Democratic messenger., 1893-08-12
SOMEWHAT STRANGE.
ACCIDENTS AND INCIDENTS OF
EVERYDAY LIFE.
Queer Facts and Thrilling Adven-
lures Which show That Truth is
Stranger Than Fiction.

Stranger Than Fiction.
Two young men of Boston while on a
journey through India last summer, wit
messed an exhibition by fakir in small
village outside of Calcutta. The fakir
was performing the usual experiment OF
making a rope descend from the clouds
and man come down the rope, who
assembled by the same route after having
his heal cut Off. The exhibition was in
an open square before 1000 spectators.
Ever zone saw plainly what was happen
ing. The two Bostonians had cameras
with them, and took numerous snap
shots of the exhibition in its various
stages. They intended to write an ar
ticle upon the subject for n magazine,
and illustrate it direct from photographs.
They Developed the plates with much
interest upon their return to Boston re-
ceutly. They were nonplussed when they
saw the results. The photographs re-
vealed the fakir surrounded by the
crowd. with astonishment, bewilderment
and horror pictured on their faces, but
the extraordinary decapitation they had
witnessed did not show upon the sensi-
tive plates. The crowd standing around
was apparently looking at nothing in the
photographs. What they saw had not
happened at all, but they merely saw it
in their minds eye. While there is
nothing remarkable in the force of sug
gcstion when applied to one person, and
it would not be impossible for an inn
preston such as the event which the
Boston men saw, to be conveyed to one
~, n,.,l.&sa,, t1,a 81
cumstances at the Indian fakir's exhibi
tion were entirely different. Here were
1000 people. fully awake, who all saw
in their minds exactly the same picture,
and had no doubts that the wonderful
events actually happened. An incident
OF this kind tends to make one begin to
consider. if he has not done so before, if
il is not possible for certain influences to
so strongly impress the mind that we
may, even while clinging to the old
theory, "seeing is believing" be hon
estly deceived, yet what we see may be
SO real that the thought OF its being any
thing else never enters our mind. 1t was
so in the case of the Bostonians.
As anecdote has been going the rounds
Of the newspapers of n man who, on
breaking open an old relic, came upon
some unexpected records of his progeni-
tors. This is nothing to what really
happened few years ago to Mr.. w. r..
Oakes, of Foxcroft, one of the best known
of Maine land surveyors, and the de-
scendant of q land surveying ancestry
He was employed to find, if he could.
the true line between Willimantic and
Bowerbank townships in the Maine
woods, where there was strip of land
half mile wide which had been so often
surveyed with varying results, that
spotted trees were more numerous on it
than unspotted ones. One end of the
disputed line was in the middle of Scbec
Lake. The other end was somewhere
among the lodges of the mountain range
Under these conditions, t. find the orig
inal corner tree was, as the boy said, 'no
fool of Job" Mr. Oakes took long
start back where the line was well estab-
lished and surveyed over the mountains.
lie did this several times, finding such
natural obstacles in the way that correct
results were far from easy to get. He
had nearly given up the task as hope
less one, when by accident almost, in a
down tree, which had once stood on a
steep, rocky knoll, he found the coveted
marks. Chopping off the overgrowth
from the ancient spots, he uncovered a
smooth surface as clean and bright as if
newly cut, on which was written the sur
veyor's record in plain hand, stating
that it was the corner tree between the
two townships as surveyed in 1891, Civ
ing the date. This was signed by Samuel
Weston, Stephen Weston, William
Cakes, and John Oakes, who composed
the surveying party. William Oakes
was the grandfather of the finder of the
tree. and John Oakcs was his granduncle,
and this was the first time the grandson
had ever seen the handwriting of either
of them.
TIE offense known in this country as
sequestration, or private imprisonment,
Is far from uncommon, says II Paris letter
Only the other day whole family was
brought up for trial on a charge of keep
ing an idiot youth in an iron cage until
he had lost all his physical as well as
mental faculties. and similar case is
now reported from Evreux, in Normandy.
The authorities of the village of Neu-
anonymous letter that peasant named
Lehuby was ''sequestrating" his wife,
The gendarmes presented themselves at
Lehuby's house and asked to see his wife.
This request being refused, they pro-
ceeded to search the place from the Gel
lar to the granary. and having found no
trace of the woman were about to with
draw when one of them discovered a
large trunk and asked for the kew. On
the case being opened the figure of Nine
Lehuby suddenly jumped up like Jack
in the Box, and she explained to the
gendarmes that her husband would not
allow her TO go out, and Whenever he
left the house he left her locked up in
the box, where she could scarcely
breathe. Lehuby was at once arrested,
and will be tried for amateur imprison-
ment."
An unmarried woman possessed of
considerable wealth who died recently
in town in Pennsylvania was buried in
grave that was dug nineteen years ago.
Her father was buried i'm it originally.
and after two years his body was ex-
humed and placed in n vault 1t was a
principle of the family never TO spend
money uselessly, and the daughter, real
izing that she herself would need grave
some time, decided that filling up the
grave would be waste OF good money,
and gave orders that it be kept open for
her When the not-too long delayed
day came, (she was then eighty one
years of age,) the grave was found TO be
half dozen inches too short. 1t was
heightened and the interment made.
A RECENT earthquake at San Nicholas
Island, near Santa Barbara, Cal, has re-
vived interest in the story of the old In
dian woman who led Crusoe life on the
island for many years. She was left
there by accident in 1886, and her exist
ence forgotten until twenty years later,
when Santa Barbara hunter, who had
visited the island for ottcrs, found
her there and carried her to
the mainland. She had entirely for.
gotten her language. and in consequence
the story of her hermitage was never