Juniata sentinel and Republican. [volume] (Mifflintown, Juniata County, Pa.) 1873-1955, 1883-04-04

The famous stage driver Is uedu- lie
has been on the down grade a long time.
Recently his foot lost its final hold on
the brake and his coach could not he
stopped until, battered and broken on a
sharp turn, it went over into that canon,
black and deep. which we call death.
In his way Hank Monk was character.
In the old days, before the feathers
under his coach We're so soaked with
alcohol, there was no better balanced
head than his. There was an air about
him which his closest friends could not
understand. There was something
which seemed to say that stage driving
was not his intended work; that, if he
pleased, there were other things, even
more difficult than handling six wild
horses, which he could do quite as well.
Generally. he was reserved of speech,
sententious in his ways, but often,
while battling with high-strung team,
would pronounce an epigram worthy of
lngersoll or Emerson. After his little
episode with Greeley, distinguished
men passing over the Sierras, where
Monk drove, would plan to ride outside
with him. Many a one has ridden
twenty miles, trying i'll vain to call him
out, and ut last has settled back with
the belief that he was but a stOlid IDIOT,
when half dozen words from Monk,
spoken with his peculiar drawl, showed
that when he drove Greeley's coach
over the mountains there was, perhaps,
as big man outside as there WAS inside
the vehicle. As he was not like any
other man, SO he was not like any other
stage driver. In his prime he would
turn a siX-horse coach in the street with
the team at "A full run, and with every
rein apparently loose. But the coach
would always bring up III exactly the
spot that the most careful driver would
have tried to bring it. His eve never
deceived him, and his estimation of
distances was absolute; the result which
must he when leaders, swings and
wheelers all were playing their roles,
was with him an exact science. His
driving was such a perfection of art
that it did not seem art at all, and
many an enviouS whip, watching him,
has turned away saying, ''he is the luck
lest man that ever climbed on top of a
box" 1t was not luck at all. il was
simply an intuitive, exact calculation
from causes to effect, and his whole
duty ended when he fixed the cause.
The effect had To be. He has often
driven from the summit of the SieTras
down into the valley, ten miles, in forty
five minutes. Other drivers have done
as well. the only difference being that
with others it was a strain upon eve.
and hand. and arm, and foot; with
Monk ii was matter of course. He
was to stage driving what the German
papers say Edwin Booth was in Hamlet:
1t was not played. but lived" Of
course We speak of him as he was of
old. when the railroad was Vet beyond
the Sierras, and when staging over the
Sierras was something finer than staging
ever was before. or ever viii he again.
OF late years Monk has been but a
ghost of himself. His physical strength
has been So wasted that no wild horses
have been given him; the grades up the
mountains have not been sprinkled; the
locomotive took away the glory Of stag
ing. and bad whisky sapped the finer
springs of the old drivers life. \ wear
ago. for the first time. coach capsiZed
under him. and while the accident
seemed trivial in itself, it was a notice
10 him that his hand had lost its cun-
ming. that his lamps Were going out,
that dark canon was before him, and
there was no moon Ia rise. sWhen this
winter closed down he went into his
little den of a house and knew that he
was going to mire down in few weeks.
When friends tried to have him consent
to he removed to the hospital, where he
could have more comforts, lac refused
and waited where he was, until We'd
nesday last, when he drove into the
home station. He died simply diSSip-
ated old stage driver; but if in the long
ago, when life was bright and hope was
eXultant. his heart did not receive a.
wound which changed his whole life,
and all its purposes, than a mans face,
and acts, and moods, and models of
thought are no Indication of what he has
done and suffered.