d missing. It had been emptied of its
freight into the wide lap of suffering. Before him stood the blue-coated
guardsmen in a deep half circle. There was a shed at his back and a
group of flood survivors, some in old clothing of their own, some in the
new garments of charity. They were for the most part members of the
Methodist congregation of Johnstown to which he had preached for three
years.

"I hunted a long time yesterday for the foundations of my little home,"
he said, "but they were swept away, like the dear faces of the friends
who used to gather around my table. But God doesn't own this side alone;
He owns the other side too, and all is well whether we are on this side
or the other. Are your dear ones saved or lost? The only answer to that
question is found in whether they trusted in God or not. Trust in the
Lord and verily ye shall dwell in the land and be fed."

It was not a sermon. Nobody had words or voice for preaching. Others
spoke briefly and prayed. They sang, "Jesus, Lover of My Soul."

A Song in the Waters.

The shrill treble of the weeping women in the shed was almost lost in
the strong bass of the soldiers. "Cora Moses, who used to sing in our
church choir, sang that beautiful hymn as she drifted away to her death
amid the wreck," said the chaplain. "She died singing it. There was only
the crash of buildings between the interruption of the song of earth and
its continuation in heaven."

Dr. Beale's Address.

Dr. Beale, whose own Presbyterian Church was one of the first morgues
opened and who has lived among dead bodies ever since is the cheeriest
man in Johnstown. He made a prayer and an address. It was all
straight-from-the-shoulder kind of talk, garbed in homely phrase.

In the address he said: "I have been asked to say something about this
disaster and its magnitude, but I haven't the heart. Besides I haven't
the words. If I was the biggest truth teller in the world I could not
tell the tale."

Then the preacher went hammer and tongs at the practical teachings of
the flood. "That night in Alma Hall when we thought we would all die I
heard men call on God in prayer and pledge themselves to lead better
lives if life was given them. Since then I heard those same men cursing
and swearing in these streets. Brethren, there was no real prayer in any
of those petitions put up by those of godless lives that night. They
were merely crying out to a higher power for protection. They were like
t