ed always to
have ready for use whilst on duty; and every engine, on passing over one
of these signals, is to be immediately stopped, and the guards are to
protect their train by sending back and placing a similar signal on the
line behind them every two hundred yards, to the distance of six hundred
yards; the train may then proceed slowly to the place of obstruction.
When these detonating signals were first invented, it was resolved to
ascertain whether they acted efficiently, and especially whether the
noise they produced was sufficient to be distinctly heard by the engine
driver. One of them was accordingly fixed to the rails on a particular
line by the authority of the company, and in due time the train having
passed over it, reached its destination. Here the engine driver and his
colleague were found to be in a state of great alarm, in consequence of a
supposed attack being made on them by an assassin, who, they said, lay
down beside the line of rails on which they had passed, and deliberately
fired at them. The efficiency of the means having thus been tested, the
apprehensions of the enginemen were removed, though there was at first
evident mortification manifested that they had been made the subjects of
such a successful experiment.

--F. S. Williams's _Our Iron Roads_.

"ALMOST DAR NOW."

The following anecdote, illustrative of railroad facility, is very
pointed. A traveller inquired of a negro the distance to a certain
point. "Dat 'pends on circumstances," replied darkey. "If you gwine
afoot, it'll take you about a day; if you gwine in de stage or homneybus,
you make it half a day; but if you get in one of _dese smoke wagons_, you
be almost dar now."

WORDSWORTH'S PROTEST.

Lines written by Wordsworth as a protest against making a railway from
Kendal to Windermere:--

"Is there no nook of English ground secure
From rash assault? Schemes of retirement sown
In youth, and 'mid the world kept pure
As when their earliest flowers of hope were blown,
Must perish; how can they this blight endure?
And must he, too, his old delights disown,
Who scorns a false, utilitarian lure
'Mid his paternal fields at random thrown?
Baffle the threat, bright scene, from Orrest-head,
Given to the pausing traveller's rapturous glance!
Plead for thy peace, thou beautiful romance
Of nature; and if human hearts be dead,