A FIGHT IN A RAILWAY CARRIAGE.

Lake Wakatip Mail, Volume II, Issue 55, 7 November 1863, Page 6

A FIGHT IN A RAILWAY CARRIAGE.

A simply amusing incident, if it had not turned out a positively annoying one, happened in a second class carriage in the Melbourne to Ballarat seven o'clock train on Saturday night. A remarkably full train set off from opencerstreet, the second class carriage in question being filled with twenty more than ordinarily respectable looking and more than usually uniformly well-conducted people, including one lady, under the protection of a husband or brother. The carriage was less than half-lighted—one lamp being wholly absent, and the rain trickling down from the aperture upon the heads of the passengers beneath, while the other shed such a small, flickering, and uncertain flame, that even those nearest to it gave up all attempts at vehicular literary pursuits, after one or two desperate efforts. Those present, feeling that any appeal to the powers that were would be useless, and that to be second class passengers was to be placed in the unenviable position of those •' who didn't like it" yet "had to lump it," gradually did the next best thing; and, from intense contemplation of the dismal landscape to the right and left, fell off one by one into fitful slumber. All went thus obviously well, until the ten minutes' scramble at the Werribee arrived; the sleepers awoke, the carriages were all but evacuated, and there was hurrjing to and fro upon the platform by persons who had much to do in one way or another, but ended in doing little or nothing—what with deficient light, absence of instruction, and fear that the remorseless whistle would sound before anything was attempted. But before the closely-packed twenty of the second class carriage had returned to occupy its four several seats, a weather-beaten " old customer," looking like a cross between a bullockdriver and a laborer, with a strong tinge of what one mistakingly sets down as indicative of a long and compulsory acquaintance with Australian life, less voluntary than that enjoyed by most residents—such a person trundled into a carriage at this juncture, without ceremony, but with dripping and excessively tattered garments, visage adorned with beard and moustache, which had evidently only been permitted to develop their glories after long years of razorial snubbing. The man would have been, as a matter of course, permitted to take his place as one who had paid his passage, and no fault been found with his uncouth appearance, had it not been manifest from the first that he was ■* sprung." He had a bottle of some sort of liquor under his arm, to which he had evidently made frequent application, and had arrived at the point of intoxication when u bounce" is thought by the utterer to be knock-down argument. On entering he found one of the seats to be wholly unoccupied, (temporarily) and flinging down at one end a dripping wet canvas swag, proceeded to deposit his uncomely attired carcase so as to occupy the whole of the rest of the plank. One of the original passengers chose to mention in jocular fashion that he need not expect to be able to retain undisturbed ownership of the couch, as the compartment had been full, and would soon again be filied by persons who were coutent to take stern passages. The half-drunken intruder took this to be an attack upon his personal appearance* which he seemed to know was not prepossessing, and straightway sought to ridicule the person who had addressed him. The original occupant of the compartment began to re-enter, all insisting on the new comer assuming an erect position, and stowing away his swag beneath the seat. He then became garrulous about politics, addressed everybody in Gaelic in a toweringly loud voice, would persist in engaging in any conversation that was going on, and thrust his bottle up to everybody's mouth to drink. These motions he occasionally interlarded with recriminations on his original assailant, until becoming a still more intolerable bore than ever, he personally insulted the person sitting immediately opposite. This individual, at the utterance of one more than usually offensive expression, started up, pulled off his coat, and closed with the bottleowner. The confined place, and the difficulty of getting the arms into full swing, gave the mischief-maker rather the advantage of his intended castigator, and a second person rose to the preservation' of law and order. The melee now became general, every one rising to his feet to escape chance blows of fists and elbows. Meanwhile, the rain was pouring outside, the glasses (all down) were covered with steam, and the train was whirling along without any one on the exterior being the wiser for what was going on within. Amid cries of " fair play" from the opposite compartment, and the gesticulations of those who protested they were only preventing a ruffian from making himself a nuisance to everybody, he was at last fairly pitched over the seat rail, or succeeded in retreating thither, wildly exclaiming that he would fight his way out of such a den of cut-throats, and take it out of them all next morning at Meredith. At last his more lenient enemies succeeded in inducing him to sit quiet, and at Meredith, he was got out in the midst of his threats of vengeance, demands for his swag, and oft-repeatdd calls for his dog Dingo, which latter seems to have been put into another carriage. After the ruffianly nuisance was left reeling about on the platform wildly crying for his dog, another fight was very near being improvised within the carriage between those who took different views of the manner in which the man had been treated. At last all settled down, and by the time the train reached its destination every ground for acerbity had Deen well nigh forgotten.— Ballarat Star, September 30.