_Showing that one must act promptly in emergencies if he would save
the lives of others._
George was a little boy who lived in a small town. His father was
an engineer on a locomotive, and their house was near the railroad
track. George liked to sit and watch the trains pass. Whenever
his father’s train would go by he would look out for his father’s
hand waved to him from the window of the locomotive. Sometimes his
father blew the whistle to let his mother know that everything was
all right.
A short distance from his house there was a very dangerous trestle.
One day after a hard rain George ran out to wade in the water.
He came to the trestle and saw that a part had been washed away.
He knew at once that if any train tried to pass over the broken
trestle that the engine and all the cars would fall through and the
lives of many passengers would be lost.
George was a brave little boy and knew that he must do something
and do it quickly. “I must hurry to the station and tell the
master to send some one to flag the next train,” said he to
himself. At once he started to the station to tell what he had seen.
Listen! What was that he heard? He listened again and remembered
that it must be time for the train, and it was his father’s train,
too. If the train went on his father would be killed. The train did
not stop at this station, and George knew he would not have time to
get anybody now.
So he ran to the middle of the track and waved his hat up and down,
trying to stop the train. On, on it came, but George did not move.
It was near enough now for his father to see him. The whistle blew
long and loud, still George did not move.
The whistle blew again and again, but George stood still in the
middle of the track. His father was frantic with fear that the
train would run over his little son, and he pulled down hard on the
screaming whistle, while he plied the brakes to the wheels. The
great engine slowed down with much groaning of wheels just before
it came to the place where George was standing.
“What is the matter, George?” cried his father as he leaped from
the engine and caught the boy in his arms. “Is your mother ill?”
“No, father,” said George, “but the trestle is washed away, and if
you had gone on you would have been killed--and I didn’t want you
to be killed.”
“You have done more than that, my son,” said his father; “you have
saved the lives of my passengers, and all the train property.”
The passengers crowded around him, and called him a brave little
boy and patted him on the shoulder.