Loses Life But Saves Hundreds

Printed Jan. 1908

Tunnel Track Walker Wins Glory In His Death

New York. — A few laboring men dropped around to Tommy Ryan's house on West Forty-ninth street "to help pack up and move." They took their hats off in the dark hall below and walked up the stairs with muffled feet. In the front room a neighbor's daughter was trying to amuse two pretty babies, one four and the other two years old.

Tom Ryan, big, hearty, good-natured Tom, who loved his wife and children, was not there. He was buried and his two babies were cared for at the home of a neighbor while his friends followed him to the grave. The children do not know he is dead. Neither does his wife, who is sick unto death in a hospital where for four weeks she has been battling with typhoid fever. She thinks that she is so sick that the nurses will not let her see even her husband. And no one, not even the hospital physicians, have yet dared take the responsibility of letting her know the truth.

This story should interest those persons who took the 9 p.m. local train for Westchester county from the Grand Central. Their train went safely through the tunnel, carrying them to their waiting families in the suburbs, but they never knew why. They didn't even know that as they passed the signal lamp at Eighty-sixth street in safety their train had swept over the body of the man who had saved them.

Thomas Ryan had been married about a dozen years. His oldest child had died and six months ago, to give his wife and the remaining children the home he wished, he took the hazardous position of lamp man in the New York Central tunnel. He was a sober, industrious man, six feet in his stockings and perfectly healthy. His day began at 6 p.m. and ended at 7 a.m., and it was his duty to patrol the tunnel and keep the lamps burning on the signal towers.

Two weeks ago his wife was taken ill with typhoid fever, and grew rapidly worse. He told his fellow-workers he feared his wife would die before morning. Nevertheless, he set about his task of seeing that the lamps were all right so that the passengers hurrying home would pass in safety. At 9 p.m. he saw that the distance signal lamp on the outbound track three was smoky. He remembered that several accidents costing human live had happened because of smoky lamps.

He ran across the tracks, dodging a down train and reached up for the signal lamp. With his pocket handkerchief he rubbed the chimney bright and turned down the wick a little. As he did this the lamp swung around in answer to the signal tower man, cautioning the up train to go slow. A down train came tearing through the tunnel, making a great noise and drowning the noise of the approach of a train in the opposite direction. Then he stepped down on the track, conscious that he had probably saved an accident — and the next instant the train hit him.

"The engineer, with his eyes on the signal — as was his duty — did not see the shadow that flickered for an instant under the forward wheels. But the track-walkers, passing a few moments after, found the crumpled mass under the light of their lanterns. They found the handkerchief with the lampblack on it, and saw the finger-marks of the man on the signal lamp chimney, and they understood. The case was reported to the police and entered on the station house blotter.

But it was "just a man killed in the tunnel — a trackwalker or a lampman." It was not till days after that a stray word dropped by a trackwalker revealed that big Tom Ryan had given his life to send a trainload of commuters home in safety.

Faithful Dog Avenges a Policeman

1910

NEW YORK. — Patrolman Lawrence Cummins of the East One Hundred and Fourth street police station, on whose post the car barn gang has its headquarters, was beaten savagely by members of that band and was in the hospital for several weeks.

The first request Cummins made to Capt. Corcoran when he reported again for duty was to be assigned to his old post. He said he wanted to show the toughs that he was not afraid of them and that they could not drive a policeman from his place of duty. Capt. Corcoran took the same view and sent Cummins back.

From the moment he resumed his work the gang annoyed Cummins, hut it was not until the other night that the roughs got a chance to "do him up" again. He found about a dozen of them on the street insulting women who passed.

"Move on," commanded Cummins. But a truck driver, 19 years old, hurled insults at the policeman. Cummins arrested him. The rest of the gang disappeared, Cummins started for the police station with his prisoner, but as they went along there was a call from a roof. The prisoner broke from Cummins and ran into a house. The gang had gone to a roof, torn away the chimney and waited for the policeman and his prisoner. When the signal was given and the prisoner had fled from the firing zone his friends hurled the chimney bricks down at Cummins. After three had struck him on the head he fell unconscious. Men who saw the attack ran to the station. Sgt. Higgins and eight bluecoats raced to the rescue of their comrade.

Twice a week a Dalmatian dog, Bessie, who belongs to truck company No. 26 on One Hundred and Fourteenth street, visits the East One Hundred and Fourth street station, and has a supper at the expense of John Ritter. That night she was there and she went with the rescue squad.

When the men entered the house from which the bricks had been hurled on Cummins the dog went with them. But while the sergeant and his men went to the roof Bessie stopped at the second floor.

Back in a dark corner of the tenement hallway she had caught sight of a man, and, instead of going further, she leaped for him. She got a good grip on his trousers and he could not beat her off. Five minutes afterward the policemen on their way back to the street after a fruitless search, heard a scuffle. They found Bessie still holding on to the man. He was the escaped prisoner.

The Duty of a Woman to be a Lady

1877

Wildness is a thing which girls cannot afford. Delicacy is a thing which cannot be lost and found. No art can restore to the grape its bloom. Familiarity without love, without confidence, without regard, is destructive to all that makes woman exalting and ennobling.

"The World is wide, these things are small,
They may be nothing, but they are all."

Nothing? It is the first duty of a woman to be a lady. Good breeding is good sense. Bad manners in a woman is an immorality. Awkwardness may be ineradicable. Bashfulness is constitutional. Ignorance of etiquette is the result of circumstances. All can be condoned, and do not banish man or woman from the amenities of their kind. But self-possessed, unshrinking and aggressive coarseness of demeanor may be reckoned as a state prison offence, and certainly merits that mild form of punishment called imprisonment for life.

It is a shame for women to be lectured on their manners. It is a bitter shame that they need. Women are the umpires of society. It is they to whom all mooted points should be referred. To be a lady is more than to be a prince. A lady is always in her right inalienably worthy of respect. To a lady prince and peasant alike bow. Do not be restrained. Do not have impulses that need restraint. Do not wish to dance with the prince unsought; feel differently. Be sure that you confer honor. Carry yourselves so lofty that men shall look up to you for reward, not at you in rebuke.

The natural sentiment of man toward woman is reverence. He loses a large means of grace when he is obliged to account her a being to be trained into propriety. A man's ideal is not wounded when a woman fails in worldly wisdom; but if in grace, in tact, in sentiment, in delicacy, in kindness, she should be found wanting, he receives an inward hurt. — Gail Hamilton.