The Holbrook news., 1911-12-08
VIE summer of 1911 will go down in history as one of the most remarkable in respect to freak isk electrical displays and the havoc wrought by them.


 ish electrical displays and the
 havoc wrought by them.
 Winged death out of the angry skies Is more terrible now than it was to the primeval cave dweller He flour ished centuries before the metal age, cons before the time of harnessed electricity. Neither his clothing nor his utensils offered an attractive mark. But a severe electrical storm in this age of universal conduction spells un- limited possibility of horrors. The lightning bolt Is identical with the force that drives the street cars. that transmits telegraph messages. that works the telephone, that supplies light and power.
 The lawless flash has an avenue over every open wire. It can deal death by applying the spark to manu- factured explosives. It cavorts and prances with fiendish delight over and through the myriad shapes of metal within its fleld-metal of universal necessity in our dress, our house con struction. our sports, our amusements and our business. Moreover, it travels AOL 6l Ce-lCA AoNdAC0 IO oAeAJ. A-eCSr1 miles from the center of a storm the bolt has stricken a lineman mending wire It seeks the bowels of the earth, and, as in a recent wonderful disaster, not even the miners burrov- ing far below the ground are safe.
 The type of lightning flash shown above Is one which extends hori- zontaIly for a considerable distance. A correspondent writing to Nature concerning a curious multiple-fash photograph which he had obtained mentioned that he did not leave the camera shutter open as is usually the case, but snapped it when he observed a slight movement of the storm clouds from which the flashes were proceed ing. The impression his letter con veys is of a slight twittering move ment in the cloud.
 scaIpIng a HousefuI of People.
 In Monticello, N Y, Charles Garet- sky runs a summer boarding house. crowded during the hot spell. He had sixty guests the morning of July 26, when the electrical visitor came down through the roof and, neglecting to register, entered without ceremony, every room of the house. Singeing the hair costs 15 to 25 cents in the average barber shop. Without a money charge. but with a very decided cleo trical one, the bolt singed the hair and scorched the scalps of twenty two men and women guests. It did them no other damage. Coquettishly, 1t woke a young woman out of her sleep by tearing a hole in the wall beside her pillow It didn't touch the beds, which were possibly of the feath- CT sort dear to our grandmothers, and the late sleepers. as distinguished from the early birds who had already got up and were moving around. escaped bodily injury.
 Lightning altered still more remark ably the domestic arrangements of a family in Columbus, Ind, when it gave back to Mrs. Jonathan Drake her voice Two years before she had lost her speech as the result of paralysis of the vocal cords But when, on July 2O the lightning flashed and the heavens roared, Mrs. Drake simply just had to scream. It was a good, healthy scream, too, and the manner of 1t surprised the good lady even more than it did her gaping mouthed friends and neighbors. Having re- learned vocal utterance. Mrs. Drake has kept right on talking. Sign Ian guage has been forgotten, chalk and blackboard have been sent to the at- tic, and, given her choice of two sig nal deprivations, Mrs. Drake probably shares the opinion of universal woman kind that they would rather talk than eat.
 Golfers as a Target.
 The golfer out on the links with his midiron, butter and brassie offers @ true mark for the wandering bolt The lamentable death of Tristan Burges Johnson, the former New York alderman, occurred on the Chevy Chase links, near Washington, in this wise: As is well known, these are the links that the president uses, and 1t was rather a matter of luck than otherwise that Mir. Taft did not play