Democratic Sentinel, Volume 16, Number 44, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 18 November 1892 — A PATHETIC EPISODE. [ARTICLE]

A PATHETIC EPISODE.

How Two Brothers Died on a Western Railroad. “I have seen a great many men killed,” said Burke McMahon, at the Southern. “I was with old Pap Thomas at Chickamauga when his corps s*ood like a rock for the flower of the Confederacy to beat and break upon, and with Grant when he hurled his columns at the impregnable heights of Vicksburg. I have seen commanding officers torn to pieces with a shell and beardless boys dead on the battle-field with their mother’s picture pressed to their cold lips, but I never had anything affect me like the death of a couple of young railroad men in Texas seven or eight years ago. “I was riding on the engine of a fast passenger train, and at Waco the engineer got orders to look out for a brakeman who was missing from the freight we were following. He was supposed to have fallen between the cars of his train. ‘My brother is breaking on that train. I wonder if it can be him?” said the fireman. ‘l’ll keep up steam while you stand on the pilot and watch out,’ replied the engineer. The fireman took his post in front and we pulled out. We had Just got well under way when the fireman gave the signal to stop. The engineer applied the brakes. They failed to respond, and we were on a ■’own grade and could not stop. The missing brakeman was lying on the track, badly mangled, but conscious.

“He raised his hand and frantically signaled the train, but the great iron machine went plunging down upon him at a rate of twenty miles an hour. The fireman cast one despairing look at the engineer, then sprang in front of the pilot and hurled his wounded brother off the track. But he was not quick enough to save himself. The engine caught him and crushed both legs off at the hips. As we picked him up he said, with a quiet smile: ‘lt’s no use, boys; I’m done for. But I saved Ned.' We laid them down in the baggage car side by side. Ned put out a feeble hand and clasped that of his brother. ‘l’ve got my time, old fellow,’ he said. ‘Here, too, Ned; we’ll make the run to the next world together,’ was the response, and, holding each other by the hand, they died without another word.”—St. Louis GlobeDemocrat.

Frederick Douglass plays the violin. As it is his only dissipation and he has it in a mild form, it is hoped that it will hot be counted against the good old man.