usual place for meeting another train, and only about as many minutes to do it. Both were express trains, and that manthe dictator of that train-did run his cars with two hundred people in them at that frightful speed, when the slightest accident would have dashed them to ruin. As it was, the other train was just pulling out, when the approaching train was discovered in time barely to save collision."

"You do not pretend to say such things are common,-do you?" asked a Director, with some agitation.

"More common than is generally known, as I fully believe. I tell you, gentlemen, that innocent travellers are sometimes whirled along our railways at a speed and in circumstances as perilous as to ride on Blondin's back over a tight rope across the Niagara, or about as perilous as if I should attempt to trundle one of you on a velocipede across that knifeedged bridge which Mohammed says spans the infernal abyss."

The Superintendent had drawn a pic ture not pleasant for any one to contemplate who ever rides on a railway. The last was a dash of grim humor.

"But what has all this to do with the Sunday contract?" said Gen. A., who was becoming a little nervous at the turn the Superintendent's discourse had taken.

"I am coming to it, General; only let me come my own way. I was mentioning several cases of railway disaster, not one of which could have happened if the men in charge had had the fear of God before them. And if you ask me, I will tell you candidly that a very large per cent. of railway accidents arise from the criminal, vicious recklessness of employés. Had they been God-fearing men, very many accidents would not have occurred. Not a doubt of it.

is; that it was called the Utopian Central Railway. Strange enough, I seemed to be carried back to the very beginning, and found the capitalists feared God, and began the work in that spirit. Neither in the Legislature or anywhere else was a cent of corruption-money used to get its charter and right of way. The engineers ran the line not to kill some old town, and convert waste acres owned by some favorite into town lots, but they ran their line conscientiously. The contracts were not let on the basis of double or treble estimates for the work, to defraud the stockholders and enrich the rascals. The masons who built piers and culverts, and the carpenters who built bridges, and the very laborers who dug the earth and cast up the highways were controlled by the same high motive, so that when the road was ready for the iron it was as well made as conscientious men could make it.

"And then in my dream I watched the iron makers. They did not put in a lump of 'cold-short' 'red-short' ore, nor mingle irons which they knew would make imperfect iron, because it was cheap, but every man, from the furnace-man to the roller, made his work in God's fear the very best he could. And so it was laid down on the ties and the ballasting arranged. In my dream I visited the axle shops and the locomotive works of Utopia, and found that every blow was given in God's fear; and each such engine I followed as it was placed on our road, with a devout Christian engineer and fireman; the trains were conducted by the same kind of men. Not an operative who did not fear God. Why, gentlemen, the most remarkable fact of all was, that not a stockholder, or director, or executive officer, or even a clerk or messenger could I find who was not a good man.

"Well, sirs, that road, as I saw in my dream, ran very elegant trains with the utmost precision, carried passengers and freight without 'smash-ups' or slaughter, and accidents were extremely rare, because the road was built and operated as under the great Task-master's cye.' I was pleased with my dream."

The Superintendent's conceit was so charming that it came very near being applauded; but he added that, in his "opinion most of our roads are so steeped in corruption, from their inception to their completion, and are worked with so little conscience before God, that for his part he did not wonder when he heard of their financial misfortunes, and their extraordinary losses in accidents and the like." The language seemed a little harsh, but modern developments go far towards justifying it.

"You will see by this time that I believe that the interests of a railroad are affected by whatever affects the moral character of its operatives, from the highest to the lowest. Elevate the morals of your workmen, and you promote the interests of the road; depress their morals and you depress the interests of the road. "I have noticed that there is scarcely such a demoralizing agency in any branch of business as Sabbath-breaking, and railroading is no exception. Take from your workman his Sunday, and you so far make him a bad man, who does not fear God or man; but let him observe Sunday by rest, cleaning up his person, and going to meeting, and he mounts his engine or applies his brake on Monday morning, not a reckless but a responsible agent. Not a doubt about the general rule."

And suppose it be so, what has that to do with the contract?" demanded the General.

"This: by compelling an engineman and fireman to put foot on God's command, I train them to put foot on my command, and to be reckless in handling a machine that cost fifteen or twenty thousand dollars. What do they care about 'risks and ventures,' jaded and worried as they are by working seven days a week?

6

"Now let me tell you an incident. On a certain Sunday, some years ago, a steamer plying in connection with the and R. R. between and the city of was burned, the passengers and crew barely escaping. That same Sunday afternoon a train of cars was run

to the city of — The operativer

as usual from the same city as above. on that train wrought for the company seven days each week. On the Monday morning following the same engineer wa running his train on the return trip. He had to cross a drawbridge, and its gY was plainly visible half a mile. When it was up all was right; when it was not up, 'the draw was off.' That morning the drawbridge was open to let a vessel through, and the signal was down to show the fact. The road for half a mile is m level and clear of obstructions that the engineer might have seen a rabbit had it been on the bridge, and yet he actually ran his train straight into that drawbridge, putting in the greatest peril five hundred passengers. The engine was going with such force that it almost leaped the chasm, and one man on the engine was killed Two others barely escaped!"

"That was awful and unaccountable," exclaimed one of the Directors. "The man must have been drunk!"

"No, he was not drunk, nor is the fact unaccountable," said Mr. Bariron. “In the first place that man disobeyed orders by having a chum or friend on his engine without permission; and in the second place by not noting that the draw signal was down. His orders were positive, but the pious superintendent and directors had set him the day before to disobeying God's positive command, and could they wonder that he should follow the pattern and set their order at naught? They had demoralized him.

"But that was not all. I said a steamer was burned the day before, that is, on Sunday. The engineer of that boat was the friend who was on the locomotive that went into the draw, and undoubtedly had taken the attention of the engineer from his business so that he forgot all about the drawbridge and the signal, by hearing the description of the scenes on the burning steamer!"

"You have made out one case, surely!" admitted Gen. A.; "but you would not say it proved the rule, would you?"

that road. It is one of the best roads on the continent, and is splendidly managed. During the week its trains run incessantly. It has carried millions of people and rarely meets with an accident. There is one portion of the road as straight as an arrow and as level as a floor for several miles, without a bush or a blade of grass to obstruct the view. It is the very last place where a train ought to run on a cow or horse, and yet several times just there that thing has been done, and one time the engine was thrown into the ditch and the whole train put in most serious peril. It was a singular fact-perhaps a chance that these needless casualties usually happened to the Sunday trains. Forty trains a day between morning and midnight would fly along that very place without harm, and yet on Sunday occasionally such an accident would occur.

"And as if to make the case still stronger, one Sunday an engineer ran a train of empty passenger cars into a drawbridge, at a point where for near half a mile he might tell whether all was right without a signal. Yet, in spite of this and the signal to boot, he ran into the draw!

"I tell you, gentlemen, you cannot afford to demoralize your men by teaching them to be atheists, and by taking from them a chief means of moral training, for you put your costly machines, your property, and also the property and lives of others into the keeping of men rendered reckless, disobedient, defiant.

You cannot afford it.

"Besides this, there is not a piece of machinery on our road, from a locomotive to a hand-car, not an axle or a wheel, that is not better for use and endurance to stand still-or, as I sometimes say, 'cool off-one solid day of twenty-four

hours every week. In my opinion, you cannot afford to run your rolling-stock incessantly with no Sunday. You may call it superstition, but many facts sustain me in my view.

"Add to all this a word not often enough repeated in the Directors' Room of our railways: God has said, 'Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy;' and He made no exception for railroads or Sunday mail trains. Now, gentlemen, you cannot afford to run your trains over that command, for the Almighty will surely reckon with you. I am your employé, and strive to serve you faithfully. We have a road to be proud of in all respects; and so deep are my convictions on this point, that if you convert your road into a wholesale means of Sunday desecration, I must ask you at once to seek my successor."

Gen. A. sprang to his feet with great promptness, and in view of what Mr. Bariron had so well said, "moved that the Sunday contract for carrying the mail be declined, for it really seems as if we cannot afford to take it!"

Whether Mr. Bariron is a real "live superintendent of a real railroad, I will not say, nor whether so singular a lecture was ever delivered by a railroad superintendent in a "Directors' Room;" but that the facts and reasonings are not only facts, but facts of an imposing character, I am ready to assert. Just now our huge railway corporations are crushing out the Christian Sabbath, and I here present a plea for that day under a guise which I trust may gain for it a hearing. It is a cause for thankfulness that there are some railway superintendents in our country, who practically and in words indorse what "Mr. Superintendent Bariron" has set forth in this article.

in the position and thickness of the beds of clay and gravel, and that on this account water would occur at different depths, and that if the first experimental well had been carried deeper, ice would have been reached. The regular depression of temperature favors this inference. These frozen wells have been before observed. The Rev. Mr. Perkins, of Ware, Mass., dug a well in the summer of 1858, thirty-five feet in depth. One night the following winter the water was incrusted with a thin layer of ice, not thicker than ordinary window glass. The same thing was observed the second winter. This well was inside the house, and of course was so protected that this frost could not have been produced except by some internal cause, even had the cold been sufficiently severe to freeze water at that depth in wells standing in the open air.

A well has been described in the American Journal of Science, vol. 36, 1st Series, in Owego, N. Y. This well was seventy-seven feet deep, and during four or five months in the year was frozen so hard as to become useless to the people. In winter the sides of the well became so thickly coated with ice that only a space of one foot remained between them, and the surface became so solidly frozen that it could not be broken by a heavy iron weight attached to a rope. The ice continued as late as July, but disappeared during the latter part of summer.

This well is situated in the gravel bank of the Susquehanna river, about threefourths of a mile from the water, at a point where the ground is elevated about thirty feet above it. When a lighted candle was let down into the well, it seemed to encounter a current of air at a depth of about thirty feet, as the flame flickered and seemed carried in one direction.

In the Literary Journal, published at Concord, N. H., in 1823, Mr. Caleb Emery, of Lyman, Grafton Co., published an account of his examination of a well in the town in which he resided in 1816, the year of the remarkably cold summer. In June of that year this well was frozen solid at a depth of eight feet below the

surface of the ground, so that water could be obtained only by cutting a hole through the ice.

The following month he again visited the well, and found that although the quantity of ice had greatly diminished, yet that a mass as large as a wash-tub was floating in the water.

M. Erman, the celebrated Siberian traveller, describes a well dug or blasted through the frozen earth at Yakootsk to the depth of 42 feet. He computed that the frozen earth reached a depth of 630 feet.

Another explorer, M. Middendorf, bored to a depth of 70 feet, going through frozen soil and ice, until he reached pure transparent ice, in which he excavated more than six feet without ascertaining its thickness. He also observed that a shaft which had been sunk through clay, sand, and lignite mixed with ice, did not reach through the frozen crust, though carried to the depth of 384 feet. The temperature in this case increased from 1° at the surface to 26° 6' at the bottom.

M. Helmerson, another observer, computes the frozen crust to be between 300 and 400 feet thick. In a pit he examined, he found a temperature of more than 21° at a depth of seventy-five feet, and that this had increased ten degrees at a depth of 378 feet.

Sir R. J. Murchison, the author of the Geology of Russia, and favorably known for his extensive geological researches, speaks of a shaft sunk at Yakootsk, which passed through sixty feet of alluvium, and the remaining depth of 290 feet through limestone, shale, and coal. The temperature at the bottom was 18° 5', far below the freezing point. The thickness of the frozen crust at Fort Simpson, on Makenzie's River, in the same latitude as Yakootsk (62°), has been found to be twenty-six feet.

These facts, and certain other phenomena, are related to those of the frozen wells.

The ice mountain in Virginia, described by Mr. Hayden in vol. 45 of the American Journal of Science, is an instance of the fact of ice being preserved under the