The Financier Catches an Express Train in the Berkshires
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Special to The New York Times
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PITTSFIELD, Mass., Sept. 8---J. Pierpont Morgan to-day pursued an
express train in an automobile and caught it.
It was the fastest run that has been seen in this vicinity up to date,
and some folk in the Central Berkshires are still speculating as to the
nature of the red streak that flashed down their beautiful roads.
Mr. Morgan has been here as the guest of Charles Lander, and this
afternoon started back to New York to keep an important engagement in
the morning. Mr. Morgan, Mr. Lander, Capt. E. J. Smith of the steamship
Adriatic, and Col. Oswald Latrobe left Mr. Lander's country home in the
auto together to come to the station here. Through a miscalculation they
arrived just in time to see the tail end of the New York Express whirl
round a curve in the distance.
Mr. Morgan's host ran into the station, explained his unfortunate slip
to the agent, John Gleason, and induced him to wire to Lee, twelve miles
away, asking that the train be held up for a couple of minutes at that
point.
On the chance that the request would be acceded to, Mr. Lander rushed
out of the station without waiting for an answer, jumped into the auto,
and told the chauffeur to push it to the last limit of speed for Lee.
Through Pittsfield's ordinarily sedate streets the car rushed at a
forty-mile clip. That was only a preliminary. Fine roads are the rule
thereabout, and the main road to Lenox, along which the flying auto took
its course, is particularly adapted to spectacular automobile
performances. There the $15,000 car was let out to the last notch, and
at sixty miles an hour or more it headed a trail of dust that stretched
away two miles to the rear.
Everybody sat tight, and with horn-blowing and machinery rumbling the
car dashed into Lee, whirled around to the station, and there found the
delayed express train.
It had been waiting for about five minutes. Mr. Morgan, who seemed not
at all disturbed by his perilous dash, climbed from the auto, got on the
train as it pulled out, and waved a goodby to his friends.
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