Not very far from the above spot, on the western side of the mountains, where the grades are particularly steep, an accident occurred a few years ago which had more of the comic element than the serious. A train, proceeding at a rapid rate, broke in two, the locomotive and several carriages dashing on, while the second half of the train followed at slower speed. At length the foremost car of this part of the train left the rails, and breaking off from the couplings, turned bottom upwards on the embankment, just coming to an anchor at the edge of a ravine, into which, had it fallen, no one could have been saved. A husband of Falstaffian proportions was in one of the foremost carriages which had proceeded with the locomotive, and as soon as they stopped he scrambled off, running back to the scene of the accident, hurrying and stumbling and shinning himself on and over the rough roadway and obtrusive sleepers, for his wife was in one of the hindmost cars, and he feared the worst. At last he approached the wreck, where his wife was seen standing, calmly waving a handkerchief, she having climbed out through one of the windows, almost unhurt. She had just been tending the one damaged person of the whole number. That individual, in his anxiety to grasp something as the carriage overturned, had seized on the hot stove, and was badly, though not seriously, burned. Not altogether a nuisance is an institution inseparably connected with American trains—the peripatetic boy who offers you one minute a newspaper, the next a novel, and then anything from a cigar or a box of sweetmeats to a “prize package.” These latter are of all values, from a twenty‐five cent package of stationery to a bound book at a dollar and a half, about one in a hundred of which may possibly contain a money prize. The writer had been a good customer as regards paper‐covered novels, and his plan was to sell the books back at half‐price, then purchasing a new story, and this, of course, suited the boys well enough. In consequence of these and other purchases, he was one day allowed to win a five‐dollar “greenback” in a prize package. He was somewhat annoyed afterwards to find that he had been used really as the “decoy duck.” The news of his winnings flew through the carriage, and even through the train, and the enterprising youngster soon sold a dozen or so of the same packages, and, it may be added, the same number of purchasers. There were no more prizes that day! [Illustration: ON THE PACIFIC RAILWAY: A SCENE IN THE SIERRA NEVADA MOUNTAINS.]