The Johnstown Horror!!!: or, Valley of Death, being A Complete and Thrilling Account; of the Awful Floods and Their Appalling RuinWalker, James Herbert
History
The Johnstown Horror!!!: or, Valley of Death, being A Complete and Thrilling Account; of the Awful Floods and Their Appalling Ruin
"I hunted a long time yesterday for the foundations of my little home,"
he said, "but they were swept away, like the dear faces of the friends
who used to gather around my table. But God doesn't own this side alone;
He owns the other side too, and all is well whether we are on this side
or the other. Are your dear ones saved or lost? The only answer to that
question is found in whether they trusted in God or not. Trust in the
Lord and verily ye shall dwell in the land and be fed."
It was not a sermon. Nobody had words or voice for preaching. Others
spoke briefly and prayed. They sang, "Jesus, Lover of My Soul."
A Song in the Waters.
The shrill treble of the weeping women in the shed was almost lost in
the strong bass of the soldiers. "Cora Moses, who used to sing in our
church choir, sang that beautiful hymn as she drifted away to her death
amid the wreck," said the chaplain. "She died singing it. There was only
the crash of buildings between the interruption of the song of earth and
its continuation in heaven."
Dr. Beale's Address.
Dr. Beale, whose own Presbyterian Church was one of the first morgues
opened and who has lived among dead bodies ever since is the cheeriest
man in Johnstown. He made a prayer and an address. It was all
straight-from-the-shoulder kind of talk, garbed in homely phrase.
In the address he said: "I have been asked to say something about this
disaster and its magnitude, but I haven't the heart. Besides I haven't
the words. If I was the biggest truth teller in the world I could not
tell the tale."
Then the preacher went hammer and tongs at the practical teachings of
the flood. "That night in Alma Hall when we thought we would all die I
heard men call on God in prayer and pledge themselves to lead better
lives if life was given them. Since then I heard those same men cursing
and swearing in these streets. Brethren, there was no real prayer in any
of those petitions put up by those of godless lives that night. They
were merely crying out to a higher power for protection. They were like
the death-bed fears of the infidel, for I have seen seventeen infidels
die and everyone showed the white feather. Nay, those prayers were
unsanctified by the spirit, but let us who are here now living, dedicate
ourselves to the service of Almighty God. There were those who were to
be dedicated that night. I know one who, when it came, sent his family
up the staircase, and taking up his Bible from his parlor table, opened
at the 46th Psalm, first verse, and, following them, read, and the
waters followed him closely. And through the flood he read the word of
God and there was peace in that house while terror was all around it."
Mothering the Orphans.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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