I know that if the sorrows of this community, what remains of it, have thrilled humanity, they must have touched the wellsprings of divine mercy and sympathy, and that the helpless victims who have survived the tragedy of this moment may feel safe from another attack from the remorselessness of the storm.
LIGHTNING FLASHES IN DARKNESS.
Galveston, stricken and bleeding, is safe from the wrath of all powers, human or divine. The vivid lightnings may cleave the sleepless waves of the sea and the thunders may play at will among the fantastic clouds in the sky. Galveston, soothed and compassed by the tenderness of mankind, is veiled in the folds of heaven’s mercy, and the shrieking tempest is now but a whisper from the sky, the angry wave but the gentle falling of tears from above the stars.
It is so hard to write the story or a chapter of it without feeling the power that appalls human intelligence, just as it is hard to disassociate overwhelming sorrow from that broad sympathy which we do not understand, but which never fails to nestle close to human misery. Call it what you may, it is part of human life, and its presence comes when disaster overwhelms to bring humanity in the presence of God.
Who can dispute this in the presence of the all-pervading mystery of the storm? Who can laugh to scorn the sympathy whose manifestations have already reached the widows and orphans, whose desolate lives now find comfort from the realms above? This is not a matter of appealing to emotion. I have before me this minute four rings. The man who brings them tells me that they were taken from rigid fingers, among the 700 who on last Monday were sunk to rest amid the borderless fathoms of the sea. He says they may be the means of identification of three lost ones. No; there can be no identification; but who can tell the tender secrets which these circlets pledged? Identification is impossible deep down among the mysteries of the sea.
The tragedy grows greater every moment. The romances dead to the world, the grief lost beneath the wave or carried to the vapors above the earth, the aching hearts soothed by lasting peace, the tired souls in the arms of endless rest, the ambitions stilled by the calm which banishes the anguish of life’s dreary struggle—it matters not what these rings may bring to mind—we are yet confronted with the loss of the thousands who shall never again press these wave-kissed shores. The sentiment of this people is, God rest every one who sleeps beneath the wave, and gather to everlasting peace the ashes of all whose funeral pyres were built of these shattered homes.
A DAY OF ANGUISH.
It has been a day of anguish like all the days of this week have been. There has been no cessation of tear-stained faces appearing here and there to tell of the lost. And it is a wonder if the end of this sad divulgence will ever come. A motherless boy or a fatherless girl, a now childless mother or father, or whatever it may be, they still come to tell of their woe, and the stolid men who glide over the water or who search the shore, still bring in the swollen and unrecognizable victims of the storm. It will end some day, and agonizing hearts may rest the painful throbbings of this hour.
It matters not how great the numbers of the dead, they are numerous enough to shock the sympathies of the world, and they are gone forever. But we fear to look upon the sea, lest some heartless wave shall bring to view the cold, stark form of somebody whom somebody loved. The victims are still growing into larger thousands, and the bereft are still coming in to tell of losses. It is a continued story of anguish and death, such as Texas has never known before and will never know again.
It is needless to repeat the sad discoveries which every day brings forth. It is said that every wave of the sea has its tragedy, and it seems to be true here. In Galveston it has ceased to be anxiety for the dead, but concern for the living. The supreme disaster, with its overwhelming tale of death and destruction, has now abated to lively anxiety for the salvation of the living.