I was the conductor of the Underground Railroad for eight years, and I can say what most conductors can't say--I never ran my trai...n off the track and I never lost a passenger.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The only free road, the Underground Railroad, is owned and managed by the Vigilant Committee. They have tunneled under the whole b...readth of the land.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
It is in our interests to let the police and their employers go on believing that the Underground is a conspiracy, because it incr...eases their paranoia and their inability to deal with what is really happening. As long as they look for ringleaders and documents they will miss their mark, which is that proportion of every personality which belongs in the Underground.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
We do not ride on the railroad; it rides upon us. Did you ever think what those sleepers are that underlie the railroad? Each one ...is a man, an Irishman, or a Yankee man. The rails are laid on them, and they are covered with sand, and the cars run smoothly over them. They are sound sleepers, I assure you. And every few years a new lot is laid down and run over; so that, if some have the pleasure of riding on a rail, others have the misfortune to be ridden upon. And when they run over a man that is walking in his sleep, a supernumerary sleeper in the wrong position, and wake him up, they suddenly stop the cars, and make a hue and cry about it, as if this were an exception. I am glad to know that it takes a gang of men for every five miles to keep the sleepers down and level in their beds as it is, for this is a sign that they may sometime get up again.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Dear, I know nothing of Either, but when I try to imagine a faultless love... Or the life to come, what I hear is the murmur Of underground streams, what I see is a limestone landscape.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
An actor rides in a bus or railroad train; he sees a movement and applies it to a new role. A woman in agony of spirit might turn ...her head just so; a man in deep humiliation probably would wring his hands in such a way. From straws like these, drawn from completely different sources, the fabric of a character may be built. The whole garment in which the actor hides himself is made of small externals of observation fitted to his conception of a role.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
When we think back to our forefathers, with their sedentary lives of forest-chopping, railroad-building, fortune-founding, their f...ox-hunting and Indian taming, their prancing about in the mazurka and the polka, with their coattails flying and their bustles bouncing, to say nothing of their all-day sessions with the port and straight bourbon,... we must realize that we are a nation, not of neurasthenics, but of sissies and slow-motion sports.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
When you are waiting for a train, don't keep perpetually looking to see if it is coming. The time of its arrival is the business o...f the conductor, not yours. It will not come any sooner for all your nervous glances and your impatient pacing, and you will save strength if you will keep quiet. After we discover that the people who sit still on a long railroad journey reach that journey's end at precisely the same time as those who "fuss" continually, we have a valuable piece of information which we should not fail to put to practical use.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »