St. Johnsbury Caledonian. [volume] (St. Johnsbury, Vt.) 1867-1919, 1878-06-21

went on a Sunday walk with her father
AS safe an amusement, it might be
supposed, as little girl could try. No
rational person would suppose child
likely to be burned to death, while
walking quietly in the fields with her
| father far from stoves and thunder
storms. But this father happened to
be smoker He lighted the inevita-
BILE match, and, having started his pipe
tossed the burning splinter away-a
practice that every year works fearful
destruction of life, and great waste of
hard-earned property. The fame ig-
nited the child's dress, and she was
burned TO death before his eyes. The
money which her clothes and schooling
would have cost him, he can now spend
in tobacco.
In Pawlet, Vermont, lately, party
of boys were out playing in steep
pasture. Many of the pastures in the
Green Mountain region are so steep
that they seem, to the unaccustomed
eye, to be set upon the edge. A popu-
lar amusement with boys is to roll
stones, of which there are plenty, down
these steep hillsides. Once started,
stone gathers momentum as it goes,
and crashes through the bushes at a
tremendous rate, sometimes going hall
a mile or more, before stopping. While
these boys were enjoying themselves, a
stone struck one of them in its path,
knocked him down the side of the
mountain, more than hundred feet,
killing him instantly.
Children often get severe falls, and
no serious injury follows. In Richmond,
Va, not long since, baby of two years
fell from a third story window and
alighted on picket fence beneath, but
miraculously escaped with a few bruis-
es, not one of which amounted to con-
fusion. Last week child in New York
fell from low chair and was taken up
dead.
A week or so since, lady in Cincin-
natl, walking quietly along the street,
was struck senseless by missile that
made a flesh-wound extending from
her right temple around to her forehead.
1t was thought at first that she had
been shot by stray ball from an air
gun, but it was afterward ascertained
that small pebble, one side of which
had been heavily pressed on by the
outside rim of a passing street-car
wheel, was propelled after the fashion
of wet watermelon seed from between
the thumb and forefinger, with a force
sufficient to cause the nearly fatal inju-
ry. This was one of the most ingenious
accidents on record, and looks very
much like malice afOrethought.
Since the prevalence of the noble
game of base ball, several players have
been killed in the field. Three acct
dents of this kind occurred in as many
States, last week, and two, less severe,
in this city on Memorial day. In Ken
lucky week or so ago, girl eleven
years old was attacked by game-cOck,
which struck one of its spurs through
the side of heE head and into the brain,
infiicting fatal wound.
The happening by which man sur
wives starvation on n wreck, living
through untold sufferings, to die at last
by being choked with piece of beef
steak ut his own breakfast table-by
which woman who, before the revo-
luton, had lived through all the hard
ships and privations of pioneer life, in
Guiding capture by the Indians, was at
last killed on her own kitchen floor by
stepping on rolling buckshot, and by
an piu WIN
braved the storms of fifty Atlantic
voyages, was crushed to death by Il
runaway horse in the ''sweet security
of streets, lis it fortune, fate or acct
dent9 And in the present age of unex-
pected and needless disasters-when
grist mills blow up, and staunch and
well-tried passenger ships like the
Mosel go into thousand pieces while
lying at the wharf-when torrents of
grain burst through the sides of build
ing, and crush all within reach-when
the very sidewalk flies up in the faces
of quiet pedestrians, killing them right
and left, as not long ago in Boston,
when even doughnuts explode, and
when simple dinner of dandelion
green's, even "where love u.s." turns
out to be tainted with deadly poison
is it fate, or accident, which leaves any
of us to die quietly of old age?