Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 77.djvu/166

160 dollars being needed for the repair of disjointed gas pipes in Chicago and its suburbs. Goods were thrown from the shelves in some stores. In the watch works in Elgin some delicate instruments were thrown out of gear, and in a printer's office in Dubuque some type, locked in a form, was pied. A kitten was thrown across a room.

There was one class of accidents, some serious and others comical, which could not have been foreseen as the results of an earthquake. These involve some trigger-like arrangements. Falling stoves and disjointed stove flues caused several fires in Aurora and Chicago. In Waukegan the shock disarranged the bins in a feed store, and some of the grain was let out through a crack between the boards. The leg of a piano was loosened and fell in a school in Oak Park. The whole instrument was in this way upset and tumbled down on the floor, and the accompanying crash and noise naturally frightened the children.

Many reports describe the mental state and the behavior of people on experiencing the unusual sensation of the earthquake. In the epicentral tracts some were terrified, many left, or fled or rushed from their homes, or from buildings where they were working. There were several small panics among laborers and among employees in factories. People were alarmed and excited and ran on the streets. Some schools were dismissed for the day and instruction was interrupted in two university classes. From farther out in the disturbed region some papers state that the people in the upper stories of some high buildings were frightened, and from still further out reports mention that people were surprised or merely that they perceived the physical sensation, evidently unattended by any emotion.

The tendency of the human mind to make inferences and draw conclusions is pointedly illustrated by many of the reports. In cases where the earthquake was not recognized, the disturbance noted was nevertheless invariably ascribed to some cause, more or less remote, but suggested through the bias of previous experience. Many people thought the jar they felt was due to an explosion or a blast in some quarry, and others thought it was due to the moving of some heavy object in the building they occupied. A janitor in a school building thought that a man engaged to repair the flag pole had fallen on the roof. A grocer who had piled up some sacks of flour in the second story, went up to see if these had fallen down. People living near car lines and railroads referred the commotion to passing cars or trains. Residents in the cities were reminded of the passing of heavy vehicles. Two unsophisticated children jumped out of a bed that shook, ran crying to their mother and reported that the bed was falling to pieces. A young lady stenographer in Chicago, more versed in the ways of the world, felt her chair rocking and promptly rebuked a supposed offender at her back with the command: "You stop that."

Projected forward instead of backward, reasoning results in the