The daily morning journal and courier., 1896-06-20

HIN wall ana WlLn the two children huddled down on the floor close to it. The house began to crumble, A large old-fashioned wardrobe toppled over against the new wall and made with it erevice in which Mrs. Ely and the children were protected, The bricks from the Ely house were scattered far and wide, hardly enough being left where the walls had stood to make Q respectable ruin. Brick walls were no more substantial than wooden ones be- fore such forces. Of the family which lived across the street from the Ely house four were killed, Of the family that lived next door three were killed.
 Captain Jim Woods place was one of those on the edge of the cyclones path. It was so near the barn was taken and the house was left. When the family looked out of the windows Just after the cloud had gone by there stood the horse, where the barn had been, look ing around him inquiringly. Captain Woods had thirty or forty bales of hay in the loft of his barn. The cyclone took those bales, broke the string bands and scattered the hay as thoroughly as could have been done with a fork over an adjoining field,
 To the colored people along Post Oak Creek that passage of the cyclone was section of the Day of Judgment They prayed and ejaculated with in tense fervor, but were as helpless as little children The white people came and gathered up the black dead and in- jured, They turned the stores on une side of the public square into hospitals, and there white ladies have sat day af- ter day and night after night, flaming the black faces and putting cool druks to the fevered lips. In the presence Of great calamity the race problem has shrunken into at least temporary insig- nificance.
 John Butler and his wife had one of the marvellous experiences In ChoctaW Bottom, Becoming alarmed as they saw and heard the cloud, they left their house and ran to a neighbours 'Hhe people who lived at this second house had fled to the fields, Duncan and his wife had no time to go farther. As the house began to rock they dropped flat on the floor, he on one side and she on the other side of the cook stove The house was carried away and ;he Wreckage falling in the rear of the cloud piled on the stove and over them so that they were but slightly hurt But that is not the marvel. When MT and Mrs. Butler got down on that door there was carpet on it. When they were found the carpet was gone. Not a vestige of it can be found.
 The Choctaw Bottom farmers were wise in the day of cyclones. With few exceptions the families left the houses on the approach of the cloud ran out in the fields and lay flat on the ground among the fruit trees or in the 3orn and cotton row furrows They looked backward and upward and saw strange sights as the cloud went by. Logue brothers had a double log stable with a team of mules in each end. The south end remained in place with the mules unhurt. The north end was cut off and taken away. The mules there were carried half a mile to wire fence and killed The Logues lay on the ground and saw the mules roll over and over along with a revolving mass of brush and timbers across the half mile of open field.
 One story of what the cyclone did in Choctaw Bottom seems to be too much for credence. It is sustained, however, by much testimony A COW and a calf were seen going through the air. If this were told by only one witness it might be attributed to the effect of the atmospheric disturbance upon the im- agination. Every family in Choctaw Bottom which took refuge in the ope.N fields claims to have seen that COW 3nd calf in the air. One of the LoBuc brothers, while clngng to a stump to keep from going up himself. saw COW close enough to judge of her size He says she weighed about nine hundred pounds, which would make her good average COW.
 ''I will never again call man a lar who tells me any kind of a cyclone sto- ry," said the heretofore skeptical hotel- keeper of Sherman.
 pr w. r. Michael survives to tell the most thrilling experiences. He sailed through the air distance of two city blocks in the heart of the cloud. Three days afterward he was limping about attending to his patients. Dr Michael preserved his faculty of observation and is able to describe in detail what he saw and felt.
 That Friday afternoon the doctor was making professional calls in che southwestern suburbs of the city He had been to the Dublin home, had re- turned to where he had left his horse hitched and was driving southward through the cemetery. intending to pass out the gate on that side. The storm cloud loomed up before him just before he reached the south fence He realized that 1t was driving toward him, and that with a spirited horse it was impossible to get out of the way. Springing from his buggy, he unfast- ened the traces, started the horse out of the shafts and turned him loose. Then he began to run for a place of safety. He had gone fifty feet west ward when il seemed to him that the cloud was going to strike the center of the cemetery. So he turned and ran eastward toward the east fence. Just as he reached the fence and flung him self down the cloud came upon him.
 T heard roaring sound" said pr. Michael, "when the storm was two miles or so distant, but it was beyond the hills, and I didn't discover that I was right In the path of it until it reached the nearest hill, from half to three quarters of a mile south of me. It didn't resemble a funnel-sh3ped cloud. It looked to me like a great ball of vapor. rolling over and over toward mo When I first saw it distinctly at