The daily morning journal and courier., 1902-03-29
HoUGHTs OF A FALLING MAN.
What Occupied zeis' Mind While He
 Was Dropping 100 Feet.

What Occupied ZeiS Mind While lie
 Was Dropping 100 Feet. "Why. I feel bully; I was wishing
 they would let me go out and roll on
 the lawn" said the man who fell five
 stories yesterday.
 Falling 100 feet down an elevator
 shaft is not exactly pleasant sensa-
 tion-one has no time for feeling" and
 it is not often that after it is over there
 are pleasant memories of the incident.
 Frank G. Zeis of 2933 Gray street is a
 restless patient at St. Josephs hospital
 to-day. His cheek and lip are scratched
 and his right little finger is wrapped up.
 Otherwise there is no evidence of the
 accident which befell him at the new
 Adams hotel Eeighteenth and Welton
 streets, yesterday, save a little soreness
 in the back
 q can't tell just how fell' said he, laughing, as if he was glad to see a vis- itor, this morning I went 'siss-boom' with just little accent on the siss, and
 have been lying here wondering how much brain I have. I didn't think l had much gray matter in my skull until
 I was being carried to the ambulance.
 Ordinarily I would not have paid any attention to the shaft sides as I went up in fact I didn't, but when I started to fall everything flashed before me; it seemed that I could see every nail, every chip and block on the floors and particularly the boards at the bottom.
 Before I fell I felt the rope on one side of my swing giving way Then I | remembered swinging out of seven story building recently with half-a-ton of iron for a fire escape, all hanging on the two ropes that supported me, and I wouldn't believe one of them was breaking. I yelled at the space below
 to let that rope alone, believing some one was tampering with the free ends by which had pulled my swing up on | the pulleys.
 | "Then came the horrible jerking 1 breaking of strand after strandit seemed to unravel and break by bits. I suppose it took two seconds for me to start, but it seemed like twenty min utes. When I saw the cause of one end of my board sinking I reached for the other rope, -siss-down went. As I slid off the board I thought a dozen things. First I realized like a flash of lightning that was facing death with out a chance in my favor. No, never thought of the mean things I had done nor the good. nor my friends and rel atives. It was death, death--sure and swift, coming at me like a cyclone, and I relaxed to die: a thousand rushing noises seemed to be bewilder me for an instant-a very, very short instant H. I my mind passed to the bottom of the shaft. My head was pointed down and turned over. l don't remember think ing how I would strike, but by some mysterious impulse or action I turned over and prepared to alight in sitting position.
 Then the sensation grew pleasant, I seemed to be riding on the wind above the earth, while the objects shot by like cannon balls. I seemed to be in rev. erie when I reached the thir floor-I | know it was the third for I remembered | later of having seen, a stick projecting | there-I felt a pain in my face My | finger and my face tipped the stick and | gave me those scratches and then I | thought of the boards at the bottom I | knew they were there about fifteen | inches apart and with the vision of these boards before me, rorgetful Of the flashes of light as I passed the diff ferent floors, I struck,
 Tit didn't hurt, I just felt as if thousand cannon boomed all at once in- to my ears and then all was black
 Next I awoke as they carried me to the ambulance. l thought about CUTS ing. Every time an ironworker gets hurt he curses. An ironworker can give a trooper pointers on frofanity, but death came looming up before me again-I went through it all over in my mind and I did not cuss. I haven't the habit, however. I drew up my arms and legs and began to realize I was alive--that I was not in a new world, and then I felt thankful. The sky seemed bluer and the sun brighter than it ever did and I resolved never to go up in the air again. When an iron worker gets Q fall he is mo move rood at the business I won't go up any more, but up to yesterday I always felt in the air, swinging by two ropes"
 Zeis struck on one two-inch board and snapped it in twain. His back. struck the other and was bruised, but lad it not been for the second board he would have walked awy., according to his own statements.-From the Denver Post.