The Elk County advocate. [volume] (Ridgway, Pa.) 1868-1883, 1874-04-23
A TRUE STORY.
A Brave Miner who Saved the Lives OF
Dozen Men.

A Brave Miner who Saved the Lives OF
Dozen Men.
Two or three weeks ago, says the
New York Tribune, an accident did not
occur near Scranton, Penn; the news
papers missed a sensational horror
and a dozen men, instead OF being
hurled into eternity without having
time to breathe prayer, walked quietly
home to their dinners, quite unconsci-
Gus that Death had had them by the
throats. Tt might, after ali, be worth
our while to look into the cause of the
loss of this tragedy to the world; we
should have been keen enough to I'M
earth the guilty party if it had occur
red. The facts are briefly these
In the largest anthracite coal mine in
the State, the care of the engine by
which the cars for passengers are
lowered and hoisted is placed in the
hands of Scotch-Irishman, an ordi-
nary fellow enough. The cable, neces-
sarily of great weight and thickness,
passes through the roof of a slightly
built shed under which he stands. One
morning, as the man stood smoking his
pipe, his hand upon the lever, his mind
very probably busy with His dinner,
and assuredly not wrought up to any
heroic rapture of resolve, the ascending
car Qoaded with coaD at one end of the
cable broke, and fell crashing into the
dark shaft, to be shattered into q
thousand fragments. He knew that in
the next minute the cable, released
from the strain, would fly back and fall
with crushing weight on the rickety
beams and boards of the roof. Death
was absolutely certain if he did not
escape from the shed. But if he took
his hand from the lever, the descending
car, full of men, must fall one or two
hundred feet He had but one instant
| to face his death and theirs, and to
choose between them. There was a boy
in the back of the shed the man mo-
toned to him with his head to go out.
Then he frightened his hold on the
lever. The loosened cable struck and
caught somewhere below against the
side of the shaft. Surely God meant
it should so strike It was the delay
of but a breath of time; but 1t was
enough. The car grated with jar
against the ground far below its oc-
cupants stepped leisurely out, while the
man who had saved them above threw
himself from under the shed, just as its
roof, beams, pulley, and all crashed
down on the spot where he had been
standing.
We do not know the mans name, and
should scarcely need to publish it if we
did. Fame or reward jar somehow
against the deed itself. There is q
wholesome tonic for all of us in the
certainty which is forced upon us now
and then, of the unknown, unmeasured
resources of courage and heroism and
unfinching integrity to duty which we
possess among what we choose to call
the mass of the people. 1t is, after all,
only when a man reaches the certain
ties of middle age that he is not sur
prised every new day by the knowledge
of how admirable a crew has been put
into the world for its long voyage how
many of the women are gracious and
finely natured how many men respond
promptly to the call of honesty or duty
or even self-sacrifice because it is the
simple and natural thing for them tc
do so.
We will congratulate ourselves, then
not that this class can boast one sucE
brave fellow as this Scotch-Irish engi
neer, but that, like King Harry over
Percy's grave, we believe that it " has
a thousand such as he."