Wichita eagle., 1888-12-27
THE SPECTRAL DOG
STRANGE STORY TOLD BY AN OLD
RAILROAD FIREMAN.

A White Dog Running Side by Side with,
an Engine Going Sixty MILES an Hour.
The Train Saved from What Might Haze
Been an Awful Wreck.
A Tribune reporter was sitting on
one of the seats on the Battery prone
made recently when a well dressed
woman passed leading By strap snow
white Spitz dog. A man dressed in the
rough garb of a laborer sat on the seat
next to the reporter, smoking short
stemmed cob pipe.
Talking about strange things" said
the laborer, nudging the news gatherer,
II never see white dog but what it calls
up strange experience | had while
firing On the Pennsylvania railroad ten
years ago. was in the cab with Tommy
Burns, one of The best engineers in the
company's service, and our run was be-
tween Jersey City and Philadelphia.
We left Jersey City at 8 o'clock one Sat
urday evening. pulling a long train of
passenger coaches and three Pullmans.
The cars were ell full and we had the
right Of way, making no stops except at
Market street, Newark, and Trenton.
Werolled along all right over the Hacken
sack meadows and after we left Newark
we struck sixty miles an hour pace, and
watched the telegraph poles fash by till
they looked like the teeth of fine tooth
comb.
BURNS SEES THE spooK DOG.
eve had struck the plain at Princeton
Junction when Burns, who was looking
out of the cab window, says to me:
'Look-a-here Jack! There is a white
dog runnin' alongside what's been fol-
lowin' us for five minutes and blamed if
he amt keepin' UP to the injine. Look
at HIM
~ was shoveling coal in the furnace
at the time and the heat was blistering
my eye balls In their sockets. 1t took
me some time after gazing out of the
window before could make out the dog.
Finally / saw him skimming along like
q swallow Now in the glare from the
window he could besplainly seen, then
he would get out in the line of the dark
ness and we would lose sight of him.
But be would be sure to show up again
in few minutes. bitches, cuts and
sharp bends, it was all the same, that
white dog stuck beside the cab as steady
as its shadow. Burns and l couldn't
make it out. First we thought our eye
sight was deceiving lis, for the awful
heat from the furnace, the sharp wind
or something else, or all of these things
put together, is terribly trying on ones
eyes who has to use them in an engine
cab The sight gets blurred and cloudy,
and sometimes you see double, and
sometimes you don't see half. Well,
Burns and l thought at first we We're
fooled by our eyes and there couldn't be
any dog. But mile after mile that white
dog was alongside
"'Jack,' says Burns all at once, this
mussed up there's something wrong
l am agoin' to stop her.
THE HEAVY STONE ON THE TRACK.
''Sure enough he stopped and we both
got off the cab. The conductor came
up and wanted to know what
In the blue blazes was the matter. We
told him about the white dog running
alongside the engine, and we looked
about to show him the blamed animal.
But to our surprise there was no dog to
be seen, and hunt high and hunt low we
could not find him. The conductor
laughed at us, and Burns and I got
aboard again thinking that after all our
eyes might have fooled Us. Burns pulled
back the throttle and we started on
slowly. There was curving cut just
ahead of us. Fifty yards from it, before
the wheels had fairly begun to revolve
good, the headlight flashing on the track
before us showed us rock that must
have weighed two tons on our track.
We stopped the engine with the cow
catcher not twelve inches from the
stone, which, loosened by rains, had rolled
down from tle back. Had we not
stopped on account of that white dog
we would have struck it on full head
way, and you can see what that would
have meant. got shaky soon after that
and resigned, and the very mention of
white dog, much less the sight of one,
brings that strange ride back to me-
New York Tribune.