The Baltimore County union. [volume] (Towsontown, Md.) 1865-1909, 1871-09-16
Letter from the Seo-ShOre.

BY THE SEA, sept. 4tn, 1871.
We have had horror which has filled the
communities hereabout with suffering and ex-
element, but the knowledge of which, terri BILE
as it is to us, will hardly reach to you so local
and alas ! so temporary are the effects of the
great catastrophies which deluge our land, and
leave scarce a memory behind them. Ex-
perience, so far, fails to make wise our people,
and rouse them to the prevention of what we
so insanely persist in calling mysterious provi-
dences or accidents, when they only are crimes.
On Saturday evening the accommodation
train leaving the Depot the Eastern railroad,
at Boston was delayed some twenty minutes
beyond the regular time of its starting. The
road, inadequately furnished with rolling stock
for its own regular travel, had been for week
in more or less confusion owing to the throngs
attending Camp meeting and q military mus
ter along its line, and the cars of this train
were packed to suffocation, even out upon the
platform On the track, and to start in fifteen
minutes, was the lightning express for Bangor.
So imminent was the danger that the Superin-
tendent followed the departing express train
with reiterated injunction to look carefully
out for the train in advance, which in the space
of six miles had as many stops to make, and
as it proved, one other stop to avoid accident
with another train, which had not been calcu-
lated on. Knowing the delay upon their own
train and the propinquity of the express, q
dation train, and what one now hears of the
comments of the passengers shows fearful
foreboding on the part of the living as the
dead. | need not however, rehearse the facts
of the fearful collision at Revere.
One of our family was in the train run into,
and when he reached US at one o'clock in the
morning, with his tale and bearing the marks
of his own and other mems wounds, he wore a
look as of one who had seen and heard unut-
terable things. He had helped take out fifteen
bodies when nature gave way. We were left
to imagine all sorts Of things of friends and
neighb0rs, and the morning brought little re-
lief for while we learned much that was sad,
there were many lying unreeognized. Little
as you knew you dreaded to know more. That
Sunday was one of the hard days of life, a day
of bewilderment, day in which you could get
no satisfactory statement in which sense of
horror grew, and you could in no way surmlse
its limit. We kept hearing of those we knew
escaping unhurt as by miracle, of others
more or less burned and broken, of those dead
The dead came back to Us, as also the bruised.
But take it for all in all, think the strangest
if not the saddest case, was that Of Rev. DR..
Gannett, known almost as broadly as any other
man in the whole community, through nearly
two generations public man, lying unrecog-
nized in a town hall within five miles of his
own home through all the hours of that Sun
day, on which it is computed that over twenty
thousand people visited the spot. Probably
the mistake of two consonants in the name as
taken from his dress, prevented persons from
removing the cloth upon his face, and it was
not till one of those who had sat in the church
awaiting his coming through all the hour of
the morning service, had driven to the place of
the accident, that he was identified.
Probably no man has ever served his genera
ton with more untring unselfshness. Crippled
by disease for years walking only upon canes,
day and night,in season and outofseason, where
younger men would have considered themsel-
yes exempt, he was, ministering and ever re-
fusing to be minstered unto He was always
doing things at which, knowing his physical
condition, men marveled and yethe himselfwas
always marveling at anything others did. He
magnified other mems deeds, he grieved at his
own short comings. He has left a legacy of
earnest, untring fidelity such as few men
have, place no man can fill, and the memory