THE BOY HERO OF JOHNSTOWN.
SOME of us may say that the lad whose heroism is told of in the following from the Philadelphia Times, should rank higher in the temple of fame than all the Paul Reveres of the Johnstown flood: "Among the heroes of the disaster—and some of them swept off in525the flood will never be known—John Stitt, the boy hero of the bridge, should have a brass plate memorial set in its stone. He was seventeen, and worked in the Pennsylvania Railroad machine shop at Blairsville. After helping to pull several people out at the bridge, that black and awful Friday night, he went to the shops and came back with a lighted locomotive headlight. Standing on the bridge he turned it this way and that, not only saving many from being dashed against the bridge, or caught in the houses that cracked like egg-shells against it, but enabling the others to get to the shore. Several times he was urged not to stay, but he still kept his place and held the light, occasionally taking off his cap and sending up a cheer as he saw one after another safely reach the bank. Then a wave larger than the others came, there was a crash, and noble little John, still with his saving headlight, was washed away."