PRESENCE OF MIND FIFTY YEARS AGO.
[To THE EDITOR or THE "SPECTATOR'] SIR,—Your paper, in the Spectator of December 16th, on the courage and command over the French Assembly exhibited by M. Dupuy, recalls a scene of over half-a-century ago, the facts of which have never been known to even a score of persons. Some survive in London who can recall the mag- nificent Chinese museum, collected by Mr. Nathan Dunn, a munificent merchant of Philadelphia and Hong Kong, which was first located in Philadelphia, and then brought to London in the early years of the Queen's reign. It was intended as a donation to the public, but was unfortunately burned. The building first, erected (now the site of the Philadelphia Continental Hotel) for this display of the treasures of the then sealed Kingdom, had an upper room which was about 35 ft. high, and very long and narrow. In the centre part of this immense auditorium was collected one evening about three thousand persons. At near 9 o'clock, the manager of the build- ing came to the leader of the meeting, white with affright, and told him that the floor had sunk nearly a foot, and that in a few minutes more the tennents of the joists might be out of their sockets. The floor would then fall through on to the Chinese museum, and the walls, 60 ft. in height, would collapse and be precipitated, with the roof, upon the assembly.
This might have caused the death of those present,—the foremost people in Philadelphia. The leader explained to the person whom the audience expected next to hear, that by addressing the assembly from the end of the hall, he could withdraw the company from the sunken part of the floor to that where the front walls strengthened the joists to bear the weight of the people. The' reply to this was that his family was in the audience and that he must get them out first. " You shall not," said the leader; "a hint of danger—a rush— and we' shall all be under the fallen walls and roof. Five minutes' delay may kill us altogether." As a boy in the audience I well remember my surprise at seeing the leader suddenly appear at the far front of the room and tell the people that they would next be addressed from where he stood —the organ-loft. As the audience turned and moved to the front, the flooring rose six inches. The people were enter- tained, partly by an impromptu sentimental song in a voice without a quaver, in the very face of death, and as soon as prac- ticable they were quietly dismissed. Not a single individual in that great assembly was aware that, by the presence of mind of one man, an awful catastrophe had been averted. Three thousand persons were saved from being buried under two aidewalls 60 ft. high, pressed down by a heavy roof. The imagination sickens at the thought of what would have been the consequence of a panic and sadden alarm by the failure of the courage of this man. All use of the room was, of course, suspended till it was effectually strengthened. So well was the secret kept, that I only learned it long afterwards ; and I am confident that, excepting the speaker referred to and the manager of the building, no one outside the immediate family of the man whose courage prevented this catastrophe has known the whole story till now. The terror of those minutes before the crowd was moved and the floor rose towards its level, was such, that he never, even in his own family, alluded to the scene, though he lived for forty years afterwards. I know not if the self-possession of M. Dupuy, when the bomb exploded in the French Assembly, was greater than this hitherto un- known act of heroism.—I am, Sir, &a., R. P.-S.
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