“It is natural that France should participate in the sadness, as well as in the joy, of the American people. I take it to heart to tender to your excellency our most heartfelt condolences, and to send to the families of the victims the expression of our afflicted sympathy.
“EMILE LOUBET.”
President McKinley sent this answer the next day:
“Executive Mansion, Washington, D. C., Sept. 13.—His Excellency, Emile Loubet, President of the French Republic, Rambouillet, France:
“I hasten to express, in the name of the thousands who have suffered by the disaster in Texas, as well as in behalf of the whole American people, heartfelt thanks for your touching message of sympathy and condolence.
“WILLIAM McKINLEY.”
SCHOOL CHILDREN GAVE THEIR PENNIES.
Even the school children of the country helped the sufferers with their pennies. Miss Ethel Donelson, a pupil at the Grant School, Chicago, wrote a letter to a Chicago daily paper suggesting that the school children give some of their pennies to the victims of the great hurricane. The idea was carried out and several thousand dollars was raised in this way in Chicago. The plan was adopted also in several other cities.
When the suggestion was first made United States Postoffice Inspector Walter S. Mayor wrote as follows:
“I was reared in Galveston; lived there from my infancy until appointed to the government service nineteen years ago, and my mother and brother still live there.