No man has been busier comforting the grief-stricken people of Galveston than Dr. R. C. Buckner of the Buckner Orphan Home in Dallas county. He leaves Thursday morning for his institution with the homeless orphans of the Galveston Orphans’ Home, which was wrecked by the storm. He has others besides these, and altogether he will take one hundred home with him.
What a grand old man Dr. Buckner is! I will take off my hat to him any day in the week. I have known him for years and there is not a nobler character alive. I saw him at Sherman when that city was ravished by a cyclone several years ago. He was there looking for orphans, and I know that he has always been quick to reach the scene of disaster and death. He got here Tuesday afternoon and lost no time in reaching his part of the work, and heaven knows there was none more important than that to which he assigned himself.
RESCUING DESTITUTE CHILDREN.
But the people of Texas ought to know what he has done. They have always loved the Buckner home. They know what it has done in the way of rescuing destitute children. They know that hundreds of good men and women of the State have come from that institution—men and women who have become successful in life and who honor the State and the home by their useful and upright lives. But Texas will have greater cause than ever to love and revere Dr. Buckner and his institution when it is known that he has added to his family a hundred hapless victims of the Galveston storm, making in all 400 in his entire family. The heart of this State is throbbing here now, and whoever renders a good service to Galveston will be honored by the State.
If the people of the State and the outside world can not grasp the full measure of the Galveston horror, neither can the people of Galveston themselves. The town is dazed, and self-contained people are hard to find. There is a well-organized Citizens’ Committee at work in a consecutive and business manner, but the work before it is beyond the ability or power of any committee.
It will be some time before thousands will know the real nature of the disaster which has overtaken them, and the world will never know it all. Men and women walk the streets and tell each other experiences and weep together as gradually the stories of loss come out. They are hysterical, half crazy, paralyzed and utterly dejected. There has been so such death and so much ruin that they don’t know which way to turn or what to do.
There has been much complaint on the part of visitors that the men don’t go to work and help clear the debris from the streets. This job alone would give three thousand men a month’s hard work. But a man can’t work when he has before him the vision of his loved ones hurled to death in an instant and thinks of what has happened.
A man who lost a wife and children, no matter how strong he may be, can’t get his mind on the necessities of this town when he thinks of his family among the seven hundred sunk in the sea last Monday or the thousand burned in trenches on the beach yesterday. If he does not become a maniac or does not commit suicide it is a wonder, if one will stop to think of it for a minute.
SHATTERED LIVES.
They will come around after a while and will do their part. Thousands of them have not slept since last Friday night and may not sleep for a week to come. Pity them, for God knows their shattered lives are enough to drive almost any of us insane if we should stop to think.