As already stated, the scene had its humorous as well as its pathetic side, and various amusing stories are told by those who were in a frame of mind to notice ludicrous incidents in the horrors of the situation. Two race track men met in the drive.
“Hello, Bill; where are you living now?” asked one.
“You see that tree over there—that big one?” said Bill. “Well, you climb that. My room is on the third branch to the left,” and they went away laughing.
Another observer tells these incidents of the flight: “I saw one big fat man calmly walking up Market Street, carrying a huge bird cage, and the cage was empty. He seemed to enjoy looking at the wrecked buildings. Another man was leading a huge Newfoundland dog and carrying a kitten in his arms. He kept talking to the kitten. On Fell Street I noticed an old woman, half dressed, pushing a sewing machine up the hill. A drawer fell out, and she stopped to gather the fallen spools. Poor little seamstress, it was now her all.”
A more amusing instance of the spirit of saving is that told by another narrator, who says that he saw a lone woman patiently pushing an upright piano along the pavement a few inches at a time. Evidently in this case, too, it was the poor soul’s one great treasure on earth.
He also tells of a guest berating the proprietor of a hotel, a few minutes after the shock, because he had not obeyed orders to call him at five o’clock. He vowed he would never stop at that house again, a vow he might well keep, as the house is no more.
In one room where two girls were dressing the floor gave way and one of them disappeared.
“Where are you, Mary?” screamed her companion.
“Oh, I’m in the parlor,” said Mary calmly, as she wriggled out of the mass of plaster and mortar below.
At the handsome residence of Rudolph Spreckels, the wealthy financier, the lawn was riven from end to end in great gashes, while the ornamental Italian rail leading to the imposing entrance was a battered heap. But the family, with a philosophy notable for the occasion, calmly set up housekeeping on the sidewalk, the women seated in armchairs taken from the mansion and wrapped in rugs and coverlets, the silver breakfast service was laid out on the stone coping and their morning meal spread out on the sidewalk. This, scene was repeated at other houses of the wealthy, the families too fearful of another shock to venture within doors.