I have no mind to linger on the details of disasters such as this; or of the one at Forest Lawn a little later when a suburban passenger-train bound into Rochester was in a fearful rear-end collision with the delayed west-bound White Mountain and more lives were sacrificed. The Rome road, as a rule, had a fairly clean record on wrecks, on disastrous ones at any rate. There was in 1887 a wretched rear-end collision just opposite the passenger depot at Canton, which cost two or three lives and made Conductor Omar A. Hine decide that he had had quite enough of active railroading. And shortly before this there had been a more fortunate, yet decidedly embarrassing affair down on the old Black River near Glenfield; the breaking of a side-rod upon a locomotive which killed the engineer and seriously delayed a distinguished passenger on his way to the Thousand Islands--Grover Cleveland, then President of the United States, was taking his bride for a little outing upon the shores of the St. Lawrence River. A few years later Theodore Roosevelt, in the same post, was to ride up over that nice picturesque stretch of line. Yet was to see far less of it than his predecessor had seen. At Utica he had accepted with avidity the Superintendent's invitation to ride in the engine-cab of his special. He swung himself quickly up into it. Then reached into his pocket, produced a small leather-bound book and had a bully time--reading all the way to Watertown. One more wreck invites our attention, and then we are done with this forever grewsome side of railroading: This last a spectacular affair, if you please, more so even than that dire business back to Carlyon. The Barnum & Bailey circus was a pretty regular annual visitor to Northern New York in those days. It began coming in 1873 and for more than a quarter of a century thereafter it hardly missed a season--generally playing Oswego (where once the tent blew down, during the afternoon performance, and there was a genuine panic), Watertown and Ogdensburgh. In this particular summer week, the show had gone from Watertown to Gouverneur, where it violated its tradition and abandoned the evening performance in order that it might promptly entrain for the long haul to Montreal where it was due to play upon the morrow.