On reaching State and Sixteenth Streets, a curious sight met my eyes. The telegraph headquarters were in a brick warehouse on the northeast corner of those streets. The sidewalks were nearly four feet above the street grade. There were no desks or counters in the temporary offices, only boards laid across barrels, behind which the clerks stood to receive telegrams. As telegrams could not be written there, senders of them were standing in the street and using the sidewalk as desks. From Fifteenth to Sixteenth Street and for a half block on Sixteenth, men were standing as close as they could and use elbow room, writing telegrams. I joined the company and wrote mine, then reported for duty. I was placed behind a couple of barrels with a board over them as a receiving clerk, with instructions to accept every telegram offered without exacting any toll, and to note thereon that it was sent free on account of fire. So great was the necessity of getting information out to anxious relatives that no telegrams whatever were being taken from other places, all the operators, all wires and facilities being devoted to sending telegrams out of the city. I sent a long telegram to my father in Buffalo, assuring him of my safety and that of more than a score of former Buffalonians whom I had met in my wanderings. For years after I was gratefully told of the relief which that telegram brought to many families besides my own, as my father and brother went from family to family with the good news of personal safety, at least, of the homeless people. A hasty consignment of food had been rushed from St. Louis by the telegraph officials. So far as I shared in it that afternoon, it consisted of a liberal allowance of apples and cheese which, in the slang of one of our hungry crowd, was good enough such as it was, and plenty of it as far as it went. The next day rye bread was added to the menu. The only drinking water I had had in three days was from the well of our host. Water for ablution was out of the question. There was no water to drink at the telegraph headquarters until Wednesday and then it was unfit. It was turbid water bailed up from the lake shore. Our thirst was assuaged by beer and we could never get enough of that at five cents per glass. If it was abundant in the saloons across State Street immediately after a beer wagon had discharged its cargo, the price was five cents; as it became scarcer the price rose to ten cents, and then to the famine price of fifteen cents. As the price rose we endured parched throats as best we could until reports reached us of a renewed supply of the beverage when, regardless of the demands of business, there would be a rush of officials and clerks alike to take advantage of the abundance and normal price to quench our, by that time, consuming thirst.