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mu LUCKY STARS.
Bow Railroad Employes Become Su
perstitious.
Miraculous Escapes From Death Re
counting- Wonderful Experiences at
a “Tie and Rail Club” Social- Better
Lucky Than Rich.
From the Washington Star.
If there is one thing- that a railroad em
t-i'i,\ t- believes in more than another it is
hick. No matter how clearly a practical
man may aualyze a certain odd occur
rence they will dubiously shake their
heads and contend-that it was a case of
In-k. good or bad. pure and simple. For
instance, if one of their number hail been
ordered out on a certain train and through
sickness had failed to report and the man
taking his place had been killed, they
' ill me and all. emphatically declare it
wa> a case of lucky sickness for the man
that was compelled to remain at homo.
Tlu\\ fail to see the fact that the substi-
I ite proved negligent in his duty and had
tin-regular man been in his place it was
a inn to 1 chance that the accident would
net have occurred.
It is, however, an undeniable fact that
there are more strange and weird occur
fences taking place daily in the railroad
service than in any other branch of em
ployment. The ponderous rolling stock,
s vift flight through tne country, over
spider-like bridges, winder the earth in
me dismal tunnels, and in weather vary
ing from the pleasant to the most trying,
a ll tend in the direction of beliefs almost
supernatural. Then, again, train service
■ not the kind that calls so much for
brain as physical equipment. The element
of chance does, to a certain extent, enter
' the every-day service of train men,
cid that they should be superstitious is
on - following natural lines.
A NAKKOVV ESCAPE.
. It is occurrences like the following, the
""tails of which come from Hazleton.
I’,i that lend a color of substance to a
hainman's belief in luck. When coming
mi" the yard at Weatherly, a small sta
tmn near Hazleton, with his train. Con
ic John McHugh told one of the
J-rakenien to cut the caboose loose at the
lower end of the siding and let the engine
' iki- the train to a point near the western
' "'I McHugh had then been on the road
twenty hours and his eyes were heavy
' luck of sleep. As Ordered, the brake
m 11 a few minutes later pulled the pin
m-lding the caboose, and supposing the
'•'inductor would take care of the caboose,
' linued up the track with the cars. He
1 "iced later, however, that the caboose
I'Ud run out on the main line again and
' at McHugh had not appeared -on the
l-iatform. The road at that point is
marked by a grade which drops fifty feet
'lie mile, and to catch the caboose was
impossible.
faking in the situation the trainman
" i atoned to the telegraph office and mes-
SHL ' ( ‘ S were sent to the different offices be
to either sidetrack or derail the run
■i" i iv caboose. It was not known whether
l! ’ conductor was on it-or not. The op
‘ ca'i.r at Black Creek reported the car by
1 s station and the man at Penn Haven
"as barely notified when the runaway
* ll,J t b.v the window of the station. Down
mountain side the car rushed with the
rapidity of lightning, while within it sat
inductor McHugh asleep and oblivious
/. tlle danger his nap was incurring.
, ortunatcly there were no west-bound
- "urns started out from Packingtou and
■ immense distance allowed time for the
' P'malur to set the switches and run the
>' up the safety track. Other trainmen
“ere distributed along the graded track.
*iu as the speed of the ruua way caboo
decreased as it climbed the hillside one of
them was enabled to board it and apply
the brake before It reached the obstruc
tion at the etui.
When they did so McHugh was found
on the bench, sitting bolt upright and
sound asleep. When aroused and told of
the- perilous ride he had had lie refused
to believe it, and only after looking in
vain for his train did he come to a sense
of the situation. There were a hundred
and one chances for that car to either
jump the track or crash into another
train and kill the sleeping McHugh, but
lie can certainly he classed with the ones
born under a lucky star.
THE BULK or THREE.
Few veteran engineers there are who
will not tell you that the rule of three has
quite as much to do with railroad acci
dents as it has to do with the theory and
practice of proportion. A serious mishap
to a train in variably causes a shudder of
apprehension among the trainmen the
whole road over, for a large number of
them are firm in the belief that many
days will not pass before a second and
third will happen to round out the trinity
of accidents which to their minds was
foreshadowed in the first-disaster. It is no
use to laugh at the superstition of the en
gineer who has run trains at breakneck
speed over unseen bridges on dark nights
without turning a hair, as he stands pre
dicting trouble with seemingly childish
fear. He will quote instances, ancient
and modern, and will tell that when
young and a fireman he himself was an
unbeliever, but that by experience the
truth of the adage has been proved to
him.
A social session of the ‘-Tie and Hail
Club” was being held one evening re
cently down at ihe oil house on Virginia
avenue, when an Evening Star reporter
happened to drop in. The discussion was
warm, and many of the stories told were
given as illustrations to substantiate as
sertions that it is better to be born lucky
than rich. An engineer, all rigged out in
a suit of blue jean, and who was sched
uled to go out on the fast freight, was
telling how slight the barrier between
life and death may sometimes be. and
how his lucky star permitted him tore
late the story at this time. He said :
••I was running at a good rate of speed
one day. when, as I approached a part of
ttie road about two miles east of Phila
delphia on the newly built Baltimore and
Ohio road, where there was rather a sharp
curve, and where the road bed was raised
about forty feet above the turnpike level,
the front wheel on the outward side un
der tiie forward truck of the locomotive
without the slightest warning fell off the
shaft and rolled down the embankment.
Instantly all the wheels under the whole
train -engine, tender, baggage car and
several passenger cars- were bumping
along over the ties.
"Trie bumping and jolting was so
violent that no one could steady himself
preparatory to leaping from the cars; all
the passengers could do was to hold on
for dear life. After this frightful ride
had been continued for about 300 feet, and
we were running fully fifty miles an hour,
tiie reversed engiue brought the cars to a
standstill, nobody the worse except for
the fright and jolting.
"What do you think saved us”’ asked
the engineer, casting an inquiring
glance around to his companions, all of
whom shook their heads negatively.
"Merely a little one-inch iron bolt nut un
der the pilot. The nut was brought, when
the cars left the rails, against the inner
side of the outward rail, and, acting as a
sort of flange. served to keep the course
of the cars forward instead of outward. It
was all a combination of things not to be
met with once in 10,000.000 times.”
HELD OK THE AXLE.
"Oh. that experience is nothing to Tom
Kelly's, the boss of section No. 17. up near
Bowie," chimed in a greasy-looking loco
motive cleaner. "Tom was walking on
the west-bound track one day last spring
so as to face trains approaching him.
when a wild cat engine running back-
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ward came up behind him and knocked
him down. When Tom fell one leg was
thrown across the south rail, while tin
rest of his body rested between the rails.
"In that position he was pushed by the
moving engine a distance of about 200 feet
before he was seen by a brakeman of a
coal train coining south. The brakeman
yelled to the engineer that they had run
over a man and the engine was quickly
stopped. Kelley then got out from under
the engine and walked home. His only in
juries were bruises about the arms and
hands, lie was only in the house a few
days. Tom told me that the first punch he
got knocked the breath out of him, so that
lie couldn't yell to the engineer, but he
kept liis senses and clung to one of the
axles like a drowning man to a plank. He
said that the snow and ice on the track
alone saved his life, as had his clothing
caught but for a moment he would have
been cut in two.”
"1 have only run against one lucky man
in my time,” spoke up a gray-liaired and
whiskered engineer, "but the incident is
worth talking about. The man I refer to
told me his story shortly after the inci
dent. It seemed that the pool- fellow got
out of work, and no money coming in, his
wife deserted him. Then lie became
seriously ill for many weeks and when ho
was able to walk about life had very little
charm for him. .Then he decided to com
mit suicide in a novel manner, and as luck
would have it, if his plan worked, I was
to do the killing.
"The awful novelty of the method he
selected for ending his life was a suf
ficient indication of the frenzy to which
brooding over bis troubles had driven
him. Iw as working on the western di
vision of the Baltimore and Ohio then,
and at the time mentioned was clearing
Cincinnati at a forty-mile-an-hour gait.
The would-be suicide went out on the
Freeman avenue bridge in that city,
where it crosses the Baltimore and Ohio
tracks. After waiting some time my
train swung into sight and he quickly
mounted the bridge railing. I saw the
fellow, but there are so many curious
antics going on about a railroad that he
but slightly interested me, and I let ray
train speed ahead. Just as we were
dashing under the bridge tiie poor fcllow
threw himself headlong to the tracks be
low. As I saw him take the plunge my
breath forsook me, as you know, boys, it
takes a tough man to kill a human being
without a quiver of remorse.
"He intended to throw himself in front
of the engine, but waited just an instant
too long. Instead of meeting tiie horrible
fate be had planned for himself his body
struck the coneaVe side of tiie engine
boiler, glanced off and rolled into the mud
at the side of the track. Some bystand
ers who had seen the man make the ter
rible leap rushed to the spot, expecting,
of course, to find him a crushed and bleed
ingiinass. They found instead, that though
he was badly bruised and his nose and
face lacerated, lie had few hones broken,
and in a few minutes was fully recovered.
He came to see me afterward at the
station in Cincinnati, and after telling
me his troubles, said his experience with
my engine bad completely cured him of
suicidal intentions, and tiiat lie was going
to brai eup and be a man. That was a
lucky jump for him, for. besides not kill
ing him, as it should have done, it knocked
some sense into his foolisli head.”
WALKED OFF IK HIS SLEEP.
"That escape was almost an lucky as
Jim Walters’,” chimed in another mem
ber of the dub. J-At tiie time I speak of
Jim was firing on a through passenger
run and on account of the heavy traffic
hud been working about twenty hours
straight. Of course he could steal little
naps off and on throughout tiie run be
tween this city .and Philadelphia, but the
engines are the work hard and he fin
ally worked himself into a balf-conseious
condition. He was coming south on a run
that reaches Washington nehr midnight
and about an hour earlier than that
pulled out of Union station. Baltimore.
Von all know what it is to get through
the big tunnels up there with a heavy
train and Jim worked like a (she horse to
keep iqi a full head of steam. After
they cleared the turt'ffels .Thu nursed Ins
fire nicely so as to get a little rest down
to the grades near Severn.
"He hud finished trimming up the coals
and was trying to creep up into the little
resting nook opposite the engineer, w hen
he lost consciousness. .Tint told me after
ward that tie imagined ho was home in
his little sitting room and w)is about go
ing upstairs to go to bed. At the time lie was
imagining himself opening his bed room
door and was stepping therein, he stepiNtP
off the side of the engine, which was run
ning fully forty miles an hour, and had
reached about tiie worst spot on 'the
Pennsylvania road the high bridge over
the (Iwynnes Falls, near the stock yards.
At that time the gully sides were covered
with trees, and down Jim went, crashing
through these like so much paper to the
bottom, a distance of fully a hundred feet
or more. He was picked up unconscious
and with hardly a stitch of clothing on
his back, but not n bone brokeu. He re
gained consciousness in the hospital,
opened his eyes, heaved a deep sigh,
turned over on his side and slept ten
hours straight. He missed two runs, and
then took ids old place, none the worse
for liis experience.”
“Well, that was a lucky escape of Jim’s,
sure enough,” spoke up an intelligent
looking engineer,- whb'hnd Just come in
off of liis run from Philadelphia, "but
Jerry O’Neill, the-tr:bv.cUug engineer, told
roe of an experience he bad last Septem
ber while on liis way east from Chicago
that will make yob fioldwoui-, breath, and
make you all more posltivfe'in your belief
in luck, .)
‘ Jerry said lie was coming to Baltimore
on train No. ti. the daily world's fair flyer
between Chicago and Pittsburg, cgi the
Pittsburg and Western road. The train
consisted of a baggage car, five Pullman
sleepers and a dining car, and was
crowded with passengers. Numerous lit
tle delays threw the train behind time,
and when the incident happened that I
am about to toll of the engine throttle
was wide open and the train was running
at fully fifty miles ati hour. Charley
Parks, jerry told me, was handling the
engine, and from that I know he wasn't
guessing at the speed. The engine had
just crossed the Pine creek bridge when
Charley. Jerry and the fireman were
almost thrown from their seats by a vio
lent Jolt. To say that the trio was
startled is putting it mildly.
"Glancing back toward the train they
discerned the cause of the Jolt. The ten
der and three cars had jumped the track
on the curve and were hounding about
between tiie engine and the rear ears in a
frightful manner. Charley at onee threw
back the lever, but the sjiecd of tiie heavy
train was so great that a sudden halt was
impossible. This state of things continued
for about fifty yards, when with a lurch
that stopped the breath of the three
badly frightened men in the .'engine, tlio
ears plunged on to thu track again,
making the trucks tremble and creak as
they struck the rails. The danger was
over, but no one except the men in the en
gine knew or ever will know what a ter
rible catastrophe was averted.
"Jerry said he went back to ixamino
the rails and roadbed after the traiu was
finally stopped. He found that the ten
der and ears had left the rails Just at the
end of the bridge, and striking the ties
had bounded along for a distance of ten
yards, where two deep trenches in an
other tie showed where they had alighted.
Some ten yards further on there is a mill
railroad crossing. The wheels of the ten
der had struck the cross rails and had
actually split two of them into pieces.
They then bounded into the air and the
inside wheels landed more than a foot
outside of tire main track, where they
ground through the ends of the ties re
ducing them to kindling wood. At a
second crossing a short distance beyond
the wheels struck the guard plank and
made the wonderful leap that landed
them again On the rails.
"Had the slightest, flaw developed in
any one of the derailed cars a‘splinter’
wreck would have occurred and tiie loss
of life would have been something terri
ble. Jerry told me he didn’t believe there
was a person on that traiu who was born
in the sign of the crab.”
MORE BUZZARD THAN TURKEY.
Aa American’s Observations On
Monte Carlo and Its Casino.
Monte Carlo Letter in New York Herald.
I)o you remember the old story of the
Yankee and the Indian? They shot a
turkey and a buzzard. When the time
came to divide up tlio Yankee said:
“Will you take the buzzard and I take
the turkey, or shall I take the turkey and
you take the buzzard?”
Quoth the poor Indian; —“But you talk
no turkey to me onee.”
Now that is how some people regard the
relations between themselves and the
Prince of Monaco. Sometimes they get,
tiie buzzard. But then again it occasion
ally happens that they take the turkey.
Perhaps the doctrine of chance gives the
fortunate prince more turkey than buz
zard, but then people are not bound to
come here, are they? They can calculate
beforehand their probable proportion of
bird, and they can spend their income
elsewhere, if they are afraid of getting
too much buzzard at Monaco.
But to a man up a tree —1 am a man up
a tree- without any love of speculation,
it is much greater fun to see the birds
placed on the table, and then to let tiie
prince and the public divide them up to
suit themselves.
WITH A FEELING OF HEPIt.SIOK.
Until to-day Iliad never been in a
gambling place. I have smoked opium,
gone down to the bottom of the sea in a
diver's dress, sailed heavenward in a
balloon, tackled the Esquimau in the
frozen north, where 1 Killed a white bear,
and indulged in almost every sort of vice
and crime. But gambling has never been
a weakness of mine. 1 have seen cock
fights, prize fights, dog fights (tiie most
cruel and contemptible “sport” .1 know ofj
and I have fought New York cabmen, I
fancy lam ease hardened. But f will
confess tiiat when I entered tiie Monte
Carlo Casino to-day it was with a feeling
of repulsion. It seemed to me that I was
to be the witness of the sufferings of un
fortunate doves held firmly in the fierce
talons of cruel hawks. People always
make out that the man who finds his way
into a gambling place is white, unstained
and innocent and that the keeper of the
place is everything that is bad.
But it is much of a muchness. On
presenting my card at the "commissariat”
to-day, I received a ticket of admission
to tiie saloon in which the games take
place. On entering the ball my first im -
pression was of four hungry crowds
grouped round four tables at which there
was something to cat. There was the
same eagerness to force themselves to the
front that one sees manifested by a mob
of people when there is a free lunch In
sight, or when a horse and man have
fallen exhausted in the street. It is on
these occasion*— play, feed and catas
trophe—that people in their impulse for
get all else around them and become so
many pairs of eyes.
Cat eat emptor 1 My first thought was
of the eager greediness of the people to
invest. My next was, Do they know
what they are buying?
Do they care? Do they care so long as
the craving for excitement is satisfied ? If
they pay IJOf. and win back lOf., are they
not the gainers' Is there not lOf.’s worth
of happiness with which they must debit
themselves :
THEF ARE XOT BLIND.
Every one of them knows the chances
of the bank Tiie income of the princi
pality is a matter of common knutvledge.
Are they buying a pig in a poke?
They stand with their little books or
cards Jotting down the record of the
jbSSf / Jim j&f Jfflr f '
waves of chance as they fall or rise.
From these facts that they accumulate
the;, are sure they will learn the wisdom
that will make them rich. Thus did the
alchemists of old. They paid for every
cent’s worth of experience they ever got.
They see tiie golden louis rolling into the
coffers of the bank, but each one is plan
ning a dam tiiat will stop that, flow and
divert the stream Ids way.
Tiie brutal man of business, cruel, cold
and calculating, when he undertakes an
affair sees to it that the odds are in his
favor before he begins. But hero are
people who risk SM‘> to win *?>. Are they
optimists, fools or what? Is the difference
between the average amount they pay
and tlio average amount they receive rep
resented by the sum of the pleasure they
have had out of the game
The machinery of tiie hank seems to me
the very acme of juggernautism. The of
ficials, cold and impassive, were the least
interested of all in tho result of the turns
of the little wheel. They watched the
players build their little piles of gold
without the least feeling. It was as if
they said to themselves, “You are build
ing but for us. You are building with
materials which are ours, and which we
shall call for presently.”
What chance lias the player? How
small the golden louis looked upon tiie*
board! One sv.eep of the hand of the
croupier and fifty of them were raked
into the maw of the hank. It was all done
in a moment. The savings of a lifetime
would he swallowed ut> in half an hour,
and the official would yawn, as much as to
say, “Is thal all ?” while the loser sat on
one side and turned white and gasped for
breath.
DE ATH IN* THKIK MIDST.
An old man, (>0 years old, and he bad
tbe red button of honor in his lapel, sat
on a bench watching tiie play, from which
he had just withdrawn. He presently
fell over senseless upon the lounge. A
doctor went to liis assistance and begged
that he he carried into the open air, but
it was ten minutes before any one could
be got to move him. Meanwhile the play
went on five feet away. Eventually he
was carried out, perhaps dying. No one
seemed to care. “Some old fool who has
ruined himself,” observed a eocotte sneer
ingly. This is not a fictitious picture in
troduced for dramatic effect. It happened
to-day (Tuesday, Nov. 7,) at twenty min
utes to :t p. m., and saw it. I once saw an
old baukor let Ills head fall forward in a
street car in Philadelphia, anil in a sec
ond lie was dead. He looked just as that
man looked that I saw carried out of the
Casino.
To those who swarmed around after it
was all over, the officials merely said:
“C’est ime petite indisposition. Cost
tout’.”
And at tiie tables: “Faites vos jeux,
messieurs.”
But the doctor who had pleaded for
help to have the man taken into the open
air said: "I am afraid he is dying.”
It’s funny, this idea of a princedom
founded on roulette. 1 f (lilbert and Sulli
van wrote a comic opera with the Monaco
factory for a p'ot it would be more
screamingly humorous than anything
they ever did—tiiat is if it did not really
exist and they suddenly thought of the
idea. To have a monarch over a gambling
den is like personifying the king of
spades.
A silly Dntidon eveningpaper, comment
ing on a South American revolution, said:
“It makes the very name of republic de
tested.” What then does the existence
of Monaco do to the very name of
monarchy ?
It may be convenient to have spots on
the eartli where the different vices may
be enthroned. I saw a play in America
called "The Isle of Champagne.” It told
of an island where there was no water,
but where people drank only the efferves
cent juice of the grape. How would it do
to establish a principality based on bar
rooms and in tiie confines of which any
one found sober should be fined flO or ten
days;
to “get square.”
An American went up to an attendant
at tiie Casino and said:
“See here. I want to see tiie king of
this place. Where’s his office?"
‘A ou cannot see His Royal Highness.”
was the reply, given very frigidly.
"Not see him? Why, I’m one of his
biggest customers. I’ve Just lost (5,000.”
"What do you want to see him about !”
inquired tho attendant, suspiciously.
"I want to teach him poker,” said the
American, with an eye to getting bis
money back.
Behind the men with tiie rakes at tho
tables are perched on high chairs officials
wlio appear to watch the game. One of
them, who is very dignified in appearance,
is frequently iKiintod out as the Prince of
Monaco, many people having the notion
that he is always present to nee that
nothing is stolen.
They say that Daly, tiie Txing Branch
gambler, onee met the Prince of Monaco.
Daly had very hazy notions of the rela
tions of things to each other in this part
of the world, and saw only the big Casino
running (lay and night in full blast, with
out any attempt at concealment.
Daly looked tiie prinee up and down ad
miringly for a moment and then hurst
out:
"My! But you must have a big ‘puli’
with the police!”
Then there was tiie Chicago firm that
sent a drummer over here to show tho
prince samples of a “crooked” roulette
wheel and of their patent, undetecta
ble marked cards. Many propositions'
made to the prince must Is- decidedly awk
ward.
They say that Dick Croker, of<
New York, was incensed because Presi
dent Cleveland refused to create an em
bassy to Monaco and appoint him ambas
sador.
1 wish some expert would take the mat
ter up and positively get proofs that the
game at Monie Carlo is “square.” I
know there is a consensus-of opinion al
most everywhere that it is, but there is a
gentlemen - named Quinn in America, ler,-
turer for the “anti-gambling crusade,” as
it is called, who showed me a dozen rou
lette wheels precisely similar to those
used at Monte Carlo,and everyone of
them was "crooked.” It was absolutely
impossible for the observer to detect the
trick. There is nothing about the wav
in which tho tiling is done tiiat is at ail
incompatible with fraud. Mr. Quinn
says that the big gamblers never use
their secret mechanisms until there is a
big stake iii question. Someone puts
fo.ooo. for instance, on tiie red. Then
—presto?— and tho black wins.
AN EXTRAORDINARY WEDDING.
Aged Couples United in the Presence
of Scores of Grandchildren.
From the Pittsburg Dispatch.
Clarksville, Tcnn.. Nov. 27. —An extra
ordinary double wedding occurred vester
day in tho neighborhood of Cross Plains.
Robertson county, and twenty-five miles
from here. The parties were Mrs. Ellen
Fitzgerald, aged 40, who became the wife
of H. H. laimbeth, aged 73. and Mrs.
Mary Offur. a widow of 70, who was wed
ded to William Armstrong, a widower,
aged 77.
Among the wedding guests present were
twelve children and tliirty-seven grand
children of the grooms, and three sons of
the brides: also five sous-in-law and four
daughters-in-law. The event was cele
brated b.v an old-time wedding feast.
Gate in the evening the couples wens
treated to a serenade, in which stringed
instruments, bells, horns, guns, etc.,
played a part.
"Your neighbor appears to have failed
a good many times." "Just twenty-four
times. The next will be his silver-bank
ruptcy.”— Fliegetide Blatter.
“Ef this Queen Lilly O Killarne.v Is an
Irishwoman, I’m with tbe administra
tion," said Pat.—Crypt.
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