"I didn't think last Tuesday I'd be begging to-day, Emma," interrupted a young man from across the stream of water which ran down the centre of Main Street. "I'm sitting on your aunt Tabby's trunk." The girl gave a cry, half of pained remembrance, half of pleasure. "Oh, my dear Aunt Tabby!" she cried, and, rushing across the rivulet, she threw herself across the battered leather trunk—sole surviving relic of Aunt Tabby; but Aunt Tabby and the finding thereof was a light among other shadows of the day.
Nothing but a Baby.
Gruesome incidents came oftener than pathetic ones or serio-comic. General Axline, the Adjutant General of Ohio, was walking down the station platform this afternoon, when a boy came sauntering up from the viaduct with a bundle in a handkerchief. The handkerchief dripped water. "What have you there, my boy?" asked the General. The boy cowered a minute, though the General's tone was kindly, for the boy, like every one else in Johnstown, was prepared for a gruff accostal every five minutes from some official, from Adjutant General to constable. Finally he answered: "Nothing but a baby, sir," and began to open his bundle in proof of the truth of his statement. But the big soldier did not put him to the proof. He turned away sick at heart. He did not even ask the boy if he knew whose baby it was.
How the Coffins Were Carried.
A strangely utilitarian device was that of a Pittsburgh sergeant of Battery B. With one train from the West came several hundred of the morbidly curious, bent upon all the horrors which they could stomach. A crowd of them crossed the viaduct and stopped to gaze round-eyed upon a pile of empty coffins meant for the bodies of the identified dead found up and across the river in the ruins of Johnstown proper. As they gazed the Sergeant, seeking transportation for the coffins, came along. A somewhat malicious inspiration of military genius lighted his eye. With the best imitation possible of a regular army man, he shouted to the idlers, "Each of you men take a coffin." The idlers eyed him.
"What for?" one asked.
"You want to go into town, don't you?" replied the Sergeant. "Well, not one of you goes unless he takes a coffin with him."
In ten minutes time way was made at the ticklish rope bridge for a file of sixteen coffins, each borne by two of the Sergeant's unwilling conscripts, while the Sergeant closed up the rear.
Some of the scenes witnessed here were heartrending in the extreme. In one case a beautiful girl came down on the roof of a building which was swung in near the tower. She screamed to the operator to save her and one big, brave fellow walked as far into the river as he could and shouted to her to try to guide herself into the shore with a bit of plank. She was a plucky girl, full of nerve and energy, and stood upon her frail support in evident obedience to the command of the operator. She made two or three bold strokes and actually stopped the course of the raft for an instant.
Then it swerved and went out from under her. She tried to swim ashore, but in a few seconds she was lost. Something hit her, for she lay quietly on her back, with face pallid and expressionless. Men and women in dozens, in pairs and singly; children, boys, big and little, and wee babies were there in among the awful confusion of water, drowning, gasping, struggling and fighting desperately for life.