There are lots of ludicrous scenes to be observed on the railroads and
conductors are loaded with stories that would cause a marble monument to
keep its sides a laughing. Some day we are going to borrow a conductor,
and take him out in the woods, and place a revolver to his head and make
him deliver a lot of stories. The other day as conductor Fred Underwood's
train from Chicago, arrived on the trestle work on the south side, the
whistle blew, the air break was touched off, and the train came up
standing so quick that a woman lost her false teeth in the sleeper, and
everybody's hair stood up like a mule's ears. Every window had a head out,
and when the conductor got out on the platform he saw the engineer and
fireman on the ends of the ties looking down into the mud and water,
shading their eyes as though looking for the eclipse.
There, sticking out of the mud were two human legs, and as one leg had a
piece of listing around it, just above the veal, the conductor knew,
instinctively, that the surface indications showed that there was a woman
in there. Then he thought that the engine had probably struck a female,
and tore her all to pieces, and of course he knew that the company would
expect him to bring home enough for a mess, or a funeral. Spitting on his
hands he called a brakeman with a transom hook out of the sleeper, to fish
with, they rolled up their trousers and waded in, after telling a porter
to bring a blanket to put the pieces in. The brakeman got there first and
took hold of one foot, when the conductor got hold of the brakeman's coat
tail and pulled. The passengers turned away sick, expecting to see the
mangled remains brought to the surface. They pulled, and directly the
balance of the deceased came up. It was an Irish lady, with a tin pail,
who had been on the way to take her husband's dinner to him, and
she stood on one side to let the train pass, and had lost her balance and
fallen into the mud. As her head came out of the mud, she squirted water
out of her mouth, kicked the brakeman in the ear and said,
"Lave go of me, I am a dacent woman!"
The conductor asked her if she was hurt.
"Hurted is it," said she, "Ivery bone in my body is kilt intirely, and I
have lost me tay cup," and she looked in her tin pail in distress.
After vainly trying to get the conductor to wade in and search for her
"tay cup," she permitted them to assist her into the car, where an old
doctor from Racine volunteered to examine her to see if she was mortally
injured. He put his hand on her shoulder and asked her if she was in any
pain.
"Divil the pain, except the loss of me tay cup," said she, "and kape yer
owld hands off me, for I am a dacent woman."
She shook herself in the car and got mud all over everybody, and finally
took her pail and jumped off at a crossing before arriving at the depot.
As the train came into the depot ten minutes late, and the conductor
jumped off, all mud from head to foot, as though he had been playing
spaniel and retrieving a wounded duck, Supt. Atkins looked at his clothes
and said, "Where in ---- have you been all the time?" The conductor took a
wisp of straw to wipe himself off, and as he threw it under a car he said
he had been in the artificial propagation of the human race. In fact he
had been engaged in the noble work of raising woman to a higher sphere. He
was allowed to go on probation and wash himself. The brakeman went down
there the next day and was fishing in the same hole. He said he didn't
know but there might be more woman in there, but they say he was after the
"tay cup."