NH SCHOOL HIT BY LIGHTNING (continued)


School Struck by Lightning

The scene changes now to a day in summer.  The rain that commenced early in the morning has increased in violence, until school-house hill is a fair sized cataract, and the street at its base a running river.  Mingled with the deluge of the watery element, are thunder and lightning so terrific and oft-repeated, that the more youthful pupils hide in terror beneath their desks.  At last there comes a shock more terrible than all that preceded it -- like a broadside from Nelson's fleet at Trafalgar, or the Allies' fire at Sebastopol.  The room is filled with sparks, and without the whole atmosphere seems a blaze of fire.  When it has passed, revealing faces livid with affright, the stillness of death succeeds, for simultaneous with the last great shock, the rain has almost instantly ceased, and teacher and pupils rushing out of doors, discover that the belfly has been shattered to fragments, one of the chimneys rent asunder, and the bricks scattered upon the roof and the ground below.  Looking in the direction of the residence of William Jones, Esq. they see that one of the chimneys has entirely disappeared, and the windows of the first floor are in a sadly damaged condition.  A man in the door of Wiggin & Story's grocery, at the corner of State and Penhallow streets, is telling some people that while standing in that position a few minutes before he saw in the air a large ball of fire, which separated, one portion taking the direction of the school-house, the other that of Mr. Jones's residence, and while nearly blinded and stunned by this blaze and explosion that followed he was suddenly brought to consciousness by a heavy blow upon his knee from a brick still lying upon the door step.  There is no more school for the day, for the lightning has struck in a dozen places, and the boys are given a holiday to enable them to take lessons in electricity.  Among other locations they visit the old South Church, and climb the fence on the opposite side of the way, to get a peep at two promising spring pigs, which had been brought to an untimely end by the electric fluid.  They think the catastrophe rather of a comical character, yet it brings to mind a fact the master endeavored to impress upon them before they were dismissed for the day, that had the classes recited that morning in their usual position beneath the belfry, a miracle alone could have saved some of them from being instantly killed.

Text scanned courtesy of The Brewster Family Network
Copy of Rambles courtesy Peter E. Randall
History Hypertext project by SeacoastNH.com
This digital transcript  © 1999 SeacoastNH.com 

CONTINUE with Brewster's SCHOOL MEMORIES