to
relieve the hungry people in the parks.

One young man who was pressed into service by the soldiers, came clad
in a fashionable summer suit, straw hat and kid gloves.

* * * * *

An incident of the fire in the Latin quarter on the slope of Telegraph
Hill is worthy of note. The only available water supply was found in a
well dug in early days. At a critical moment the pump suddenly sucked
dry and the water in the well was exhausted.

"There is a last chance, boys!" was shouted and Italian residents
crashed in their cellar doors with axes and, calling for assistance,
began rolling out barrels of red wine.

The cellars gave forth barrel after barrel until there was fully 500
gallons ready for use. Then barrel heads were smashed in and the
bucket brigade turned from water to wine. Sacks were dipped in the
wine and used for beating out the fire. Beds were stripped of their
blankets and these were soaked in the wine and hung over the exposed
portions of the cottages and men on the roofs drenched the shingles
and sides of the house with wine.

Past huddled groups of sleepers an unending stream of refugees was
seen wending their way to the ferry, dragging trunks over the uneven
pavement by ropes tethered to wheelbarrows laden with the household
lares and penates. The bowed figures crept about the water and ruins
and looked like the ghosts about the ruins of Troy, and unheeding save
where instinct prompted them to make a detour about some still burning
heap of ruins.

At the ferry the sleepers lay in windrows, each man resting his head
upon some previous treasures that he had brought from his home. No one
was able to fear thieves or to escape pillage, because of absolute
physical inertia forced upon him.

Mad, wholly stark mad, were some of the unfortunates who had not fled
from the ruins. In many instances the soldiers were forced to tear men
and women away from the bodies of their dead. Two women were stopped
within a distance of a few blocks and forced to give up the dead
bodies of their babes, which they were nursing to their bosoms.

A newsgatherer passing through Portsmouth square noticed a mother
cowering under a bush. She was singing in a quavering voice a lullaby
to her baby. The reporter parted the bushes and looked in. Then he saw
what she held in her arms was only a mangled and reddened bit of
flesh. The baby had been crushed when the shock of earthquake came and
its moth