Page 219 - The model orator, or, Young folks' speaker : containing the choicest recitations and readings from the best authors for schools, public entertainments, social gatherings, Sunday schools, etc. : including recitals in prose and verse ...

IN THE SIGNAL BOX.
[A station master's thrilling-story. 1
T T "ESs it’s a quid. station, but it suits me well enough ;
I 1 want a bit of the smooth now, for I've had my share o’ rough.
This berth that the company gave me they gave as the work
was light;
I was never fit for the signals after one awful night,
I'd been in the box from a youngster, and I never felt the strain
Of the lives at my right hand’s mercy in every passing train.
One flay there was something happened, and li made my nerves go
queer,
And it’s all through that as vou find me the station master here,
r-
I was on the box down yonder-— that's where we turn the mails,
And sped tils, and fast expresses on to the centre rails ;
The side's for the other traffic— die luggage and local slows;
It was rare hard work at Christmas when double the traffic grows.
I've been in the box down yonder nigh sixteen hours a day,
Till my eyes grew dim and heavy, and my thoughts were ail astray;
But I'Ve worked the points half sleeping—-and once I slept outright,
Ti!l die roar of the limited woke me, and I nearly died with fright.

Then I thought of the iives in peril andwlia!: might have been their fa\c
Had I sprung to the points that evening a tenth of a tick too late;
And a cold and ghastly shiver ran icily through my frame
As I fancied the public clamor, the trial and hitter shame.
I could see the bloody wreckage— I could see the mangled slain—
And the picture was seared forever, blood-red, on my heated brain.
That moment my nerve was shattered, lor I couldn't shut out the
thought
Of the lives I held in my keeping and the ruin that might be wrought.

That night in our little cottage, as I kissed our steeping child,
My wile looked up from her sewing and told me, as she smiled,