CHAPTER X.
HOW THE NEW YEAR WAS USHERED IN.
The New Year came to Chicago with muffled drums, two days after the calamity that threw the great metropolis into mourning.
Scarcely a sound was heard as 1904 entered.
Jan. 1—day of funerals—was received in silence. Streets were almost deserted, even downtown. Men hurried silently along the sidewalks. There were not half a dozen tin horns in the downtown district where ordinarily the blare of trumpets, screech of steam whistles, volleys of shots and the merriment of late wayfarers make the entrance of a new year a period of deafening pandemonium.
Merrymakers were quiet when in the streets and subdued even in the restaurants. Noise, except in a few scattered districts, was unknown.
It was a remarkable, spontaneous testimony to the prevalent spirit throughout the city. Mayor Harrison had asked, in an official proclamation, that there be no noise, but few of those who desisted from the usual practices of greeting the New Year knew that they had been requested to be silent.
MOURNING IN EVERY STREET.
There were mourning families in every neighborhood; crepe in every street; grief stricken relatives throughout the city; unidentified dead in the morgues, and sufferers in the hospital. The citizens did not need to be requested to be quiet.
Jan. 1, 1904, meant the beginning of funerals and the burial of dead who were to have lived to take part in merrymaking.