cars have come the people have assumed a more presentable
appearance and food has brought life back to them and warmth, but their
condition is still pitiful. The destitute ones are almost altogether
from the well-to-do people of Johnstown, who have lost all and are as
poor as the poorest.

Altoona to the Rescue.

Altoona has been so hemmed in by floods and the like, and her
representatives have been so busy, that they had but little to say of
the prompt action and excellent work done by open-handed citizens of
that beautiful interior Pennsylvania city. Altoona first became alarmed
by the non-arrival and reported loss of the day express east on the
Pennsylvania Railroad Friday afternoon. Soon the station was thronged
with an anxious crowd, and the excitement became intense as the scant
news came slowly in. Saturday the anxiety was relieved by a telegram
from Ebensburg, which a blundering telegraph operator made "three
hundred lost," instead of "three thousand." That was soon corrected by
later news, and the citizens immediately were called upon to meet for
action. The Mayor presided, and at once $2,600 was subscribed and
provisions offered. By three o'clock that afternoon a car had been
loaded and started for Ebensburg, thirty-two miles away in charge of a
committee. At Ebensburg that evening ten teams were secured after much
trouble and the supplies sent overland seventeen miles to the desolated
valley. The night was an awful one for the committee in charge. The
roads were badly washed and all but impassible. The hours dragged on. At
last, Sunday morning, the wagons drove into desolate Conemaugh. There
were no cheers to greet them, no cries of pleasure. The wretched
sufferers were too wretched, too dazed for that. They simply crowded
around the wagons, pitifully begging for bread or anything to eat.

The committee report: "Impostors have not bothered us much, and,
singular enough, the ones that have were chiefly women, though to-day
we sent away a man who we thought came too frequently. On questioning he
owned up to having fifteen sacks of flour and five hams in his house. On
Tuesday we began to keep a record of those who received supplies, and we
have given out supplies to fully 550 families, representing 2,500
homeless people. Our district is only for one side of the river. On the
other is a commissary on Adams street, near the Baltimore and Ohio
Railway station, another at Kernville, a third at Cambria City, a f