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Show The Tragedy Of It. The catastrophe in California is the most trag-Hi trag-Hi ical event In our country of the past forty years. There wore comparatively few livos lost outright; not more, perhaps, than would have died from nat-ural nat-ural causes in a few months. But as it is not all of death to die, so it is not all of life to liva The hearts that break and still "brokenly live on," are what this calamity must be measured by. The American race is a hopeful one; it has the faculty, moreover, to keep from advertising its troubles; but when 375,000 people in a day see their homes and their hopes melt away, and, looking into the future, know not where to go or what to do, then the misfortune takes tangible form and we begin to measure the extent of the wreck that has been suffered. Death is the expected, but how to live is the problem that concerns the majority of our race, from the cradle to the grave. There are wives by the thousand to be cherished; there are children by the tens of thousands to be clothed, fed and educated; and when men who were in either affluence or at least in comfortable circumstances a week ago are suddenly bereft of all, it is a sit-uation sit-uation which puts a double strain upon a man. When his own heart is breaking, he must still turn a hopeful gaze to the watching wife, he must still smile upon his children and not permit them to even dream that a grim wolf is gnawing his vitals. And when his case Is but a single one, when all whom he has known as neighbors and friends are like himself; when each one has the same claims for consideration and such support and credit as may be given, the effect is almost the dissolution of society, for the very faco of nature is changed. "We spoke above' of the sorrows of husbands and fathers. But what of the wives and mothers? They by both knowledge and intuition perfectly realize the situation. Bach knows the burden the husband is struggling under, and though he smiles under it, his very smiles become a torture to her. She thinks of the dreams she has been nursing for herself and her children for women love beautiful homos and their adornments, they love beautiful apparel, and every comfort and luxury that they can give their children brings to them a greater joy than it does to the children them-selves. them-selves. And as all this passes now in review in H; their minds, they look out and behold nothing but universal wreck. There is nothing for them except H' to gather together their repressed desires, their cherished hopes, their dreams of future joys all H! dead now and to compose and bury them in the silence of their own souls, and then to turn with white faces and closed lips to face a selfish world. And the children. They do not comprehend the catastrophe, but their instincts are shrewd and H quick; they know that a shadow has fallen upon their lives; they see through the smiles on their mother's face the specter of a sorrow that is there, mmi the heartiness of the father does not deceive them Eh any more than does the mechanical tick of a WM dummy watch whioh can never measure time; and Hj knowing further that the sorrow of mother and father is mostly for themselves, that knowledge H is a grief to them. It is a bitter thing for a cnild to advance through Its maturing years under the shadow of a great sorrow. Hence we say the real tragedy of that catas-trophe catas-trophe was not with those who died in the debris of a destroyed city, but with those whose lives were saved but whose hopes and dreams of the H future were killed and burled In the awful wreck. |