Eaton weekly Democrat. [volume] (Eaton, Ohio) 1866-1875, 1871-03-02
WHOLE NUMBER 21O.
MARK TWAIN AGAIN.
He Decides TO Spend His life on n Rail-
road.
Rrnrl the FahrrnnrN GiaInrv

From the February GALAXY.
The man in the ticket Office said
Have an accident insurance ticke
alsoP"
"No," 1 said, after studying the mat
ter over a little. No, believe not
am going to be travelling by rail al
day. However, tomorrow / don't ira
vel. Give me one for tomorrow
The man looked puzzled. He said
"But it is for accident insurance, and
if you are going to travel by rail-"
"If / am going to travel by rail
shan't need it. Lying at home in bed
is the thing 1 am afraid Of"
had been looking into this matter
Last year 1 travelled 10000 miles, almost
entirely by rail the year before, 1 ira
veled over $4,000 miles, half by sea and
half by rail and in the year before that
I travelled in the neighborhood of 10000
miles, exclusively by rail. suppose il
l put in all the little odd journeys here
and there 1 may have travelled 10000
miles during the three years l have
newfoundland 1aeUer an accident.
For a good while / said to myself
every morning: Now, have escaped
so far, and the chances are just that
much increased that I shall catch it
this time. will be shrewd, and buy
an accident ticket" And to dead
moral certainty I drew blank, and
went to bed that night without a joint
started or bone splintered. got
tired of that sort of daily bother, and
fell to buying accident tickets that were
| good for a month. l said to myself,
|" A man can't buy thirty blanks in a
bundle." .s.. q
But was mistaken. There was never
prize in the lot. 1 could read of rail-
way accidents every day the newspa-
per atmosphere was foggy with them !;
but somehow they never came in my
way. l found had spent a good deal
of money in the accident business and
had nothing to show for it, My suspi-
cions were aroused, and began to look
around for somebody who had won in
this lottery. 1 found plenty of people
who had invested, but not an individual
that had ever had an accident or made
cent. / stopped buying accident
tickets and went to ciphering. The
result was astounding. The peril lay,
not in travelling, but in staying at home.
1 hunted up statistics, and was
amazed to find that after all the glaring
newspaper headings concerning railroad
disasters, less than three hundred peo-
pie had really lost their lives by those
disasters in the preceding twelve
months. The Erie road was set down
as the most murderous in the list. 1t
had killed 46, or 26, do not remember
exactly which, but know the number
was double that ofany other road. But
the fact straightway suggested itself
that the Erie was an immensely long
road, and did more business than any
other line in the country so the double
number of killed ceased to be matter of
surprise.
By further figuring it appeared that
between New York and Rochester the
Erie ran eight passenger trains each
way every day, and carried a daily aver
age of six thousand persons. This is
about a million in six months-the
population of New York city. Well,
the Erie kills from 13 to % persons out
of its million in six months and in the
same time 1900 of New YorI's million
die in their beds My flesh crept, my
hair stood on end. "This is appal-
ling p 1 said. "The danger isn't in
travelling by rail, but in trusting to those
deadly beds will never sleep in bed
again ~
1 had figured on considerably less
than one half of the length of the Erie
road. 1t was plain that the entire road
must transport at least 11,0O0 or 1900
people every day. There are many
short roads running out of Boston
that do fully half as much great
many roads scattered about the Union
that do prodigious business. There
fore to presume that an average of 2, 800
passengers a day for each road in the
country would be about correct. There
are S46 railway lines in our country, and
846 times $500 are 2,Il5,000 of people
every day 650,000,000 of people a year,
without counting the Sundays. They
do that, too, there Is no question about
it; though where they get the raw ma
terial is clear beyond the Jurisdiction of
my arithmetic; for have hunted the
census through and through, and / find
that there are not that many people in
the United States by matter of 6l0,
100000 at the very least. They must
use some of the same people again
likely.
San Francisco is one eighth as popu-
lous as New York there are 60 deaths
a week in the former and 500 a week in
the latter-if they have luck. That is
3,I2O deaths a year in San Francisco,
and eight times as many in New York
say about $4,000 or 26,000. The health
of the two places is the same. So we
will let it stand as a fair presumption
that this will hold good all over the
country, and that consequently 25,000
out of every million of people we have
must die every year. That amounts to
one-fortieth of our total population.
Out of this million 10000 or 1900 are
stabbed, shot, drowned, hanged, poi
soned, or meet a similarly violent death
in some other popular way, such as per-
ishing by kerosene lamp and hoop-skirt
conhagrations, getting buried in coal
mines, falling off housetops, breaking
through church or lecture room floors,
taking patent medicines, or committing
suicide in other forms. The Erie rail
road kills from 90 to 46; the other 845
roads kill an average of one third of a
man each, and the rest of that million,
amounting in the aggregate to the ap-
palling figure of 987,631 corpses, die
naturally in their beds
You will excuse me from taking any
more chances on those beds. The rail
roads are good enough for me.
And my advice to all people is: Don't
stay at home any more than you can
help but when you have got to stay at
home while, buy a package of these
insurance tickets and sit up nights.
You cannot be too cautious.
Zone can see now why Il answered
that ticket agent in the manner record
ed at the top of this sketch.
The moral of this composition is that
thoughtless people grumble more than
| is fair about the railroad management of
the United States. When we consider
that every day and night in the year
full fourteen thousand railway trains of
various kinds go laundering over the
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