THE RULING OCCUPATION STRONG ON SUNDAY.
In an Episcopal church in the north, not one hundred miles from Keith, a porter employed during the week at the railway station, does duty on Sunday by blowing the bellows of the organ. The other Sunday, wearied by the long hours of railway attendance, combined, it may be, with the soporific effects of a dull sermon, he fell sound asleep during the service, and so remained when the pealing of the organ was required. He was suddenly and rather rudely awakened by another official when apparently dreaming of an approaching train, as he started to his feet and roared out, with all the force and shrillness of stentorian lungs and habit, “Change here for Elgin, Lossiemouth, and Burghead.” The effect upon the congregation, sitting in expectation of a concord of sweet sounds, may be imagined—it is unnecessary to describe it.
—Dumfries Courier, 1866.
THE GOOD THINGS OF RAILWAY ACCIDENTS.
We have always thought that, except to lawyers and railway carriage and locomotive builders, railway accidents were great misfortunes, but it is evident we were wrong and we hasten to acknowledge our error. Speaking on Thursday with a respectable broker about the heavy damages (£2,000) given the day before on account of the Tottenham accident against the Eastern Counties Company in the Court of Exchequer, he observed, “It is rather good when these things happen as it moves the stock. I have had an order for some days to buy Eastern Counties at 56 and could not do it, but this verdict has sent them down one per cent., and enabled me now to buy it.” With all our railway experience we never dreamt of such a benefit as this accruing from railway accidents, but it is evidently among the possibilities.
—Herepath’s Railway Journal, June 7th, 1860.
BENEFICIAL EFFECT OF A RAILWAY ACCIDENT.
A gentleman who was in a railway collision in 1869, wrote to the Times in November of that year. After stating that he had been threatened with a violent attack of rheumatic
fever; in fact, he observed, “my condition so alarmed me, and my dread of a sojourn in a Manchester hotel bed for two or three months was so great, that I resolved to make a bold sortie and, well wrapped up, start for London by the 3.30 p.m. Midland fast train. From the time of leaving that station to the time of the collision, my heart was going at express speed; my weak body was in a profuse perspiration; flashes of pain announced that the muscular fibres were under the tyrannical control of rheumatism, and I was almost beside myself with toothache. From the moment of the collision to the present hour no ache, pain, sweat, or tremor has troubled me in the slightest degree, and instead of being, as I expected, and indeed intended, in bed drinking tinct. aurantii, or absorbing through my pores oil of horse-chestnut, I am conscientiously bound to be at my office bodily sound. Don’t print my name and address, or the Midland Company may come down upon me for compensation.”