Universal sympathy and deep interest have been evoked throughout the
country by the calamity which overtook the small Lincolnshire town of Louth last Saturday. A sudden downpour of rain in almost tropical violence--so violent indeed that men spoke of it as a " cloudburst "—sent an overwhelming flood of water surging down a narrow valley in the desolate Welds from which the little river Lud derives its stream. The channel of this river, which runs through the town, was quite unable to carry off the flood, and it rose over the banks with such rapidity that more than twenty people were caught and drowned helplessly before they could escape to the upper floors of their houses. Many of the incidents related by more agile survivors forcibly recall the brilliant description of the bursting of a Sheffield reservoir which is to be found in Charles Reade's novel, Put Yourself in His Place, or the other Lincolnshire flood de- scribed by George Eliot. In some oases the houses themselves, like the bridges over the river, were swept away bodily. The material damage alone is estimated at over £100,000. Incidents of this distressing character are happily so rare in England that the general mind is always rightly touched to active sym- pathy by the suffering which they cause.
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