"Brakeman" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... tell it, then. The thing happened in no time, of course. The girl got over screaming, and ran down to the track, frightened out of her wits. The train managed to stop, about twice its own length farther down, round a bend in the track, and the conductor and brakeman came running back. The mother came out of her hovel, carrying twins. The—the—thing was on the track, across the rails. It was a beastly mess, and Ferguson got the girl away; set her down to cry in a pasture, and then went back and helped out, ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... thoroughly rural in his taste for sensation, the baggage-master leaped to the bottom step of the nearest car and spoke to a brakeman. The brakeman glanced at the first citizen with respect. There was a hissing noise and a jerk. When the train rumbled to a stop again under the startled eyes of Lindon, Abner Sawyer was already striding up the ...
— Jimsy - The Christmas Kid • Leona Dalrymple
... brakeman with a dirty blue bandana knotted about his brown throat, waved to them and shouted something which they could not hear. He held aloft a white stick from which he had peeled the green bark, pointed to it, then cast it back towards them ...
— Every Man for Himself • Hopkins Moorhouse
... days now. I had no notion she was half so bad before she came to me. She just wrote that she was run down. Now that she's here, I think she'd be happier anywhere under the sun, but she won't leave. She says it's easier to let go of life here. There was a time when I was a brakeman with a run out of Bird City, Iowa, and she was a little thing I could carry on my shoulder, when I could get her everything on earth she wanted, and she hadn't a wish my $80 a month didn't cover; and now, when I've got a little ...
— Youth and the Bright Medusa • Willa Cather
... it was difficult to realise that the villages we passed through, now half hidden in foliage, might be under 7 ft. of snow in winter. In travelling in this hillier region one has an extra kurumaya, who pushes behind or acts as brakeman. ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott
... labored were progressing. At eighty-five she still spoke in the great meetings. Each Christmas she carried turkeys, pies, and a gift for each man and woman at the "Aged Colored Home," in Philadelphia, driving twenty miles, there and back. Each year she sent a box of candy to each conductor and brakeman on the North Pennsylvania Railroad, "Because," she said, "they never let me lift out my bundles, but catch them up so quickly, and they ...
— Lives of Girls Who Became Famous • Sarah Knowles Bolton
... upon the centre-table of a country parlor. Perhaps a third, hastily bought at a railway station as the train started, and abandoned by the purchaser, may at this hour have entered upon a series of railway journeys in company with the brakeman's lamps and oil-bottles, with a fair prospect of surviving many generations of short-lived railway travellers. We figure to ourselves the heart-breaking desolation of a village-tavern, where, on the bureau under the mirror, to which the public comb and brush are chained, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 106, August, 1866 • Various
... suddenly to find herself in a heap in the aisle of the car with the brakeman, a swinging lantern in his hand, bending over her. "Well, bless my ...
— Keineth • Jane D. Abbott
... "Drury—Drury—Drury!" Crosson watched her as she poised to listen for the answer that did not come. He gaped at her in stupid fascination till a brakeman shook him and ordered him to lend a hand. He rested his gun against a pile of ties and bowed his shoulder to the hoisting of a beam overhanging a woman and ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... betrayed some irritation. "I'm of age, and Lorelei's a grown woman. If we don't get out of Vale I'll still be a brakeman on a soda-fountain ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach
... salute as "father," had been for years trying to throttle the two twin enemies of the railway man, alcohol, and the freight-car equipment of link-and-pin coupler and hand-brake. It was he who agitated unceasingly for national protection to railway men, and to the brakeman especially. He and his fellow reformers asked for a law compelling the use of a brake which would relieve the crew from such awful exposure and foolhardy risk of life on the icy roofs of the cars in ...
— Charles Carleton Coffin - War Correspondent, Traveller, Author, and Statesman • William Elliot Griffis
... been heard to remark on one occasion that he had begun as a brakeman, but there were rumors of adventurous days before he became a member of a train crew. It was said that he had gone prospecting into Mexico as a youth, and that he had spent years working at ends and odds of jobs about mines and smelters. Probably ...
— Children of the Desert • Louis Dodge
... course, exceptions. The blacksmith climbs into a city pulpit. The popular preacher becomes an excellent insurance agent. The saloon-keeper develops into the legislator, and wears the broadcloth and high hat of the politician. The brakeman becomes the railway magnate, and the college graduate a grocer's clerk, and the messenger-boy, picking up by chance one day the pen, and finding it run easier than his legs, becomes a power on a city journal, ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... picture of a row of naked women from whom I could take my pick, and the smell of the women I imagined to be identical with the smell of my big friend A. at boarding-school. When I was traveling down town on an elevated train one afternoon the brakeman asked me whether I had ever been in a brothel, and told me that disorderly houses abounded in my neighborhood. "I have had connection with women," said this red-haired young man, waving his hand in greeting to a woman who nodded at him from a window, "since I was 15 years old. Not long ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 5 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... the language of Koheleth, there is a time to apply the brake and there is a time to abstain from applying the brake. To clog the wheels continually is to stand still, and to stand still is to retreat. Progress has need of the brakeman, but the brakeman should not occupy all of his time putting ...
— Love, Life & Work • Elbert Hubbard
... York to meet one of their number who, beginning life as a telegraph operator out beyond the Mississippi, was at the head of one of the two greatest railroads in the east. Of the guests, one, the president of another important railroad, was once a farm boy, then a freight brakeman in that same western State; another, the president of one of the longest railroads, was the son of a stone-mason out in that valley; another, the head of the Interborough system of New York, also a prairie- ...
— The French in the Heart of America • John Finley
... time the smoke became too dense. A short, thick-set fellow with an evil dark face coolly thrust his heel through a window. The conductor, who, with the brakeman and baggage master, was seated in the baggage van, heard the jingle ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White
... "Cow Run!" intoned the brakeman monotonously, passing through the coaches, "Cow Run next stop!" His eye fell on Redmond. "Wish I'd seen you before, Officer!" he remarked, "I'd have had a hobo for you. Beggar stole a ride on us from Glenbow, back there. The con's goin' to chuck ...
— The Luck of the Mounted - A Tale of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police • Ralph S. Kendall
... from a railway brakeman," Ventner said, rushing up to the boys with an air of importance, "that the two lads you are in search of were seen leaving a box car at a little station in Ohio. I don't just recall the name of the station now, but I can find it ...
— Boy Scouts in the Coal Caverns • Major Archibald Lee Fletcher
... up forty-four years as a brakeman and five years on ditching trains before I went to braking. My old road master put me on the braking. A fellow got his fingers cut off and they turned his keys over to me and put me to braking and I ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Arkansas Narratives Part 3 • Works Projects Administration
... few moments at some insignificant station, of which Mercy could see nothing but a narrow platform, a dim lantern, and a sleepy-looking station-master. Slowly, one or two at a time, the passengers disappeared, until she and her mother were left alone in the car. The conductor and the brakeman, as they passed through, looked at them with renewed interest: it was evident now that they were going through to the terminus of ...
— Mercy Philbrick's Choice • Helen Hunt Jackson
... A brakeman leaped from the cab and ran ahead. Stooping, he cursed the corroded lock of the unused switch which creaked and jarred to the pull of the lever as old No. 9 headed wheezily onto the rust-eaten rails of ...
— The Promise - A Tale of the Great Northwest • James B. Hendryx
... railway signals, he had been "passed" by the desk examiner and sent out as one of the "scab" train crew to move perishable freight, for the Wisconsin Central was then in the throes of its first great strike. And he had gone out as a green brakeman, but he had come back as a hero, with a Tribune reporter posing him against a furniture car for a two-column photo. For the strikers had stoned his train, half killed the "scab" fireman, stalled him in the yards and cut off two thirds ...
— Never-Fail Blake • Arthur Stringer
... him and brought back assurance of its acceptance. I felt able to give this, and, of course, he eagerly approved; I think he telegraphed his approval. Another time, some years afterward, we sat down together in places near the end of a car, and a brakeman came in looking for his official note- book. Clemens found that he had sat down upon it, and handed it to him; the man scolded him very abusively, and came back again and again, still scolding him for ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... the other robbers escaped the wounded bandit eluded the conductor, and made his way into the sleeper, where he climbed into an empty berth. But he was soon traced by the drops of blood from his wound. The conductor and a brakeman hauled him out and battled with him in the aisle amid the screams ...
— Lo, Michael! • Grace Livingston Hill
... brakeman called "Next station is Berkeley Center." Dr. Blake came to the sudden realization that they had reached his destination. ...
— The House of Mystery • William Henry Irwin
... The brakeman and a kindly-hearted fellow passenger helped the Flopper into the train—and thereafter for an hour or more, in a first class coach, the Flopper held undisputed sway. The passengers, flocking from the other cars, filled the aisle ...
— The Miracle Man • Frank L. Packard
... truth in a glance. There had been clamors for the positions of honor, and she, from weakness of sex, had been overborne. She, whose heart cried out for the distinction of train-boy, conductor, engineer, brakeman, or fireman, in the order named, had been forced into the only degrading post in the game—a mere passenger without voice or office in those delicate feats of administration. And she suffered—suffered with a pathetic loyalty, for she knew as well as they ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... them on that wonderful morning. Even the supercilious ticket-seller at the San Francisco depot had unbent, and wished them good luck. The conductor of the train had shown himself affable. The very brakeman had gone out of his way to apprise them, quite five minutes ahead of time, that "the next stop was their place." And at San Bruno the proprietor of the road-house himself hitched up to drive them over to the lake, announcing that he would call for them at "Richardson's" ...
— Blix • Frank Norris
... seething Square roared at him; the sailors began to surge forward. Suddenly another door was flung wide; in it stood two or three brakeman, a ...
— Ten Days That Shook the World • John Reed
... of the caboose the conductor, with Geordie Graham by his side, was bending over a battered and dishevelled form. As the rear trucks went clicking over the switch-points, the former sprang to the open doorway to see that his brakeman reset and locked the switch, and with a swift run overtook the caboose ...
— To The Front - A Sequel to Cadet Days • Charles King
... the Pilot country, and the tortoise-like way station became at once a place of importance. It takes its name from the neighboring mountain around the base of which winds the swift Rat River. At Sleepy Cat town the main line leaves the Rat, and if a tenderfoot brakeman ask a reservation buck why the mountain is called Sleepy Cat the Indian will answer, always the same, "It lets ...
— The Daughter of a Magnate • Frank H. Spearman
... Fuel Company to see that the work of constructing the trocha was started that afternoon, and when Violet had telephoned to Mechanics' Hall, Grant and a group of men went to the mines to begin on the trocha. They passed down the switch into the yards, and Grant heard a brakeman say: ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... for Marshallton!" shouted the brakeman, and in half a minute the boys were climbing into a taxi bound for the school; in half an hour they were facing the great buildings which stood for so much learning, and in half a day they had matriculated and were of ...
— Radio Boys Loyalty - Bill Brown Listens In • Wayne Whipple
... It was the brakeman's cry, and an instant later the train rolled into the vast and gloomy depot, and every one was scrambling up and making for ...
— Richard Dare's Venture • Edward Stratemeyer
... The brakeman came through, and I spoke to him about the window. He said, "The first time I see the president of the road I'll tell him about it!" ...
— You Can Search Me • Hugh McHugh
... only people that paid car fare were the Knights of Pythias on their way to their annual convention. Railroad workers could get all the passes they wanted, and any toiler whose sister had married a brakeman or whose second cousin was a conductor "bummed" the railroad for a pass and got it. None of my relatives was a railroad man, and so to obtain the free transportation which was every American's inalienable right, I had to let ...
— The Iron Puddler • James J. Davis
... twenty-six violet transfer-slips, were discovered, together with a rejection blank from a leading magazine, in the Dead Letter office. According to the current folk-lore in Harlem and the Bronx, Smith is now living in California employed as a brakeman on the Southern Pacific Railroad. Some aver that Pansy fell heiress to a sausage establishment and moved to Italy with her Poet. Still others maintain that Pansy, Gill the Grip and Maxy the Firebug never existed in real life - were merely ...
— The Love Sonnets of a Car Conductor • Wallace Irwin
... them Long Island branch lines? Say, it must be int'restin' sport, providin' you don't care whether you get there this week or next. I missed one connection by waitin' for the brakeman to call out the change. And when I'd caught another train back to the right junction I got the pleasin' bulletin that the next for Quehassett is the theater train, that ...
— Torchy, Private Sec. • Sewell Ford
... Hair combed down into his Eyes. He wore a punky little Derby, about two sizes too small. The turn-down Collar was four inches high, and he wore a navy-blue Cravat with a copper Butterfly for a Scarf-Pin. Furthermore, he had a Suit of Clothes that was intended for a gentle Brakeman. On his Lapel he had a Button Photograph of the Girl who worked in the ...
— People You Know • George Ade |
