Within eighteen hours after the flood, there was a force of three hundred qualified policemen guarding the vaults of the First National and Dibert’s banks, and patrolling the town. A few were armed with shot-guns, the most with base ball clubs extracted from a wrecked store. The size of their batons was an indication that they were not on dress parade, but were equipped for war. Committees were quickly appointed on finances, on supplies, on morgues, on the removal of dead animals and debris, on police, on hospitals; and these committees entered on their respective duties without an hour’s delay. Farmers and others were now crowding to behold the ruin, and there were many with hearts to sympathize and hands to aid. Dr. Wm. Caldwell, one of the oldest and best known merchants in the place, met the wondering comers and engaged many of them for service in the removal of the wreckage and the recovery of the dead. Details were at once constituted and sent forth under proper leaders for these purposes. Within a brief while, Charles Zimmerman had removed more than two hundred dead animals, and Thos. L. Johnson, his assistant committeeman, one of the owners of the great plant at Moxham, had made visible progress in clearing the streets of debris. A crying and instant need was a hospital. Before the flood there was only one hospital in Johnstown. This was built by the Cambria Iron Company for the use of their own men. This hospital was now almost instantly filled and running over; but before sunset on this memorable Saturday, June 1st, the committee had opened another. Telephonic communication was broken, but a boy was sent on horseback to Shoyestown with a message to Pittsburg for hospital equipments--cots, mattrasses, pillows, medicines and other necessities; and such was the energy of all concerned that by two o’clock on Sunday, less than twenty-four hours from the sending of the message, the equipment was in Johnstown. At that time every bench and counter and even the floor was crowded with the sick and wounded from all parts of the city. It is impossible to describe the varied movements of that dreadful day. There was little shelter and less food, death everywhere, and some doubtless imprisoned in heaps of wreck, and not yet dead, but dying of wounds, or of cold and exhaustion. The first patient in the Bedford street hospital had been taken up, presumably dead, and carried to the morgue; there he was found to be yet alive, was removed to the hospital and died of congestion the next day. The claims of the dead and of the living seemed to be equally urgent. Many of the living, for food and shelter, pushed to the country; the farmers received them with [Illustration: AT THE MORGUE.]