Page:The Strand Magazine (Volume 4).djvu/108

 the high tower on Bunker's Hill, and then, with his eyes closed and the box firmly clasped in his arms, he threw himself down, down, down to death.

From New York to Toronto, and from the Niagara Falls to Cleveland, all good railway men revere the memory of Bill Erie.

The trunk did not break in the terrible fall that killed poor Bill. After his death, the secret came out. You see, Sam Slutters, the next best trunk-smasher on the line (who was a mean skunk, for all his good qualities) had a great jealousy of Bill. So he just put that box in his way after he had filled it tight full with sandwiches and buns from an English railway refreshment room, and riveted the sides firmly to the adamantine contents.

Nobody could do anything with that box, so they put a brass plate on it and stuck it over Bill's head by way of a gravestone. On the brass plate the following epitaph (adapted from the Greek of Thermopylæ) has been engraved:—

"Passer-by, tell Vanderbilt, the king of the railroads of the New World, that Bill Erie died to avenge the honour of the Railway Company."