|
applicants for admission, if it was thought they were prompted by idle curiosity, were not allowed to enter. The central morgue was formerly a school-house, and the desks were used as biers for the dead bodies. Three of the former pupils lay on the desks dead, with white pieces of paper pinned on the white sheets that covered them, giving their names.
But what touching scenes are enacted every hour about this mournful building! Outside the sharp voices of the sentinels are constantly shouting: "Move on." Inside weeping women and sad-faced, hollow-eyed men are bending over loved and familiar faces. Back on the steep grassy hill which rises abruptly on the other side of the street are crowds of curious people who have come in from the country round about to look at the wreckage strewn around where Johnstown was.
"Oh! Mr. Jones," a pale-faced woman asks, walking up, sobbing, "can't you tell me where we can get a coffin to bury Johnnie's body?"
"Do you know," asks a tottering old man, as the pale-faced woman turns away, "whether they have found Jennie and the children?"
"Jennie's body has just been found at the bridge," is the answer, "but the children can't be found."
Jennie is the old man's widowed daughter, and was drowned, with her two children, while her
|
