When Jimmy Flew

1916

Story for the Children

Jimmy was just an ordinary, wide-awake, curiosity-satisfying boy, with a very inventive mind.

In the short term of years that had elapsed since he started on the road to learning, three things that were of much interest to him had been born into the world. They were the automobile, the motor-cycle, the aeroplane. Upon wireless telegraphy he had not bestowed more than a passing thought, for, as he forcibly expressed it, "it didn't get you nowhere."

Of the first-mentioned three he desired to make for himself one of each, and in reality had made an automobile that went haltingly and uncertainly down the road for distances varying from a few feet to half a mile. Upon its completion Jimmy was the king of his gang for ten days — just ten days and no longer.

He was coasting down the long hill in front of his father's home one day when the machine became unmanageable and ran away. On the bridge it struck a cow, breaking her leg so she had to be killed for beef. The automobile, with Jimmy at the wheel, then jumped the balustrade, landing in the water upside down, and had it not been for ready assistance Jimmy would have been drowned.

Jimmy was just at that age when he was easily frightened at something of no consequence, yet would, with perfect equanimity, climb to the top of a forty-foot windmill tower while the wheel was turning in a perfect gale, and wonder why his parents became so excited and ordered him down forthwith. It took more than an automobile accident to dampen his inventive spirit, so he took up the manufacture of a motor-cycle with renewed enthusiasm. In it, however, he found more than his match and had to give up the project. His father's withdrawing all his assistance after his former accident no doubt was the controlling factor in the failure. The making of an aeroplane was never considered very seriously by Jimmy, as he had never seen one outside of books, let alone get close enough to one to see how the thing was made.

This explains why Jimmy's heart throbbed with excitement when he learned that there was to be an aeroplane flight at the forthcoming celebration, and he became more excited than ever a few days before the much-looked-for date when a force of men appeared in the field alongside his father's orchard and were soon erecting the canvas hangar that was to house the machine.

Jimmy was at the spot post-haste, and dogged the steps of the workmen from morning until night, carrying bolts, wire, or anything that their slightest wish signified they needed.

Jimmy absorbed the erection of that biplane as a sponge absorbs water.

He was a very likely boy, and the men took a great fancy to him, explaining everything in detail, and when the last nut had been tightly fastened, the last wire drawn taut until it fairly sang, the machine was pushed into the open, Jimmy placed in the seat and a picture taken of the youthful aviator.

While he sat there the young man who operated the machine showed him how the aeroplane was guide and how the various plans were manipulated.

"Say, when a fellow has to use both feet and both hands and his back, he does not have very much time for anything else, does he?" Jimmy asked, wonderingly.

"No time to look at the landscape that's sure," his instructor replied.

The aviator and his mechanicians were seated a few feet away, eating dinner; Jimmy was sitting in the machine, trying to explain to Bud Wilkins and Jerry Smith just how the thing flew, when Bud, in a spirit of fun, gave the paddles a whirl. Immediately there was a sputter that grew rapidly into a roar. Before Jimmy or the men were aware of what had happened, the machine was bounding along over the field.

The frightened boy just had one fleeting glimpse of the men as they jumped to their feet in a futile attempt to catch the machine, and then he saw the frightened face of his mother as he sped past the house. As he turned to look back he unknowingly raised the planes and barely cleared the high hedge at the end of the field.

Higher and higher he went.

The whole country seemed to be one large green carpet; golden splotches, showing where the oats had been cut, made the cornfields a greener hue by contrast, while here and there a tin roof was betrayed by flashing the rays of the sun up into his face.

By the time he had realized his position Jimmy attempted to lower his planes to keep from going any higher. He did it so suddenly that he nearly turned over. He turned half around in his seat to see how far he had gone, and the machine shot around in a sharp turn, canting at an angle that was positively dangerous.

"I'm on my way back, anyhow," he muttered between his chattering teeth. "If I ever get down all right, I'll be some big chief," he continued, not without a certain exultation, in spite of his perilous position, as he watched the country below him passing like some huge kaleidoscope.

The motor made such a roar that he could hardly think, yet he reveled in its smoothness and easy running, boy though he was.

He was almost over the town again, and as he sped by there were innumerable black specks in the open spaces and in the streets, mere cracks between the rows of buildings. He looked for his own home, but was almost past before he noticed a smoke coming from an open field and rightly guessed that they were signaling him, so he could land safely.

"Good thing," he thought. "The whole works down there look as level as a floor from up here. But how am I going to get down?" he wailed.

He would have to turn again, and as he really did not know whether he had made the turn before with his right hand or his left foot, or his left hand or his right foot, or his back, he was not a bit easy, and his altitude made him chary about experimenting. But there was one thing sure — he must turn soon, for he was approaching the Big Woods, where a safe landing would be impossible.

He racked his brain trying to remember some of the instructions the aviator had given him, but could not call many of them to mind. After several gradual dips and rises he finally was started on the return trip,

As he squared away confidence came to him, and he thought of Bud and wondered how he felt. The last glimpse Jimmy had of Bud was the latter being caught in the back of the neck by a guy wire and turned over and over like a tumbler at the circus. It would have been real funny if he had not been so scared.

Jimmy was becoming more composed with each passing minute, and when he came in sight of the field and the hangar he lowered the planes and came gradually to earth. He did not know how to shut off the power, however, and sped past the terrified men and his frenzied parents like a shot, going with all speed toward a deep ravine that lay diagonally across the field. Machine and boy went to the bottom in a crumpled heap.

When Jimmy came to consciousness some time later he was in bed in his own room, and his father was bending over him solicitously.

"Young man, this is the last time I am going to call you for breakfast. You roll out now or we'll go to the parade without you."

It was then that Jimmy flew. — Harmon R. Andrews, in The Junior Herald.

Smashes His Fist In Dream

1916

Dentist Thinks He's in a Fight and Punches Wall.

TORRINGTON, Connecticut. — No teeth are being drilled, filled, drawn or quartered in the office of Dr. Arthur E. Guildford today because his right hand is all out of shape.

Dr. Guildford dreamed that he was horsewhipping another man, but his blows were so violent that he soon wore out the whip. His victim realized the predicament and sprang at the dentist. Doubling his right fist, Dr. Guildford lunged such a terrific blow at the horsewhipped man that he almost knocked a hole thru the wall next to the bed.

The blow awakened every one else in the house and a physician had to be called to apply arnica and bandages to Dr. Guildford's battered tooth-pulling hand. Every one in Torrington would like to know who Dr. Guildford dreamed he was horsewhipping and why.

—The Saturday Blade, Chicago, Sept. 16, 1916, p. 7.

Unlucky Men

1901

"The unlucky men are all kin; they all have certain qualities alike," says An American Mother in The Ladies' Home Journal. "They have eyes keen to look into the root of things, but which also dream dreams and see visions; they have hot human blood, they love or hate in no half way measure. To each of them, too, comes at times — no matter what the business or pursuit may be by which they strive to push their way among men and to grow rich — a sudden disgust of it, heartfelt and real, a contempt for the work and for its successes. They dream of something before them better than money or office, and they try to clutch at it. So they go through life groping for success with one hand and for their dream with the other, and they lose both. We must choose either God or Mammon as master and keep faith with him if we mean to succeed."

The Fall of Miss Minnie B. Werner, Chicago, 1916

1916

Girl Will Live

CHICAGO, Jan. 25. — St. Luke hospital attendants announced today that Miss Minnie Werner, the stenographer who yesterday plunged sixteen stories from a window of a loop skyscraper, may recover fully from her injuries. An auto-truck load of cardboard boxes broke her fall.

—La Crosse Tribune, La Crosse, Wisconsin, Jan. 25, 1916, p. 5.


"I Must Be Hard to Kill"

These Are Words of Girl Who Fell Sixteen Stories

Chicago, Jan. 26 — Miss Minnie B. Werner, who fell sixteen stories from a window of the Transportation building last Monday, recovered consciousness today.

Her first words were: "I must be hard to kill."

—St. Paul Pioneer Press, St. Paul, Minnesota, Jan. 27, 1916, p. 1.


She Things She is Hard to Kill

Chicago, Jan. 26. — "I must be hard to kill," was the comment of Minnie B. Werner when she recovered consciousness at St. Luke's hospital and heard how she had fallen sixteen stories to the netting of an auto truck.

Miss Werner, who is 22 years old and lives at 2417 North Washington, sustained a broken shoulder bone and possibly internal injuries. Physicians say she has an excellent chance to recover.

Elsie Werner, a sister, said she fell by accident, although the police were inclined to think that Miss Werner jumped intentionally.

—The Daily Review, Decatur, Illinois, Jan. 26, 1916, p. 10.


Excerpt from article called "Escapes a Matter of Luck," originally from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

She escaped with a broken shoulder and a few bruises.

She worked as a stenographer for a publication concern in the Transportation Building, 608 South Dearborn street, Chicago.

One day, about three weeks ago, she complained of being ill and left the office. An elevator took her to the sixteenth floor where there is a rest room for women. From the time she left the elevator until she was picked up, broken and unconscious, no person seems to have seen her. Whether she had leaped or fallen could not be determined until she herself was able to tell about it and then she said she fell.

From the window of the rest room to the ground is a distance of about 200 feet and Miss Werner fell headlong. That she was saved from destruction was due to a queer freak of chance. The driver of a big truck, laden with paper boxes, had stopped under the window. She fell among the boxes and they broke her fall.

When she was picked up after the fall a policeman rushed up and asked if she had leaped. "I fell," she said, although at that moment she seemed actually unconscious. As soon as she could talk intelligently about the matter her sister, Edith, asked her to tell how it happened.

"I did not intend to jump," she said. "I felt dizzy and went upstairs to the rest room. When I got there I couldn't make out the details of my surroundings. I went to the window for air. The next thing I knew was when I felt myself falling."

Then she told of how she found herself plunging, head down, toward the earth. Although she could have been in the air only a few seconds at most, so rapidly was her mind working, that it seemed almost an eternity. Her memory divides the period into two distinct phases, the first of which is clear and accurate in detail; and the second obscure and uncertain. She seemed to have a curious, detached feeling, as if if were not she but another who was falling, a sensation not uncommon in dreams.

Her first impression was that she was suffering a nightmare in which one imagines himself falling through infinite space. She felt that sickening faintness persons frequently feel when an elevator unexpectedly starts downward. Her chest felt compressed, as if inclosed with bands which were squeezing out all the air. The air seemed to pluck at her eyelids as if about to tear them away. There was a ringing in her ears and her body tingled all over.

She realized that she was perfectly conscious — able to stream. She idly wondered if she could move her fingers. She tried and found she could. And then came the realization of what it all meant. She was in full possession of all her faculties and yet she couldn't avert the disaster that lay below.

Then she passed into the second stage. The speed of her fall was accelerated. Now she did not seem to be falling. Instead she was caught in the midst of a canyon and the earth was rushing up to meet her. Where the buildings had been were nothing but white streaks and below them was the black street. She had a hazy impression that she was all right, but that the world had suddenly been turned upside down. Then the white streak and the black merged into one vast chasm of blackness. Apparently she never saw the truck before she struck it. Her fall carried its load of papers with her to the street and a few minutes later she was pulled from the wreckage.

—The Washington Post, March 12, 1916, p. 1, Miscellany Section.


Girl Who Fell Sixteen Floors Ready to Work

CHICAGO, Ill., March 13 — Miss Minnie Werner, the stenographer, who ten weeks ago fell out of a sixteen story window of the Transportation building, will be back to work in a week, it was learned on Sunday.

Miss Werner fell into a truck load of paper boxes, and her most serious injury was a badly fractured arm.

"If you ever had a dream that you fell out of the mountain you know something of what my experience was like," said the young woman. "Any way it shows that the popular idea that a person dies after falling a hundred feet is not true."

—The Racine Journal-News, Racine, Wisconsin, March 13, 1916, p. 2.

Dreaming He's Fighting Intruders, Hacks Brother With Ax

1902

MURDERS IN A DREAM.

NASHVILLE, Ind., June 28 — Dreaming he was fighting burglars, John Snyder, aged 18 years, the son of Newberry Snyder, living near Beck's grove, eight miles south of here, seized an ax and literally chopped to pieces his brother, Grover, aged 20 years.

The young men had attended an ice cream supper at the home of County Superintendent Manuels and on their return home they were told by their mother that she had heard someone prowling about the premises and she showed them where she had placed the ax which she intended to use to defend herself if she was attacked.

The young men retired, and a short time afterward Mrs. Snyder was aroused by the screams of her son and rushed into the bed room to find John standing horror-stricken beside his brother's bed with a bloody ax in his hands. The victim is terribly lacerated about the body and legs and his recovery is considered impossible. John claims he was dreaming burglars "were in the house and that he was beating them off when he seized the ax and attacked his brother.


CONFESSION OF BOY ROBBERS.

CRAWFORDSVILLE, Ind., June 28. — Eleven boys, aged from 8 to 13 years, have been arrested and jailed in this city for numerous robberies at the junction. For several weeks the cars and stores in that neighborhood have been looted and much valuable goods taken. To-day the police bagged the entire organized gang of juvenile robbers, who confessed.

—Fort Wayne News, Fort Wayne, IN, June 28, 1902, p. 8.