STORIES OF SORROW.
George H. Walker, of San Antonio, known well in theatrical circles, was a member of the party which struggled all day Tuesday to get to Galveston, and he landed late at night. It was an anxious day for him, for this was the city of his birth and before the storm he had six brothers and five sisters living here, in addition to his son, an aunt and his mother-in-law.
He found his son safe and many other members of his family. They told him how the boy, Earl, a lad of 15, had at the height of the tempest placed his grandmother, Mrs. C. S. Johnson, on the roof of the house after it was floating in the current, and had made a second trip to bring his aunt to the roof. When the lad returned the grandmother was gone, finding in the raging current her final peace. The boy and his aunt, another Mrs. Johnson, clung to the roof throughout and successfully weathered the gale.
George Walker found later on, however, that his brother Joe, and his stepbrother, Nick Donley, had been swept away to feed the fury of the storm.
I met W. R. Knight, of Dallas, who arrived yesterday at noon. He told me that he had found his mother, two unmarried sisters and a married sister, Mrs. E. Webster, safe. But he, too, had his sorrow. A sister, Mrs. Ida Toothaker, and her daughter Etta, were lost, and his brother-in-law, E. Webster, Sr., and five children, Charley, George, Kenneth, Julia and Sarah, had joined the other two loved ones on the bosom of the unresting sea.
How many stories of sorrow like this that remain to be told cannot now be numbered. The anxious people who have been straggling into Galveston from a distance have usually found some dear relative or many of them missing and numbered among the thousands who became in a few brief hours the victims of the remorseless furies.
It is with reluctance that I relate one case that came under my own observation. It was so horrible that perhaps it ought not to be told at all, but only such instances can convey a faint idea of the horror of the Galveston disaster. While rowing near the Huntington wharves the naked upturned body of an unfortunate woman was observed floating in the water, with a half-born infant plainly in view.
MASSACRE OF THE LIVING.
Mr. L. H. Lewis, of Dallas, arrived yesterday looking for his son, George Cabell Lewis, who was found alive and well. Mr. Lewis said: “I helped to bury sixteen at Texas City last (Tuesday) night—all Galveston victims. They buried fifty-eight there Tuesday. Coming down Buffalo bayou I saw numberless legs and arms, mostly of women and children, protruding from the muck. I believe there are hundreds of women and children near the mouth of the bayou. As soon as men can be found to do the work these poor victims should be looked after. Unquestionably most of them were from Galveston Island. Among other things I saw were tombstones with inscriptions in German and rusty caskets which had been beached by the waves.”
The cruel elements were not content to massacre the living, but had to invade the silent homes of the unoffending dead.