lately on a western railway in America, some passengers were discussing the carriage of explosives. One man contended that it was impossible to prevent or detect this; if people were not allowed to ship nitro-glycerine or dynamite legitimately, they’d smuggle it through their baggage. This assertion was contradicted emphatically, and the passenger was laughed at, flouted, and ignominiously put to scorn. Rising up in his wrath, he produced a capacious valise from under the seat, and, slapping it emphatically on the cover, said, “Oh, you think they don’t, eh? Don’t carry explosives in cars? What’s this?” and he gave the valise a resounding thump, “Thar’s two hundred good dynamite cartridges in that air valise; sixty pounds of deadly material; enough to blow this yar train and the whole township from Cook County to Chimborazo. Thar’s dynamite enough,” he continued; but he was without an auditor, for the passengers had fled incontinently, and he could have sat down upon twenty-two seats if he had wanted to. And the respectful way in which the baggage men on the out-going trains in the evening handled the trunks and valises was pleasant to see.
The neglect of carefulness appears, in one instance at least, to have involved inconvenience to the offending official. “An unknown genius,” says an American periodical, “the other day entrusted a trunk, with a hive of bees in it, to the tender mercies of a Syracuse ‘baggage-smasher.’ The company will pay for the bees, and the doctor thinks his patient will be round in a fortnight or so.”
—Williams’s Our Iron Roads.
STUMPED.
Several Sundays ago a Philadelphia gentleman took his little son on a railway excursion. The little fellow was looking out of the window, when his father slipped the hat off the boy’s head. The latter was much grieved at his supposed loss, when papa consoled him by saying that he would “whistle it back.” A little later he whistled and the hat reappeared. Not long after the little lad flung his hat out of the window, shouting, “Now, papa, whistle it back again!” A roar of laughter in the car served to enhance the confusion of perplexed papa. Moral: Don’t attempt to deceive little boys with plausible stories.
EXCURSIONISTS PUT TO THE PROOF.
A good story is told of the Manchester, Sheffield, and Lincoln Railway Company. A week or two since, the company ran an excursion train to London and back, the excursion being intended for their workmen at Gorton and Manchester. There was an enormous demand for the tickets; so enormous that the officials began, to use an expressive term, “to smell a rat.” But the sale of the tickets was allowed to proceed. The journey to London was made, and a considerable number of the passengers congratulated themselves upon the remarkably cheap outing they were having. But on the return journey they made a most unpleasant discovery. Their tickets were demanded at Retford, and then the ticket-collectors insisted upon the holder of every ticket proving that he was in the employ of the company. The result can be imagined. There were more persons in the train who had no connection with the company than there were of the company’s employés; and the former had either to pay a full fare to and from London, or to give their names and addresses preparatory to being summoned. We hear, from a reliable source, that the fares thus obtained amount to about £300.
—Echo, Sept. 23, 1880.
A MONKEY SIGNALMAN.
We learn from the Colonies that a monkey signalman manages the railway traffic at Witenhage, South Africa. The human signalman has had the misfortune to lose both his legs, and has trained a baboon to discharge his duties. Jacky pushes his master about on a trolly, and, under his directions, works the lever to set the signals with a most ludicrous imitation of humanity. He puts down the lever, looks round to see that the correct signal is up, and then gravely watches the approaching train, his master being at hand to correct any mistake.