angs of
childbirth, and infants not an hour old. These must have help. I must
get over to the West Division. There are some hearts over there, I am
sure."

"I'll take you, sir," said the baker, "and I don't want none of your
silver. I'm beat, sir: I never thought of women hit that way. I can't
fight with sich, and with babies born in a graveyard. I'm whipped, sir.
I ain't never had much of a chance to make a extry dollar: I thought
this fire had give me a chance. My shop was left, full of flour. I was
bakin' all night; but darn me if I kin put the screw onto babies, and
women in childbed. You shall have my horse and cart and all my bakery
for 'em. Come, load up."[A]

[Footnote A: It need scarcely be said that the incidents here related
are literal facts, which came under the writer's observation in the
midst of the scenes described.]

On their way through the burnt district, on the ill-fated Chicago
Avenue, they passed a ruined wall where people were preparing to dig out
two men. One was crying piteously in mixed German and English for help.
The other, except his head and shoulders, was completely buried beneath
the ruins. As the people began to remove the rubbish he said in a tone
expressive at once of pluck and agony, "Leave me, and go and get out
that bawling Dutchman: he ain't dead, and I am."

As it proved, he was broken all to pieces, both legs and both arms being
fractured, one of the arms in two places.

Of course Dr. Lively found the hearts he went to seek, not only among
the favored few whom God had spared the bitter cup, but all over the
world. We all know the beautiful story--how all the cities and villages
and hamlets of the land were on the housetops, watching the burning of
Chicago, marking her needs, and speeding the relief as fast as steam and
lightning could bring it. We know of that message of love, the sweetest,
the most wonderful the world ever heard since Christ died for us.
Through the pallid stupefaction, the sullen silence, the awful gloom,
the black despair that were settling over Chicago's heart, it pierced,
and from all the world it came: "We have heard thy cry, O our sister!
Our hearts are aching for thee; our tears are flowing for thee; our
hands are working for thee." Oh, how it electrified us in Chicago! If
any refused, if any gave grudgingly, we saw it not, we knew it not. We
saw only the eager outstretched hand of love.

And we know now the sequel of the wonderful story--how Chic