of disaster, which impelled him to
hasten home, several days before the earthquake. He left for San
Francisco to search for his father and mother, who are among the
missing.

"For several days I felt as if something awful was about to happen,"
said he. "So completely did the feeling take possession of me that I
could not sleep at night. At last I could stand it no longer, and I
left Paris April 14, four days before the upheaval.

"I embarked on La Savoie at Havre. I tried to send a wireless message,
but could receive no answer.

"The day after the catastrophe the captain of the ship called me to
his cabin and told me he had just received a wireless message that San
Francisco had been destroyed by an earthquake. I was not surprised."

At the Presidio, where probably 50,000 people were camped, affairs
were conducted with military precision. Here those who are fortunate
enough to be numbered among the campers were able now and then to
obtain a little water with which to moisten their parched lips, while
rations, owing to the limited supply, were being dealt out in the
smallest quantities that all may share a bit. The refugees stood
patiently in line and the marvelous thing about it all was that not a
murmur was heard. This characteristic is observable all over the city.
The people were brave and patient and the wonderful order preserved by
them had been of great assistance. Though homeless and starving they
were facing the awful calamity with resigned fortitude.

In Oakland the day after the quake messages were stacked yards high in
all the telegraph offices waiting to be sent throughout the world.
Conditions warranted utter despair and panic, but through it all the
people were trying to be brave and falter not.

Oakland temporarily took the place of San Francisco as the metropolis
of the Pacific coast, and there the finance kings, the bankers and
merchants of the San Francisco of yesterday were gathering and
conferring and getting into shape the first plans for the rebuilding
of the burned city and preventing a widespread financial panic that in
the first part of the awful catastrophe seemed certain.

Resting on a brick pile in Howard street was a young Swedish woman,
whose entire family had perished and who had succeeded in saving from
the ruins of her home only the picture of her mother. This she
clutched tightly as she struggled on to the ferry landing--the gateway
to new hope for the refugees. A little farther