Evening bulletin. [volume] (Honolulu [Oahu, Hawaii]) 1895-1912, 1897-08-10
INSTRUCTIVE GOODNESS
INSTANCE wwERE human sAruss
saess psvsssLY.
Hereto UmseiHshness Eshisissa ~
aanevers In An EsGtish
Railway Wvssh.

L
champion on Friday week is in
many ways one of the most dis.
tressing which have occurred in
recent years, says the London
Spectator. The number Of the
victims was, for an English acct.
dent, unusually large-eleven
killed and twenty-five Wounded
all of them persons of an unusual.
ly respectable kind, engaged in a
function-a gathering of Sunday
school teachers - more directly
religious than the charitable
bazaar at which the sufferers in the
Paris calamity were destroyed.
The slaughter, too, was so unne-
cessary. There was no accident"
properly so-called, nothing which
could not have been provided
against, no sudden collapse of
part of the machinery, no fault or
breakdown of signallers or en-
| CINE drivers. The victims, it is
reported in the Daily Chronicle,
apparently on the authority of the
official inspector, were sacrificed
to some imperfection in the condi-
ton of the line, which had been
left, by the neglect probably of
some subordinate overseer, in a
state in which it was unable to
bear the passage of heavy engines.
That report, of course, may be
unfounded, but nothing is salts
factory about the narrative except
the behavior of the sufferers,
many of whom, according to the
detailed account in the Daily
News, displayed fortitude aud
disregard of self that elevates
ones conception of the virtues
which may Oe hidden in ordinary
human nature. Many of the vic
tins, of course, shrieked and
grosned, as the wouOIed 40 On IL
battlefield, but many more bore
agony which must have been ter
rible, in silence, while few dis
played a demeanor which makes
one think that the old theologians
who spoke so much of 'prevenient
grace the gift ct goodness
which seems independent of any
cause save the will of merciful
Creator, were at least familiar
with some of the recesses of
human nature. The man who for
two hours held candle aloft with
one arm while his deliverers hack.
ed at the woodwork crushing the
other, was, perhaps, possessed of
, nothing better than stubborn
pluck, though endurance of that
t kind involves such perfect self
5 control as to he equivalent to a
virtue; but the girl who, with a
leg broken and thigh fractured,
said gently, Go and see to others,
, exhibited charity such as we dc
not often find in the most devoted
Christians, while the little boy oil
s ten who cried for his mother, bu,
: begged that she might not know
how badly he had been injured
showed how the quality of con
sideration, which we often think
of as mere politeness, may be
Q developed into a lofty virtue
3 Such instances make one recon
slider ones conviction that human
nature is bad-and it is astonish
ing, under certain circumstance
q Of suffering. how frequent they
are. We hardly ever read an &C
.. count Of grave mining accident
or a personal narrative of battle
or story of escapes from grea
fire. without noting incidents il
o which persons, always ordinary
and sometimes ruiiianly, have dis
played what philosophers cal
"altruism," the power of postpon,
ing self to others welfare, in it
a most admirable degree. Contras
J. such stories with those of the mac
. selfshness and cruelty often de,
I veloped by panics, and we get
e new impression OF the range 0
r the moral qualities, their basenes
in some, their nobility in others
which compels one to ask whethe
: it is impossible that some nature
: may be possessed OF moral gift
!. separating them from the ruck a
completely as the gift of genius o
of special intellectual force separ'
ate q few from the majority. TA,
idea of such inequalities is
! strange one, almost impdsnin,
the fairness OF God in his treat