eight o'clock
A commercial traveler , on the 7.50 train -LRB- arriving at 10.01 , that day -RRB- , having lost a big order through missing an appointment , told the `` Clarion '' about it . A contractor 's agent , gazing from the windows of the stalled `` Limited '' out upon `` fresh woods and pastures new '' twenty miles short of Worthington , what time he should have been at a committee meeting of the Council , forfeited a $ 10,000 contract and rushed violently into `` Clarion '' print , breathing slaughter and law-suits . Judge Abner Halloway and family , arriving at the New York pier in a speeding taxi from the Eastern Express -LRB- five hours late out of Worthington -RRB- , just in time to see the Lusitania take his forwarded baggage for a pleasant outing in Europe , hired a stenographer -LRB- male -RRB- to tell the `` Clarion '' what he thought of the matter , in words of seven syllables . Professor Beeton Trachs , the globe-trotting lecturer , who arrived via the `` M. and M. '' for an eight o'clock appearance , at 9.54 , gave the `` Clarion '' an interview proper to the occasion of having to abjure a $ 200 guaranty , wherein the mildest and most judicial opinion expressed by Professor Trachs was that crawling through a tropical jungle on all fours was speed , and being hurtled down a mountain on the bosom of a landslide , comfort , compared to travel on the `` Mid and Mud . '' All these and many similar experiences , the `` Clarion '' published in its `` News of the M. and M. '' column . It headed them , `` Stories of Survivors . '' For six weeks the railroad endured the proddings of ridicule .