Chapter III: Part 3

Old Stephen Hanford, or "Old Steve," as he is called by everybody who knows him, had been running engines for twenty-five years, with an exemption from the calamities, the smash-ups and break-downs, collisions, etc., that usually checker the life of an engineer, that was considered by everybody most remarkable. Night and day, in rain, snow and mist, he has driven his engine on over flood and field, and landed his passengers safely at their journey's end, always. No matter how hard the storm blew, with sharp forked lightnings, with muttering thunders, and the pitiless, driving rain, Old Steve's engine, which from its belching smoke and eating fire seemed the demon of the storm, came in safe, and the old man, whose eye never faltered, whose vigil never relaxed, got off from his engine, and after seeing it safely housed, went to his home, not to dream of the terrors and miseries of collisions, of the shrieks and groans of victims whom his engine had trodden down and crushed with tread as resistless as the rush of mountain torrents. No; all these saddening reflections were spared him, for he had never had charge of an engine when any fatal accident happened. Old Steve was one of the most careful men on an engine that I ever saw. He was always on the watch, and was active as a cat. Nothing escaped his watchful glance, and in any emergency his presence of mind never forsook him; he went at once to doing the right thing, and did it quickly.

The old man's activity never diminished in the least, but his eyesight grew weak, and he thought he would leave the main line, and, like an old war-horse, in his latter days be rid of the hurry-skurry of the road. So he took a switch engine in the yard at Rochester and worked there, leaving the fast running in which he delighted to his younger comrades, many of whom received their first insight to the business from Old Steve. He had been there about a year at work, very well contented with his position, a little outside of the great whirling current of the road on which he had so long labored, and was one day standing beside his engine, almost as old a stager as himself, when with an awful crash the boiler exploded. Old Steve was not hurt by the explosion, but he started back so suddenly that he fell upon the other track, up which another engine was backing; the engineer of which, startled, no doubt, by the explosion, did not see the old man, until too late, and the wheels passed over him, crushing his leg off, just above the knee. They picked him up and carried him home; "the pitcher had been often to the well,"--it was broken at last. Owing to his vigorous constitution, the shock did not kill him; the leg was amputated, and now, should you ever be in the depot at Rochester, you will most likely see Old Steve there, hobbling around on one leg and a pair of crutches, maimed, indeed, but as cheerful as ever. He said to me, "I am used up, but what right had I to expect any thing else? In twenty-five years I have bidden good-bye to many a comrade, who, in the same business, met the stern fate which will most surely catch us all if we stick to the iron horse."

A VICTIM OF LOW WAGES.

During an absence from home of several weeks, in the past summer, I traveled in safety, upwards of three thousand miles, but it was not because the danger was not there, not because the liabilities for accidents were not as great as ever; it was because human foresight did not happen to err, and nature happened to be propitious. The strength of her materials was as much tried as ever, but they were in condition to resist the strain; so I and my fellow passengers passed safely over many a place which awoke in me thrilling memories; for in one place, the gates of death had been in former time apparently swung wide to ingulf me, but I escaped; at another, I remember to have shut my eyes and held my breath, while my heart beat short and heavily, as the ponderous engine, of which I had the control, crushed the bones and mangled the flesh of some poor wight caught upon the track, to save whom I had exercised every faculty I possessed, but all in vain; he was too near, and my train too heavy for me to stop in time to spare him. I met many of my old cronies during my absence, and, inquiring for others, heard the long-expected but saddening news, that they had gone; their running was over, the dangers they had so often faced overcame them at last, and now they sleep where "signal lights" and the shrill whistle denoting danger, which have so often called all their faculties into play to prevent destruction and save life, are no longer heard. Others I met, who, in some trying time, had been caught and crushed by the very engines they had so often held submissive to their will, and now, maimed and crippled, they must hobble along till the almost welcome voice of death bids them come and lay their bones beside their comrades in danger, who have gone before.

A little paragraph in the papers last winter, announced that a gravel train, of which Hartwell Stark was engineer, and James Burnham conductor, had collided with a freight train, on the N. Y. C. R. R.; that the fireman was killed, and the engineer so badly hurt that he was not expected to live. Perhaps a fuller account of this catastrophe may be instructive in order to show the risks run by railroad men, the responsibility resting upon the most humble of them, and the enormous amount of suffering a man is capable of enduring and yet live. This gravel train "laid up" for the night at Clyde, and in the morning early, as soon as the freight trains bound west had passed, proceeded out upon the road to its work. It was the duty of the switchman to see that the trains had all passed, and report the same to the men in charge of the gravel train. This morning it was snowing very hard, the wind blew strong from the east, and take it altogether, it was a most unpleasant time, and one very likely to put all trains behind. Knowing this, the conductor and engineer both asked the switchman if the freights had all passed. He replied positively that they had. So, without hesitation, they proceeded to their work. They had left their train of gravel cars at a "gravel pit," some sixteen miles distant; so with the engine backing up and dragging the "caboose," in which were about thirty men, they started. They had got about ten miles on their way, the wind and snow still blowing in their faces, rendering it almost impossible for them to see any thing ahead, even in daylight--utterly so in the darkness of that morning, just before day--when, out of the driving storm, looking a very demon of destruction, came thundering on at highest speed, the freight train, which the switchman had so confidently reported as having passed an hour before they left Clyde. The engineer of the freight train jumped, and said that before he struck the ground he heard the collision. Hart tried to reverse his engine, but had not time to do it; so he could not jump, but was caught in the close embrace of those huge monsters. The freight engine pushed the "tender" of his engine up on to the "foot-board." It divided; one part crushed the fireman up against the dome and broke in the "fire-door;" the wood piled over on top of him, and the flames rushing out of the broken door soon set it on fire, and there he lay till he was taken out, eighteen hours afterward, a shapeless cinder of humanity. The other part caught Hart's hips between it and the "run-board," and rolled him around for about six feet, breaking both thigh-bones; and to add to his sufferings a piece of the "hand-rail" was thrust clear through the flesh of both legs, and twisted about there till it made gashes six inches long. The steam pipe being broken off, the hissing steam prevented his feeble cries from being heard, and as every man in the "caboose" was hurt, Hart began to think that iron rack of misery must surely be his death-bed. At last, however, some men saw him, but at first they were afraid to come near, being fearful of an explosion of the boiler. Soon, however, some more bold than the rest went to work, and procuring a T rail, they proceeded to pry the wreck apart, and release him from his horrible position. And so, after being thus suspended and crushed for over half an hour, he was taken down, put upon a hand-car, and taken to his home at Clyde, which place he reached in five hours after the accident. No one expected him to live. The physicians were for an immediate amputation of both limbs, but to this Hart stoutly objected. So they finally agreed to wait forty-eight hours and see. At the end of that time--owing to his strong constitution and temperate habits of life--the inflammation was so light they concluded to leave poor Hart with both his legs, and there he has lain ever since. For twelve weeks he was never moved from his position in the bed, his clothes were never changed, and he never stirred so much as an inch; and even to this day--May 20th--he is unable to turn in the bed, though he can sit up, and when I saw him, was sitting in the stoop cutting potatoes for planting, and apparently as happy as a child, to think he could once more snuff fresh air.

I should think that such accidents (and they are of frequent occurrence) would teach the managers of railroads that the policy of hiring men who can be hired for twenty-five dollars a month, and who have so little judgment as to sleep on their posts, and then make such reports as this switchman did, endangering not only the property of the company, but also jeopardizing the lives of brave and true men like Hart Stark, and subjecting them to these lingering tortures, is suicidal to their best interests. Would not an extra ten dollars a month to all switchmen be a good investment, if in the course of a year it saved the life of one poor fireman, who otherwise would die as this poor fellow did; or if it saved one cool and true man from the sufferings Hart Stark has for the past five months endured?

CORONERS' JURIES VS. RAILROAD MEN.

Coroner's juries are, beyond a doubt, a very good institution, and were established for a good purpose; they investigate sudden deaths, while the matter is still fresh, before the cause has become hidden or obscured by lapse of time, and in most cases they undoubtedly arrive at a just conclusion; but in cases of railroad accidents, I never yet knew one that was not unjust, to a greater or less degree, in its verdict against employees of the company on the train at the immediate time of the occurrence.

I know that in saying this I fly into the face of all the newspapers of the land, for they have a stereotyped sneer in these words, "_Of course_ nobody was to blame," at every coroner's jury that fails to censure somebody, or to adjudge some one guilty of wilful murder. Nevertheless I believe it, and unhesitatingly declare it. Most generally it is the engineer and conductor who are censured, sometimes the brakemen or switchmen; but rarely or never is it the right one who is branded and placed in the newspaper pillory as unfit to occupy any position of trust, and guilty of the death of those killed and the wounds of those wounded. As to an accident that could not be avoided by human forethought, that idea is scouted, and if a coroner's jury does ever so far forget what is expected of it by these editors--who are the self-elected bull-dogs of society, and must needs bark or lose their dignity--why no words are sufficiently sarcastic, no sentences sufficiently bitter, to express the contempt which they feel for that benighted coroner's jury. To be sure they know nothing, or next to nothing, of the circumstances, and the jury knows _all_ about them. To be sure, iron will break and so will wood; the insidious frost will creep in where man cannot probe, and render as brittle as glass what should be tough as steel; watches will go wrong, and no hundred men can be found who will on all occasions give one interpretation to the same words. But what of that?

Why, the bare idea that any accident upon any road can happen, and some poor devil of an engineer, conductor, brakeman or switchman not be ready at hand, to be made into a pack-horse on whom to pile all the accumulated bile of these men who, many of them, have some private grudge to satisfy--the idea, I say, is preposterous to these men, and they fulminate their thunders against railroad men, until community gets into the belief that virtue, honesty, integrity or common dog sense are things of which a railroad man must necessarily be entirely destitute; and they are looked upon with distrust, they are driven to become clannish, and frequently, I must confess, any thing but polite to the traveling public, whose only greeting to them is gruff fault-finding, or an incessant string of foolish questions. But are they so much to blame for this? Would you, my reader, "cast your pearls before swine?" and can you particularly blame men for not being over warm to the traveling community which almost invariably treats them as machines, destitute of feeling, for whose use it pays so much a mile? Railroad men, though, are not impolite, nor short to everybody. Ask a jovial, good-natured man, who has a smile and a pleasant word for everybody, and I'll warrant he will tell you that he gets treated well enough on railroads; that the engineer answers his questions readily; that the brakeman sees that he has a seat; that his baggage is not bursted open every trip he takes, and the conductor does not wake him up out of his sleep every five minutes to ask for his ticket. But ask a pursy, lordly individual, whose lack of brains is atoned for by the capacity of his stomach, who never asks for any thing, always orders it, and who always praises the last road he was on, and d----s the one he is now on; or ask a vinegar-looking, hatchet-faced old maid, who has eight bandboxes, a parasol, an umbrella, a loose pair of gloves, a work-bag and a poodle dog, who always has either such a cold that she knows she "shall die unless that window in front is put down," or else is certain that she "shall suffocate unless more air is let into the car," and who is continually asking whoever she sees with a badge on, whether the "biler is going to bust," or if "that last station ain't the one she bought her ticket for?"--ask either of these (and there are a great many travelers who, should they see this, would declare that I meant to be personal), and they will tell you that railroad men are "rascals, sir! scamps, sir! every one of them, sir! Why, only the other day I had a bran-new trunk, and I particularly cautioned the baggageman and conductor to be careful, and would you believe it, sir? when I got it, two--yes, sir! two--of the brass nails were jammed. Railroad men, from the dirty engineer to the stuck-up conductor, are bent on making the public as uncomfortable as they can, sir!" Reader, take my advice, and when you want any thing, go to the proper person and politely ask for it, and you will get it; but don't jump off and ask the engineer at every station how far it is to the next station? and how fast he ever did run? and if he ever knew John Smith of the Pontiac, and Buckwheat of the Sangamon and Pollywog road, one or the other, but really you forget which; but no matter, he must know him, for he looked so and so. Take care; while you are describing the venerable John Smith, that long oil-can may give an ugly flirt, and your wife have good cause for grumbling at your greasy cassimere inexpressibles; or a wink from the engineer to his funny fireman, may open that "pet cock," and your face get washed with rather nasty feeling water, and the shock might not be good for you. Don't bore the conductor with too many questions. If you ask civil questions, he will civilly answer you; but if you bore him too much by asking how fast "this ingine can run?" he may get cross, or he may tell how astonishingly fast the celebrated and mythical Thomas Pepper used to run the equally celebrated and mythical locomotive, "Blowhard." I started this article to tell a story illustrating my opinion of coroners' juries, but have turned it into a sort of homily on the grievances of railroad men. No matter; the story will keep, and the traveling people deserve a little talking to about the way they treat railroad men.

ADVENTURES OF AN IRISH RAILROAD MAN.

On a railroad, as everywhere else, one meets with decidedly "rich" characters--those whose every act is mirth-provoking, and who, as the Irishman said, "can't open their mouths without putting their fut in it." Such an one was Billy Brown, who has been, for nearly thirteen years, a brakeman on one road; who has run through and escaped many dangers; who has seen many an old comrade depart this life for--let us hope, a better one. Scarce an accident has happened on the road in whose employ he has been so long, but Billy has somehow been there; and always has Billy been kind to his dying friends. Many a one of them has breathed out his last sigh in Billy's ear; and I have often heard him crooning out some wild Irish laments (for Billy is a full-blooded Patlander), as he held in his lap the head of some of his comrades whose life was fast ebbing away from a mangled limb. I well remember one time, when one of Billy's particular cronies, Mike--the other name has escaped my memory--was missing from the train to which he was attached. A telegraphic dispatch was sent to the last station to see if he was left there; but, no! he was seen to get aboard the train as it left the station. So the conclusion was clear that Mike had fallen off somewhere on the road. Half a dozen of us, Billy with the rest, jumped into a hand-car, and went back to find him. We went once over the road without seeing any thing; but, as we came back, on passing the signboard which said "80 rods to the drawbridge," we saw some blood on it; and, on looking down under the trestlework, we saw poor Mike's body lying half in the water and half on the rocks. It was but an instant ere we were down there; but the first look convinced us that he was dead. As the train was passing over the bridge, he had incautiously put out his head to look ahead, and it had come in contact with the signboard, and was literally smashed flat. No sooner had the full conviction that Mike was dead taken possession of Billy, than he whops down on his knees, and commences kissing the fellow's bloody face, at the same time, with many tears, apostrophizing his body somewhat after this fashion: "Oh! wirra, wirra, Mike dear! Mike dear! and is this the way ye're afther dyin' to git yer bloody ould hed smashed in wid a dirty old guideboord?"

We all felt sad, and sympathized fully with Billy's grief; but the ludicrousness with which he expressed it, was too much for any of us; and we turned away, not to hide a tear, but to suppress a smile, and choke down a laugh.

But Billy was very clannish; and, to use his own expression, "the passenger might go hang, if there was any of the railroad byes in the muss." But as soon as Billy's fears as to any of his comrades being injured were allayed, no man could be more efficient than he in giving aid to anybody. Billy was true to duty, and never forgot what to do, if it was only in the usual routine of his business. Outside of that, however, he could commit as many Irish bulls as any one.

I well remember one night I had the night freight to haul. We were going along pretty good jog, when the bell rang for me to stop. I stopped and looked back to see what could be the matter. I saw no stir; so after waiting awhile, I started back to see if I could find any one. After getting back about twenty cars, I found that the train was broken in two, and that the rest of the cars were away back out of sight. I hallooed to my fireman to bring a light, and started on foot back around the curve, to see where they were. I got to the curve, and saw a light coming up the track towards me; the man who carried it was evidently running as fast as he could. I stopped to see who it was; and in a few moments he approached near enough to hail me--when, mistaking me for a trackman, and without slackening his speed the least, Billy Brown--for it was he--bellowed out, with a voice like a stentor, only broken by his grampus-like blowing, "I say, I say, did yees see iver innything of a train goin' for Albany like h--l jist now?" I believe I never did laugh quite so heartily in my life, as I did then; and Billy, turning around, addressed me in the most aggrieved manner possible, saying: "Pon me sowl now, Shanghi, its mighty mane of yees to be scarin' the life out of me wid that laff of yours, an' I strivin' as hard as iver I could to catch up wid yees, and bring yees back, to take the resht of yere train which ye were afther lavin in the road a bit back."

Another adventure of Billy's, at which we liked to have killed ourselves with laughter, and Billy himself liked to have died from fright, occurred in this wise: I was taking the stock train down the road one very dark night, and Billy was one of the brakemen. Attached to the rear of the train were five empty emigrant cars, which we were hauling over the road. I was behind time, and was running about as fast as I could, to make up the lost time; when the bell rang for me to stop. I stopped; and going back to see what was the matter, I found that two of the emigrant cars had become detached from the train, and been switched off into the river, just there very close to the track and very deep; and there they lay, one of them clear out of sight, and the other cocked up at an angle of about 45 degrees, with one end sticking out of the water about six feet. On looking around, I found that all the men were there on hand, except Billy; and he was nowhere to be found. We at last concluded that he must have been in the cars that were thrown into the river, and was drowned. But in this we were soon shown our error; for, from the car that was sticking out of the water, came a confused sound of splashing, and praying, and swearing, which soon convinced us that Billy was at least not dead. We hallooed at him, and asked him if he was hurt. His answer was, "Divil a hurt, but right nigh drowned; an how'll I get out o' this?" We told him to get out of the door. "But it's locked." "Unlock it then." "Shure, frow me a kay an' I will." "Where is your own key?" "Divil a wan o' me knows. Gone drownded I ixpect." "How deep is the water where you are, Billy?" "Up till me chin, an' the tide a risin'. Oh! murther, byes, hilp me out o' this; for I'm kilt intirely wid the wet and the cowld and the shock til me syshtem----" But we told him we couldn't help him, and that he must crawl out of a window. "Howly Moses," says Billy, "an' don't ye know these is imigrant cars, an' the windows all barred across to kape thim fules from sticking out their heads? an' how'll I get out? Byes, byes, wad ye see me drown, an' I so close to land, an' in a car to bute? Ah! now cease yere bladgin, an' hilp me out o' this." After bothering him to our hearts' content, we got a plank, and crawled out to the car, only about ten feet from shore, and cutting a hole in the top, soon had Billy at liberty.

A BAD BRIDGE.

One cold winter's night, while I was running on the H---- Road, I was to take the Night Express down the road. The day had been excessively stormy; the snow had fallen from early dawn till dark, and blown and drifted so on the track, that all trains were behind time. Especially was this so on the upper end of the road; the lower end, over which I was to run, was not so badly blockaded; in fact, on the southern portion, the storm had been of rain. The train came in three hours behind, consisting of twenty cars, all heavily loaded with grumbling, discontented passengers. This was more of a train than I could handle with my engine, even on the best of rail; but where the rail was so slippery with snow or ice as it was that night, it was utterly impossible for me to do any thing with it. So, orders were given for another engine to couple in with me; and George P----, with the Oneida, did so.

I was on the lead. George coupled in behind me. We both had fast "machines;" and in a little quiet talk we had before starting, we resolved to do some pretty fast running where we could.

The hungry passengers at last finished their meal, it being a refreshment station; the bell was rang; "all aboard" shouted; and we pulled out. Like twin brothers those engines seemed to work. Their "exhausts" were as one, and each with giant strength tugged at the train. We plowed through the snow, and it flew by us in fleecy, feathery flakes, on which our lights shone so bright that it seemed as if we were plunging into a cloud of silver dust. On! on! we rushed; the few stops we had to make were made quickly; and past the stations at which we were not to stop, we rushed thunderingly: a jar, a rumble, a shriek of the whistle, and the glimmering station-lights were away back out of sight.

At last we were within fourteen miles of the terminus of our journey. Both engines were doing their utmost, and the long train behind us was trailing swiftly on. Soon the tedious night-ride would be over; soon the weary limbs might rest. We were crossing a pile bridge in the middle of which was a draw. The rising of the water in the river had lifted the ice, which was frozen to the piles, and thus, I suppose, weakened the bridge, so that, when our two heavy engines struck it, it gave away. I was standing at my post, when, by the sudden strain and dropping of the engine, I knew that we were off the track, but had no idea of the real nature of the calamity. My engine struck her forward end upon the abutments of the bridge, knocking the forward trucks from under her. She held there but an instant of time; but in that instant I and my fireman sprang upon the runboard, and from thence to the solid earth. We turned in time to see the two engines go down into the water, there thirty feet deep; and upon them were piled the baggage, mail and express cars, while the passenger cars were some thrown from the track on one side, some on the other. The terrible noise made by the collision and the hissing made by the cold waters wrapping the two engines in their chill embrace, deafened and appalled us for an instant; but the next, we were running back to help the wounded. We found many wounded and seven dead amidst the wreck of the cars; but seven more were missing, and among them were six of the railroad men. After searching high and low, amidst the portion of the wreck on dry land, we with one accord looked shudderingly down into those black, chilling waters, and knew that there they lay dead. All night long we sat there. The wild wintry blasts howled around us; the cold waters gurgled and splashed amid the wreck; we could hear the wounded groan in their pains; but we listened in vain for the voices we were wont to hear. The chill tide, over which the ice was even then congealing anew, covered them. Mayhap they were mangled in the collision, and their shriek of pain was hushed and drowned as the icy waters rippled in over their lips. We almost fancied, when we threw the light of our lanterns upon the black flood, that we could see their white faces turned up toward us, frozen into a stony, immovable look of direst fear and agonizing entreaty.

Morning came, and still we could not reach our friends and comrades. Days went by before they were found, but when found each man was at his post. None had jumped or flinched, all went down with the wreck, and were found jammed in; but their countenances wore no look of fear, the icy waters that congealed their expression, did not find a coward's look among them; all wore a stern, unflinching expression that would have shown you, had you seen them just ere they went down, that they would do as they did do, stick bravely to their posts, and go down with the wreck, doing their duty at the cost of their lives.

A WARNING.

I am not, nor was I ever, superstitious. I do not believe in dreams, signs, witches, hobgoblins, nor in any of the rest of that ilk with which antiquated maidens were in olden time used to cheer the drooping spirits of childhood, and send us urchins off to our bed, half scared to death, expecting to see some horrid monster step out from every corner of the room, and in unearthly accents declare his intention to "grind our bones for coffee," or do something else equally horrid, the contemplation of which was in an equal degree unfitted to render our sleep sound or our rest placid. Somehow the visitors from the other world, that children used to be told of, were never pretty nor angelic, but always more devilish than any thing else. But in these days, this has changed; for the ghosts in which gullible people deal now, are preëminently silly things. They use their superhuman strength in tumbling parlor furniture about the rooms, and in drumming on the floors and ceilings of bed-rooms. The old proverb is, that "every generation grows weaker and wiser." In this respect, however, we have reversed the proverb; for a great many have grown stronger in gullibility and weaker in intellect, else we would not have so many spiritualists who wait for God and His angels to thump out their special revelations, or else tumble a table about the room to the tune of A B C.

I have known, as have many, probably all of my readers, a great many people who professed to have the firmest faith in dreams and signs, who were always preadmonished of every event by some supernatural means, and who invariably are looking out for singular events when they have been visited by a singular dream. I have never believed in these things, have always laughed at them, and do so still. Yet there is one circumstance of my life, of this kind, that is shrouded in mystery, that I cannot explain, that I know to be so, and yet can scarcely believe, when a warning was given to me somehow, I know not how, that shook me and influenced me, despite my ridicule of superstition and disbelief in signs or warnings of any kind; so that I heeded it, and, by so doing, saved myself from instant death, and saved also many passengers who, had they known of the "warning" which influenced me to take the steps which I did, would have laughed at me, and endeavored to drive me on. The facts are briefly as follows--I tell them, not attempting to explain them, nor offering any theory concerning them--neither pretending that angels or devils warned me, and only knowing that it was so:

I was running a Night Express train, and had a train of ten cars--eight passenger and two baggage cars--and all were well loaded. I was behind time, and was very anxious to make a certain point; therefore I was using every exertion, and putting the engine to the utmost speed of which she was capable. I was on a section of the road usually considered the best running ground on the line, and was endeavoring to make the most of it, when a conviction struck me that I must stop. A something seemed to tell me that to go ahead was dangerous, and that I must stop if I would save life. I looked back at my train, and it was all right. I strained my eyes and peered into the darkness, and could see no signal of danger, nor any thing betokening danger, and there I could see five miles in the daytime. I listened to the working of my engine, tried the water, looked at the scales, and all was right. I tried to laugh myself out of what I then considered a childish fear; but, like Banquo's ghost, it would not down at my bidding, but grew stronger in its hold upon me. I thought of the ridicule I would have heaped upon me, if I did stop; but it was all of no avail. The conviction--for by this time it had ripened into a conviction--that I must stop, grew stronger, and I resolved to stop; and I shut off, and blew the whistle for brakes, accordingly. I came to a dead halt, got off, and went ahead a little way, without saying any thing to anybody what was the matter. I had my lamp in my hand, and had gone about sixty feet, when I saw what convinced me that premonitions are sometimes possible. I dropped the lantern from my nerveless grasp, and sat down on the track, utterly unable to stand; for there was a switch, the thought of which had never entered my mind, as it had never been used since I had been on the road, and was known to be spiked, but which now was open to lead me off the track. This switch led into a stone quarry, from whence stone for bridge purposes had been quarried, and the switch was left there, in case stone should be needed at any time; but it was always kept locked, and the switch-rail spiked. Yet here it was, wide open; and, had I not obeyed my preadmonition--warning--call it what you will--I should have run into it, and, at the end of the track, only about ten rods long, my heavy engine and train, moving at the rate of forty-five miles per hour, would have come into collision with a solid wall of rock, eighteen feet high. The consequences, had I done so, can neither be imagined nor described; but they could, by no possibility, have been otherwise than fatally horrid.

This is my experience in getting warnings from a source that I know not and cannot divine. It is a mystery to me--a mystery for which I am very thankful, however, although I dare not attempt to explain it, nor say whence it came.

SINGULAR ACCIDENTS.

The brothers G. are well known to all travelers by the route of the N. Y. C. R. R. They have been a long time employed there, and by the traveling public and the company that employ them they are universally esteemed; but the star of them all, the one most loved by his companions in toil, respected by travelers, and trusted by his employers, was Thomas, who met with his death in one of those calamitous accidents which so frequently mar the career of the railroad man. I was an eye-witness of the accident, and shall attempt to describe it.

The day on which it occurred was a glorious summer one; the breeze wafted a thousand pleasant odors to my senses; the birds sang their sweetest songs. As I was journeying along the highway between Weedsport and Jordan, I heard the rumble of the approaching train, and as from where I was I could get a fair view of the passing train, which was the fastest on the road and was behind time a few minutes, I stopped to watch it as it passed. On it came, the sun glancing on the polished engine as it sped along like the wind. The track where I had stopped, was crossed by two roads, one of them crossing at right angles, the other diagonally; between the two crossings there was a large pile of ties placed, probably eight feet from the track. I saw the engine, which was running at full speed, pass the pile, when suddenly, without warning, in a second of time, the cars went piling and crashing over the bank into a promiscuous heap, crushed into each other like egg-shells. One of them, a full-sized car, turned a complete somersault; another was turned once and a half around, and lay with one end down in the ditch, and the other up to the track, while the third went crashing into its side. I hitched my horse and ran over to the scene, expecting, of course, that not a soul would be found alive; arrived there, I found that no person was killed but poor Tom, and not over a dozen hurt, although the cars were crowded, and not a seat was left whole in the cars, which were perfectly riddled. They had already found Tom's body, which lay under the truck of the first passenger car, which had been torn out, and one wheel lay on his neck. He had no need of care, no need of sympathy, for the first crash killed him; and so with no notice, no warning, no moment for a faintly whispered good-bye to those he loved, poor Tom passed away to the unknown shore, leaving many friends to grieve for him.

We got him out, laid him beside the track, and stood solemnly by; grieving that he, our friend, had gone and left no message for the wife who idolized him, the brothers who had loved him, or the friends who so fully appreciated his many noble qualities. While we stood thus speechless with heartfelt, choking grief, a man came up and asked for the man who had charge of the train. Some one, I forget who, pointed to the mangled form of poor Tom and said, "There is all that is mortal of him." Said the thing--I will not call him man--"Dear me! I'm sorry; I wanted to find some one to pay for my cow."

It was his cow that had caused the accident, by jumping out against the baggage car after the engine had passed.

Another singular accident occurred on a road in the State of New York. An engine, to which something had happened that required a couple of sticks of wood out on the run-board as fulcrum for a lever, was passing through a station at full speed, when one of the sticks, that had carelessly been left outside, fell off and was struck by the end of the main rod on the backward stroke; impelled backwards by the force of the blow, it struck a man, standing carelessly beside the track, full on the side of the head, fracturing his skull, and killing him instantly.

LUDICROUS INCIDENTS.

There is not often much that is comic on the "rail," but occasionally an incident occurs that brings a loud guffaw from everybody who witnesses it.

I remember once standing by the side of an engine that was switching in the yard. The fellow who was running it I thought, from his actions while oiling, was drunk, so I watched him. He finished oiling, and clambered up on to the foot-board and attempted, in obedience to the orders of the yard-man, to start out. He jerked and jerked at the throttle-lever, but all to no effect; the engine would not budge an inch. I saw from where I stood what was the matter, and although nearly bursting with laughter, I refrained from telling him, but looked on to see the fun. After pulling for at least a dozen times, he bawled out to the yard-man that he couldn't go, and then gave another twitch, but it was of no use; then he stepped back a step or two and looked at the throttle, with a look of the most stupid amazement that I ever saw; his face expressed the meaning of the word "dumbfoundered" completely. At last the fireman showed him what was the matter. It was simply that he had set the thumb-screw on the throttle-lever and neglected to unloose it, in each of his efforts.

Another laughable affair occurred on one of the Eastern roads, I forget which. An engine stood on the switch, all fired up and ready to start; the hands were all absent at dinner. A big black negro, who was loafing around the yard, became exceedingly inquisitive as to how the thing was managed--so up he gets and began to poke around. He threw the engine into the forward gear and gave it steam, of course not knowing what he was doing; but of that fact the engine was ignorant, and at once, like a mettled steed, it sprung to full speed and away it went, carrying the poor darkey an unwilling dead-head ride. He did not know how to stop it, and dare not jump, for, as he himself expressed it, when found, "Gorra mity, she mos flew." The engine of course ran until steam ran down, which was not in fourteen miles, and Mr. Darkey got off and put for the woods. He didn't appear at that station again for over a week. He said that "ef de durn ting had a gon much furder he guessed he'd a bin white folks."

"Ol Long," an old friend of mine, tells a pretty good story about an old white horse that he struck once. Ol says that he was running at about thirty miles an hour, when an old white horse jumped out on the track right in front of the engine, which struck him and knocked him away down into the ditch, where he lay heels up. He of course expected that the horse was killed, and so reported on arriving at the end of the road; but what was his surprise, on returning the next day, to see the self-same old nag quietly eating by the side of the road. Ol says he believes the old fellow did look rather sour at him, but he could not apologize.

EXPLOSIONS.

It is easy to account for explosions of boilers on the hypothesis of too great pressure; but it is hardly ever very easy--frequently utterly impossible--to account for the causes which induce that overpressure. There are, to be sure, a number of reasons which may be advanced. The engineer may have screwed the scales down too much, and thus, the safety-valve not operating to let off the surplus steam, a force may be generated within the boiler of such tremendous power that the strong iron will be rent and torn like tissue-paper. This I say may occur, but in my experience I never knew of such a case. Then again, the water may get so low in the boiler that, on starting the engine and injecting cold water upon the hot plates, steam will be generated so suddenly as not to find vent, and in such enormous quantities and of so high a temperature as to explode the strongest boiler. Again, the water may be allowed to get low in the boiler, and the plates getting extremely hot, the motion of the train would generate steam enough by splashing water against them to cause an explosion. A proper care and due attention to the gauges would obviate this, and render explosion from these causes impossible. A piece of weak or defective iron, too, may have been put into the boiler at the time of its manufacture, and go on apparently safe for a long time, until at last it gives way under precisely the same pressure of steam that it has all along held with safety, or it may be with even less than it has often carried. How the engineer is to obviate this most fruitful cause of explosions, for the life of me I cannot see; still if his engine does blow up, everybody and their wives will believe that it happened entirely through his neglect. A person who has never seen an explosion, can form no idea of the enormous power with which the iron is rent. I saw one engine that had exploded, at a time too when, according to the oaths of three men, it had a sufficiency of water and only 95 lbs. of steam to the square inch, and was moving at only an ordinary speed, yet it was blown 65 feet from the track, and the whole of one side, from the "check joint" back to the "cab," was torn wide open--the lower portion hanging down to the ground, folded over like a table-leaf, and the other portion lay clear over to the other side, while from the rent, the jagged ends of more than half of the flues projected, twisted into innumerable shapes. The frame on that side was broken, and the ends stuck out from the side at right angles with their former position. I saw another, where the whole boiler front was blown out and the engine tipped clear over backwards on to the tender and freight car, where the engineer and fireman were found, crushed into shapeless masses, lying in the midst of the wreck. The engine Manchester exploded while standing at a station on the H. R. R. R., and killed two out of five men, who were standing together beside the tender. Two of those who were left, deposed, on oath, that not three minutes before the accident occurred, the engineer tried the water and found fully three gauges, while there was a pressure of only ninety-five pounds to the square inch, and it was blowing off.

How to account for it no one could tell, so every one who knew any thing whatever in regard to such things, called it "another of the mysterious visitations of God." But the newspapers called it an evidence of gross carelessness on the part of the engineer.

Several explosions have been known where the upper tubes were found unhurt, while the lower ones were, some of them, found badly burnt. The conclusion in these cases was that the tubes were too close together, and the water was driven away from them; consequently the starting of the engine, or the pumping of cold water into the boiler, was sufficient to cause an explosion.

HOW A FRIEND WAS KILLED.

There is among the remembrances of my life as a railroad man, one of such sadness, that I never think of it without a sigh. Every man, unless he be so morose that he cannot keep a dog, has his particular friends; those in whom he confides, and to whom he is always cheerful; whose society he delights in, and the possibility of whose death, he will never allow himself to admit.

Such a friend had I in George H----. We were inseparable--both of us unmarried; we would always manage to board together, and on all possible occasions to be together. Did George's engine lay up for the Sunday at one end of the road, and mine at the other, one of us was sure to go over the road "extra," in order that we might be together.

George and I differed in many respects, but more especially in this, that whereas I was one of the "fast" school of runners, who are never so contented with running as when mounted on a fast engine, with an express train, and it behind time. George preferred a slow train, where, as he said, his occupation was "killing time," not "making" it. So while I had the "Baltic," a fast engine, with drivers six feet and a half in diameter, and usually ran express trains, George had the "Essex," a freight engine, with four feet drivers.

One Saturday night I took the last run north, and was to "lay over" with my engine for the Sunday at the northern terminus of the road, until two o'clock Monday P. M. George had to run the "Night Freight" down that night, and as we wished particularly to be together the next day, I concluded to go "down the line" with him. Starting time came, and off we started. I rode for awhile in the "caboose," as the passenger car attached to a freight train is called, but as the night was warm and balmy, the moon shining brightly, tinging with silvery white the great fleecy clouds that swept through the heaven, like monstrous floating islands of snow drifting over the fathomless waters of the sea, I went out and rode with George on the engine. The night was indeed most beautiful, the moonlight shimmering across the river, which the wind disturbed and broke into many ripples, made it to glow and shine like a sea of molten silver. The trees beside the track waved and beckoned their leafy tops, looking sombre and weird in the half-darkness of the night. The vessels we saw upon the river, gliding before the freshening breeze, with their signal lights glimmering dimly, and the occasional steamers with light streaming from every window, and the red light of their fires casting an unearthly glare upon the waters; these all combined to make the scene spread before us, as we rushed shrieking and howling over the road, one of unexcelled beauty. We both gazed at it, and said that if all scenes in the life of a railroad man were as beautiful as this we would wish no other life.

But something ailed George's engine. Her pumps would not work. After tinkering with them awhile, he asked the fireman if there was plenty of water in the tank; the fireman said there was, but to make assurance doubly sure I went and looked, and lo! there was not a drop! Before passing through the station George had asked the fireman if there was plenty of water. He replied that there was; so George had run through the station, it not being a regular stopping place for the train, and here we were in a fix. George thought he could run from where we had stopped to the next water station; so he cut loose from the train and started. We had stopped on the outside of a long curve, to the other end of which we could see; it was fully a half mile, but the view was straight across the water--a bay of the river sweeping in there, around which the track went.