An Irish woman
who had been called in to play the part of midwife at a birth elsewhere
on Saturday, made a pertinent comment after the wee one's eyes were
opened to the walls of its tent home.
"God sends earthquakes and babies," she said, "but He might, in His
mercy, cut out sending them both together."
There were many pathetic incidents. Families had been sadly separated
in the confusion of the flight. Husbands had lost their wives--wives
had lost their husbands, and anxious mothers sought some word of their
children--the stories were very much the same. One pretty looking woman
in an expensive tailor-made costume badly torn, had lost her little
girl.
"I don't think anything has happened to her," said she, hopefully. "She
is almost eleven years old, and some one will be sure to take her in and
care for her; I only want to know where she is. That is all I care about
now."
A well-known young lady of good social position, when asked where she
had spent the night, replied: "On a grave."
"I thank God, I thank Uncle Sam and the people of this nation," said a
woman, clad in a red woolen wrapper, seated in front of a tent at the
Presidio nursing one child and feeding three others from a board propped
on two bricks. "We have lost our home and all we had, but we have never
been hungry nor without shelter."
The spirit of '49 was vital in many of the refugees. One man wanted to
know whether the fire had reached his home. He was informed that there
was not a house standing in that section of the city.
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