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NORMAN BRUCE
GOD spoke to Moses in the burning bush; to Noah in visions; to Daniel in dreams. The Almighty iv as very close to His followers in the younger and cleaner days. Yet now, in this latter time, above the whorl of human squabbling, the whine of the downtrodden, the battle-yell of brothers, God still speaks, and there are those ivlw hear Him: the spent mother harkens as her new-born tugs at her breast; the ragged artist, lifting rapt eyes from his blundering effigy of the Ideal; the clean-souled man and woman in the crannies of their daily toil.
On — on, thru sterile acreage of alkali, thru scattered settlements and ugly towns gashed with the civic scars of factories, thru clean sunlight and across the track of storms — on like Destiny, mighty, grim, purposeful ; trailing bright threads of fire beneath grinding wheels ; leaving, when it is gone, only unheard echoes and frail smoke-smears across the sky — and on — on — on.
The man sat motionless, as if he were, indeed, a part of the mechanism above him, his hand steady upon the throttle — a daub of brittle human bones and flesh that carried, in its
frail grasp, a hundred immortal souls and perishable bodies. Beneath his fingers throbbed the pulse of the engine; its hoarse, panting breath clogged his ears. The steel and iron muscles, responding cleanly to the impulse of the master mind, trod the miles shoulder to shoulder with the gale, until into the watchful eyes below the greasy cap came the content of one whose task is nearly done.
Every night, at the first symptoms of home, Bracey Curtis drew a long breath of relief that was almost a prayer. He was a slow, grave man, stooped of shoulder from bending above his throttle; inarticulate, with the silence of those whose lives are set to the deafening symphony of steam. He thought not so much in syllables as in distances, terms of pressure and response. But, given words, his breath of relief would have said: "Thank God! I've brought her in safe again. Ah ! it 's good to be home — good to be hungry and tired and at home!"
The lights of the station closed in about him — a blur of faces and voices — the uneasy sense of discontinued motion. Bracey unclinched his rigid fingers stiffly and clambered down from the cab.
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