The Sealy hospital was first reported as having been blown away, but it survived the storm in a most remarkable manner, notwithstanding the fact that it is situated where the raging waters were the highest. With the exception of broken window panes, a damaged ceiling and a good drenching of a number of the rooms, with their contents, it is virtually unharmed. The nurses’ home, which stood opposite the infirmary and was used in conjunction with it, was completely demolished, but with no loss of life.
There was no loss of life among the regular inmates of the hospitals. A number died during the storm, but they had been brought in in a dying condition.
CLOTHED ONE THOUSAND.
One thing developed by the storm that has not been commented upon is the manner in which the so-called “society men” have taken hold of things. They have worked like Trojans, every one of them, and have proven that the wearing of good and fashionably cut garments is no evidence of lack of manhood. Some of the first to go out in charge of gangs of men clearing away the debris and burying the bodies were the young fellows one meets at cotillions and fashionable functions. To-day their fair skins are cracked and burned with sun and wind, their hands blistered and burned, and their clothes covered with mud and slime. They glory in their young manhood, and are not one bit ashamed to go about with their collarless negligee shirt open at the neck, or their sleeves rolled up. Some of them have not shaved since the storm, and look more like subjects for charity than many who apply for relief.
One young man, who probably clothed one thousand people in two days, is going around in a very much soiled, borrowed shirt. His home was destroyed, and all the clothes he saved he had on his back at the time. He has not had time to buy new clothing, although he has probably clothed one thousand people. He would as soon have stolen as to have taken one of the nice clean shirts he was giving away. Besides, it never occurred to him.
Mr. J. Martin, one of the refugees at Houston, who passed through the storm at Galveston all right, save a gash in the head, a black eye, a mashed nose, and a sprained arm and leg, says that on the night of the storm he sought shelter in six different houses. As the last of these houses in turn succumbed to the force of the hurricane, Mr. Martin was plunged into the dark and angry waters, amid its splintering ruins. Numerous times, he said, falling timbers would knock him unconscious for a few moments, and after regaining his senses he would be so full of water, so exhausted and weak from his desperate exertions and loss of blood, that he felt like giving up all hope and allowing the water to draw him under and relieve him of his sufferings.
FOR A MOTHER’S LOVE.
He says he saw other men who were physically stronger than he do that very thing. Still he would not give up and he struggled on. He had no wife or child to live for—there was just one person in the world whom he fondly loved, and that was his mother. Every time, he says, that he decided to let himself go down beneath the water and drown his mother’s face would appear before his vision. Clearly and distinctly he could see the look of reproach in her eyes at his threatened weakness, and each time this vision would spur him to greater effort, and he would battle on until he reached another place of safety.
Finally, when the storm had spent its fury and he crawled into a place of safety, he drifted into unconsciousness and remained in that condition until late Sunday evening. Mr. Martin says that his mother lives in New York and he knew she was safe, but says had it not been for the image of her face which constantly appeared before him he certainly would never have lived to tell his experience.
There are no better hearted people in the world than the Americans. Not a case of genuine suffering or honest and unavoidable misfortune need ever go long without generous assistance in any part of the United States, if only the people know that it is a proper case for their sympathy. And this is true whether the misfortune be an individual and private or a public calamity.