“He bounded from his bed a new man. He was hopeless the day before. He had seriously thought of abandoning his house, which he believed beyond repair, but when he looked at it on Thursday morning it did not look so badly. He resolved to fight it out. He went and found others like himself—resolved to fight it out.
“Thursday night’s sleep made the people a new people. The difference in their look and deportment from that of the day before was observed by everyone. The streets were filled with them, when on the day before the streets were silent of all except those who had the horrible work of taking care of the dead on their shoulders. Now women could be seen talking to women. They met on the corners in the residence portion of the town and told their adventures. The men began to discuss the future. By 10 o’clock the town was up and buoyant. The effect of that one night’s sleep was marvelous. There was no longer any talk of abandoning the town. Galveston should be greater than Galveston had ever been. That was on the lips of everyone.
GALVESTON SAFER THAN EVER.
“On Friday I would not have given $10 for the place. On Thursday I would have given more for a lot than I would have given before the deluge and storm. Why? Because the pluck of the people came out through that night of rest. Galveston should be greater than it had ever been. That is what they said. Galveston was safer than before by the island’s weathering such a storm. That is what they said, too. They began to talk of their own pluck. We have stood so much, but the world will say that we stood it well. If we can do as we have done in such a trial, what can not we do in the battle of life? Galveston shall be rebuilt.
“Galveston shall be the greatest of towns. Hurrah for Galveston! Thus they talked and went about their work of throwing up breastworks against disease by cleaning the town. Thousands of the people, negroes as well as whites, went about the work of burning the dead and cleaning away the debris. They asked nothing about wages, even those who had no property. They had begun the fight. It was evident that they intended to keep it up. The cold, calculating speculator would have had something to study over if he had seen these people as I saw them the day after their one night’s rest. Well, there was nothing wild in their determination. The island has not a break in it.
“There is a story of millions of feet being torn from it and cast into the sea. This story may be true if applied to some part of the island which I did not visit. But where I went it is not true. There was erosion. That was to be expected. Erosion would have come from a far less storm than this. I have seen a common “rise” on the Ohio River carry away more dirt than this storm carried from Galveston Island into the Gulf. The people of the interior know where the old Beach Hotel stood.
“They know where the chimney of that house was built. They know how far it was from the beach. They will understand the work of erosion. I stated that the brick of that chimney is not in the water. The piling on which the hotel was built are in some places in the water. In fact, according to my observation, the erosion at this point has not been above 300 feet. I went to the east end of the town and to the west end of it. The destruction of the island is no greater anywhere that I saw than at the location of the hotel mentioned.
PREDICTIONS OF DISASTER.
“For years and years people have said that when the right kind of storm came the island would sink under it or be washed away like a house of cards in a flood. It was supposed that the great currents which would rush across the island would dig bayous as deep as the bay. These would grow in width, and finally the great island would be cut into small ones, if it did not disappear beneath the waves. But the result of this greatest storm on record? Why, there is not, as far as I could hear, and I made inquiries, a single excavation made from the Gulf to the bay or the bay to the Gulf. The island stands there in all things, except in the matter of the erosion mentioned, as stable and firm as it has ever been since man knew it. That is enough. The foundation is there. Man can do most any thing with a proper foundation.
“The only need now is stable and the right kind of houses. The old houses seem to have stood the shock better than the new ones. The reason of this is apparent. The old ones were built with an eye to storms. The new ones were built in book times. One young fellow told me that his house, the one in which he was born, had stood the storm of 1875 and every storm since that time without a quiver.