if he were a maggot--a laborer in overalls on his way to the Union Iron
Works, with a dinner pail on his arm.

"Everywhere men were on all fours in the street, like crawling bugs.
Still the sickening, dreadful swaying of the earth continued. It seemed
a quarter of an hour before it stopped. As a matter of fact, it lasted
about three minutes. Footing grew firm again, but hardly were we on our
feet before we were sent reeling again by repeated shocks, but they were
milder. Clinging to something, one could stand.

"The dust clouds were gone. It was quite dark, like twilight. But I saw
trolley tracks uprooted, twisted fantastically. I saw wide wounds in
the street. Water flooded out of one. A deadly odor of gas from a broken
main swept out of the other. Telegraph poles were rocked like matches.
A wild tangle of wires was in the street. Some of the wires wriggled and
shot blue sparks.

"From the south of us, faint, but all too clear, came a horrible chorus
of human cries of agony. Down there in a ramshackle section of the city
the wretched houses had fallen in upon the sleeping families. Down there
throughout the day a fire burned the great part of whose fuel it is too
gruesome a thing to contemplate.

"That was what came next--the fire. It shot up everywhere. The fierce
wave of destruction had carried a flaming torch with it--agony, death
and a flaming torch. It was just as if some fire demon was rushing from
place to place with such a torch."


WRECK AND RUIN.