The Jersey City news. (Jersey City [N.J.]) 1889-1906, 1889-12-18
DEAD In THE SWAMP.
The Ghostly Story of a Kite and
Three Dead Cows.

spoke in a previous article of the dis
NAL swamp that stood on the eastern
limits of the village of Bruceville. Some
time or other, probably before the village
had been settled, there had come through
the forest a tornado, and it had dashed
the trees down in all sorts of shapes over
the partly submerged land. Then at
some other period a fire had swept
through this, and had left it one of the
most d~esolate, forlorn looking, tangled
mazes of half burnt wood that could be
imagined. Years had passed since that
time, and the repeated rains had washed
most of the black off the wood and left
the white, gaunt limbs sticking up in the
air, like spectral arms, and made the
,ghostly place to is boys a region of ter
ror and q first rate place to avoid. No
body, asfar as / have been able to learn,
had penetrated into the innermost re-
icesses of that swamp. No boy that I
ever knew dared to enter the swamp
even in the brightest sunlight, while the
thought of that swamp at night!-whew
it makes me shudder even now.
Nobody was more afraid of that swamp
than | was, yet think l may claim to
have been the first boy that ever explored
it, and that is the reason that my hair
today is gray. | may say that about
this time a great mystery shook the vii
lage from its circumference to it's center.
The mystery was the strange disappear
ance of three COWS that belonged to three
of our villagers. Nearly every one of
the villagers kept a cow, and these COWS
grazed on the commons that adioined the
village. One day three of the most val
liable cows were missing, and a search
all over the country for them was unsuc-
oessful. This mysterious disappearance
caused more talk and gossip in that vii
ilage than the murder OF three men would
have done in a larger town. Everybody
had a theory as to how the COWS had dis
appeared. l remember that a lot of wan
dering gypsies anne along at that time,
and one of the owners of the cows CON
suited a gypsy as to their whereabouts.
After paying the fee the gypsy told him,
somewhat vaguely, that he would hear
of the COW, but that she feared he would
not take as much interest in the animal
after she was found as he had done be-
fore. This turned out, however, to be
strictly accurate.
About this time some one introduced
in the village a strange continuance
which was known as a kite. Improba-
bic as it may seem, this invention would
sail in the upper skies without the aid Of
gas, which is used to elevate a balloon.
The way it was made was thus:
A hoop of a barrel was taken and was
cut SO that it made a semi-circle; then a
piece of lath was fastened to the center
of that semi-circular hoop, and a piece
of string was tied to the end of the hoop
and down to the bottom of the lath. A
cross piece of lath was also made to
strengthen the affair, and then we cut a.
newspaper into shape and pasted it over
the string and lath and hoop ends. A
long tail was attached to the end of the
lath, made of string, to which was tied
little bits of paper, somewhat after the
form of curl papers used by ladies in
those days to keep their hair in curl.
Then a long string was attached to this
kite, and if the breeze was good and you
held IN one end of the string, the affair
rose gracefully in the heavens.
There was great competition among
US boysin kite flying, and the wild desire
to own the kite that would fly the high
est caused bitter rivalry. I succeeded in
getting a very good kite, and bankrupt
ed myself in buying a lot Of string as an
attachment. After purchasing that ball
Of Irvine, l was poor in this worlds
goods, with the exception of that kite,
which proudly floated away above it's
fellows. We used to tie our kite string
to the fences, and leave the kites float
ing up all day, and | have seen as man
as ten or fifteen kites lowering away
above the village. One day, when the
wind was blowing from the village over
the swamp, some nyious villain, whose
identity | have not been able to discover
to this day, cut the string Of my kite at
the fence. If | had found out who the
that there would have been the biggest
fight that the village of Bruceville ever
saw. | was in another part of the vii
Iage when the disaster happened, and I
saw with horror that my kite, which
hoated SO high above the rest, suddenly
began to waver and then fioated off to-
wards the east, wabbling to one side and
then to the other in a drunken, stupid
sort of fashion, and finally huttered
down TO the ground somewhere on the
other side of the swamp. In doing this
it trailed the long line of valuable string
clear across the dismal swamp.
1t was hard TO believe that there could
exist in the world such desperate villainy
as would pronpta boy to the awful deed.
I passed through the village weeping
loudly over the disaster, but this at
tracted very little attention it was merely
thought that ] had got one Of my usual
thrashings, and there seemed to be a be-
lle1 III the village tnas whenever that IN
teresting episode occurred it was richly
deserved. found the end of the string
near the edge of the swamp, and l got a
stick and began to wind it and save as
much as possible of the string. don't
suppose any less consideration would
have induced me to brave the terrors of
that swamp, but through the wild en-
tanglement | went, winding up the string.
which was stretched over bush and
bramble, and now and then stuck on the