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

LIGHTNING FLASHES IN DARKNESS.

Galveston, stricken and bleeding, is safe from the wrath of all powers, human or divine. The vivid lightnings may cleave the sleepless waves of the sea and the thunders may play at will among the fantastic clouds in the sky. Galveston, soothed and compassed by the tenderness of mankind, is veiled in the folds of heaven’s mercy, and the shrieking tempest is now but a whisper from the sky, the angry wave but the gentle falling of tears from above the stars.

It is so hard to write the story or a chapter of it without feeling the power that appalls human intelligence, just as it is hard to disassociate overwhelming sorrow from that broad sympathy which we do not understand, but which never fails to nestle close to human misery. Call it what you may, it is part of human life, and its presence comes when disaster overwhelms to bring humanity in the presence of God.

Who can dispute this in the presence of the all-pervading mystery of the storm? Who can laugh to scorn the sympathy whose manifestations have already reached the widows and orphans, whose desolate lives now find comfort from the realms above? This is not a matter of appealing to emotion. I have before me this minute four rings. The man who brings them tells me that they were taken from rigid fingers, among the 700 who on last Monday were sunk to rest amid the borderless fathoms of the sea. He says they may be the means of identification of three lost ones. No; there can be no identification; but who can tell the tender secrets which these circlets pledged? Identification is impossible deep down among the mysteries of the sea.

The tragedy grows greater every moment. The romances dead to the world, the grief lost beneath the wave or carried to the vapors above the earth, the aching hearts soothed by lasting peace, the tired souls in the arms of endless rest, the ambitions stilled by the calm which banishes the anguish of life’s dreary struggle—it matters not what these rings may bring to mind—we are yet confronted with the loss of the thousands who shall never again press these wave-kissed shores. The sentiment of this people is, God rest every one who sleeps beneath the wave, and gather to everlasting peace the ashes of all whose funeral pyres were built of these shattered homes.