woman, the remaining occupant of the compartment, after screaming violently in her terror for a few moments, fainted away and fell upon the floor. The struggle nevertheless went on among the three men, until at last, though blinded with blood and weak from its loss, the wounded Mr. Warland got behind his assailant and threw him down, in which position the two succeeded in holding him, he striking and stabbing at both of them with his knife, shouting loudly all the time, and desperately endeavoring to rise and throw them off. They finally, however, got his knife away from him, and then kept him down until the train at last drew up at Camdentown station. When the ticket collector opened the compartment door at that place he found the four passengers on the floor, the woman senseless and two of the men holding the third, while the faces and clothing of all of them, together with seats, floor, windows and sides of the carriage were covered with blood or smeared with finger marks.

The assailant in this case, as it subsequently appeared upon his commitment for an assault, was a schoolmaster who had come over from Ireland to a competitive examination. He was insane, of course, but before the magistrate he made a statement which had in it something quite touching; he said that he saw the two gentlemen talking together, and, as he thought, making motions towards him; he believed them to be thieves who intended to rob him, and so he thought that he could not do better than defend himself, "if only for his dear little ones at home."

This took place before the Board of Trade circular was issued, but, as if to give emphasis to it, a few days only after its issue, in August, 1864, there was a not dissimilar occurrence in a third class carriage between London and Peterborough. The running distance was in this case eighty miles without a stop, and occupied generally an hour and fifty minutes,—the rate being forty-three miles an hour. In the compartment in question were five passengers, one of whom, a tall powerful fellow, was dressed like a sailor. The train was hardly out of London when this man, after searching his pockets for a moment, cried out that he had been robbed of his purse containing £17, and began violently to shout and gesticulate. He then tried to clamber through the window, getting his body and one leg out, and when his fellow passengers, catching hold of his other leg, succeeded in hauling him back, he turned savagely upon them and a desperate struggle ensued. At last he was gotten down by main force and bound to a seat. Meanwhile, notwithstanding the speed at which they were running, the noise of the struggle was heard in the adjoining compartments, and almost frantic efforts were made to stop the train. Word was passed from carriage to carriage for a short distance, but it proved impossible to communicate with the guard, or to do anything but thoroughly alarm the passengers. These merely knew that something was the matter,—what, they could only imagine,—and so the run to Peterborough was completed amid shouts of "stop the train," interspersed with frantic female shrieks. The man was suffering from delirium tremens.

About a year later, in December, 1865, a similar case occurred which, however, had in it strong elements of the ludicrous. A clergyman, laboring under great indignation and excitement, and without the slightest sense of the ridiculous, recounted his experience in a communication to the Times. He had found himself alone in a compartment of an express train in which were also a young lady and a man, both total strangers to him. Shortly after the train started the man began to give unmistakable indications of something wrong. He made no attempt at any violence on either of his fellow passengers, but he was noisy, and presently he proceeded to disrobe himself and otherwise to indulge in antics which were even more indecent than they were extraordinary. The poor clergyman,—a respected incumbent of the established church returning to the bosom of his family,—was in a most distressing situation. At first he attempted remonstrance. This, however, proved worse than unavailing, and there was nothing for it but to have recourse to his umbrella, behind the sheltering cover of which he protected the modesty of the young lady, while over its edges he himself from time to time effected observations through an apparently interminable journey of forty and more miles.

These and numerous other cases of fires, murders, assaults and indecencies had occurred and filled the columns of the newspapers, without producing the slightest effect on the managers of the railway companies. No attention was paid by them to the Board of Trade circulars. At last Parliament took the matter up and in 1868 an act was passed, making compulsory some "efficient means of communication between the passenger and the servants of the company in charge" of railroad trains. Yet when six years later in 1874 the Shipton accident occurred, and was thought to be in some degree attributable to the absence of the very means of communication thus made compulsory, it appeared, as has been seen, that the associated general managers did not yet consider any such means of communication either required or likely to be useful.

Meanwhile, as if in ironical comment on such measured utterances, occurrences like the following, which took place as recently as the early part of 1878, from time to time still meet the eye in the columns of the English press:—

"A burglar was being taken in a third-class carriage from London to Sheffield. When about twelve miles from Sheffield he asked that the windows might be opened. This was no sooner done than he took a dive out through the aperture. One of the warders succeeded in catching him by a foot, and for two miles he hung head downward suspended by one foot and making terrific struggles to free himself. In vain he wriggled, for although his captors were unable to catch the other foot, both held him as in a vise. But he wore spring-sided boots, and the one on which his fate seemingly depended came off. The burglar fell heavily on the foot-board of the carriage and rolled off on the railway. Three miles further on the train stopped, and the warders went back to the scene of the escape. Here they found him in the snow bleeding from a wound on the head. During the time he was struggling with the warders the warder who had one hand free and the passengers of the other compartments who were witnessing the scene from the windows of the train were indefatigable in their efforts to attract the attention of the guards by means of the communication cord, but with no result. For two miles the unfortunate man hung head downward, and for three miles further the train ran until it stopped at an ordinary resting place."

A single further example will more than sufficiently illustrate this instance of British railroad conservatism, and indicate the tremendous nature of the pressure which has been required to even partially force the American bell-cord into use in that country. One day, in the latter part of 1876, a Mr. A. J. Ellis of Liverpool had occasion to go to Chester. On his way there he had an experience with a lunatic, which he subsequently recounted before a magistrate as follows:—

"On Friday last I took the 10.35 A.M., train from Lime Street in a third-class carriage, my destination being Chester. At Edge Hill Station the prisoner and another man, whom I afterward understood to be the prisoner's father, got into the same compartment, no one else being in the same compartment. The other person was much under the influence of drink when he entered, and was very noisy during the journey. The prisoner had the