Rensselaer Union, Volume 10, Number 34, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 9 May 1878 — A Gallant Act. [ARTICLE]

A Gallant Act.

Life is full of opportunities. for selfsacrificing heroism, which every now and then meets us in unexpected places. Of this truth the terrible ride to death of one of Barnum’s circus drivers last week affords a sublime illustration. He had driven over to his home in or near Ninth avenue, with a team of six splendid coal-black horses, and an empty baggage wagon. The animals had been highly fed, had no work to do, were ready for their spring campaign, and were in splendid condition. It is said that the two leaders weighed 1,200 ’'pounds'each, and the pole horses 1.300. Returning he passed under the elevated railroad; an engine let off steam; the horses, startled, sprang into a run down Forty-second street; the driver as instantly threw his whole weight on the brake and gathered up the reins to guide, utterly unable to check his team. The wheels, held fast by the brake, slid over the pavement, leaving a train of sparks behind them. He guided the horses on the full run across Ninth, Eighth, Seventh and Sixth avenues, on each of which are horae-car tracks, turning out to avoid the possibility of collision and in at least one instance narrowly missing it; between two lines of

wagons on either side of the street in one crowded place, where there was but just room to pass; across Fifth avenue; 4nd then down the slight decline toward the Gratid Central Station. Here there are alwkys massed a number of carriages and horsecars, and to avoid them it was necessary' to make a considerable detour. "The driver, with great skill and coolness, turned his maddened horses at an angle of nearly forty-five degrees, and passed the carriages in safety; but in doing so the hind wheel caught in the horse-car track, the iron axle was snapped off like a pipe-stem, the wheel was thrown with the violence of the rhock a rod away; the driver could no longer keep his seat; still holding fast to the reins, he endeavored to climb back to a place of greater safety, when the plunging of the wagon threw him with a terrible rebound into the air; he fell over the dashboard, struck his horses on the flank, fell under the wagon, and was instantly killed, whether by the violence of the fall or by a blow from the wheel we do not clearly understand from the conflicting accounts. A moment later and the no longer guided horses brought the wagon up against a telegraph-pole, snapping it asunder, but holding the wagon fast and releasing the horses, who. with their strength spent, were now easily caught. Except the driver’s, not a life was lost, and the horses had not received a scratch. They had run more than a mile through one of the most frequented of the up-town cross streets. There is a lessoh for alt of us in this simple story of martyrdom to fidelity and duty that would only be weakened by the attempt to draw the moral from it.— Christian Union.