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GAVE HIS LIFE TO SAVE A HORSE
There were many marvelous escapes along that part of Missouri avenue which faces the park. The home of Alois Solerer is a three-story brick, with imitation stone front, at 1401 Missouri avenue (corner of Park). The roof is blown away, and the family was gathered in the basement, while the brick and mortar fell thick about them. In this family group was also William Taylor, the negro coachman, who had been with the family for years. The negro was passionately devoted to "Bess," the family horse, and while the storm was at its worst heard the animal "neigh." It was the same piteous neigh which has already been described by the proprietors of several stables and Taylor started for the stable. The family pleaded with him in vain. Taylor reached ' the stable just in time to free "Bess" just before the walls gave way. Although the horse escaped the negro was buried in the ruins, and was taken out dead. There were some stories of miraculous escapes to tell at each of the houses facing Lafayette park from Missouri avenue, but the general tenor was the same. The people escaped by fleeing to the basements of their houses. Looking east from Park avenue the wreckage seemed complete. Save the one residence block which bounded the park on the east the others were commercial and industrial streets. The small shop keepers along Park avenue, east of the park, were with their families in a sad mixture of children, mattresses, broken bureaus and bedsteads and disfigured homes. The most colossal wreck of the neighborhood was the big two-story, brick car shed of the People's railway line. It covered one full acre of ground, and the whole structure fell, mashing the cars and building into a gigantic heap of brick and mortar. It was almost impossible for one to pick his way along Park avenue, and the mass of humanity which struggled to cover the territory thereabout included every variety of citizenship which a big city has to offer. Small boys rang the gongs and bells on the despoiled street cars, linemen vainly attempted to rescue such electric wires as could be preserved.
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