Rensselaer Republican, Volume 18, Number 44, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 8 July 1886 — A HOSTLER’S RECITAL. [ARTICLE]

A HOSTLER’S RECITAL.

BY MRS. MARY R. P. HATCH.

It was in the fall of 1881, Sept. 20, that a party of five, including myself, started on a trip to Dixville Notch, a wild and romantic pass situated some fifty miles north of the White Mountains. Circumstances prevented our setting forth at the proposed hour, so it was nightfall ere we passed through Colebrook; indeed, lamps were lit in many of the stores and dwellings. Upon inquiry we learned that we were still ten miles from the Notch. We decided, however, to go forward although our horses were tired and did not pull well together, being both off horses which had never before been driven together.. The trinkling lights grew less frequent and finally disappeared altogether, which led us to conjecture that we were now in the Dixville region. The stars came out, and the moon gave a faint light, but this only served to make more apparent the gloom of the impenetrable forests and rocky cliffs, and as we observed alljliis we regretted that we had not remained at Colbrook until morning, for the road, if not actually dangerous, was dreary enough. Wo seemed as much out of the world, or at least from ihe abodes of man, as though we had been traveling days, instead of hours. The cry of a loon or some other bird of night occasionally broke the silence which settled over us; for the gentlemen were too much engaged in their efforts to keep the horses in the narrow path to indulge in any but laconic remarks, and Miss Alden and I with tightly-clasped hands sat rigid and still, waiting for the carriage

to be overturned or hurled downward into the far-reaching darkness. “Ain’t you afraid?” at last exclaimed Miss Alden. “No, I feel as safe as though I were in my mother’s lap," returned Charlie, but immediately before the laugh subsided he drew up the horses suddenly. Mr. Ackley got down and discovered that we had narrowly missed being thrown down a precipice. “Shall we go on?" I asked anxiously. “We can't turn around, and I suppose we must,” replied Charlie. The gloom increased, the darkness thickened. Trees grew thick on either side of the road, the curtains of our carriage were down, and Miss Alden and myself were thus enveloped in total darkness. As for my little boy he had fallen asleep. Suddenly we heard the shrill whistle of a locomotive, and the thunder of a train broke the silence. Onr horses quivered with fright so that their harness shook, and they began plunging and rearing. Bending forward to peer out, we saw high up on the crags the lights of a passing train. Another whistle, a rumble, and it had vanished. “Heavens!” exclaimed Charlie, “we have seen the phantom train. ”

“Phantom train!" repeated Miss Alden. “I see nothing remarkable about it.” “Nothing remarkable when there is not a railroad track within twenty miles of here? That train,” said Charlie, “if it did not float in the air ran over the points of stones bristling several feet apart and at an altitude that surveyors have thus far not interfered with.” “la this true?" I asked. “It is indeed.” he replied. “I have beard of this phantom train, but never believed in its existence until now. It only appears one night in a year, and I suppose lucky or unlucky we havs chanced upon that night.” Absurd as the story had always appeared to me, I did not in the uncanny darkness which surrounded us, find it too strange for belief. Indeed had we not seen with our own eyes the phantom train? “Shall I tell you the story as I heard it?” asked Mr. Ackley. “O no, not until we are out of this gloom," said I. ‘\ . ' “If we 4ver are,” said Miss Alden. We went on, past one or two lumbering camps, untenanted and solitary, and just as we had begun to feel hopelessly shut in by dangers, seen and unseen, we enured a cleared-up space, and in a moment drew rein at a large, pleasant, well-lighted hotel, the Dix House. The hostler immediately appeared and the landlord met us at the door. . The change was wonderful. Out of the dreadful darkness into the cheerful house and the pleasant parlor where quite a number of guests, remnants of the summer visitors, were sitting cosily together. “See H? Yes I ece it every 20th of September for years till the landlord took

to having , me hers * to tell the story to ms company,” broke from one corner of the room, an<s then we observed a tall, weather-beaten did man who looked strangely out of place in the midst of the group of well-dressed city people. ** Heaekiab Winters," said one gentleman, rising and placing chairs for Miss Alden and myself, “was about to tell us of the Phantom Train which is popularly supposed to appear every 20th of Beptem“Let us not interrupt his recital,’’said Mr. Ackley, as We all exchanged glances. “You see," said the old man, “I was hostler to the Phenix down to Cohos, and I was a-tenejjn' to my dooties, when into the stable comes a yonng man, genteel but sorter dissipated-lookin', and with somethin’ in his eye I didn't like the looks of” “ ‘They tell me up to the house,’ says he, ‘that I can't get to Pixville to-night, but I’ll go if the devil will help me, and I think be will.’ “ ‘They say he helps his own,’ says I perlitely, but he didn't seem to mind what I said.

“ ‘You see,’says he, ‘there's a young lady with me, and her mother is very sick. If we can get through the Notch to-night, maybe she will see her mother before she dies. We've got to go, and we will go.’ “ ‘But there ain’t no train and there ain't no team that goes this 'ime er night,' says I, and I turned round to card one of the hossea, and when I got through I looked round and he want there. I was supposed, because you see the stable doors opened and shet turriblo hard and squeaked besides on their hinges. “Well, he was gone, vanished like. I went up to the house, and the cook and chambermaid was talkin’ about a lady in the parlor. “ ‘She's handsome as a drawn picture,’ says Mary, ‘and her feller is handsome, too. They're a runaway couple, I blieve.’ “ ‘Handsome!’ said the cook.- ‘He’s too wicked lookin’ to be handsome.’ “ ‘I wish I could see her,’ says I; for you see I pitied the girl if she was going to run off with that man. “ ‘Well, come with me,’ says Mary. ‘I guess yon can get a look at her, for I am jest a-goin'to ask if she wants anything.’ “I followed Mary as fur as the parlor door, but in a minute she came out lookin’ scarf. ‘She ain’t there,’ says she. “Wall, gentlemen and ladies, no one ever sot eyes on either of them after that, but strange sights and sounds was heard that night by mor n one. Miss Higgins, the milliner, was waked rip by a noise like a train passin' her winder, and Dick Henderson was run over by a train and had his leg broke. There won’t no track, mind you, when they found him, and a good many folks said that Dick was too drunk to know what hurt him.* - ■■— i “But old Mr. Fellersis one of the soberest, men you ever saw, and he heered a train a-tootin’ andbellering like all possessed shat very night. I heered him tell on’t down to the store. I thought the day of judgment had come! And the Widder Storm, a mother in Israel if there ever was one, says she was cornin’ from a sick neighbor’s when she saw light before her an ingine and one car smokin’ and tearin’ along. A man seemed tendin’ the ingine, but she didn’t see no one else till the car passed her, and then, siftin’ by the winder that, waa all lit up, she saw a - beautiful young lady and she was a cryin’. She felt so sorry for her, the Widder Storm did, that she says she never once thought about there bein’ no track for the car to run on till she got home and then she says she shook jest like a leaf, and then she remembered that the smode had a dreadful curious smell. “Jest a year from that night I happened to be camped out in Dixville wood«, and long towards midnight I saw passin’ high up on the peaked rocks a train tearin’ long at a- terrible rate. It was all lit up, but there won’t only the engine and one car. ’Twas too far off to see inter the winders, but I kuew it was the same train. That feller was tendin’ of the ingine and the pretty girl was cryin’inside. I was sure on’t, fur when a man calls on the devil as he did he’s sure to git help, and he’s pretty sure to git more’n he wants on’t. “Wall, the next year me an’ Jim Gallikin thought we’d git nigher if we could, and so we set out to cljmb the rocks long in the afternoon, and we dim’ an’ dim’, but sure’s you're born we never got no nigher. When night come then we was in a different place, but no nigher, an’ so we camped out. By an’ by, the train come a-teafin’" along. It looked wickider this" time. The engine seemed possessed, an’ belched, an’ quivered, an’ threw fire, an' this time I could just make out the rigger of a man walkin’ on the car. “I looked ’round at Jim and there he laid on the ground, his eyes a-rollin' an’ he a-twistin’ as though he was in a fit. I shook him pretty rough set up an’ gasped. “Wall Ki,” says he, “Inever b’lieved beforethat you ever see“it, but thats a phantom train sure nuff. Where it goin’ to?” “Sure as the world I’d never thought of that, but Jim’s a readin’ feller you see. At the rate that train traveled it could go round the world pretty quick or down to Chiny and ’round tother way, for it don’t need no rails you see. But who was the feller an’ who was the girl, an’ was it all a lie' about her siek mother? I’ve figgered on it pretty stiddy but I don’t get no nigher the truth! “Wall two or three years after tall, mel-ancholy-lookin’ man come to the Phenix to inquire after his daughter; said he’d tracked her so fur; said he 'sposed she’d gone off with a stranger, leastwise a stranger to him. His daughter got acquainted with him somewhere to school. Course no one could tell anything about her, and there won’t no one that could bear to tell him the dreadful stories goin’ about the phantom train, so he went back to Canady.

‘ But the strangest thing about it is that the train is seen in other parts of the world. You see. Dr. Hodge used ter live in Lincoln 'bout forty miles from here, and my sister worked in the family till she got to be jest like one of them’, so when the doctor (he’s a curious critter, allars doin’ somethin’ odd) took it into his head to go to Chiny, to Hong Kong, to cure the catarrh. He said, why nothin’ would do but Mahaly to. ' “Wall in the very fust letter she wrote home she said that Chiny was the curiousest place! There wasn't ‘no railroads, she said, but one night in a year an engine and one car came tearin’ along. The Chinese think they have offended one of their gods, and so they throw themselves onto the ground and howl so you can hear 'em miles. She see the car herself. 'Twas in September. “Wall now, that aint all, though, maybe you think it’s enough, but Elber Storm goes a walin’ down to Maine, leastwise from Maine, and he says that one night on shipboard he see sailin’ richt over their heads ’mohgst the clouds a engine an’ one car. Mirage, the Captain called it, so Elber said, but when I told him about the phantom train he said Ke hadn’t no doubt, not the leastest mite, but it was the same thing. “So then ’tis. It’s been seen in these parts of the world all in September. I don’t know bent the dates, and that critter is tearin'’round the world yet, I 'spose. It’s an awful thing when a feller turns agin Providence and Bible teachih’. “That’s all I know about it, gentlemen and ladies. Scientific fellers try to explain it on philosophical principles, call it optical delusion, and mirage, like the ’

Captain, but when I tell 'em it never appears no night but ihe 20th they mostly shot up their nonsense, " “'•A enrions trtorfrMr. Winters’* said the first gentleman, blandly. “Very curious indeed." ■ \ ~ The old man was ho fool, and he was a little nettled by the term. His face Cleared up, however, when Mr. Ackley ind Charlie shook hands with him, thanking him for his story as they went out together. As for me I am not in the least scientific, and have no theory to offer,* so I give the facts to the reader and generally allow each to study up one for himself.