CHAPTER XVIII.
RELIEF MEASURES.
“Abou Ben Adhem (may his tribe increase)
Awoke one night from a deep dream of peace,
And saw within the moonlight of his room,
Making it rich and like a lily in bloom,
An angel writing in a book of gold:
Exceeding peace had made Ben Adhem bold,
And to the presence in the room he said,
“What writest thou?” The vision raised its head,
And with a look made all of sweet accord,
Answered: “The names of those who love the Lord.”
“And is mine one?” said Abou. “Nay, not so,”
Replied the angel. Abou spoke more low,
But cheerily still, and said, “I pray thee then
Write me as one who loves his fellow men.”
The angel wrote and vanished. The next night
It came again with a great wakening light
And showed the names of whom love of God had blessed,
And lo, Ben Adhem’s name led all the rest!”
T goes without saying that the destitution and suffering occasioned by the flood were fearful. Everywhere might be seen hundreds of sad-eyed, disconsolate, almost famished creatures, groping about the wreck, almost unconscious of present necessities by reason of present woe. Scores were compelled to drag their precious dead from the wreck and bury them with their own hands—a trying task. Other scores found never a trace of many whom they sought. Hundreds of telegrams of anxious inquiries will never be answered.
The pressing necessities of the hungry people soon drove many to seek escape from the place. Yet all railroads were damaged, and in Johnstown itself one could hardly get about the streets. A stranger describes it as it appeared on June 1:
“Johnstown proper was partly a lake, partly several small streams, partly a vast sandy plain, and partly clusters of more or less ruined houses. Around, among, between, inside and on top of these houses, wherever the rushing torrent had been checked, were piled masses of wreckage; trunks of mighty trees, household furniture, houses whole and in fragments, bridges, locomotives and railroad cars, hundreds of tons of mud and gravel. Thickly strewn through it all were hundreds of corpses and carcasses. The only communication between this section and the Pennsylvania Railroad and the village of Peelerville on the north, and Kernville on the south, was across swollen torrents in skiffs, which required constant bailing to keep them above water. From the Stone Bridge of the Pennsylvania Road, for a distance of half a mile, no river could be seen, simply a dense mass of drift from twenty to fifty feet deep, apparently inextricable, bound together with miles of wire, here blazing and there smoldering, and enveloping the bridge in a cloud of nauseating vapor and smoke, giving unmistakable evidence of the presence of burning flesh. Not a thoroughfare was passable for a team, and very few for a horse. Locomotion was difficult, the mud was deep, the streets obstructed often to the roofs of houses, the rain was incessant.
“How poor, how rich, how abject, how august,
How complicate, how wonderful is man;
How passing wonder He who made him such,
Who centered in our make such strange extremes
From different natures marvelously mixed.”