AN APPALLING EXPERIENCE.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXII, Issue 7270, 7 March 1885, Page 2 (Supplement)

AN APPALLING EXPERIENCE.

A correspondent sende the following to the Daily Telegraph, -which he duly authenticates : A yoang man, whose name, at his own modest request, i 3 suppressed, a few evenings since was riding in a third-class carriage on the Metropolitan Railway. There were other passengers in the same compartment when he entered it, but they alighted, leaving him alone. Scarcely, however had the train made another start when he observed beneath the seat at the further end, and on the side opposite, something on the floor that he at first thought wa3 an article of luggage inadvertently left behind by a passenger. The object was apparently made of zinc, its eize being about 20 inches long, 8 inches or i) inches wide, and about 5 inches deep. It was flat-bottomed, and rounded on the top, and at one end there was a projecting brass cap. The conclusion at once arrived at by the young fellow was that it was an " infeyial machine" of formidable dimensions, and, no doubt, of terrific destructive power, that had been deposited there by some villain, and " timed" probably to explode at a point on the line—perhaps beneath a tunnel—where it might do most damage. His first impulse naturally was to put as much space as possible between himself and the horrible engine of death and destruction as speedily as he could. It wss a desperate predicament, but a nobler sentiment speedily eclipsed fears for his own personal safety. It would mitigate., the mischief, at all events, if he cast tne metal box out of the window. Nerving himself for a critical exploit, he approached the diabolical contriv»nce, and laid hands on it, but immediately started back. The zinc outer casing was qnite warm. To his more heated imagination the clockwork within had nearly fulfilled its function, which was to ignite the thundering charge, and any moment might now be the fatal one. Daunted fora long space he fell back from the dread thing ; but again his better nature prevailed, and, witb sensations he would never forget, he caught it up in both his hands and launched it out of the carriage window at the very instant when a station was reached. With a thud it landed actually on the platform, and in a twinkling active porters came rushing up, and the young man, who leapt out of the carriage, found himself surrounded and peremptory questioned as to what he meant by such conduct. "White and incoherent, he could only ejaculate, " Mesn by it! Don't you see what it is?" " Why, of course. Anybody can see what it is. It is a foot-warmer." Under different circumstances such a flagrant offence would very properly have been seriously dealt with, but it was unmistakable, from the youth's bewildered and agitated state, that what he had done was in perfect good faith. He protested he had never before seen a railway carriage foot-warmer, and what he had recently heard and read of Fenian outrages on railways and elsewhere, together with the shape and make of their murderous contrivances, had led him into the mistake.