1906  THE MORNING OF THURSDAY, APRIL 19TH



    "'Yesterday morning,' he said, 'I was worth six hundred
thousand dollars. This morning this house is all I have left.
It will go in fifteen minutes.' He pointed to a large cabinet.
'That is my wife's collection of china. This rug upon which
we stand is a present. It cost fifteen hundred dollars. Try
that piano. Listen to its tone. There are few like it. There
are no horses. The flames will be here in fifteen minutes.'
    "Outside, the old Mark Hopkins residence, a palace, was
just catching fire. The troops were falling back and driving
the refugees before them. From every side came the roar-
ing of flames, the crashing of walls, and the detonations of
dynamite.
    "I passed out of the house. Day was trying to dawn
through the smoke-pall. A sickly light was creeping over
the face of things. Once only the sun broke through the
smoke-pall, blood-red, and showing quarter its usual size.
The smoke-pall itself, viewed from beneath, was a rose color
that pulsed and fluttered with lavender shades. Then it
turned to mauve and yellow and dun. There was no sun.
And so dawned the second day on stricken San Francisco.
   "An hour later I was creeping past the shattered dome
of the City Hall. Than it there was no better exhibit of the
destructive force of the earthquake. Most of the stone had
been shaken from the great dome, leaving standing the naked
framework of steel. Market Street was piled high with the
wreckage, and across the wreckage lay the overthrown pillars
of the City Hall shattered into short crosswise sections.
   "This section of the city, with the exception of the Mint
and the Post-office, was already a waste of smoking ruins.
Here and there through the smoke, creeping warily under
the shadows of tottering walls, emerged occasional men and
women. It was like the meeting of the handful of survivors
after the day of the end of the world."
   On Friday the most drastic measures were taken, and
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