The Londonderry sifter. (South Londonderry, Vt.) 1883-19??, 1890-01-16
PRICE THREE CENTS.
Correspondence OF the SITTER.

Everybody knows jim, OF course,
Conductor Jim on the b. & w., or
"Cap'n Jim," as he is Familiarity
called by all the old-timers on Lake
Champlain and along the Welland
Canal. Jim is now plotting the ac-
commodation train over the mountain
between Brattleboro and Whitehall,
and when at the west end of the road
makes it his headquarters at the Yule
Tree House. After getting into
Whitehall evenings he makes sure Of
slowing away a hearty supper the
first thing, and then retires to the ho-
tel office where he proceeds to regale
those present, until time to turn in
for the night, with stirring tales of his
hair breadth escapes when Captain
on Cdaaler," as he calls it, some
thirty odd years ago. To hear Jim
tell how he "ploughed the raging
main" in gale on Welland Canal
once when the wind was blowing
forty knots an hour off shore, and the
waves were "running mountains
high," and how the storm unshipped
his rudder, nearly sending all hands
to the bottom, and his being chased
by sharks and kidnapped by pirates
on Lake Champlain, is full as inter-
esting as listening to 10 Cooks Mon
day lectures, or reading 10 Howards
letters in the Boston Sunday Globe.
The Cap'n is walking, talking vo-
cabulary of nautical phrases, and the
habitual use of the same by him,
while actively engaged in water navi-
cation, and a long time before he be-
gan slaughtering ailload tickets, still
clings TO him. One night last sum
mer when he was taking the st. Louis
limited over the Mountain Division,
and while descending the other side
near the coal kilns, his train ran into
a landslide. During the temporary
excitement that naturally ensued, and
when passing through the twelve or
fourteen coaches trying to pacify his
passengers, lady in the Chicago
sleeper nervously clutched him-by the
arm and wanted to know what the
trouble was. so nothing, marin,
nothing," said jim, ''only the lub-
Der at the wheel didn't luff 'er enough,
and she's half her length high and
dry on sandbar, and we've got to
wait for the tide to rise or send for a
tug and lighter to get her off" He
came pretty near getting months
vacation, without pay, for that, as the
person he was talking to proved to
be the wife of a prominent colored
politician from Thompson Street,
New York, on her way from Boston
to East Dorset to attend a woman's
rights meeting. When approaching
Whitehall nights, the Cap'n frequent
ly startles his passengers from one
end of the train to the other by sing
ing out in stentorian tones that cause
the car ventilators to open and shut
automatically, "All ashore for Ii
conderoga, Burlington, Plattsburgh
and Rouses Point Step lively there,
please Step lively!" When in
Brattleboro Jim ties up at the Bliss
House where he puts in most OF his
spare time humming 1.-The Nancy
Lee" or whlstling 1.-The Straw berry
Girl" when he isn't entertaining land
lord Bliss and Frank Green with his
yarns about the amount of mission
airy work he did in Central Africa
when Young man. 1t rather took
him down the other day, though, when
Jack Turner, an old salt and form
er messmate of his, just in from a
two-year's whaling voyage to the
Sandwich Islands, sailed into town
three sheets IN the wind, during Jim's
absence, and confidentially told Pat
Austin and Oscar Willard that all
the real missionary work the Cap.
ever did was when he took cargo of
New England rum and West Indies
molasses, an invoice of warming pans,
and Job lot of cast-iron axes, worth
four cents apiece, in 1858, out to the
coast of Africa and worked the whole
business off on to the guileless ma
tiyes in exchange for ship load of
elephants tusks. Jim has, in a
measure, atoned for that since then,
however, by joining the Dutch Re-
formed Church, of which he is now a
member in good and regular standing,
his rotund form and rubicund features
always being the most conspicuous on
communion days. JOB.