A train wreck a century and a half ago sent Herman Melville into this eloquent rant: "Two infatuate trains ran pell-mell into each other, and climbed and clawed each other's backs; and one locomotive was found fairly shelled, like a chick, inside of a passenger car in the antagonist train; and near a score of noble hearts, a bride and her groom, and an innocent little infant, were all disembarked into the grim hulk of Charon...Yet what's the use of complaining?... Don't the heavens themselves ordain these things?"
But Melville did not mean the heavens. He was inclined to look for...
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