MRS. SCOTT'S FAMILY.

King Country Chronicle, Volume V, Issue 366, 3 June 1911, Page 3

MRS. SCOTT'S FAMILY.

An American paper relates a strange story of a railway conductor's dilemma. One day late in February Conducor Jarvis, employed by the Omaha Railroad Company, started to collect tickets, and saw in a compartment of a first-class carriage a gathering which he concluded must be a Sunday school picnic. Thirteen very small children were being guarded by one neatly - attired woman. Conductor Jarvis remaked, "Tickets, please," and the lady handed him a slip of cardboard representing one fare from St. Paul to Oklahoma. "Are these yours?" asked the officer, looking around him. "I reckon you got to pay for some of them. You can't carry an orphan asylum on one ticket." "That's all right, conductor," said the lady. "Don't the rules of the road provide that all children under five years of age shall ride free when accompanied by a parent? Well, these are all mine." And in proof of her statement the passenger produced a bunch of birth certificates, which bore witness to the fact that within five years she had presented her husband with thirteen children. She, was Mrs Frank Scott, the wife of a Canadian farmer, who has moved recently from Alberta into the United States. Ashbel, Archer and Austin are triplets, born four and a half years ago, Arthur and Arnold, twins, were ushered into the world a year late; while Allan, Almon and Alvin are aged about thirty months. Albert, Albion and Adolph the third set of triplets, are not quite eighteen months old, and Abel and Abner are the babies of the family. The conductor passed on in a dazed condition, and at the first opport'uniaty consulted a superior officer. There seemed to be some doubt about the proper interpretation of the regulation, but the railway company rose to the occasion and handed Mrs Scott a free pass entitling her to take her whole family over the lines. Fourteen individuals travelled some two thousand miles in all on one ticket, and a veracious newspaper reporter records that several railway officials suffered from nervous prostration before the Scott childen had been passed on to the next section.