The weekly soliphone., 1917-06-07

l
 I put on brakes and stoppde the | train within 400 feet of the wreck N ed railroad depot, just outside the ! danger zone of the stwister.
 \ The passengers, half of whom 4 were scheduled to leave the train \ at Mineral Point, tranfer juno Al tion, and half of whom were bound \ for St. Louis, watched the finishing | touches of the cyclone from the ! stalled train. It was several min ' utCs after the twister had moved ! before the hailstorm that accOmpa- ! nied it abated sufficiently to per 1 init anyone to leave the train. As soon as it became safe, the train | emptied and passengers and crew members went to work rescuing ! the victims.
 There were a score of negroes at Mineral Point who volunteered to | aid in the rescues, Gragg said. They performed feats of strength l in lifting heavy debris that whites | were unable to budge, thus releas- ing persons who had been pinned beneath it.
 One negro lifted the fallen roof of the railroad station at the direc- tiOn of Gragg, who saw the foot of q. man beneath it. The body was that of Supt. Le Masters, a com panion of Gragg's for twenty years. Le Masters was dead and the body crushed almost beyond recognition TRAIN WINS THRILLING RAGE
 A thrilling race with the cyclone
 Mississippi River and Bonne Terre railroad, near Mineral Point, and possibly saved the lives of 100 pas scngers, who pleaded with the train crew to stop the train and take q chance with the twister. that was plainly visible in the rear. Conductor Edward Brewer of Doe Run refused to heed the pas l sengers' pleas, and ordered the en- gineer to throw the lever full on, in an effort to outrun the approach ing twister The train broke all records on the Bonne Terre divis- ion, according to the crew, and sue ceeded in keeping beyond reach of the tornado that followed it close ly for more than a mile. The pas sengers watched the storm from the windows of the coaches.
 FREAKS OF. STORM
 Cragg said there were the usual
 number of freaks reported by those who survived the storm. One that impressed him was the experience of the station agent, Mcclure, who
 was standing with his arm about
 the shoulders of Le Masters when the station was blown down on them. Mcclure climbed out of the debris without scratch on him,
 while Le Masters was killed in
 stantly. A telephone operator
 who was in the station at the time, within 6 feet of Mcclure and Le Masters, escaped with his life, but probably will be blind, Gragg said
 Another incident that impressed Gragg was that of a trainman on the POtoSi branch train that was overturned at Mineral Point, where it was waiting to receive passen
 gers from the Mcmphis-St. Louis train.
 This man, whose name Gragg could not recall, told him he was stan ding ill front of the railroad station when the twister first be- came visible, approaching rapidly from a southeasterly direction. The man became alarmed, and shouted a warning to those i'll the station, and started south on the tracks at a run in an effort to get out of the twisters range. He ran only a few hundred feet when it over took him, he said, and he grasped a young tree about two Inches in diameter, with the idea of remain l ing on earth by it's aid. The tWister ierked the little tree around like Q blade of grass, according to the mani and in a dazed condition he continued to cling to it in spite of the tremendous strain on his arms and hands. After a bit the cyclone moved away from the spot and he was able to take his bear ings He found that the tree had been yanked out of the ground more than foot, and it's roots were barely clinging to the soil He pulled it out the balance of the way with one tug.
 Had it not been for the fact that many residents of Mineral Point twere attending Decoration Day eX-' ercisos yesterday afternoon at Hope we'll, six miles south of Mineral Point, there might have been a larger list of casualties. Gragg said that 200 passengers boarded the