Part 21

“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.

The Irish mail leaving London at shortly after seven A.M., it was timed in 1868 to make the distance to Chester, one hundred and sixty-six miles, in four hours and eighteen minutes; from Chester to Holyhead is eighty-five miles, for running which the space of one hundred and twenty-five minutes was allowed. Abergele is a point on the seacoast in North Wales, nearly midway between these two places. On the 20th of August, 1868, the Irish mail left Chester as usual. It was made up of thirteen carriages in all, which were occupied—as the carriages of that train usually were—by a large number of persons whose names, at least, were widely known. Among these, on this particular occasion, were the Duchess of Abercorn, wife of the then Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, with five children. Under the running arrangements of the London and North-Western line a goods train left Chester half-an-hour before the mail, and was placed upon the siding at Llanddulas, a station about a mile-and-a-half beyond Abergele, to allow the mail to pass. From Abergele to Llanddulas the track ascended by a gradient of some sixty feet to the mile. On the day of the accident it chanced that certain wagons between the engine and the rear end of the goods train had to be taken out to be left at Llanddulas, and, in doing this, it became necessary to separate the train and to leave five or six of the last wagons in it standing on the main line, while those which were to be left were backed on to a siding. The employé whose duty it was to have done so, neglected to set the brake on the wagons thus left standing, and consequently when the engine and the rest of the train returned for them, the moment they were touched, and before a coupling could be effected, the jar set them in motion down the incline toward Abergele. They started so slowly that a brakeman of the train ran after them, fully expecting to catch and stop them, but as they went down the grade they soon outstripped him, and it became clear that there was nothing to check them until they should meet the Irish mail, then almost due. It also chanced that the wagons thus loosened were oil wagons.

The mail train was coming up the line at a speed of about thirty miles an hour, when its engine-driver suddenly perceived the loose wagons coming down upon it around the curve, and then but a few yards off. Seeing that they were oil wagons, he almost instinctively sprang from his engine, and was thrown down by the impetus and rolled to the side of the road-bed. Picking himself up, bruised but not seriously hurt, he saw that the collision had already taken place, that the tender had ridden directly over the engine, that the colliding wagons were demolished, and that the front carriages of the train were already on fire. Running quickly to the rear of the train, he succeeded in uncoupling six carriages and a van, which were drawn away from the rest before the flames extended to them by an engine which most fortunately was following the train. All the other carriages were utterly destroyed, and every person in them perished.

The Abergele was probably a solitary instance, in the record of railway accidents, in which but one single survivor sustained any injury. There was no maiming. It was death or entire escape. The collision was not a

## particularly severe one, and the engine driver of the mail train

especially stated that at the moment it occurred the loose wagons were still moving so slowly that he would not have sprung from his engine had he not seen that they were loaded with oil. The very instant the collision took place, however, the fluid seemed to ignite and to flash along the train like lightning, so that it was impossible to approach a carriage when once it caught fire. The fact was that the oil in vast quantities was spilled upon the track and ignited by the fire of the locomotive, and then the impetus of the mail train forced all of its leading carriages into the dense mass of smoke and flame. All those who were present concurred in positively stating that not a cry, nor a moan, nor a sound of any description was heard from the burning carriages, nor did any one in them apparently make an effort to escape.

Though the collision took place before one o’clock, in spite of the efforts of a large gang of men who were kept throwing water on the line, the perfect sea of flame which covered the line for a distance of some forty or fifty yards could not be extinguished until nearly eight o’clock in the evening, for the petroleum had flowed down into the ballasting of the road, and the rails were red-hot. It was, therefore, small occasion for surprise that when the fire was at last gotten under, the remains of those who lost their lives were in some cases wholly undistinguishable, and in others almost so. Among the thirty-three victims of the disaster, the body of no single one retained any traces of individuality; the faces of all were wholly destroyed, and in no case were there found feet or legs or anything approaching to a perfect head. Ten corpses were finally identified as those of males, and thirteen as those of females, while the sex of ten others could not be determined. The body of one passenger, Lord Farnham, was identified by the crest on his watch, and, indeed, no better evidence of the wealth and social position of the victims of this accident could have been asked for than the collection of articles found on its site. It included diamonds of great size and singular brilliancy; rubies, opals, emeralds; gold tops of smelling bottles, twenty-four watches—of which but two or three were not gold—chains, clasps of bags, and very many bundles of keys. Of these, the diamonds alone had successfully resisted the intense heat of the flame; the settings were nearly all destroyed.

RAILWAY DESTROYERS IN THE FRANCO-GERMAN WAR.

One obvious means of hampering the military operations of the Germans was the cutting of railroads, so as to interrupt and overthrow on-coming trains. This method was resorted to by bands of volunteers, calling themselves “The Wild Boars of Ardennes,” and “Railway Destroyers.” Here again the invaders incurred great odium by announcing that, on the departure of a train in the disaffected districts, the mayor and principal inhabitants should be made to take their places on the engine, so that if the peasants chose to upset the conveyance, their surest victims would be their own compatriots.

—_Annual Register_, 1870.

FRIGHTENED AT A RED LIGHT.

A driver, not on duty, had been drinking, and was, in company with his fireman, walking in the vicinity of the Edgware Road, when he suddenly started violently, and seizing his mate’s arm, shouted—

“Hold hard, mate—hold hard!”

“What’s the matter?” cried the fireman.

“Matter!” roared the driver, “why, you’re a-running by the red light;” and he pointed to the crimson glare which streamed through a glass bottle in a chemist’s window.

“Come along; that’s nothing,” said the fireman, trying to drag him on.