ld never stop at that house again, a vow he
might well keep, as the house is no more.

In one room where two girls were dressing the floor gave way and one of
them disappeared.

"Where are you, Mary?" screamed her companion.

"Oh, I'm in the parlor," said Mary calmly, as she wriggled out of the
mass of plaster and mortar below.

At the handsome residence of Rudolph Spreckels, the wealthy financier,
the lawn was riven from end to end in great gashes, while the ornamental
Italian rail leading to the imposing entrance was a battered heap. But
the family, with a philosophy notable for the occasion, calmly set up
housekeeping on the sidewalk, the women seated in armchairs taken from
the mansion and wrapped in rugs and coverlets, the silver breakfast
service was laid out on the stone coping and their morning meal spread
out on the sidewalk. This, scene was repeated at other houses of the
wealthy, the families too fearful of another shock to venture within
doors.

Another story of much interest in this connection is told. On Friday
afternoon, two days and some hours after the scene just narrated, Mrs.
Rudolph Spreckels presented her husband with an heir on the lawn in
front of their mansion, while the family were awaiting the coming of the
dynamite squad to blow up their magnificent residence. An Irish woman
who had been called in to play the part of midwife at a birth elsewhere
on Saturday, made a pertinent comment after the wee one's eyes were
opened to the walls of its tent home.

"God sends earthquakes and babies," she said, "but He might, in His
mercy, cut out sending them both together."

There were many pathetic incidents. Families had been sadly separated
in the confusion of the flight. Husbands had lost their wives--wives
had lost their husbands, and anxious mothers sought some word of their
children--the stories were very much the same. One pretty looking woman
in an expensive tailor-made costume badly torn, had lost her little
girl.

"I don't think anything has happened to her," said she, hopefully. "She
is almost eleven years old, and some one will be sure to take her in and
care for her; I only want to know where she is. That is all I care about
now."

A well-known young lady of good social position, when asked where she
had spent the night, replied: "On a grave."

"I thank God, I thank Uncle Sam and the people of this nation," said a
woman, clad in a red woolen wrapper, seated in front of a tent at t