The most astonishing kind of property to leave behind at a railway station is mentioned in an advertisement which appeared in the newspapers dated Swindon, April 27th, 1844. It gave notice “That a pair of bright bay horses, about sixteen hands high, with black switch tails and manes,” had been left in the name of Hibbert; and notice was given that unless the horses were claimed on or before the 12th day of May, they would be sold to pay expenses. Accordingly on that day they were sold.
—Household Words.
RAILWAY EPIGRAM.
In 1845, during the discussions on the Midland lines before the Committee of the House of Commons, Mr. Hill, the Counsel, was addressing the Committee, when Sir John Rae Reid, who was a member of it, handed the following lines to the chairman:—
“Ye railway men, who mountains lower,
Who level locks and valleys fill;
Who thro’ the hills vast tunnels bore;
Must now in turn be bored by Hill.”
SINGULAR CIRCUMSTANCE.
A certain gentleman of large property, and who had figured, if he does not now figure, as a Railway Director, applied for shares in a certain projected railway. Fifty, it seems were allotted to him. Whether that was the number he applied for or not, deponent saith not; but by some means nothing (0) got added to the 50 and made it 500. The deposit for the said 500 was paid into the bankers’, the scrip obtained, and before the mistake could be detected and corrected—for no doubt it was only a mistake, or at most a lapsus pennæ—the shares were sold, and some £2000 profit by this very fortunate accident found its way into the pocket of the gentleman.
—Herepath’s Journal, 1845.
LOUIS PHILIPPE AND THE ENGLISH NAVVIES.
Whittlesea Will, William Elthorpe, from Cambridgeshire, had a large railway experience; during the construction of Longton Tunnel, he told me the following story:—“Ye see, Mr. Smith (Samuel Smith, of Woodberry Down), I was a ganger for Mr. Price on the Marseilles and Avignon Line in France, and I’d gangs of all nations to deal with. Well, I could not manage ’em nohow mixed—there were the Jarman Gang, the French Gang, the English, Scotch, and Irish Gangs, of course; the Belgic Gang, the Spanish Gang, and the Peamounter Gang—that’s a Gang, d’ye see, that comes off the mountains somewhere towards Italy.” “Oh, the Piedmontese, you mean.” “Well, you may call ’em Peedmanteeze if you like, but we call’d ’em Peamounters—and so at last I hit on the plan of putting each gang by itself; gangs o’ nations, the Peamounter gang here, the Jarman gang there, and the Belgic gang there, and so on, and it worked capital, each gang worked against the other gang like good ’uns.