A report came that the fatal east wind was blowing. And at this there
was a general movement of those present, as if the time were too short
to waste in longer listening. I came up Lafayette Place to Astor Place
with the intention of reaching Fourth Avenue. Both spaces were choked
with people, and on Eighth Street I saw a woman on the steps of a
private residence, wildly calling on the mob, which paid no attention to
her, to repent, for the day of judgment was at hand. Her white hair was
blown over her face and her arms were frantically gesticulating. Into
the great hall of the Cooper Union a mass of religious people had
flocked, and a number of speakers were making addresses and offering up
prayers. When I passed the woman who was exhorting the crowd I had
noticed the manner in which her hair, which was of soft, flossy white,
streamed out straight in front of her, but it did not occur to me until
I reached the square in front of the Cooper Union that this was caused
by the peculiar and ominous draft of wind from the east of which I had
heard so much, for it was there that I saw a crowd pointing up to the
roof of the vast building known as the Bible House, which appeared to be
covered with people. Some of them were holding flags and drapery, and
the material floated out westward without any of the undulating motion
which always marks a flag in a disturbed current. These extemporized
pennants stood out as if they were starched. I could see that this sign
produced a dumb sort of terror in the crowd. It seemed to me then that
all emotion of which I was capable was centered in the one desire to get
to the woman I loved and die with her. A crushing and at the same time
an animating remorse, as if somehow I had been responsible for her death
at least, in disregarding her warnings, and somehow doubly guilty in
mistrusting her motives, unmanned me and inflamed me. It was with
something of the same disregard of everybody but oneself that I had seen
in others that I fought my way to Twenty-first Street. What brutalities
I committed need not be recounted. That hour remains with me an acute
and jangled memory of frenzy. I reached the steps of Judge Brisbane's
house torn and bleeding. The terrible scenes were in my eyes, and the
dreadful, monotonous tumult of human desperation--that vast sigh of
doomed humanity, pierced here and there by the wails and shrieks of
despair and the cries of innocence for help, was in my ears. The
celerity with which it had all come on left no chance for cool reason.
An invisible phantom was at the heels of the community and we were part
of a mighty stampede. After fumbling for an instant at the bell and
pushing back several ghastly creatures who were on the steps, I must
have applied my shoulder to the door and pushed it in. Some one appeared
to be resisting on the other side, but it gave way and I half fell into
Judge Brisbane's vestibule. An instant later we were looking into each