It's Sunday morning, appropriate for the following item from The Chariton Herald of May 22, 1902, that describes the lengths a preacher went to 120 years ago to to reach his scheduled preaching assignment. Sadly, we do not know who the preacher was.
+++
The other night as Burlington passenger train No. 2, one of the fastest east-bound trains on the road, was coming into Cleveland, a little mining settlement west of Chariton, the engineer was surprised to see a lantern swung across the track as a signal to stop. Cleveland is not even a flag station for No. 2 and the meaning of the new signal was not known.
The members of the crew got their revolvers ready as best they could, while the occupants of the coaches were being piled in heaps by the sudden stopping of the train, and as the trainmen clambered to the ground expecting to see train robbers with guns as long as fishing poles, a meek looking minister of the gospel calmly blew out the lantern, picked up his Bible, looked again to see if his half-fare ticket was still in his pocked, and calling a reassuring "all right" to the conductor, stepped onto the train.
Nobody said a word all the way into Chariton. Everyone was so surprised at the nerve of the act that nobody remembered to ask the name of the preacher, who sat down calmly, opened his Bible and began studying the scripture for his sermon which he was to deliver on the morrow at some nearby town, thanks to his success in boarding No. 2. He acted as if he didn't know, and he probably didn't, that it would have taken yard after yard of red tape and bottle after bottle of ink for the railroad officials to allow No. 2 to stop at Cleveland for one half-fare passenger who intended to ride only a short distance.
No comments:
Post a Comment