AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN
second stories of the houses in which they had taken shelter, that the ice was piled up between them and the shore, making them inaccessible, and that unless relieved they would soon be drowned. It was a situation in which I did not know what to do. I so told the man at the other end and asked him what he had to suggest. He said he thought I could perhaps get the life-saving people at the station at Atlantic City to come up. I could have done so, no doubt, but meanwhile the people on the island would have been drowned. I sent for Captain John C. Delaney and told him to go down there at once and see what could be done. He soon returned with the report that the situation was hopeless. At the same time I sent for James M. Shumaker, who at once had a plan, which was to take the riggers who were at work on the Capitol, and used to moving around with little support, with their tackle and necessary apparatus, down there. Shumaker was the right man in the right place, and that the very thing to do. He was put in charge of the arrangements. Senator E. K. McConkey of York, a fine fellow who, within a few years died of heart disease, who had arrived on the scene, assisted. They fastened ropes to the shore, one man went out on the ice a short distance and there stood at the rope. Another went a little further and so on until they had a living chain reaching to the edge of the current. Then with a boat they took the people out of the upper windows of the house and brought them all, including a grandmother seventy-five years old, over the ice piles in safety to the shore. It was a thrilling and dramatic incident and here was a man equal to an emergency, who was willing to do his duty and, when occasion required it, more than his duty, deserving well of the state. Those rescued were the families of John and George Burger, who had been caught by the waters on Shelly's Island.
Since Roosevelt had postponed his participation in the ceremonies of University Day for a year, the authorities of
