Show HERO OF VESUVIUS PROF MATTEtJCGI STICKS TO HIS POST DURING ERUPTION Brave Director of the Royal Observatory > Observa-tory Who at Risk of His Life 4r Saved Naples frou l4t P8SA > jf rtls 1ltifhl l Is just awakening to the Tact that Aliittcuccl tho man who braved Vesuvius In her most violent moods iiiul kept Naples Informed and prevented wild panic In the city Is tits > hero of tho hour During all those awful aw-ful days when the volcano was vomiting vomit-ing forth Its rivers of lava and Its great clouds of ashen Prof Mattouccl remained at his post In tho observatory on tho top of tho mount and when It Is realized that the present eruption U the most violent outbreak since that of A D 79 when Pompeii and Horcu Inneum were destroyed we can begin to understand the real sublimity of his heroism + Ho has stayed there In the ruins ot the observatory early wrecked by the hot ashes thrown from the crater of tho volcano Ills friends Implored him to save himself but ho believed that during this terrible time It at anytime any-time at all his duty demanded that h remainthat he could be of real help 4 to the many thousands of people living liv-ing near the volcano by warning thoty I tqI t rotor V H MATTKUCCL when further peril was Impending and by reassuring them when tho volcano began to how signs of having spent i Its force And in this belief he baa boon JUJU fled On Tuesday and Wednesday when the situation was such that ev mIn t m-In Naples thero was a veritable panic 1 when the people believed that tho city was about to be blotted out when the prisoners In the Jail mutinied and the poorer classes declaring that the authorities au-thorities were to blame for the lou ot many lives were in the mood for anyi excess It was the messages from Mat teucci that furnished the one note ot hope It is Indeed more than probable proba-ble that they turned the scale ut the critical moment and averted n terrible outbreak on the part ot tho population r The knowledge that this man in the midst of peril tar greater indescribably indescriba-bly greater than that of any Inhabitant Inhabi-tant of Naples remained cool and full of faith that conditions were about to grow brighter must surely have served to calm tho fears of thousands t Six years ago tho scientific world was startled by reading that an observer ob-server had camped for three days on the edge of the crater of Vesuvius while the volcano was In violent eruption erup-tion At that time the boiling lava was within 260 feet of the top of tho crater enormous blocks ot stono were thrown out and great quantities of the Ecorlao The observer who camped on the edge of the crater was Prof Mat teuccl who had then been director ol the royal observatory for four years The details later received regardtnt t the proceedings of tho professor only served to increase the general wonder at his Intrepidity It was related how on one occasion when he was camping i not on the edge of tho crater but oq I the mountain side some distance below o be-low the volcano throw up a block ol stone of extraordinary size It rose Ic tho air and came down within a few yards of Mattouccl What was Matteuccl doing In the meanwhile Running away as fast ai his legs could carry him No Ho was standing with a stopwatch in his hand carefully counting the second during which the great mass of stone remained tho air It was up 17 seconds sec-onds and by weighing tho stone afterward after-ward and going Into various elaborate computations Matteuccl was able tc announce that the stone which had traveled at tho rate of 300 feet a second sec-ond had been ejected from tao volcano with a force equaling 607J95horso power A man who could do this could do anything and perhaps ho has been reckoning the horse power within Vesuvius Ve-suvius which has been behind the outbreak out-break of last week |