Through brightly lighted but apparently deserted streets we sped on, and finally found a public square with which Speed was familiar. He had been here before. We hurried up to an hotel, which was largely darkened for the night. Out of the door, just as we arrived, were coming two girls in frills and flounces, so conspicuously arrayed that they looked as though they must have been attending an affair of some kind. An hotel attendant was showing them to a taxi. Franklin went in to arrange for three adjoining rooms if possible, and as I followed I heard one attendant say to another,—they had both been showing the girls out—"Can you beat it? Say, they make theirs easy."
I wondered. The hotel was quite dark inside.
In a few minutes we had adjusted our accommodations and were in our rooms, I in one with a tall window looking out into a spacious court. The bed was large and soft. I fairly fell out of my clothes and sank into it, just having sense enough to turn out the light. In a minute I fancy I was sound asleep, for the next thing I was conscious of was three maids gossiping outside my door.
“Blank, blank, blank,” I began. “Am I not going to be allowed to get any sleep tonight?”
To my astonishment, I discovered the window behind the curtains was blazing with light.
I looked at my watch. It was nine o’clock. And we had turned in at three thirty.
CHAPTER XXIV
THE WRECKAGE OF A STORM
The next day was another of travel in a hot sun over a country that in part lacked charm, in other parts was idyllically beautiful. We should have reached Sandusky and even the Indiana line by night, if we had been traveling as we expected. But to begin with, we made a late start, did not get out of Erie until noon, and that for various reasons,—a late rising, a very good breakfast and therefore a long one, a shave, a search for picture cards and what not. Our examination of the wreck made by the great storm and flood was extended, and having been up late the night before we were in a lazy mood anyhow.
Erie proved exceedingly interesting to me because of two things. One of these was this: that the effects of the reported storm or flood were much more startling than I had supposed. The night before we had entered by some streets which apparently skirted the afflicted district, but today we saw it in all its casual naturalness, and it struck me as something well worth seeing. Blocks upon blocks of houses washed away, upset, piled in heaps, the debris including machinery, lumber, household goods, wagons and carts. Through one wall front torn away I saw a mass of sewing machines dumped in a heap. It had been an agency. In another there was a mass of wool in bags stacked up, all muddied by the water but otherwise intact. Grocery stores, butcher shops, a candy store, a drug store, factories and homes of all kinds had been broken into by the water or knocked down by the cataclysmic onslaught of water and nearly shaken to pieces. Ceilings were down, plaster stripped from the walls, bricks stacked in great heaps,—a sorry sight. We learned that thirtyfive people had been killed and many others injured.
Another was that, aside from this Greek-like tragedy, it looked like the native town of Jennie Gerhardt, my pet heroine, though I wrote that she was born in Columbus, a place I have never visited in my life.