THE STATION-MASTER OF LONE PRAIRIE.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XVII, Issue 46, 7 March 1890, Page 7

THE STATION-MASTER OF LONE PRAIRIE.

(From the Independent.) (tnnoN pacific b.b., 1880,) An empty bench, a sky of grayest etching, A bare, bleak shed in blackest silhouette, Twelve yards of platform, and, beyond them stretching, Twelve miles of prairie glimmering through the wet, North, South, East, West— the same dull gray persistence , The tattered vapors of a vanished train, The narrowing rails that meet to pierce the distance, Or break the columns of the far-off rain, Naught but myself -nor form nor figure waking The lone-hushed level and stark-shining waste — Nothing that moves to fill the vision aching Where the last shadow fled in sullen baste. Nothing beyond. Ay, yes I From out the station A stiff, gaunt figure thrown against the sky, Beckoning me with some wooden salutation Caught from his signals as the train flashed by ; Fielding ma place beside him with dumb gesture Born of that reticence of eky and air. We eit apart, yet wrapped in that one vesture Of silence, sadness and unspoken care ; Each following his own thought — around us, darkening, The rain-washed boundaries and stretching track ; Each following those dim parrellels acd hearkening For long-lost voices that will not come back ; Until, unasked — I knew not why or wherefore — He yielded, bit by bit, his dreary past, Like gathered clouds that seemed to thicken there for Borne dull down-dropping of their care at last. "Long had he lived there. As a boy has started From the stacked corn the Indian's painted face ; Heard the wolves' howl the wearying wa9te that parted His father's hut from the last camping-place. " Nature had mocked ; thrice had claimed the reaping With scythe of fire of lands he once had sown ; Sent the tornado — round his hearthstone heaping Rafters, dead faces, that were like his own. " Then came the war time. Waen its shadow beckoned He had walked dumbly where the flag had led. Through swamp and fen — unknown, unpraised, unreckonel To famine, fever, and a prison bed. " Till the storm past, and the slow tide returning Cast him a wreck beneath his native eky ; At this lone watch gave him the chanca of earning Scant means to live — who won the right to die." All this I heard— or seemed to hear— half blending With the low murmur of the coming breeze, The call of some lo9t bird and the unending And ceaseless sobbing of those grassy seas. Until at last the spell of desolation Broke witn a trembling star and far off cry. Ihe coming train. I glanced around the station. All is as empty as the upper sky ! Naught but myself — nor form nor figure waking The long-hushed level and Btark-shining wa9te — Naught but myself, that cry, and the dull shaking Of wheel and axle, stopped in breathless haste I " Now, then— look sharp ! Eh, what i The stationmaster 1 lhar's none I We stopped here of our own accord. The man got killed in that down-train disaster This time last evening. Right there. All aboard 1 " — London, England. Bret Hartr

A Catholic priest, Rev. J. Q. Perrault, has been unanimously elected chaplain of the first Legislative Assembly of North Dakota. Patrick Murphy, engine-driver of the train which was dashed into by the runaway excursion train near Armagh last June, died lately from his serious injuries. This makes eighty-eight deaths from the great Armagh railway disaster. Twenty-three summonses have been served in Clonmel on persons who took part in tne late Manchester Martyrs' celebration. A Coercion Court at Bantry, on Saturday, delivered a sentence of fourtgen days' imprisonment in one case for the same " offence," and in two other cases where the defendants pleaded guilty, a rule of bail was imposed.