The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1881-10-01 00:00:00

"None knew him but to love him,

The RECENT EARTHQUAKE in ITALY.

The Correspondent of The Times, writing from Rome on
the 27th, says :

The destruction caused by the earthquake in the
Abruzzi far exceeds anything that was indicated by
the first news that reached Rome. The Archbishop
of Chieti, appaling in piteous terms for help, writes
that the disaster can only be compared to that of Co.s-
sarnicciola. More than a thousand houses have been
pronounced uninhabitable, and the remainder are
more are less fissured. The churches left standing are
in a tottering condition, and the religious services
have to be celebrated in the open air. The Arch-
priest of Orsogna writes that the ruin is indescrib-
able. It almost exceeds anything recorded in the
annals of hist.ny ; even the Cyclopian walls are in
many places fissured. The Commission of Succour
reports that of the 1,34 C houses in the commune 79
must be entirely or in great part demolished, and
618 have been rendered uninhabitable, without taking
into account the churches which are all in a con-
dition unsafe for pu'alic worship. Consequently, four.
fifths of the population, which numbers abut 7,000
souls, are without shelter. In the meantime, Oa com-
mandant of the 37th and 68th Regiments has sent
300 tents to their assistance, and urgent appeals for
help towards providing necessities for the wretched
sufferers and repairing the less damaged houses as far
as possible before the autumnal rains set in are
being made. All this was anterior to the renewal of
the shocks at Castel Frentano on the 23rd inst.' fol-
lowed by a serious landslip, the second that had taken
place there. Very little is known here of the forma-
tion of the ground on which that village stands, or
rather stood, but from the brief description received it
would appear to have been a kind of shelf, a portion of
which gave way through a fissure made by the earth-
quake some seventy metres lower down on the hill-
side. The actual loss of life seems to have been com-
paratively small.

vle.ttl:
PANIC IN A SYNAGOGUE:
The Vienna correspondent of the Standard says that
a shocking accident is reported as having occurred at
Osvibczim, in Galicia, on Sunday. It was the second
day in the Jewish New Year, and the synagogue of
the town in question was crowded with worshippers
when the curtain of the tabernacle accidentally cauQht
fire. A sudden rush and panic ensued and the gallery,
which was filled with women and girls gave way.
The result was that four females, including two girls
of sixteen, were killed, and twelve others more or less
seriously injured.

SNADY. —The heat has been so excessive in America
that a Chicago paper says " horses in that city are
wearing hats to some extent." And why not? Horses
dln4reav tcollars toy extant, httci, t Igoe! i 8 ,n 9
reason they should not wear hats; though to be sure
a horse in a hat is somewhat of a "staggerer." Still,
a protection for the head is the main thing, as it is
quite possible for an attack of sunstroke to drive a
horse out of Ms mind,—Fultny Folks.

lattkie:

The Daily Telegraph has a leader noticing the above
banquet, from which we make the following extract :--
In a beautiful garden in the North of India stands
a monument toward which, as long as England en-
dures, her children will turn with pride. It is no
structure of marble inlaid with gold stone, like Shah
Jehan's great tomb at Agra.; no grandiose pillar,
towering almost in the clouds, like the Kutub Minar
of Delhi; but a heap of blackened ruins, held up
by stays of iron, and only protected from the ravages
of the weather by a thick coating of varnish, which
leaves all the smoke and grime of the broken
walls fully exposed to view. Here and there
the traveller, as he passes amid the luxuriant flowers
which climb round the piles of wrecked brickwork,
may descry tiny marble tablets, some bearing simply a
name; while others tell the story of how a hero fell
just where the tablet is now fixed. Round the dilapi-
dated building may also be teen little columns of red
brick also carrying marble stones inscribed with brief
but touching legends. These alone form the monu-
ment, and yet, meagre as is the architecture,
and black as are the remains, that house and
the surrounding pillarets constitute a prouder
record of gallantry and loyalty than any trium-
phal arch or gaudy column in the world. For
the garden encloses what was left of the
Residency of Lucknow after the terrible events of
1857, and stands just as it did on the glorious day
when, after a resistance unparalleled in modern, if
not in ancient warfare, the heroic garrison was finally
rescued by Sir Colin Campbell. There is outside, on
a mound overlooking the Residency garden, a more
ornate and artistic souvenir of the siege, in the shape
of an obelisk erected by the Prince of Wales to the
memory of the gallant Sikh soldiers who took part in
the defence ; but the record, par excellence, of the fight
will always be, so long as they last, the crumbling
walls of the house itself. This is, indeed, as it should
be, for the ruins teach a double lesson. Dark and
covered with smoke as they are, they tell Englishmen
of how magnificent a battle their countrymen waged
within them when the fate of India for the moment
trembled in the balance. Broken and battered, they
speak to the native of the hopelessness of ever driving
by force from India a nation whose sons can yet
cheerfully hold on when the fort} e.s is in pieces,
and all apparent hope is gone. Round that one
beleagured spot now grow thick wom's, shutting it
in from the outside world; all kinds of beautiful
plants cover the ground upon which, shoulder to
shoulder, the brave men who served the Queen
fought for the honour of their flag, and the
lives of the tender womm and children who were with
them; sentries stand over the place to see that those
who enter shall reverently comport themselves as they
scan the ruins ; what was once the scene of tierce con-
flict, ever present peril, and dreadful sufferings, is
now a peaceful and beautiful paradise. Not far away
stand the walls of the Secunderbagh, loopholed just
as the rebels left them, with the battered gate and the
breach by which the Highlanders and the 53rd en-
tered ; while yet a few miles distant in the garden of
the Alumbagh, is Ha.velock's tomb, almost lost all the
year round in a bower of roses. . . .
Nobody who has ever visited the site of Lucknow can
comprehend how the few hundreds of brave souls that
manned the thin walls and trenches contrived to hold
the desperate enemy with which they were engaged
at bay for a single hour. On one side were only
a small prickly pear hedge and a narrow ditch, on
another a low fence like that which ordinarily
environs the common Indian compound. But the
men who were behind these trifling obstacles never
thought for a moment of flinching. They were half
starved, many were suffering from dysentery, more
were wounded, the hail of bullets under which they
stood was unceasing, the attacks of the ruthless enemy
who surrounded them continual, and yet there they
remained unfaltering and victorious. They had
nothing to cheer them except their own grand spirits;
relief could not possibly come for sometime; every day
made the foe more numerous and stronger; the masses
of the Sepoys were arrayed close on to the
boundaries of their little defence ; their
provisions were almost gone, and ammuni-
tion threatened to fail, but their courage
never once gave out, and each man as he died left the
memory of a hero behind him. "They were more
like the gods than men," said an old Punjabee soldier,
who had come to Lucknow to offer up his yearly
orisons, as was his wont by the side of the well of the
Residency, where he had had many a narrow escape.
"And when they died," he continued, "they only
wanted to live, in order that they might fight a little
longer for and with those who were left."
An omission seems unaceountably to have been
made in the proceedings of Saturday's feast. Nothing
was said of the women, the brave soldiers' and
civilians' wives, who, throughout the siege, helped,
not only to encourage the men, but entered the lists
and became combatants themselves. Of these Jennie
Deans, who heard the distant pipers playing "The
Campbells are coming," was but one. All lent their
aid in the combat, carrying ammunition and food
to the men in -the trenches, tending the wounded,
watching the sick. The place they inhabited
during the siege still remains—a huge cellar,
pretty strong, but yet not quite secure from the fire of
the rebels. Thera hour after hour and day after day
they patiently waited, wondering how the fearful
struggle would end, and whether at last the courageous
fellows who were in the front would be beaten back
and they themselves would fall into the hands of the
most ruffianly soldiery the world has ever seen. 2s.t
Cawnpore their friends had suffered that terrible
fate, and the well, filled with bodies, showed what
woes the female inhabitants of Lucknow might
anticipate. Still, terrible as was the possible
future in front of them, they bore themselves as
bravely as the bravest, inciting their husbands,
fathers, and friends to yet greater deeds of
valour, and all the while saving the best of what
there was to eat in the Residency for those they loved.
Inside the cellar, on the walls, are still many traces
of the agony of mind they endured, for the poor crea-
tures amid the din of battle had many misgivings, and
wrote what they thought upon the plaster and stone.
And it is clear from what they thus left recorded that
they looked forward to things much worse even than
a violent death, and that the terror which faced them
was greater even than that which the soldiers had to
confront. The heroines, as well
.as the heroes, of
Lucknow must therefore he borne in mind whenever
and wherever the simplest story of that splendid
defence is hereafter told. Meanwhile, we may be
proud as a people that such brave hearts belonged to
our race.