--stood the operation finely.

Miss Hinckley, of Philadelphia, is busy in Kernville making known the
plans of the Children's Aid Society. She does an immense amount of
running about and visiting houses. Many children made orphans by the
flood are now being cared for. There are a hundred or more of them; just
how many no one knows.

"I have great difficulty," said Miss Hinckley to me to-day, "to persuade
the people who have taken children to care for that our society can be
trusted to take charge of what will surely be a burden to them. All my
work now is to inspire confidence. We have received hundreds of letters
from people anxious to adopt children. They are ready now in the first
flush of sympathy, but I am afraid that they will not be willing to take
the children when we are ready to place them."

Many Dead Still in the Ruins.

The ruins still shelter a ghastly load of dead. Every hour at least one
new body is uncovered and borne on a rough stretcher to some one of the
many morgues. The sight loses none of its sadness and pathos by its
commonness; only the horror is gone, giving place to apathy and stupor.
Stalwart men, in mud-stained, working clothes, bring up the body, the
face covered with a cloth. The crowds part and gaze at the burned corpse
as it passes. At the morgue it is examined for identification, washed
and prepared for burial. Not more than half of these recovered now are
identified.

The vast majority fill nameless but numbered graves, and the
descriptions are much too indefinite to hope for identification after
burial. What can you expect from a description like this, picked out at
random: "Woman, five feet four inches tall, long hair?" The body of
Eugene Hannon, twenty-two, found yesterday near the First Presbyterian
Church, was identified to-day by his father. He was a member of the
League of American Wheelmen, and his bicycle was found within a few
yards of his body. The father will lay the wrecked bicycle on the coffin
of his son.

Just now a woman, still young and poorly dressed, went by the shed where
I am writing, sobbing most pitifully. She lost her husband and children
in the flood and is on the verge of insanity.

Finding Solace in Work.

The day opened with heavy rain and an early morning thunder storm. The
hillside streams were filled to the banks and everything was dripping.
The air was chilly and damp, and daylight was slow in coming to this
valley of desolation and death.