“‘Alkali Ike,’ they call Dr. Crossway, that is because he is tall and rawboned and comes from Texas himself. If a man gets a nickname in this part of the world you know that he is loved. The women and children who came from the district where ‘Alkali Ike’ is working know his name and their eyes fill with grateful tears at the mention of it. The hospital at Galveston is well named. The corps is effectively organized and we hear from there that they are doing splendid work. Our own hospital here in Houston is in ship-shape condition.
“We have built a partition or two, put up temporary quarters for a dressing room for the nurses and doctors. The great ice boxes are filled and the range, which burned wood, has been replaced with a gas range to keep the heat down as much as possible.
“There is a little railing just back of the great wide door of the hospital where the entrance to the theater used to be and there the relieving nurse sits with her assistants. The bookkeeper has her desk there and the man who answers inquirers is standing there.
“This is no ordinary hospital work. People come crowding to the doors, and nearly all night they come. Some of them are hungry, some of them are sick, some of them are hunting for missing friends, and some are merely curious. Some are neighbors who come to offer help, some are women bringing delicacies to offer to the sick. It takes the entire time of three persons to attend to this crowd of visitors intelligently.
“We are keeping records of every case entered at the hospital. The name and age and final disposition of the case. These names and the facts concerning them are kept on the books for reference, so that people are easily identified, and so that any one who has contributed to the fund can investigate and find out just exactly what became of the money he gave. It is hard to pick out a case in the hospital which does not deserve special attention. A man was brought in with three broken ribs. They were broken the night of the storm, he having been working ever since burying the dead.
“A young man was carried to the hospital on a stretcher late last night who was wandering up and down the island for the past three days trying to find the body of his young wife. He found and buried over forty bodies which had been overlooked by the burying committee, but he did not find his wife. He is lying out at the hospital now in a stupor.
SUFFERING UNTOLD AGONY.
“A boy of twelve was brought in who has been suffering untold agony from an injury to his eye for four days. He has not had a soul to help or to speak to him, and all he has had to eat in that time was a handful of crackers. A woman came in at 11 o’clock last night. She had a baby in her arms and three children hanging to her skirts. None of them had tasted food for nearly three days.
“A young girl was brought in by one of the outside corps at 9 o’clock last night. The relief corps found her huddled up in an empty freight car, laughing and singing to amuse herself. The doctors say food and care is all she needs to restore her to reason. Three-fourths of the people who come in are mentally dull. The physicians say with proper care that most of them can be cured.”
One of the many touching incidents of the storm occurred at Houston on the 18th. Mrs. R. Qualtrough and Mrs. Will Glass were at the International and Great Northern depot Monday intent on the relief of any who needed, when they saw a little woman with a baby of about eight months in her arms. The mother was weeping bitterly, so the two kind-hearted friends went up to see what was the matter. The stranger said she had just arrived from New Orleans to find Galveston shut off from the world, and her husband, mother and sister were there, and she feared they were all lost. Mrs. Glass finally prevailed over the little woman to go home with her, where she could care for her.