achines and escaped serious injury. Several fainted and were carried
out by foremen.

Amelia Davis, a warper, was hit on the head by a brick as she hurried
from the second floor. Tessie Carey, of Minooka, sustained a black eye
and lacerations of the left side of the face by falling bricks. Gus
Minnick, a repairer, working in the engine room, had just set his dinner
pail where one of the stacks fell. There were altogether one hundred and
fifty girls at work, but outside of bruises and scratches they were
uninjured. The property damage was about $20,000. Much silk on the looms
was ruined.

A large tower was blown off a school. Three houses in the neighborhood
were also badly damaged by the wind. The storm caused destruction in all
parts of the city and adjoining places.

Trees and fences were blown down in all parts of the city and in the
adjoining country.

The storm came from the west and its approach was preceded by an inky
black sky which, coupled with thoughts of the havoc of Sunday's storm in
Nebraska, caused a general consternation. A heavy downpour accompanied
by thunder and lightning followed the tornado.

CHAPTER XXV

THE FREAK TORNADO IN ALABAMA

FREAKS OF THE WIND--PITIABLE CHAOS--THE HERO OF LOWER
PEACHTREE--EXTENT OF DAMAGE.

Weird tales of horror and misery attended the tornado which swept over
the little town of Lower Peachtree, Alabama, on Friday, March 21st,
wrecking the entire village.

After the tornado had passed, corpses with hair stripped from heads and
divested of every thread of clothing were picked up. Naked men and women
ran screaming in the semi-darkness.

Chickens and hogs stripped of feathers and hair wandered in bewilderment
among the ruins. Nailed unerringly into trees cleaned of their bark were
pickets from fences that had been swept away. Where once had stood a big
steamboat warehouse near the river was left the floor of the building
standing upon which were the entire contents of the warehouse untouched
by the terrific whirls of the wind.

In the backyard of the Bryant home, buried in debris, was a chicken
coop, not a splinter awry. Within it was a goose sitting meekly upon a
dozen eggs which she had not left.

The blast wrenched an iron bed from a house and wrapped it around a tree
trunk as no human hand could have done.

Crossing the river from the town it had desolated it bore away half of a
soapstone bluff many feet in height and left the other half stand