The Far and the Near - read online free

Sep 20, 2026

A weary railroad engineer, devoted to a routine whistle signal heard by a woman and her growing family, carries an idealized image of their small, orderly house for decades. Each passing day shapes his memory, tenderness, and sense of enduring beauty beyond tragedy. When retirement finally brings him to the gate, familiar details initially match his hopes, but his arrival triggers confusion and immediate emotional disillusionment. The narrative contrasts long-cherished expectations with the unsettling reality of meeting what one imagined.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryStory & Novel

FormatPDF

Pages3

Reading Time5 min

AccessFree to download

The Daily Signal and the House

The Train’s Arrival

The Waving Women

Years of Tragedy and Endurance

The Engineer’s Service

The Idealized Vision

Retirement Brings a Reversal

Reaching the House

From Hope to Disillusionment

The Far and the Near by Thomas Wolfe On the outskirts ofa little town upon a rise of land that swept back from the railway there was a tidy little cottage of white boards, trimmed vividly with green blinds. To one side of the house there was a garden neatly patterned with plots of growing vegetables, and an arbor for the grapes which ripened late in August. Before the house there were three mighty oaks which sheltered it in their clean and massive shade in summer, and to the other side there was a border of gay flowers. The whole place had an air of tidiness, thrift, and modest comfort. Every day, a few minutes after two o’clock in the afternoon, the limited express between two cities passed this spot. At that moment the great train, having halted for a breathing-space at the town near by, was beginning to lengthen evenly into its stroke, but it had not yet reached the full drive of its terrific speed. It swung into view deliberately, swept past with a powerful swaying motion of the engine, a low smooth rumble of his heavy cars upon pressed steel, and then it vanished in the cut. For a moment the progress of the engine could be marked by heavy bellowing puffs of smoke that burst at spaced intervals above the edges ofthe meadow grass, and finally nothing could be heard but the solid clacking tempo of the wheels receding into the drowsy stillness of the afternoon. Every day for more than twenty years, as the train had approached this house, the engineer had blown on the whistle, and every day, as soon as she heard this signal, a woman had appeared on the back porch of the little house and waved to him. At first she had a small child clinging to her skirts, and now this child had grown to full womanhood, and every day she, too, came with her mother to the porch and waved. The engineer had grown old and gray in service. He had driven his great train, loaded with its weight of lives, across the land ten thousand times. His own children had grown up, and married, and four times he had seen before him on the tracks the ghastly dot of tragedy converging like a cannon ball to its eclipse of horror at the boiler head—a light spring wagon filled with children, with its clustered row of small stunned faces; a cheap automobile stalled up the tracks, set with the wooden figures of people paralyzed with fear; a battered hobo walking by the rail, too deaf and old to hear the whistle’s warning; and a form flung pas his window with a scream—all this he had seen and known. He had known all the grief, the joy, the peril and the labor such a man could know; he had grown seamed and weathered in his loyal service, and now, schooled by the qualities of faith and courage and humbleness that attended his labor, he had grown old, and had the grandeur and the wisdom these men have. But no matter what peril or tragedy he had known, the vision of the little house and the women waving to him with a brave free motion of the arm had become fixed in the mind of the engineer as something beautiful and enduring, something beyond all change and ruin, and something that would always be the same, no matter what mishap, grief or error might break the iron schedule of his days. The sight of this little house and these two women gave him the most extraordinary happiness he had ever known. He had seen them in a thousand lights, a hundred weathers. He had seen them through the harsh light of wintry gray across the brown and frosted stubble of the earth, and he had seen them again in the green luring sorcery of April. He felt for them and for the little house in which they lived such tenderness as a man might feel for his own children, and at length the picture of their lives was carved so sharply in his heart that he felt that he knew their lives completely, to every hour and moment of the day, and heresolved that one day, when his years of service should be ended, he would go and find these people and speak at last with them whose lives had been so wr

FAQs

What daily event connects the engineer to the woman’s house?

Each afternoon the limited express passes at about two o’clock, and as the engineer whistles, the woman appears on the back porch and waves. Over time she comes with her child, who later grows into a woman.

How does the engineer’s career affect his feelings about the house?

His service exposes him to grief, peril, and labor, yet the memory of the women waving becomes fixed as something beautiful and enduring. He repeatedly envisions their lives and feels increasing tenderness toward them.

What changes when the engineer finally visits after retirement?

Although he finds the house and its surroundings familiar, his sense of confusion and hopelessness immediately rises. He feels bitter loss and regrets coming as soon as the woman opens the door and looks at him with mistrust.

Sep 20, 2026

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