say that the forces of ruin within the earth take no heed of persons or
places. They come and go as the conditions of nature demand, and if man
has built one of his cities across their destined track, its doom comes
from its situation, not from the moral state of its inhabitants.


THE GREAT DISASTER OF 1906.


That night the people went, with their wonted equanimity, to their beds,
rich and poor, sick and well alike. Did any of them dream of disaster in
the air? It may be so, for often, as the poet tells us, "Coming events
cast their shadows before." But, forewarned by dreams or not, doubtless
not a soul in the great city was prepared for the terrible event so
near at hand, when, at thirteen minutes past five o'clock on the dread
morning of the 18th, they felt their beds lifted beneath them as if by
a Titan hand, heard the crash of falling walls and ceilings, and saw
everything in their rooms tossed madly about, while through their
windows came the roar of an awful disaster from the city without.

It was a matter not of minutes, but of seconds, yet on all that coast,
long the prey of the earthquake, no shock like it had ever been felt,
no such sudden terror awakened, no such terrible loss occasioned as in
those few fearful seconds. Again and again the trembling of the earth
passed by, three quickly repeated shocks, and the work of the demon of
ruin was done. People woke with a start to find themselves flung from
their beds to the floor, many of them covered with the fragments of
broken ceilings, many lost among the ruins of falling floors and walls,
many pinned in agonizing suffering under the ruins of their houses,
which had been utterly wrecked in those fatal seconds. Many there were,