Miscellany.

Akaroa Mail and Banks Peninsula Advertiser, Volume V, Issue 486, 15 March 1881, Page 2

Miscellany.

A TOUGH YARN

Just as the" 5.35 p.m. eastward bound fast mail train was steaming out _of Opelika, a hack containing three Irish gentlemen drove up to the depot of the Western railroad, only to be told that the train that they were in search of was that just disappearing behind the curve. Business of the most pressing nature demanded their presence in Columbus at eight o'clock. The hack which had brought them to the depot had left, so nothing remained lor them to hire but a four-ox team, the animals of which were helping their driver to finish a handful ot sugar-corn fodder and a pone of corn bread. « Five dollars,' said ono, Mr Collin?, Mo carry us to Columbus.' « Five dollars more,' said another, Mr Coon'w. c to carry us there agamst eight o'clock.'

« Five dollars more,' said the third, Mr Brunton, 'to get in ahead of the train.'

So much money to be made, all in two hours and twenty minutes, set the driver crazy. He looked at his team for a moment and then at the thirty miles which lay be! ween him and Columbus, and then at the probable and partly possible fifteen dollars to be made by fulfilling the gentlemen's desire?. ( I'se your man. boss,' he said and crnckinghis rawhide whip, he mounted his cart and started on his journey. The first mile v» as made in slow time, but after that they warmed up ; in an hour they had got up with the train on the east side of Salem. The darkness of the evening prevented the passengers on the train from seeing the race, but the train with its red light and fiery furnace was distinctly visible to the ox-cart passengers as they whirled over the waggon • road that lay alongside the railroad, and they were, very naturally, more and more delighted as they saw the distance increasing between them. At Smith's station the mail train was entirely lost sight of, and in two hours from the time the cart had left Opelika, the rattle of wheels might be heard as it rolled over the upper bridge into Columbus. 1 Boys,' said Collins, as soon as they had domiciled at a hotel, 'we have beaten the train by twenty minutes; let us go up to the depot and see it creeping in.'