Witness—Yes, I did.
Mr. Brown—Very good.
Some other questions were put, which led to nothing particular: but, just as the witness—a Scotchman—was leaving the box, the learned gentleman put one more question:—
Q.—I am instructed to ask you, if the vehicle you saw was not the hearse of the last inhabitant?
Answer—It was.
—Cornhill Magazine.
THE GOAT AND THE RAILWAY.
In Prussian Poland the goods and cattle trains are prohibited from carrying passengers under any conditions, and, however urgent their necessities, the only exception allowed being the herd-keepers in charge of cattle. So strictly is this regulation enforced that even medical men are not allowed to go by them when called for on an emergency, and where life and death may be the result of their quick transit. This is generally considered a great hardship, the more so as there are only two passenger trains daily on the above railroads. But the inventive genius of a small German innkeeper at Lissa has hit upon a clever plan of circumventing the government regulations in a perfectly legitimate manner. He keeps a goat, which he hires out to persons wanting to proceed in a hurry by a cattle train, at the rate of 6d. per station, the passenger then applying for a ticket as the person in charge of the goat, which he obtains without any difficulty. In this manner a well-known nobleman, residing at Lissa, is frequently seen travelling by the cattle train to Posen, in the passenger’s carriage, and the goat is so tame that a very slender silk ribbon suffices to keep it from straying.
THE FIRST RAILWAY IN THE CRIMEA.
During the Russian War, in 1854, when the whole country was horror-struck with the report of the sufferings endured by our brave soldiers in the Crimea, Mr. Peto, in the most noble and disinterested manner, and at the cost of his seat in the House of Commons for Norwich—which city he had represented for several years—constructed for the Government a line of railway from Balaclava to the English camp before Sebastopol, which at the end of the war, with its various branches, was 37 English miles in length and had 10 locomotives on it. In recognition of this patriotic service the honour of a baronetcy was, in the following year, conferred upon him by Her Majesty.