His attire is greasy and grimy, and his appearance is unprepossessing. The only music with which he goes into action is he shriek of his engine; the shots he hears are the explosive reports of the fog signals sending up a shower of sparks under the grinding wheels, as the train burns its way through the pitchy gloom, and
Shears the moonlight with its shadowy shrouds,
Till every breath and pant
Mirrors and paints itself against the clouds,
Like northern lights aslant.