50 OX THE TRACK OF THE MAIL-COACH 



perhaps examples of endurance and resource. In 

 other ways, not, however, connected with the mail- 

 service, some curious instances of presence of mind 

 and the reverse have come within my experience. 

 Amongst them, I recollect, when the town-hall of 

 Leeds was in course of construction, in the fifties, 

 seeing a workman cling to the chain of a windlass 

 fixed in the scaffolding of the tower, and resting his 

 feet on a knob or hook at the extremitv, allow himself 

 to be hauled up, dangling in mid-air, to a height of 

 probably sixty or eighty feet. Similarly, in the con- 

 struction of the new General Post-Office (Xorth), it was 

 a common practice for labourers to be lifted twenty or 

 thirty feet in the air, holding on to a chain, and then 

 to be swung by a partial revolution of the foot-plate 

 of the steam-crane from the southern side to the 

 eastern front. In either case, a momentary dizziness 

 would have meant destruction. 



On the other hand, while I was travelling by 

 rail to a Midland town, and my train was passing 

 through a cutting, the reservoir of a cotton-mill, filled 

 to overflowing by heavy rain, burst and swept down 

 bales of cotton on to the line, throwing the train off 

 the rails and bringing it to a standstill. No one was 

 hurt. But because the line was flooded, we, the 

 passengers, had to pass along by the foot-boards of 

 the carriages, clamber on to the engine, and slip down 

 easily enough from the front of it to term firma. 

 Perhaps the upward gradient left the ground dry 

 there, or possibly the platelayers had made a rough 



