s then the locomotive chief, and renowned
above all other things for maintaining discipline among his staff, while
they cherished a feeling for him very much akin to what we hear of the
clannish enthusiasm of the ancient Scotch.

THE DECOY TRUNK.

August 27, 1875. The Metropolitan magistrates have had before them a
case which seems likely to show how some, at least, of the robberies at
railway stations are accomplished. Some ingenious persons, it appears,
have devised a way by which a trunk can be made to steal a trunk, and a
portmanteau to annex a portmanteau. The thieves lay a trunk artfully
contrived on a smaller trunk; the latter clings to the former, and the
owner of the larger carries both away. The decoy trunk is said to be
fitted with a false bottom, which goes up when it is laid on a smaller
trunk, and with mechanism inside which does for the innocent trunk what
Polonius recommended Laertes to do for his friend, and grapples it to its
heart with hooks of steel. In fact, the decoy duck--we do not know how
better to describe it--is made to perform an office like that of certain
flowers, which suddenly close at the pressure of a fly or other insect
within their cup and imprison him there.

--_Annual Register_, 1875.

DRIVING A LAST SPIKE.

There are now two lines crossing the American continent. The western
section of the new route goes through on the thirty-parallel--far enough
south from the Rocky Mountains for the current of the train's own motion
to be acceptable even in December, and to be a grateful relief in June.
Beginning at San Francisco, the additional line runs south through
California to Fort Yuma on the Colorado river; thence along the southern
border of the territories of Arizona and New Mexico, and across the
centre of Kansas, until it joins the lines connecting the Southern States
with New York. The undertaking is a vast one, and has been one of some
difficulty; but its completion has been the occasion of very little
display. Never was a great project of any kind brought to a successful
result with so much of active work and so little of actual talk. A cable
message a line in length told the story a month ago to European readers,
and none of the American papers appear to have dealt with the matter as
anything out of the ordinary run of daily events.

Far otherwise was it with the finishing touch twelve years ago to the