The Birmingham age-herald., 1908-03-22
THE MINER AND DEATH MESSENGER The Choice He Would Make of
 Its Form FACES IT DAY AFTER DAY Explosion Is the Easiest Because It Has the Virtue of Being Sudden. Carbon Monoxide Brings
 Smile.

The advantage Of being III aH eAPAoSiO-A is tlsz.. you cen die, as a rule, pleasantly : because only about five of g. hundred ever feel the fire; the rest-perhaps coupie of hundred of you-inhale carbon nlon- oxide on your way out of the mine' "nicn brings a smile to your lips and req beauty-blush to your cheeks; and dyllg 's as easy as sleeping. You think you al going home. but will just take q httie rest You lie gently down in the dust. and that is all. All the pain IS lor 'no friends who find you dead.
 If is ouite different when the water breaks into the pit from some 1orsolten old working. You have choice ol oetl.ns then, but it is not nearly so pieasaht. p .h., You can either risk getting through the water and be drowned en route TOT tne pits eye. or run back to the higher work- ings and find dry, dark little noie "heio the water cannot reach you. iiefe 'n9 compressed air is sweet to preathe' anu so cold that you escape dying or star ton. because before that point IS reacneo vou are frozen stiff in your high and dry safe place.
 Besides. it is the easiest thing in the world to know what has happened when the roar of an explosion makes the pit shake But the drawback of an lnuhua- tion is that you have no idea tnat tne nllnG Is lOOueu uillll liAc ""NSA
 comes to you by rolling down your own road and knocking you and your putty head first into the face of the coal you are cutting. It hardly gives you tune to drop tools and run away. It is so strong that it will sometimes, as at Penygras' shoot a solid block of coal, four rect thick and six feet iong, out of It's We'll made, comfortable mesozoic bed.
 The flood rolls in and fills up the stall. It comes in with such a rush that at first everything floats and twists Tn it- shovels, mandrels, food tins, and drinking tins, jackets and waistcoats that were lying in the side, with big pieces of tim ber, and even Jumps of coal Hoauhs around. Sometimes you will see in it the body of a horse or of friend who was coming to warn you. x, Then for moment you join your lrlenu and the other wreckage, and the f1ooo swrIs you all round near the roof, up against the timber
 CoIors of the Flood.
 It may he a black flood. or It may pc yellow. I have ssen it as red as flre' III color it always takes after the minerals of the particular geological freak lhaI sent it into you so unexpectedly.
 In other workings the men and boys are running hard in all directions so as to avoid any personal contact with the flood They scramble through the race that is, right along the black lace OF the coal-instead of going out into the open roadways. They swing their pit 1amDs and shout-some to warn every rody else within sight and sound, but mostly they swing their lights and shout merely in terror.
 The roadways that end actually against th, coal may be branching down from q big. main level, like the limbs of 1aneh tree stretching out from the great trunk ,n1 lnnd there are as many men and boys In the mine as there are leaves on the tree; with the difference that the leaves on the tree comes there only with the sunshine, whereas these human units spring rom darkness. The best coal trees grow about a thousand feet down under the crust. There is that distance between the doom- cd human beings and daylight. They are nearly a quarter of a mile from the day light, and the roaring flood is scattering them through the dark workings more pitilessly than any winter blast dead leaves from Dig tree.
 Like a Hungry Devil.
 Everywhere in the darkness there are wild cries and swinging lights, and men, bows. and horses are struggling to escape. The rays of the lamps reach back to the water, and the glitter of the lights on the flood made it look like a great angry and
  all up
 The worst of it the miners are not only deep, but far from the daylight. There is only one way up-a small, mar row hole, and the rich coal has already been dug out over an area of a mile or so from the bottom of the shaft. So with all this distance to be covered, by its in- tended victims the flood has most of.the chances.
 Wherever it can find an opening. the water dashes in and drowns horses as easily as it drowns boys. The roadways are well lined with timber to keep up the mountains. but the force of the flood knocks out the timber and down comes the roof. So if you escape being drowned you risk being buried. and the choice has no attraction even when it is offered you. Yet in spite of all the handcapping, if there is any chance at all, human inge- nuity will get the best of the race.
 One or two strong -natured men will rise up in the, darkness, panic and disorder. and find a passage for terror stricken hundreds through the red or black sea, as the particular color happens to be. At least that is true history, By some God-known means man down there in the hole of death will take hun d,ed men in the palm of his hand and send them flying up to the top of the pit where their wives and mothers and chill dren are screaming and tearing their hair with agony. Then he will go back and fna the last fifteen or sixteen fathers and sons who have lost their way in the black maze of roadways. He finds them running and trying without light or hope. By this time the flood has followed and found him. Water has rushed in and filled up the road by which he came, He is entombed with the other fifteen, and he knows it. Their lamentations fill the darkness with useless echoes. But he gathers the men and boys into one group behind him. He has been able to keep his lamp lighted. They follow this one light in and out of the dangerous ways, evading the water wherever they meet it, creeping and crawling past the ragged, shining face of the coal, always keeping to the rise of the seam, until the light stops in hole at the topmost corner of all that black, bewildering world. The lgl,t atopc hara bacalIsa thera iS no