Part 24

At a banquet in Paris attended by Americans in celebration of the late Fourth of July, Mr. Walker’s speech in reply to the toast of the material prosperity of the United States and France, and the establishment of closer commercial relations between them, was especially striking and interesting. He remarked, “In 1870 the cost of transporting food and merchandise between the Western and Eastern States was from a cent-and-a-half to two cents a ton a mile. I well remember a conversation which I had in 1870 or 1871 with Mr. William B. Ogden, of Chicago, one of the modest railway kings of that primitive period. In a vein of sanguine prophecy, Mr. Ogden exclaimed to me, ‘Mr. Walker, you will live to see freight brought from Chicago to New York at a cent a ton a mile!’ ‘Perhaps so,’ I replied; ‘but I fear this result will not be reached in my time.’ In 1877 or 1878 the cost had fallen to three-eighths of a cent a ton a mile, and although this price was not remunerative, I was told by one of the highest authorities in railway matters that five-eighths of a cent would be perfectly satisfactory. The effect of this reduction in the cost of transportation is precisely as though the unexhaustible grain fields and pastures across the Mississippi had been moved bodily eastward to the longitude of Ohio and Western New York. It is estimated that it takes a quarter of a ton of bread and meat to feed a grown man in Massachusetts for a year. The bread and meat come to him from the far west, and I have no doubt that it will astonish you to be told, as it lately astonished me, that a single day of this man’s labour, even if it be of the commonest sort, will pay for transporting his year’s subsistence for a thousand miles.”

TAY BRIDGE ACCIDENT.

Dec. 28, 1879. A fearful disaster occurred in Scotland. As the train from Edinburgh to Dundee was crossing the bridge, two miles in length, which spans the mouth of the Tay, a terrible hurricane struck the bridge, about four hundred yards of which was, with the train, dashed into the sea below. About seventy persons were in the train, of whom not one escaped, nor, when the divers were able to descend, could a single body be found in the carriages, or among the bridge girders, and some days elapsed before any were recovered. No conclusive evidence could be produced to show whether the train was blown off the rails and so dragged the girders down, or whether the bridge was blown away and the train ran into the chasm thus made. The night was intensely dark, and the wind more violent than had ever been known in the country.

_Annual Register_, 1879.

AN EXTRAORDINARY WAIF.

The following is a translation from the Norwegian newspaper _Morgenbledet_, dated Feb. 20th:—“By private letter from Utsue, an island on the western coast of Norway, is communicated to Dapposten the intelligence that on the 12th inst. some fishermen pulled on the Firth to haul their nets, and had hardly finished their labour when they sighted an extraordinary object some distance further out. The superstitious fears of sea monsters which have been written a good deal about lately held them back for some time, but their curiosity made them approach the supposed sea monster, and, to their great surprise, they found that it was something like a building. As the sea was calm they immediately commenced to tow it to shore, where it was hauled up on the beach, and was then found to be a damaged railway wagon. The wheels were off, the windows smashed, and one door hanging on its hinges. By the name on it, “Edinburgh and Glasgow Railway,” it was at once surmised that it must have been one of the wagons separated from the train which met with the disaster on the Tay Bridge. In the carriage was a portmanteau containing garments, some of them marked ‘P.B.’ The wagon was sent, on the 14th, to Hangesund, to be forwarded thence to Bergen.”

A RAILWAY SLEEPER.

A railway pointsman, caught napping at his post and convicted of wilful negligence, said to the gaoler who was about to lock him up, “I always supposed that the safety of a railroad depended on the soundness of its sleepers?” “So it does,” replied the gaoler, “but such sleepers are never safe unless they are bolted in.”

NOT TO BE CAUGHT.

The following incident is said to have occurred on the North London Railway:—Some time ago a passenger remarked, in the hearing of one of the company’s servants, how easy it was to “do” the company, and said, “I often travel from Broad Street to Dalston Junction without a ticket—anyone can do it—I did it yesterday.” When he alighted he was followed by the official, who asked him how it was done. For a consideration he agreed to tell him. This being given, “Now,” said the inquirer, “how did you go from Broad Street to Dalston Junction yesterday without a ticket?” “Oh,” was the reply, “I walked.”

THE DOCTOR AND THE OFFICERS.

The following is rather a good story from the Emerald Isle:—A doctor and his wife got into a train near—well, we will not say where. In the same carriage with the doctor were two strange officers. The doctor’s wife got into another compartment of the same train, the doctor not having seen his wife in the hurry, neither knew that they were travelling by the same train until both had got into different carriages. Said one of the officers to his companion, “That is the ugliest woman I ever saw.” “She is,” replied the Son of Mars. “I should not like to be obliged to kiss her,” responded the first speaker. “I should not mind doing it,” sullenly said the doctor. “You never would, sir, think of such a thing,” said the officer. “I’ll bet you a sovereign I will,” answered the man of “pills and potions.” “Done,” said the officer. So when they all got out at the station, the doctor went forward and kissed his wife, and won his sovereign—the easiest-earned fee he had ever received. The officers looked rather astonished when he presented his wife to them.

THE BOTHERED QUEEN’S COUNSEL.

Mr. Merewether, Q.C., got into the train one morning with a whole batch of briefs and a talkative companion. He wanted to go through his briefs, but his companion would not let him work. He tried silence, he tried grunting, he tried sarcasm. At length, when they came to Hanwell, the gossip hit upon the unfortunate remark, “How well the asylum looks from the railway!” “Pray, sir,” replied Mr. Merewether, “how does the railway look from the asylum?” The man was silent.

A BRAVE ENGINE DRIVER.

An American contemporary says:—“John Bull, of Galion (Ohio), ought to have his name recorded in an enduring way, for few have ever behaved so nobly as that engine driver of the New York, Pennsylvania, and Ohio railroad. As he was driving a passenger train last month he found that, through somebody’s blunder, a freight train was approaching on the same track, and a collision was inevitable. He could have saved his own life by leaping from the engine, but, dismissing all thoughts of himself, he resolved to try and save the passengers committed to his care. So he reversed the engine and set the air-brakes, and then put on full steam, started the locomotive ahead, broke the coupling attached to the train, and dashed on to receive the shock of the collision. The passengers escaped all injury, while the brave engineer was so badly hurt that he died in a few hours. Such heroism as this should not go unnoticed.” The _Cincinnati Inquirer_ says: “He remained in the car until the engine leaped into the air and was dashed into the ditch, when he attempted to spring to the ground, but had his foot caught between the frames of the engine and tender, striking his head on the ground and causing the fatal injuries. Railroad men say that the act of detaching the engine as he did, not even derailing the baggage car with his engine at the high rate of speed, and all in 150 feet, is without parallel in railroading. A purse of 500 dollars was raised by the grateful passengers. The body has been shipped to Galion for burial.”

AN INDUSTRIOUS BISHOP.

In noticing the “Life of the Rt. Rev. Samuel Wilberforce, D.D., Lord Bishop of Oxford, and afterwards of Winchester,” a writer in the _Athenæum_ remarks:—“Busy he was, both in Oxford and in London, and his correspondence with all kinds of people was unusually large. A large proportion of his letters were written in the railway train, and dated from ‘near’ this town, or ‘between’ this and that. We remember to have heard from one who was his companion in a railway carriage that before the journey was half-finished the adjoining seat was littered with envelopes of letters which he had read, and with the answers he had written since he started. All this undeniably shows energy and determination, and power to work.”

COOL IMPUDENCE AND DISHONESTY.

Some days since, the trains of the North London Railway were all late, and consequently every platform was crowded. At one of the stations an unfortunate passenger attempted to enter an already over-crowded first-class compartment, but one of the occupants stoutly resisted the intrusion. Thereupon, the unfortunate one said, “I will soon settle this,” and called the guard to the carriage door. He then requested the official to ask two of the occupants to produce their tickets, which proved to be third-class ones. In spite of the delinquents protesting there was no room in the train elsewhere, they were ejected, and the unfortunate one took their place. The other passengers were naturally rather indignant; and, seeing this, the successful intruder quietly said, “I am very sorry to have had to turn those two gentlemen out, especially as I have heard them say they were already late for an important engagement in the city; and I am all the more sorry, seeing that I only hold a third-class ticket myself.”

—_Truth_.

THE BOOKING-CLERK AND BUCKLAND.

Mr. Frank Buckland had been in France and was returning via Southampton, with an overcoat stuffed with natural history specimens of all sorts, dead and alive. Among them was a monkey, which was domiciled in a large inside breast-pocket. As Buckland was taking his ticket, Jocko thrust up his head and attracted the attention of the booking-clerk, who immediately—and very properly—said, “You must take a ticket for that dog, if it’s going with you.” “Dog,” said Buckland, “it’s no dog, it’s a monkey.” “It is a dog,” replied the clerk. “It’s a monkey,” retorted Buckland, and proceeded to show the whole animal, but without convincing the clerk, who insisted on five shillings for the dog-ticket to London. Nettled at this, Buckland plunged his hand into another pocket and produced a tortoise, and laying it on the sill of the ticket window said, “Perhaps you’ll call that a dog too.” The clerk inspected the tortoise. “No,” said he, “we make no charge for them—they’re insects.”

REMARKABLE RESCUE OF A CHILD.

An engineer on a locomotive going across the western prairie day after day, saw a little child come out in front of a cabin and wave to him, so he got in the habit of waving back to the child, and it was the day’s joy to see this little one come out in front of the cabin door and wave to him while he answered back. One day the train was belated, and it came on to the dusk of the evening. As the engineer stood at his post he saw by the headlight that little girl on the track, wondering why the train did not come, looking for the train, knowing nothing of her peril. A great horror seized upon the engineer. He reversed the engine. He gave it in charge of the other man, and then he climbed over the engine, and he came down on the cowcatcher. He said though he had reversed the engine, it seemed as though it were going at lightning speed, faster and faster, though it was really slowing up, and with almost supernatural clutch he caught the child by the hair and lifted it up, and when the train stopped, and the passengers gathered around to see what was the matter, there the old engineer lay, fainted dead away, the little child alive and in his swarthy arms.

FEMALE FRAGILITY.

There was a time when American women prided themselves on their fragility. To be healthy, strong or plump was thought to be the height of vulgarity, and refinement was held to be inseparable from leanness and consumption. These views still obtain—so it is said—in Boston, and especially in Bostonian literary circles; but elsewhere the American woman is growing plump and healthy, and is actually proud of it. While wise men are heartily glad of this change in female sentiment and tissue, it must be admitted that there is one form of feminine fragility which has its value. There is a rare condition of the bony system in which the bones are so fragile that the slightest blow is sufficient to break them. A baby thus afflicted cannot be handled, even by the most experienced mother, without danger; and a man with fragile bones is so liable to be broken, that there is sometimes no safety for him outside of a glass case. The late Mrs. Baker—for that was her latest name—was not so fragile that she could not be handled by a careful man, but still a very light blow would usually break her. She did not share the Bostonian opinion of the vulgarity of strength, but she was, nevertheless, very proud of her fragility, and by its aid her husband managed to amass a comfortable fortune within three years after their marriage. She is perhaps the only fragile woman on record of whom it can be said that her whole value consisted in her fragility, but, as her story shows, her fragility was the sole capital invested in her husband’s business. In January, 1870, Mrs. Baker—then a single woman, as to whose maiden name there is some uncertainty—was married to Mr. Wheelwright—James G. Wheelwright, of Worcester, Mass. Her husband married her on account of her well-known fragility, but he treated her with such kindness that in the whole course of their married life he never once broke her, even by accident. In February, 1870, the Wheelwrights removed to Utica, N.Y., and one day Mr. Wheelwright took his wife to the railway station, and had her break her leg in a small hole on the platform. He at once sued the railway company for 10,000 dols., being the value set by himself on his wife’s leg, and ten days afterwards accepted 5,000 dols. as a compromise, and withdrew the suit The Wheelwrights left Utica in June, 1870, and in the following August the dutiful Mrs. Wheelwright, who now called herself Mrs. Thomas, broke her other leg in a hole in the platform of the railway station at Pittsburg. Again her husband sued the railway company for 15,000 dols., and compromised for 6,500 dols. The leg was mended successfully, and in July, 1871, we find the Thomases, now passing under the name of Mr. and Mrs. Smiley, at Cincinnati, where Mr. Smiley, after long searching, discovered a piece of ragged and uneven sidewalk, upon which his wife made a point of falling and breaking her right arm. This time the city was sued for 15,000 dols., and Mr. Smiley proved that his wife was a school teacher by profession, and that the breaking of her arm rendered it impossible for her to teach, for there as on that she could not wield a rod or even a slipper. The city paid the 15,000 dols. and the Smileys, having by honest industry thus made 26,500 dols., removed to Chicago, and entered their names on the hotel register as Mr. and Mrs. McGinnis, of Portland, Me. On the second day after their arrival at the hotel, Mr. McGinnis found an eligible place on the piazza for Mrs. McGinnis to break another leg, which that excellent woman promptly did. The usual suit of 15,000 dols. was brought, and the hotel-keeper, fearing that the notoriety of the suit would injure his hotel, was glad to compromise by paying 8,000 dols. By this time, it is understood, Mrs. McGinnis was willing to retire from business, but her husband had set his heart on making 50,000 dols., and like a good wife she consented to break some more bones. It should be said that there was very little pain attending a fracture of any one of the lady’s bones, and that she did not in the least mind the monotony of lying in bed while the broken bones knitted themselves together. There can, therefore, be no charge of cruelty brought against her husband. Indeed, she herself entered with a hearty goodwill into the scheme of making a living with her bones, and would go out to break a leg with as much cheerfulness as if she was going to a theatre. In March, 1872, Mrs. Wilkins—hitherto known as Mr. McGinnis—walked into an open trench in a street in St. Louis and broke another leg. This time the suit brought by Mr. Wilkins against the city did not succeed, and the inquiries which were put on foot as to the antecedents of the Wilkinses fairly frightened them out of the city. They turned up a month later in Detroit, where the weather was still cold, and much snow had recently fallen. There were still 16,000 dollars to be made before the industrious pair would have the whole of their desired 50,000 dollars, and it was decided that Mrs. Wilkins—who had changed her name to Mrs. Baker—should fall on the icy pavement and break both arms. This, it was estimated, would be worth at least 8,000 dols., and it was hoped that the subsequent judicious breakage of two legs on the premises of a Canadian railway would bring in 8,000 dols. more, after which the Bakers intended to retire from business. Early one morning Mr. Baker took his wife out and had her fall on a nice piece of ice, where she broke both arms. Unfortunately, she fell more heavily than was necessary, and, in addition, broke her neck and instantly expired. The grief of Mr. Baker naturally knew no bounds, and he sued for 25,000 dols., all of which he recovered. He had thus made 59,500 dols. by the aid of his fragile wife, and demonstrated that as a source of steady income a woman who breaks easily is almost priceless. Still, nothing could console him for the loss of his beloved partner, and he is to-day a lonely and unhappy man.

—_New York Times_.

TAKING HIM DOWN A PEG.

A guard of a railway train, upon the late occasion of a _hitch_, which detained the passengers for some time, gave himself so much importance in commanding them, that one old gentleman took the wind out of his sails by calling him to the carriage door, and saying, “May I take the liberty, sir, of asking you what occupation you filled previous to being a railway guard?”

A REMARKABLE NOTICE.

On a certain railway, the following notice appeared:—“Hereafter, when trains moving in opposite directions are approaching each other on separate lines, conductors and engineers will be required to bring their respective trains to a dead halt before the point of meeting, and be very careful not to proceed till each train has passed the other.”

FLUTTER CAUSED BY THE MURDER OF MR. BRIGGS.

My vocations led me to travel almost daily on one of the Great Eastern lines—the Woodford Branch. Every one knows that Müller perpetrated his detestable act on the North London Railway, close by. The English middle class, of which I am myself a feeble unit, travel on the Woodford branch in large numbers. Well, the demoralization of our class,—which (the newspapers are constantly saying it, so I may repeat it without vanity) has done all the great things which have ever been done in England,—the demoralization of our class caused, I say, by the Bow tragedy, was something bewildering. Myself a transcendentalist (as the _Saturday Review_ knows), I escaped the infection; and day after day I used to ply my agitated fellow-travellers with all the consolations which my transcendentalism and my turn for French would naturally suggest to me. I reminded them how Julius Cæsar refused to take precautions against assassination, because life was not worth having at the price of an ignoble solicitude for it. I reminded them what insignificant atoms we all are in the life of the world. Suppose the worse to happen, I said, addressing a portly jeweller from Cheapside,—suppose even yourself to be the victim, _il n’y a pas d’homme nécessaire_. We should miss you for a day or two on the Woodford Branch; but the great mundane movement would still go on, the gravel walks of your villa would still be rolled, dividends would still be paid at the bank, omnibuses would still run, there would still be the old crush at the corner of Fenchurch street. All was of no avail. Nothing could moderate in the bosom of the great English middle class their passionate, absorbing, almost blood-thirsty clinging to life.

—Matthew Arnold’s _Essays in Criticism_.

AN EXTRAORDINARY BLUNDER.

A correspondent, writing from Amélia les Bains, says:—A very singular blunder was committed the other day by the officials of a railway station between Prepignan and Toulon. A gentleman who had been spending the winter here with his family, left last week for Marseilles, taking with him the body of his mother-in-law, who died six weeks ago, and who had expressed a wish to be buried in the family vault at Marseilles. When he reached Marseilles and went with the commissioner of police—whose presence is required upon these occasions—to receive the body from the railway officials, he noticed to his great surprise that the coffin was of a different shape and construction from that which he had brought from here. It turned out upon further inquiry that a mistake had been committed by the officials, who had sent on to Toulon the coffin containing his mother-in-law’s body, believing that it held the remains of a deceased admiral, which was to be embarked for interment in Algeria, while the coffin awaiting delivery was the one which should have been sent on. The gentleman who was placed in this awkward predicament, having requested the railway officials to communicate at once with Toulon by telegraph, proceeded thither himself with the coffin of the admiral, but the intimation had arrived too late. He ascertained when he got there that the first coffin had been duly received, taken on board, amid “the thunder of fort and of fleet,” the state vessel which was waiting for it, and despatched to Algeria. He at once called upon the maritime prefect of Toulon, and explained the circumstances of the case, but though a despatch-boat was sent in pursuit, the other vessel was not overtaken. He is now at Toulon awaiting her return, and I believe that he declines to give up the coffin containing the deceased admiral until he regains possession of his mother-in-law’s remains.

A CURIOUS RACE.