hat these are the same that were used by the federal
forces in the civil war, twenty-five years ago. The bridges that are to
be used at Johnstown were brought from West Point and Willet's Point,
where they have been for years used in the ordinary course of
instruction in the military and engineer corps.

Secret Society Relief.

The following official announcements have been made:

A Masonic relief committee has been organized and solicits aid for
distressed Freemasons and their families.

WILLIAM A. DONALDSON, Chairman.

OFFICE OF SUPREME COMMANDER, KNIGHTS OF THE MYSTIC CHAIN, WILMINGTON,
DEL., June 8, 1889.--In view of the great calamity that has befallen our
brothers at Johnstown, Pa., and vicinity, I, H.G. Rettes, Supreme
Commander, request that wherever the Order of the Knights of the Mystic
Chain exists there be liberal donations made for our afflicted brothers.

Affairs at the tremendous stone bridge wreckage pile seem to have
resolved themselves into a state of almost hopelessness. It is amazing
the routine into which everything has fallen in this particular place.
Every morning at seven o'clock a score of Lilliputs come mechanically
from huts and tents or the bare hillside, and wearily and weakly go to
work clearing away this mass, and at the rate they are now proceeding it
will actually be months before the debris is cleared away and the last
body found. Fortunately the wind is blowing away from us or we would
have olfactory evidence that what is not found is far worse than what
has been exposed.

Then it may be good business and good policy to have these few workers
fool around the edge of the wreckage for five or ten minutes adjusting a
dynamite blast, then hastily scramble away and consume as much more time
before a tremendous roar announces the ugly work is done, but the
onlookers doubt it. Sometimes, when an extra large shot is used, the
water, bits of wood and iron, and other shapes more fearfully
suggestive, fly directly upward in a solid column at least three hundred
feet high, only to fall back again in almost the same spot, to be tugged
and pulled at or coaxed to float down an unwilling current that is
falling so rapidly now that even this poor mode of egress will soon be
shut entirely off.

The fact of the matter is simply this: They are not attempting to
recover bodies at the bridge, but as one blast tears yards of stuff into
flinders it is shoved indifferently into the water, be it huma