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

MAKING A FIGHT FOR LIFE.

“The people of Galveston are making a brave and gallant fight for life. The citizens have organized under efficient and willing management. Gangs of men are at work everywhere removing the wreckage. The city is districted according to wards, and in every ward there is a relief station. They give out food at the relief stations. Such food as they have will not last long.

“I sat in one relief station for an hour this morning and saw several people who had come asking for medicine and disinfectants and a few rags of clothing to cover their pitiful nakedness, turned away. The man in charge of the bureau took the last nickel in the world out of his pocket and gave it to make up a sum for a woman with a new-born baby in her arms to buy a little garment to cover its shivering flesh.

“The people of the State of Texas have risen to the occasion nobly. They have done everything that human beings, staggering and dazed under such a blow, could possibly do, but they are only human. This is no ordinary catastrophe. One who has not been here to see with his own eyes the awful havoc wrought by the storm cannot realize the tenth part of the misery these people are suffering.

“I asked a prominent member of the Citizens’ Committee this morning where I should go to see the worst work which the storm had done. He smiled at me a little, pitifully. His house, every dollar he had in the world, and his children were swept away from him last Saturday night.

“‘Go?’ said he. ‘Why, anywhere within two blocks of the very heart of the city you will see misery enough in half an hour to keep you awake for a week of sleepless nights.’

“I went toward the heart of the city. I do not know what the names of the streets were or where I was going. I simply picked my way through masses of slime and rubbish, which scar the beautiful wide streets of the once beautiful city. They won’t bear looking at, those piles of rubbish. There are things there that gripe the heart to see—a baby’s shoe, for instance, a little red shoe, with a jaunty tasseled lace—a bit of a woman’s dress and letters. Oh, yes, I saw these things myself, and the letters were wet and grimed with the marks of the cruel sea, but there were a few lines legible in it.

“‘Oh, my dear,’ it read, ‘the time seems so long. When can we expect you back?’ Whose hand had written, or who had received, no one will ever know.