The Great Galveston Disaster, Containing a Full and Thrilling Account of the Most Appalling Calamity of Modern Times Page: 378

378 DIED IN EFFORTS TO SAVE O()THERS
endowed with human or divine intelligence. And I know in the
simple faith of humanity that the God who " plants his footsteps
in the sea and rides upon the storm " would reach out with his
omnipotent arm and throttle tlhe agencies of nature if they should
again aggravate wind and wave to vent their wrath upon these
desolate shores.
I know that if the sorrows of this community, what remains
of it, have thrilled humanity, they must have touched the wellsprings
of divine mercy and sympathy, and that the helpless
victims who have survived the tragedy of this moment may feel
safe from another attack from the remorselessness of the storm.
LIGHTNING FLASHES IN DARKNESS.
Galveston, stricken and bleeding, is safe from the wrath of
all powers, human or divine. The vivid lightnings may cleave
the sleepless waves of the sea and the thunders may play at will
among the fantastic clouds in the sky. Galveston, soothed aid
compassed by the tenderness of mankind, is veiled in the folds of
heaven's mercy, and the shrieking tempest is now but a whisper
from the sky, the angry wave but the gentle falling of tears from
above the stars.
It is so hard to write the story or a chapter of it without
feeling the power that appalls human intelligence, just as it is
hard to disassociate overwhelming sorrow from that broad sympathy
which we do not understand, but which never fails to
nestle close to human misery. Call it what you may, it is part
of human life, and its presence comes when disaster overwhelms
to bring humanity in the presence of God.
Who can dispute this in the presence of the all-pervading
mystery of the storm? Who can laugh to scorn the sympathy
whose manifestations have already reached the widows and
orphans, whose desolate lives now find comfort from the realms
above? This is not a matter of appealing to emotion. I have
before me this minute four rings. The mlan who brings them
tells me that they were taken from rigid fingers, aniong the 700
who on last Monday were sunk to rest amid the borderless