In the cemetery at Alton, Illinois, there is a tombstone bearing the following inscription:—
“My engine is now cold and still.
No water does my boiler fill.
My coke affords its flame no more,
My days of usefulness are o’er;
My wheels deny their noted speed,
No more my guiding hand they heed;
My whistle—it has lost its tone,
Its shrill and thrilling sound is gone;
My valves are now thrown open wide,
My flanges all refuse to glide;
My clacks—alas! though once so strong,
Refuse their aid in the busy throng;
No more I feel each urging breath,
My steam is now condensed in death;
Life’s railway o’er, each station past,
In death I’m stopped, and rest at last.”
This epitaph was written by an engineer on the old Chicago and Mississippi Railroad, who was fatally injured by an accident on the road; and while he lay awaiting the death which he knew to be inevitable, he wrote the lines which are engraved upon his tombstone.
TRAFFIC-TAKING.
Between the years 1836 and 1839, when there were many railway acts applied for, traffic-taking became a lucrative calling. It was necessary that some approximate estimate should be made as to the income which the lines might be expected to yield. Arithmeticians, who calculated traffic receipts, were to be found to prove what promoters of railways required to satisfy shareholders and Parliamentary Committees. The Eastern Counties Railway was estimated to pay a dividend of 23½ per cent.; the London and Cambridge, 14½ per cent.; the Sheffield and Manchester, 18½ per cent. One shareholder of this company was so sanguine as to the success of the line that in a letter to the Railway Magazine he calculated on a dividend of 80 per cent. Bitter indeed must have been the disappointment of those railway shareholders who pinned their faith to the estimates of traffic-takers, when instead of receiving large dividends, little was received, and in some instances the lines paid no dividend at all.
MONEY LOST AND FOUND.
On Friday night, a servant of the Birmingham Railway Company found in one of the first-class carriages, after the passengers had left, a pocket book containing a check on a London Bank for £2,000 and £2,500 in bank notes. He delivered the book and its contents to the principal officer, and it was forwarded to the gentleman to whom it belonged, his address being discovered from some letters in the pocket book. He had gone to bed, and risen and dressed himself next morning without discovering his loss, which was only made known by the restoration of the property. He immediately tendered £20 to the party who had found his money, but this being contrary to the regulations of the directors, the party, though a poor man, could not receive the reward. As the temptation, however, was so great to apply the money to his own use, the matter is to be brought before a meeting of the directors.
—Aris’s Gazette, 1839.
ORIGIN OF COOK’S RAILWAY EXCURSIONS.
Mr. Thomas Cook, the celebrated excursionist, in an article in the Leisure Hour remarks:—“As a pioneer in a wide field of thought and action, my course can never be repeated. It has been mine to battle against inaugural difficulties, and to place the system on a basis of consolidated strength. It was mine to lay the foundations of a system on which others, both individuals and companies, have builded, and there is not a phase of the tourist plans of Europe and America that was not embodied in my plans or foreshadowed in my ideas. The whole thing seemed to come to me as by intuition, and my spirit recoiled at the idea of imitation.