“‘Same to you, old man,’ as they join hands in hearty clasp.
“‘How ’bout your family?’
“‘All safe, thank God.’
“‘I lost my little one, but the rest are safe. How’s your home?’
“‘Gone: knocked into kindling wood, but that don’t matter, as I saved my wife and children after a hard struggle.’
TEARS IN MANY EYES.
“And the two pass on, the one light hearted, the other a smile glistening in his tear dimmed eye, both glad for what was left them. I saw a telegram to a Galveston woman from a sister in Houston with whom she had hardly been on speaking terms for years. It read:
“‘Are you safe? Do you want any money? Come up to Houston and live with us.’
“Is there necessity of comment? I saw neighbors who had been quarreling and saying spiteful things about each other for months, riding down the street in the same buggy, the most loving chums in the world. I saw rival candidates for the same political office catch hold of opposite ends of the same log, and with a ‘heave ho!’ toss it up out of the way of wagons and pedestrians, each doing the work for humanity’s sake.
“Social distinction is wiped out. I heard the banker tell his story of the storm to his stableman with as much vim and gusto as though hobnobbing with his heaviest depositor. White and colored stopped to make inquiries of each other and shake hands. I saw a blind mendicant, a continual object of charity, on the corner of Twenty-first and Market, and heard of hundreds upon hundreds of great, strong, useful men who went down with the flood. Life is stranger than fiction, but it does seem an ironical providence that saves the halt and the maimed and takes away the useful.”