The Great Galveston Disaster / Containing a Full and Thrilling Account of the Most Appalling Calamity of Modern Times Including Vivid Descriptions of the Hurricane and Terrible Rush of Waters; Immense Destruction of Dwellings, Business Houses, Churches, and Loss of Thousands of Human Lives; Thrilling Tales of Heroic Deeds; Panic-Stricken Multitudes and Heart-Rending Scenes of Agony; Frantic Efforts to Escape a Horrible Fate; Separation of Loved Ones, etc., etc.; Narrow Escapes from the Jaws of Death; Terrible Sufferings of the Survivors; Vandals Plundering Bodies of the Dead; Wonderful Exhibitions of Popular Sympathy; Millions of Dollars Sent for the Relief of the Stricken Sufferers

by Paul Lester

A TRAGIC WEDDING CEREMONY.

At the Tremont Hotel in Galveston a wedding occurred Thursday night, which was not attended with music and flowers and a gathering of merrymaking friends and relatives. Mrs. Brice Roberts had expected some day to marry Earnest Mayo. The storm which desolated so many homes deprived her of almost everything on earth—father, mother, sister and brother. She was left destitute. Her sweetheart, too, was a sufferer. He lost much of his possessions in Dickinson, but he stepped bravely forward and took his sweetheart to his home.

A pathetic story of the Galveston flood is that of Mrs. Mary Quayle, of Liverpool, England, who is now on her journey home. She had only been two days in the city with her husband when the storm came. She goes home, her husband dead, and herself a nervous wreck. Mr. and Mrs. Quayle had taken apartments in Lucas terrace, Galveston. During the storm Mr. Quayle went to a window, when a sudden burst of wind tore out the panes and sucked him, as it were, out of the house. Mrs. Quayle, in the rear of the room, was thrown against a wall and stunned. No trace of her husband’s body has been found.

It will be a long time before many of the survivors of the Galveston catastrophe can appreciate the nature of the calamity which has befallen them. One woman laughingly told another that she had saved her baby, but that her two boys and her husband had been drowned. She was evidently insane.

An eye-witness, writing on September 16th, said: “Galveston is striving manfully to rise from its ashes. A reign of terror has been averted, Hope crowns the day. More than a thousand men are clearing the streets of debris. They are working night and day. Their efforts so far have been expended in picking up carcasses and gathering bodies into piles and burning them. Separate pyres are built for human bodies and animals, and the work progresses rapidly. The task is heart-rendering, and many able bodied men have succumbed to the ordeal.