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where alone there is hope of security, faint
though it be. The tall buildings on
either hand blot out the skies and
the stars, and seem to overhang every foot of
ground between them; their shattered cornices
and copings, the tops of their frowning
wails, seemed piled from both sides to the
centre of the street. It seems that a touch
would not send the shattered masses left
standing down upon the people below, who
look up to them and shrink together as the
tremor of the earthquake again passes under
them, and the mysterious reverberations
swell and roll along like some infernal drumbeat
summoning them to die, and it passes
away, and again is experienced the blessed
feeling of deliverance from impending calamity,
which it may well be believed evokes
a mute but earnest offering of mingled prayer
and thanksgiving from every heart in the
throng.

Again, far along the street, and up from
the alleys that lead into it on either
side, is heard that chorus of wailing and
lamentation which, though it had not ceased,
was scarcely noticed a moment before. It is
a dreadful sound—the sound of helpless,
horror-stricken humanity, old and young,
the strong and the feeble alike, where all are
so feeble, calling for help from their fellow-
creatures and raising their anguished voices
in petition to Heaven for mercy, where no
human aid could avail. It is not a scene to
be described by any mortal tongue or pen.
It is not a scene to be forgotten when once it
has been witnessed, and when the witness
has shared all its danger and feels all its
agony.

The first shock occurred at seven minutes
of 10, as was indicated this morning by the
public clocks, the hands on all of which had
stopped at that fateful hour, as though to
mark the end of time for so many who had
heard the preceding hour pealed forth by St.
Michael's chimes without a thought but of
long and happy life. The second shock,
which was but a faint and crisp echo of the
first, was felt eight minutes later. As it
passed away the writer started homeward to
find the scenes enacted on Broad street,
around the News and Courier office, repeated
at every step of the way.

St. Michael's steeple towered high and
white above the gloom, seemingly uninjured.
The station-house, a massive brick building
across the street, had apparently lost its roof,
which had fallen around it. A little further
on the roof of the portico of the Hibernian
Hall, a handsome building in the Grecian
style, had crashed to the ground, carrying
down part of the massive granite pillars with
it. All the way up Meeting street, which, in
respect to its general direction and importance,
may be called "the Broadway of
Charleston," the roadway was piled with
debris from the tops of the walls.

In passing the Charleston Hotel, which, to
carry out the comparison above indicated,
occupies the position of Stewart's up-town
store in New York, the third shock was felt,
about ten minutes after the second, and, of
course, caused the greatest alarm in that
neighborhood, as elsewhere. At Marion
Square, corresponding exactly with Union
Square, New York, a great crowd had collected,
as even the edges of the wide spaces
embraced in it could not be reached by the
nearest buildings in the event of their fall.
From this crowd, composed of men, women
and children of both races, arose incessant
calls and cries and lamentations; while over
the motley, half-dressed throng was shed the
lurid light of the conflagration which had
broken out just beyond the square immediately
after the first shock, and had now
wholly enveloped several building in flames.

In three other quarters of the town at the
same time similar large fires were observed
under full headway, and the awful significance
of the earthquake may be most fully
appreciated, perhaps, when it is said that with
these tremendous fires blazing up all at once
around them, and threatening the city with
total destruction, the people whom you met
on the streets or saw gathered together in
groups on the open places evidently did not
give them a thought.

No one watched the ruddy flames or the
pillars of cloud rising high into the still night
air. All were too intent on listening with
strained senses for the dreaded recurrence of
that horrible growl or groan of the power
under the sea and under the land to give a
thought to the new terror, though it had
threatened his own home and many homes in
the doomed city. The crowds poured in from
every direction to the square just described,
as though it had been indeed a charmed circle,
and life depended on passing within its
grassy bounds. Street cars, carriages and
other vehicles were ranged in lines on the
streets surrounding the square, while the
horses stood as though sniffing the ground in
anxious inquiry.

The colored people everywhere were loud
and increasing in their declamations of
alarm, in the singing of hymns and in fervent
appeals for God's mercy, in which appeals,
God knows, many a proud heart who
heard them arising in the night, and in the
hour of His wondrous might, devoutly
and humbly and sincerely joined. Danger
brings all of us to the level of the lowliest.

There was no distinctions of place or
power, pride or caste, in the assemblages
that were gathered together in Charleston on
Tuesday night. It was a curious spectacle to
look back upon. It is a good one to remember
for white and black alike. There were
instances of unselfish devotion, of kind and
loving regard between master and servant,
mistress and maid, in the presence of a common
ill, and of threatened ruin that showed,
as nothing else could show, how strong is the
tie that binds our white people and our black
people together; and this lesson of the dread
visitor we may hope, too, will never be forgotten.

Arrived at his home, the writer found the
same scenes of distraction and wreck which
marked nearly every other home in the city.
All the houses in the neighborhood had suffered
seriously, and streets, yards and gardens
were filled with the fallen chimneys
and fragments of walls, while the walls that
were left standing were rent assunder in
many cases from top to bottom, and were
badly shattered in every instance. Women
and children, rouse from sleep or interrupted
in their evening pursuits by the sound
of the ruin being affected above and around
them, rushed out into the streets and huddled
together awaiting the end, whatever it might
be.

Invalids were brought out on mattresses
and deposited on the roadway. No thought
was given to treasures left behind in the
effort to save the peculiar treasure of life
itself, suddenly become so precious in the
eyes of all, the invalid woman and the robust
man alike. Until long after midnight the
streets were filled with fugitives in sight of
their homes. Through the long hours that
followed few ere the eyes even of childhood
that were closed in sleep. Charleston
was full of those who watched for the morning,
and never in any city in any land did the
first gray shades that mark the approach of
dawn appear so beautiful and so welcome to
eyes as they appeared to the thousands of
people who hailed them this morning from
the midst of the countless wrecked homes in
our thrice scourged, but still patient, still
brave, still hopeful, still beautiful city by
the sea.

The story is here taken up by another account,
which goes on as follows:

The effect of the shock can be judged by
the experiences of Captain Dawson, of the
News and Courier, who lives in a massive
brick residence in Bull street, near Rutledge
street. Captain Dawson was in his room on
the second story when the first shock occurred.
The house seemed literally to turn
on its axis. The first shock was followed by
a second and third less severe than the first.
The excitement and terror in the city were
intense. It was worse than the worst battle
of the war. When the first agony was over,
it was found that the ceiling of every room
in the house was cracked, the big cistern was
broken apart, the huge tank in the attic was
pouring its flood of water into the bedrooms.
In the parlors the statues had been wrenched
from their bases and thrown to the floor. In
the hall the massive lamp had actually been
turned around. In front of the house was a
large porch with heavy pillars and solid marble
steps. All this was swept away as though
it had been shaved off with a razor. And