St. Paul daily globe. [volume] (Saint Paul, Minn.) 1884-1896, 1888-12-01
STORY OF A SPECTRAL DOG.
How a Wreck on the Pennsylva.
~" po"d Was Averted.

New York Tribune.
A Tribune reporter was sitting on
one of the seats on the Battery promo
made recently when a well dressed
woman passed leading by strap a
snow white Spitz dog. A man dressed
in the rough garb of laborer sat on the
seat next to the reporter, smoking a
short-stemmed cob pipe.
Talking about strange things" said
the laborer, nudging the news gath
erer, II never see white dog but what
it calls ND strange experience had
while firing OH the Pennsylvania rail-
road ten years ago. ! was In the cab
with Tommy Burns, one OF the best en-
gineers in the company's service, and
our run was between Jersey City and
Philadelphia. We left Jersey City at 8
O'Clock one Saturday evening, pulling a
long train of passenger coaches and
three Pullmans. The cars were all full
and we had the right of way. making no
stops except at Market street, Newark
and Trenton. We rolled along all right
over the Hackensack meadows, and
after We left Newark we struck a sixty
miles an hour pace, and watched the
telegraph poles flash by till they looked
like the teeth of fine tooth comb. We
had struck the plain at Princeton juno
ton when Burns, who was lookiag out
OF the cab window, says to me:
'LOok-a-here, Jack! There is white
dog runnin' alongside what's been fol-
lowin' us for five minutes, and blamed
if lie amt keepin'. up to the iDjine.
Look at him.
Il was shoveling coal in the furnace
at the time, and the heat was bliStering
my eyeballs in their sockets. 1t took me
some time after gazing out OF the win
dow before | could make out the dog.
Finally saw him skimming along like
a swallow. Now in the glare from the
window he could be plainly seen, then
he would get out in the line of the dark
ness and we would lose sight OF him.
But he 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 | couldn't
make it out. First we thought our eye
sight was deceiving us, 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 thought at first we were
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
is MORN kin stand. If our eyes amt
mussed up there's sOmethin' wrong
somewhere. l am a-goin' to stop her.
''Sure enough he stopped, and we both
got Off the cab. The conductor came
running up and wanted to know what
in blue blaZes was the matter. We told
side 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
hot find him. The conductor laughed
at us, and Buans and [ 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 curYing 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
cowcatcher not twelve inches from the
stone, which, loosened by rains, had
rolled down from the bank. Had we
not stopped on account OF that white
dog we would have struck it on full
Roadway and you can see what that
would have meant. | got shaky soon
after that and resigned, and the men,
ton of white dog, much less the sight
of one, brings that strange ride back
to me-"