Though forty or fifty persons were in the depot at the time, only one, a restaurant boy, was killed; Twenty-one passenger coaches were more or less wrecked. On following days the impression of the ruins upon the beholder was peculiarly gloomy. Instead of the stir of life, the brilliancy of electric lights, the scream of whistles and the rumbling of trains, there was a scattered wreck, and comparative silence. A few chickens, liberated from their coop, crept at dusk to roost on a timber, and in subdued tones seemed to be discussing with each other the mournful situation.
CHAPTER VI
INCIDENTS OF THE TORNADO.
“O cold and savage wind!
It racks my soul to hear the wild lamenting
Of wounded hearts whose grief knows no relenting,
Can not their woe e’er sway thee to repenting?
O cold and savage wind!
O melancholy wind!
Hast thou no requiem for the dead and dying?
Art thou some fierce despairing spirit sighing
O’er a lost Paradise behind thee lying?
O melancholy wind!”
OO frequently in the confusion of great disasters the woes of the poorer classes are forgotten in the attention given to their more opulent neighbors. There is only too often good cause given for a slight modification of Shylock’s speech, “Hath not a Jew eyes?” etc. There is no sadder record than that so frequently given in a single line: “Dead—a woman, name unknown.” What fearful heart-aches often end in the Potter’s field!
Adjoining the Louisville Hotel was a saloon and cigar store, the rooms over which were occupied by the hotel laundry girls. These were hurled into the cellar, and so tightly wedged that death could not have been long delayed. One was found sitting upright, the pallor of death on her face, and agony in every feature. Another lay upon her back, with hands outstretched above her head, as though she tried to thrust destruction back. A third was sitting, dead; while near by another lay upon her face, as though refusing to behold that which she could not shun.
“Nor you, ye proud, impute to these the fault,
If memory o’er their tomb no trophies raise,
Where through the long-drawn aisle and fretted vault
The pealing anthem swells the note of praise.”
Poor laundry girls! Let their dead dust be mentioned with reverence. Had they been spoiled daughters of wealth and fashion, press reporters would have waxed eloquent of their birth, their history, their beauty, their accomplishments, their heritage. We should have heard in detail the names of their wealthy and mourning friends, and of their impressive obsequies. Magnificent monuments would have risen to mark their sleeping dust. These five laundry girls were taken up tenderly, and two or three days later, together borne without pomp to humble graves. But is not honest industry in useful avocation toiling for bread a more royal thing than silks and diamonds, bedizzening frivolity and idleness? Is there not in America many a haughty heiress, less worthy of our tears, than these?
“Let not ambition mock their useful toil,
Their homely joys and destiny obscure;”