The Houma courier. (Houma, La.) 1878-1939, 1897-09-04

a Travelling Mnn's Experience IL q
Georeia Country House.

oPeakAn8 q NhlnSA remarked q
Philadelphia drummer, 'Ihad a strange
thing happen to me about a month ago
n Georgia. IT didn't exactly happen
to me, either, bot Il was ID my hearing.
/ had attempted to drive across country
to catch a train at a station which 1
could not have reached otherwise. ex-
cept BY q long and tiresome detour over
q miserable piece Of road-and when
a railroad il Georgia is bad ii is bad
with any sort of an adjective for en-
phasis you choose. II " 10 miles
and through a mountain gap, and it
was nearly dark when / wound up by
getting lost and going the Lord knows
where till I struck a very fair two
story house that locked like it might
have been a summer hotel once upon
a time.
Il asked the man who responded to
my call how far it was to the railroad,
and he told me ten miles, and had bet
ter light and stay all night. light
cd and after a bit of cold bread and
meat and a drink of .moonshine' Invent
to bed, tired enough to have slept on a
picket fence. 1t was then IL o'clock,
and about two hours later [ wa
awakened from my slumbers by hear
ing a train whistle apparently a mile
or less away, and then rumble along,
coming nearer and nearer until sud
denly it stopped, and l heard no more.
was too sleepy to give it much
thought, and rolling over l went to
sleep again, wondering why my host
had told me it was ten miles to the rail-
road, unless it was to deceive me out Of
the price of a nights lodging.
In the morning at breakfast men
toned the fact to him, and he laughed
in an uneasy kind OF a way and assured
me that it was ten miles to the railroad,
and l would think it was three times
that far after I had driven overit. The
noise I had heard, he said, was probably
the wind blowing down the chimney
and banging around the house, which
was old and open in many places. I
hadn't any more to say, and went on my
way to the railroad, reaching there in
three hours, and noticing all the wa
that am old roadbed with the ties and
rails still on it in places lay near the
wagon road all the way to the station.
AT the station, while waiting for
my train, I got to talking with the sta
ton agent, who was a bright, sharp
chap, and incidentally 1 asked him
about that railroad train. He looked
at me quick as a wink, and asked me
the particulars, which 1 told him.
Its a ha'nt,' he said. Last night
was the night it always comes When
the road was first built there was a
branch that u back up in that coun-
try to a place about two or three miles
beyond that house, to a kind of a
summer resort up there. Mineral
springs and a waterfall. Excursions
for a day used to go up there from
towns down the road here and up the
other way. Ten years ago tonight an
excursion was coming back from there
and just about the n-eighborhood of
that house the engineer saw an OBJ
struction on the track that was going
to throw the whole shebang over the
bank, and whistling down brakes and.
cutting his engine loose he went
straight for it and knocked it off the
track. OF course he and his engine
went with it, and neither of them was
ever nor used after that racket; but
the train was saved, and that was
enough for a man to die for, because
there were 200 women and children in
the excursion.
ut was shown that some of the peo-
pie in the neighborhood had attempted
to wreck the train, and it spoiled the
excursion business. There was coal
on the branch that kept the last nine
or ten miles of it in operation for a few
years longer, but there was never an
other passenger train to go over the
place where the engineer was killed.
That is to say, never another train that
anybody ever saw; but there has been
one go over the spot, or rather go to it
and stop, n night in every year for
the past ten years. I have heardtit, and
so have the men in that house and you,
but no more that / know of, because
his nearest neighbor is three miles
away and nobody ever gets in that
neighborhood to stay all night. Isup-
pose l would not lave been there if he
had not asked me as a friend to come
up on n of the anniversary nights and
hear it, so he could talk to me about it
and advise with me whether to move
away or stick it ut. advised him to
stay and had very near forgotten all
about it, for really the subject hasn't
come to my notice in four or five years,
and you can wager money I never went
back there to listen to it any more. I'll
be blamed If I couldn't see that en-
gineer and his engine whirling to de-
struction the night / stayed there, be-
aus I knew what to expect and sat
up to wait for it with every nerve at its
highest tension. Darn queer kind of
d ghost, isn't itg
ST told him 1 thought it was" con-
Guided sthe drummer, 'and when l sug-
gested to him that / might perhaps tell
the story to some one else and ii might
get into the newspapers, he laughed
and said that was just the same as
keeping it a dead secret, for nobody in
that n~eighborhood took a newspaper or
could read n if he did ..,-Washington
Star.