EVERYBODY'S BUSINESS

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Mountain View, California · May 17, 1905

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 31, No. 20.

EVERYBODY'S BUSINESS.

A WEALTHY man in St. Louis was asked to aid in a series of temperance meetings, but he scornfully refused. Being pressed, he said, "Gentlemen, it is not my business."

A few days later, his wife and two daughters were coming home on the lightning express. In his carriage, with liveried attendants, he rode to the depot, thinking of his business, and planning for the morrow. Hark! Did some one say "Accident"? There are twenty-five railroads centering in St. Louis. If there had been an accident, it was not likely to have occurred on that road. Yet it troubles him. It is his business now. The horses are stopped on the instant, and on inquiry he finds that the accident has occurred twenty-five miles out on that road. He telegraphs to the superintendent:

"I will give $500 for an engine."

The answer flashes back, "No."

"I will give you $1,000 for an engine!"

"A train with surgeons and nurses has already gone forward, and we have no other."

With white face and anxious brow, the man paced the station to and fro. In a half-hour, perhaps, which seemed to him a half-century, the train arrived. He hurried toward it, and in the tender found the mangled bodies and lifeless forms of his wife and one of his daughters. In the car following lay the other daughter, with her dainty ribs crushed in, and her precious life oozing slowly away. Whisky which was drunk fifty miles away by a railroad employee was the cause of the catastrophe. Who dare say of this tremendous question, "It is not my business"? — Selected.