pointed significantly to the rails below them. His companion started.
The metal was scaling off in thin strips from the rails, and in some
places its thickness had been reduced a quarter of an inch, while in
others the projecting edges were torn off, or hanging in iron shreds,
so that the wheels actually ran on the narrow central strip. It seemed
marvelous that the train could keep the track.

"NOW you know why we don't go more than five miles an hour, and--are
thankful that we don't," said the young traveler quietly.

"But this is disgraceful!--criminal!" ejaculated the other nervously.

"Not at their rate of speed," returned the younger man. "The crime would
be in going faster. And now you can understand why a good deal of the
other progress in this State is obliged to go as slowly over their
equally decaying and rotten foundations. You can't rush things here as
we do in the North."

The other passenger shrugged his shoulders as they remounted the
platform, and the train moved on. It was not the first time that the two
fellow-travelers had differed, although their mission was a common
one. The elder, Mr. Cyrus Drummond, was the vice-president of a large
Northern land and mill company, which had bought extensive tracts of
land in Georgia, and the younger, Colonel Courtland, was the consulting
surveyor and engineer for the company. Drummond's opinions were a good
deal affected by sectional prejudice, and a self-satisfied and righteous
ignorance of the actual conditions and limitations of the people with
whom he was to deal; while the younger man, who had served through the
war with distinction, retained a soldier's respect and esteem for his
late antagonists, with a conscientious and thoughtful observation of