er doomed home. She was not
attempting to take anything with her. Like many others, she had simply
locked her door and gone.

Many of these people, rich one day, are practically paupers on the
morrow. Many of them slept outdoors in the parks under a blanket,
afraid to sleep in their own palatial homes.

What I call the "Exodus" fled down Van Ness avenue to the water front,
thence along the Barbary Coast and tough water front by an enormously
long detour to the ferries; it was the only way, the town streets
being on fire and closed by the military.

The farther you went along the more conglomerate the throng became.
The inhabitants of the foreign quarters began pouring out to join the
flight.

I was so tired with a long day spent walking about the burning city
that it seemed an impossibility that I should keep on. Every step was
actual physical pain.

Twenty passing cabs, returning from the ferries, I stopped and tried
to charter. The drivers, after bigger game, would wave me aside and
say "Nothin' doin'."

One cabby said that he had to hurry out to the other end of the city
to rescue his own family who were in danger. Another young autocrat on
the cabby's box took a long puff on his cigarette before he replied to
my appeal.

"Fellow, you couldn't hire this hack for a million dollars," he said.

There was one amusing feature in the terrible procession. She was a
haughty dame from Van Ness avenue. All that she could save she had
stuffed into a big striped bed tick. She was trying to drag this
along, and at the same time trying to maintain the dignity of a
perfect lady. Candidly, it was not a success. One can stick pretty
nearly everything into a striped bed quilt, but not dignity.

All along the way were women who had dropped out from exhaustion and
were sitting there with their bundles in utter despair.

CHAPTER X.

WHOLE NATION RESPONDS WITH AID.

=Government Appropriates Millions and Chicago Leads All
Other Cities with a Round Million of Dollars--People in
All Ranks of Life from President Roosevelt to the
Humblest Wage Earner Give Promptly and Freely.=

The fiery destruction of the beautiful city and the pitiable plight of
the survivors who escaped annihilation from quake and fire only to
face death in the equally horrible forms of starvation and exposure
touched the heartstrings of humanity. The response to the needs of the
stricken city and its people was so prompt, so univer