Incidents of the Tornado.
Sometimes branches were stripped from trees; sometimes the trees were wrenched and twisted off as by some giant hand; sometimes they were torn up by the roots, "as the fickle fancy of the storm listeth." Says the Kansas City Times of April 29:— "The wrenched and twisted iron frame of a sewing-machine is sticking firmly in a stump, driven in so deeply that two strong men were unable to pull it loose. Long, jagged, fearsomely sharp spears of wood that once were the beams of floors, and the rafters of roofs, are sticking in the ground, and what walls are left look like a spent fight of Brobdingnagian javelins; and these are everywhere." "Awful sights were met on every hand. One young woman was found pinned to the ground by15a huge beam and with a stake driven clear through her body. Dr. Young and a corps of students from the Ward infirmary did all that could be done for her, but she died this morning. Bessie Green, a pretty, winsome girl of 18, was found dead in what had been her home, at 1020 East McPherson Street. Her skull had been split open and her brains cupped as if by a surgeon." Dead cows, horses, and chickens were strewn about in promiscuous confusion, "but in one place in the biggest of the ruins was one hen mother clucking about with a brood of thirteen little week-old chicks—she had apparently not lost a single member of her family." A young man was carried two blocks ten feet high in the air, and over him were sailing two horses. "J. T. Coonfield and his family were eating supper when the tornado struck their home. The house was picked up and carried across a slough and dumped up against a hill. The building was not completely wrecked, and the family escaped without anything worse than a severe shaking up." Articles, such as clothing, books, albums, jewelry, etc., were blown from Kirksville to places twenty-five and thirty-five miles away. "Mrs. Ranschott suffered a most terrible death. Her headless body, with its arms clasping her lifeless baby, was discovered on the floor of the house, which was left as a raised platform in an open field. The head was as keenly severed as if it had been done with a knife, and was about 20 feet distant." A 16-year-old girl was found with a 2x4 scantling driven through her body. There were happier incidents. "Two children had been lying in a cot in one of the destroyed homes. The house was carried away, but the floor of the first story and the foundation were left, the wind lifting the house from the sills and tumbling it a long distance. The cot on which the little ones lay was lifted up with them on it and carried fully a block and a half and set down on the ground. Neither of the children were hurt." Many other escapes were as truly remarkable. Says the editor of the Kirksville Journal:— "The wreck of the houses flying through the air high up presented an awful evidence of the fearful power of the wind. People seem dazed and can scarcely speak of it without trembling." Two minutes the storm lasted, some say four minutes, when minutes mean hours; some say less than two minutes. Three minutes before all was quiet and at peace, save some ominous clouds, boding no danger save to a very few. Two minutes afterwards and there were nearly twocore dead, nearly a hundred more seriously injured, a quarter of a million of property destroyed, nearly three hundred families, 500 persons rendered homeless, part of a beautiful city in ruins, and many mourning,—all the work of two minutes! Before the tornado $10,000 residences stood in beauty and seeming prosperity; two minutes later not a vestige of them remained. So noble characters are wrecked by the tempests of sin and vice. Blessed is the man who builds not in the realms ruled by Satan, but whose house of character is anchored in the eternal righteousness and power of God.