springing from disaster. It is the story of Chicago, of San Francisco,
of Galveston, of Dayton, and of many a smaller town: a cataclysm, a few
days of despair, a return of courage, and another beginning.

Imagine yourself being tucked into bed one night by your valet or your
maid, as the case may be, calm in the feeling that all was secure: that
your business was returning a handsome income, that your stocks and
bonds were safe in the strong box, that the prosperity of your
descendants was assured. Then imagine ruin coming like lightning in the
night. In the morning you are poor. Your business, your investments,
your very hopes, are gone. Everything is wiped out. The labor of a
lifetime must be begun again.

Such an experience was that of Baltimore in the fire of 1904.

On the sickening morning following the conflagration two Baltimore men,
friends of mine, walked down Charles Street to a point as near the
ruined region as it was possible to go.

"Well," said one, surveying the smoking crater, "what do you think of
it?"

"Baltimore is gone," was the response. "We are off the map."

How many citizens of Chicago, of San Francisco, of Galveston, of Dayton
have known the anguish of that first aftermath of hopelessness! How many
citizens of Baltimore knew it that day! And yet how bravely and with
what magic swiftness have these cities risen from their ruins! Was not
Rome burned? Was not London? And is it not, then, time for men to learn
from the history of other men and other cities that disaster does not