sion, the gallant soldier
could not have been more courteous and kind. He immediately set about
devising means for making as comfortable as possible a "poor, lone
woman," helpless, of course, upon such a field. It was with considerable
difficulty that I could convince him that the Red Cross had a way of
taking care of itself at least, and was not likely to suffer from
neglect.

Not a business house or bank left, the safes all in the bottom of the
river; our little pocketbook was useless, there was nothing to buy, and
it would not bring back the dead. With the shelter of the tents of the
Philadelphia Red Cross, that joined us en route with supplies, when we
could find a cleared place to spread, or soil to hold them, with a
dry-goods box for a desk, our stenographer commenced to rescue the first
dispatches of any description that entered that desolate city. The
disturbed rivers lapped wearily back and forth, the people, dazed and
dumb, dug in the muddy banks for their dead. Hastings with his little
army of militia kept order.

Soon supplies commenced to pour in from everywhere, to be received,
sheltered as best they could be from the incessant rain, and distributed
by human hands, for it was three weeks before even a cart could pass the
streets.

But I am not here to describe Johnstown--the noble help that came to it,
nor the still more noble people that received it--but simply to say that
the little untried and unskilled Red Cross played its minor tune of a
single fife among the grand chorus of relief of the whole country, that
rose like an anthem, till over four millions in money, contributed to
its main body of relief, with the faithful Kreamer at its head, had
modestly taken the place of the twelve millions destroyed. But after all
it was largely the supplies that saved the people at first, as it always
is, and the distribution of which largely consumed the money that was
contributed later.

From one mammoth tent which served as a warehouse, food and clothing
were given out to the waiting people through the hands of such volunteer
agents, both women and men, as I scarcely dare hope to ever see gathered
together in one work again. The great cry which had gone out had aroused
the entire country, and our old-time helpers, full of rich experience
and still richer love for the work, faithful to the cross of humanity as
the devotee to the cross of the Master, came up from every point--the
floods, the cyclones, the batt