The terror, the horror, the tragedies, the martyrdom, the piercing screams of the dying, the agonized groans, the excitement of the surging mob, the hurrying back and forth of the police with their burdens of death and life that only lasted a moment, the pushing of physicians, the casting of dead about on the floors like cord wood, one on top of the other, to make room on the marble slabs of tables for the oncoming living, the cries of children, the sobbing of persons recognizing their loved one dead, or worse than dead—this unutterable horror can never be imagined, and was never known before in Chicago, not excepting the horrors of the great fire, or the martyrdom of war.
LIKE A FIELD OF BATTLE.
The scene presented was most horrible. It was like a battlefield where the dead are being brought to the church or the residence that has at a moment's notice been turned into a hospital. In they came, the dead and the injured, at first at the rate of one every three minutes; then faster, several at a time, until the restaurant was heaped with maimed bodies lying on the tables or the floor, with surgeons bending over them, and on the cashier's counter, with the girl there sobbing with her face hidden in her hands, afraid to look at the ghastly spectacle.
There were scores of physicians, three to each table, and they worked with vigor and earnestness and skill, but with the tears coursing down the cheeks of many a one. At first the bodies were carried into Thompson's, then they went across the street; many of them were put in ambulances and taken to the emergency room for women in Marshall Field's store, and still many others of the injured—those yet able to walk—were half dragged, half carried to the offices of physicians in the Masonic temple.
WOMEN EAGER TO HELP.
Women fought and shoved and pushed their way through the crowd to get to the door of the improvised hospital, that became a morgue only too rapidly.
"I am a nurse. Let me help," said some.
"I am a mother. My boy may be dead inside. For God's sake, let me save a life," said another, a woman in middle age.
Others came in from the crowds, neither mothers nor nurses, women with the spirit of heroism who longed to serve humanity when humanity was at so low an ebb.
"She's dead," was more often than not the verdict after much work. "Next!" and the cold and stiffened form of the victim was dragged, head first, from the marble eating table, thrown quickly under the tables, and another form, perhaps that of a tiny child, took its place.