Chapter IX: Part 9

In 1867, “A cattle train on the Luxemburg Railway was stopped,” says the _Nord_, “two nights back, between Libramont and Poix by the snow. The brakesman was sent forward for aid to clear the line, and while the guard, fireman, engine-driver, and a customs officer were engaged in getting the snow from under the engine they were alarmed by wolves, of which there were five, and which were attracted, no doubt, by the scent of the oxen and sheep cooped up in railed-in carriages. The men had no weapons save the fire utensils belonging to the engine. The wolves remained in a semicircle a few yards distant, looking keenly on. The engine-driver let off the steam and blew the whistle, and lanterns were waved to and fro, but the savage brutes did not move. The men then made their way, followed by the wolves, to the guard’s carriage. Three got in safe; whilst the fourth was on the step one of the animals sprang on him, but succeeded only in tearing his coat. They all then made an attack, but were beaten off, one being killed by a blow on the head. Two hours elapsed before assistance arrived, and during that time the wolves made several attacks upon the sheep trucks, but failed to get in. None of the cattle were injured.”

ARTEMUS WARD’S SUGGESTION.

“I was once,” he remarks, “on a slow California train, and I went to the conductor and suggested that the cowketcher was on the wrong end of the train; for I said, ‘You will never overtake a cow, you know; but if you’d put it on the other end it might be useful, for now there’s nothin’ on earth to hinder a cow from walkin’ right in and bitin’ the folks!”

COACH VERSUS RAILWAY ACCIDENTS.

A coachman once remarked, “Why you see, sir, if a coach goes over and spills you in the road there you are; but if you are blown up by an engine, where are you?”

BAVARIAN GUARDS AND BAVARIAN BEER.

“In England,” says Mr. Wilberforce, “the guard is content to be the servant of the train; in Germany he is in command of the passengers. ‘When is the train going on?’ asked an Englishman once of a foreign guard. ‘Whenever I choose,’ was the answer. To judge from the delays the trains make at some of the stations, one would suppose that the guard had uncontrolled power of causing stoppages. You see him chatting with the station-master for several minutes after all the carriages have been shut up, and at last, when the topics of conversation are exhausted, he gives a condescending whistle to the engine-driver. Time seems never to be considered by either guards or passengers. Bavarians always go to the station half-an-hour before the train is due, and their indifference to delay is so well known that the directors can put on their time book ‘As the time of departure from small stations cannot be guaranteed, the travellers must be there twenty-five minutes beforehand.’” Mr. Wilberforce should not have omitted to mention the main cause of these delays, which appears at the same time to constitute the final cause of a Bavarian’s existence—Beer. Guards and passengers alike require alcoholic refreshment at least at every other station. At Culmbach, the fountain of the choicest variety of Bavarian beer, the practice had risen to such a head that, as we found last summer, government had been forced to interfere. To prevent trains from dallying if there was beer to drink at Culmbach was obviously impossible. The temptation itself was removed; and no beer was any longer allowed to be sold at that fated railway station, by reason of its being so superlatively excellent.

—_Saturday Review_, 1864.

THE RAILWAY SWITCH-TENDER AND HIS CHILD.

On one of the railroads in Prussia, a few years ago, a switch-tender was just taking his place, in order to turn a coming train approaching in a contrary direction. Just at this moment, on turning his head, he discerned his little son playing on the track of the advancing engine. What could he do? Thought was quick at such a moment of peril! He might spring to his child and rescue him, but he could not do this and turn the switch in time, and for want of that hundreds of lives might be lost. Although in sore trouble, he could not neglect his greater duty, but exclaiming with a loud voice to his son, “Lie down,” he laid hold of the switch, and saw the train safely turned on to its proper track. His boy, accustomed to obedience, did as his father commanded him, and the fearful heavy train thundered over him. Little did the passengers dream, as they found themselves quietly resting on that turnout, what terrible anguish their approach had that day caused to one noble heart. The father rushed to where his boy lay, fearful lest he should find only a mangled corpse, but to his great joy and thankful gratitude he found him alive and unharmed. Prompt obedience had saved him. Had he paused to argue, to reason whether it were best—death, and fearful mutilation of body, would have resulted. The circumstances connected with this event were made known to the King of Prussia, who the next day sent for the man and presented him with a medal of honour for his heroism.

VERY COOL.

Some years ago at a railway station a gentleman actually followed a person with a portmanteau, which he thought to be his, but the fellow, unabashed, maintaining it to be his own property, the gentleman returned to inquire after his, and found, when too late, that his first suspicions were correct.

THE BLACK REDSTART.

A railway carriage had been left for some weeks out of use in the station at Giessen, Hesse Darmstadt, in the month of May, 1852, and when the superintendent came to examine the carriage he found that a black redstart had built her nest upon the collision spring; he very humanely retained the carriage in its shed until its use was imperatively demanded, and at last attached it to the train which ran to Frankfort-on-the-Maine, a distance of nearly forty miles. It remained at Frankfort for thirty-six hours, and was then brought back to Giessen, and after one or two short journeys came back again to rest at Giessen, after a period of four days. The young birds were by this time partly fledged, and finding that the parent bird had not deserted her offspring, the superintendent carefully removed the nest to a place of safety, whither the parent soon followed. The young were, in process of time, full fledged and left the nest to shift for themselves. It is evident that one at least of the parent birds must have accompanied the nest in all its journeys, for, putting aside the difficulty which must have been experienced by the parents in watching for every carriage that arrived at Giessen, the nestlings would have perished from hunger during their stay at Frankfort, for everyone who has reared young birds is perfectly aware that they need food every two hours. Moreover, the guard of the train repeatedly saw a red-tailed bird flying about that part of the carriage on which the nest was placed.

STOPPING A RUNAWAY COUPLE.

Captain Galton who some years ago was the government railway inspector, in one of his reports relates the following singular circumstance. “A girl who was in love with the engine-driver of a train, had engaged to run away from her father’s house in order to be married. She arranged to leave by a train this man was driving. Her father and brother got intelligence of her intended escape; and having missed catching her as she got into the train, they contrived, whether with or without the assistance of a porter is not very clear, to turn the train through facing points, as it left the station, into a bog.” The captain does not pursue the subject further in his report, so that we are left in ignorance as to the success of the plan for stopping a contemplated runaway marriage.

A MADMAN IN A RAILWAY CARRIAGE.

We subjoin from the _Annual Register_ for 1864 an account of an alarming occurrence which took place July 4th of that year:—“In one of the third-class compartments of the express train leaving King’s Cross Station at 9.15 p.m., a tall and strongly-built man, dressed as a sailor, and having a wild and haggard look, took his seat about three minutes before the train started. He was accompanied to the carriage by a woman, whom he afterwards referred to as his wife, and by a man, apparently a cab-driver, of both of whom he took leave when the train was about to start. It had scarcely done so, when, on putting his hand to his pocket, he called out that he had been robbed of his purse, containing £17, and at once began to shout and gesticulate in a manner which greatly alarmed his fellow-travellers, four in number, in the same compartment. He continued to roar and swear with increasing violence for some time, and then made an attempt to throw himself out of the window. He threw his arms and part of his body out of the window, and had just succeeded in placing one of his legs out, when the other occupants of the carriage, who had been endeavouring to keep him back, succeeded in dragging him from the window. Being foiled in this attempt, he turned round upon those who had been instrumental in keeping him back. After a long and severe struggle, which—notwithstanding the speed the train was running at—was heard in the adjoining compartments, the sailor was overcome by the united exertions of the party, and was held down in a prostrate position by two of their number. Though thus secured, he still continued to struggle and shout vehemently, and it was not till some time afterwards, when they managed to bind his hands and strap him to the seat, that the passengers in the compartment felt themselves secure. This train, it may be explained, makes the journey from London to Peterborough, a distance little short of eighty miles, without a single stoppage; and as the scene we have been describing began immediately after the train left London, the expectation of having to pass the time usually occupied between the two stations (one hour and fifty minutes) with such a companion must have been far from agreeable. While the struggle was going on, and even for some time afterwards, almost frantic attempts were made to get the train stopped. The attention of those in the adjoining compartment was readily gained by waving handkerchiefs out of the window, and by-and-by a full explanation of the circumstances was communicated through the aperture in which the lamp that lights both compartments is placed. A request to communicate with the guard was made from one carriage to another for a short distance, but it was found impossible to continue it, and so the occupants of the compartments beyond the one nearest the scene of the disturbance could learn nothing as to its nature, a vague feeling of alarm seized them, and all the way along to Peterborough a succession of shouts of ‘Stop the train,’ mixed with the frantic screams of female passengers, was kept up. On the arrival of the train at Peterborough the man was released by his captors and placed on the platform. No sooner was he there, however, than he rushed with a renewed outburst of fury on those who had taken the chief part in restraining his violence, and as he kept vociferating that they had robbed him of his money, it was some time before the railway officials could be got to interfere—indeed, it seemed likely for some time that he would be allowed to go on in the train. As remonstrances were made from all quarters to the station-master to take the fellow into custody, he at length agreed, after being furnished with the names and addresses of the other occupants of the carriage, to hand him over to the police. The general impression on those who witnessed the sailor’s fury seemed to be that he was labouring under a violent attack of delirium tremens, and he had every appearance of having been drinking hard for some days. Had there been only one or even two occupants of the compartment besides himself, there seems every reason to believe that a much more deadly struggle would have ensued, as he displayed immense strength.”

INSURED.

The engine of an ordinary railway train broke down midway between two stations. As an express train was momentarily expected to arrive at the spot, the passengers were urgently called upon to get out of the carriages. A countryman in leather breeches and top-boots, who sat in a corner of one of the carriages, comfortably swathed in a travelling blanket, obstinately refused to budge. In vain the porter begged him to come out, saying the express would reach the spot in a minute, and the train would in all probability be dashed to pieces. The traveller pulled an insurance ticket out of his breeches pocket, exclaiming, “Don’t you see I’ve insured my life?” and with that he set up a horse laugh, and sunk back into his corner. They had to force him out of the train, and an instant afterwards the express ran into it.

A NEW TRICK.

A novel illustration of the ingenuity of thieves has been afforded by an incident reported from the continent. For some time past a North German railway company had been suffering from the repeated loss of goods which were sent by luggage train, and which, notwithstanding all research and precautions, continued to disappear in a very mysterious manner. The secret which the inquiries set on foot had failed to discover was at length revealed by a rather amusing accident. A long box, on one side of which were words equivalent to “This side up,” had, in disregard of this caution, been set up on end in the goods shed. Some time afterwards the employés were not a little startled to hear a voice, apparently proceeding from the box in question, begging the hearers to let the speaker out. On opening the lid, the railway officials were surprised and amused to find a man inside standing on his head. In the explanation which followed, the fellow wanted to account for his appearance under such unusual circumstances as due to the result of a wager, but he was given into custody, and it was soon found that the thieves had adopted this method of conveying themselves on to the railway premises, and that during the absence of the employés they had let themselves out of the box which they at once filled with any articles they could lay their hands on, refastened the lid, and then decamped. But for the unfortunate inability of human nature to endure an inverted position for an indefinite period, the ingenious authors of the scheme might have flourished a long time without detection.

A TRAIN STOPPED BY CATERPILLARS.

_Colonies and India_ quotes from a New Zealand paper the following story:—In the neighbourhood of Turakina an army of caterpillars, hundreds of thousands strong, was marching across the railway line, bound for a new field of oats, when the train came along. Thousands of the creeping vermin were crushed by the wheels of the engine, and suddenly the train came to a dead stop. On examination it was found that the wheels of the engine had become so greasy that they kept on revolving without advancing—they could not grip the rails. The guard and the engine driver procured sand and strewed it on the rails, and the train made a fresh start, but it was found that during the stoppage caterpillars in thousands had crawled all over the engine, and all over the carriages inside and out.

TRAVELLING IN RUSSIA.

Of course, travelling in Russia is no longer what it was. During the last quarter of a century a vast network of railways has been constructed and one can now travel in a comfortable first-class carriage from Berlin to St. Petersburg or Moscow, and thence to Odessa, Sebastopol, the Lower Volga, or even the foot of the Caucasus; and, on the whole, it must be admitted that the railways are tolerably comfortable. The carriages are decidedly better than in England, and in winter they are kept warm by small iron stoves, such as we sometimes see in steamers, assisted by double windows and double doors—a very necessary precaution in a land where the thermometer often descends to 30 degrees below zero. The trains never attain, it is true, a high rate of speed—so at least English and Americans think—but then we must remember that Russians are rarely in a hurry, and like to have frequent opportunities of eating and drinking. In Russia time is not money; if it were, nearly all the subjects of the Tsar would always have a large stock of ready money on hand, and would often have great difficulty in spending it. In reality, be it parenthetically remarked, a Russian with a superabundance of ready money is a phenomenon rarely met with in real life.

In conveying passengers at the rate of from fifteen to thirty miles an hour, the railway companies do at least all that they promise, but in one very important respect they do not always strictly fulfil their engagements. The traveller takes a ticket for a certain town, and on arriving at what he imagines to be his destination, he may merely find a railway station surrounded by fields. On making inquiries he finds to his disappointment, that the station is by no means identical with the town bearing the same name, and that the railway has fallen several miles short of fulfilling the bargain, as he understood the terms of the contract. Indeed, it might almost be said as a general rule railways in Russia, like camel drivers in certain Eastern countries, studiously avoid the towns. This seems at first a strange fact. It is possible to conceive that the Bedouin is so enamoured of tent life and nomadic habits, that he shuns a town as he would a man-trap; but surely civil engineers and railway contractors have no such dread of brick and mortar. The true reason, I suspect, is that land within or immediately without the municipal barrier is relatively dear, and that the railways, being completely beyond the invigorating influence of healthy competition, can afford to look upon the comfort and convenience of passengers as a secondary consideration.

It is but fair to state that in one celebrated instance neither engineers nor railway contractors were to blame. From St. Petersburg to Moscow the locomotive runs for a distance of 400 miles, almost as “the crow” is supposed to fly, turning neither to the right hand nor to the left. For fifteen weary hours the passenger in the express train looks out on forest and morass and rarely catches sight of human habitation. Only once he perceives in the distance what may be called a town; it is Tver which has been thus favoured, not because it is a place of importance, but simply because it happened to be near the straight line. And why was the railway constructed in this extraordinary fashion? For the best of all reasons—because the Tsar so ordered it. When the preliminary survey was being made, Nicholas learned that the officers intrusted with the task—and the Minister of Ways and Roads in the number—were being influenced more by personal than by technical considerations, and he determined to cut the Gordian knot in true Imperial style. When the Minister laid before him the map with the intention of explaining the proposed route, he took a ruler, drew a straight line from the one terminus to the other, and remarked in a tone that precluded all discussion, “You will construct the line so!” And the line was so constructed—remaining to all future ages, like St. Petersburg and the Pyramids, a magnificent monument of autocratic power.

Formerly this well-known incident was often cited in whispered philippics to illustrate the evils of the autocratic form of government. Imperial whims, it was said, override grave economic considerations. In recent years, however, a change seems to have taken place in public opinion, and some people now venture to assert that this so-called Imperial whim was an act of far-seeing policy. As by far the greater part of the goods and passengers are carried the whole length of the line, it is well that the line should be as short as possible, and that branch lines should be constructed to the towns lying to the right and left. Apart from political considerations, it must be admitted that a great deal may be said in support of this view.

In the development of the railway system there has been another disturbing cause, which is not likely to occur to the English mind. In England, individuals and companies habitually act according to their private interests, and the State interferes as little as possible; private initiative acts as it pleases, unless the authorities can prove that important bad consequences will necessarily result. In Russia, the _onus probandi_ lies on the other side; private initiative is allowed to do nothing until it gives guarantees against all possible bad consequences. When any great enterprise is projected, the first question is—“How will this new scheme affect the interests of the State?” Thus, when the course of a new railway has to be determined, the military authorities are always consulted, and their opinion has a great influence on the ultimate decision. The consequence of this is that the railway map of Russia presents to the eye of the tactician much that is quite unintelligible to the ordinary observer—a fact that will become apparent to the uninitiated as soon as a war breaks out in Eastern Europe. Russia is no longer what she was in the days of the Crimean war, when troops and stores had to be conveyed hundreds of miles by the most primitive means of transport. At that time she had only about 750 miles of railway; now she has more than 11,000 miles, and every year new lines are constructed.

_Russia_, by D. M. Wallace, M.A.

AN ARMY WITH BANNERS.

As giving an idea of the old way of signalling and precautions employed to ensure safety on the Hudson River Railroad nearly forty years ago, we append the following from the _Albany Journal_. It should be premised that this road extends from New York to East Albany, a distance of only 144 miles:—

“AN ARMY WITH BANNERS.—As you are whirled along over the Hudson River Railroad at the rate of 40 miles an hour, you catch a glimpse, every minute or two, of a man waving something like a white pocket handkerchief on the end of a stick, with a satisfactory sort of expression of countenance. If you take the trouble to count, you will find that it happens some two hundred times between East Albany and Thirty-first street. It looks like rather a useless ceremony, at first glance, but is a pretty important one, nevertheless.

“There are 225 of these ‘flagmen’ stationed at intervals along the whole length of the line. Just before a train is to pass, each one walks over his “beat,” and looks to see that every track and tie, every tunnel, switch, rail, clamp, and rivet, is in good order and free from obstruction. If so, he takes his stand with a white flag and waves it to the approaching train as a signal to ‘come on’—and come on it does, at full speed. If there is anything wrong, he waves a red flag, or at night a red lamp, and the engineer, on seeing it, promptly shuts off the steam, and sounds the whistle to ‘put down the brakes.’ Every inch of the road is carefully examined after the passage of each train. Austrian espionage is hardly more strict.”

SEIZURE OF A RAILWAY TRAIN FOR DEBT.

The financial difficulties under which some railway companies have recently laboured were brought to a crisis lately in the case of the Potteries, Shrewsbury, and North Wales Railway, a line running from Llanymynech to Shrewsbury, with a projected continuation to the Potteries. A debenture holder having obtained a judgment against the company, a writ was forthwith issued, and a few days back the sheriff’s officers unexpectedly presented themselves at the company’s principal station in Shrewsbury, and formally entered upon possession. The down train immediately after entered the station, and the bailiffs, without having given any previous intimation to the manager, whose office adjoins the station, seized the engines and carriages, and refused to permit the outgoing train to start, although many passengers had taken tickets. Ultimately the manager obtained the requisite permission, and it was arranged that the train should make the journey, one of the bailiffs meanwhile remaining in charge. The acting-sheriff refused a similar concession with regard to the further running of the trains, and it being fair day at Shrewsbury, and a large number of persons from various stations along the line having taken return tickets, much inconvenience to the public was likely to ensue. The North Wales section of this line was completed in August last at a cost of a little over £1,100,000, and was opened for passenger and goods traffic on the 13th of that month. As has already been stated, the ordinary traffic of the line was, after the enforcement of the writ, permitted to be continued, with the proviso that a bailiff should accompany each train. This condition was naturally very galling to the officials of the railway company, but they nevertheless treated the representative of the civil law with a marked politeness. On the night of his first becoming a constant passenger by the line he rode in a first-class carriage to Llanymynech, and on the return journey the attentive guard conducted him to a similar compartment which was devoted to his sole occupation. On arriving at Kennerly the bailiff became conscious of the progress of an elaborate process of shunting, followed by an entire stoppage of the train. After sitting patiently for some minutes it occurred to him to put his head out of the window and inquire the reason for the delay, and in carrying out the idea he discovered that the train of which his carriage had lately formed a part was vanishing from sight round a distant curve in the line. He lost no time in getting out and making his way into the station, which he found locked up, according to custom, after the passage through of the last down train. Kennerly is a small roadside station about 12 miles from Shrewsbury, and offers no accommodation for chance guests; and, had it been otherwise, it was of course the first duty of the bailiff to look after the train, of which he at that moment was supposed to be in “possession.” There being no alternative, he started on foot for Shrewsbury, where he arrived shortly after midnight, having accomplished a perilous passage along the line. It appeared, on inquiry, that in the course of the shunting the coupling-chain which connected the tail coach with the body of the train had by some means become unlinked; hence the accident. The bailiff accepted the explanation, but on subsequent journeys he carefully avoided the tail-coach.

_Railway News_, 1866.

A KANGAROO ATTACKING A TRAIN.

The latest marsupial freak is thus given by a thoroughly reliable correspondent of the _Courier_ (an Australian paper):—A rather exciting race took place between the train and a large kangaroo on Wednesday night last. When about nine miles from Dalby a special surprised the kangaroo, who was inside the fences. The animal ran for some distance in front, but getting exhausted he suddenly turned to face his opponent, and jumped savagely at the stoker on the engine, who, not being able to run, gamely faced the “old man” with a handful of coal. The kangaroo, however, only reached the side of the tender, when, the step striking him, he was “knocked clean out of it” in the one round. No harm happened beyond a bit of a scare to the stoker, as the kangaroo picked himself up quickly and cleared the fence.

SHE TAKES FITS.

Some time ago, an old lady and gentleman were coming from Devenport when the train was crowded. A young man got up and gave the old lady a seat, while his companion, another young gent, remained stedfast and let the old gent stand. This did not suit the old gentleman, so he concluded to get a seat in some way, and quickly turning to the young man on the seat beside his wife, he said:—“Will you be so kind as to watch that woman while I get a seat in another carriage? She takes fits!” This startled the young gent. He could not bear the idea of taking charge of a fitty woman, so the old gentleman got a seat, and his wife was never known to take a fit afterwards.

SNAGS’ CORNERS.

The officials of a Michigan railroad that was being extended were waited upon the other day by a person from the pine woods and sand hills who announced himself as Mr. Snags, and who wanted to know if it could be possible that the proposed line was not to come any nearer than three miles to the hamlet named in his honour.

“Is Snags’ Corners a place of much importance?” asked the President.

“Is it? Well, I should say it was! We made over a ton of maple sugar there last spring!”

“Does business flourish there?”

“Flourish! Why, business is on the gallop there every minute in the whole twenty-four hours. We had three false alarms of fire there in one week. How’s that for a town which is to be left three miles off your railroad?”

Being asked to give the names of the business houses, he scratched his head for awhile, and then replied—

“Well, there’s me, to start on. I run a big store, own eight yokes of oxen, and shall soon have a dam and a sawmill. Then there’s a blacksmith shop, a post-office, a doctor, and last week over a dozen patent-right men passed through there. In one brief year we’ve increased from a squatter and two dogs to our present standing, and we’ll have a lawyer there before long.”

“I’m afraid we won’t be able to come any nearer the Corners than the present survey,” finally remarked the President.

“You won’t! It can’t be possible that you mean to skip a growing place like Snags’ Corners!”

“I think we’ll have to.”

“Wouldn’t come if I’d clear you out a place in the store for a ticket office?”

“I don’t see how we could.”

“May be I’d subscribe 25 dols.,” continued the delegate.

“No, we cannot change.”

“Can’t do it nohow?”

“No.”

“Very well,” said Mr. Snags as he put on his hat. “If this ’ere railroad thinks it can stunt or cripple Snags’ Corners by leaving it out in the cold it has made a big mistake. Before I leave town to-day I’m going to buy a windmill and a melodeon, and your old locomotives may toot and be hanged, sir—toot and be hanged!”

A NEWSPAPER WONDER.

The _Railway Journal_, an American newspaper, containing the latest intelligence with respect to home and foreign politics, the money market, Congress debates, and theatrical events, is now printed and published daily in the trains running between New York and San Francisco. All the news with which its columns are filled is telegraphed from different parts of the States to certain stations on the line, there collected by the editorial staff travelling in the train, and set up, printed, and circulated among the subscribing passengers while the iron horse is persistently traversing plains and valleys, crossing rivers, and ascending mountain ranges. Every morning the traveller may have his newspaper served up with his coffee, and thus keep himself informed of all that is going on in the wide world during a seven days’ journey covering over three thousand miles of ground. He who pays his subscription at New York, which he can do at the railway ticket-office, receives the last copy of his paper on the summit of the Sierra Nevada. The production of a news-sheet from a flying printing office at an elevation of some ten thousand feet above the level of the sea is most assuredly a performance worthy of conspicuous record in journalistic annals, and highly creditable to American enterprise.

MONETARY DIFFICULTIES IN SPAIN.

Sir Arthur Helps, in his life of Mr. Brassey, remarks:—“There were few, if any, of the great undertakings in which Mr. Brassey embarked that gave him so much trouble in respect of the financial arrangements as the Spanish railway from Bilbao to Tudela. The secretary, Mr. Tapp, thus recounts the difficulties which they had to encounter:—

“‘The great difficulty in Spain was in getting money to pay the men for doing the work—a very great difficulty. The bank was not in the habit of having large cheques drawn upon it to pay money; for nearly all the merchants kept their cash in safes in their offices, and it was a very debased kind of money, coins composed of half copper and half silver, and very much defaced. You had to take a good many of them on faith. I had to send down fifteen days before the pay day came round, to commence getting the money from the bank, obtaining perhaps £2,000 or £3,000 a day. It was brought to the office, recounted, and put into my safe. In that way I accumulated a ton-and-a-half of money every month during our busy season. When pay week came, I used to send a carriage or a large coach, drawn by four or six mules, with a couple of civil guards, one on each side, together with one of the clerks from the office, a man to drive, and another—a sort of stableman—who went to help them out of their difficulty in case the mules gave any trouble up the hilly country. I was at the office at six o’clock, and I was always in a state of anxiety until I knew that the money had arrived safely at the end of the journey. More than once the conveyance broke down in the mountains. On one occasion the axle of our carriage broke in half from the weight of the money, and I had to send off two omnibuses to relieve them. I had the load divided, and sent one to one section of the line and one to the other.

“‘Q.—Was any attempt made to rob the carriage?

“‘A.—Never; we always sent a clerk armed with a revolver as the principal guard. We heard once of a conspiracy to rob us; but, to avoid that, we went by another road. We were told that some men had been seen loitering about the mountain the night before.’”

A CARLIST CHIEF AS A SUB-CONTRACTOR.

The natural financial difficulties of constructing a railway in Spain were added to by the strange kind of people Mr. Brassey’s agents were obliged to employ. One of the sub-contractors was a certain Carlist chief whom the government dared not arrest on account of his great influence. Mr. Tapp thus relates the Carlist chief’s mode of settling a financial dispute:—

“When he got into difficulties, Mr. Small, the district agent, offered him the amount which was due to him according to his measured work. He had over 100 men to pay, and Mr. Small offered him the money that was coming to him, according to the measurement, but he would not have it, nor would he let the agent pay the men. He said he would have the money he demanded; and he brought all his men into the town of Orduna, and the men regularly bivouacked round Mr. Small’s office. They slept in the streets and stayed there all night, and would not let Mr. Small come out of the office till he had paid them the money. He attempted to get on his horse to go out—his horses were kept in the house (that is the practice in the houses of Spain); but when he rode out they pulled him off his horse and pushed him back, and said that he should not go until he had paid them the money. He passed the night in terror, with loaded pistols and guns, expecting that he and his family would be massacred every minute, but he contrived eventually to send his staff-holder to Bilbao on horseback. The man galloped all the way to Bilbao, a distance of twenty-five miles, and went to Mr. Bartlett in the middle of the night, and told him what had happened. Mr. Bartlett immediately sent a detachment up to the place to disperse the men. This Carlist threatened that if Mr. Small did not pay the money he would kill every person in the house. When he was asked, ‘Would you kill a man for that?’ he replied, ‘Yes, like a fly,’ and this coming from a man who, as I was told, had already killed fourteen men with his own hand, was rather alarming. Mr. Brassey and his partners suffer a great amount of loss by their contracts for the Bilbao railway.”

HOW TO BEAR LOSSES.

During the construction of the Bilbao line, shortly before the proposed opening, it set in to rain in such an exceptional manner that some of the works were destroyed. The agent telegraphed to Mr. Brassey to come immediately, as a certain bridge had been washed down. About three hours afterwards another telegram was sent, stating that a large bank was washed away; and next morning, another, stating the rain continued, and more damage had been done. Mr. Brassey, turning to a friend, said, laughingly: “I think I had better wait until I hear that the rain has ceased, so that when I do go, I may see what is left of the works, and estimate all the disasters at once, and so save a second journey.”

No doubt Mr. Brassey felt these great losses that occasionally came upon him much as other men do; but he had an excellent way of bearing them, and, like a great general, never, if possible, gave way to despondency in the presence of his officers.

RAILROAD INCIDENT.

An Englishwoman who travelled some years ago in America writes:—“I had found it necessary to study physiognomy since leaving England, and was horrified by the appearance of my next neighbour. His forehead was low, his deep-set and restless eyes significant of cunning, and I at once set him down as a swindler or a pickpocket. My conviction of the truth of my inference was so strong that I removed my purse—in which, however, acting by advice, I never carried more than five dollars—from my pocket, leaving in it only my handkerchief and the checks for my baggage, knowing that I could not possibly keep awake the whole morning. In spite of my endeavours to the contrary, I soon sunk into an oblivious state, from which I awoke to the consciousness that my companion was withdrawing his hand from my pocket. My first impulse was to make an exclamation; my second, which I carried into execution, to ascertain my loss, which I found to be the very alarming one of my baggage checks; my whole property being thereby placed at this vagabond’s disposal, for I knew perfectly well that if I claimed my trunks without my checks the acute baggage-master would have set me down as a bold swindler. The keen-eyed conductor was not in the car, and, had he been there, the necessity for habitual suspicion incidental to his position would so far have removed his original sentiments of generosity as to make him turn a deaf ear to my request; and there was not one of my fellow-travellers whose physiognomy would have warranted me in appealing to him. So, recollecting that my checks were marked Chicago, and seeing that the thief’s ticket bore the same name, I resolved to wait the chapter of accidents, or the reappearance of my friends. With a whoop like an Indian war-whoop the cars ran into a shed—they stopped—the pickpocket got up—I got up too—the baggage-master came to the door. ‘This gentleman has the checks for my baggage,’ said I, pointing to the thief. Bewildered, he took them from his waistcoat pocket, gave them to the baggage-master, and went hastily away. I had no inclination to cry ‘stop thief!’ and had barely time to congratulate myself on the fortunate impulse which had led me to say what I did, when my friends appeared from the next carriage. They were too highly amused with my recital to sympathize at all with my feelings of annoyance, and one of them, a gentleman filling a high situation in the east, laughed heartily, saying, in a thoroughly American tone, ‘The English ladies must be cute customers if they can outwit Yankee pickpockets.’”

NOVEL OBSTRUCTION.

On a certain railroad in Louisiana the alligators have the bad habit of crawling upon the track to sun themselves, and to such an extent have they pushed this practice that the drivers of the locomotives are frequently compelled to sound the engine whistle in order to scare the interlopers away.

—_Railway News_, 1867.

BABY LAW.

The railways generously permit a baby to be carried without charge; but not, it seems, without incurring responsibility. It has been lately decided, in “Austin _v._ the Great Western Railway Company,” 16 L. T. Rep., N. S., 320, that where a child in arms, not paid for as a passenger, is injured by an accident caused by negligence, the company is liable in damages under Lord Campbell’s Act. Three of the judges were clearly of opinion that the company had, by permitting the mother to take the child in her arms, contracted to carry safely both mother and child; and Blackburn, J., went still further, and was of opinion that, independently of any such contract, express or implied, the law cast upon the company a duty to use proper and reasonable care in carrying the child, though unpaid for. It may appear somewhat hard upon railway companies to incur liabilities through an act of liberality, but they have chosen to do so. The law is against them, that is clear; but they have the remedy in their own hands. There was some reason for exempting a child in arms, for it occupies no place in the carriage, and is but a trifling addition of weight. But now it is established that the company is responsible for the consequences of accident to that child, the company is clearly entitled to make such a charge as will secure them against the risk. The right course would be to have a tariff, say one-fifth or one-fourth of the full fare, for a child in arms; and if strict justice was done, this would be deducted from the fares of the passengers who have the ill-luck to face and flank the squaller.

—_Law Times_, 1867.

RAILROAD TRACKLAYER.

The railroad tracklayer is now working along regularly at the rate of a mile a day. The machine is a car 60 feet long and 10 feet wide. It has a small engine on board for handling the ties and rails. The ties are carried on a common freight car behind, and conveyed by an endless chain over the top of the machinery, laid down in their places on the track, and, when enough are laid, a rail is put down on each side in proper position and spiked down. The tracklayer then advances, and keeps on its work until the load of ties and rails is exhausted, when other car loads are brought. The machine is driven ahead by a locomotive, and the work is done so rapidly that 60 men are required to wait on it, but they do more work than twice as many could do by the old system, and the work is done quite as well. The chief contractor of the road gives it as his opinion that when the machine is improved by making a few changes in the method of handling rails and ties it will be able to put down five or six miles per day. This will render it possible to lay down track twelve times as fast as the usual rate by hand, and it will do the work at less expense. The invention will be of immense importance to the country in connection with the Pacific railroad, which it was calculated could be built as fast as the track could be laid, and no faster; but hereafter the speed will be determined by the grading, which cannot advance more than five miles a day. Thirty millions of dollars have already been invested on the Pacific railroad, and if the time of completion is hastened one year by this tracklayer, as it will be if Central and Union Companies have money enough to grade each five miles a day, there will be a saving of three million dollars on interest alone on that one road.

—_Alla California_, 1868.

A GROWING LAD.

“This your boy, ma’am?” inquired a collector of a country woman, “he’s too big for a ’alf ticket.” “Oh, is he?” replied the mother. “Well, perhaps he is now, mister; but he wasn’t when he started. The train is ever so much behind time—has been so long on the road—and he’s a growing lad!”

FORGED TICKETS.

Attempts to defraud railway companies by means of forged tickets are seldom made, and still more seldom successful. In 1870, a man who lived in a toll-house near Dudley, and who rented a large number of tolls on the different turnpikes, in almost every part of the country, devised a plan for travelling cheaply. He set up a complete fount of type, composing stick, and every requisite for printing tickets, and provided himself with coloured papers, colours, and paints to paint them, and plain cards on which to paste them; and he prepared tickets for journeys of great length, and available to and from different stations on the London and North-Western, Great Western, and Midland lines. On arriving one day at the ticket platform at Derby, he presented a ticket from Masbro’ to Smethwick. The collector, who had been many years in the service of the company, thought there was something unusual in the ticket. On examination he found it to be a forgery, and when the train arrived at the platform gave the passenger into custody. On searching his house, upwards of a thousand railway tickets were discovered in a drawer in his bedroom, and the apparatus with which the forgeries were accomplished was also secured. On the prisoner himself was the sum of £199 10s., and it appeared that he came to be present at the annual letting of the tolls on the different roads leading out of Derby. The punishment he received was sufficiently condign to serve as a warning to all who might be inclined to emulate such attempts after cheap locomotion.

—Williams’s _Midland Railway_.

A YANKEE COMPENSATION CASE.

A horny-handed old farmer entered the offices of one of the railroad companies, and inquired for the man who settled for hosses which was killed by locomotives. They referred him to the company’s counsel, whom, having found, he thus addressed:—

“Mister, I was driving home one evening last week—”

“Been drinking?” sententiously questioned the lawyer.

“I’m centre pole of the local Tent of Rechabites,” said the farmer.

“That doesn’t answer my question,” replied the man of law; “I saw a man who was drunk vote for the prohibition ticket last year.”

“Hadn’t tasted liquor since the big flood of 1846,” said the old man.

“Go ahead.”

“I will, ’Squire. And when I came to the crossing of your line—it was pretty dark, and—zip! along came your train, no bells rung, no whistles tooted, contrary to the statutes in such cases made and provided, and—whoop! away went my off-hoss over the telegraph wires. When I had dug myself out’n a swamp some distance off and pacified the other critter, I found that thar off-hoss was dead, nothing valuable about him but his shoes, which mout have brought, say, a penny for old iron. Well—”

“Well, you want pay for that ’ere off-hoss?” said the lawyer, with a scarcely repressed sneer.

“I should, you see,” replied the farmer, frankly; “and I don’t care about going to law about it, though possibly I’d get a verdict, for juries out in our town is mostly made up of farmers, and they help each other as a matter of principle in these cases of stock killed by railroads.”

“And this ’ere off-hoss,” said the counsel, mockingly, “was well bred, wasn’t he? He was rising four years, as he had been several seasons past. And you had been offered £500 for him the day he was killed, but wouldn’t take it because you were going to win all the prizes in the next race with him? Oh, I’ve heard of that off-horse before.”

“I guess there’s a mistake somewhere,” said the old farmer, with an air of surprise; “my hoss was got by old man Butt’s roan-pacing hoss, Pride of Lemont, out’n a wall-eyed no account mare of my own, and, now that he’s dead, I may say that he was twenty-nine next grass. Trot? Why, Fred Erby’s hoss that he was fined for furious driving of was old Dexter alongside of him! Five hundred pounds! Bless your soul, do you think I’m a fool, or anyone else? It is true I was made an offer for him the last time I was in town, and, for the man looked kinder simple, and you know how it is yourself with hoss trading, I asked the cuss mor’n the animal might have been worth. I asked him forty pounds, but I’d have taken thirty.”

“Forty?” gasped the lawyer; “forty?”

“Yes,” replied the farmer, meekly and apologetically; “it kinder looks a big sum, I know, for an old hoss; but that ’ere off-hoss could pull a mighty good load, considering. Then I was kinder shook up, and the pole of my waggon was busted, and I had to get the harness fixed, and there’s my loss of time, and all that counts. Say fifty pounds, and it’s about square.”

The lawyer whispered softly to himself, “Well, I’ll be hanged!” and filled out a cheque for fifty pounds.

“Sir,” said he, covering the old man’s hand, “you are the first honest man I have met in the course of a legal experience of twenty-three years; the first farmer whose dead horse was worth less than a thousand pounds, and could trot better without training. Here, also, is a free pass for yourself and your male heirs in a direct line for three generations; and if you have a young boy to spare we will teach him telegraphing, and find him steady and lucrative employment.”

The honest old farmer took the cheque, and departed, smiting his brawny leg with his horny hand in triumph as he did so, with the remark—

“I knew I’d ketch him on the honest tack! Last hoss I had killed I swore was a trotter, and all I got was thirty pounds and interest. Honesty is the best policy.”

—_Once a Week_.

ABERGELE ACCIDENT.