“They saw a stout roof on the edge of the debris and succeeded in reaching it; an old lady on bended knees and holding with her hands, floated by on a shutter, and Winter assisted her to gain the roof; the current suddenly turned and swept them rapidly up Stony Creek, a distance of half a mile; they came to rest above Morris street in the Fifth Ward, and lay for a considerable time; some inexplicable force then carried them across the river, and they lay for a while in the mouth of Franklin street; the Catholic church was on fire, and the town clock struck five; a cold and pitiless rain poured down upon them; the current now changed and buildings and wreckage were borne rapidly down the stream; as houses were broken to pieces, clinging wretches with wild shrieks sank to watery graves; the two sons were separated from the remainder of the family on the roof; it drifted once more down the stream, was struck by a heavier building and pushed upon the bank; over various drift they climbed till they reached a three-story brick which stood intact; they entered it just as the town clock struck six—two awful hours, and yet no member of the family lost. Happier far their fate than that of many others. The two boys returned to their parents at four o’clock the next day.”
These incidents will suffice. Thousands of the same sort might be given. No wonder that many were crazed with grief. One woman, wife and mother, sole survivor of a happy family, was found sitting in the wreck, holding in her arms her family clock which she had found. She told her story without a tear. Her mind was unbalanced. A man who had never been known to touch liquor was found the day after the flood, reeling to the bridge, drunk and raving, determined to drown himself. In agony at the loss of all he held dear, he had taken to drink, that he might remember his misery no more; but in vain: whisky could not destroy his terrible memories. Talmage in a letter to the New York World, said: “Such an avalanche of horrors never slipped upon any American city. Horrors piled on horrors, woe augmenting woe; bankruptcy, orphanage, widowhood, childlessness, obliterated homesteads, gorged cemeteries and scenes so excruciating it is a marvel that any one could look upon them and escape insanity * * * *
“Was the work of devastation as great as I supposed? Far worse. Types can not tell it. Only the eye can make revelation. But the worst part of it can not be seen. The heart-wreck caused by the sudden departure of so many can be open only to one eye, and that the All-Seeing. Think of one family of fourteen all dead except one, and that the wife and mother, and she the witness of their drowning. I saw the grave trench in which two hundred and sixty were buried, and the whole graveyard like a national cemetery, in which the unrecognized dead have a particular number placed above them and are recorded in the undertaker’s rooms with a description of the body and clothes.”
On many a life a shadow has been cast that will never be lifted. Many a heart will ache until it breaks. One who had lost wife and children and was alone, whose verses and whose name the world has never heard, more than thirty years ago wrote the following most touchingly beautiful lines, which will find an echo in the hearts of thousands of survivors of the Johnstown flood, as well as among countless millions of others in every age of the world:
Down by the cedar sitting,
Lonely and sad and still,
Watching the shadows flitting
Over the distant hill.
Yearning for by-gone hours,
Never again to come;
Longing for beauteous flowers,
Never again to bloom.
Ever there flits before me
A shadowy form and face;
Ever it hovers o’er me,
Wearing a nameless grace.
Above my brow there lingers
A breath like summer air;
Unseen and loving fingers
Stray through my tangled hair.
Silence, slow creeping nigh me,
Out from the leafy shade,
Bringeth the dead hours by me,
And rests on the darkening glade.
O ye beloved of spring time,
Can ye come back no more?
Bending I trace your footsteps
Over the distant shore;
Down to the misty river,
Into the depths of death,
Seeking your presence ever,
Praying with sobbing breath,
“Can ye come back no more?”
Echoing clear from the unseen shore,
Answer sweet voices “No more, no more!”
O for the pearly gates
Of the golden nightless plain,
Where your gentle spirit waits
For the hour we meet again.
Out from the darkness, soft and plain,
Comes the glad echo, “We meet again.”