ficial when
apparently dreaming of an approaching train, as he started to his feet
and roared out, with all the force and shrillness of stentorian lungs and
habit, "Change here for Elgin, Lossiemouth, and Burghead." The effect
upon the congregation, sitting in expectation of a concord of sweet
sounds, may be imagined--it is unnecessary to describe it.

--_Dumfries Courier_, 1866.

THE GOOD THINGS OF RAILWAY ACCIDENTS.

We have always thought that, except to lawyers and railway carriage and
locomotive builders, railway accidents were great misfortunes, but it is
evident we were wrong and we hasten to acknowledge our error. Speaking
on Thursday with a respectable broker about the heavy damages (2,000
pounds) given the day before on account of the Tottenham accident against
the Eastern Counties Company in the Court of Exchequer, he observed, "It
is rather good when these things happen as it moves the stock. I have
had an order for some days to buy Eastern Counties at 56 and could not do
it, but this verdict has sent them down one per cent., and enabled me now
to buy it." With all our railway experience we never dreamt of such a
benefit as this accruing from railway accidents, but it is evidently
among the possibilities.

--_Herepath's Railway Journal_, June 7th, 1860.

BENEFICIAL EFFECT OF A RAILWAY ACCIDENT.

A gentleman who was in a railway collision in 1869, wrote to the _Times_
in November of that year. After stating that he had been threatened with
a violent attack of rheumatic fever; in fact, he observed, "my condition
so alarmed me, and my dread of a sojourn in a Manchester hotel bed for
two or three months was so great, that I resolved to make a bold sortie
and, well wrapped up, start for London by the 3.30 p.m. Midland fast
train. From the time of leaving that station to the time of the
collision, my heart was going at express speed; my weak body was in a
profuse perspiration; flashes of pain announced that the muscular fibres
were under the tyrannical control of rheumatism, and I was almost beside
myself with toothache. From the moment of the collision to the present
hour no ache, pain, sweat, or tremor has troubled me in the slightest
degree, and instead of being, as I expected, and indeed intended, in bed
drinking _tinct. aurantii_, or absorbing through my pores oil of
horse-chestnut, I am conscientiously bound