il. About a mile from where he stood the cyclone, with great force,
swooped down and, with a muffled roar, swept a quarter-section of land
out from under a heavy mortgage without injuring the mortgage in the
least. He says that people came for miles the following day to see the
mortgage, still on file at the office of the register of deeds and just
as good as ever.

Then a gentleman named Bean, of western Minnesota, a man who went there
in an early day and homesteaded it when his nearest neighbor was fifty
miles away, spoke of a cyclone that visited his county before the
telegraph or railroad had penetrated that part of the state.

Mr. Bean said it was very clear up to the moment that he noticed a cloud
in the northwest no larger than a man's hand. It sauntered down in a
southwesterly direction like a cyclone that had all summer to do its
chores in. Then it gave two quick snorts and a roar, wiped out of
existence all the farm buildings he had, sucked the well dry, soured all
the milk in the milk house, and spread desolation all over that
quarter-section. But Mr. Bean said that the most remarkable thing he
remembered was this: He had dug about a pint of angle worms that
morning, intending to go over to the lake toward evening and catch a few
perch. But when the cyclone came it picked up those angle worms and
drove them head first through his new grindstone without injuring the
worms or impairing the grindstone. He would have had the grindstone
photographed, he said, if the angle worms could have been kept still
long enough. He said that they were driven just far enough through to
hang on the other side like a lambrequin.

The cyclone is certainly a wonderful phenomenon, its movements are so
erratic, and in direct violation of all known rules.

Mr. Louis P. Barker of northern Iowa was also on the car, and he
described a cyclone that he saw in the '70s along in September at the
close of a hot but clear day. The first intimation that Mr. Barker had
of an approaching storm was a small cloud no larger than a man's hand
which he discovered moving slowly toward the southwest with a gyratory
movement. It then appeared to be a funnel-shaped cloud which passed
along near the surface of the ground with its apex now and then lightly
touching a barn or a well, and pulling it out by the roots. It would
then bound lightly into the air and spit on its hands. What he noticed
most carefully on the following day was the wonderful eviden