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 inhabitants who had escaped
the fate of their fellows were gazing over the scene of destruction and
trying to arouse themselves from the lethargy that had taken hold of
them when they were stunned by the realization of all the woe that had
been visited upon them. How nobly they responded to the call of duty!
How much of the heroic there is in our people when it is needed! No idle
murmurings of fate, but true to the god-like instincts of manhood and
fraternal love, they quickly banded together to do the best that the
wisest among them could suggest.

For five weary months it was our portion to live amid the scenes of
destruction, desolation, poverty, want and woe; sometimes in tents,
sometimes without; and so much rain and mud, and such a lack of the
commonest comforts for a time, until we could build houses to shelter
ourselves and those around us. Without a safe and with a dry-goods box
for a desk, we conducted financial affairs in money and material to the
extent of nearly half a million dollars.

I shall never lose the memory of my first walk on the first day--the
wading in mud, the climbing over broken engines, cars, heaps of iron
rollers, broken timbers, wrecks of houses; bent railway tracks tangled
with piles of iron wire; bands of workmen, squads of military, and
getting around the bodies of dead animals, and often people being borne
away; the smouldering fires and drizzling rain--all for the purpose of
officially announcing to the commanding general (for the place was under
martial law) that the Red Cross had arrived in the field. I could not
have puzzled General Hastings more if I had addressed him in Chinese;
and if ours had been truly an Oriental mis