The Honorable Peter Stirling and What People Thought of Him

by Paul Leicester Ford

“Yes.”

“Then,” said Leonore, “tell me about the way you got that sword.”

Watts laughed. “She’s been asking every one she’s met about that. Do tell her, just for my sake.”

“I’ve told you already.”

“Not the way I want it. I know you didn’t try to make it interesting. Some of the people remembered there was something very fine, but I haven’t found anybody yet who could really tell it to me. Please tell about it nicely, Peter.” Leonore was looking at Peter with the most pleading of looks.

“It was during the great railroad strike. The Erie had brought some men up from New York to fill the strikers’ places. The new hands were lodged in freight cars, when off work, for it wasn’t safe for them to pass outside the guard lines of soldiers. Some of the strikers applied for work, and were reinstated. They only did it to get inside our lines. At night, when the substitutes in the cars were fast asleep, tired out with the double work they had done, the strikers locked the car-doors. They pulled the two cars into a shed full of freight, broke open a petroleum tank, and with it wet the cars and some others loaded with jute. They set fire to the cars and barricaded the shed doors. Of course we didn’t know till the flames burst through the roof of the shed, when by the light, one of the superintendents found the bunk cars gone. The fire-department was useless, for the strikers two days before, had cut all the hose. So we were ordered up to get the cars out. Some strikers had concealed themselves in buildings where they could overlook the shed, and while we were working at the door, they kept firing on us. We were in the light of the blazing shed, and they were in the dark, which gave them a big advantage over us, and we couldn’t spare the time to attend to them. We tore up some rails and with them smashed in the door. The men in the cars were screaming, so we knew which to take, and fortunately they were the nearest to the door. We took our muskets—for the frames of the cars were blazing, and the metal part too hot to touch—and fixing bayonets, drove them into the woodwork and so pushed the cars out. When we were outside, we used the rails again, to smash an opening in the ends of the cars which were burning the least. We got the men out unharmed, but pretty badly frightened.”

“And were you not hurt?”

“We had eight wounded and a good many badly burned.”

“And you?”

“I had my share of the burn.”