that in which is developed human sympathy, one of the finest and most
ennobling manifestations of the Love which is, in its essence, divine.
In human life there is much that is ignoble, and the race has almost
contemptible weakness and insignificance in comparison with the physical
forces of the universe.

But man is superior to all these forces in his possession of the power
of affection; and in almost the lowest and basest of the race this
power, if latent and half lost, may be found and evoked by the spectacle
of the suffering of a fellow-creature.

The human family looks on with pity while the homeless and hungry and
impoverished Californians endure pangs. Wherever the news went, by
the swift processes of electricity, there men and women, some of them,
perhaps, hardly knowing where California is, were sorry and willing
and eager to help. There are quarrels within the family sometimes, when
nation wars with nation, and all love seems to have vanished; but the
world is, in truth, akin. "God hath made of one blood all the nations of
the earth," and the blood "tells" when suffering comes.

THE PUBLISHERS.



TABLE OF CONTENTS


CHAPTER I.

SAN FRANCISCO AND ITS TERRIFIC EARTHQUAKE