About noon yesterday the Rev. George H. Bigler, one of the oldest & most esteemed citizens of Farmington, left his home in that village to visit his married daughter, Mrs. Eli Sawyer, of Hartford. He came in an open two-horse wagon, &Ⓐemendation was accompanied by his wife, his youngest son, Thomas, aged 18; his grandchild, Minnie Sawyer, aged 8; & two neighbors, Simon & Ellsworth Oglethorpe, brothers, the former a lawyer & the latter formerly postmaster of Farmington. When the wagon arrived at the junction of Farmington avenue & Forest street, in this city, the guard of warning who should have been on duty there was absent from his post; the party in the wagon glanced up at the semaphore telegraph on the top of Mr. Chamberlin’sⒶemendation house,2explanatory note & strangely enough but one of its arms was visible & that was pointing directly north, signifying “No danger.” So they turned into Forest street & proceeded on their way. In a little while they found themselves hopelessly entangled among the grading & gas-laying improvements, which have been going on in that street since the inauguration of the Christian Era. They shouted for help & presently made themselves heard; passers-by ran to the vicinity, & as soon as they comprehended the state of the case an alarm was sounded (it is due to Mr. Joseph W. Milligan, grocer, to say that he was the first to get to a fire alarm station & turn the key) & within a few minutes all the bells in the city were clamoring. Thousands & tens of thousands of people gathered to the scene of danger & openly sympathized with the persons in peril. They could do no more, for it would have been foolhardy in the extreme to venture into the street, the mud being at that place from thirty to ninety feet deep on a level, to say nothing of the water.

The wagon made another start, & plowed along desperately until it reached the monument (the first one from Farmington avenue—the one erected to a street commissioner during the middle ages for promising to quit repairing the street—which he basely violated & hence the vindictiveness of the inscription on the shaft). Here, as is known, there is more water than mud; the nearest life-boatⒶemendation station in this part of the street is the one located in front of Mr. George Warner’s (new) premises. Captain Hobson & his crew of nine men at once launched a life-boat & started on their errand, notwithstanding it was Sunday & would cause remark; but the wind was blowing a gale by this time, & as it was just the turn of the tide, every thing was against the gallant boys. The boat was swept to leeward of the monument & shivered to atoms against the marble column erected in 1598 to the memory of a Sabbath school procession which disappeared at that spot, dressed with unusual care in the best clothes they had, & were never heard of afterward. Fragments of the life-boat crew washed ashore this morning in the extreme southern end of Forest street, nearly three hundred yards from the scene of the disaster. The party in the wagon were well nigh desperate now. But when hope seemed darkest Capt. Duncan MacAllister of the canal boat George Washington arrived with a ship’s compass, a chronometer fifteen minutes slow, & a sack of sea-biscuit & hove them aboard the vehicle, while cheers rent the air from the surging multitude that lined the sidewalks. The Rev. Mr. Bigler & his party seemed greatly encouraged after a brief luncheon. (These crackers were from Johnson & Peterson’s bakery & are acknowledged to be the best in this market.) Mr. Bigler now bore away sou-west-by-west-half-west, but his weather harness got fouled, his port check-rein fetched away, & his wagon broached to & went ashore at the base of the monument erected five years ago to commemorate the 1868th annual alteration of the grade. Here the starboard horse began to disappear; Mr. Simon Oglethorpe at once cut away the main rigging, & the animal continued his journey to China. Within five minutes the other horse followed him. There was a heavy sea on by this time, of mud & water mixed, & every third colossal poultice of it that rolled along made a clean breach over the wagon & left the occupants looking like the original Adam before the clay dried.

Hope now departed at once & forever, & it was heartrending to hear the castawaysⒶemendation plead for a little drop of limpid water; they were willing to die, they were ready to die, but they wanted to wash first. There was not a dry eye in the vicinity. The awful moment came at last; a great sea of sable mush swept the wagon from stem to stern, then the vehicle plunged once, twice, three times, & disappeared beneath the state with all its precious freight on board.

This is a sad case. I am not writing this letter in order to make a great to-do about the loss of a few unnecessary country people in Forest street, for of course that is too common a thing to excite much attention; but I have an object which makes my letter of moment.

In the first place I wish to discourage the building of monuments in Forest street. Every few years the street commissioner goes out there & deposits sixteen feet of gas pipe (on top of the ground) & straightway the property-holders set up a majestic monument to remember it by. Every year he changes the grade & plagiarizes original chaos, & they monumentalize that. Every now & then somebody gets off soundings there & never comes back to dinner any more, & up goes another monument. The result is that what solid ground there is in that street is all occupied by monuments, now, & it makes no end of trouble. There is only one solid spot left, & I discover that a new length of gas pipe has just been dumped in the street & the ground ravaged in the vicinity, preparatory to burying that piece of tube one of these years. Now, will they not want to commemorate that bit of official energy? You know, yourself, that they will, & away goes the last square yard of firm soil in Forest street. If there had been fewer monuments to get shipwrecked against, the Farmington people & the life-boat crew might all be with us yet.

Secondly, I think there ought to be more lanterns standing on barrels, & more sentinels roosting on the fences along Forest street, to warn strangers.

Thirdly, I think there ought to be at least three more life-boat stations on that street, & a number of miscellaneous rafts, with provisions & literature lashed on them, distributed along here & there.

Fourthly, I think there ought to be a chart of the street made, with the soundings marked on it.

Fifthly, I think the war office ought to establish a signal station in Forest street & put in the Probabilities,3explanatory note “Danger signals are ordered for the lakes, the Gulf of Mexico, the Atlantic seaboard & Forest street, Hartford—the one at Forest street to be nailed up with fifteen inch spikes & remain permanent in all weathers.”

Then I shall enjoy living in this soft, retired street even more than I do now, perhaps.