GREAT PRESENCE OF MIND.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XV, Issue XX, 16 November 1895, Page 631

GREAT PRESENCE OF MIND.

One of the * sights ’ of Philadelphia, fifty years ago, was a magnificent Chinese Museum, whose treasures, collected by Mr Dunn, a munificent merchant, were displayed in a building erected on the site on which now stands the Continental Hotel. Over the museum was a long, narrow upper room, about thirty five feet high. It was a public hall, used for lectures and concerts, and with it was associated a most remarkable instance of presence of mind. A correspondent of the London Spectator tells the thrilling story : In the central part of this immense auditorium were collected one evening about three thousand persons. At about nine o’clock, the manager of the building came to the leader of the meeting, white with affright, and told him that the floor had sunk nearly a foot, and that in a few minutes more the tenons of the joists might be out of their sockets. The floor would then fall through on to the Chinese Museum, and the walls, sixty feet in height, would collapse and be precipitated, with the roof, upon the assembly. The leader explained to the person whom the audience expected next to hear, that by addressing the assembly from the end of the hall, be could withdraw the company from the sunken part of the floor to that where the front walls strengthened the joists to bear the weight of the people. The reply to this was that his own family was in the audience, and that he must get them out first. * You shall not,’ said the leader ; * a hint Of danger, a rush, and we shall all be under the fallen walls and roof. Five minutes’ delay may kill ns altogether.’ As a boy in the audience I well remember my surprise at seeing the leader suddenly appear at the far front of the room, and tell the people that they would next be addressed from where he stood—the organ-loft. As the audience turned and moved to the front the flooring rose six inches. The people were entertained, partly by an impromptu sentimental song in a voice without a quaver, in the very face of death, and as soon as practicable they were quietly dismissed. Not a single individual in that great assembly was aware that, by the presence of mind of one man, an awful catastrophe had been averted. The imagination sickens at the thought of what would have been the consequence of a panic and sudden alarm by the failure of the courage of that man. I am confident that, excepting the speaker referred to and the manager of the building, no one outside the immediate family of the man whose courage prevented this catastrophe has known the whole story till now. The terror of those minutes before the crowd was moved and the floor rose toward its level, was such, that he never, even in his own family, alluded to the scene, though he lived for forty years afterward.