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I returned that afternoon, and the water had given up many of its dead. Twenty-two bodies lay stretched upon the shore--but one in a coffin, and she a bride of that morning, with the wedding-dress scorched and blackened, and clinging with wet, clammy folds to her stiff and rigid form. Her husband bent in still despair over her. A little child lay there, unclaimed. His curly, flaxen hair that, two hours before, father and sisters stroked so fondly, was matted around his forehead, and begrimed with the sand, over which his little body had been washed to the river-bank. His little lips, that a mother pressed so lately, now were black with the slime of the river-bed in which he went to sleep. An old man of seventy was there, sleeping calmly after the battle of life, which for him culminated with horror at its close. In short, of all ages they were there, lying on the sand, and the scene I shall never forget. Each incident, from the first flashing out of the flame to the moment when I, with reverent hands, helped lay them in their coffins and the tragedy closed, is photographed forever upon my mind.

THE CONDUCTOR.

Let two suits be brought in almost any of our courts, each with circumstances of the same aggravation, say for assault and battery, and let the parties in one be ordinary citizens, and in the other, let one party be a railroad man and the other a citizen, with whom, for some cause, the railroad man has had a difficulty, and you will invariably see the railroad man's case decided against him, and in the other case the defendant be acquitted, to go scot-free. Why is this? Simply, I think, because every individual who has ever suffered from the hands of any railroad employee, treasures up that indignity, and lays it to the account of every other railroad man he meets, making the class suffer in his estimation, because one of them treated him in a crusty manner.

If a man's neighbor or friend offend him, he tries to forgive it--earnestly endeavors to find palliating circumstances; but, in the case of railroad men, all that would palliate the offense of rudeness and want of courtesy, such as is sometimes shown, is studiously ignored, or, at the mildest, forgotten.

I knew a school teacher once, who said that the most barbarous profession in the world was that of teaching, because it drove from a man all humanity. He got into such a habit of ruling, that it became impossible for him to understand how to obey any one himself.

BRAVERY OF AN ENGINEER.

The presence of mind shown by railroad men is a great deal talked about; but few, I think, know the trying circumstances under which it must be exercised, because they have never thought of, and are not familiar enough with the details of the business, and the common, every-day incidents of the lives of railroad men. If any thing does happen to a train of cars, or an engine, it comes so suddenly, and is all over so quickly, that the impulse, and effort, to do something to prevent it, must be instantaneous, or they are of no avail. The mind must devise, and the hands spring to execute at once, for the man is on a machine that moves like the wind-blast, and will snap bands and braces of iron or steel as easily as the wild horse would break a halter of thread.

The engine, while under the control of its master, moves along regularly and with the beauty of a dream; its wheels revolve, glancing in the sun; its exhausted steam coughs as regularly as the strong man's heart beats, and trails back over the train, wreathing itself into the most fantastic convolutions; now sweeping away towards the sky in a grand, white pillar, anon twining and twisting among the gnarled limbs of the trees beside the track, and the train moves on so fast that the scared bird in vain tries to get out of its way by flying ahead of it. Still the engineer sits there cool and calm; but let him have a care,--let not the exhilaration of his wild ride overcome his prudence, for the elements he controls are, while under his rule, useful and easily managed, but broken loose, they have the power of a thousand giants, and do the work of a legion of devils in almost a single beat of the pulse.

A man can easily retain his presence of mind where the danger depends entirely upon him; that is, where his maintaining one position, or doing one thing resolutely, will avert the catastrophe; but under circumstances such as frequently beset an engineer, where, to do his utmost, he can only partially avert the calamity, then it is that the natural bravery and acquired courage of a man is tried to the utmost extent. I remember several instances of this kind, where engineers, in full view of the awful danger which threatened them, knowing too well the terrible chances of death that were against them and the passengers under their charge, even if they did maintain their positions, and, by using all their exertions, succeeded in slightly reducing the shock of the collision, which could only be modified--not averted--still stuck to their posts, did their utmost, and rode into the other train and met their death, amid the appalling scenes of the chaotic ruin which followed.

THE FIREMAN.

His aspirations are, that he may, by attending to his own duties, so attract the attention of the ones in authority that he may be placed in positions where he can learn the business, and, by and by, himself have charge of an engine as its runner. It does not seem a very high ambition; but, to attain it, he undergoes a probation seldom of less than three, frequently of seven or eight years, at the hardest kind of work, performed, too, where dangers are thick around him, and his chances to avert them very slim. His duties are manifold and various; but long years of attendance to them makes them very monotonous and irksome, and he would soon weary of them, did not the hope of one day being himself sole master of the "iron horse," actuate him to renewed diligence and continued efforts to excel. He is on duty longer than any other man connected with the train. He must be on hand before the engine comes out of the shop, to start a fire and see that all is right about the engine. Usually he brings it out upon the track; and then, when all is ready, he begins the laborious work of throwing wood; which amounts to the handling of from four to seven cords of wood per diem, while the engine and tender are pitching and rolling so that a "green-horn" would find it hard work to stand on his feet, let alone having, while so standing, to keep that fiery furnace supplied with fuel. The worse the day, the more the snow or rain blows, the harder his work. His hands become calloused with the numerous wounds he receives from splinters on the wood. He it is who has to go out on the runboard and oil the valves, while the engine is running full speed. No matter how cold the wind may blow, how rain, hail, sleet, or snow may beat down upon him, covering every thing with ice, nor how dark the night, out there he must go and crawl along the slippery side of the engine to do his work. At stations he must take water, and when at last the train arrives at its destination, and others are ready to go home, he must stay. If a little too much wood is in the fire-box, he must take it out, and then go to work cleaning and scouring the dust and rust from off the bright work and from the boiler. Every bit of cleaning in the cab and above the runboard, including the cylinders and steam-chest, must be done by him; and any one who will look at the fancy-work on some of our modern locomotives, can judge something of what he has to do after the day's work on the road is done. Every thing is brass, or covered with brass; and all must be kept polished like a mirror, or the fireman is hauled over the coals.

THE BRAKEMAN.

A very humble class of railroad men, a class that gets poorer pay in proportion to the work they do and the dangers they run than any other upon a road, are the brakemen. Though perhaps less responsibility rests upon them, they are placed in the most dangerous position on the train; they are expected to be at their posts at all times, and to flinch from no contingency which may arise. The managers of a railroad expect and demand the brakemen to be as prompt in answering the signals of the engineer as the throttle-valve is obedient to his touch.

But have a care, O! most chivalrous passenger, you who fly into such a passion if your dignity is offended by a short answer. You may quarrel with a man having a soul in him beside which yours would look most pitifully insignificant; one who, were the dread signal to sound, would rush out into the danger, and, throwing himself into the chasm, die for you, amid all the appalling scenes of the chaotic wreck of that train of cars, as coolly, as determinately, as unselfishly as the Stuart queen barred the door with her own fair arm, that her liege lord might escape. And then, methinks, you would feel sad when you saw his form stretched there dead, all life crushed out of it--once so comely, now so mangled and unsightly--and thought that, with that poor handful of dust from which the soul took flight so nobly, you had just been picking a petty quarrel.

If you have read the accounts of railroad accidents as carefully and with such thrilling interest as I have, you will remember many incidents where brakemen were killed while at their post, discharging their duty. Several have come under my immediate observation. On the H. R. R. one night I was going over the road, "extra," that is, I was not running the engine, but riding in the car. I heard a sharp whistle, but thought it was not of much consequence, for I knew the engineer's long avowed intention, to never call the brakemen to their posts when the danger could be avoided; he said he would give them a little chance, not call them where they had none. The brakemen all sprang to their posts; the one in the car where I was I saw putting on his brake; the next instant, with a shock that shook every thing loose and piled the seats, passengers, stove, and pieces of the roof all into a mass in the forward end of the car, the engine struck a rock, the cars were all piled together, and I was pitched into the alley up close to the end which was all stove in. I felt blood trickling on my hands, but thought it was from a wound I had received on my head. I soon found that it was from Charley McLoughlin, the brakeman with whom I had just been talking, and whom I saw go to his post at the first signal of danger. The whole lower part of his body was crushed, but he yet lived. We got him out as soon as possible and laid him beside the track on a door, then went to get the rest of the dead and wounded. We found one of the brakemen dead, his head mashed flat; the other one, Joe Barnard, was hurt just as Charley was, and as they were inseparable companions, we laid them together. I took their heads in my lap--we did not try to move them, as the physicians said they could not live--and there for four long hours I sat and talked with those men whose lives were surely, but slowly ebbing away. In life they were as brothers, and death did not separate them, for they departed within fifteen minutes of each other. But notice this fact--the brakeman who was found dead, still held in his hand the shattered brake-wheel, and Joe Barnard was crushed with both hands still grasping his. Yet these men were "only brakemen!"

A DREAM IN THE "CABOOSE."

A first thought of the life of an engineer would be that it was a life peculiarly exhilarating; that in the mind of an engineer the rush and flow of strong feeling and emotion would constantly be felt; that the every-day incidents of his life would keep his nerves continually on the stretch, and that lassitude would never overtake him. But such is not the case. I know of no life that a man could live which would more certainly produce stagnation than it. Every day, in sunshine or storm, cold or heat, light or darkness, he goes through the same scenes, bearing the same burdens of care and responsibility, facing the same dangers, braving grim death ever and all the time until he loses fear, and the novelty of the at first exhilarating effort to conquer space and distance, and make time of no account, wears away, till danger becomes monotonous, and only an occasional scene of horror checkers the unchanging current of his every-day life. He knows every tie on the road; he knows that here is a bad curve, there a weak bridge, from either of which he may at any time, by the most probable of possibilities, be hurled to his death; and still every day he rides his "iron horse," of fiery heart and demon pulse, over the weak places and the strong, posted at the very front of the procession, which any one of a thousand contingencies would make a funeral train. He passes the same stations, blows his whistle at the same point, sees the same men at work in the same fields, with the same horses that they used last year and the year before. Two lines of iron stretch before him, to demand and receive his earnest scrutiny every day, precisely as they have every day for years.

He meets the same men on other trains at the same places, and bids them "hail" and "good-bye" with the same uncertainty of ever seeing them again that he has always felt, and which has grown so sadly wearisome.

He alone knows and appreciates the chances against him, but his daily bread depends upon his running them, so with a resolute will that soon gets to be the merest trusting to luck, he goes ahead, controlled by the same rules, which always have the same dreary penalties attached to them when violated,--a maimed and disfigured body for the balance of his days, or a sudden and inglorious death.

If one of his intimate companions gets killed, he can only bestow a passing thought upon it, for he has not been unexpectant of it, and he knows full well that the same accident may at the same place make it his turn next, as he passes over the same road every day, running the same chances, as did his friend just gone.

AN UNMITIGATED VILLAIN.

Everybody knows mean men. Everybody knows people that they think are capable of any mean act, who would, did opportunity present itself, steal, lie, cheat, swear falsely, or do any other act which is vicious. But do any of my readers think that they know any one who would be guilty of deliberately placing an obstruction on a railroad track, over which he knew that a train, laden with human passengers, must soon pass? Yet such men are plenty. Such acts are frequently done, and often with the sole view of stealing from the train during the excitement which must necessarily ensue after such an accident. Sometimes such deeds are done from pure revenge, because the man who does it imagines that the railroad company has done him some injury, and he thinks that by so doing he will reap a rich harvest of vengeance. What kind of a soul can such a man have? The man who desires to steal, wishes to get a chance to do so when people's minds are so occupied with some other idea that their property is not thought of. So he goes to the railroad track and lifts up a rail, places a tie or a T rail across the track, or does something that he thinks will throw the train from the track; and then lies in wait for the accident to happen, calmly and with deliberate purpose awaiting the event; expecting, amid the carnage which will probably follow, to reap his reward; calculating, when it comes, to fill his pockets with the money thus obtained; and when it does happen, and the heavy train, in which, resting in security, are hundreds of passengers, goes off the track, is wrecked, and lies there with every car shattered, and out of their ruins are creeping the mangled victims, who rend the air with their horrid shrieks and moans of agony; when the dead and the mangled are mixed up amidst the appalling wreck; when little children, scarce able to go alone, are so torn to pieces that they linger only for a few moments on earth; when families, that a few moments before were unbroken and happy, are separated forever by the death of the father who lies in sight of the remaining ones, a crushed and bleeding mass, or by the loss of the mother, who, caught by some portion of the wreck, is held, and there, in awful agony, slowly frets her life away, right in sight of all that are dear to her; or, maybe, a husband, who is hurrying home to his dear one lying at the point of death, and anxiously awaiting his coming, that, before she dies, she may bid him good-bye, he is caught and mangled so that he cannot move farther, and the wife dies alone. Maybe a child, long time absent, is hastening home to meet the aged mother or father, and bid them good-bye ere the long running sands are run out entirely; but here he is caught, and his last breath of life goes out with a heart-rending, horrible scream of agony, and only his mangled corpse can go home. All ties may be rudely sundered. The infant at its mother's breast may be killed, and its mother clasp its tiny, bleeding form to her bosom, but it shall smile on her nevermore; its cooing voice shall not welcome her care again on earth. The mother too may be killed, and the moaning child may sob and sigh for the accustomed kiss, but all in vain. The mother, mangled and slain, only holds the child in the stiff embrace of death. The author of it all--where is he? he that did the deed? Is he rummaging the baggage or the pockets of the dead to find spoil? If he is, surely every cent he gets will blister his fingers through all time and in hell. The wail of the dying and the last gasp of the dead will, through all time, surely ring in his ears with horrible distinctness, and with a sound ominous of eternal torture. The horrible sight of the mangled, bleeding bodies, the set eyes, and jaws locked from excessive torture, will surely fasten on his eye forever, and blister his sight. Horrid dreams, wherein jibing fiends shall mock at him and the wail of the damned ring forever in his ears, shall surely visit his pillow and haunt him every night. Each voice that he hears amid the carnage shall seem, in after-time, to be the voice of an accusing angel telling him of his guilt.

So we would think, and yet men do it. Some in order to have a chance to steal, others as revenge for some petty injury; and they live, and, if detected, are sent for ten or twenty years to the penitentiary, as if that were punishment enough! It may be that I feel too strongly on the subject, but it seems to me that an eternity in hell would scarce be more than sufficient punishment for such a damnable deed. I think I could coolly and without compunction tread the drop to launch such a being to eternity; for surely no good influence that earth affords would be sufficient to reclaim such a man from the damnable depravity of his nature. Surely a man capable of such a deed, is a born fiend fit only for the abiding place of the accursed of God, whose voice should ever be heard howling in sleepless, eternal agony in the sulphurous chambers of the devil's home. I do feel strongly on this subject, for I have stood by and seen many a horrid death of this kind; I have held the hands of dear friends and felt their last convulsive pressure amid such scenes, whose deaths were caused by the diabolical malignity of some devil, who, for the nonce, had assumed human shape, and in revenge for the death of a cow, or for the unpaid occupation of land, or to get a chance to rob, had placed something on the track and thrown the cars therefrom. I have seen things placed on the track, rails torn up, and other traps, the ingenuity of whose arrangement could only have been begotten by the devil; and I have shut my eyes and thought that I had taken my last look at earth and all its glories; but I have escaped. I never caught one of these wretches, and I never want to; for if I should, I am afraid I would become an instrument for ridding the earth of a being who had secured good title to an abode in the nethermost hell.

A PROPOSED RACE BETWEEN STEAM AND LIGHTNING.

Wash. of course was not reinstated, but the "plank-roader" never made the running time of any of the fast trains with any other man on the "foot-board."

AN ABRUPT "CALL."

"Hi White," as he was familiarly called, was an engineer on the same road with me. He has been running there for over ten years, and, although Hi is one of those mad wags who are never so happy as when "running a rig" on some of their cronies, he was universally acknowledged to be one of the most competent and careful men that ever "pulled a plug" on a locomotive.

THE GOOD LUCK OF BEING OBSTINATE.

If one were to judge from the words of the press and the finding of coroners' juries, he would infer that a pure accident, one unavoidable by human foresight, was a thing unknown; but if he will only think, for a moment, of all the circumstances, consider the enormous velocity at which trains move, the tremendous strain thus thrown upon every portion of the road-bed and the machinery, I think the wonder will be why there are not more accidents. Think, for a moment, of one or two hundred tons' weight impelled through the air at a velocity of from one hundred to two hundred and forty feet per second, and tell me if you do not consider that the chances for damage are pretty numerous.

HUMAN LIVES VS. THE DOLLAR.

Cattle and horses on the track are a continual source of annoyance to engineers, and have been the occasion of many serious accidents. On the W. & S. Railroad, not many years since, an accident occurred, with the circumstances of which I was familiar, and which I will relate.

I had been there waiting for him to pass, for over half an hour, when I heard his whistle sound at a "blind crossing" about a mile distant; so I knew he was coming; and as George was a pretty fast runner, I thought I would stand out on the track and see him come, as the track was straight, there, for nearly a mile.

I saw the glimmer of his head-light when he first turned the curve and entered upon the straight track, and pulled out my watch to time him to the station, through which he was to pass without stopping. The light grew brighter and brighter as he advanced with the speed of the wind, and he was within sixty feet of the bridge, when I saw an animal of some kind, I then knew not what it was, but it proved to be a horse, dart out on the track, right in front of the engine. George saw it, I know, for he gave the whistle for brakes, and a series of short puffs to scare the horse from the track; but it was of no use; the horse kept right on and ran towards the bridge. Arrived there, instead of turning to one side, it gave a jump right on to the bridge, and fell down between the ties, and there, of course, he hung. On came George's ponderous engine, and striking the horse, was thrown from the track into the floor timbers of the bridge, which gave way beneath the weight and the tremendous concussion, and down went the engine standing upon its front, the tender dropped in behind it, and the baggage car and one passenger car were heaped together on top of them both. I saw them drop, heard the crash, and at once, with the other men of my train, started to relieve any that might be caught in the wreck. Leaping down the embankment forming the approach of the bridge, I waded through the stream to where the engine stood, my fireman following close behind me. Looking up, we saw George caught on the head of the boiler. He was able to speak to us, and told us that he was not much hurt, but his legs were caught so that he could not move, and from the heat of the boiler he was literally roasting to death. We climbed up to where he was caught, to see if we could move him or get him out; but alas! he could not be helped. His legs lay right across the front of the boiler, and on them were resting some timbers of the broken baggage car, while the passenger car was so wedged into the bridge that there was no prospect of lifting it so as to get George out for many hours. I went and got him some water, and with it bathed his forehead and cooled his parching lips; he talking to me all the time and sending word to his wife and children. For a few minutes, he bore up under the pain most manfully; but at last, it grew too intolerable for any human being to bear, and George, than whom a braver soul never existed, shrieked and screamed in his agony. He begged and prayed to die. He entreated us to kill him, and put an end to his sufferings--he even cursed us for not doing it, asking us how we could stand and see him roast to death, knowing, too, as we did and he did, that he could not be saved. He begged for a knife to kill himself with, as he would rather die by his own hand at once than to linger in such protracted, awful agony. Oh! it was terrible, to stand there and see the convulsive twitchings of his muscles, to hear him pray for death, to watch him as his eyes set with pain, and hear his agonized entreaties for death any way, no matter how, so it was quick. At last it was ended, the horrible drama closed, and he died; but his shrieks will never die out from the memory of those who heard them. The next day, when we got him out, we found his legs were literally jammed to pieces and then baked to a cinder. The fireman we found caught between the trucks of the tender and the driving-wheel of the engine, and apparently not a bone left whole in his body; he was utterly smashed to pieces. You could not have told, only from his clothing, which hung in bloody fragments to his corpse, that he had ever been a human being. We got them out at last and buried them. Sadly and solemnly we followed them to the grave, and thought, with much dread, of when it would be our turn. They lie together, a plain stone marking their resting-place, and no railroad man ever visits their graves without a tear in tribute to their memory.

Thus they died, and thus all that knew them still mourn them. But the noise of the accident had scarcely ceased echoing amidst the adjoining hills, ere the owner of the horse was on the ground wishing to know if any one was there who was authorized to pay for his horse; this, too, in the face of the fact, afterward proven, that he himself had turned the horse upon the track, there to filch the feed.

FORTY-TWO MILES PER HOUR.

We are now running a mile in one minute and twenty-six seconds; the driving-wheels are revolving a little more than 3 1/2 times in each second; and steam is admitted into, and escapes from, the cylinders fifteen times in a second, exerting each time a force of nearly nine tons on the pistons. We advance 61 feet per second. Our engine weighs 22 tons; our tender about 17 tons; and each car in the train with passengers, about 17 tons; so that our whole train weighs, at a rough calculation, 209 tons, and should we strike an object sufficiently heavy to resist us, we would exert upon it a momentum of 12,749 tons--a force hard to resist!

Look out at the driving-wheels; see how swiftly they revolve. Those parallel rods, that connect the drivers, each weighing nearly 150 pounds, are slung around at the rate of 210 times a minute. Don't you think that enough is required of an engine to run 42 miles per hour, without making it gain 18 miles in that time? Those tender-wheels, too, have been turning pretty lively meanwhile--no less than 600 times per minute. Each piston has, in each minute we have traveled, moved about 700 feet. So you see that, all around, we have traveled pretty fast, and here we are in Columbus, "on time;" and I take it you are satisfied with 42 miles per hour, and will never hereafter ask for 60.

Let us sum up, and then bid good-bye to the Deshler and her accommodating runner, Johnny Andrews. The drivers have revolved 16,830 times. Steam has entered and been ejected from the cylinders 67,320 times. Each piston has traveled 47,766 feet, and we have run only 55 miles, at the rate of 42 miles per hour.

USED UP AT LAST.

The old proverb, that "the pitcher which goes often to the well returns broken at last," receives, in the lives of railroad men, frequent confirmation. I have known some men who have run engines for fifteen or twenty years and met with no accident worthy of note to themselves, their trains, or to any of the passengers under their charge; but if they continue running, the iron hand of fate will surely reach them.

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 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.

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 , 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.

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