“Now you kids listen to me,” Harry said, “and don’t fall off the railing—especially Pirate Harris.” He said that, because we were all sitting along the railing of the porch. He was sitting in a wicker chair, tilted back, and his feet stuck up on the railing.

“When I was in the city to-day,” he said, “I went into the big library situated in the dark morass on Fifth Avenue. Groping my way along its dark passages, I escaped the savage bookworms and ferocious authors who frequent its silent lairs, and made my way unobserved to the underground cave where the newspaper files are. Shh!

“There I examined the New York Chronicle of March eighth and ninth and tenth, eighteen ninety-five. You remember that old Hickory wrote his letter on March seventh? Well, here’s a sort of condensed version of a newspaper article that I found. Don’t fall backward Pee-wee, or you’ll go plunk into the rose bush. Now listen.”

New York Chronicle

Harry took out some pages in lead pencil writing and read them to us. This is what he read, because he gave me the pages afterward and I pasted them in our troop-book:

CANADIAN SPECIAL WRECKED

NEAR BORDER.

FATAL DISASTER FOLLOWS HOLD-UP.

A fatal accident occurred yesterday morning to train number 37 of the Canadian Grand Valley Railroad, when the bridge south of Steuben collapsed with the locomotive and four cars which fell in a mass of wreckage into the deep gully which the bridge spanned. It is supposed that the old fashioned trestle of wood had been weakened by the charring effect of the forest fires which had devastated the immediate neighborhood. Engineers are endeavoring to determine the exact cause with the view to fixing responsibility.

Two cars at the end of the train were not yet upon the bridge when the fatal plunge occurred and while the first of these hung in a precarious position, the brakeman and passengers of the last car had the presence of mind to release the coupling before the last car of the train was dragged into the chasm of the burning wreckage below. Several of the passengers of this last car, however, were in the car ahead at the time of the disaster and lost their lives.

A wrecking crew with physicians and nurses was immediately dispatched from Watertown, the nearest place of any size, but as yet, no survivor has been found amid the charred wreckage, and it 

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