among those in the interior dry strip.

SUFFERERS CHEERFUL

One of the remarkable features was the cheerful spirit with which flood
victims viewed their plight. This was Dayton's first big flood in many
years. Much of the submerged area had been considered safe, but as the
majority of residents of these sections looked out on all sides upon a
great sweep of muddy, swiftly moving water, they seemed undisturbed.

In some of the poorer sections the attitude of the marooned was not so
cheerful. As a motor boat passed beneath the second floor at one partly
submerged house, a man leaned out and threatened to shoot the boat's
occupants unless they rescued his wife and a baby that had been born the
day before. The woman, almost dying, was let from the window by a rope
and taken to a place of refuge.

Further on, members of a motor boat party were startled by shots in the
second floor of a house, about which five feet of water swirled. The
boat was stopped and a man peered from a window.

"Why are you shooting?" he was asked.

"Oh, just amusing myself, shooting at rats that come upstairs. When are
you going to take me out of here?" he replied.

Three babies were born in one church during the afternoon. One was born
in a boat while its mother was being conveyed to safety. Such scenes
were common.

WOMEN BECAME HYSTERICAL

At the rescue stations the scenes enacted were heartrending and the most
pitiful were witnessed at the temporary morgues. At the West Dayton
morgue frantic crowds all day and night watched every body brought in,
hoping against hope it was not that of some loved one.

Women became hysterical at times when searching for missing members of
their families whom they had failed to find at the relief stations.

With the coming of nightfall Thursday the efforts to rescue more persons
were slackened, and all of Dayton not in the central flood districts
waited in dread for the nightly fires which had added horrors to the
already terrible situation.

The flood situation at night appeared brighter than in the morning. The
water had fallen from three to five feet, the currents of the river and
creek had slackened, and there was food enough left for the town's
breakfast and dinner.

As Galveston and San Francisco pulled themselves together after calamity
so Dayton began pulling itself together on Friday of the week of the
flood. Emerging from the waters and privation, citizens began
co-operating with thos