Bright was the morn, and happy rose poor Port; Gay on the train he used his wonted sport. Ere noon arrived his mangled form they bore With pain distorted and overwhelmed with gore. When evening came and closed the fatal day, A mutilated corpse the sufferer lay.” AN ENGINE-DRIVER’S EPITAPH. In the cemetery at Alton, Illinois, there is a tombstone bearing the following inscription:— “My engine is now cold and still. No water does my boiler fill. My coke affords its flame no more, My days of usefulness are o’er; My wheels deny their noted speed, No more my guiding hand they heed; My whistle—it has lost its tone, Its shrill and thrilling sound is gone; My valves are now thrown open wide, My flanges all refuse to glide; My clacks—alas! though once so strong, Refuse their aid in the busy throng; No more I feel each urging breath, My steam is now condensed in death; Life’s railway o’er, each station past, In death I’m stopped, and rest at last.” This epitaph was written by an engineer on the old Chicago and Mississippi Railroad, who was fatally injured by an accident on the road; and while he lay awaiting the death which he knew to be inevitable, he wrote the lines which are engraved upon his tombstone. TRAFFIC-TAKING. Between the years 1836 and 1839, when there were many railway acts applied for, traffic-taking became a lucrative calling. It was necessary that some approximate estimate should be made as to the income which the lines might be expected to yield. Arithmeticians, who calculated traffic receipts, were to be found to prove what promoters of railways required to satisfy shareholders and Parliamentary Committees. The Eastern Counties Railway was estimated to pay a dividend of 23½ per cent.; the London and Cambridge, 14½ per cent.; the Sheffield and Manchester, 18½ per cent. One shareholder of this company was so sanguine as to the success of the line that in a letter to the _Railway Magazine_ he calculated on a dividend of 80 per cent. Bitter indeed must have been the disappointment of those railway shareholders who pinned their faith to the estimates of traffic-takers, when instead of receiving large dividends, little was received, and in some instances the lines paid no dividend at all. MONEY LOST AND FOUND.