The Boy Who Vanished Into the Dirt

RISKS TAKEN BY YOUTHS IN SEARCH OF PLEASURE. They Are In Constant Danger.

Several contractors and builders met the other day to discuss a peculiar incident and remarkable escapes from death or injury which they had observed in their experience of the most singular accidents ever witnessed, said an old contractor. "Occurred on a piece of work I was doing a couple of years ago. I had a contract for laying a large water main, and the street opened up for several blocks. We had laid the pipe, which was a large one, and had begun to fill up the trench. The pipe did not rest upon the bottom of the trench, but each joint was placed upon a brick and cement foundation, and under the pipe, between joints, there was space about 4 inches high between the street and the bottom of the trench."

"About 10 o'clock in the morning I went to a drug store a few blocks down the street to get a cigar. As I entered the drug store I saw a little boy about six years old running upon the pile of dirt alongside the trench. He was a bright little fellow, well-dressed, with golden curls around his face, and at an instant of time kicking the dirt and stones into the trench. I spoke to him and cautioned him about the danger of falling in the trench and getting hurt. He stopped an instant, laughed, and ran on. He had gone only a few feet when he stumbled and fell down the side of the pile of dirt into the trench. I was provoked that he should be there, and, fully expecting him to scramble up again, went into the drug store.

"I remained in the drug store about ten minutes, and, coming out, was going to the trench to see if the boy was there, but before I reached it I saw, as I supposed, the same little boy brushing off his clothes about half a block away. I dismissed the matter from my mind and went up the street to where the men were filling in. In a short time it though of the incident came back, and try as I would, I could not dismiss it. I was sure I had seen the boy in the trench brushing off his clothes when I left the drug store. The men were rapidly filling in the trench and had reached the spot where the little boy had fallen. After they had partly covered the pipe, I could not feel easy about the boy's fate, and spoke to the foreman about him. He only laughed at me and assured me that the boy was not there.

"In order to satisfy myself I determined to have the dirt removed to see if by any remote possibility I had been mistaken about being there brushing off his clothes when I left the drug store. I ordered the filling in stopped and told the men to remove the dirt from the pipe at this point. They hadn't been at work ten minutes when one of them unearthed a little shoe and a massed curl of hair. In a few moments had all the dirt removed, and there the boy lay lengthwise under the pipe, insensible, and almost dead. We carried him to the drug store, shot a physician called him into consciousness. We questioned him when he had retained consciousness, and he told us that when he fell into the trench he hit his head on the pipe and remembered nothing afterward. Here was a case where there came very nearly twice a mysterious disappearance. We learned afterward that he had run away from home and was last seen by any one who knew him several blocks from where the accident occurred. Nobody saw him fall but myself."