A Story of the Red Cross
On Sunday afternoon, May 31, 1889, with the waters of the Potomac two feet deep on Pennsylvania Avenue, a half dozen of us left Washington for Johnstown, over washed-out ties and broken tracks, with every little gully swollen to a raging torrent. After forty-eight hours of this, we reached the scene, which no one need or could describe, but if ever a people needed help it was these.
Scarcely a house standing that was safe to enter, the wrecks piled in rubbish thirty feet in height, four thousand dead in the river beds, twenty thousand foodless but for Pittsburg bread rations, and a cold rain which continued unbroken by sunshine for forty days.
It was at the moment of supreme affliction when we arrived at Johnstown. The waters had subsided, and those of the inhab
