The Spectral Dog

A Tribune reporter was sitting on one of the seats on the Battory promenade recently when a well dressed wornan passed leading by a strap a snow white Spitz dog. A man dressed in the rough garb of a laborer sat on the seat next to the reporter, smoking a short stemmed cob pipe. "Talking about strange things," said the laborer, nudging the news gatherer, "I never seo a white dog but what it calis up a stiange experience I had white firing on the Pennsylvania railroad ten years ago. I was in the cab with Tommy Burns, one of the best engineers in the company's service, and our run was between Jersey City and Philadelphia. We left Jersey City at 9 o'clock one Saturday evening, puiling a long train of passenger, coaches and three Pullmans. The cara were all full and we had the right of way, aiaking no stops except at Market street, Newark, and Trenton. We rolled along all right over the Hackensack meadows and af ter we left Newark we struck a sixty miles an hour pace, and watched the telegraph poles flash bv till they looked like the teeth of a fine footh comb. BURNS SEES THE SPOOK DOG. "We had struck the plain at Princeton Junction when Burns, who was looking out of the cab window, says to me: " 'Look-a-here Jack! There is a white dog runnin' alongside what's been followin' us for five minutes and blamed if ho air 't keepin' up to the injine. Look athim.' "I was shoveling coal in tho f urnace at the time and the heat was blistering my eye balls in their sockets. It took me some time after gazing out of the window before I could make out the dog. Finally I saw him skimming along like a swaÜow. No%v in the glare from the window he could be plainly seen, then lie would get out in the line of the darkness i.nii we would lose sight of him. But 1)3 would be sure to show up again in a few minutes. Ditches, cuts and sharp bends, it was all the same, that white dog stuck beside the cab as steady as its shadow. Burns and I couldn't make it out. First we thought our eyesight was deceiving us, for the awful heat from the furnace, the sharp wind or something else, or all of these things put together, is terribly trying on one's eyes who has to use them in an engine cab. Tho sight gets blurred and cloudy, and sometimes you see doublé, and sometimes yon don't see half. Well, Burns and I thought at first we were f ooled by our eyes and there couldn't be any dog. But mile after milethat white dog was alongside. "'Jack,' sa y s Burns all at once, 'this is more'n I kin stand. If our eyes ain't mussed up there's sometliing wrong somewhere. I am agoin' to stop her.' THE HEAVY STOXE ON THE TRACK. "Sure enough he stopped and we both got olï the cab. The conductor carne running up and wanted to know what in the blue blazes was the matter. We told him about the white dog running alongside tho engine, and we looked about to show him tho blamed animal. But to our surprise there was no dog to be seen, and hunt high and hunt low we could not find him. The conductor laughed at us, and Burns and I got aboard again thinking that after all our eyes might have fooled us. Burns pulled back the throttle and we started on slowly. There was a curving cut just anead oí us. r ífty yards from it, bef ore the wheels had fairly begun to revolve good, the headlight flashing on the track before us showed us a rock that must have weighed two tons on our track. We stopped the engine with the cowcatcher not twelve inches from the stone, which, loosened by rains, had rolled down from the back. Had we not stopped on account of that white dog we would have etruck it on full headway, and you can see wliat that would have neant. I got shaky soon after that and resigned, and the very menlion of a white dog, much less the sight of one, bringa that strange ride back to me. -