been the result if impatience, ungenerousness, and love of greed had marred his life and work. The tributes of respect which we gladly lay upon his tomb to-day, would probably have been placed elsewhere.”
REMARKABLE COINCIDENCES.
Many years ago the editor of this book and an elderly lady, the widow of a well-known farmer, took tickets from Little Bytham for Edenham in Lincolnshire. They were the only passengers, and as the railway passed for nearly two miles through Grimsthorpe park, she asked the driver if he would stop at a certain spot which would have saved us both perhaps half-a-mile’s walk. The request was politely refused. After going a good distance the train was suddenly pulled up. I opened the window and found it had stopped at the very spot we desired. The stoker came running by with a fine hare which the train had run over. I said we can get out now and he said, Oh yes. And so through this strange misadventure to poor pussy our walk was much shortened.
Some years before the above occurrence I was travelling by the early morning mail train from the Midlands to the West of England. At Taunton I perceived a crowd of persons gathered at the front of the train. I went forward and saw a corpse was being removed from the van to a hearse outside the station. On reading the inscription on the coffin plate I was somewhat taken aback to find my own name. So Richard Pike living and Richard Pike dead had been travelling by the same train. Perhaps rarely, if ever, have two more singular circumstances occurred in connection with railway travelling.
LOSS OF TASTE.
Serjeant Ballantine in his Experiences of a Barrister’s Life, says:—“There was a singular physical fact connected with him (Sir Edward Belcher), he had entirely lost the sense of taste; this he frequently complained of, and could not account for. A friend of mine, an eminent member of the Bar, suffers in the same way, but is able to trace the phenomenon to the shock that he suffered in a railway collision.”
INGENIOUS SWINDLING.
A party of gentlemen who had been to Doncaster to see the St. Leger run, came back to the station and secured a compartment. As the train was about to start, a well-dressed and respectable looking man entered and took the only vacant seat. Shortly after they had started, he said, “Well, gentlemen, I suppose you have all been to the races to-day?” They replied they had. “Well,” said the stranger, “I have been, and have unfortunately lost every penny I had, and have nothing to pay my fare home, but if you promise not to split on me, I have a plan that I think will carry me through.” They all consented. He then asked the gentleman that sat opposite him if he would kindly lend him his ticket for a moment; on its being handed to him he took it and wrote his own name and address on the back of the ticket and returned it to the owner. Nothing more was said until they arrived at the place where they collected tickets; being the races, the train was very crowded, and the ticket-collector was in a great hurry; the gentlemen all pushed their tickets into his hands. The collector then asked the gentleman without a ticket for his, who replied he had already given it him. The collector stoutly denied it. The gentleman protested he had, and, moreover, would not be insulted, and ordered him to call the station-master. On the station-master coming, he said he wished to report the collector for insulting him. “I make a practice to always write my name and address on the back of my ticket, and if your man looks at his tickets he will find one of that description.” The man looked and, of course, found the ticket, whereupon he said he must have been mistaken, and both he and the stationmaster apologised, and asked him not to report the case further.
DANGEROUS LUGGAGE.
Complaints are sometimes made of the want of due respect paid on the part of porters to passengers’ luggage. It appears that occasionally a like lack of caution is manifested by owners to their own property. It is said that on a train