Railway Adventures and Anecdotes Part 32

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 _Athenaeum_ 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 pa.s.senger attempted to enter an already over-crowded first-cla.s.s 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-cla.s.s 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 pa.s.sengers 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-cla.s.s 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 pa.s.sengers 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 gla.s.s 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 ama.s.s 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, Ma.s.s. 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 pa.s.sing 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 pa.s.sengers 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 pa.s.sed 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 Muller perpetrated his detestable act on the North London Railway, close by. The English middle cla.s.s, of which I am myself a feeble unit, travel on the Woodford branch in large numbers. Well, the demoralization of our cla.s.s,-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 cla.s.s caused, I say, by the Bow tragedy, was something bewildering. Myself a transcendentalist (as the _Sat.u.r.day 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 Caesar refused to take precautions against a.s.sa.s.sination, because life was not worth having at the price of an ign.o.ble 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 necessaire_. 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 cla.s.s their pa.s.sionate, absorbing, almost blood-thirsty clinging to life.

-Matthew Arnold's _Essays in Criticism_.

AN EXTRAORDINARY BLUNDER.

A correspondent, writing from Amelia 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 Ma.r.s.eilles, 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 Ma.r.s.eilles. When he reached Ma.r.s.eilles 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 circ.u.mstances 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.

In July, 1877, a carrier-pigeon tried conclusions with a railway train.

The bird was a Belgian voyageur, bred at Woolwich, and "homed" to a house in Cannon Street, City. The train was the Continental mail-express timed not to stop between Dover and Cannon Street Station. The pigeon, conveying an urgent message from the French police, was tossed through the railway carriage window as the train moved from the Admiralty Pier, the wind being west, the atmosphere hazy, but the sun shining. For more than a minute the bird circled round till it attained an alt.i.tude of about half-a-mile, and then it sailed away Londonwards. By this time the engine had got full steam on, and the train was tearing away at the rate of sixty miles an hour; but the carrier was more than a match for it.