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Show A KANSAS TORNADO. How It Licked Up Farms, Changed County Lines, and Played the mischief. "Tornadoes, did you say?" remarked a tall man, whose bronzed and freckled hands gave evidence ol an intimate acquaintance ac-quaintance with the plow handle. "Well, if I havn't seen a tornado, you can sell me for a yearling. Why, stranger, I was raised where tornadoes grow. I used to play back of their pasture ground. I've done everything with a tornado but milk it, and, as to cyclones, why I take to them the way a boy does to circuses. I live in Kansas when I am at home. What place ? Well, that is rather hard to say. I moved out there from Johnson county, Indiana, in 1865. We settled in Cedar county, up in the northern part of the State. I bought a horse, built a shack, and squatted squat-ted on one hundred and sixty acres of the prettiest land the rain ever beat on. That was in June. I had just got out of the army, and I had my pay to start in with. Well, we had a hard time oi it, stranger, the first year. We lived mostly on hog and hominy. But when I began cutting the first crop of wheat the next summer, I began to feel like a millionaire." "One July night," continued the tall man, "I had my wheat all stacked ready for thrashing, and went to bed feeling as rich as if I owned the whole country. About midnight, as near as I can recollect, recol-lect, I heard a clap of thunder, and then the house began to rock like a willowy tree. Then everything was quiet for a little while, and I went to sleep. Early the next morning my wife got up and looked out of the window. " 'John,' said she, 'where on earth is your wheat?' " 'What,' said I, jumping out of bed, 'what's that you say?' "'Where's the wheat?' "I looked out of the window, too, and, stranger, I saw the most remarkable sight I ever saw. There wasn't a grain of wheat within a mile of me. There wasn't a remnant of my barn. My barnyard was gone. The house, the cows and even the pigs were gone. I got dressed and walked out doors. The place was changed, stranger changed in a single night. My house was sitting in a garden by the side of a creek. There was a new barn in the yard, some red cows mine were white some black pigs mine were spotted instead of wheat there was the alfiredest 6tack of cornstalks you ever looked at. I thought at first I was dreaming, dream-ing, and asked my wife to kick me, but I wasn't. About breakfast time some neighbors neigh-bors came in and asked where Mr. Jones was. I never heard of him. " 'He used to live here.' they said. 'He lived here last night "Then I told them of the crash and the rocking, and they said I must have been struck by a tornado. I asked them where I was ; they said I . was in Izard county, which was fifty miles south- of where I went to bed. Sure enough, they were right. The strangest part of it was, the house wasn't hurt a bit The roof, even, didn't leak. The neighbors said it was a visitation of providence, and the place belonged to me. But that wasn't all, stranger. About a year afterward I heard from some of my old neighbors that Jones' house had been moved right up to where my old house stood, by the same blast of wind. We both concluded to stay where we were and avoid any trouble on that account. I've been away three months, and can't exactly say where I do live now, but I expect I am still at the old stand." |