HOW AN ACCIDENT WAS PREVENTED.

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume 5, Issue 1478, 8 September 1883, Page 4

HOW AN ACCIDENT WAS PREVENTED.

Talking of accidents, the most terrible accident of all might have happened here. It was before my time, but we still talk of it at the office. • I don't know whoso mistake it was, but thoro was a mistake of a most terrible sort, The up-trair. was wrongly started. The station-master two stations off had, I believe, committed some great oversight. The result was that there were two trains on the same line in opposite directions that would meet presently, The result of such a collision must be. most dreadful. There would be an immense loss of life, destruction of property, and frightful damages to be paid by the railway company. Now, all this was prevented by the cleverness of a little child. She was one of those children who are always hanging about the line, and watching the working of it, and understood all the details. The little girl had move wit than the station-master, and found out that something was wrong. She climbed up a parapet of a bridge, and waved, her handkerchief and gestukted wildly to the driver of the approaching train. That driver was a sharp follow, lie might have fancied it was only child's play; but ho had the gumption to see there was something wrong. Hebacked his engine just in time. Three minutes more and there would have been one of the most frightful'railway accidents ever known in this country. It .is supposed that that mero child saved the company-£IO,OOO, besides-saving ever so many human lives. :■ VI. hope the company did something very handsome by her." " Well, sir, I can't say they did, The railway companies are not over liberal, They made her,' sir, a present of five shillings, They also said something about sending her to school, but they never did so, However, the Almighty did something better for her, She was a sweet little thing—too good for this world—and He sent her a short illness and took her to Himself."—London 'Society.'