DITOR'S NARRATIVE.

"I have seen this whole, great horror. I stood with two other members
of the Examiner staff on the corner of Market Street, waiting for a car.
Newspaper duties had kept us working until five o'clock in the morning.
Sunlight was coming out of the early morning mist. It spread its
brightness on the roofs of the skyscrapers, on the domes and spires of
churches, and blazed along up the wide street with its countless banks
and stores, its restaurants and cafes. In the early morning the city was
almost noiseless. Occasionally a newspaper wagon clattered up the street
or a milk wagon rumbled along. One of my companions had told a funny
story. We were laughing at it. We stopped--the laugh unfinished on our
lips.

"Of a sudden we had found ourselves staggering and reeling. It was as if
the earth was slipping gently from under our feet. Then came a sickening
swaying of the earth that threw us flat upon our faces. We struggled in
the street. We could not get on our feet.

"I looked in a dazed fashion around me. I saw for an instant the big
buildings in what looked like a crazy dance. Then it seemed as though my
head were split with the roar that crashed into my ears. Big buildings
were crumbling as one might crush a biscuit in one's hand. Great gray
clouds of dust shot up with flying timbers, and storms of masonry rained
into the street. Wild, high jangles of smashing glass cut a sharp note
into the frightful roaring. Ahead of me a great cornice crushed a man as
if he were a maggot--a laborer in overalls on his way to the Union Iron
Works, with a dinner pail on his arm.

"Everywhere men were on all fours in the street, like crawling bugs.
Still the sickening, dreadful swaying of the earth continued. It seemed
a quarter of an hour before it stopped. As a matter of fact, it lasted
about three minutes. Footing grew firm again, but hardly were we on our
feet before we were sent reeling again by repeated shocks, but they were
milder. Clinging to something, one could stand.

"The dust clouds were gone. It was quite dark, like twilight. But I saw
trolley tracks uprooted, twisted fantastically. I saw wide wounds in
the street. Water flooded out of one. A deadly odor of gas from a broken
main swept out of the other. Telegraph poles were rocked like matches.
A wild tangle of wires was in the street. Some of the wires wriggled and
shot blue sparks.

"From the south of us, faint, but all too clear, came a horrible