Rensselaer Union, Volume 9, Number 44, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 19 July 1877 — Mrs. Hollingsworth’s Nerve. [ARTICLE]

Mrs. Hollingsworth’s Nerve.

Mrs. Jane Hollingsworth and her two small children started from Ellenville for this place on Friday in the stage connecting with the Midland Railroad trains. There was but one other passenger, a young man, who occupied a seat with James Low, the driver. Just this side of Ellenville is a long and steep declivity known as Budd’s Hill. The stage had just started down this incline, and the tongue slipped through the ring in the neck-yoke. This brought the whiffletrees on the heels of the horses, and they ran away. The driver threw down the lines and "jumped from his seat. The passen ger that was by his side quickly followed him. The horses, freed from all restraint, plunged furiously down the hill. Mrs. Hollingsworth and her children occupied the back seat in the coach. Although young, slight and inexperienced in the handling of a horse, she determined to make an effort to save the lives of herself and children. The horses dashed down the steep hill, and on one side of the road was a bank. The coach was throw'n from one side of the road to the other at every jump the horses made, and now and then hung on the very-edge of--the embanks ment. Mrs. Hollingsworth quieted the children with the assurance that she would stop the horses, and then clambered over three seats to that deserted by the driver and his companion. The lines had been drawn from the dashboard, where the driver had thrown them, and were out of reach. The courageous woman 'climbed down to the pole ot the coach, walked between the horses to where she could reach the reins, and clambered back to the box. Just below where this occurred the road makes a sharp turn around a hill. She pulled the horses close to the base of this hill, but. in making the turn at a high rate of speed, the coach was careened, the wheels on the upper side were lifted from the ground, and it ran in that position until the straight road was reached again, when it righted. By the exertion of all her strength, Mrs. Hollingsworth kept the horses almost against the hillside, and linally turned them off to the left, where the bank wa3 not steep, and guided them into a fence. Then she swooned. The driver and the passenger who jumped with him were badly hurt. —SummitviUe (A. Y.)Cor.Jf. Y. Sun. —The average , small boy is already kicking up his heels at the thought that his mother’s brass kettle and his father's overcoat will net enough to take him safely over the Fourth of July.— Erie Dispatch.