By the time Friday—practically the sixth day after the flood, although the waters did not subside nor the wind go down until about 2 o’clock on Sunday morning—had arrived many of the business men of the stricken city had recovered their courage and two or three banks and a few business houses were opened, although most of the streets were still choked with debris and practically impassable. On every corner was this sign:
CLEAN UP.
Some women even ventured out shopping, picking their way over great masses of wreckage. Tremont street was by that time opened from the bay to the beach, and Mechanic street, the Strand and Winnie and Church streets were being rapidly cleared. However, the stench from the putrefying bodies of the victims of the calamity still in the ruins of scores and hundreds of buildings was all but unbearable.
“GALVESTON SHALL RISE AGAIN.”
“Galveston must rise again,” said the Galveston News in an editorial on Thursday.
“At the first meeting of Galveston citizens Sunday afternoon after the great hurricane, for the purpose of bringing order out of chaos, the only sentiment expressed,” the editorial says, “was that Galveston had received an awful blow. The loss of life and property is appalling—so great that it required several days to form anything like a correct estimate. With sad and aching hearts, but with resolute faces, the sentiment of the meeting was that out of the awful chaos of wrecked homes and wrecked business, Galveston must rise again.
“The sentiment was not that of bury the dead and give up the ship; but, rather, bury the dead, succor the needy, appeal for aid from a charitable world, and then start resolutely to work to mend the broken chains. In many cases the work of upbuilding must begin over. In other cases the destruction is only partial.
“The sentiment was, Galveston will, Galveston must, survive, and fulfill her glorious destiny. Galveston shall rise again. * * *
“If we have lost all else, we still have life and the future, and it is toward the future that we must devote the energies of our lives. We can never forget what we have suffered; we cannot forget the thousands of our friends and loved ones who found in the angry billows that destroyed them a final resting place. But tears and grief must not make us forget our present duties. The blight and ruin which have destroyed Galveston are not beyond repair; we must not for a moment think Galveston is to be abandoned because of one disaster, however horrible that disaster has been.
“It is a time for courage of the highest order. It is a time when men and women show the stuff that is in them, and we can make no loftier acknowledgment of the material sympathy which the world is extending to us than to answer back that after we shall have buried our dead, relieved the sufferings of the sick and destitute, we will bravely undertake the vast work of restoration and recuperation which lies before us in a manner which shall convince the world that we have spirit to overcome misfortune and rebuild our homes. In this way we shall prove ourselves worthy of the boundless tenderness which is being showered upon us in the hour of desolation and sorrow.”