The Hero of the Jersey Express

The young man you met at the gate, sir? Yes, that is my son—my boy Jack. He was a railroad man through and through. When the Jersey express was forced to make up time, they were hitting sixty miles an hour. Then, the great connecting-rod of the driving-wheel broke, shattering the cab and leaving Jack scalded and torn. Despite his agony, he remembered the passengers—the men reading, the women with babies, the happy couples. He crawled back to his post, reversed the engine, and put on the air-brake. The train stopped, snatched back from the pit's mouth. Later, at a great meeting of the road-folk, the community cheered him and a child presented him with a purse of gold. Jack refused the money, asking instead that it be given to the widow and children of a brakeman who had been killed the week before.