There was a thrilling incident on the B&O railway bridge that crosses the Auglaize river in Defiance. A number of young girls from the Central School building were on their way to East Defiance to gather wild flowers. They choose to cross on the B&O bridge rather then to walk to the Hopkins Street bridge. All of the young ladies had passed over the bridge but one. She was swing along very leisurely, when suddenly one of the B&O limited passenger trains came roaring down the tracks like a hurricane. There were frantic shrieks from the shore, but it was obvious that the girl could not leave the bridge in time to escape the train. The situation was one that would have tried the nerves of the strongest man. The structure is a lofty affair, all of the braces and trusses being under the track. There are no side rails nothing indeed that a person could catch but the ends of the ties that projected over the sides of the bridge. But it was not a man that was forced to cling like a bird to the side of the structure some thirty or forty feet above the waters of the Auglaize, but a frail maiden, tenderly raised and unused to any such nerve destroying experiences. A man passing in a boat took in the situation at a glance. He instructed the young lady how to place herself and pulled his boat into position to rescue her if she should lose her hold and drop into the river. It was all over in a moment. The girl had scarcely cleared the track and perched upon the end of the cross piece when the train whirled over the bridge like a flash of light. When the trail of smoke that it left behind had cleared away, the young miss again took her place on the track and passed very leisurely to the east shore where she joined her trembling and frighten companions.
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