The New Bloomfield, Pa. times. (New Bloomfield, Pa.) 1877-188?, 1880-11-30
Remarkable Escapes.

THE amount of inventive genius man
L developes under the spur of perilsis
is in nothing better illustrated than in
the chronicles of escapes. We all know
the story of the hunter who tumbled
into the hollow of the tree in which a
she bear had made her lair, and couldn't
climb out. He waited, it will be re-
membered, till the tenant whose lodg-
ings he had invaded came home from a
dinner she had been enjoying at the
expense of some tender young Africans
on the neighboring plantation, and COM
menced to back down into the tree after
the fashion adopted by her race in MAX
ing descent. AS soon as her tail was
within reach the prisoner grabbed it,
while with his other hand he COM
menced digging Mrs. Bruin in the rump
with his knife. She didn't come down
to inquire into the matter, but scram-
bled, bowling, out again, towing the
captive behind her till he got a chance
to use his blade on more vital portion
of her frame.
A somewhat similar yarn is that told
by Pausanius of Aristomenes, the Mes.
sinian General, whom the Lacedamo-
mans captured in battle some seven
hundred years B. c., and tumbled into
the Gulf of Coedo, fissure in the earth
near the City of Sparta, which served
them instead of gallows for the dispo-
sition of their criminals. A number of
his soldiers were sent the same road
before him, and Aristomenes, falling on
their bodies, saved his own. He revived
to find himself in hideous cavern
without apparent outlet but the unat-
tainable opening overhead. He spent
two days among the bones and rotting
bodies. On the third day he saw fox
creeping along in the gloom toward a
heap of corses. The fact that the ami
NAL got into the cave was proof, positive
that there was some way out.
Lying motionless till the fox came
shifting around him, Aristomenes then
grabbed him by the leg, and, as he
turned to snap him, thrust the hem of
his mantle in his mouth. Reynard held
on viciously, and the ingenious captive
was led, as he desired to be, through a
labyrinthine passage to an opening just
large enough for the fox to crawl
through, and which he managed to
enlarge sufficiently to escape by himself.
Those old-timers were tough lot if
historians don't lie. Herodotus tells of
another, Hegesistratus, who was an
augur or fortune-teller to one Mordonius.
The Spartans got hold of him, too, and
put him in jail with a log fettered to his
leg. Failing to release himself in any
other way, he contrived to scrape a
passage out Of his dungeon with an old
knife blade he found in a corner, and
then cut enough of his foot off to slip
the stump out of the fetter, and so
crawled away to freedom. Increditable
as the story seems, such cases of self
mutilation are not uncommon among
our Indians, and animals caught by the
foot in trap almost invariably gnaw
the captive members off and survive the
loss.
Coelius Secundus Curion was jealous
Lutheran of the sixteenth century in
Turin. Taking exception to a passage
In the sermon Jesuit was preaching in
the Cathedral, he called him a liar. He
was seized and thrown into the prison
of the Inquisition, where his feet were
shackled to ponderous blocks Of wood to
prevent his moving. According to his
own account, after having spent week
In these ornaments, he induced his
jailer, on the plea that he was perishing
of pain in his constrained position, to
unshackle one leg for him. Then he