A writer in _All the Year Round_, observes:—“A dreadful accident down in
‘Illonoy,’ had particularly struck me as a warning; for there, while the
shattered bodies were still being drawn from under the piles of shivered
carriages, the driver on being expostulated with, had replied:
‘I suppose this ain’t the first railway accident by long chalks!’
Upon which the indignant passengers were with difficulty prevented from
lynching the wretch; but he fled into the woods, and there for a time
escaped pursuit.
But, two other railway journeys pressed more peculiarly on my mind; one
was that of eight or ten weeks ago, from Canandaigua to Antrim. It was
there a gentleman from Baltimore, fresh from Chicago, told me of a
railway accident he had himself been witness to, only two days before I
met him. The 2.40 (night) train from Toledo to Chicago, in which he
rode, was upset near Pocahontas by two logs that had evidently been
wilfully laid across the rails. On inquiry at the next station, it was
discovered that a farmer who had had, a week before, two stray calves
killed near the same place, had been heard at a liquor store to say he
would ‘pay them out for his calves.’ This was enough for the excited
passengers, vexed at the detention, and enraged at the malice that had
exposed them to danger and death. A posse of them instantly sallied out,
beleaguered the farmer’s house, seized him after some resistance, put a
rope round his neck, dragged him to the nearest tree, and would have then
and there lynched him, had not two or three of the passengers rescued
him, revolver in hand, and given him up to the nearest magistrate.”