The Great Galveston Disaster, Containing a Full and Thrilling Account of the Most Appalling Calamity of Modern Times Page: 507
xiv, 17-536 p. : front., plates ; 24 cm.View a full description of this book.
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GREAT STORMS AND VAST DESTRUCTION. 507
it drove them up step by step. They were frightened, yes, but
never did the dreadful picture of what did happen present
itself to even their terror-stricken minds. No imagination was
then able to make a picture like the one in reality.
They were thus driven up into the attic by the waters and
terrorized by the wind until after dark. Then, as if to follow out
the idea that whom the gods wish to destroy they first make mad,
the wind added to their fright and almost crazed them by carrying
before it to their ears the frantic appeals for help from those
who were already in the storm's clutches and were soon to become
its victims. The houses around them went, nothing being able
to stand against the mighty force of the wind and waves. Then it
was that their house began to creak and groan louder than ever,
until at last Irvin and his fellows in distress felt that it was going
the next minute, and if they did not get out then they never would.
EIGHT CHILDREN THROWN OUT OF WINDOW.
So, having uo time for a second thought, he picked up one o_
those eight children, whose life was part of his and who made
his life worth living, and with a prayer tossed him out of the
window, to alight on what he did not know, if to alight on anything.
But he thought, and wisely, as circumstances proved,
that they would have a better chance in the open than in a falling
house. He risked their falling into that turbulent sea and sinking,
never to come up, to leaving them in the building.to be maimed
by flying timbers and killed by the falling house.
Thus he threw out all of the eight, then came his wife, then
the others who had come to him for refilge. He did not know
what the fate of each of the former was when he threw out
another, but trusted to Divine Providence, and not in vain. For
as he threw the first out a shed in the rear of the house, as if
wi'h heroic instinct, washed against the building directly under
the window, and there it stayed for a few seconds, catching each
member of the family as he or she fell, even waiting for him.
The rest of Irvin's story is that of a continual fight to keep
his family from being blown and washed off of the raft that Provi-
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The Great Galveston Disaster, Containing a Full and Thrilling Account of the Most Appalling Calamity of Modern Times (Book)
This book covers the Galveston Hurricane of 1900, the United States' deadliest natural disaster. It includes accounts from survivors and eyewitnesses, and photos of the devastation.
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Lester, Paul. The Great Galveston Disaster, Containing a Full and Thrilling Account of the Most Appalling Calamity of Modern Times, book, 1900~; (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth26719/m1/565/?rotate=90: accessed May 4, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting UNT Libraries Special Collections.