“Mysteries of Providence” are continually ferreted out on such occasions. Reporters, to whom everything that can be written is news, gather up a hundred items and give them to the public; often grouping items in a manner that is strikingly grotesque. There is no grimmer humor than the apparently matter-of-fact statement that during a great Italian earthquake, wherein lofty cathedrals were shaken to pieces and hundreds of people killed, statues of the Virgin escaped uninjured. Sober-minded people are prone to wonder what is the relative value of a human life and a graven image. One might, if such things were of constant occurrence, consider them as meant by Providence as a very sarcastic punishment for the violation of the second commandment. [Illustration: EIGHTH AND MAIN STREETS, LOUISVILLE.] It is related that at the time of the massacre of St. Bartholomew, a Romish captain secured a number of fugitives, among whom he felt satisfied there were some good Catholics. Not being able to distinguish them readily, he referred the perplexing case to a fanatical priest. The response came promptly: “Kill all; the Lord will know his own!” Interpreters of the inscrutable ways of Providence might find such the only solution for many particulars of the storm. The pious but superstitious folk who believe that all such visitations are for the sins of a people, instead of the result of laws that send the rain alike upon the just and the unjust, might find some perplexity in conning the following cases. On the next street back of Falls City Hall stood the St. John’s Episcopal Church. The rector, with his little four-year-old boy, was in the study. The rectory and the church were completely destroyed, and the rector and his child were killed. In an adjoining building, ten or eleven men were playing cards. The house was demolished, but not one of the players was seriously hurt. The preacher perished; the idlers were saved--herein is food for reflection. Tierney’s saloon was on Eleventh, between Main and Market. The ice-box saved him and four other men from being crushed. They crowded beside it, and crawled out uninjured. The pastor and the useful laundry girls perished; the saloon-keeper and his patrons survived. The Catholic buildings at Seventeenth and Broadway were Father Desney’s residence, the Sisters’ Home, the Church of the Sacred Heart, and the parochial school. All these were wrecked by the wind, and Sister Pius was killed. There is a story that, amid utter ruin, the image of the Virgin was left standing, untouched by harm. Let the devout remember that a saloon-keeper obtained an equal deliverance.