The aegis & intelligencer. [volume] (Bel Air, Md.) 1864-1923, 1874-04-17
A True Story.

Two or three weeks ago an accident did
not occur near Scranton, Penn. the news
papers missed sensational horror; and a
dozen men, instead of being hurled into
eternity without time to breathe prayer,
| walked quietly home to their dinners, quite
| unconscious that Death had had them by
the throats 1t might, after ALL 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 unearth the gull
ty party if it had occurred. 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 a Scotch-Irish-
man, an ordinary fellow enough. The ca
BILE, necessarily of great weight and thick
ness, 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 assur-
eddy 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 shat
tered into thousand fragments. He
knew that in the next minute the cable, re-
leased 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 boy
in the back of the shed the man motioned
to him with his head to go out. Then he
frightened his hold on the lever. The loos-
ened cable struck and caught somewhere
below against the side of the shaft. Surely
God meant il should so strike 1t was the
delay of but q breath of time, but it was
enough. The car grated with a jar against
the ground far below its occupants step
ped lcisurely out, while the man who had
saved them above, threw himself from UNI
der 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 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 fore
w uPoh 10 noN aHtt llcu, vi lHc uHhuONH,
unmcasured resources ofcourage and hero
ism and unfnching integrity to duty which
we possess among what we choose to call
the mass of the people 1t is, after all, only
when man reaches the certainties of mid
die age that he is not surprised 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
responed promptly to the call of honesty OF
duty or even solf.sacriice because it is the
simpled and natural thing for them to do
so.
We will congratulate ourselves, then, not
that his class can boast one such brave fell
low as this Scotch-Irish engineer, but that
like King Harry over Percy's grave, we be-
lieve that it "has thousand such as he"-
". Y. Tribune.