Democratic Sentinel, Volume 7, Number 34, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 21 September 1883 — Outrunning Death. [ARTICLE]

Outrunning Death.

“Think of a man getting seasick from riding on a locomotive engine,” said Counselor Farley, who shot down from Philadelphia -to Atlantic City at the rate of more than a mile a minute to reach the bedside of his dying child. “Seasickness is, of course, not the term to apply to the disorder, but that expresses it better than any other name I can think of. My ride created the same feeling of wretchedness that a few hours on the ocean always gives me, only instead of its being caused by the rolling of a vessel it was brought’on by the pitching and tossing of the locomotive. “I received a telegram telling me of my child’s condition about 2 in the a<fterneon. Every moment after that seemed an hour: I realized how extreme was the danger, for I had been up for several nights with the little one. I engaged a special conveyance at once. There was nothing but the locomotive, and I sat in with the engineer. Dispatches were sent ahead ordering all regular trains to run for sidings and remain until the engine passed. We were about a minute getting out of the business part of Camden. Then we flew, but no rate could be too fast for me. As we rushed along, we enveloped ourselves in a cloud of dust that was so thick sometimes that I could not see half a dozen yards ahead. The whistle screamed a note of warning almost every second. Indeed, it seemed to my excited mind that it was all one wild shriek, extending from the Delaware to the sea. After we had gone a few miles the engine began to pitch and toss, and,as the speed increased, the motion grew more violent. Now we seemed to drop into a gulf, then to rear into - the air and, again, as as thought, to be in the Act of leaping a creek. The trees and fields and houses were like a long, black, waving streak. I began to feel faint and dizzy, and if it had not been for the rushing wind I fear I must have swooned in that terrible cab. The engineer was perfectly cook He afterwards declared that never before had he gone at so high a rate of speed for so great a distance. I told him of my feeling of sickness. ‘Yes,’he said, ‘I have heard old railroad men tell how passengers had been made seasick by fast riding, but I have never seen it before.’ When we struck the meadows and I got a whiff of salt air I braced up a bit, but I felt queer and unsteady on my legs, even after we had reached the station and had alighted. I felt as if I

had just come in from a rough sea voyage. But I was in time. I once more saw the light of my child’s eyes, fading fast, indeed, but still instinct with life, and in that everything else was forgotten.”—Phthidefphwi Times.