SAVED HIS DRINK
Henry Collins of East St. Louis, tells a queer story of
his experience during the storm. He was standing in a saloon in East St. Louis with a
glass of liquor in his hand. Suddenly the roof fell in, he was turned over twice or thrice
and landed on his feet with the glass still in his hand and half of the liquor still in
it. He quaffed the liquor with relish, as his collarbone had been broken in the crash and
he needed the stimulant.
Mrs. R. P. Tansey, wife of the president of the Merchants' Transfer
Company, well known in St. Louis social circles, but now a resident of Springfield,
Illinois, was a passenger on the Chicago and Alton train that be. came tangled up with the
tornado on the eastern end of the Eads Bridge. When the coaches turned over Mrs. Tansey,
in some way, became wedged in the roof of one of them and there was considerable
difficulty in extricating her; as it was, one of the brakemen finally pulled her through a
window and she then footed it over the crossties in that overwhelming downpour of rain to
East St. Louis and tried to find the Martell House, but only suc. ceeded in reaching the
spot where it had once stood. How she ever got to St. Louis she does not know, but late in
the evening she made her way to the Planters' Hotel, more dead than alive, where her
anxious husband found her the next morning.
