Sticking Out.
A queer accident it was, but it happened.
In a town near where I am now writing, a freight-car with a broken door was moving rapidly past an express passenger-train going in the other direction. The lurching of the freight threw the swaying door sharply against the side of the passenger-train, and with a swift jerk it was torn from its fastenings, and swung wildly out. It smashed a window of a well-filled coach, and then it took three others in its crashing course, till it was torn completely off.
The tearing noise and the flying glass frightened the occupants of the car. Several women fainted. One woman was taken to the hospital when the train reached Boston. There were some narrow escapes from serious injury. And all because a freight-car door was loose on its hinges.
Ah, my brethren, how many times this strange and most unusual accident is duplicated in the hidden affairs of the soul! For our lives are like express trains, swiftly moving hither and you, on tracks that cross in many intricate ways. It is a wise Signalman, up there in the Tower, that keeps us from colliding!
But sometimes, though we may not collide, our doors get off their hinges, and then look out for the flying glass! "A man of angles," we say, meaning that he sticks out in just this fashion. "Hard to get along with," we say, meaning that we can't move along our track without being struck by some projecting disagreeableness.
My brethren, the longer I live in this mixed-up world, the more convinced I am that a goodly part of the happiness of our mundane existence is due to those comfortable folks that quietly keep themselves largely to themselves, "living and letting live," as the saying goes. They may not push us along our way, but they do let us get smoothly by!