Everybody knows mean men. Everybody knows people that they think are
capable of any mean act, who would, did opportunity present itself,
steal, lie, cheat, swear falsely, or do any other act which is vicious.
But do any of my readers think that they know any one who would be
guilty of deliberately placing an obstruction on a railroad track, over
which he knew that a train, laden with human passengers, must soon
pass? Yet such men are plenty. Such acts are frequently done, and often
with the sole view of stealing from the train during the excitement
which must necessarily ensue after such an accident. Sometimes such
deeds are done from pure revenge, because the man who does it imagines
that the railroad company has done him some injury, and he thinks that
by so doing he will reap a rich harvest of vengeance. What kind of a
soul can such a man have? The man who desires to steal, wishes to get
a chance to do so when people's minds are so occupied with some other
idea that their property is not thought of. So he goes to the railroad
track and lifts up a rail, places a tie or a T rail across the track,
or does something that he thinks will throw the train from the track;
and then lies in wait for the accident to happen, calmly and with
deliberate purpose awaiting the event; expecting, amid the carnage
which will probably follow, to reap his reward; calculating, when it
comes, to fill his pockets with the money thus obtained; and when
it does happen, and the heavy train, in which, resting in security,
are hundreds of passengers, goes off the track, is wrecked, and lies
there with every car shattered, and out of their ruins are creeping
the mangled victims, who rend the air with their horrid shrieks and
moans of agony; when the dead and the mangled are mixed up amidst the
appalling wreck; when little children, scarce able to go alone, are
so torn to pieces that they linger only for a few moments on earth;
when families, that a few moments before were unbroken and happy, are
separated forever by the death of the father who lies in sight of the
remaining ones, a crushed and bleeding mass, or by the loss of the
mother, who, caught by some portion of the wreck, is held, and there,
in awful agony, slowly frets her life away, right in sight of all that
are dear to her; or, maybe, a husband, who is hurrying home to his dear
one lying at the point of death, and anxiously awaiting his coming,
that, before she dies, she may bid him good-bye, he is caught and
mangled so that he cannot move farther, and the wife dies alone. Maybe
a child, long time absent, is hastening home to meet the aged mother or
father, and bid them good-bye ere the long running sands are run out
entirely; but here he is caught, and his last breath of life goes out
with a heart-rending, horrible scream of agony, and only his mangled
corpse can go home. All ties may be rudely sundered. The infant at its
mother's breast may be killed, and its mother clasp its tiny, bleeding
form to her bosom, but it shall smile on her nevermore; its cooing
voice shall not welcome her care again on earth. The mother too may be
killed, and the moaning child may sob and sigh for the accustomed kiss,
but all in vain. The mother, mangled and slain, only holds the child
in the stiff embrace of death. The author of it all--where is he? he
that did the deed? Is he rummaging the baggage or the pockets of the
dead to find spoil? If he is, surely every cent he gets will blister
his fingers through all time and in hell. The wail of the dying and
the last gasp of the dead will, through all time, surely ring in his
ears with horrible distinctness, and with a sound ominous of eternal
torture. The horrible sight of the mangled, bleeding bodies, the set
eyes, and jaws locked from excessive torture, will surely fasten on
his eye forever, and blister his sight. Horrid dreams, wherein jibing
fiends shall mock at him and the wail of the damned ring forever in his
ears, shall surely visit his pillow and haunt him every night. Each
voice that he hears amid the carnage shall seem, in after-time, to be
the voice of an accusing angel telling him of his guilt.
So we would think, and yet men do it. Some in order to have a chance
to steal, others as revenge for some petty injury; and they live, and,
if detected, are sent for ten or twenty years to the penitentiary, as
if that were punishment enough! It may be that I feel too strongly on
the subject, but it seems to me that an eternity in hell would scarce
be more than sufficient punishment for such a damnable deed. I think
I could coolly and without compunction tread the drop to launch such
a being to eternity; for surely no good influence that earth affords
would be sufficient to reclaim such a man from the damnable depravity
of his nature. Surely a man capable of such a deed, is a born fiend fit
only for the abiding place of the accursed of God, whose voice should
ever be heard howling in sleepless, eternal agony in the sulphurous
chambers of the devil's home. I do feel strongly on this subject, for
I have stood by and seen many a horrid death of this kind; I have held
the hands of dear friends and felt their last convulsive pressure amid
such scenes, whose deaths were caused by the diabolical malignity of
some devil, who, for the nonce, had assumed human shape, and in revenge
for the death of a cow, or for the unpaid occupation of land, or to get
a chance to rob, had placed something on the track and thrown the cars
therefrom. I have seen things placed on the track, rails torn up, and
other traps, the ingenuity of whose arrangement could only have been
begotten by the devil; and I have shut my eyes and thought that I had
taken my last look at earth and all its glories; but I have escaped.
I never caught one of these wretches, and I never want to; for if I
should, I am afraid I would become an instrument for ridding the earth
of a being who had secured good title (and could not lose it) to an
abode in the nethermost hell.