The Daily Dispatch: January 18, 1861., [Electronic resource]

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Fatal Omission to see to the bits.

--On Wednesday evening, 2d inst., Franklin Stevens of Salem, New York, drove out with his wife, having a team of young and high-spirited horses. On his return, as he was going down a somewhat steep hill, the horses were frightened by the approach of a team behind and started off at a breakneck speed. In attempting to control them, Mr. Stevens made the discovery for the first time, that they had no bits, and he was utterly powerless. The horses ran at an awful rate until they reached his house, when they made a dash at his gate, but did not enter it, bringing up with force against a hitching post, wheeling, and bounding off to the village, a mile and a half distant, where they brought up in a stable yard. Then Mr. Stevens, for the first time, made the discovery, on turning to congratulate his wife upon their escape, that she sat by his side, a corpse! She had received a violent blow upon the temple, in the contact with the post at the gateway, which instantaneously terminated her existence. She died without a struggle or a groan, and all the fearful subsequent ride Mr. Stevens had taken with her dead body sitting closely against him on a seat!