Rensselaer Republican, Volume 17, Number 31, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 9 April 1885 — “Blame It All on Me!” [ARTICLE]

“Blame It All on Me!”

A grand crash—a shower of flying splinters bump! bump! and the coaches settled back on the rails, and the passengers picked themselves up and cried out to each other that there had been a collision. So there had. freight No. 17 was pulling in on the side-track, but the day express thundered down on her while the long train was yet a third of its length on the main track. Some one had blundered. Some one's watch was off time. Some one must be held responsible for the accident. Under the overturned locomotive was the fireman —dead. Near hiin was the engineer, pinned down to the frozen earth by one of the drivers, and when he had been relieved a doctor, who was among the passengers, knelt beside him and said: “Arm broken leg broken foot crushed to a pulp. He cannot live. ’’ Who had blundered? Who had disobeyed orders? The conductors of the two trains were comparing watches and orders, when the engineer beckoned them. “I alone am to blame!” he whispered. “I wasn’t due here till 10:10, ‘ and it was just 10:05 when I struck the freight. I was ahead of time—running on her time.” “So it was —so it was, ” whispered the two conductors. “This morning when I left home,” continued the engineer, “the doctor was there. Our little Jennie—our 5-year-old—-was sick unto death. In her delirium she kept crying out: ‘ Don’t go, papa; don’t leave little Jennie to die!’ It was like a knife in my heart to leave her, but go I must. I was leaving the house when the doctor put his hand on my shoulder and said: ‘ Tom, my boy, by 6 o’clock to-morrow morning she’ll either be dead or better.’ “What a long day this was to me!” he went on after a bit “When I pulled out of the depot to-night, headed for home and Jennie, I wanted to fly. I kept giving her more steam, and I kept gaining on my time. We aren’t due till 7, you know, but I wantedHo be in at 6-r-aye! an hour before that. When the thought came to me that Jennie might be dead when next I entered the door, I should have pulled the throttle wide open if the fireman hadn’t grabbed my arm.” “Poor man 1” they whispered as he shuddered with pain and seemed to be exhausted. “Yes, blame it all on me!” he whispered. “No. 17 had five minutes more to get in, and she’d have made it all right, but I stole her time. And now—and now !” He lay so quiet for a moment that the doctor felt for his heart to see if it still beat. “And now—that’s her—that’s Jennie. She’s beckoning—she’s calling! Right down the track—over the high bridge —through the deep cut —I’m coming—coming!” ““ And men wiped tears from their eyes and whispered: “He has found his child in death!”— As. Quad.