"In the early part of the month of August of that year [1831], I
left Philadelphia for Canandaigua, New York, traveling by stages
and steamboats to Albany and stopping at the latter place. I
learned that a locomotive had arrived there and that it would
make its first trip over the road to Schenectady the next day. I
concluded to lie over and gratify my curiosity with a first ride
after a locomotive.

"That locomotive, the train of cars, together with the incidents
of the day, made a very vivid impression on my mind. I can now
look back from one of Pullman's Palace cars, over a period of
forty years, and see that train together with all the
improvements that have been made in railroad travel since that
time.... I am not machinist enough to give a description of
the locomotive that drew us over the road that day, but I
recollect distinctly the general make-up of the train. The train
was composed of coach bodies, mostly from Thorpe and Sprague's
stage coaches, placed upon trucks. The trucks were coupled
together with chains, leaving from two to three feet slack, and
when the locomotive started it took up the slack by jerks, with
sufficient force to jerk the passengers who sat on seats across
the tops of the coaches, out from under their hats, and in
stopping, came together with such force as to send them flying
from the seats.

"They used dry pitch for fuel, and there being no smoke or spark
catcher to the chimney or smoke-stack, a volume of black smoke,
strongly impregnated with sparks, coals, and cinders, came
pouring back the whole length of the train. Each of the tossed