Part 11 (2/2)

During the prevalence of fogs, when neither signal-posts nor lights are of any use, detonating signals are frequently employed, which are affixed to the rails, and exploded by the iron tread of the advancing locouards, policemen, and pointsateers and platelayers, and tunnel-nals, which they are required always to have ready for use whilst on duty; and every engine, on passing over one of these signals, is to be iuards are to protect their train by sending back and placing a sinal on the line behind them every two hundred yards, to the distance of six hundred yards; the train may then proceed slowly to the place of obstruction

When these detonating signals were first invented, it was resolved to ascertain whether they acted efficiently, and especially whether the noise they produced was sufficient to be distinctly heard by the engine driver One of thely fixed to the rails on a particular line by the authority of the co passed over it, reached its destination Here the engine driver and his colleague were found to be in a state of great alar made on them by an assassin, who, they said, lay down beside the line of rails on which they had passed, and deliberately fired at the thus been tested, the apprehensions of the engineh there was at first evident mortification manifested that they had been made the subjects of such a successful experiment

-F S Williams's _Our Iron Roads_

”ALMOST DAR NOW”

The following anecdote, illustrative of railroad facility, is very pointed A traveller inquired of a negro the distance to a certain point ”Dat 'pends on circuwine afoot, it'll take you about a day; if you gwine in de stage or hoet in one of _dese sons_, you be almost dar now”

WORDSWORTH'S PROTEST

Lines written by Wordsworth as a protest againsta railway froround secure From rash assault? Schemes of retirement sown In youth, and 'mid the world kept pure As when their earliest flowers of hope were blown, Must perish; how can they this blight endure?

And hts disown, Who scorns a false, utilitarian lure 'Mid his paternal fields at randoht scene, frolance!

Plead for thy peace, thou beautiful ro winds; ye torrents, with your strong And constant voice, protest against the wrong!”

THE HON EDWARD EVERETT'S REPLY TO WORDSWORTH'S PROTEST

The Hon Edward Everett in the course of his speech at the Boston Railroad Jubilee in co of railroad communication between Boston and Canada, observed, ”But, sir, as I have already said, it is not the material results of this railroad system in which its happiest influences are seen I recollect that seven or eight years ago there was a project to carry a railroad into the lake country in England-into the heart of Westmoreland and cumberland Mr

Wordsworth, the lately deceased poet, a resident in the centre of this region, opposed the project He thought that the retireion would be disturbed by the panting of the locomotive and the cry of the steam whistle If I am not mistaken, he published one or two sonnets in deprecation of the enterprise Mr

Wordsworth was a kind-hearted uished poet, but he was entirely mistaken, as it seems to me, in this matter The quiet of a few spots may be disturbed, but a hundred quiet spots are rendered accessible The bustle of the station-house may take the place of the Druidical silence of some shady dell; but, Gracious Heavens, sir, how many of those verdant cathedral arches, entwined by the hand of God in our pathless woods, are opened to the grateful worshi+p of man by these means of communication?

”How little of rural beauty you lose, even in a country of coland-how less than little in a country so vast as this-by works of this description You lose a little strip along the line of the road, which partially changes its character; while, as the co all this rural beauty,

'The warbling woodland, the resounding shore, The poarniture of fields,'

within the reach, not of a score of luxurious, sauntering tourists, but of the great mass of the population, who have senses and tastes as keen as the keenest You throw it open, with all its soothing and hu influences, to thousands who, but for your railways and stea breathed the life-giving air of the one to their graves, and the sooner for the prevention, without ever having caught a glinificent and beautiful spectacle which nature presents to the eye of , as it co toward the shore, till its soft green ridge bursts into a crest of snow, and settles and digs along the whispering sands”

REMARKABLE ADVERTIse kind of property to leave behind at a railway station is mentioned in an advertisement which appeared in the newspapers dated Swindon, April 27th, 1844 It gave notice ”That a pair of bright bay horses, about sixteen hands high, with black switch tails and manes,”