going to be any
wreck, but the engineers are only waiting till everybody has forgotten
about it, and then, biff, bang, and they have run into another train, or
been run into, and you have to be pulled out of a window by the heels,
and laid out in a marsh until the claim agents can settle with you.

I always thought in reading of railroad accidents, that the railroad
sent out a special trainload of doctors and nurses, to care for the
injured, but the special train never has a doctor until the lawyers give
first aid to the wounded in the way of financial poultices for the
cripples. People in our business are on the railroads, and we work them
for all there is in it; and the man that is hurt the least makes the
biggest howl, and gets the biggest slice of indemnity. Some circus
people spend all their salary as they go along, and live all winter on
the damages they get from the railroads when the wreck comes.

The night of the wreck our train was whooping along at about 90 miles an
hour, on a hippity-hop railroad in Pennsylvania, and the night was hot,
and the mosquitoes from across the line in New Jersey were singing their
solemn tunes, and pa, who attended a lodge meeting that night at the
town we showed in, was asleep and talking in his sleep about passwords
and grips, and the freaks and trapeze performers in our car had got
through kicking about how the show was running into the ground, when
suddenly there was a terrific smash-up ahead, an engine boiler exploded,
a freight car of dynamite on a side track exploded and there was a
grinding and bumping of cars. Then they rolled down a bank, over and
over, so the upper berth was the lower berth half the time, and finally
the whole business stopped in a hay marsh, and the bilge water in the
marsh leaked into the hold of our car; people screamed, and some one
yelled "fire!" and I pulled on pa till he woke up.

I thought pa's head was all caved in, because he talked nutty. The first
thing he said was: "Say I, pronounce your name, and repeat after me,"
and then he said: "I promise and swear that I will never reveal the
secrets of this degree," and then the conductor pulled pa's leg and
said: "Crawl out of the window, old man, 'cause the train is in the
ditch, the car is afire, and if you don't get out in about a minute with
the other freaks, you will be a burnt offering."

Pa said you couldn't fool him, 'cause he knew he was being initiated
into the 20-steenth degree of the