MOVERS HEROES

Te Aroha News, Volume VI, Issue 351, 16 March 1889, Page 6

MOVERS HEROES

We do not need to go bad. '0 the annalsof chivalry, nor to war tiir.es, to find heroes. They may come to \iew almostany d;iy, when the crisis lorcea them to the front, and they are more likely than not to ho fellows in rough coatf. There was Michael Maloney, foreman of the gaa where the explosion took pace the other night. An immense tank holding half a million cubic feet of j?as had exploded, and there was a wild scene of vreck and confusion Two others-, each containing luilf t' at amount, weie beside it. Maloney determined to prevent another explosion, if he could, and went up on the second tank to open a valve and let; the gas escape. He was in imminent danger, but he Paved the tank, and soon after he had been dragged awny by the firemen the third exploded. This wae a devotion to duty heroic as it was pimple. There was the ca?e of Fireman Snyder in Pittsburg, who vit-ked his life to lescue a messenger boy, 14 yea»s old, from the ruins of a seven frtorey building blown down by a tornado. Tht boy was pinne I down in the cellar by a scantling that lay across his breast. Above him was a macs of timbers and bricks, apparently kept in place by the scantling. Snvd> r — not a name that would ordinal ily suggest heroism — came forward and ottered to cut the timber away, taking the -.iek ot being crushed to death by the avalanche that might come, down upon him. Happily, there wa« no collapt-e of the overhanging mass, and the boy was taken home to dio in his parents' ai ms. It is more than likely that that poor father and mother ! think a good deal ot Snyder, and think none the less of him because hi*, name is , nob what would be called hijrh-sonnding-. ;It may.be that they get a little wet about the eyelids when that very prosaic name is mentiomd. Let us hope they do. Then there wa* Father Camevin, .who with a man named Devlin, was supplying the same poor boy with a drink of water at the peril of both their lives, when he saw a wall falling upon them. He gave his companion a push so as to save him, and then met the f hock in mch a way that he might save as much lireathmg-f-pace as .possible for the imprisoned lad. The priest was a hero, and we mcd not lofo pight of that fact because theie have been many such prieets,, or because we take heioifm in such men very much as a matter of course. And why is not Abraham Lincoln Pearsol — a good name, that —something of u hero 1 He ,ia the Pittsburg steamboat mate who appeared on the scene without any authority but that given hun by his pluck and brains, and took charge of the woi k of rescue from the ruins. It was Pearsol who scaled a tottering wall and lassoed., a seven-storey life every moment that it,r?mained standing, and y hich could then be pulled down. Up to his arrival that chimney seemed to be a ho eless problem, but Pearsol solved it promptlyby the simple process of putting his own body in peii!. Whenever we want a seven-srorey chimney lassoed we shall send for Peat sol. He is a brave and ready man, and «c like him. Then there was Jim Givens, the Mississippi pilot, whose name i 3 known now through two continents, because he gave him-elf up to the flames to save hie passengprs. The courage that will keep a man ab his post while fiieis cor.suming his flesh .nust be of the highest kind. The courage that carries a man into battle is mere child's play alongside the endurance that will hold him to one spot while the flames are destroying him. There are very fewheroes so grand as this one. The 'Jim Bludeo ' of fiction must take off hio hat to the Jim Givens of rea ity. There are many such heroes whom we never h< ar of. Their names do nob get into the nevspapers and they sink into nameless grave*. Or, more often still, they don't die at all, and mny not even i-jfler nny hurt, and it does nob occur to anybody that they have done anything out of the common, because their bravery has had no trngic sequel. Probably there is never a tenement house fire without some self-sacri-ficing act by a fireman which attracts little or no attention. Our heroes nre quite likely to be neither well-dressed nor welleducated. The heait cannot be judged by the coat that covers it.