1895. 



THE AMERICAN BEE-KEEPER. 



3 c 



TEUE TO A TRUST. 



Mine is a railway family. One ni^ht, 

 when it was just time to get out of the 

 shed and take t!ie 7 o'clock express, one of 

 the cleaners comes to me to say: ''Jim 

 old So-and-so's took suddenly bad, and 

 the doctor says he won't do any more en- 

 gineering for days to come. You'd better 

 see the superin'jeiideut. " 



Well, I trots off to the oflSce, and when 

 I got there, to my big surprise, I found 

 the boss talking to my brother Jack. He'd 

 just come in off a journey, and the super- 

 intendent was telling him he'd have to 

 >ork the express through that night. 

 "Here's your brother, " says he, "'will bo 

 with you, and you both of you know the 

 road thoroughly well. You're about the 

 only man on the spot that I can trust, and 

 when I tell you that n}y ovon wife and lit- 

 tle ones are going down by the 7 o'clock 

 you'll see how much confidence I have in 

 you." 



Now, Jack, he'd never run an express 

 before, but orders were orders, and we 

 were nearly a minute behind as it was. 

 So off we goes to the shed. Jack putting 

 on the pea jacket he's just taken off and 

 shouting to one of the lads to get him a 

 tin bottle of tea and a crust. When we 

 started out, wo were nearly three minutes 

 over the time, and ifc was one of those 

 journeys where we had to look lively at 

 ordinary times. We had to pull up those 

 minutes somewhere on the line, and we 

 went in to make the engine do her level 

 best over a bit of straight road when we 

 knew everything would be clear for a run 

 of 15 miles. 



We had got her up to a speed of over 60 

 miles an hour. We were fairly flying, and 

 the old lady went leaping along like a 

 greyhound. It's thundering hard worl;, 

 let me tell you, is firing on a job like that. 

 You'd hardly believe how the coals are 

 gobbled up before you've hardly got them 

 into the furnace. 



And an engineer wants just two pairs 

 of eyes and three hands, besides a cool 

 brain, to look after his work, let me tell 

 you. It looks easy enough to stand there 

 and hang on to a lover and just keep your 

 eyes open for signals, but an engine wants 

 just as much humoring as a race hor.'-ic, 

 and the quicker you go the more she wants 

 watching. 



Well, Jack had just started the whistle 

 in the usual way as we ran into a tunnel 

 two miles long when a dreadful thing hap- 

 pened. The connecting rod on the right 

 Bide of the engine broke, and I iust heard 



jactc give one terrific yell as he saw It fly 

 up and inward, when something seemed 

 to come down upon me like forty thousand 

 tons of pain and blackness, and I knew no 

 more about it. I never heard exactly how 

 it happened, but Jack said that every- 

 thing seemed to go to pieces in front and 

 around him, and he lost his senses too. 



He woke up presently — it could only 

 have been a second or two — in awful ag- 

 ony, burned and scalded and almost blind, 

 to find himself lying on the tender, with 

 the flesh all peeled on his hands. And 

 then he remembered how the engine was 

 rushing away to certain smash if he 

 couldn't manage to get to the valve and 

 shut off steam. 



He said afterward that he could see the 

 whole of the people in the carriages, like 

 as in a mental photograph, laughing and 

 chatting and carrying on, unconscious of 

 the danger in front of them, and especially 

 he thought of the superintendent's little 

 yellow haired baby and his good natured 

 wife, cuddling up in each other's arms as 

 we had seen them just before we started. 



How he d-d it he never could tell, for 

 besides the rest of the damage one of his 

 legs was badly broken, but he crawled 

 down from the top of the coals, right into 

 the blinding steam that kept on escaping 

 from the broken gauge, and shut off the 

 steam and wound down the brake. There 

 was no Westinghouse then, and all we'd 

 got was the old fashioned style of thing. 



When the front guard jumped out to see 

 what was the matter, he found that Jack 

 had fallen insensible in the six foot way. 

 As for me, they picked me up nearly a 

 mile back of where the train came to a 

 stand, and the two%of us were taken away 

 to the nearest house, while the guard went 

 to the next signal box and got them to 

 telegraph for help. 



It was many a weary week before I was 

 able to get about, and poor Jack, he lay 

 between life and death for weeks longer. 

 But he pulled through, and I must say 

 that all the time we lay sick nobody could 

 have been kinder than the officials of the 

 company. As soon as we could go they 

 sent us down to Seatown, and there we 

 lived like fighting cocks till we were on 

 the upward grade again. 



At last, when we were just beginning 

 to go for short walks together and pick up 

 a bit, there came a sudden message that 

 we were wanted at a meeting in the com- 

 pany's room, and off we toddled, wonder- 

 ing what it could be about. When we got 

 there, the room was nearly full of folks, 

 and there was the chairman of the line 

 and the mayor of the town on the plat- 

 form and a whole crowd of directors and 

 other swells around them, with our super- 

 intendent and his wife and daughter. As 



