Refugees from Galveston, Alvin, Angleton and other places are fast scattering throughout the State. Over fifty have arrived at Austin and have found temporary homes with friends and relatives. Many have gone to places in other States. A local Relief Committee has been organized in Austin to look after the wants of the destitute people as fast as they arrive. They are clothed and fed at the expense of the local people.
Similar committees are being formed in all the principal cities and towns of the State. It is expected that this action will assist the Relief Committees of Houston and Galveston greatly and will also reduce the amount of money required to be expended out of the general fund that is accumulating for the benefit of the sufferers.
Word reached here from Houston that evidences had been found there of imposition on the part of chronic tramps who are pouring into the city from all directions and claiming to be just from Galveston and to have lost everything in the storm. Many of these frauds have been exposed and driven out of the city. A plan is being arranged whereby all parties seeking help must be identified as having come from Galveston or other storm-swept towns.
SERMONS ON GALVESTON.
The Galveston catastrophe furnished the theme for Rev. Dr. Russell H. Conwell’s sermon on Sunday, September 16th, in the Temple of Grace Baptist Church, Philadelphia. He attributed the disaster to the working of God’s immutable laws, and declared that the calamity in its end was for the good of all things. At the conclusion of his sermon he made an appeal for the aid of the sufferers. There was a generous response. Many pledged themselves for specific sums.
Dr. Conwell took his text from Genesis xiii, 36. He said in part: “It was Jacob who said ‘all things are against me,’ but Paul said, ‘All things work together for good to them that love God.’ Paul’s position was true. Jacob’s was untrue. Yet Jacob had philosophy in his expression; but his philosophy was so much inferior that Paul’s inclosed it, left it out of sight. There is no sorrow or affliction or pain or death but it worketh out in God’s hands a greater good.
“The disaster at Galveston fills me with terror. It was a lovely city; its people kind-hearted and enterprising. The destruction of that city so suddenly was God’s doing, and consequently it must be for good. It was His doing and what He does is right. The hurricane was the necessary outcome of all the working laws of God. He sent it and it must be for good. We can not understand that; we sit back in our heart’s darkness and say, ‘God is wrong; He is not governing the universe.’
BLESSINGS IN DISGUISE.
“The people who now live in Galveston will be better all their lives. This experience has deepened their natures, enriched their sympathies, enlarged the boundaries of their feelings, and the people of that city will be blessed by that awful experience. They are going to be better inspired, more loving toward others, more affectionate toward each other, and they are going to be different men even without their riches, for riches do not make good men. The people of Galveston have been taught that there is something more than dollars in this world. The rich will now feel what it is to be poor. It does man good to feel the depths of life. Many of the survivors will thank God they have to begin life over again.
“This great calamity is good also in that it arouses the sympathies of the whole country. When it arouses the sympathies of many tens of thousands it must be a gigantic force to work out an ultimate good. Just think when they begin to build the city again! How many will be benefited? They will order lumber from the North, where the suffering people are waiting for the order. They will order millions of dollars worth of goods from Philadelphia, and there are poor people here waiting for that work. When you consider how that disaster locally is going to bless so many people outwardly, then the measure of its good may be far greater than the measure of its evil.”