The Hillsdale Standard

A Fearful Leap and Marvelous Rescue.

Yesterday morning, about ten o'clock a young lady approached the Suspension Bridge from this side, and when asked for her toll inquired of the gate-keeper how much it was, and when told the price to the Island replied that she did not think that she was going that far, and said that she ought to go for half price, as she was going only to the middle of the bridge. He took the toll she offered, and she proceeded on her way. When she reached the place where the iron cables touch the railing, at nearly the highest part of the bridge, Mr. Geo. Downey, the toll collector, observed her climbing up the railing and removing her bonnet and shawl. He ran to her only in time to catch the mantilla which she wore, when she broke from his grasp and leaped to the stream below, a distance, even at the present high stage of water, of not less than seventy-eight feet!

The current was full of floating ice, and her destruction seemed inevitable; she sank then rose, then plunged wildly in the swollen current; sank again, rose once more, and then floated onward amid the torrent of ice, with nothing but her head and one hand occasionally visible. Several men in a skiff put out from a boat lying at the wharf followed her, gave her up as lost several times, but each time renewed the chase, and finally picked her up alive, but insensible, after she had been in the water for nearly half an hour! Restoratives were immediately applied, and she was removed to the house of friends, where, we understand, she is gradually recovering from the injuries sustained from the ice and cold.

The leap was one of the most desperate and the escape from instant death the most miraculous we have ever recorded or ever seen recorded. Her clothes no doubt kept her head uppermost as she was falling, and buoyed her up when she got in the stream. The heroine of this adventure is a young unmarried lady, whose name we omit at the solicitation of her friends, and who has lived here for some five years, supporting herself by her work as a seamstress. Those with whom she has resided give her an irreproachable character. The common report attributes the affair to a disappointment in love matters.