My chum and I talked over the depression in the money market, and the panic in Wall street, and tried to think we were better off than millionaires who did not know where the next meal was coming from, and with our stomachs full, and no care on our minds, we wished we could give some of our dog biscuit to the hungry rich.
While we were thinking of the good one can do with a few dog biscuit, there was a terrible crash, the car jumped on the ties and reared up, and finally rolled over and down a bank and all was still as death, except that the boiler of the engine was blowing off steam, and the horses were groaning, and the confounded dog that chewed me was dead.
Men run over the cars, and chopped with axes, and finally a fire engine began to throw water on the burning cars, my chum and I were wedged under bales of hay, one of my legs was asleep, and we both yelled murder, and finally the fire was out, the side was chopped out of the car, and they took us out and put us in an ambulance and the brakeman who had let us into the car said, “Tickets, please,” and the ambulance was driven to a hospital at East St. Louis, and they wanted to amputate us, just for practice. One of the hospital attendants asked me who I was, and when I told him I was “Peck’s Bad Boy,” traveling for my health, he said, “Well, you are certainly getting what is coming to you,” and I guess that is no lie.
CHAPTER IV.
A Bad Railroad Wreck—The Boy Contrasts Their Ride to One in a Parlor Car—The Lawyer Is the Greatest Man on Earth—The Boy Settles His Claim for $20.
The accident by the wrecking of the freight train on which my chum and myself were touring the country, viewing the scenery through an auger hole in the side of a box car, was a darn sight worse than I thought it was. What a come down it was for me, who have always traveled with pa, in a parlor car, to have to ride in a box car, with live stock, and feast on dog biscuit, instead of ordering from the menu in a dining car.
No one likes the luxuries of foreign travel any better than I do, but that freight car experience showed me that we do not know when we are well off, but when a boy goes out into the world to make his fortune, and cuts loose from home ties, and pie, and bath tubs, and a warm bed, and victuals such as mother makes, and winds up in a wreck, under a horse that he does not know the name of, he is going some.
When we got to the hospital a lawyer, who had chased the ambulance on a motorcycle, retained me as his client and offered to sue the railway company for a million dollars damage, and he would furnish all the evidence, and take half of what he got for his fee. I thought it was a good proposition, and probably I can own a railroad if I take stock for my damages, but I shall take nothing but money, and let my lawyer have the railroad stock. Gee, but a lawyer is the greatest man on earth. This one has been riding alongside the railroad track on a motorcycle for years, waiting for an accident, and when he selected me for a client he just cried for joy, and he has drawn a complaint against the Railroad Company that is a work of art.
