Now That's Using Your Head!
How a man saved a woman from a burning building in 1895.
The following harrowing story was printed in The Philipsburg Mail (Philipsburg, Mont.) on August 15, 1895.
HIS HEAD WAS SOFT.
And So the Beautiful Girl’s Life Was Miraculously Saved.
Far above the excited crowd a young woman clung, trembling, to a windowsill. Beautiful she was, even in the habiliments of midnight, says the New York World.
The flames rolled on. Ominous volumes of smoke belched from the windows about and, climbing up the walls of the doomed structure, darkened the heavens above.
Still the young woman maintained her grasp and hung suspended five hundred feet in midair.
“Help! Help!” she cried at last.
But, though the street below was thronged with firemen who wore medals for bravery, not one moved towards the girl. Such an act would have been suicidal.
“What shall I do? again shrieked the girl, as the forked flames licked the coping just above her head.
“Hold on! Don’t jump! Wait awhile!” cried a thousand voices from the street.
It was then that a young man was seen pushing his way through the crowd. He wore a small, dark mustache and seemed scarcely more than a stripling. In his teeth he clinched a cigarette.
When he had reached a position directly under the young woman he exclaimed:
“Let go your hold and drop!”
She obeyed his command and the crowd stood awestricken. Like a comet she shot earthward.
Landing directly upon the young man’s head, she rebounded several feet into the crowd and was caught by a policeman.
“Are you hurt?” inquired the young man, anxiously.
“Not one bit,” she replied.
“Ha, ha! he ejaculated; “I was always famous for having anything but a hard head.” And the crowd cheered him to the echo.1
The Philipsburg Mail, “His Head Was Soft: And so the Beautiful Girl’s Life Was Miraculously Saved,” Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers. Lib. Of Congress, August 15, 1895, https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83025320/1895-08-15/ed-1/seq-1/.