“Don’t be afraid, little fellow,” he said to the timid child. “I’ll take good care of you, all right.”
The sled shot down the incline at a furious speed. Half-way to the bottom it encountered a sharp grade and became unmanageable. The steersman lost control for a moment, and the “bob” darted to the side just as a post loomed up a few paces ahead. Collision was inevitable.
Schumacher’s mind worked quickly, and then, without a thought of consequences to himself, he flung the child from him into a deep snowbank. The next instant the sled hurled itself upon the post, with the steersman still at his place.
The child was picked up, unhurt, and of the seven young persons who sat behind, none were injured beyond a severe shaking up, but the boy in whose hands, for a moment, were the lives of all in the sled lived only a few minutes after the crash. But he had kept his promise to the child, even at the cost of his own life.
There is an old lady living in Harrogate, Tenn., Taylor by name, who, at the age of seventy-five years, is the mother of fifteen children, 108 grandchildren, ninety-six great-grandchildren, and 25 great-great-grandchildren, and she is still as spry as a cricket.
Work on the latest American transcontinental railroad is nearing completion. “Only a few miles remain to link the Canadian Northern railroad from ocean to ocean,” said R. Creelman, general passenger agent of the Canadian Northern, when on a visit in Chicago the other day. “The last gap, north of Kamloops, in British Columbia, is being closed at the rate of nearly three miles a day, and the final linking of the unbroken line of steel from the Atlantic to the Pacific should take place before the end of this month. It still lacks more than four years of a half century since the Union Pacific and the Central Pacific linked the two oceans, forming the first continuous all-rail route across the continent. In 1885 the Canadian Pacific was completed. The Canadian Northern is the latest of the transcontinentals. The line extends from Quebec through Montreal, Ottawa, Toronto, Port Arthur, Winnipeg, Regina, Edmonton, Calgary, to Vancouver. While the main line is approximately 3,100 miles long, from Quebec to Vancouver, feeders increase the mileage of the system to slightly over 9,000, nearly two-thirds of which has been in operation for a number of years.