Democratic Sentinel, Volume 14, Number 42, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 14 November 1890 — IN A TOWER OF WATER. [ARTICLE]

IN A TOWER OF WATER.

Whlrlwl Aroand Lika a Top In Mid Air —A Boy’s Experience. Under recent date a Fall River (Mass.) correspondent writes as follows: ’*! A boy with a wonderful capacity for cold water made a kind of Noah’s ark time of it last evening for people who dwell around the South Park. There-is-a tall stand-pipe near the park where the sprinkling cart loads up; and the pressure from the pond at that point is something like a million pounds to the square inch. Just what possessed the aforesaid boy to climb that stand-pipe while the band was playing gayly in the band stand will probably never be known. Possibly he had found life tob slow at the drinking fountain, and may be that he didn’t think he could do the standpipe any harm. At any rate he shinned up and began monkeying with the cap at the top. A fuil-grown man with cold steel appliances would undoubtedly have experienced considerable difficulty in unfastening that tap, but the foot-high urchin found it easy enough. His a©“ compiishment will surprise him to the end of his days. He was bending directly over the pipe, stomach down, when the last thread of the cap screw was loosened. There was a swish and a roar and the million pound pressure sent a mighty volume of water 1,000 feet into the air. It would have been a magnificent spectacle but for one feature which froze the blood in the veins of the assembled multitude. As far as the eye could retch, and almost at the very-top of this tower of water, a tiny speck slowly revolved. It was the small boy, helpless, and feebly waving his hands and feet in his terror. Fortunately the tremendous force supported him, and the centrifugal power convexing toward the sides of the torrent, kept him in the middle. It was wet work looking on, but for a few seconds nobody dared to move. Then a brave member of the police department recovered his presence of mind and darted to the Park House telephone. A little later Superintendent Kieran of .the water works arrived on the scene, pale but determined. The same thought seemed to inspire the crowd at the same moment, for 500 voices exclaimed: “You must let him down easy.” Superintendent Kieran needed no such warning. He knew that to shut off the supply suddenly meant a terrible fall for the half-drowned lad, who had ceased to move up there among the stars, and with a touch as light as a woman’s he began to turn back the swift tide in the main artery. Inch by inch the tower of water diminished; inch by inch that small speck of humanity descended. The excitement was at concert pitch. Everybody spoke in hoarse whispers. Finally a joyous cheer rang out. The urchin was thirty feet from the ground, and scores of arms were outstretched to receive him. “Stand steady;” was the order, and the last spoonful of water was turned off, and the boy dropped safely into a network of hands. “That beats balloons,” he said, as he wiped his face with his dripping sleeve.