The Arizona sentinel., 1889-07-06
THE MINERS CORNET.
How It's Notes Preached a Sermon Amid
 Wretched Scene.

An incident that touched me
 deeper than any thing ever did before or since occurred on visit l paid tC the coal regions some years ago." said a gentleman of this city. There had been a serious cave-in at the Bellevue mine, along the Lackawanna river, or the outskirts of Scranton. I went tC the spot a day or so after the cave hat occurred. It was dreary day, late il NOvember--a dark, rainy, dismal day The great coal breaker at the mine was in operation, as work had not been entirely suspended. The rattle and crash and whirr of the ponderous machinery was deafening. From windows and doors, and every crack and cranny, black clouds oi coal dust poured out into the open air, and were beaten by the rain into inky Ooze that fell in besmirching drops on every thing about and below. A mar row road, cut into gullies by the rain, and lying ankle deep in the sooty mud, l led past the breaker, and from it up a i steep hill to the clusters of dilapidated l huts where the miners and their fam flies lived, called by courtesy the vil- lage.'
 Through the village, without any ap- parent reason for their being, unless it might be that they were parade grounds for the geese and goats that disputed the way with me, ran narrow streets, with here and there great seams and crevices crossing or running parallel to them, results of the sinking of the mine roofs beneath. Here and there a hut also had sunk half way to it's roof ! into the unstable earth.
 "On the summit of the hill, which overlooked miles of dreary, desolate landscape, stood a little church, which had itself settled a foot or more with the sudden caving. The scores of simple grave-stOnes in the church. yard, standing askew, some of them surface, told their sad tale of mine fatality. The bottoms of many of the graves had fallen in with the tumbling mine roof, and the crumbling remains the graves contained had dropped into the depths-the remains, perhaps, of miners who had previously been car ried dead or mangled beyond recovery from the very mine to which their bones had been so ruthlessly returned.
 "LoO1ing down from the summit of the hill upon that struggling collection of most wretched habitations; upon the grooming breaker, with the inky drainage dripping from its grimy caves; the swollen, yellow river, be- meath the very bed of which many of the occupants of the miserable novels were even then deIvIng for subsistence, down deep in the mines, it seemed to me that nowhere on Gods footstool could there be a scene more desolate, more utterly bereft of all that could give to any living soul one single ray of hope or thought of contentment.
 But even as gazed around, think ing how little the outside world kne W of the actual wretchedness that hedged about these patient toll CTS, the sound of a cor net broke upon my ear. Clear and plaintively sweet it's notes swelled out upon the air. They issued from one of the most dilapidated of the dwellings,; one that stood on the very edge of one of the hn4 course of the dismantled mine roof. And what was the air, think you, that doated up from the unknown musician's instrument amid these dismal sur roundings?
 1t was Home, Sweet Home,' God help him! Of all things in the world, Home, Sweet Homer Never was pathos so personiied. Tears welled to my eyes, and 1 was proud of them. 1 emptied all the coin 1 had into the hand of a pale, gaunt little boy, who had been eye:ug me. curiously as l stood an the hill, and bade him carry them 10 the house and give them to whoever might live there. The lads thin hand closed convulsively on the money, and, with frightened look, he ran away toward the house.
 ''I did not stay to learn more of the inmates of that hut. That they could have heart to dwell there and think of it as home, sweet home, was enough for me. l hastened from the desolate spot to the rich and happy city just beyond, in the shadow of whose heaven-pointing spires a sermon had been preached to me such as none of their well-paid pastors, with all their eloquence, could have preached. "-N.