Hampden Street, From High
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The Mills, Seen from Lower High Street
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Another tragic story has a woman for its subject. It was a winter’s evening. The river above the dam was frozen in a glary sheet of ice, and a strong north wind had come up and was sweeping with bitter force down the stream. The woman, having been visiting at the Falls, started across the ice toward home. It was a dark night, the sky was clouded and a fine sleet was cutting through the air. She became somewhat confused in the wind and the storm, and when the full force of the gale struck her in mid-river she began to slip along the glary surface. She struggled against the wind, but it still drove her along toward the fatal dam, whose roar was sounding in her ears above that of the storm. She fell on her knees and clung to the ice, but when she rose again to battle toward home, the wind pushed her slowly but surely toward the dam. It was frightful. She cried for help. But few would go abroad on such a wild night, and the wind stifled her shouts so that in the dull roar of the waters, now so near, she could not have been heard a dozen yards away. She sat down with her back to the wind and took off her shoes, hoping that in her stocking feet she would not slip. But her feet quickly numbed and she had to give up. In the morning the weather had cleared and quieted, and then a chance passer found her body only a few feet from the edge of the dam on the glary ice, which was streaked with the remnants of last night’s snow scud.
In the course of time a suspicion arose that the constant pounding of the water over the dam must be wearing away the bottom below, and so endangering the base of the structure. A test showed that hollows twenty, thirty and even forty feet deep had been worn in the river bed, and steps were at once taken to build an apron for the dam. This was done in 1868-70. First these worn hollows were filled with sand-bags, and with "cribs" made of logs criss-crossing and filled with stone till they sank. The stone came from all the country around, and many a farmer took this opportunity to sell at a profit the old stone walls zig-zaging around his fields. While this work was going on a diver, who had gone below to examine the cavity they were filling, was caught by the current, the tubes and cords connecting him with the surface were snapped, and he was never seen after. Search for the body was unavailing.
Picturesqueness in the Rear of High Street
Site of the new Y.M.C.A. Building, 1891
Lower High Street
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He was probably drawn into some crevice and there buried beneath the sand and rubbish churning about in the water. So there he lies to this day, walled in the dam. The apron almost rivals the main structure in size and solidity. It has the same slope as the upper part, and a base of fifty feet. Down this the water slips wilh a mellow roar, quite gentle beside the heavy pounding of earlier days, and the loose windows and doors of the neighborhood tremble no more at the dam’s mighty pulsations.
The Problem.
The common problem, your’s, mine, everyone's,
Is—not to fancy what were fair in life
Provided it could be—but finding first
What may be, then find out how to make it fair
Up to our means.
—Browning.
For the Absent Sons of Hampden.
No more grateful act can be performed than to send the absent sons and daughters of Hampden both volumes of "Picturesque." The price is so low that several copies, sent on their friendly mission, would seem small expensive in view of the pleasure they will give. How welcome such a work as this must be to one who has been for some years away from his native hills and meadows. Every Hampden man and woman should save a copy for the home, and it is suggested that in the holiday season no gift could be more appropriate than our "Family Edition," with its substantial and attractive cloth cover, or, if you can spare a few dollars more, the "Holiday Edition," richly bound in full leather.
© Laurel O’Donnell 1996 - 2006, all rights reserved
This document may be downloaded for personal non-commercial use only
and may not be reproduced or distributed without permission in any format.
This is an edited adaptation from the original publication.
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