About a year later, in December, 1865, a similar case occurred which, however, had in it strong elements of the ludicrous. A clergyman, laboring under great indignation and excitement, and without the slightest sense of the ridiculous, recounted his experience in a communication to the _Times_. He had found himself alone in a compartment of an express train in which were also a young lady and a man, both total strangers to him. Shortly after the train started the man began to give unmistakable indications of something wrong. He made no attempt at any violence on either of his fellow passengers, but he was noisy, and presently he proceeded to disrobe himself and otherwise to indulge in antics which were even more indecent than they were extraordinary. The poor clergyman,--a respected incumbent of the established church returning to the bosom of his family,--was in a most distressing situation. At first he attempted remonstrance. This, however, proved worse than unavailing, and there was nothing for it but to have recourse to his umbrella, behind the sheltering cover of which he protected the modesty of the young lady, while over its edges he himself from time to time effected observations through an apparently interminable journey of forty and more miles. These and numerous other cases of fires, murders, assaults and indecencies had occurred and filled the columns of the newspapers, without producing the slightest effect on the managers of the railway companies. No attention was paid by them to the Board of Trade circulars. At last Parliament took the matter up and in 1868 an act was passed, making compulsory some "efficient means of communication between the passenger and the servants of the company in charge" of railroad trains. Yet when six years later in 1874 the Shipton accident occurred, and was thought to be in some degree attributable to the absence of the very means of communication thus made compulsory, it appeared, as has been seen, that the associated general managers did not yet consider any such means of communication either required or likely to be useful. Meanwhile, as if in ironical comment on such measured utterances, occurrences like the following, which took place as recently as the early part of 1878, from time to time still meet the eye in the columns of the English press:--