Page:Once a Clown, Always a Clown.djvu/42

ONCE A CLOWN, ALWAYS A CLOWN and the train about to start, when Harris came in search of me to complete the poker game which was to occupy the men of the troupe until we reached Mobile. I protested that I could play poker any time, while this was my first opportunity to ride on an engine. Harris was so insistent that I was needed to complete the game that I gave in and took a hand.

Harris thereby saved my life. An hour and a half later, near State Line station on the Mississippi-Alabama border, our train collided head-on with a freight train in a cut.

The engineer of the passenger was killed, the fireman so burned and mangled that he lost a leg, and all three men in the freight locomotive killed. The freight-engine crew were drunk on Christmas cheer, it developed, and ran by a signal at State Line, where we were to pass.

Other than cuts and bruises, the passengers escaped, but the most of them huddled together in shock and bewilderment. The one doctor who chanced to be on the train did his utmost, the rest was left largely to us actors, but a troupe that had just finished with a Christmas Eve performance such as that was alert for any emergency. I remember Georgie Drew Barrymore laying her new and costly fur-lined circular under