Railway Adventures and Anecdotes Part 16

"Thank G.o.d! Mr. Sherbourn, we stopped you in time. I would have lost my life before one hair of your head should have been hurt. Oh, I prayed to heaven that we might stop the train, and, my G.o.d, I thank thee!"

The children were crying for joy. I confess I don't very often pray, but I did then and there. I kneeled down by the side of that good old woman, and offered up thanks to an All Wise Being for our safe deliverance from a most terrible death, and called down blessings without number upon that good old woman and her children. Near by stood the engineer, fireman, and brakesmen, the tears streaming down their bronzed cheeks.

I immediately prevailed upon Mrs. Graff and the children to go back into the cars out of the storm and cold. After reaching the cars I related our hair-breadth escape, and to whom we were indebted for our lives, and begged the men pa.s.sengers to go forward and see for themselves. They needed no further urging, and a great many of the ladies went also, regardless of the storm. They soon returned, and their pale faces gave full evidence of the frightful death we had escaped. The ladies and gentlemen vied with each other in their thanks and heartfelt grat.i.tude towards Mrs. Graff and her children, and a.s.sured her that they would never, never forget her, and before the widow left the train she was presented with a purse of four hundred and sixty dollars, the voluntary offering of a whole train of grateful pa.s.sengers. She refused the proffered gift for some time, and said she had only done her duty, and the knowledge of having done so was all the reward she asked. However, she finally accepted the money, and said it should go to educate her children.

The railway company built her a new house, gave her and her children a life pa.s.s over the road, and ordered all trains to stop and let her get off at home when she wished, but the employes needed no such orders, they can appreciate all such kindness-more so than the directors themselves.

The old lady frequently visits my home at H- and she is at all times a welcome visitor at my fireside. Two of the children are attending school at the same place.

-_Appleton's American Railway Anecdote Book_.

A COUNTY COURT JUDGE'S FEELING AGAINST RAILWAYS.

In a County Court case at Carlisle, reported in the _Carlisle Journal_, of October 31st, 1851, the judge (J. K. Knowles, Esq.) is represented to have said:-"You may depend upon it, if I could do anything for you, I would, for I detest all railways. If they get a verdict in this case it will be the first, and I hope it will be the last."

RAILWAY TICKETS.

A writer in that valuable miscellany _Household Words_, remarks:-"About thirteen years ago, a Quaker was walking in a field in Northumberland, when a thought struck him. The man who was walking was named Thomas Edmonson. He had been, though a Friend, not a very successful man in life. He was a man of integrity and honour, as he afterwards abundantly proved, but he had been a bankrupt, and was maintaining himself as a clerk at a small station on the Newcastle and Carlisle line. In the course of his duties in this situation, he found it irksome to have to write on every railway ticket that he delivered. He saw the clumsiness of the method of tearing the bit of paper off the printed sheet as it was wanted, and filling it up with pen and ink. He perceived how much time, trouble, and error might be saved by the process being done in a mechanical way; and it was when he set his foot down on a particular spot on the before mentioned field that the idea struck him how all that he wished might be done by a machine-how tickets might be printed with the names of stations, the cla.s.s of carriage, the dates of the month, and all of them from end to end of the kingdom, on one uniform system. Most inventors accomplish their great deeds by degrees-one thought suggesting another from time to time; but, when Thomas Edmonson showed his family the spot in the field where his invention occurred to him, he used to say that it came to his mind complete, in its whole scope and all its details. Out of it has grown the mighty inst.i.tution of the Railway Clearing House; and with it the grand organization by which the Railways of the United Kingdom act, in regard to the convenience of individuals, as a unity. We may see at a glance the difference to every one of us of the present organized system-by which we can take our tickets from almost any place to another, and get into a carriage on almost any of our great lines, to be conveyed without further care to the opposite end of the kingdom-and the unorganized condition of affairs from which Mr. Edmonson rescued us, whereby we should have been compelled to s.h.i.+ft ourselves and our luggage from time to time, buying new tickets, waiting while they were filled up, waiting at almost every point of the journey, and having to do it with divers companies who had nothing to do with each other but to find fault and be jealous.

"On Mr. Edmonson's machines may be seen the name of Blayc.o.c.k; Blayc.o.c.k was a watchmaker, and an acquaintance of Edmonson's, and a man whom he knew to be capable of working out his idea. He told him what he wanted; and Blayc.o.c.k understood him, and realized his thought. The third machine that they made was nearly as good as those now in use. The one we saw had scarcely wanted five s.h.i.+llings worth of repairs in five years; and, when it needs more, it will be from sheer wearing away of the bra.s.s-work, by constant hard friction. The Manchester and Leeds Railway Company were the first to avail themselves of Mr. Edmonson's invention; and they secured his services at their station at Oldham Road, for a time. He took out a patent; and his invention became so widely known and appreciated, that he soon withdrew himself from all other engagements, to perfect its details and provide tickets to meet the daily growing demand.

He let out his patent on profitable terms-ten s.h.i.+llings per mile per annum; that is, a railway of thirty miles long paid him fifteen pounds a year for a license to print its own tickets by his apparatus; and a railway of sixty miles long paid him thirty pounds, and so on. As his profits began to come in, he began to spend them; and it is not the least interesting part of his history to see how. It has been told that he was a bankrupt early in life. The very first use he made of his money was to pay every s.h.i.+lling that he ever owed. Ho was forty-six when he took that walk in the field in Northumberland. He was fifty-eight when he died, on the twenty-second of June last year."

TAKEN ABACK.

Four young cavalry officers, travelling by rail, from Boulogne to Paris, were joined at Amiens by a quiet, elderly gentleman, who shortly requested that a little of one window might be opened-a not unreasonable demand, as both were shut, and all four gentlemen were smoking. But it was refused, and again refused on being preferred a second time, very civilly; whereupon the elderly gentleman put his umbrella through the gla.s.s. "Shall we stand the impertinence of this bourgeois?" said the officers to one another. "Never." And they thrust four cards into his hand, which he received methodically, and looked carefully at all four; producing his own, one of which he tendered to each officer with a bow.

Imagine their feelings when they read on each-"Marshal Randon, Ministre de Guerre."

FAITHFUL UNTO DEATH.

The engineer of a train near Montreal saw a large dog on the track. He was barking furiously. The engineer blew the whistle at him, but he did not stir, and crouching low, he was struck by the locomotive and killed.

There was a bit of white muslin on the locomotive, and it attracted the attention of the engineer, who stopped the train and went back. There lay the dead dog, and a dead child, which had wandered upon the track and gone to sleep. The dog had given his signal to stop the train, and had died at his post.

NARROW ESCAPES FROM BEING LYNCHED.

A writer in _All the Year Round_, observes:-"A dreadful accident down in 'Illonoy,' had particularly struck me as a warning; for there, while the shattered bodies were still being drawn from under the piles of s.h.i.+vered carriages, the driver on being expostulated with, had replied:

'I suppose this ain't the first railway accident by long chalks!'

Upon which the indignant pa.s.sengers were with difficulty prevented from lynching the wretch; but he fled into the woods, and there for a time escaped pursuit.

But, two other railway journeys pressed more peculiarly on my mind; one was that of eight or ten weeks ago, from Canandaigua to Antrim. It was there a gentleman from Baltimore, fresh from Chicago, told me of a railway accident he had himself been witness to, only two days before I met him. The 2.40 (night) train from Toledo to Chicago, in which he rode, was upset near Pocahontas by two logs that had evidently been wilfully laid across the rails. On inquiry at the next station, it was discovered that a farmer who had had, a week before, two stray calves killed near the same place, had been heard at a liquor store to say he would 'pay them out for his calves.' This was enough for the excited pa.s.sengers, vexed at the detention, and enraged at the malice that had exposed them to danger and death. A posse of them instantly sallied out, beleaguered the farmer's house, seized him after some resistance, put a rope round his neck, dragged him to the nearest tree, and would have then and there lynched him, had not two or three of the pa.s.sengers rescued him, revolver in hand, and given him up to the nearest magistrate."

CURIOUS NOTICE.

The following notice, for the benefit of English travellers, was exhibited some years ago in the carriage of a Dutch railway:-"You are requested not to put no heads nor arms out of te windows."

OBTAINING INFORMATION.

But one of the most difficult things in the world is the levity with which people talk about "obtaining information." As if information were as easy to pick up as stones! "It ain't so hard to nuss the sick," said a hired nurse, "as some people might think; the most of 'em doesn't want nothing, and them as does doesn't get it." Parodying this, one might say, it is much harder to "obtain information" than some people think; the most don't know anything, and those who do don't say what they know.

Here is a real episode from the history of an inquiry, which took place four or five years ago, into the desirability of making a new line of railway on the Border. A witness was giving what is called "traffic evidence," in justification of the alleged need of the railway, and this is what occurred:-

_Mr. Brown_ (the cross-examining counsel for the opponents of the new line)-Do you mean to tell the committee that you ever saw an inhabited house in that valley?

_Witness_-Yes I do.

_Mr. Brown_-Did you ever see a vehicle there in your life?

_Witness_-Yes, I did.

_Mr. Brown_-Very good.

Some other questions were put, which led to nothing particular: but, just as the witness-a Scotchman-was leaving the box, the learned gentleman put one more question:-

_Q_.-I am instructed to ask you, if the vehicle you saw was not the hea.r.s.e of the last inhabitant?

_Answer_-It was.

-_Cornhill Magazine_.