The _Indianapolis News_ is responsible for the following story. A railroad official of Indianapolis had, among other passes, one purporting to carry him freely over the Warren and Tonawanda Narrow-Gauge Railway. Happening to be near Warren, he thought he would use this pass. Now, it appears that some enterprising citizens of Pennsylvania once proposed to lay a pipe-line for petroleum between Warren and Tonawanda. The Legislature having refused to sanction their scheme, they “engineered” a bill for building a narrow-gauge line, which passed, the oil capitalists not conceiving that they had any interest in opposing it. It is needless to say the narrow-gauge line was the “desiderated pipe-line.” The enterprising citizens carried their joke so far as to issue annual passes over the road, receiving others in return. When the traveller sought for the Warren station on this line he found a chimney, and for the narrow-gauge an iron-lined hole in the ground. It is hardly surprising that now he is moved to anger at the slightest reference to the “Warren and Tonawanda Narrow Gauge.” AT FAULT. It is rather a serious matter that our public companies, and especially our railway companies, are doing their best to degrade our language. I am not going to be squeamish and object strongly to the use of the word _Metropolitan_, though I think it indefensible. Still, it is too bad of them to persist in using the word _bye-laws_ for _by-laws_—so establishing solidly a shocking error. The word _bye_ has no existence in England except as short for _be with you_, in the phrase _Good-bye_. The so called by-laws are simple laws by the other laws, and have nothing to do with any form of salutation. In a bill of the Great Western Railway I find the announcement that tickets obtained in London on any day from December 20th to 24th will be available for use on _either_ of those days—this _either_ meaning the five days from the 20th December to the 24th inclusive. Either of five! After this I am not surprised that, in a contribution of my own to a daily paper, the editor gravely altered the phrase _the last-named_, applied to one of three people, to _latter_. In a railway advertisement I read a day or two ago, “From whence.” Now, what is the good of such fine words as _whence_ and _thence_ if they are thus to be ill-used? Surely the railway companies might have some one capable of seeing that their grammar has some pretence to correctness. —_Gentleman’s Magazine_. A WIDOW’S CLAIM FOR COMPENSATION.