Plano-playing Extraordinary.

Manawatu Standard, Volume IV, Issue 271, 13 October 1884, Page 3

Plano-playing Extraordinary.

. "?' I was loafing round the streets last nighti" said- Jem Nelson, one of the oldest locomotive engineers run— ninginto New Orleans, "and; as I had nothing else to do, 1 dropped into a concert, and heard. a sick-looking Frenchman play a piano m a way that made me feel over m spots- As soon as be sat down on the stool, I knew by the way he handled himself that he understood the machine he was running. He tapped the keys away up one end, just as if they were gauges, and then he wanted to see if he had water enough. Then he looked up, as if he wanted to know how much steam he was carrying, and the next moment he pulled open the throttle and sailed out on the main line as if he was half an hour late. You could hoar her thunder over culverts and bridges, and getting faster and faster, until the fellow rocked about m his seat like a cradle. Somehow I though it was old ' 36' pulling a passenger train, and getting out di the way of a 'special.' (The fellow worked tie keys on the middle division like lightning,' and then he flew along 1 the north end of the line until the drivers went around like i a buzz-saw, and I got excited. About j the lime I was trying" to tell him to cut her off a little, he kicked the dampers under the machine wide open, pulled the throttle- valve way back m the tender, and, Jerusalem} how ho did run. I couldn't stand it any longer, I and yelled to him that he was pounding on the left side, and if he wasn't careful he'd drop his ash-pan. But he did not hear. No one heard me. Everything 1 was flying and whizzing. Telegraph poles on the side of, the track looked like corn stacks, the | trees appeared to be a mud bank, and all the time the exhaust on the old rqachine sounded like the hum of a bumble-bee, r tried to yell out, but my tongue would not move. He went round curves like a bullet/ slipped nn eccentric, blew out his soft plug, went down evades fifty, feet to the mile, and not a confounded brake set. He went by the meeting point at a mile and a hulf a minute, and calling- for more steam. My hair stood up like a cat's tail, because T know the game was up. Suie enough, dead ahead of us was the tail-light of the 'special.' In a daze I hear* l the crash «8 ihey struck, and I saw cars shivered into atoms, people mashed and mangled and bleeding, and gasping for water. I heard another crash as the French professor struck the deep keys away down on

the lower end of the southern division and then I came to my senses. There he was at a dead standstill, with the door of the fire-box of the machine open, wiping the perspiration off his face, and bowing at the people before him. If I live to be a thousand years ' old I'll never forget -the ride that Frenchman gave me on a piano."