The Perils Of Home

The man in the ticket oilicosaid: - "Hare an accident ïnsuraneo tickei also?" "No," I sanl after studyingthe matter over a little. --No, I belicvo not. ] am going lo bc traveling by rail all daj to-day. Ho we ver, to-morrow I don't travel. Give sooiie for to-morrow." Tho man lookci jmzzlcd. He said "But it is for accident insnrance, and if yon are going to travol by rail - " 'Ü' I am gointt to travel by rail I sha'nt need it. Lying at home in bed is the thing J am afrait! of." I had been looking into this matter. Last year 1 traveied 20,000 miles, almost . entirely byrail; tbpyear bcfore L travelcd over 25,()flO miles, half by sca and half by rail; and the yoar before that I trayeled in tho neighborhood of 10,000 miles exclusively by rail. 1 suppose f I put in all tho littlo odd journoys hero and there, I may say Í havo traveled 00,000 miles doring tlie three years I have mentioiied. And uevcr an accident. For a good while 1 said to myself every morning: "'IS'ow 1 have escapcd thus far, and so the chances aro just that much increascd that I shall eatch it this time. I will be shrewd, and buyan accident, ticket." And to a dead moral certainty I dréw a blank and went to bed that night without a joint started or a bono splintered. 1 got tired of that sort of daily bother, and feil to buying accident tickets that were good for a moath. I said to myself, "A man oan'fc buy thirty blanks iu ono bondie." Hut I was mistaken. Thore iv }rino in the lot. 1 could rcad of railway accidents every day - the newipaper atmosphere was foggy wtth them, but somehow they never canie my way. I found I had spent a good deal of money in the accident business, and had nothing to show for it. My suspicions were aroused, and I began to hunt for someone that had won in this lottery. l found of paoplo who had invested, but not an individual who had ever had an accident or'made a cent.. I stopped buying accident tickets and went to ciphering. The result was astounding. The peril was not in travelling but in staying at home. I huntcd up statistici, and was aniazed to find that after all the glariag newspapcr hcading3 concerning railroad disasters, less than 800 people had really lost their lives by those disasters in the preceeding tvvclve tuonths. The Krie road vi as set down ns the most mur Jerons in Ihe list It had killed forty-six- - or twonty-six, I do aot exactly romember which., but know bbo nutubor was iloublo tliftt of ajOV ather road. Btlt the fact strvightway immensely long road anddid moro businps.'s fch&a 'iny iJiharlinn ín í lm. comitvjv so tlie doublé nuaiber of killed eeased to be matter or surprise. By further figuring il, 't appeared that bet ween New Vork and Roehester the Krie raneisrht passender tr;-Jns oach way overy day - sixteen altóle her - aud carried !i daily average of 6,000 persous. This is ubout a milüon in six montlis, the population oí' New York city. Well, the Krie kiil.s froni thirteen lo twenty-three persons ou', of its 1,000,000 in six nionths; and in the same time 13,000 out of New York's 1,000,000 dicd in theirbeds! '"This is appalling," I said. "The dangcr isn't iii traveiling by rail, but in trusüng to thosc deadly beds. I will never sletp in a bed again." I had flgured on considerabiy less than oue-half the length of ttie Erio road. It was plain that the entire road milsl transport nt leMl 1X,UUU Sí 1.000 people every day. There aro many short roads runniDir out of Boston that do fully half as much; a great many such roads. Tuero are many roads scattered abont the Unioa that do a prodigious passenger business, therefoie it was fair to presume Ihat an average of 2,530 passengers a day for each road in the country would be about correct. There are 816 railways in our country, and 84G times 2,500 are 2,115,000. So the railways of America move more than 2,000,000 people every day- 650,000,000 of people a year, without counting Sundays They do that, too thero is no questiön about it - thouirh where they get the raw material is clean beyond the jurisdiction of my arithmetic; for I have htinted the census through and through, and I fïnd that there are not that many people in the United States bya matter of 010, 000,000 at ihe very least. San Francisco is one-eighth as populous as New York; there are GO deaths a weck in tho forraor and 500 a week in the latter- if they havo luck. That is 3,120 deaths a year in San l-'rancisco, and eight timos as many in New York say 25,000 or 26,000. The. health of thetwo places is the saine. So we will let it stand as a fair presumpüon tiiat tliis will hold gooil all over tho country, and tbat eonsequently 25,000 out of evèry million of peoplo we have must die every 3'ear. l'liat amounts to onc-fortieth of our total population One niilüou of us then, die annually. Out of tUs million tenoitwelve thousand are stabbed, shot, drowncd, hanged, poisoned or meet siniilarly violent death insomo other popular vay, sUch as perishing by kerosene lamp and hoop-skirt conilagration, getting tmried in ooal mines, falling off housptops, brcaking through church or lectureroom iloors, taking patent medicines, or eoramitting suicide in other forms. The Erie railway kills from twenly-three ■ to forty-six ; the other 815 raüroads kill an average of one-lhird of a man each ; and the rest of that 1,000,000, 'amountiug in the asrgregate to the appalling iiguro of 1)87, 031 corpses, die naturally in their TJBCtS""! - - - ' Yu will excuse me from taking any moro chances on those beds. The ra.ilroads are good enough f or me. And my advice ló all peoplf. is, don't stay homo any more thau you canhtip; but when you havo got to slay home a while buy a package of those ïnsurauce tickets and sit up nights. You cannot be too cautious. [One can now sec why 1 answercd that ticket agent in the manncr recordcd at the top of this sketch.] ' The moral of this composition is, that thoughtless people grumblo more than is fair aboutrailroad management. When wc consider that every day and night of tho year full ' 14,000 railwav trainsof various kinds, freighted with life and armed with death, go thundering over tho land, tho marvel is, not that thoy kill 300 human beings in a twelfth-month. but that they do not kill ,'iOO times 300.