tables are upheaved as if by an earthquake, and the engines actually go on burrowing underneath them like some gigantic mole. The effort was mighty, but it was doomed to come to an end at last, and in a few seconds more the rush of steam from the safety-valve told us it was over. We all cheered heartily, for we felt it was a splendid effort, and in volved no small amount of courage on the part of the drivers. We scrambled down over the blocks of snow, Doddridge calling to the men to see if they were all right, which happily proved to be the case, and the snow-gang then resumed their labors. The engines were more completely buried than ever, and it was a terribly long job to get them out; when that was accomplished, we had evidence of the tremendous force of the impact. The plow was crushed and bent out of all recognition; the iron plates twisted like crumpled paper, and great stays and braces as thick as a man's arm broken short off like twigs, in fact a broken end of one of them was found within an inch or two of the side of the boiler. Had it pierced the plate, a serious explosion must have ensued.

But it was evident that even with a new plow it would be madness to run full at the drift in its present condition; so, after extricating the engines, the snow-gang were ordered to spend the remainder of the day "cross-cutting." This operation consists of digging out trenches two feet wide across the track right down to the rails, with intervals of four feet between each trench. By this means the plow, instead of running into a solid bank, has only to encounter a series of blocks, which, having a space behind them, break up more readily, and do not offer nearly the same resistance. Having given these orders, we had nothing more to do but to steam back to Shoshone, and wait for the fresh plow. We had to encounter a good deal of good-natured chaff, for we had exultingly told our friends the first day we hoped to sleep at Bellevue, whereas this was now the second time we had returned. Next day the new plow arrived, and we went up with it. Before the first run we went to look at what had been done. An enormous amount of snow had been taken out of the cross cuts, and we now realized what the task was that we had before us. Standing at the edge of the trenches was As the men dug down, and the serious like looking down a well, and we could damage to the plow became more and hardly believe that even this relief would more apparent, the faces of the officials be sufficient, seeing the enormous blocks lengthened. This was quite a new expe of caked snow that were still left. And rience in "snow bucking." Had the so it proved. A run was made at the snowfall been on the main line, such a drift; again the same scene was enacted, drift never could have accumulated at all, and the engines plunged in; but this time, for during the winter the snow-plows are to save the plow, only one engine ran bekept constantly running, and thus all drifts hind instead of two. The effect of the are cleared while they are soft, but this cross-cutting now became apparent, for, outlying branch having been left for a notwithstanding the reduced power, the week, it was like running at a wall, and two engines made more progress than the hence the damage. Moreover on a main three had done before; but still damage line such a cutting as this would have had was done, and the plow, though not ina shed built over it, which would have jured like the last, had some braces broken, saved it. Doddridge's dismay was great, and had to return to Shoshone for repairs. and he fully determined to send in a It now became evident that the bulk of requisition for a shed at once, for fear it the snow must be dug out, so the next should be forgotten before the following day, while the plow was being repaired, a winter. This, however, would not solve gang of over a hundred men was taken up the existing problem, which was how to to dig the whole drift out down to within get through to Hailey. Notwithstanding four feet of the rails, thus giving the plow the tremendous effort and the great dam- an easier task. Some idea of the work age, we had not penetrated more than involved in this operation may be formed fifty or sixty yards into the cutting, and from the fact that in the middle portion of of course by far the more formidable por- the drift for some distance it took four tion had yet to be dealt with. Further tiers of men, one above the other, to lift operations with our crippled plow were the snow out. The passage thus cleared impossible, so Doddridge cut the telegraph wire, attached his private instrument (which he always carries in his car) to it, and ordered another from headquarters to be at Shoshone the next morning.

was certainly over twenty-five feet deep in the worst part, but it was completed at last, and the following day we had the satisfaction of witnessing from our old position on the top of the rocks the final

clearance. The last run was nearly as | We are now seeking to understand, not well worth seeing as the first, for the en- to make war upon, the promiscuous exgines rushed past us at great speed, the pression of our time. The loss of digniplow throwing up its snow fountains fied reserve, like almost every other loss, nearly as high as where we sat, fifteen or may be minimized by being made contwenty feet above the top of the cutting.scious. Whatever it be that makes life After this, the remaining cuttings offered so much more unclothed than it was in but little resistance; work had been done the time of our fathers, it is worth under. upon them by gangs sent out from the standing, even if it be something that other end, and we only had one more dig. must be simply accepted; for it concerns out before we reached the plain on which the whole of life, and modifies almost the terminus is situated. When this last every feeling which is stirred by the interobstacle was cleared away, I got into the course of man with man. cab of the plow-engine and rode the last ten or fifteen miles on it at about fifty miles an hour with Hank de Land. We thus reached our journey's end, to the unspeakable satisfaction of all concerned, especially the railway officials, who all agreed that they had had a severe lesson, which must not be repeated. The company will, no doubt, take care to listen to Mr. Doddridge's recommendations as to precautions to be taken against a recurrence of the disaster; for the cost to then during that week in labor, damage, and wear and tear of machinery must have far exceeded the expense which would have been incurred in properly protecting the line.

GREVILLE PALMER.

From The Spectator.

SILENCE IS GOLD.

It is the result of two important move. ments of our day; of its rapid progress towards democracy, and of its increasing interest in physical science. But, indeed, truly considered, these two things are one. Democracy is triumphant everywhere, and its triumph in the world of education means the substitution of scientific for literary interest. The old ideal of education was aristocratic. It said:" All knowledge is good, but all knowledge is not, in the same degree, educating. One study has this educating influence in a peculiar degree that which is called literature; and one class of literature has it in a peculiar degree that to which the consent of Europe has accorded the epithet of classical, and which the intellect of Europe has for centuries been employed in fashioning into an implement of education. Let there be, therefore, a certain stamp of catholic approval on the knowledge of the two languages containing this literature, which is accorded to no other knowledge; dignify. IT is the curious fate of the great maning it with the title of cultivation, and thus whose memoirs have been occupying the reading world for the last few years, to teach, almost as eloquently by his conduct as by his utterance, the lesson of our text. Carlyle's sermons on the duty of selfcontrol in expression, like the sermons of many another preacher, have received their most forcible illustration from his own errors. His wordy wailings have to some extent concealed his character. Never was there a case in which it was truer that half is more than the whole. There is a surplusage of expression which is all the more misleading because it refers to facts; and many an error of detail is less important than the loss of proportion which is inevitable when the biographer unveils all he sees. We know more about our great men than we did in the days before it was the fashion to paint them naked, we do not know them better. But this is a theme we have urged before, and to repeat the hopeless protest would be indeed to illustrate our own warning.

raising it on a kind of platform, above the promiscuous crowd of claimants on intellectual attention." Thus it has arisen that this particular knowledge has a kind of prestige shared by no other. For a man to say that he is ignorant of chemistry is to avow a mere idiosyncrasy; to make the same avowal about Greek is to give up all claim to a liberal education. And then, again, the same distinction holds good as to the ignorance respec[tively of Latin and of German. A certain division of literature, is literature par excellence. It is not that Latin is a casket of more valuable thought than German is. Quite the reverse. No great nation was ever so little original as the one whose records reach us in that language; it would be difficult to cite from them a single striking thought. But the student of Latin literature lives in select society. The student of German must pick and choose for himself. When Europe accepted as its educational instrument a

study of the two languages to which the word classical is given, on the ground that they offer nothing which is not classical, a sanction was given to the principle of aristocracy in knowledge, and its influence still holds to a considerable extent, for its roots went deep. But it is fading under the influence of a rival theory. No thoughtful persons would at any time suppose that the sole business of education is the imparting of knowledge; but the premiss of the old school was that certain knowledge is education in a peculiar sense, in opposition to the modern theory that the pupil is to have his faculties trained to the work of acquiring knowledge, and left to decide for himself what knowledge he requires. The aristocracy of knowledge is to be done away with.

indirectly. Re-read Cicero's literary mas. terpieces, do you find any light thrown on the problems of life, do you gain a single idea that from the point of view of science, taking that word in its largest signification, has any value whatever? Not one. If you look at these productions in that light, they are exceedingly commonplace. But the lightness of touch, which is gone as we feel it, just supplies that suggestion, so faint and yet so distinct, which in its power of reviving individual memories, seems to rouse within us the very feelings it describes. A word more, and the spell is broken. What we value is more what is not said than what is said. The words themselves are not striking, what is striking is the quick passing on from a suggestion that leaves room for memory and The proclamation of liberty and equality imagination to rush in and fill the blank in the world of study appears only to do with visions which great genius perhaps away with the favored position of litera- could not translate into language. This ture. But, in fact, it concedes that posi- classic ideal of self-restraint passed into tion to physical science. Equality is an the very life-blood of European literature, unstable condition; as the obliteration of and is manifest in those who did not imrank brings out the preponderance of bibe it at first hand. It is exhibited nowealth, so the dethronement of literature where with more distinctness than in the means the enthronement of science. All work of one who, in her recently published practical pursuits stand in immediate rela- letters, prettily describes herself as the tion to physical science; the moment you most ignorant writer who ever handled a try to make all studies equal, you make a pen, Miss Austen. An article on this supreme. This change has many kinds" Style," in one of the reviews for Decemof influence; we are concerned with only ber, quotes from her a sentence which While there was this precedence seems to us a perfect example of this self. given to literature, every one, whether he restraint in expression. "Their union," cared for literature or not, was reminded she says in describing an ideal constancy more or less of the existence of a great perhaps modelled on some actual feeling, world of expression, in which silence had "could not any more divide her from other its proper domain. "By what he omits, men than their final separation." Dilute show me the master in style." Some that idea as it would be diluted by a writer works which are not at all literary might of our own day, and it becomes trite. be made so by mere excision. A great Nothing is more commonplace than the writer, while adding not a single idea, and idea of a devotion irrespective of all rehardly a word of his own, might some- quital, whatever the fact may be, and times make of an unreadable book a con- nothing can be more tedious than most tribution to literature, merely by removing descriptions of it. What gives power and what had better be left out. We have meaning to a sentence which makes us all some experience, some gleam of in- feel merely what every novel-writer tries spiration, even some thought, which, if we to make us feel is its exceeding reticence. could express that and nothing besides, Describing a strength of feeling wonderwould be in its degree poetic." But the fully rare in life, and naturally suggesting very power to separate what should be superlatives, it takes a negative form, and unexpressed from what should be ex- uses the very fewest and faintest words in pressed is a part of the literary instinct; which the idea can be expressed. Though and those who lack it may possess the ore Jane Austen knew not a line of Latin and to some amount, but have no smelting Greek, she shows classic influence in that furnace. And this is the condition of or- reticence, And, just as the influence of dinary humanity. classic training is felt in the writing of This self-restraint, this intellectual tem- those who know nothing of the classics, perance, is the special characteristic of so the influence of literary training is felt classical literature, and of all literature in the behavior of those who know noththat has been much influenced by it evening of literature. It is the principal part

one.

of what we mean by breeding. A man of the world who yawns over a novel or a newspaper shows some trace of inherited cultivation in the criticisms on his neighbors which he keeps to himself; and even so highly cultivated a man as Carlyle, perhaps, exhibits the lack of that influence in remarks which would seem to us less ill-natured, if we remembered his peasant blood.

that seeks to unfold character has a dou ble principle of rejection, both halves of which are unknown to science. It rejects whatever is trivial, and then, again, it rejects whatever is misleading. Do not tell us your hero's favorite dish; do not describe at any length his bodily ailments; do not dwell on his personal appearance. And further, do not tell us of some inexplicable lapse from the kindness, the hon. or, or the purity which almost invariably distinguished him. Not because you will hurt the feelings of his children, not because you will impair the loyalty of his disciples-these are not motives that should weigh with a biographer but because you are not, in so doing, helping us to know him. In his life this strange exception was probably the result of some combination of circumstances hopelessly beyond our recovery, and hopelessly bewildering to our attention if it could be recovered. In our mind it would, from its very strangeness, be the chief thing we should remember about him. Now, in any scientific account, the exceptional is exactly what it would be most important to record. To mention the fact that a man of genius and virtue was once found drunk would be the same kind of mistake as to conceal the fact that a highly respectable comet failed to keep its appointment. Science founded a theory of the universe on the exception. Litera ture would find it a mere source of confusion. Where literature is silent, science becomes emphatic.

Now science, whatever else it may enforce, certainly drops the literary discipline of reticence. It concerns that about which the more facts are known the nearer we get to the truth, in which it is specially important not to neglect the trivial and the imperfect, and in which the misleading cannot be said to exist. A study of which this is true manifestly encourages all expression. Not that it is satisfied with expression. A man of science is very far from accepting language as an adequate vehicle for his study; he would say, indeed, that those who know it only through the medium of language, do not know it at all. But still he would allow that the more fully the truth of science is put into words the better. It is no exaggeration to say that the less fully the truth of literature is put into words the better. Of poetry this is eminently true, and it is in poetry that we see this opposition at its height. You may agree or disagree with a scientific writer, but if two persons of average intellect, after reading him attentively, differ as to his meaning, he must have expressed him self badly. But poetry guarded against This principle is essential to literature, any varying interpretation by different but is not confined to it. That person is minds would cease to be poetry. We wonderfully fortunate who has not learned sometimes see the divergent ideals exhib- by actual experience that the most accu ited in the development of a single mind.rately recorded fact on his lips may beAs time goes on, a man of science is apt to be dissatisfied with all expression that rather suggests than exhausts its subject matter. He is surprised at his own loss of literary taste. He turns back to the poems scored by pencil marks of his youth, and wonders to find their charm is fled, and that he even fails to "understand" them, as he calls it, which, in his sense, is what nobody does. His attention has grown rusty in a certain posture, and he cannot change its focus. He is expecting to carry away from incomplete expression tion is solid, narrative is linear." Carthe same kind of intellectual satisfaction that he habitually gains from complete expression. He is looking for the accuracy of science where that kind of accuracy is incompatible with the truth of poetry. And biography in this respect should approach poetry. All narrative

come the most hopelessly false theory in his hearers' ears. "The public," it is true, does not distort true fact into false theory quite so much as an individual does, and not quite in the same way. But human character, and the events which unfold and result from it, are never adapted to complete expression, in the same way that all other events are. "Action," says the great writer whose works preach the lesson as forcibly as his biography exhibits the danger of neglecting it, "ac

lyle's weighty sentences are almost sufficiently numerous to win oblivion for his unwise utterances; but among them all, and indeed in all literature, we hardly know a warning so pregnant with truth for all time as that implied in those words.

For all time, but especially for our own.