The daily morning journal and courier., 1900-05-19

the SuTldce, ana women eyes were ufy with hope for the first time since, tht | dreadful tidings were heard. The rap pings continued at intervals, and every I body was sure some of the entombeG 1 men were alive-everybody except one poor boy of eighteen who day and night was in the slope with the workers. The rappings were heard on the iron pipes | through which water had been pumped | from the bottom of the slope. It was | evident that some of the entombed men
 had reached an open space there and were hammering on the pipes to en- 1 courage the workers. Work went on
 with renewed enthusiasm, and young
 Langan. the entombed superintendent
 son, performed as heroic an act as is re-
 corded in the history of mining. Be
 tween the top of the fall and the roo1
 was a space of a few inches, and with
 wonderful daring he dragged himself
 along over the fall, At any moment he might have been crushed by the roof | but he returned. He was gone three
 hours and in that time crawled nearly three hundred feet and back, His 1 clothes were torn to shreds, and his body was covered with blood from scores of cuts and bruises. He had | found no opening and learned nothing of { he entombed. For three days the rappings continued, and then one night, | in a dark and obscure corner of the slope, one of the foremen came upon a water boy hammering the pipes with a | piece of rock. It was an awful discov- cry, the hope that had cheered the men on for the past three days was dis | pelled, and despair replaced it. The
 poor boy when arraigned before the 1 mine officials, confessed that he had
 been rapping on the pipes during the three days and he said, in extenuat ton
 of his act: i've got a father and two brothers in there and I was afraid the men would quit work, so I wrapped to encourage them, because I want them to find my father and brothers" The work was kept up for months, but no trace of the entombed men was found, and the attempt at rescue was at last abandoned.
 The accident at Plymouth, Pa, was
 caused in a like manner. As may well
 be imagined the conflict between hope
 of rescue and fear of death in the
 hearts of the victims friends, is terri
 ble. Hope died slowly at Pittston, and
 it is the same elsewhere. This is due
 to the absolute uncertainty Some
 argue that the victims may be hemmed
 in an open chamber, with plentiful
 supply of air and water, and quote the
 wellknOwn cases, where, at Sugar
 Notch, 0 number of men lived two
 weeks, eating a mule entombed with
 them, and were finally rescued; where
 at Jeanesville, Pa, a rescue was ef-
 fected after nineteen days. in which the men had nothing to eat except the
 leather of their boots-owing to their ignorance, the life-sustaining fsh-oil in their lamps was untouched-and again, of the two men who at Nantcoke were rescued after sitting astride log in flooded workings for nine days with nothing to eat. With these instances of recovery from the hand of death, after persistent attempt at rescue, it is hard for friends of entombed men to believe that all hope is gone and frequently- as at Pittston-as late as six weeks af- ter the accident they mplore the mine officials to keep up the effort
 Other accidents affect only the mine and the miners. Caves affect the sur face, and many property owners in this region have cause to regret the day when they bought land which was un- dermined because it was cheap. Re- gently large section of street at Wyo- ming. Pa., went down, with several buildings, and instances are numerous of houses being swallowed up by the greedy earth, of cattle engulfed and suffocated. People are sometimes caught, but not often, for the earth generally sinks slowly, and there is usu- ally plenty of time to escape, There have been instances of a quick settle ment; two close to this city were espec- ially interesting. A peddler was driv- ing slowly along the road leading from this city to Plains, Pa, when his horse sank, dragging the front wheels of the wagon after him. When the driver recovered from his surprise and terror, the wagon body was on the edge of hole thirty feet deep. Some time later near the same place an old woman was sitting near her doorstep shelling peas. Her husband coming over the hill, saw her suddenly drop out of sight, ran up and found her busy picking up her scattered peas forty feet below the surface. She was uniniured and quickly rescued
 In February portion of the tracks along the line of the Central Railroad of New Jersey, two miles from here, was sucked down by a cave-in. In the early morning a freight train speeding toward this city dashed into the hole wrecking the engine and several cars.- Letter in the New York Evening Post