Evening Republican, Volume 16, Number 185, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 3 August 1912 — HIS TIME OF DANGER [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

HIS TIME OF DANGER

RAILROAD MAN TELLS OF MOST SERIOUS ACCIDENT. Overmuch Good Nature Led to What Might Have Been a Disastrous Collision, According to ExCity Passenger Agent . A bunch of railroad men had been telling of their most hazardous expe-

rlences. One had been in a wreck out in Kansas when 18 people were killed. Another had been riding in the cab with the engineer when the train hit a buggy and killed a man, his wife and their golden -haired

daughter. Still another had been on a runaway car that was stopped within a few feet of a broken trestle over a deep canyon out in Colarorda. “The most distressing accident that ever befell me in all my railroad career,” spoke up the man with the fawn-colored mustache, “was when I was city passenger agent of a road out in Los Angeles.

“One day a young fellow came to me and wanted to map out ms route for a wedding trip. I engaged a stateroom for him and a lot of things like that, and then he called me to one side and told me with a serious face about two feet long, that there was one more Important thing he wanted me to do for him. He said I must help him to identify the girl he was going to marry that evening.

“‘Wh-a-a-t,’ I says, *help you to identify her.’ I was startled, for it looked as if the young chap must have had his reason kind of unseated by the anticipations of approaching wedded bliss. But he was in dead earnest about it.

“‘You see,’ he tells me. ‘I did all my courting by mall and I’ve never seen the object of my affections. She is coming in on the train this after noon and I might not recognize her. I know only that she is very beautiful, for I have her photograph.’

“He took her picture to show It to me. She was a pretty girl, all right. I told him 1 It oughtn’t to be any trouble to recognize her from the picture. But he said his was a timid, shrinking disposition, where young women were concerned, and he wouldn’t take a chance on approaching the wrong girl when the crowd got off the train, not for anything. He looked at me with pleading eyes like a child, and coaxed me to go down to the station and see if I couldn’t pick her for him. So I went down.

“Well, I held the photograph in my hand, looking first at it and then at the crowd, and right up among the first bunch that climbed off the day coach was a slick-looking little dame that I thought must be the one. “She wasn’t dressed what you would call swell, but her clothes looked neat and seemed to fit her everywhere at once. I wondered tow it could happen that such a girl would have to answer an advertisement in order to get a man, but there wasn’t much time to ponder over that “As she came through the gate, I walked up to her, with the bridegroom right at my heels, and says I, clearing my throat nervously: “Dp you happen to be Miss Twinkleton, the girl that ’ “Before I could finish danged if she hadn’t thrown her little arms around my neck and was gurglin’ in my ear: •You’re just the darllngest boy ever. I was afraid you might not know me, but I knew you,’ and a lot more like that, before I could break her clinch and get her stopped and Introduced to the bridegroom. “That was the most serious railroad accident I was ever in.”