Wood County reporter. [volume] (Grand Rapids [i.e. Wisconsin Rapids], Wis.) 1857-1923, 1891-06-04
GRANTS CHANCE.
1t Was Offered at Odds of Fifty TO One
and Was Promptly.
Accepted.
Capturing a Manipur Fort With
Only Eighty Men and
Routing 1000.
An Incident of the Recent Rebellion
and Massacre of Her Majesty's
Eastern Possessions.

The story of Lieutenant Grant is al
most too good story to be true, and reads
like one of those Mr.. Rudyard Kipling in
vents, says Richard Harding Davis in Har-
per's Weekly. It's scene is laid in Mr.
Kipling's own territory, and it deals with
decoys and iungles, and the little darling
Goorkhas of whom Mr.. Kipling is so fond
ard with native princes aud rajah
and hand-to-hand fighting and the glory
of the British arms.
In the early part of April the Associated
press, under the unfamiliar date line of
Calcutta, told Of a massacre in Manipur,
wherever that may be, where semi-bar-
barous native Indians rose against the
representatives of the empress of India
and killed thes treaeher0usly while they
were negotiating terms Of peace, and try
ing to put the right raJah on the throne
from which troops of the wrong rajah had
driven him. The news was partly rumor,
partly horrible fact, and the names of
many comm ssioners and officers were
given as dead and as butchered after
death. And at the end of each newspaper
account was the brief statement: Lieut.
Grant, who left Tamur for Manipur with
eighty men, has not been heard from. He
is believed to be dead. 1t was most I'M
important ending and an antl-cllmaX.
Nobody but the Grants, of Grant, In the
Highlands of Scotland, who raised the
BLACK Watch" knew or cared about this
| unidentified and unknown Lieut.. Grant.
What was one lieutenant and eighty men
to three commissioners and colonies and
| the commissioners wives and the picked
troops of the Forty-foarth Gookhas?
But on the days following came fuller
and more accurate accounts Of the massa-
ere; and it was told how the Manipuri had
sheled the Residency with the same can
non the empress of India had sent them as
a token of her royal good feeling; and how
the young officers and Mrs. Grimwood had
escaped in The night, and travelled on foot
by jungle paths for 12G miles liv-
ing Oh roots, to be rescued at the last by
Capt CowIey hurrying forward with re-
Inducements; and how Mrs Grimwood's
husband and the others who had left the
Residency to arbitrate, had been cut
into quarters, and thrown into the moat
| for the parish dogs to mangle as they
pleased. 1t read Ike a page from the
| history of the Sepoy mutiny, like a
modern version O: the terrible stories Of
| Cawnpore, Delhi, and Lucknow, and it
was blow at the British rule In India,
and a trial to the hearts of every one who
read it whether ne read it in Eng
lish or translated into foreign tongue.
| But there was one saving clause, one
paragraph that ligltened the rest for
every one who read it, for Lieutenant
Grant, the unknown, marching, uncon-
scious of massacres, between Tamur and
Wanipur, had at last been "heard from. :"
His paragraph came at the end, as it had
on the day before, nodestly, as became
his rank, behind the colonels and commits
sioners. Lieutenant Grant," it read,
with so men, has defeated 1900 Mani
puri, and has taken Fort Thobal.' Now
nobody knew whether Fort Thobal was
bristiing with cannon or mud embank-
ment, but every one could appreciate that
80 into 1900 goes fifty times, and that
Lieutenant's Grants chance was only one
in fifty when he charged up the wall of
! Fort ThobaI, and drove the Manipuri
| across and over the other side. And all
over the world, thanks to kilograms
and cables, the name and fame Of Lieu
| tenant Grant became momentous and
| familiar, not only in the clubs of
London, but in the elevated cars of New
| York, and at breakfast tables from Paris
to Portland, Oregon. For if all the world
! loves lover, it loves hero next, and the
chance that came to Lieutenant Grant
| and the way he rose to it, became
| brilliant spot in the gloomy tale of
! treachery, butchery. and laundering of
| the Manipuri massacre. Lieut.. Grant
held Fort Thobal for three days, and then
repulsed the Manipuri again at Along
tang in fight that lasted three long hot
hours, during which the Senaputty prince
and his two commanders were killed, and
| the Maripuri we're driven off into the jun
gle by Lieut.. Grants men of the Second
| Burmahs.
Gen. Sir Frederick Roberts, the com
Tnander-in-chief of the Indian army, has
congratulated Lieut. c. J. W. Grant,
which is as it should be, and Punch has
given him full page all to himself; it is
also as it should be that Lieut.. Grant is as
handsome as his portrait shows him to be,
and that he is only 80 years old. cit is
the boys-the raw boys-who do the fight,
ing" Mulvaney says; and though Lieut..
Grant is no raw recruit, he is boy in
years, and the Second Burmahs are but
newly formed. Now, while the home
government sends out more commissions
to determine who blundered and who
should be punished, let US hope that
some other board of investigation and in
curry will do more for Lieut.. Grant than
congratulate him, and that he may go to
Simla on leave, and ride With all the pretty
! girls, and wear cool things and drink the
WINE of praise and approval and keep out
| of the clutches of Mrs. Hanksback. And
IN time he may get his regiment and be-
come K. c. Who know?
| And in The meanwhile his father, Lieut.
| Gen. D.. G. S. st. J. Grant, who is now IN
i London, goes to all of his many clubs that
| the members may say, ''Ah, Grant, fine
| boy, that of yours; ought to be proud OF
him" And then the lieutenant general
says, Pooh! pooh! only did his duty
and then goes home and tells his wife every
thing they say
I Perhaps this may seem to you a great
! deal of bother about enc young man; but
| do not think of what he did, but of what
! he might have done. He might have
said: 81 have no instructions to take
Fort Thobal. | have 10 right to risk my
mems lives al odds of fifty to one. |
ought to make mastery detour and
show my strategic knowledge and leave
Fort Thobal and the 1900 Manipuri
alone" Who would have blamed him ?
| Fahion would have done 1t. But Lleu-
| tenant Grant walked right up the nud
wall and over the other side. 1t was his
| chance, you see, and he took 1t; and 1t
e aches the moral that when ones chance
comes it is -. uch better TO be reported as
! heard from" than missing.
| THE THAMES EMBANKMENT.
| 4 Wonderful Work of Engineering, The