Manchester Democrat. [volume] (Manchester, Iowa) 1875-1930, 1899-09-20
..Yon don,t tnoy what c,o,dh,,.st

"You don't know what cloudburst
isl Well, that is astonishingi A cloud
burst is what we call sort of Noah's
flood without any ark You see, some
big cloud that holds perhaps million
tons of water suddenly goes to pieces,
and the water all comes down at once,
the same AS it does at Niagara falls.
There's the same difference between an
ordinary rain and IL cloudhurst that
there is between sprinkling u cabbage
with watering pot and dumping
whole waahtnb fnll of water over it.
Thishyer cloudburst that IN speaking
of took place 80 or 40 miles above
here, and the whole lot of water ran
into the Pomponoosuc river and swelled
it into raging torrent that swept
everything before it heard it COM
ing just before it reached me. and
went for that hill yonder as fast as I
could run and just managed to reach
it in time. Before l started I hailed
the captain and told him to run while
he could, but he pretended not to hear
me and remarked, as if he was speak
ing to the universe and all the rest Of
mankind, that the curse of thishyer
country was the confounded imperti-
nence Of the lower classes. He was one
of those men that nobody can help ex-
cept with club, he was that everlast-
ingly obstinate and conceited.
MARTIN saw what was going to hap
pen as well as did. and just before the
flood struck his house saw him trying
to rig up sort of steering oar by LASH
ing plank to one of the veranda posts.
Then the flood, which came down like
a wall six feet high, burst on the house,
and away it whirled. The captains
steering oar wasn't of the least use,
and before he went out of sight he
dropped it and sat down on the railing
of his veranda with an arm around the
post and his pipe in his mouth as COM
Portable as you please. watched him
for the best part of mile, and could
not see but what the house was doing
very well and that the chances were
that it would bring up in some safe To-
cality before reaching the Muskingum
falls. which are AZ miles from here.
Anyway. 1 says to myself, here's an
end of trespassing on my property and
blocking up the public road and an end
of mighty disagreeable neighbor.
The sheriff, when he came the next day
and found that there wasn't any work
for him to do. said pretty much the
same thing
"What became of Captain Martini
Well, his house floated ashore down
nigh on to II miles from here. and the
captain never SO much as got his feet
wet When the water went down, it
left the house on the most valuable cor
ner lot in West Antioch, just where the
people had calculated to put up a new
opera houae. OF course the owner of the
lot made trouble for Martin. and Mar
tin made trouble for him. There were
no less than 10 separate lawsuits going
on at the same time between them, and
the prospect was that they would both
die of old age before the courts would
find out who was in the right. Captain
Martin made an arrangement with
grocer in the town to heave in all his
supplies through window. and he
loopholed the walls of his house and
made 1t shotproof and swore that he
would never leave it alive. He never
did, for one day he g3t so particularly
mad that he had u stroke. and when
the coroner broke into the house Il few
days later he found Martin lying on
the floor dead.
"Yes, sir, what with cyclones and
cloudbursts and prairie fires and biz
yards. and such like. northern Mime
sofa is midaling lively place. How
ever, we FOLKS that live here never al
lows ourselves to worry over what may
happen tomorrow, and then again may
not happen for the next go years. Be
sides. it Womb take Il first class cyclone
or a tremendous big flood to move
house that is built as solid as this hotel
is, SO you needn't be afraid that you II
find yourself sailing through the air or
floating down the Pomponoosuc-that
is, SO long as you pays your board reg
ular, as am free to say you always
has done, and presume you always
IL