There were but few in the “Osceo,” which was the rear sleeper. These were Mrs. Eastman, and Mrs. W. H. Lew, of Rochester, N. Y.; Mrs. T. A. Davis, Kokomo, Ind.; the brakeman Stone and the colored porter who was killed.
CHAPTER XVIII.
THE EXPERIENCE OF SURVIVORS.
Every one of those who got out of the train had a different story. These are valuable because they bring before us a picture of the scene in its different features. Some one escaped from every car but one. From the second passenger coach no one was left to tell the tale. Every one perished in the fall or crash. From the first and third and fifth, many escaped; from the fourth, only one; from the sixth, three; and from the last, all but one. The story of Mr. Parslow, who was in the first, has been given through the public press, and it is given here as descriptive of the experience common to others. He says:
“The first intimation he had of the affair was the sound of the crash of the bridge. Then he felt and realized the sensation of the downward tendency of the coach. He clutched one of the seats to steady himself. All of a sudden, in the flash of a second, the passengers were thrown to the end of the coach which had reached the water. The broken pieces of ice, the snow, and fragments of the car came in with a rush. He caught the stove, which had not yet been cooled from its heat, thinking to save himself thereby from drowning. In doing so he burned his hand to a blister, while the other portion of his body was freezing in the water. He remembered the crashing of the smoker upon his car. As soon as he could collect his thoughts he went to work to extricate himself, but how he did it was unable to state. He only knew he was out of the car and into the fragments of ice and floating pieces of the wreck. From there he managed to reach unbroken ice and from thence he climbed up the height and was the first of that scarred and bruised number to reach the top. In doing this it is to be remembered that the poor man had a piece of gilt molding, one inch wide, three-quarters of an inch thick, and eight inches long, in a portion of his body. It had entered the left shoulder, back of the collar-bone, and penetrated under the shoulder-blade into the side. He scarcely realized his situation until he had been conveyed to the nearest place of comfort. In his car were from 40 to 45 passengers; in the smoking-car he thinks about the same number. In his opinion there were not less than 200 passengers in all. He says when he got out of the car on the ice the screams of the dying and crushed broke upon his ears, and were the most pitiful sounds that were ever heard. He said that all occurred in such a remarkably brief space that he cannot now realize how it was that so much of human misery could be crowded into a speck of time.”
The experience of those in the smoking-car was quite remarkable. Several who escaped from this, have told of the fall. There were but four killed in it. Among them was Harry Wagner, conductor of the sleeping cars, who, it is said, was driven against, and even through, the end of the car, by the stove, which swept through the whole length with terrible force.
The conductor, Mr. Henn, speaks of this and says that the stove shot past him on one side and something else fell with a crash on the other side, but he escaped. Mr. J. M. Earle’s experience was quite remarkable. He gives expression to the feelings which many had in almost tragic words. He says: