New-York tribune., 1920-09-30
Harding's Car
] um ps Track
On High Bridge
tcontinued from page eae)

tore up the ties for several hundred
feet until it struck the trestle. Chap
man had jammed on the emergency
air brakes at the first possyb!e second.
AS he expressed it, he pulled the
emergency angle cock. That applied
compressed air to every brake shoe in
the train.
About the same time the other rail-
road policeman. Wilson, pulled the
whis le cord that signaled the engineer
to stop. Despite all this the train ran
900 feet by actual measurement. Two
hundred and twenty of those feet mid
way in the 900 were across the trestle.
The creek bridged by this is known
as Little Mill Creek. Fifty yards be-
low the trestle it flows into the Ohio
River. Natives of Millwood said this
creek was twenty feet deep.
The course ot the stream is through
gorge-lke ravine with precipitous
sides. When the train halted with a
jerk that gave the occupants Of the
other four cars of the special their
first inkling that anything was wrong,
Senator Harding stepped to the back
platform.
What's the trouble" he asked
Chapman.
Were in the ditch" replied the
railroad man.
My Lord, that looks bad" COM
mented Senator Harding, and swung to
the ground to investigate the damage
He whistled softly when he saw the
deep furrow the steel wheels had
ploughed in the ties and roadbed and
saw the rough gray surface Of the steel
cracked frames Of the truck Then
he walked back over the right of way
to the trestle, and looked down from
the dizzy height to the muddy water
of the swiftly flowing stream
Who is the Jonah on this train ~
asked some one Of the Senator as he
examined the groove that traced the
path of derailed wheels along the
trestle edge.
"Jonah?" echoed the candidate. You
mean who is the mascot"
Mrs. Harding, in her compartment,
was not at all disturbed by the acci-
dent. Jess X. Smith, of Ohio, threw
open her door abruptly as the train
halted
Are you hurt >" he demanded
NO; + am all right Will you close
that door," replied Mrs. Harding, who
wasn't prepared for company. A few
moments later, however, she was out
on the track eXclaiming at the narrow
ness of the escape.
Karger, the correspondent for The
Times Star, said afterward that while
the train bumped along the ties the
Senator did not change color.
"He may have been disturbed" said
Karger, but he certainly didn't reveal
it by any act or change in his counte-
nance"
Within less than an hour Senator
Harding was standing on baggage
truck at Mason City, W. Va, telling
pointing to moral it contained The
saving guard rail on the trestle he saw
as the Constitution and the trestle it.
self as internationalism He said:
My countrymen all, we are espe-
cially happy to greet you here in com
fort and safety, because | suspect you
have already learned that few miles
up the track our car left the rail and
we were very near having a serious
accident. | do not want to exploit the
accident to you, but it occurred to me
that we had very fine illustration
therein. l cannot tell you precisely
observation platform from which
could talk to you, in some way left the
track, and for some 900 feet We ran
along humping on the ties, fortunately
in safety. We could not put the car
back as it was too badly wrecked, so
We had to detach the car and come on
with the balance of our train in order
to keep our appointments along the
line Of the road
at occurred to me after we left
that maybe that was an illustration of
the things we encounter in national
life. The great car of state, going for
ward to the fulfillment of national en-
gagements, somehow got OF the track
last year over in Paris Applause and
it left things in very bad order, and I
think, maybe, in crossing the trestle Of
internationalism, if it had not been for
the guard rail of constitutionalism in
America and in the Senate to prevent
us from completely leaving the track,
we might have had a very serious
wreck for the United States. SO | am
telling you that, instead Of trying to
put q broken-up car back on the track,
let US cut it loose and go on and keep
our enCaCements with all the world. y