PLYMOUTH SPIRE SPLINTERED.

Lightning's Curious Freaks on Tuesday Evening.

An electric bolt at 9:30 Tuesday evening descended on the spire of Plymouth church, corner of Summit avenue and Wabashaw street, during a sharp shower, which caused quite a lively commotion among the inhabitants in that section for a few moments, who evidently thought they were called for.

The lightning seems to have been attracted to the spire by a small iron ornament at its summit evidently inviting the visit, but from which leading to the earth there was no conducting lightning rod. As it was, the bolt followed one of the large steeple timbers some sixty feet in length to the bell tower, which timber it literally backed up into fine chips, which strewed the bell tower floor, and of which no trace was left bigger than a man's hand. In the bolt's passage to the bell tower the covering of the spire on the west side was entirely ripped out, with its braces, and strewed on the roof, in the front yard of the church, and for some distance in the road bed on Summit avenue. The covering on the north and east sides of the tower was also badly shaken up, and in some places was left flapping in the breeze like so many herding lath stalks, and the whole tower will have to be generally overhauled, and that portion on the west side rebuilt.

The bolt, on reaching the bell without touching the latter, appeared to have separated into two parts, one of which punched a big cannon ball hole a foot square through the east side of the bell tower and fled the premises, while the other ripped down the west end of the tower, tearing off the cornices, and just as it reached the eaves of the main structure of the building, it took a jump of thirty feet to the earth at the west end and entered the same, leaving quite a hole to show the point of its departure.

There were no marks in the bell to show that the bolt touched it, or upon a gas pipe within a foot of which it left its ravaging works, and there were no signs of any fire being kindled by it. On the new part of the building on which the workmen had been placing eave gutters the latter were removed without leaving any trace of violence and in places on the roof where workmen had been soldering tin that day the solder was melted and the tin left in place. The track of the lightning shows that had there been a rod leading to the earth from the little iron ornament at the peak of the steeple that the bolt would have taken that route to the earth and have saved the church from $200 to $300 expenses for repairs. As it was it was a miraculous escape for the structure as the splitting in two of the bolt in the bell tower and its peculiar track of exit therefrom, instead of following the tower to the ground, was a curious freak and a lucky one for Plymouth.