One lady writes to a newspaper as follows: “While so many deeds of heroism shown during this late storm are being told I deem it one of my greatest privileges to be able to mention the names of Mr. Clark Fisher, Mr. Sam Robertson and Mr. Clarence Anglen, who, by their daring and courage, so heroically saved my family of six ladies with their large raft on East Avenue I, during the fiercest part of the storm. We had drifted with our house until it had become dismembered and then were thrown upon the mercy of the waves and strong current. These young gentlemen all cleverly proved by their coolness and bravery what was in them.”
Another lady writes: “September 8, at about 4 o’clock, things began to be alarming at my place, at Seventeenth and O, and houses were leaving before that. I hoped my little home was an ark. It proved to be until the water began to pour wildly into the windows. I and an old man named Inco, who rented a rear room from me, got over the stair-casing and climbed until our heads were at the ceiling. He said to me: ‘We die here together; good bye.’
“At the same moment the house separated. I climbed over the door through the transom and on to the roof, thence from one timber to another, always keeping to the top. A dog always kept by me and caused me a great struggle. It was about Twentieth street and O½ that something hit my head, which seemed either to give me courage or ease. I remember laying my head down on the raft and felt indifferent.
“About 4 o’clock the next morning I rejoiced to see where the gulf and island separated. I was resting not extremely uncomfortable at the top of drifts of a two-story house at Twenty-fifth and beach. Some Italians came along, looked unconcernedly at me. They were hunting someone and went on. I still halloed until I heard Mr. Beckman, who, with assistance, took me to a house. They could find nothing to cover me, but gave me whisky.
“Then came Mr. Womack, who left nothing undone to make me safe. He carried me over lumber on a board, with blanket and pillows, to his rooming house. From there I was taken to the Sealy Hospital, with the two blankets and pillows.”
THE AWFUL STORY.
The following from the columns of a well-known journal has a mournful interest:
“In Galveston there is mourning; in the city by the sea there is sobbing and tears. When the young of us have grown old, when they, in their turn, are grand’thers, when a century of years has drifted past as sea-wreck drifts will the legend of Galveston be told and retold again, and white-faced children, clinging to the granddames’ robes, will listen to the story of how the storm-god came in rage, and how the gulf, beaten by his thong, rushed in and did his bidding. They will hear the awful story that will never die, the tale of how the tempest and the tide slew men as pestilence slays; slew praying women and prattling babes as Herod slew the boy-children twenty centuries ago; will hear of how the sea, that once calmed at the Maker’s word, made war on the orphan’s home, as if he who said ‘Suffer little children to come unto me,’ had repented of his bargain.
“Men strive for the art of remembering—lo, now we beg that some great magician may teach us how to forget. To forget the horror of it all; and the sobbing and the prayers. To forget the wail of the mother bereft of her young, and women’s prayers that came echoing back from the flinty sky. To forget the death struggles of the legion of the dead, and the cries of ‘Mamma! Mamma!’ as the screaming little ones were sucked into the throat of the tide. To forget that the sweet-voiced nuns bound the charity orphans together in lots and committed them to the care of God—to forget that the reaper came with the storm in his heart and the salt spray in his beard and gathered them by sheaves. Do not talk of consolation—there is none. Try to forget. Muffle your clamoring church bells—their noisy songs blend illy with the screams of despairing mothers beating their breasts and calling to their dead. To-day your prayers are useless, and the solemn organ’s mellow tide can be freighted only with a requiem for the lost. O, for the sadness of it all; and the sobbing and the tears; for the cries of women and the thunder of the tide; for the shouting of men and the burials in the sea.”