Pine Bluff daily graphic., 1896-06-07
THAT TEXAS CYCLONE
AN ACCOUNT OF ITS MYSTERIOUS
 FORCE AND DESTRucTlvENEss.

Buildings Literally Torn In Rits-Suryfv-
 ors Caring For yictims-The Peculiar
 Reverse Force Exerted by the Wind.
 Marrow Path of the Storm.
 Fair as a garden of the Lord'' is north Texas in the month of May. The corn is to the horses knees: the oat- fields are heading; the cotton plant is ready for hoeing out; the orchards show the new growth; nature is pushing her productive power to its limit. All of this influences you as you ride toward sherman, and then without warning you come upon strip of desolation stretching across and marring the scene. Where nature is doing her best, nature has done her worst. The two are side by side in ruthless contrast. Twenty tbeousalnd people coming from all direc- tions have sbent Sunday in Sherman. They have tramped over the cyclones path from where it tore through the cemetery on the south, leveling tomb stones aRd uprooting evergreens and oaks, to Fairview, one of Sherman's beautiful suburbs on the north, now a field of wreckage. They have marveled greatly and have gone away on the excursion trains with strange tales to tell. Sheman's own people are still burying their dead and crying for their injured. That IS as far as they have been able to get with the problem of Friday evenings visitation
 All day the relief committee, those strong, resolute men who come to the front il every community in times of great emergency. was in session in the front part cf 6 store in the public square They sent nurses kere and there; they gave orGers fer ccffins; they re- ceiyed reports from the searching par ties; they revised the list of the dead and missing Gradually the work of re- lief took on practical and definite form
 The path cf tie storm was so narrow at the Pearce place that had the family left the house and gene east or west 100 feet they would have been spared. Not even the foundation was left of the house, and the path was swept as clean of vegetation as if it had been narrowed. But 100 feet to the east or the west the corn was growing, and the foliage was undisturbed.
 Cedar is one of the toughest of trees. ] In the Sherman cemetery stands a cedar l tree with pine board driven through i it's trunk as neatly as if it had been mortised there. The old sexton is man Of powerful physique. He was at work among the graves when he heard the roar and saw the black cloud He flung 1 himself fiat on the ground, with his hands clasped about the trunk of a small cedar tree Several times in that five minutes of aRfaI suspense he said the l cyclone seemed to raise him from the l ground and almost tear his hands loose, with all the vantage he had.
 The finest monument in Sherman l cemetery, f not i'll Texas, is the Scotch granite shaft reared to the memory of i the late C. c. Binkley. The force, what i ever it was, tore the shaft from the ped estal and fang it of, not in the course i the spiral cloud was moving, but i'll the opposite direction The cyclone moved 1 northward through the cemetery. The i shaft of the Binkley monument lies seY- eral feet to the sopthward of the base.
 Dr. Michael had been to the cemetery and was just driving ont when he was overtaken. The mysterious force lifted him from his new buggy and carried ! him back into the cemetery, 200 yards. Here again the force of the storm was exercised in the reverse. Dr. Michael's t horse was found standing beside Post l Oak creek, some distance from the ceme- tery. Dr. Michael's new buggy dis i appeared as completely as if it had been caught up in the clouds The willow bends to the breeze and saves its yield i ing branches when other trees suffer. The rows of willows along Post Oak creek are as bare as so many telegraph poles.
 MT ". J. Dunn had one of the finest rose gardens in north Texas about his pretty home ill Fairvlew. His fence was made of Bois d'Arc posts, a wood into which it takes skill to drive nail. Mir. Dann's rosebushes are as bereft of bl9s- sons and leaves as if a December bllz- gard had sHack them, and these Bois q Arc posts are twisted and snapped as if they had been inch pine pickets.
 Such evidence helps to a realization by comparison of this resistless force. It dealt destruction which left nothing whole. Where house stood squarely i'll the path, as did Jeln Browns at Fair view suburb, the fury not only tore 1t apart in the original ti1aters and boards, but it shivered and snapped every tim Der and every board. It took the con tents and broke them.
 Miss Maggie Dupree came home from her country school teaching and left $60 in q safe place in the house. The house is gone, and neither Miss Dupree nor any ore else has found the money. Philip Nichols, gardener Ill the out skirts of the city. lost roll of SOC in the same way.
 ct,,o ,,,x,s+o,.;ac oc,9tiYlup rusn4yed in