 From fifteen to twenty minutes before 12 o'clock, noon, yesterday, as we sat writing at a desk in the JOURNAL counting room, it suddenly occurred to us that the Commercial Block was slightly intoxicated. The desk, the chairs, the walls, the floor commenced to vibrate from east to west, as a frame house will rock before a mighty wind. Looking up to see what was the matter, we discovered considerable of a panic among the occupants of the next room. Thinking, perhaps, that a belt had slipped in the engine room, Mr. Mendenhall, of the JOURNAL Company, rushed in there to look after the disaster, but the machinery was going with its usual rapidity, but all hands in all the rooms had suspended labor, and were apparently prepared for a rush out of the building for safety. "Eathquake," we said, and an earthquake it was, that extended over perhaps ten seconds, with that peculiar hair-lifting vibration. A lesser shock succeeded a few seconds later, and all was quiet. To find out if the "trouble" extended to other parts of the city, we started for the street, and met at our threshold a gentleman, who spoke first to know if we had felt the earthquake. We had. He was just from the state block and said its inmates had rushed out to the pave, under the impression that this solid pile of brick and mortar was coming down. Others corroborated the news a moment later, and the mystery was solved. The shock was almost universally felt in the upper and in many of the lower floors of our brick business houses. All agreed that the vibrations were east and west. At the capital, it was noticed by Judges Lake and Gantt in the supreme court room and also in the offices on the first floor. At the high school, the vibrations were quite severe, and a panic broke out among the children in one of the rooms, which was promptly checked by the teacher, though many of the little girls frightened to tears. At the university were (sic) the shaking felt, and a small quantity of plastering came down in the room of Professor Stadtler, the artist, who found it hard to keep his balance in the height of the upheavals. No damage, however, was done; no walls crushed, no buildings at all injured; and it was, so far as Lincoln, is concerned, a toy earthquake. It is rumored that the shock was much more severe in Nebraska City than here. At the present writing no other points have been heard from, but our dispatches this morning will probably give the extent and duration of the phenomenon in all parts of the west. It was apparently very similar to the small earthquake of eleven years ago, that was severer in Nebraska City and Brownville than in any other part of the State, doing some damage to old and unfinished brick buildings in those towns, but not extending very far west of the river. |