“Sure!” said Thomas, and began to swing his pick.  In a few moments the Empire State Express came whirling along.  Thomas threw down his pick and started up the track ahead of the train as fast as he could run.  The train overtook him and tossed him into a ditch.  Badly shaken up he was taken to the hospital, where the foreman visited him.

“You blithering idiot,” said the foreman, “didn’t I tell you to get out of the road?  Didn’t I tell you to take care and get out of the way?  Why didn’t you run up the side of the hill?”

“Up the soide of the hill is it, sor?” said Thomas through the bandages on his face.  “Up the soide of the hill?  Be the powers, I couldn’t bate it on the level, let alone runnin’ uphill!”

RAILROADS

“Talk ‘bout railroads bein’ a blessin’,” said Brother Dickey, “des look at de loads an’ loads er watermelons deys haulin’ out de state, ter dem folks ‘way up North what never done nuthin’ ter deserve sich a dispensation!”

On one of the southern railroads there is a station-building that is commonly known by travelers as the smallest railroad station in America.  It is of this station that the story is told that an old farmer was expecting a chicken-house to arrive there, and he sent one of his hands, a new-comer, to fetch it.  Arriving there the man saw the house, loaded it on to his wagon and started for home.  On the way he met a man in uniform with the words “Station Agent” on his cap.

“Say, hold on.  What have you got on that wagon?” he asked.

“My chicken-house, of course,” was the reply.

“Chicken-house be jiggered!” exploded the official.  “That’s the station!”

“I read of the terrible vengeance inflicted upon one of their members by a band of robbers in Mississippi last week.”

“What did they do?  Shoot him?”

“No; they tied him upon the railroad tracks.”

“Awful!  And he was ground to pieces, I suppose?”

“Nothing like it.  The poor fellow starved to death waiting for the next train.”—­W.  Dayton Wegefarth.

The reporter who had accompanied the special train to the scene of the wreck, hurried down the embankment and found a man who had one arm in a sling, a bandage over one eye, his front teeth gone, and his nose knocked four points to starboard, sitting on a piece of the locomotive and surveying the horrible ruin all about him.

“Can you give me some particulars of this accident?” asked the reporter, taking out his notebook.

“I haven’t heard of any accident, young man,” replied the disfigured party stiffly.

He was one of the directors of the railroad.

The Hon. John Sharp Williams had an engagement to speak in a small southern town.  The train he was traveling on was not of the swiftest, and he lost no opportunity of keeping the conductor informed as to his opinions of that particular road.