Springfield Republican

Hitching The Cussed Thing.—The New Hampshire Register gives the following account of an incident on the New Haven and Hartford Road, soon after it went into operation. The train stopped at Meriden to wood up, and a fidgety gentleman, who was probably for the first time in his life in a railroad car, and who held on to his seat with both hands from the moment the cars left Hartford, looking as though he expected every moment to be shook out of the window, suddenly stepped out on the platform and took a rapid look at the locomotive.

"Anything the matter?" inquired a wag who had greatly enjoyed the countryman's perturbation. "Anything the matter! I should think there was something the matter, if you ever noticed it! Why they've stopped right in the middle of the road, and hain't hitched the cussed thing! Spose it should start! hey? I guess some of us 'ud be in the kingdom come afore night!" A roar of laughter from the passengers in no wise altered the man's views of the superior safety of his position—"in case the cussed thing should start!"