Read "The Jaffa and Jerusalem Railway" by Eugene Field online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
A tortuous double iron track; a station here, a station there; / A locomotive, tender, tanks; a coach with stiff reclining chair; / Some postal cars, and baggage, too; a vestibule of patent make; / With buffers, duffers, switches, and the soughing automatic brake -- / This is the Orient's novel pride, and Syria's gaudiest modern gem: / The railway scheme that is to ply 'twixt Jaffa and Jerusalem.
Beware, O sacred Mooley cow, the engine when you hear its bell; / Beware, O camel, when resounds the whistle's shrill, unholy swell; / And, native of that guileless land, unused to modern travel's snare, / Beware the fiend that peddles books -- the awful peanut-boy beware. / Else, trusting in their specious arts, you may have reason to condemn / The traffic which the knavish ply 'twixt Jaffa and Jerusalem.
And when, ah, when the bonds fall due, how passing wroth will wax the / state / From Nebo's mount to Nazareth will spread the cry "Repudiate"! / From Hebron to Tiberius, from Jordan's banks unto the sea, / Will rise profuse anathemas against "that -- -- monopoly! " / And F. M. B. A. shepherd-folk, with Sockless Jerry leading them, / Will swamp that corporation line 'twixt Jaffa and Jerusalem.