Democratic Sentinel, Volume 15, Number 48, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 18 December 1891 — A CHRISTMAS MESSAGE. [ARTICLE]

A CHRISTMAS MESSAGE.

It Was a Sad On© and Cost a Brave Engineer His Life. We wore coining up through Missouri on the afternoon before Christmas last year. Itwas terribly cold and bitter, and the snow lay deep on the tracks. There were dozens of men on the train with Christinas bundles, dozens of women with Christmas packages, and as the afternoon waned and wo passed station after station the people dropped off one by one until only a dozen of us were left. Soon after leaving a small station we all noticed tho singu ar action of the tra'n. For a mile or two we would be hauled alonu like lightning and then the speed would slow down to fifteen miles an hour without apparent reason. One of the passengers who lived in a town fifteen or twenty miles ahead of us, and who had a dozen or more parcels piled up on the seat, soon began to fret and fume. “Isn’t be going to get us there before midnight?” he growled as the train slowed up. Then, as the speed increased until we seemed to be flying, he continued: “He’ll have us off the tra"k! That engineer is surely drunk! Some one ought to hunt up the conductor:” When we had run ten or twelve miles in the manner described the conductor came through our car on his way forward. He had an anxious look on his face, and did not stop to answer questions. Before he was out of the coach, however, there was a terrific crash, the fdrward ends of the coaches were smashed and splintered, and then we rolled down an embankment and brought up in a field. It was God’s mercy that every man and woman was not killed outright, but, Strangely enough, none of the passengers were even badly bruised. When we had extricated ourselves from the wreck we went forward to the engine. It was off the track, on its task, and under the broken wheels and twisted and bent machinery lay the engineer and fireman, both dead. Some one crept into the broken window

of the cab to shut off the steam, aud when he reappeared he had a package with the engineer’s name on it Inside was a toy horse, three or four wooden soldiers, a whLiie, and other childish playthings. He, as well as others, had someone who was eagerly expecting Santa Claus. We had run into the rear of a freight train which was taking a siding to let us pass We were just fifty seconds on her timo. As the trainmen gathered to rescue the bodies from the wreck one of them took a paper from the dead engineer’s hand. It was a telegram received at the last station and read; “Fred was burned to death this noon! Mary. ” Then we accounted for the wild running of the train—for what had before been a mystery. There was the Santa Claus gifts for the dear boy at home; there was the telegram blasting all hopes—destroying all visions of happi-ness-shattering in one moment a thousand plans for tho future. And men gathered closer and wiped away tears and whispered: “And who now can comfort the motherless widow! What a Christmas the morrow will bring'her!”