Democratic Sentinel, Volume 2, Number 8, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 5 April 1878 — A BLEEPING-CAR TRAGEDY. [ARTICLE]

A BLEEPING-CAR TRAGEDY.

A Woms Jumps from a Sleeping Car While Carrying the Remains of Her Husband Home. It would be hard to find a sadder story than tins, which we copy from the Cincinnati Gazette,: Only a short time ago Mr. Phillips, pne of the leading cititens of Akron, (Kuo, found himself losing his hitherto excellent health. Alarmed at this change from health to debility, he consulted a physician, who told him his only hope was to go to a warmer climate. His mother and sister were opposed to the journey, as they thought him unable to endure it, but he was convinced of the propriety of the step, and went, a few weeks ago, io Florida, accompanied by his wife. The journey prostrated him, and he telegraphed for his family physician to come to him. The physician went, and found Mr. Phillips apparently better, but deeply intent on going home to die. The old physician yielded to the sick man ? s earnest entreaties, and the three started homeward. Mr. Phillips was buoyant with hope at the start, and seemed better for a while, but, on the second morning, he was dead, and the journey was continued with the dead body on the train. His poor wife was almost crazed. She felt that she would be blamed for having taken him from home to die, and, as she neared Cincinnati, her grief and dread of the appre-. bended blame that would fall on he/ gave the physician alarm. When the train left Cincinnati she seemed to be more calm, and, late at night, she retired to her berth. The physician thought she would sleep after so much exhaustion, and he, worn out with watching and anxiety, went to sleep in a berth opsite. When the train neared Akron, early in the morning, the physician arose, and, to his horror, when he went to awaken Mrs. Phillips, found her berth empty and the window open. Search was made through the train, but she was nowhere to be found. When the train stopped at Akron, the poor physician was almost speechless. The telegraph was used to get tidings of the missing woman, but it was several hours before any response came, and then it was announced that the woman was lying at a house in a little village some distance off the railroad, not far from Mansfield. A train was chartered and friends hastened to bring her home. The found her in bed, conscious, but almost exhausted. The people said that she knocked at the door a little while before daylight, and, when they opened the door, they found her covered with mud, and unable to tell her name or anything about herself. They took her in and kindly cared for her, but it was some hours before she became conscious. She explained that, after she went to her berth, she could not sleep. She finally opened the window and looked out. It was raining, and the feeling that she was rapidly approaching her home brought an undefinable dread and a powerful impulse to escape it. With this feeling she threw herself out of the window while the train was in full motion. She fortunately struck upon a sandbank and was thus saved from immediate death as well as from severe injury. How she wandered so far from the railroad to the house where she was found she could not tell. It was late in the afternoon when the special train brought her to her home, where she still lies in a critical condition.