My Story by Elizabeth J. Hauser Read Free Book Online Page A

for myself.
    I may say, with all propriety, that Bidermann du Pont, the president of the road, found in me a hard working and efficient assistant, but I cannot say that I never occasioned him any anxiety, for my restless, eager nature was constantly seeking ways of expression — which ways were not always either dignified or safe. For instance, one night when a lot of our cars were lined up on Crown Hill, waiting to carry the crowds home from a late entertainment in a summer garden, I challenged the drivers to join me in taking one of the cars down the hill as fast as it would go. The plan was — to start a car with as much speed as the mule team could summon, when it was fairly started the driver to drop off with the team, the rest of us to stay on for no reason in the world except to see “just how fast she would go.” The drivers weren’t very keen to accept my challenge, but finally four of them decided to do so. After several starts we got up a rate of speed rapid enough to suit us and away we went. As the car tore madly down the hill I recalled the railroad track at the bottom and the curve in our track just beyond but there really wasn’t time to think about what mighthappen if the car and a train should reach the crossing at the same instant; for just then we shot over the railroad track, hit the curve which didn’t divert the car from its straight course, and landed half-way through a candy-shop. The company paid damages to the shop-keeper, and what Mr. du Pont thought of the episode I never knew for even after the matter had been adjusted he never mentioned it to me.
    A little while after this when there were some new mules in the stables waiting to be trained to car work, I decided to hitch the most refractory and unpromising team to a buggy and “break them in.” A little driver named Snapper joined me in this enterprise. With much difficulty, and the assistance of some dozen darkeys, we got the mules into harness and hooked up to an old, high-seated buggy. I had the reins, Snapper took his place on the seat beside me and we were off. It wasn’t long before I knew to a dead certainty that those mules were running away.
    We had a clear stretch of road before us, however, and I reflected that they’d have to stop sometime and trusted to luck that we’d be able to hang on until they did. But presently, just ahead of us, there appeared a great, covered wagon, with a fat, sun-bonneted German woman on the seat driving. She was jogging along at a comfortable pace, all unconscious of the cyclone which was approaching from behind. To get around her wagon was impossible, but here was my chance to stop our runaway! I steered the mules straight for the wagon, one on one side, one on the other, and the pole of the buggy caught the wagon box fairly in the middle. In the mix-up Snapper and I fell out, the mules dashed on with some remnantsof the wreck still attached to them, and the old lady was the most surprised individual you ever saw in your life. She wasn’t hurt, and neither were we, nor was the wagon much harmed.
    The president of the road was as silent on this foolhardy adventure as he had been on the candy-shop scrape, but Mr. Alfred du Pont took me severely to task for it, saying that while he did not object to my breaking mules he did object most seriously to having me break my neck.
    I had not been in the street railroad business long before I determined to become an owner. I didn’t want to work on a salary any longer than I could help. My fondness for girls in general and girl cousins in particular culminated in my marriage, October 8, 1874, to a distant kinswoman of my own name, Maggie J. Johnson, when she was seventeen and I was twenty. At twenty-two I purchased the majority of the stock of the street railways of Indianapolis from William H. English, afterwards candidate for vice-president of the United States in the Garfield-Arthur and Hancock-English