Was there ever a ship or a rail car, or any other place where danger is possible, that there was not present the man with a sharp nose, slightly red at the tip, whose chief delight seems to be to point out the possibilities of all sorts of disaster, and to do it in the most friendly way? I remember once going down the Hoosac Tunnel before it was finished. I went down, not because I wanted to, (indeed I would have given a farm, if I had had one, to have avoided it,) but it was the thing to do there, and must be done. So with about the feeling that accompanied John Rogers to the stake, I stepped, with others, upon the platform, and down we went. It was a most terrible descent. A hole in the ground eighteen hundred feet deep, and a platform, suspended by a single rope! In my eyes that rope was not larger or stronger than pack-thread. "Is this safe?" I asked of the sharp-nosed man. "Wa'all, yes, I s'pose so. It does break sometimes--did last month and killed eight men. I guess we are all right, though the rope's tollable old and yest'dy they histed out a very heavy ingine and biler, which may hev strained it. Long ways to fall--if she does break!" Cheerful suggestion for people who were fifteen hundred feet from the bottom and couldn't possibly get off. Another time on the Shore Line between Boston and New York, there was an old lady who had never been upon a railroad train before, and who was exceedingly nervous. Behind her sat the sharp-nosed man of that train, who answered all her questions. "Ya'as, railroad travelin' is dangerous. Y'see they git keerless. Only a year ago, they left a draw opened, and a train run into it, and mor'n a hundred passengers wuz drownded." "Merciful heavens!" ejaculated the old lady, in an agony of horror. "We don't go over that bridge." "Yes we do, and we're putty nigh to it now. And the men are jest ez keerless now ez they wuz then. They git keerless. I never travel over this road ef I kin help it." Then he went on and told her of every accident that he could remember, especially those that had occurred upon that road. And the old lady, with her blood frozen by the horrible recitals, sat during the entire trip with her hands grasping tightly the arms of her seat, expecting momentarily to be hurled from the track and torn limb from limb, or to be plunged into the wild waters of the Sound. [Sidenote: TIBBITTS, OF OSHKOSH.] We had the sharp-nosed man with us. His delight was to take timid girls, or nervous women, and explain if the slightest thing should get wrong with the machinery how we should be at the mercy of the waves. For instance, if we should lose our propeller what would happen? Or if any one of the boilers should explode, filling the ship with hot steam, scalding the passengers, or if the main shaft should break, in such a sea as we were then having, or if we should run upon an iceberg, or collide with some floating hulk?