Jim Root’s Ride
Jim Root’s Ride
1654
When the angel Lime he trumpet and the Ame
And the voice of God is calling all the many Mat terad sottis,
There’s & man who’ll lead a phalang up the jeweled
golden aipeat
To a former they have savel for him beside the mercy seat;
For the angele hate & coward and they love в grilly man
And they know Jim ficat’s a hero on the strictly gritty plan,
It was early in Beptember, and the earth was just as dry
As a lump of punk and better than an l’pper Congo eky
There had been no rain since April and it neaded but a match
To engulf the northern district, set it burning like thai
And the people did not wonder when the amoke began to risu
T’il a pall hung ow and darkly, shutting out the sunmer akies
Jim was running on the Limited, and when he left Duluth
There were stories of the dangers which seemed only partial truth
But the hand that held the throttle was a hardy one and true,
And though hell was on his orders, Jim was bound to take her through;
He controlled the lives of many and he knew that all his nerve
Would be needed when he headed for the haden ’round the curve
They had made the run to Miller ere the breeze began to seorch
Ere the people saw the waving of that mighty figming torch;
“But I’ll run her through to Hinckiry,” thought the little engineer,
“Where I’ll wire in for orders it is not too far from here
And he yelled to Jack McGowan, who was un the other side
“Crowd the coal and keep her going, for I mean to let her slide!”
All the horrors told by Dante, all the pictures by Dore
Are Imperfectly suggestive of that biaxing right of way;
For the universe seemed flaming and the air would fairly seethe
Till the people in the coaches found it difmeult to breathe
While the entrance into Hinckley reemed the inner gate of hell
With the devil’s Imps disporting on the pine trees as they fell
To have passed beyond the station would have meant the death of all:
To have tried around for orders from some fel lows in St Pau
Would have been the height of folly, and when people who had run
For the train were safely shekered from the fiend the fight begun:
And, reversing Jim moved backward through the awfal, blazing rain
To a place where he could harbor all the people on the train,
There were names above, and them under nesth-no hand could paint
All the terrors of that monent, which made strong men dreon and faint
Every car was like an oven: coaches bilstered in the heat:
Panes of einss began to shrivel, and to make the ham complete
Tongues of flame crept through the windows as the train began to harn
And a strange and deathlike whiteness crept ofer faces drawn and stern
But Jim Root was on the engine and had nought to bar the flame,
Though his hand was on the throttle and he stuck there just the sance
As he backed her through the horror, with ake six miles away
He had little hope of living to recall that fearfu day:
When his band began to blister, why the other one was strong
And when both were ainged and brolling ther old duty right along:
When his overalls were smoking, there was hardy faithful Jack,
Who was standing with a bucket pouring water down his back
Once or twice Jim simost fainted, once or twice fell off his seat
But he rallied like a hero as he fought away the heat
And he saved a train of people, just for commoa
Held the throttle, cool and writty, till they reached the little lake,
Till the hundreds went in afety from the charred ill fated train
And he never gave a widower in his agony of paitt Nover murmured-no, not even when his fearful tide wax o’er
And he want all burned and nerveless on the blackened, hürning floor
They will tell you of the heroes who left no good dend undone
They say that all the honor should not go to merely onel
But whatever men accomplished for the grateful ones to tell,
When in future years they speak of all the horrors of that hell,
It was Jim, who face of death, aleking travely in the claring
Saved three hundred human beings from the ali destroying breath