Democratic Sentinel, Volume 17, Number 4, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 10 February 1893 — The Old Engineer Reminiscent. [ARTICLE]

The Old Engineer Reminiscent.

“It makes me mad,” said the old engineer, “to hear people ask why a man don’t do so and so when his engine strikes. It all comes like a stroke of lightning. When we piled ’em up in the Whitesville cut and killed eight, year before last, I was sitting in my window that night looking ahead as careful as anyone could. We had started on the curve aud she was going as fast as the wheels could turn, forty minutes behind time, aud the deuce to pay if we didn’t make it up by morning. Jimmy Hartsell was feeding ’er every minute. “I thought I saw a glimmer of light on the bank ahead. It was the flash from the headlight around the other end of the curve. Between the time when I caught that flash and when I saw the headlight swing around the cut as big as a tub it couldn’t have been the hundredth part of a second. We were nose to nose before I realized—no, I don’t think I realized—but I put on the air with-one yank, yelled to Jimmy aud fell out of the window. When they threw water in my face I s’posed I was cut all up. The wreck was on fire, an' people was hollerin’ underneath. I laid there feelin’ of myself, expectin’ every minute to find a soft, bloody place, but I was all right, and three days after I went to Jimmy’s funeral. After that I don’t want no man to tell me what you ought to do.” —[Chicago News.