Prior to that disaster the railroads of Massachusetts had, as a rule, enjoyed a rather exceptional freedom from accidents, and there was every reason to suppose that their regulations were as exact and their system as good as those in use in other parts of the country. Yet it then appeared that in the rules of very few of the Massachusetts roads had any provision, even of the simplest character, been made as to the effect of telegraphic orders, or the course to be pursued by employés in charge of trains on their receipt. The appliances for securing intervals between following trains were marked by a quaint simplicity. They were, indeed, "singularly primitive," as the railroad commissioners on a subsequent occasion described them, when it appeared that on one of the principal roads of the state the interval between two closely following trains was signalled to the engineer of the second train by a station-master's holding up to him as he passed a number of fingers corresponding to the number of minutes since the first train had gone by. For the rest the examination revealed, as the nearest approach to a block system, a queer collection of dials, sand-glasses, green flags, colored lanterns and hand-targets. The climax in the course of that investigation was, however, reached when some reference, involving a description of it, was made to the English block. This was met by a protest on the part of one veteran superintendent, who announced that it might work well under certain circumstances, but for himself he could not be responsible for the operation of a road running the number of trains he had charge of in reliance on any such system. The subject, in fact, was one of which he knew absolutely nothing;--not even that, through the block system and through it alone, fourteen trains were habitually and safely moved under circumstances where he moved one. This occurred in 1871, and though eight years have since elapsed information in regard to the block system is not yet very widely disseminated inside of railroad circles, much less outside of them. It is none the less a necessity of the future. It has got to be understood, and, in some form, it has got to be adopted; for even in America there are limits to the reliance which, when the lives and limbs of many are at stake, can be placed on the "sharp look out" of any class of men, no matter how intelligent they may be.