Decatur Democrat, Volume 43, Number 36, Decatur, Adams County, 16 November 1899 — Page 8

lie Grem it* Cyclone. By W. L ALDEN. [Copyright, 18D9, by W. L. Alden.J “Yea, sir,” remarked the landlord, ss he sat fanning himself on the veranda of the Middleville hotel, "as yon say. this town has sprung np like a mushroom in the night. Why, only five years ago there were only two houses here, and now we have the biggest population of any town in northern Minnesota. The two houses were pretty small ones too. Mine stood just where this hotel is standing, and it was nothing more than a one story, two roomed shanty. Captain Martin ’3 house, which generally stood on a knoll about a quarter of a mile from here, wasn’t much bigger ” “What do yon mean when you say that your neighbor's house generally stood on a knoll?” I asked. “Wasn’t it in the habit of staying in the same place?” “Why. what with cyclones and cloudbursts, and one thing and another, that there house did do considerable traveling while it was in this section. What became of it after it left here I can’t precisely say, but I rather think it made its last journey when it went down to West Antioch. It was a curious sort of house, being put together with ropes instead of nails, which was probably one reason why it lasted as long as it did. “You see,” continued the landlord, “I was the first settler here. I took up a quarter section of land, and with the help of two mules and a Norwegian, I put np my house and went to farming About six months later, along comes Captain Martin, and allows that he will farm the quarter section next to me. He was a man about 60 years old, who had been a seafaring man all his days, and, like most seafaring men, he wanted to be a farmer, though he didn’t know beans from a bull’s foot. First along I thought he was a sociable sort of old chap, and he and me used to spend our evenings together. But I found out that he wouldn't take any advice, and when i told him that he was a blamed fool for building a house on a knoll in a country where cyclones were almost as common as snakes, he got mad and dropped my acquaintance. He was as touchy as he was opinionated. which is saying a good deal. “Well, he built his house with the help of a couple of men from Lucullus. which at that time was the nearest settlement to ns. and was considered to be seven miles from here, though now that Middleville has grown clear up to the southern boundary of Lucullus. it don’t seem to be so far away I told you that Martin's house was put together with rope lashings The captain said that no land carpenter knew how to build a bouse, and that he hadn’t any confidence in nails, and didn't consider them shipshape His house was mnch the same thing as mine, except that it bad a veranda on one side, where the captain used to walk up and down and look at things through a telescope. “Between my land and Martin’s there was the highroad, though at that time it wasn't often that anybody passed over it. and by the side of the road and just at the foot of the captain's knoll ran the Pomponocsuc river It don't look much like a river at this time of year, and yon could jump across it most anywhere, bnt just you wait till the spring freshets set in and you’ll admit that it is right smart of a stream I've known half a dozen men —sober men too —to be drowned in the Pomponoosnc. which is more than the Lucullus people can say for their miserable little river One of the last things that I said to the captain before he and me had a coolness was that he had better dig a cyclone pit You know what that is, 1 suppose No? Well, then. I’ll tell you. It’s just a hole in the ground about six feet deep, covered with a trapdoor When you see a cyclone coming, you get into your cyclone pit and shut the door until the trouble is over It’s the only safe way, for if you stay in your house you’re liable to be crushed to death, and if you stay outdoors the cyclone will pick you up and carry you to kingdom come. But old Martin wouldn’t hear of digging a pit He allowed that if a cyclone did come he calculated to be on deck and see it out. He said it was all very well for me to skulk down below, seeing as 1 was only a landsman, but that he considered that the quarter deck was the proper place for him in bad weather. I made my cyclone pit nearly opposite his house and close to the road, for I calculated to use it as a handy place for keeping shovels and spades and rakes and such and saving the trouble of bringing them up to the house. Captain Martin used toeneer a good deal at jny pit and called it a ‘glory hole,' which I considered to be irreligious, as well as ncgentlemanly However, the day came when he would have been mighty glad to have a cyclone pit and to be able to climb down into it without my knowledge “The captain hadn’t been living in his new house above six months when the great cyclone of 1887 came along, and 1 don’t doubt that you have heard of it It was about 10 o’clock of the morning and it was at least 20 degrees hotter than it is today, though it was only the middle of June, instead of the middle of August There wasn’t a breath of air stirring, and the sky had a sort of greasy, coppery look, that made you feel sort of suffocated just to look at it.. The mules and the Norwegian were lying under a tree down in the sorghum field, and I was making a pretense of weeding my onion bed, though 1 didn't make much headway with it I happened to turn round, and there in the northwest was a little patch of cloud, which I was glad to see, thinking as 1 did that perhaps it might mean rain But while I was looking at it I could see it was spreading as fast as a gallon of petroleum

would spread if you dumped it into a mill pond. In a few minutes pretty near one-half the sky was covered with a cloud that was as black as Pittsburg coal smoke. The way it spread reminded me of a parcel of men laying a carpet on the stage of a. theater You could see the upper edge of the cloud rolling over and over in great thick masses. All of a sudden a light breeze sprang np that blew directly toward the quarter where the cloud came from, and I knew then that we were going to have a big storm and that the wind was drawing toward it. The next thing I saw was a sort of fnnnel that seemed to drop from the middle of the cloud The lower end kept twisting and sqnirming like the tail of a snake when yon’ve got yonr boot heel on its head I didn’t wait any longer, but I just dropped my boe and made a bolt for my cyclone pit. There’s no mistaking what that fnnnel meant. There was the biggest kind of a cyclone on its way. and it was coming straight for me. I WB3 not on speaking terms with the captain then, but as I came near his house and saw him standing on his veranda and lashing himself to one of the posts with a rope. I sung out to him to come with me if he valued his life He only said, in a mighty cool and condescending way, ‘I don’t remember asking you for any advice, my man.' That made me so mad that I didn't waste any more time or breath on him, bnt lifted the cover off my pit, jumped into it without stopping to use the ladder and pulled the cover on again. “By this time the cyclone was making itself heard. First there was a low, rumbling sort of sound, like a railroad train makes when it i 9 a good way off. It grew louder and louder, till it got to be a kind of shrieking roar, like a hundred big church organs mixed up with a dozen or two steam whistles. It was as black as night in that pit, except when the lightning flashed, for there is always more or less lightning playing around the funnel of a cyclone. It seems as if no expense was spared in making a cyclone as various and entertaining as possible. Just when the roaring was at its loudest there came an awful crash that made the earth shake, and then the sound began to weaken, and in a few minutes it had died away, and the place was as still as a man's bouse when he comes back to it from his wife’s funeral.

“ ‘So far. so good I' says I to myself ‘Now I'll clamber out and see if there is anything left of my house and the mules and the Norwegian.' Bnt when I tried to lift up the cover of the pit 1 could stir it only a few inches, and that didn’t let in any light 1 couldn't understand what this meant; bnt. being a smoker, of course I had my matches with me. So I struck a light and investigated. I found that there was a sort of hoard flooring above the cover of the pit which prevented me from lifting it. and consequently I knew that the cyclone had dropped something just over my head. “Luckily there was a crowbar among the tools standing in the corner of the pit, and 1 hunted it up and got to work as well as I could in the dark. It didn't take me very long to burst a hole in the flooring that I spoke of, and after 1 had made an opening and let in the light 1 saw that there was a house on top of me I set to work again with the crowbar, and presently I was able to climb out, and found myself in a small bedroom. I didn't stop to examine it, bnt opened the first door I came to, and there I was in Captain Martin’s room, face to face with the old man. The furniture was all upset, and the sides of the honse were slanting one way and another, but there was no mistaking that it was a house, and that Captain Martin was there, looking none the worse for having been through a cyclone. “ ‘So you've been and broke into my house with a crowbar, have yon?’ he asked. ’Perhaps you don’t know, my man, that you've committed burglary and I can have you arrested for it’ “ ‘Perhaps you don’t know that you’re trespassing on my land,’ said I ‘I never gave you no permission to put “I don’t remember asking you for any advice, my man." no shanty on my land, and if you don’t take it off mighty sudden there’s a prospect that there’ll be more or less shooting.' “ ‘You don’t know much about law,’ says the captain. ‘I never put my house on your land. It was done by w-hat the underwriters call “act of God or public enemies.” and if you was a sailor, you’d know that nobody can be held responsible for such occur rences. 1 “Just then he saw me looking ont of the window toward where my bouse had been and he said ‘The last 1 saw of your house she was scudding before the wind and beading about son’east or mebbe a little east of that She was making, as 1 should judge, about 30 knots an hour It'll take you consider

able time to overhaul her. and you'd better give chase at once. ’ “ ‘I ain’t anxious for to stay in yonr house,’ says I, ‘and I’ll leave it this minute. It’s my duty to warn yon that if you set foot on my land there’ll be trouble. As for the matter of your sqnatting with your house on land that don’t belong to you, I’ll see a lawyer this very day, and I calculate you'll wish yon hadu’t done it.’ “With that I made him a bow and left him He came out on the veranda and said ’lf you’re looking for them mules and that there Finn cf yours, you'll be wasting your time. I saw a conple of mules about 60 feet in the air. and when they do come down they won’t be of any further use. considered as mules.' “My house and everything else belonging to me was clean gone, but I was that mad at the captain that I did not care a straw about it. I walked straight to Lncullns, which the cyclone hadn’t touched, and I hunted up Squire Gibbs and laid the case before him. He said that he couldn't see as Captain Martin could beheld liable for trespassing, so long as he staid in his house and didn’t step outside on to my land ‘You can’t sethis house afire or anything of that kind,' said he, ‘without getting into trouble No more can you move it while he is in it, for that would be an assault on him. But I don’t see anything to hinder you from getting a team of oxen and some rollers handy and the first time he comes up to Lucnllus to buy groceries yon can move his house back on to his own land and he can’t find any fault with you.'

“Squire Gibbs was a first class lawyer. and I knew I'd be a fool if I didn’t follow his adivee after paying 86 for it. So I hired a tent that I could sleep in till such time as I could run up another house, and I laid in provisions and a yoke of oxen and some rollers, not forgetting a small hydraulic jack. When I got back to my farm, I pitched the tent right in front of Martin's shanty, so that I could keep a good watch on him. and I went to work with the help of a couple of men from Lncullns to build me another house. You see, the full force of the cyclone had passed over just where my house had stood, while only the outer edge of it had struck the captain's premises. That accounts for the fact that my house had been carried clean away, while his had only been picked up and carried a few rods. As for the mules and the Norwegian they were scattered all over Minnesota. It was said that some of the Norwegian was picked up about 30 miles from here, but it wasn’t ever satisfactorily identified. “Captain Martin’s house happened to be planted in such away that one corner of it projected a few inches on to the highroad, and he was able to get out of a window and into the road without coming on to my property However, he didn't feel easy to leave the house alone, for fear that I might meddle with it, so he staid at home for the best part of a week, when his provisions or his whisky or some other necessary run short, and he had to walk over to Lncullns to lay in a fresh stock. This was what I had been waiting for. though I never hinted it to him. He used to come out on bis veranda and remark in a general way, without addressing himself to me or any one else, that he was mightily pleased with his new location and wouldn’t change it for any other building lot in the whole state. I never said anything to him, except to remark, also in a general sort of way, that if any rascally old sailor should set foot on my land he would have a hole bored through him so quick that he would never know what hnrt him. Neither of us felt that it would be judicious to quarrel, you understand, and so we confined ourselves to remarks that neither of ns was obliged to take any notice of “I waited about an hour after the captain had gone, thinking that he might tnrn back in hopes of catching me in the act of meddling with his honse. At the end of an hour I felt safe enough, for it was certain that he must have gone on to Lucullus, and that he couldn’t get back before dark. So 1 called the men that were working on my bouse, and we jacked Martin's shanty up with the hydraulic jack and bad her on rollers in next to no time. Then I hitched the oxen to her with a double ox chain and started her toward the road In the course of an hour I had her planted square across the middle of the road, so that nobody could possibly get by her, and I had my fence put up again and the ground smoothed out where it had been cut up by the rollers, and then I sat down and waited for the captain to return. “It was 10 o’clock, and the night was pitch dark, when I heard Martin coming along the road and singing. I knew from his style of singing that he had filled himself up with whisky, and I calculated that he would be considerably surprised when he found out what had happened. He never saw the house till he had walked bang np against it with considerable of a crash. Presently he says to himself: ‘Here’s a honse anchored right in the fairway and with no riding right displayed I Thishyer’s a pretty state of things.' Then he hails the house in his loudest voice and wants to know how she is, and where she is from, and where she is bound to, and what sort of an everlasting fool her captain might call himself. Not getting any answer, he swore he would climb aboard and wake the anchor watch with a belaying pin But after fumbling around for some time and hammering on the door and smashing a few panes of glass a new idea struck him ‘Thishyer’s a derelict That’s what it is.' said ha ‘l’ll just stand by her till daylight and see if a salvage job can’t be made out of it- ’ That was the last that I heard of Captain Martin that night. He lay down in the road close alongside of the house and was asleep and snoring the snore of the just in less than a minute. Then I went to

bed myself, considering that there wouldn't be any more performances that night. ... “The captain woke op before I aia the next day. and when I came ont of the tent he was nowhere to be seen, having unlocked his door and gone into his house. About noon he came out on the veranda, looking pretty savage, and I remarked to one of my men that nobody bnt a born fool would put bis house in the middle of the public road, for he would be certain to be fined for obstructing the road. Martin didn t say anything, which sort of riled me, so I said to the man who was nearest tc me that I wanted him to go straight up to Lucullus and tell the sheriff with my compliments that Captain Martin s house was standing directly across the road, so that I couldn’t get by it with the oxen, and that it was the sheriff s duty to see that the road was kept clear. The man naturally did as he was told, and in the course of the day the sheriff rode down and investigated things and ordered Martin to take bis house out of the road. “ ‘I didn’t put it in the road,' said the captain, ‘and there ain t no possible way of taking it out of the road without putting it on the property of that there individual standing alongside of yon.' •• ‘Heaving cuss words at one of onr leading citizens,’ says the sheriff, j||j 11 “I'll give you two days to get your house out of the way." ‘won’t help yon. I’ll give yon two days to take your bouse out of the way, and if at the end of that time I find it still in the road I ll make kindling wcod of it and arrest you into the bargain. Y'ou bear me!' “The captain heard him well enough and knew that he meant business. However, he didn't condescend to make any answer, and I could see that he was determined to let his house stand where it was. The truth is b 6 couldn’t do anything else. He couldn’t haul it back on to my land without committing a trespass, and he couldn’t haul it on to his own land without first getting it across the river, which was more than he or any other man could do. My own idea is that if it hadn't been for the cloudburst that happened the next afternoon Captain Martin would have waited for the sheriff with a shotgun, and the sheriff, being one of the brightest minds in our section of country, would have had his revolver ready, and before the work of demolishing the house could begin there would have been one or two corpses ready for the coroner. “You don’t know what a cloudburst is? Well, that is astonishing! A cloudburst is what we call a sort of Noah’s flood without any ark. Yon see, some big cloud that holds perhaps a million tons of water suddenly goes to pieces, and the water all comes down at once, the same as it does at Niagara falls. There’s the same difference between an ordinary rain and a cloudburst that there is between sprinkling a cabbage with a watering pot and dumping a whole washtub full of water over it Thishyer cloudburst that I’m speaking of took place 30 or 40 miles above here, and the whole lot of water ran into the Pomponoosnc river and swelled it into a raging torrent that swept everything before it I : -«ard it coming just before it me. and I went for that hill yonder as fast as I could run and just managed to reach it in time. Before I started I hailed the captain and told him to run while he could, but he pretended not to hear me and remarked, as if he was speaking to the universe and all the rest of mankind, that the curse of thishyer country was the confounded impertinence cf the lower classes. He was one of those men that nobody can help except with a club, he was that everlastingly obstinate and conceited. “Martin saw what was going to happen as well as I did, and just before the flood struck his honse I saw him trying to rig np a sort of steering oar by lashing a plank to one of the veranda posts Then the flood, which came down like a wall six feet high, burst on the house, and away it whirled. The captain’s steering oar wasn’t of the least use, and before he went out of sight he dropped it and sat down on the railing of his veranda with an arm around the post and bis pipe in his month as comfortable as yon please. I watched him for the best part of a mile, and I could not see b'it what the house was doing very well and that the chances were that it wou.y bring np in some safe locality before reaching the MuskiDgum falls, which are 47 miles from hem ’Anyway,’ I says to myself, ‘here’s an eDd of trespassing on my property and blocking np the public road and an end cf a mighty disagreeable neighbor.’ The sheriff, when he came tho next day and found that there wasn't any work

for him to da said pretty much the same thing. “What became of Captain martin? Well bis house floated ashore down nigh on to 17 miles from here, and the captain never so much as got his feet wet When the water went down, it left the house on the most valuable corner lot in West Antioch, jnst where the people had calculated to put np a new opera house. Os course the owner of Uie lot made trouble for and Martin made trouble for him. There were no less than 15 separate lawsuits going on at the same time between them, and the prospect was that they would both die of old age before the courts would find ont who was in the right. Captain Martin made an arrangement with a grocer in the town to heave in all his supplies through a window, and he loopholed the walls of his house and made it shotproof and swore that he would never leave it alive. He never did, for one day he got so particularly mad that he had a stroke, and when the coroner broke into the house a few days later he found Martin lying on the floor dead. “Yes, sir, what with cyclones and cloudbursts and prairie fires and blizzards, and such like, northern Minnesota is a middling lively place. However. we folks that live here never allows ourselves to worry over what may happen tomorrow, and then again may not happen for the next 20 years. Besides, it would take a first class cyclone or a tremendous big flood to move a bouse that is built as solid as this hotel is, so you needn’t be afraid that you 11 find yourself sailing through the air or floating down the Pomponoosnc—that is, so long as you pays your board regular, as I am free to say you always has done, and I presume you always will do. ” Charleston llonses. The architecture of Charleston Is unique. The houses all look alike, and unlike those of any other city that I have seen. The distinguishing peculiarity is the great two story southerly porches. The breeze comes from a southwesterly direction, and every house is built with about one-tliird of its floor space outdoors in the shape of great two story piazzas, facing the south, and occasionally the west. The front door of each residence opens into this porch, or piazza. This was the old style of the city, and such new houses as can occasionally be discovered usually retain faithfully the same system. There are no blocks, except in the business streets, and about each of these detached houses there is a little garden and some fine old trees. The sidewalks are rough, and on the residence streets are very sandy. And there is very little paint withal going to waste in Charleston.—Charleston (S. C.) Letter. Paid For Ilia Curio. An offertory bag in an English rural

H H <■ ‘IN HIS STEPS.’ “WhatJWould Jesus Do.” | | THIS is the title of the most popular book published in the last decade. Over 3,000,000 y Jl copies in book form sold in four months, and the author, ' Rev. Charles M. Sheldon, is one of the most talked about men in Christendom. By special arrangement with the publishers, THE DEMOCRAT j s enabled to offer the story to its readers in serial form, and the opening chapter will be given in our Thanksgiving number of November 30. continuing ten or twelve weeks. No matter what your reyi ligious views may be, the story is well worih reading. Now fv. \ is the time to subscribe. I I m FOF?—»»»>>>»» | First-Glass I ' Groceries || - —Cal! at —- |1 Millsf&*/Vleyef. | Gi'ade || Canned Goods PJ ..-fV Specialty... || *•Coffees. ’Phone 88. Jg |

church was recently found to com , a very rare specimen of a Severn.*! ? century token made of copper ? had apparently been dropped Into h receptacle in mistake for a farthi 6 The curio was valued by a local a , at 14 shillings. A description article and the circumstances „ni which it was found were affixed to th church porch, hut the donor seem a ashamed to turn up and explain m,7 ters. A few days afterward the gyman received a typewritten letJ’ from an address a long distance from the church stating that If the tok were sent to ’’X. Y. Z.” care of tk. householder, a remittance of half sovereign would he received in change. It was duly sent in a register! ed letter, and a postal order for lo sllil ! lings arrived in return. Mars May Be Grmvlne, While many astronomers regard the planet Mars as a “dying world,” others. notably the Abbe Moreux and Colonel du Ligandes, consider It as a young and growing planet. Moreux explains the doubling of the ’’canals'’ by an optical effect, and the otk.-r holds that Mars was formed after the earth and Jupiter. Owing to its distance from the sun and its light atmosphere, Mars ought to be an lev desert, but observation shows that it is not, and hence he concludes that the body of the planet is still warm. The “canals,” he thinks, are cracks produced by contractions of the crust. The white poles of Mars are formed not by snow, but hailstones. Mars, in short, is, according to him, like the earth when she was in the primary eraThe Growth of Love. What is love, mused 1, at the first but a mere fancy? There is a prettiness that your soul cleaves to, as your eye to a pleasant flower or your ear to a soft melody. Presently admiration comes in as a sort of balance wheel for the eccentric revolutions of your fancy, and your admiration is touched off with such neat quality as respect. Too much of this, indeed, they say, deadens the fancy and so retards the action of the heart machinery. But with a proper modicum to serve as a stock devotion is grafted in, and then, by an agreeable and confused miDgling. all these qualities and affections of the soul become transferred into that vital feeling called love.— Donald G. Mitchell iD “Beveries of a Bachelor.” If the Prussian conscription were applied in India. England would have 2,500,000 regular soldiers actually in barracks, with 800,000 recruits coming up every year. Cromwell, Ind., Nov. 4. —John Smalley, a mill owner, living near here, was attacked by a vicious bull and fatally injured. He was hurt internally, in addition to having both legs broken.