exact character of the communication, with a
view, no doubt, of satisfying himself that, in
acting on the order of the electric telegraph,
he was not exceeding his duty. Perplexed
as to the proper course to be adopted, the
sheriff, in his trepidation, commenced by
electric telegraph a correspondence with the
Home Office, to the effect that he waited for
further orders. Two hours and a half elapsed,
when a second order was received per
telegraph, instructing the sheriff at once to
proceed, and carry the sentence of the law into
effect. The order was to be forwarded from
the London Bridge station of the South
Eastern Railway; but here the telegraph
clerk appealed to the railway officers, to know
whether the authority for sending such a
message was sufficient. The Chairman of the
Company was at hand at the time, and
expressed himself not satisfied with it, requiring
further proof of its authenticity before allowing
the telegraph to be the messenger of
death. Accordingly, the superintendent, at
once drove over to the Home Office to obtain
the necessary proof, and stated to Sir Denis
Le Marchant, that in a matter involving such
consequences, it became his duty to have a
written order, and that without evidence of
this kind, the railway authorities would not
be justified in instructing the sheriff. The
Home Office authorities at once saw the
reasonableness of the request; a written paper
was signed, the message sent, and the man
was executed."

But, the tales are not all of a tragic cast.
''One day, some accidents on the railway had
created much uneasiness, and gave to every
want of punctuality an alarming aspect. The
officers of the station were heard to mutter
their 'wonder where the down train was.'
Eyes were stretched to their utmost, but no
sign of the train. All at once, there was a
loud tingle of the telegraph bell—sudden
thoughts of a terrible collision crossed all
minds—the officer of the station ran in, and
took his place before the telegraph, with his
back to the anxious passengers in waiting,
who, stretching their necks across the counter,
gazed with amazement at the mysterious
needle. There was a moment's pause, when
the officer turned round, and gravely said—
'They want a pound's worth of coppers at the
— station! ' There was a sudden laugh
and a buzz, in the midst of which a shrill
whistle announced the coming train."

The greater part of the despatches sent by
this wonderful invention, in England relate,
we believe, to occasions of disaster and
surprise. During the prevalence of the
cholera, for example, they related principally
to sudden sickness and death. Its greater
general use in America has lately been the
subject of interesting discussion; but the
immense distances at which persons engaged
in commerce are often apart, in that country,
and the time required for the despatch and
receipt of the fleetest Post in such cases,
afford an obvious reason for its use there
which does not exist in this Island. On the
question of cheapness, it must be remembered
that both wood and land are greatly cheaper
in the United States than in England, and
that these important items in the cost of
construction are necessarily low across the
Atlantic. The question of the relative
degrees of speed in the transmission of so many
hundreds or thousands of words, can only be
settled on very accurate evidence. We have
a great regard for our Brother Jonathan, but
we cannot forget that the virtue of
patriotism (which he possesses in a very high
degree) occasionally inclines him to statements
on such points a little resembling the
preliminary announcements of that famous
American steam-ship which was to arrive in
Liverpool the day before it left New York.

A COAL MINER'S EVIDENCE.

THE common scene of action for our mortal
enemy, Death, in all his manifold shapes,
whether of deep grief, slow pain, sudden
terror, or prolonged and gentle decay, is upon
the open face and fabric of our mother earth;
but every now and then we are startled by
the intelligence of some dreadful loss of life,
a loss even of numbers, from a blow dealt in
the darkness of many hundred feet beneath
the ground. The details of one of the last of
these frightful events,—together with some
previous accidents of a similar kind in South
Staffordshire and North Durham, we are
enabled to lay before our readers in the words
of a miner, as related by himself. He was in
the pit at the time of the recent explosion.
We only omit such technical terms and local
phraseology as would be unintelligible; the
rest is all in his own language.

"I am a coal miner, as you see, and have
been all my life. I was one o'them as had
the providential escape from the Sloughton
Colliery explosion, which all the newspapers,
I'm told, are a-talking about just now. They
may talk with good cause, but they don't
know, and cannot know, what we suffered, in
our minds more than our bodies,—we as
survived to escape. I pray to my God night and
day—and I am not much used to praying,
neither—that I may never again go through
such a scene as that night was. Many a man
prayed then, who had never thought of it
much since he was by his mother's knee.

"Now I shall tell you what happened to us
then, as well as I can; for it was a dark and
smoky business, you know, and not long
a-doing, till we got walled up in the ruin;
and also, if you please to hear me begin my
life a bit, of some things of the same kind
that have happened to me afore. These
explosions are nothing new to me. I have
been all my life a miner, man and boy, now
these two-and-forty year: first at Bilston,
and now here in Durham. I must tell you all