We were riding along on the bounding train yesterday, and some one spoke
of the free and democratic way that people in this country got
acquainted with each other while traveling. Then we got to talking about
railway sociability and railway etiquette, when a young man from East
Jasper, who had wildly jumped and grabbed his valise every time the
train hesitated, said that it was queer what railway travel would do in
the way of throwing people together. He said that in Nebraska once he
and a large, corpulent gentleman, both total strangers, were thrown
together while trying to jump a washout, and an intimacy sprang up
between them that had ripened into open hostility.
From that we got to talking about natural phenomena and storms. I spoke
of the cyclone with some feeling and a little bitterness, perhaps,
briefly telling my own experience, and making the storm as loud and wet
and violent as possible.
Then a gentleman from Kansas, named George L. Murdock, an old cattleman,
was telling of a cyclone that came across his range two years ago last
September. The sky was clear to begin with, and then all at once, as Mr.
Murdock states, a little cloud no larger than a man's hand might have
been seen. It moved toward the southwest gently, with its hands in its
pockets for a few moments, and then Mr. Murdock discovered that it was
of a pale-green color, about sixteen hands high, with dark-blue mane and
tail. About a mile from where he stood the cyclone, with great force,
swooped down and, with a muffled roar, swept a quarter-section of land
out from under a heavy mortgage without injuring the mortgage in the
least. He says that people came for miles the following day to see the
mortgage, still on file at the office of the register of deeds and just
as good as ever.
Then a gentleman named Bean, of western Minnesota, a man who went there
in an early day and homesteaded it when his nearest neighbor was fifty
miles away, spoke of a cyclone that visited his county before the
telegraph or railroad had penetrated that part of the state.
Mr. Bean said it was very clear up to the moment that he noticed a cloud
in the northwest no larger than a man's hand. It sauntered down in a
southwesterly direction like a cyclone that had all summer to do its
chores in. Then it gave two quick snorts and a roar, wiped out of
existence all the farm buildings he had, sucked the well dry, soured all
the milk in the milk house, and spread desolation all over that
quarter-section. But Mr. Bean said that the most remarkable thing he
remembered was this: He had dug about a pint of angle worms that
morning, intending to go over to the lake toward evening and catch a few
perch. But when the cyclone came it picked up those angle worms and
drove them head first through his new grindstone without injuring the
worms or impairing the grindstone. He would have had the grindstone
photographed, he said, if the angle worms could have been kept still
long enough. He said that they were driven just far enough through to
hang on the other side like a lambrequin.
The cyclone is certainly a wonderful phenomenon, its movements are so
erratic, and in direct violation of all known rules.
Mr. Louis P. Barker of northern Iowa was also on the car, and he
described a cyclone that he saw in the '70s along in September at the
close of a hot but clear day. The first intimation that Mr. Barker had
of an approaching storm was a small cloud no larger than a man's hand
which he discovered moving slowly toward the southwest with a gyratory
movement. It then appeared to be a funnel-shaped cloud which passed
along near the surface of the ground with its apex now and then lightly
touching a barn or a well, and pulling it out by the roots. It would
then bound lightly into the air and spit on its hands. What he noticed
most carefully on the following day was the wonderful evidences of its
powerful suction. It sucked a milch cow absolutely dry, pulled all the
water out of his cistern, and then went around to the waste-water pipe
that led from the bath-room and drew a 2-year-old child, who was taking
a bath at the time, clear down through the two-inch waste-pipe, a
distance of 150 feet. He had two inches of the pipe with him and a lock
of hair from the child's head.
It is such circumstances as these, coming to us from the mouths of
eye-witnesses, that leads us to exclaim: How prolific is nature and how
wonderful are all her works--including poor, weak man! Man, who comes
into the world clothed in a little brief authority, perhaps, and nothing
else to speak of. He rises up in the morning, prevaricates, and dies.
Where are our best liars to-day? Look for them where you will and you
will find that they are passing away. Go into the cemetery and there you
will find them mingling with the dust, but striving still to perpetuate
their business by marking their tombs with a gentle prevarication,
chiseled in enduring stone.
I have heard it intimated by people who seemed to know what they were
talking about that truth is mighty and will prevail, but I do not see
much show for her till the cyclone season is over.