" I should therefore prefer to reserve my writings for
such friendly critics, if it did not seem necessary to make public a
plain statement concerning an affair over which there appears to be
much confusion. I have heard in the last five years not less than
twenty renderings of what is commonly called "the great K.& A. train
robbery,"--some so twisted and distorted that but for the intermediate
versions I should never have recognized them as attempts to narrate
the series of events in which I played a somewhat prominent part. I
have read or been told that, unassisted, the pseudo-hero captured a
dozen desperadoes; that he was one of the road agents himself; that he
was saved from lynching only by the timely arrival of cavalry; that
the action of the United States government in rescuing him from the
civil authorities was a most high-handed interference with State
rights; that he received his reward from a grateful railroad by being
promoted; that a lovely woman as recompense for his villainy--but
bother! it's my business to tell what really occurred, and not what
the world chooses to invent. And if any man thinks he would have done
otherwise in my position, I can only say that he is a better or a
worse man than Dick Gordon.
Primarily, it was football which shaped my end. Owing to my skill in
the game, I took a post-graduate at the Sheffield Scientific School,
that the team might have my services for an extra two years. That led
to my knowing a little about mechanical engineering, and when I felt
the "quad" for good I went into the Alton Railroad shops.
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