The Great Galveston Disaster, Containing a Full and Thrilling Account of the Most Appalling Calamity of Modern Times Page: 270

270 THRILLING TALES BY REFUGEES.
woke and remembered where he was, he smiled up into my face as
a tired child would smile into the face of one he loved, and went to
sleep and began to swim through the black and troubled waters
with Charley on his strong young shoulders again.
" He is utterly alone in the world now. The doctors are a
little afraid of brain fever for him, but I believe we can stave it off,
and if we can we are going to keep him in the relief corps and
give him work and something to do and live for as long as we are
here. His name is on the list of patients published with this article.
If anyone who sees it remembers and wants to befriend this
boy telegraph to the American Relief Bureau at Houston and we
will attend to it.
HUNGRY AND HALF CLAD.
"There was a new party of them which came in last night
late from Galveston. About fifty came in after io o'clock, hungry,
half clad and worn to the very edge of human endurance. They
stood timidly at the door and one of them begged for shelter as if
she thought she would be refused. Most of our cots with mattresses
in them were taken, but that did not make any difference.
Dr. Bloch, of Chicago, and Dr. O'Brien, of New York, got their
heads together and in less than half an hour every one of those
fifty people had some sort of a bed to sleep on and in three-quarters
of an hour they were all fed.
" We engaged two cooks, a man and a woman, yesterday, but
neither of them came. That did not make the slightest particle
of difference. Whoever was hungry was fed at the relief station,
and whoever was naked was clothed and whoever was sick was
attended. Nobody knew or cared how long they had been work,ing
or whether they themselves had time to get a morsel of food.
Everybody did everything. I saw Dr. O'Brien down on his knees
taking off a pair of soaked shoes for a woman who was so tired she
could not lift her hand to her head.
"The fear of pestilence has become so widespread that the authorities
are taking measures to prevent a wholesale exodus of ablebodied
men, whose services are urgently needed at the present time.