TOUCHING INCIDENTS OF THE GREAT CALAMITY.
THERE is nothing that brings the hidden things of character into the light of day like the X-ray of great calamity. Men generally exhibit themselves then at their true worth. While some show all the niggardliness, the sordidness, the miserliness of their shrivelled and seared souls, others are giving unlooked-for demonstrations of kindness, unselfishness, generosity, and the true nobility of character. “A touch of grief makes all the world akin,” says the poet. It is a beautiful sentiment; but there are some so steeped in the bitter brew of selfishness that no amount of human suffering can soften the heart, or open the purse, or move to any act of kindness. Utterly exhausted by the fearful experiences of earthquake and fire and the constant tramping to escape the sweep of the veering flames, a young, pale-faced woman lay upon the sidewalk in San Francisco. Beside her stood her husband urging and begging a hack-driver to take them to the ferry, a distance of perhaps two miles. The hack-driver was demanding fifty dollars for the service; the husband had but eleven dollars and was offering it all. Untouched by pity, the heartless extortioner drove off. After some little time an expressman, with a rickety load of furniture drove up, learned the circumstances, deposited his load on the sidewalk, helped to lift the exhausted woman into the wagon, and drove the couple to the ferry. He refused to take a nickel for his service. The one was out for blood money, the other had flowing through his veins the blood of true nobility. This world has too many of the one kind, far too few of the other. A poor woman with little to protect her from the cold, was trying to cook something over a fitful little blaze between some bricks in the street. It was growing dusk and the San Francisco fog was stealing through the blackened streets. She was shivering with the cold. A cavalry man with a snub-nose sauntered by. He had on a warm cape lined with red flannel. He approached the woman, saw her need, threw his cape over her shoulders, and sauntered on. She shivered no more, but forgot to stir what she was cooking, while she watched the figure of the capeless young nobleman fading away in the dusk. An old woman sat on her front porch, her black bonnet tied under her chin, watching the blaze marching toward her home, pushing the dynamiters and the firemen steadily before it. She was just waiting until the fire patrol should warn her off the block. “No,” said she, “I am not afraid. It is God’s will. If the fire comes, it comes. I am ready; but I am not5afraid.” One writer says: “I saw women with diamonds on their fingers, and pearls about their throats, begging a big sergeant of the guard to allow them to go into those stores for just one can of green corn. I saw a woman wrapped in sealskins eating baked beans from a tin can, and eating them with her fingers, too. These were women of refinement, women with money; but they had to suffer with the poorest on those fateful days.” Well dressed men could be seen scrambling like children for handfuls of walnuts thrown out of a wrecked fruit store. A well-known theatrical critic and his wife fled from their apartments with but little clothing. The man was barefoot. A man he did not know piloted him to a Japanese shoe-store. There he discovered that he had forgotten his purse. “You forgot your money,” said the kind-hearted stranger; “but this is no time to think about money. Help yourself to mine.” Three gold twenties and a five-dollar piece were on his palm, and with his thumb he was forcing a twenty toward the critic. The latter took the five dollar piece, paid the Jap for a pair of bath slippers, and handed the change to his new friend. “No, indeed; put it in your pocket, and I wish you’d take some more.” “You don’t know me,” said the critic. “You don’t know me,” replied the other, “and this is no time for exchanging cards.” After five minutes’ argument, the critic succeeded in getting his benefactor’s name and address. In Portsmouth Square a Chinaman noticed that the critic had no stockings inside his new slippers. “A pair of socks will warm your feet,” said the Chinaman, “and I’ve got another pair for the lady. Come with me.” “I went,” said the critic, “got two pairs, and came back with a sneaking regret that I was ever guilty of stoning Chinamen. I offered him a dollar. He would not take it.” “If you helped me when I was barefoot,” said the Chinaman, “what would you say if I offered you money?” As soon as the street railways began to run where street-car traffic was possible, they began turning their gross receipts over to the Relief Committee, and kept it up. Some members of the committee suggested that this should not continue indefinitely. The railway official declared, however, that “no request for a discontinuance of the arrangement would ever come from the United Railroads; that it remained for the general committee to decide just how long it wanted the company to turn over its receipts.” The milk of human kindness has been flowing freely during the days of this twin calamity in the city by the Golden Gate. Human suffering and human sympathy have been tenting together among those ruined walls, have been wandering together up and down these flame-rasped streets, hand clasped in hand. Five hundred thousand people have learned to know the brotherhood of misery. The millionaire has stood in the same bread line with his char-woman and his coachman, and received the same rations. If out of this calamity there spring a kindlier feeling between man and man, the sacrifice will not be wholly in vain.