s a rule, women are a rarety in Johnstown now. This is not a
natural peculiarity of Johnstown nor a mere coincidence, but a fact with
a terrible reason behind it. There are so many more men than women among
the living in Johnstown now because there are so many more women than
men among the dead. Of the bodies recovered there are at least two women
to every one man. Besides the fact that their natural weakness made them
an easier prey to the flood, the hour at which the disaster came was one
when the women would most likely be in their homes and the men at work
in the open air or in factory yards, from which escape was easy.

An Almost Childless City.

Children also are rarely seen about the town and for a similar reason.
They are all dead. There is never a group of the dead discovered that
does not contain from one to three or four children for every grown
person. Generally the children are in the arms of the grown persons, and
often little toys and trinkets clasped in their hands indicate that the
children were caught up while at play and carried as far as possible
toward safety.

Johnstown, when rebuilt, will be a city of many widowers and few
children. In turning a school-house into a morgue, the authorities
probably did a wiser thing than they thought. It will be a long time
before the school-house will be needed for its original purpose.

The Flood on the Flat.

The flood, with a front of twenty feet high, bristling with all manner
of debris, struck straight across the flat, as though the river's course
had always been that way. It cut off the outer two-thirds of the city
with a line as true and straight as could have been drawn by a survey.
On the part over which it swept there remains standing but one building,
the brewery. With this exception, not only the houses and stores, but
the pavements, sidewalks and curbstones, and the earth beneath for
several feet are washed away. The pavements were of cinders from the
Iron Works; a bed six inches thick and as hard as stone and with a
surface like macadam. Over west of the washed-out portion of the city
not even the broken fragments of these pavements are left.

Aside from the few logs and timbers left by the afterwash of the flood,
there is nothing remaining upon the outer edge of the flat, including
two of the four long streets of the city, except the brewery mentioned
before and a grand piano. The water-marks on the brewery walls show the
flood reached twe