Another story of much interest in this connection is told. On Friday afternoon, two days and some hours after the scene just narrated, Mrs. Rudolph Spreckels presented her husband with an heir on the lawn in front of their mansion, while the family were awaiting the coming of the dynamite squad to blow up their magnificent residence. An Irish woman who had been called in to play the part of midwife at a birth elsewhere on Saturday, made a pertinent comment after the wee one’s eyes were opened to the walls of its tent home.
“God sends earthquakes and babies,” she said, “but He might, in His mercy, cut out sending them both together.”
There were many pathetic incidents. Families had been sadly separated in the confusion of the flight. Husbands had lost their wives—wives had lost their husbands, and anxious mothers sought some word of their children—the stories were very much the same. One pretty looking woman in an expensive tailor-made costume badly torn, had lost her little girl.
“I don’t think anything has happened to her,” said she, hopefully. “She is almost eleven years old, and some one will be sure to take her in and care for her; I only want to know where she is. That is all I care about now.”
A well-known young lady of good social position, when asked where she had spent the night, replied: “On a grave.”
“I thank God, I thank Uncle Sam and the people of this nation,” said a woman, clad in a red woolen wrapper, seated in front of a tent at the Presidio nursing one child and feeding three others from a board propped on two bricks. “We have lost our home and all we had, but we have never been hungry nor without shelter.”
The spirit of ‘49 was vital in many of the refugees. One man wanted to know whether the fire had reached his home. He was informed that there was not a house standing in that section of the city. He shrugged his shoulders and whistled.
“There’s lots of others in the same boat,” as he turned away.
“Going to build?” repeated one man, who had lost family and home inside of two hours. “Of course, I am. They tell me that the money in the banks is still all right, and I have some insurance. Fifteen years ago I began with these,” showing his hands, “and I guess I’m game to do it over again. Build again, well I wonder.”
Among the many pathetic incidents of the disaster was that of a woman who sat at the foot of Van Ness Avenue on the hot sands on the hillside overlooking the bay east of Fort Mason, with four little children, the youngest a girl of three, the eldest a boy of ten years. They were destitute of water, food and money.