seven square miles out into her very heart, the city waited in a
stupor the inevitable struggle with privation and hardship.

All the hospitals except the free city hospital had been destroyed,
and the authorities were dragging the injured, sick and dying from
place to place for safety.

All day the fire, sweeping in a dozen directions, irresistibly
completed the desolation of the city. Nob Hill district, in which
were situated the home of Mrs. Stanford, the priceless Hopkins Art
Institute, the Fairmount hotel, a marble palace that cost millions of
dollars and homes of a hundred millionaires, was destroyed.

It was not without a struggle that Mayor Schmitz and his aides let
this, the fairest section of the city, suffer obliteration. Before
noon when the flames were marching swiftly on Nob Hill, but were still
far off, dynamite was dragged up the steep debris laden streets. For a
distance of a mile every residence on the east side of Van Ness avenue
was swept away in a vain hope to stay the progress of the fire.

After sucking dry even the sewers the fire engines were either
abandoned or moved to the outlying districts.

There was no help. Water was gone, powder was gone, hope even was a
fiction. The fair city by the Golden Gate was doomed to be blotted
from the sight of man.

The stricken people who wandered through the streets in pathetic
helplessness and sat upon their scattered belongings in cooling ruins
reached the stage of dumb, uncaring despair, the city dissolving
before their eyes had no significance longer.

There was no business quarter; it was gone. There was no longer a
hotel district, a theater route, a place where Night beckoned to
Pleasure. Everything was gone.

But a portion of the residence domain of the city remained, and the
jaws of the disaster were closing down on that with relentless
determination.

All of the city south of Market street, even down to Islais creek and
out as far as Valencia street, was a smouldering ruin. Into the
western addition and the Pacific avenue heights three broad fingers of
fire were feeling their way with a speed that foretold the destruction
of all the palace sites of the city before the night would be over.

There was no longer a downtown district. A blot of black spread from
East street to Octavia, bounded on the south and north by Broadway
and Washington streets and Islais creek respectively. Not a bank
stood. There were no longer any exchanges, insuranc