The Forrest City times., 1904-01-01

Opera Comique in Paris, and from the rear of each balcony there are three doors leading out to passage ways toward the front of the thea ter. Two of these doorways are at the end of the balcony and one in the center The audience. in it's rush for the outer air, seems to have. for the greater part, chosen to fee to the left entrance and then attempted to make it's way down the eastern stair way, leading into the lobby of the theater.
 Outside of the people burned and suffoeated by gas, it was in these two doors on the first and second balconies that the greatest loss of life occurred.
 When the firemen entered the building the dead were found stretch ed in pile reaching from the htad of the stair at least eight feet from the door back to a point about five feet in the rear of the door. This mass Of dead bodies in the center of the doorways reached to within two feet of the top of the passage way. All of the corpses at this point were women and children.
 The fight for life which must have taken place at these two points is something that is simply beyond human power to adequately describe. Only faint idea of it's horror can be derived from the aspect of the bodies as they lay. Women on top of these masses of dead had been overtaken by death as they were crawling on their hands and knees over the bodies of those who had died before Others lay with arms stretched out in the direction toward which lay life and safety, holding in their hands fragments of garments not their own. They were evidently torn from the clothing of others whom they had endeavored to pull down and tramplc underfoot as they fought for their own lives
 AS the police removed layer after layer of dead in these doorways, the sight became too much even for po- lice and fremen. hardened as they are to such scenes, to endure The bodies were in such an inextricable mass and so tightly were they jam. med between the sides of the door and the walls that it was impossible to lift them one by one and carry them out. The only thing to do was to seize limb or some other DOT tion of the body and pull with main strength. Men worked at the ta5l with tears running down their cheeks, and the sobs of the rescuers could be heard even in the hall be low, where this awful scene was be ing enacted
 number of the men were com pelled to abandon their task and give 1t over to others whose nerves had not as yet been shaken Dy the awful experience. As one by one, the bod ies were dragged out the watersoaked blackened mass of corpses the specta- cle became more and more heartrend- ing. There were women. whose clothing was torn completely from their bodies above the waist. whose bosoms had been trampled into a pulp, and whose faces were marred beyond identification
 Bodies lay in the first and second balconies in great numbers. In some places they were piled up in the aisles three and four feet deep. where one had fallen and others tripped over the prostrate forms, and all had died where they lay, evidently suf located by the gas. Others were bent over backs of seats. where they had been thrown by the rush of peonle for the doors. and killed. with hard. " chance to rise from their seats one man was found with his back bent nearly double, his spinal coi. umn having been fractured as he was thrown backward. A woman was found cut nearly in half by the hack or the seat, she having been forced over it face downward.
 In the aisles nearest lne doors the scenes were narrowing in the ex 'reme. Bodies lay in every conceiy. able attitude. half naked the look on their faces revealing in some measure the agony which must have preceded their death. There were scores and scores of people whose entire faces had been trampled com pletely off by the heels of those who rushed over them. and in one aisle the body of a man was found with not a vestige of clothing or flesh on the bones remaining above his waist The entire upper portion of his body had been cut in mincemeat and car ried away by the feet of those who trampled him; search was careful. ly made. with a hope of finding his head. but at late hour tonight it had not been discovered. and all that will ever tell his friends who he was Is the color and appearance of the clothing on the lower limbs, and this