Fayette County herald. [volume] (Washington [Washington Court House], Fayette County, O. [Ohio]) 1860-1???, 1879-05-29


| The afternoon is still as death. ves st;,f
as death; because in death there II ,,oItt,-
er sound nor motion, and there is peitbe,
in this afternoon. 1t had grown so ss;,l
quite suddenly. Early in the afternoon
| there was something of breeze, butit
had all died out. and even the birds have
/ ceased to twitter now. The leaves on the
| trees are still, and there is sudden sense
of sUffocation and feeling as ifthe world
| had stopped and died. Suddenly. awav
off across the field, the top of one OF the
largest oaks whirls around and around,
as if it had been toy in the hands of
child, and falls crashing to the earth, the
twisted ends of the headIess trunk look
ing as if writhing in pain. There is hard
~ time to listen to the crash which sounds
terrible, bursting in so suddenly upon
the still air where not a leaf moves yet,
when another and then another goes
down, and then suddenly and iercely, so
suddenly and so fiercely it seems as if we
were in terrible nightmare, they crash
all about us. There is no pause, no mo-
ment for thought and comprehension of
what it means. Only fearful tearing
and crashing among the great trunks;
fierce glare and blaze of lightning, thkt
you. do not remember seeing begin, but
that you know, with a terrible certainty,
is all about you: a terrible crash every
now and then, as if the very heavens had
split asunder when you know some grest
tree has been torn from its roots by the
bolt. rush of rain, not in drops but in
sheets, broad, white sheets driven fiercely
by the wind and lighted up in horrible
ghastly fashion by the lightning. The
| slender trees in front of your house writh-
ing, twisting about, bowling to the very
ground, or broken with a sudden snap
and whirled furiously over the PROSTATE
fence. Gullies dug out in the path by
the water, and the whole ground, as far
as you. can see, one sheet of water, like
shallow lake and lighted up by the light
ming in a way that would have aided
Dante in his seInferno'' had he seen it.
The house itself trembling on its founda-
4 tions and once or twice moving as if to
tOpple over, and rain driving in through
every crack and crevice and places wheres
you never imagined there was one; driv-
| ingunder the shingles, and flooding the
floor under and around the doors, and
spinning across the room through hole
in the window pane, made by the hail
| that now mingles with the rain and pounds
on the roof with deafening tumult. The
lake is a boiling seething cauldron, with
! the waves all in foam and your boat
beating itself to pieces on the rocks. Then,
suddenly as it came upon you, it passes
on. The hail ceases; the rain becomes q
4 shower, then is done; the wind dies out;
the thunder sounds farther and farther
away till it becomes only a distant rum
BILE and the lightning becomes less and
/ less vivid, till it flashes far off on now
almost eloudless sky. You lock at your
watch to see what time it is and try to re-
member when this all began. You re-
member when you came into the house it
/ was 3 O'Clock, and now it is only five
O'Clock, and you feel as if you had lived
lifetime in those two hours. You open
the door to go out and find the yard full
of small gullies, your shade trees nearly
all ruined, the timber about full of fallen
and lodged and liShtning-riven trees and
your chimney only one brick high. You
90 down to rescue your boat and fnd the
white caps rushing in to shore as you
never saw them do at any other time.
: Then you go back; half an hour later the
sun is shining, the birds singing and. the
water already soaked in by the thirsty land
kYou almost wonder if il has been dream,
but the fallen trees over which you must
climb and your own house not a door of
which will shut after it is once opened
: convince you it is decided reality.