“‘I will,’ said I, ‘most certainly.’
“At Reading, the guard and a person in plain clothes looked into our carriage.
“‘You have the ticket, my love,’ said the young man, blandly, and looking to me as though he were my father.
“‘Never mind, sir; we don’t want them,’ said the official, as he withdrew his companion.
“‘I shall now leave you, madam,’ observed my fellow-traveller, as soon as the coast was clear; ‘by your kind and courageous conduct you have saved my life and, perhaps, even your own.’
“In another minute he was gone, and the train was in motion. Not till the next morning did I learn from the Times newspaper that the gentleman on whom I had operated as hair cutter had committed a forgery to an enormous amount, in London, a few hours before I met him, and that he had been tracked into the express train from Paddington; but that—although the telegraph had been put in motion and described him accurately—at Reading, when the train was searched, he was nowhere to be found.”
SAFETY ON THE FLOOR.
Many concussions give no warning of their approach, while others do, the usual premonitory symptoms being a kind of bouncing or leaping of the train. It is well to know that the bottom of the carriage is the safest place, and, therefore, when a person has reason to anticipate a concussion, he should, without hesitation, throw himself on the floor of the carriage. It was by this means that Lord Guillamore saved his life and that of his fellow passengers some years since, when a concussion took place on one of the Irish railways. His Lordship feeling a shock, which he knew to be the forerunner of a concussion, without more ado sprang upon the two persons sitting opposite to him, and dragged them with him to the bottom of the carriage; the astonished persons at first imagined that they had been set
upon by a maniac, and commenced struggling for their liberty, but in a few seconds they but too well understood the nature of the case; the concussion came, and the upper part of the carriage in which Lord Guillamore and the other two persons were was shattered to pieces, while the floor was untouched, and thus left them lying in safety; while the other carriages of the train presented nothing but a ghastly spectacle of dead and wounded.
—The Railway Traveller’s Handy Book.