ef
point in a fine scheme. He had made brass rails for it--sufficient to
extend about the four sides of the studio--something like seventy feet.
He had made most handsome passenger-cars with full equipment of brakes,
vestibules, Pintsch gas, and so on, and had painted on their sides "The
Great Pullman Line." One day, when we were quite friendly, he brought
from his home all the rails, in a carpet-bag, and gave an exhibition of
his engine's speed, attaching the cars and getting up sufficient steam
to cause the engine to race about the room at a rate which was actually
exciting. He had an arrangement by which it would pick up water and stop
automatically. It was on this occasion that he confided what he called
his great biograph scheme, the then forerunner of the latter day moving
pictures. It was all so new then, almost a rumor, like that of the
flying machine before it was invented.

"I propose to let the people see the photographic representation of an
actual wreck--engine, cars, people, all tumbled down together after a
collision, and no imitation, either--the actual thing."

"How do you propose to do it?" I asked.

"Well, that's the thing," he said, banteringly. "Now, how do you suppose
I'd do it?"

"Hire a railroad to have a wreck and kill a few people," I suggested.

"Well, I've got a better thing than that. A railroad couldn't plan
anything more real than mine will be."

I was intensely curious because of the novelty of the thing at that
time. The "Biograph" was in its infancy.

"This is it," he exclaimed suddenly. "You see how realistic this engine
is, don't you?"

I acknowledged that I did.

"Well," he confided, "I'm building another just like it. It's costing me
three hundred dollars, and the passenger-cars will cost as much more.
Now, I'm going to fix up some scenery on my roof--a gorge, a line of
woods, a river, and a bridge. I'm going to make the water tumble over
big rocks just above the bridge and run underneath it. Then I'm going to
lay this track around these rocks, through the woods, across the bridge
and off into the woods again.

"I'm going to put on the two trains and time them so they'll meet on the
bridge. Just when they come into view where they can see each other, a
post on the side of the track will strike the cabs in such a way as to
throw the firemen out on the steps just as if they were going to jump.
When the engines take the bridge they'll explode caps that will set fire
to oil