In contrast to this picture of "speed maniacs" darting more swiftly than ever eagle swooped or lightning express-train ran, let us contemplate for a moment that first automobile race held in Chicago in 1894.

"'I have an hour before the express-train starts.

Few companies in America have any idea what their express-trains cost them.

There may be seen upon the road from Boston to Springfield engines with wheels nearly seven feet in diameter, used for drawing light express-trains; while upon the roads ascending the Alleghanies may be seen wheels of only three and a half feet diameter, which are employed in drawing trains up the steep grades.

Let any one, who believes that the day of daring is past, beg or buy a ride on the locomotive of the earliest express-train, some cold winter-morning.

no wonder the servants of force say that it is like "a cur barking at the wheels of an express-train."

He learned to shoot the hills at a breathless rate, climbing up swiftly to the top; then, with feet apart, but even, zipping like an express-train down the steep incline and far along the level below.

And she skipped and sported along near the railroad track, where the express-train raced in vain with her; for she could make her sixty miles an hour or more without gasping for breath.

Rather than take another such little promenade as I had in that passage, I would submit to be placed on the middle sleeper of a railroad-bridge, with an express-train coming at me without a cowcatcher.

But any of our readers who is unsatisfied has only to place himself in front of a lightning-express-train with an ordinary conductor.

Let those of us to whom lightning-express-trains have been slow grumble hereafter at their fifty miles an hour!

For five solid hours, travelling always at express-train speed, we motored between walls of marching men.

The express-train was not stopped at the border of the three countries through which it passed.

It was as though just above you invisible telegraph-wires had jangled, and their rush through the air was like the roar that rises to the car window when two express-trains going in opposite directions pass at sixty miles an hour.

With forests uprooted, houses smashing about them, and unseen express-trains hurtling through space, they are too stunned to be afraid.