The Arizona sentinel. [volume] (Arizona City [Yuma], Yuma County, A.T. [Ariz.]) 1872-1911, 1889-11-09
ELECTRICAL FREAKS.
Lightning Flash Which Went Into tho
Paper-Hanging business.

Lightning Flash Which Went Into thu
Paper-Hanging business.
BY this term we do not mean the
experts who testified recently thai
they could receive a shock of %, 00(
volts and feel sort of braced up by it
We make this explanation in order tC
prevent any misconception of the tenor
of this article by the intelligent reader.
By electrical freaks" we do not mean
people who play fantastic tricks with
their imagination when they talk on
this subject but rather the pranks
which the forked lightning plays when
1t strikes hen-house and lights up
the emotional fancy of the reporter
who is working on space.
A few years ago young man named
Caspar Weidpants residing in Asbury
Park, was sitting at the window of his
boarding house, counting his week s
salary and wondering whether he
should divide it equally among him
self, or give some of it to his tailor
and little to his landlady or take it
all to hire horse and narrow bu v
and take proud but wealthy heiress
out to drive. At that instant bolt of
lightning struck the corner of large
house in Long Branch, not more than
seven or eight miles away. and the
young man never thought of his tailor
or his landlady again. They often
thought of him, but nobody ever found
out where he went
In the summer of 1879 John j. Fow-
Ter was a practical paper-hanger in
Albany. During the first week of June
be was hanging paper in the residence
of Clarence L. Montgomery. when
heavy black cloud came slowly over
the city from the west, and a single
flash of lightning fell from the cloud,
entered the room where Fowler was at
work, run up the trimming machine
like a buzz saw for a few minutes,
stirred up the paste, hung all the
paper in the room and trimmed six
teen yards of arabesque border. Some
of the family went in the room about
seven o'clock that evening and found
Fowler lying on the table, still Sleep
ing from the effects of the shock. The
strokes had also affected his mind and
seriously biased his moral faculties,
for he afterward brought in bill for
the work, and had to sue for it (Mr.
Montgomery being a very rich MANI,
ana he testified that he had done all
this work himself before going to
sl-c2. But that was impossible, and
tbc court so decided, as it was estab-
listed by the evidence of more than
twenty householders that no paper
hanger ever did that much work in a
day
People now living in Skaneateles,
who resided there in the spring of
1888, still remember the excitement
over the remarkable case of Reverend
Lars Christophersson, rector of the
Aboriginal American Church. He was
sitting in his study one Sabbath MORN
ing, in mon bid and gloomy state of
mind, having just learned that his son,
who had gone off on a little scalping
party down the lake the night before,
had taken the only razor in the Manse.
While the elder sat gloomily rubbing
his chin and wondering if he couldn't
sandpaper it before a class meeting, a
storm, that had been gathering for
some time, suddenly broke above the
town with terrific violence. A long
zigzag streak of ball lightning entered
the window of the minister's study,
shaved him once over without raising
a pimple, trimmed his hair straight
across the back of the neck, giving
him that peculiarly meek look of
meekly meekness which is the artistic
triumph of that style of cut, banged
1t in front to make him look
childlike and simple, gave his
shoes a patent leather shine,
brushed his coat and was out of the
window again with a crashing noise
like four-year-old boy falling off a
pew during the long prayer The
strangest thing about the occurrence
was not discovered until that evening,
when the preacher discovered that
the lightning, on departing, had
burned hole in his vest pocket and
fused a silver quarter into round
sphere, which had dropped out on his
way to the Westinghouse.
Last July, Mrs. Weatherby Showers,
wife of the well-known fnancier of
that name, was putting her three
children to bed one very warm, sultry
evening when a flash of sheet light
Sir? 1 want to remem-
Der that this is Sunday paper?" Ha;
I'd like to see me get chance to for
get it Well, that's SO; guess I'll leave
that Showers story out. 1t is pretty
tough, a little. But the others may
stand; if they are not as true as some
lightning stories I've heard told by
some awfully truthful people, l don't
want a cent that can't get. -Burdette,
in Brooklyn Eagle.
TWEI