THE
RAILWAY HOG.
A
True Story of How His Impoliteness Was Rebuked
Maj.
J. W. Sparks, the genial Senator from Rutherford, again comes to the front in
an amusing yet tragic episode.
Two
or three nights ago the Major was a passenger on the train bound for
Chattanooga, returning to Murfreesboro from a visit to this city. The car was
crowded, but Mr. Sparks’ keen eye soon discovered as he progressed along the
aisle what he doubtless considered a favorable opening. An individual, who
would by some extremists have been considered a hog of the human species, lay
spread across two seats, with his luggage on a third.
“Is
this seat engaged?” queried the Major, pointing to the seat upon whose plush
covering the stranger’s pedal extremities were extended.
The
stranger answered not a word, but gave a surprised and insolent stare at the
questioner.
The
Senator without more delay jerked the seat over, probably severely abrading the
stranger’s shin-plasters.
“By
G-d, sir,” yelled the stranger as he violently threw the seat back to its
former position and poked a revolver into the Senator’s glowing countenance, “I’m
from New York.”
“And
I,” retorted the Senator as he knocked up the New Yorker’s pistol, “am from
Texas, more recently from Tennessee.” As he spoke, he shot his right fist into
the stranger’s left optic, and knocking him against the window-pane shattered
the glass. The stranger’s head went through the opening thus made and the irate
Tennessean was about to throw the Yorker out the car when friends persuaded him
to desist.
The
train ran into Lavergne and the stranger grabbing his grip and leaving his hat
jumped off the platform and evidently fearing mob law disappeared in the
darkness. The last view of the gentleman from New York was secured as that
individual fled like one of the Major’s razor-backs across the uplands of
Rutherford County in the vicinity of Lavergne. He turned up a day later in
Chattanooga where he bought a hat and ticket North.
From the Nashville Tennessean (17 November 1889)
No comments:
Post a Comment