The flood quickly called forth the best and the worst exhibitions of human nature. We shall mention first the evil, as a back-ground against which the good may stand more conspicuous. We believe that to most men it will be simply incomprehensible that anybody should think of adding so much as the weight of a hair to the calamities of Johnstown, as they were seen on the morning of that first day of June. Ghouls were quick to enter, snatching from the living, robbing the bodies of the dead. Johnstown doubtless had her complement of thieves, and these were speedily reinforced by many more—crooks and jailbirds, pickpockets and burglars, from cities like Baltimore, Philadelphia and Pittsburg; for “where the carcass is, there will the eagles be gathered together.” Residents guarding silverware and other valuables were, in some instances, overpowered in broad daylight and their goods taken away from before their eyes. These crimes were diligently laid at the door of the Hungarians, but better knowledge acquitted them of the charge and proved that they were not more guilty than others.
The American, accustomed by republican training to regard himself as the chief source of law, is never slow to take things into his own hands in cases of extremity. We are told that a few of these ghouls were summarily dealt with; and under the circumstances the most conservative find it hard to condemn the grief-crazed men. One correspondent asked Deputy Sheriff “Chall” Dick if the reports of summary execution were true. Chall replied slowly:
“There are some men whom their friends will never again see alive.”
“Well, now, how many did you shoot?” was the next question.
“Say,” said Chall. “On Saturday morning I was the first to make my way to Sang Hollow, to see if I could not get some food for people made homeless by the flood. There was a car-load of provisions there, but the vandals were on hand. They broke into the car, and in spite of my protestations carried off box after box of supplies. I only got half a wagon load. They were too many for me. I know when I have no show. There was no show there, and I got out.
“As I was leaving Sang Hollow and got up the mountain road a piece, I saw two Hungarians and one woman engaged in cutting the fingers off of corpses to get some rings. Well, I got off that team and—well, there are three people who were not drowned and who are not alive.”
“Where are the bodies?”
“Ain’t the river handy there?”
Another form of robber appeared in the relic-hunter. He is a phenomenon inexplicable—at least to the writer of these pages. Why men should think to chip off pieces of the Washington Monument, or from Lincoln’s coffin, or from the granite sarcophagus in the great pyramid, and carry them home and put them in a cabinet, and call people to admire them, without thereby simply advertising themselves as vandals, passes comprehension. Why a chip from Johnstown should be better than the same kind of a chip from any other place, no man can tell. But the world has always had a good stock and store of this kind of fools, well described by our neglected and forgotten poet, Robert Pollok, as men who roamed about the world searching for pieces of old pottery and the like, and
“Wondered why shells were found upon the mountain-tops,
And wondered not at that more wondrous still,
Why shells were found at all.”