The St. Johns herald., 1894-02-01
A BOUNCING BOWLDER.
The Astonishing Caper of Ten-
 Ton Rock.
How a Connecticut Couple Were Surprised by the Landing of the Mammoth Stone on Their Premises Without
 Previous Warning.

Mir. and Mrs. Daniel Arnold, of East Haddam, in the Connecticut valley, were 'at home" one day recently, but hardly prepared to receive the stran- ger that suddenly appeared on their premises with big racket and consid- erable style, says the New York Sun. MT. and Mrs. Arnold, who were chatting in their kitchen, of a sudden heard a roaring, splitting, creaking and then soughing, rumbling noise, and, dash ing out of their abode into the front yard, were just in time to receive their guest there, which had come through the yard fence, taking the fence along with it. Thereupon it dug a hole in the middle of the yard and planted itself therein, setting itself easily in its socket. Mrs. Arnold threw up her hands in almost speeches. as- tonishment, and presently said: ''Oh, LordI' Her husband, like the door yard, which is small one and still al- most altogether occupied by the visit ing leviathan, was too full for utter ance. The big guest is a ten-ton powder, and it had come two or three hundred feet from it's seat on a dizzy shelf at the summit of mountain at the rear of the Arnold habitation just to make a call, apparently, on the Ar holds. It came very quietly, travers- ing the distance noted in about six seconds, and in it's track it ground up rail and stone fences, knocked down underbrush and trees, and plowed deep, ragged furrow in the wet and spongy soil between the base of the hill and the yard. It thundered across the open lots with frightful and ire sistible fury. It flew into the yard by a slightly circuitous path, barely missed slicing off gable of the dwell ing, and crushed two lengths of hand some white latticed fence into kin ding. Now MT. Arnold would like to have some one tell him how to speed the parting guest off his plantation, for it is nc easy task, safely, to blast a ten-ton powder under the caves of a mans house and haul away the frag- ments of it, and there is not enough OK or horse power in Haddam hamlet to haul it away bodily.
 For several years the great powder, perched in its mountain eyrie, had been threatening to tumble off that perch, but the fact that it never had done so encouraged the Arnold family to hope that it always would maintain it's unstable and tottering balance. It is spherical monster, that was set up like pear on its little end, and when the tremendous and long-continual downpours this spring had loosened part of its gravel support on the side of the declivisy there was no longer a substantial reason why the big fellow should stay up there alone on the precipice. It fell about thirty feet vertically, and then dived down an in- clined plane through a second-growth forest with the roar of a cyclone. It ripped up not less than dozen good sized trees by their roots, while its laundering onset nearly frightened all the people in Haddam, who feared that a hurricane was upon them, out of their wits. Mrs. Arnold was so badly scared and unnerved that she left the dinner dishes unwaShed until after supper.
 The Haddam bowlder is the biggest one that ever attacked a Connecticut household, but its extraordinary caper is by no means unparalleled in the | state. Not many years ago huge crag, weighing three tons, fell off the shag- gy hilltop at the rear of pretty cot tage on Laurel hill, in the heart of | Norwich, ran down the steep hillside l and jumped into the house by the way of the roof. It went through the roof and second story without difficulty or delay, and hopped into the middle of a handsome large bed in the guest | chamber. The bedstead was unable to hold the stranger and kept itself in- tact, and the great sock just wrapped the whole thing, bedstead, ticks, sheets, comfortables, pillows and pill low-shams, about itself and went ! down into the cellar, together with the floor, carpet and bedroom furni- | ture. When the man of the house ar rived home from his work at supper time his wife led him into the cellar | and showed him the bedroom still inthe | company of the powder. It was blue granite powder of the kind most com mon to Connecticut, hard as flint, | seamless and cross-grained. It took the family, with the help of two hired | men, more than week to get all of | the intruder out of their home, and | cost them one hundred and fifty dol lars to repair the mutilated angle of ! the house. Connecticut people have a i way of hanging their houses under i'm pending cliffs in this craggy, uphill :! land sometimes, and so when the crack | of doom finally does come they are more or less resigned to it.