We were riding along on the bounding train yesterday, and some one spoke of the free and democratic way that people in this country got acquainted with each other while traveling. Then we got to talking about railway sociability and railway etiquette, when a young man from East Jasper, who had wildly jumped and grabbed his valise every time the train hesitated, said that it was queer what railway travel would do in the way of throwing people together. He said that in Nebraska once he and a large, corpulent gentleman, both total strangers, were thrown together while trying to jump a washout, and an intimacy sprang up between them that had ripened into open hostility.
From that we got to talking about natural phenomena and storms. I spoke of the cyclone with some feeling and a little bitterness, perhaps, briefly telling my own experience, and making the storm as loud and wet and violent as possible.
Then a gentleman from Kansas, named George L. Murdock, an old cattleman, was telling of a cyclone that came across his range two years ago last September. The sky was clear to begin with, and then all at once, as Mr. Murdock states, a little cloud no larger than a man's hand might have been seen. It moved toward the southwest gently, with its hands in its pockets for a few moments, and then Mr. Murdock discovered that it was of a pale-green color, about sixteen hands high, with dark-blue mane and tail. About a mile from where he stood the cyclone, with great force, swooped down and, with a muffled roar, swept a quarter-section of land out from under a heavy mortgage without injuring the mortgage in the least. He says that people came for miles the following day to see the mortgage, still on file at the office of the register of deeds and just as good as ever.
Then a gentleman named Bean, of western Minnesota, a man who went there in an early day and homesteaded it when his nearest neighbor was fifty miles away, spoke of a cyclone that visited his county before the telegraph or railroad had penetrated that part of the state.
Mr. Bean said it was very clear up to the moment that he noticed a cloud in the northwest no larger than a man's hand. It sauntered down in a southwesterly direction like a cyclone that had all summer to do its chores in. Then it gave two quick snorts and a roar, wiped out of existence all the farm buildings he had, sucked the well dry, soured all the milk in the milk house, and spread desolation all over that quarter-section. But Mr. Bean said that the most remarkable thing he remembered was this: He had dug about a pint of angle worms that morning, intending to go over to the lake toward evening and catch a few perch. But when the cyclone came it picked up those angle worms and drove them head first through his new grindstone without injuring the worms or impairing the grindstone. He would have had the grindstone photographed, he said, if the angle worms could have been kept still long enough. He said that they were driven just far enough through to hang on the other side like a lambrequin.
The cyclone is certainly a wonderful phenomenon, its movements are so erratic, and in direct violation of all known rules.
Mr. Louis P. Barker of northern Iowa was also on the car, and he described a cyclone that he saw in the '70s along in September at the close of a hot but clear day. The first intimation that Mr. Barker had of an approaching storm was a small cloud no larger than a man's hand which he discovered moving slowly toward the southwest with a gyratory movement. It then appeared to be a funnel-shaped cloud which passed along near the surface of the ground with its apex now and then lightly touching a barn or a well, and pulling it out by the roots. It would then bound lightly into the air and spit on its hands. What he noticed most carefully on the following day was the wonderful evidences of its powerful suction. It sucked a milch cow absolutely dry, pulled all the water out of his cistern, and then went around to the waste-water pipe that led from the bath-room and drew a 2-year-old child, who was taking a bath at the time, clear down through the two-inch waste-pipe, a distance of 150 feet. He had two inches of the pipe with him and a lock of hair from the child's head.
It is such circumstances as these, coming to us from the mouths of eye-witnesses, that leads us to exclaim: How prolific is nature and how wonderful are all her works--including poor, weak man! Man, who comes into the world clothed in a little brief authority, perhaps, and nothing else to speak of. He rises up in the morning, prevaricates, and dies. Where are our best liars to-day? Look for them where you will and you will find that they are passing away. Go into the cemetery and there you will find them mingling with the dust, but striving still to perpetuate their business by marking their tombs with a gentle prevarication, chiseled in enduring stone.
I have heard it intimated by people who seemed to know what they were talking about that truth is mighty and will prevail, but I do not see much show for her till the cyclone season is over.
