other, who brought cosmos
out of chaos. When the flood was rising and nobody knew what the result
would be, John H. Patterson began to wire for motor boats. He did not
ask, he demanded. And the motor boats came. Patterson took all of the
carpenters from the National Cash Register--one hundred and fifty
skilled woodworkers--and set them to work making flat boats. The entire
force of the great institution was at the disposal of the people who
needed help. And not a man or a woman was docked or dropped from the
payroll. Everybody had time and a third.

As for John H. Patterson himself, he worked in three shifts of eight
hours each; and for forty-eight hours he practically neither slept nor
ate. And then, by way of rest, he took a Turkish bath and a horseback
ride, and forty winks, and was again on the job--this man of seventy,
who has known how to breathe and how to think and who carries with him
the body of a wrestler and the lavish heart of youth!

There were many other heroes--too many to mention here--but we cannot
forget John A. Bell, the telephone operator who was driven to the roof
of the building, where with emergency instruments he cut in on one of
the wires, and for two days and nights, in the driving rain, without
food or drink or dry clothing, kept the outside world informed as to
what was going on and the needs of the sufferers. What Bell endured
during those long hours was enough to kill the heart in a very strong
man. Yet his greeting to Governor Cox, over the crippled wire Thursday
morning, was: "Good morning, Governor. The sun is shining in Dayton."

Could anything be finer! Men with such spirit are great men, and the
spirit that was in John H. Patterson and John A. Bell is the same spirit
that was in John Jacob Astor, and Archie Butt, and George B. Harris, and
Charles M. Hayes, and the band of musicians on the Titanic that played
in water waist deep.

As I stood amid the slimy ruins of Dayton the day after the waters
receded, Brigadier-General Wood said to me, "There go Patterson and
Bell. Would you like to shake hands with them?" And I said, "Just now I
would rather shake hands with those two men than own the National Cash
Register Company."

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The Storms
By Chester Firkins

And you are still the Master. We have reared
Cities and citadels of seeming might,
But in the passing of a single night
You rend them unto ruin. We