The Portland daily press., 1889-06-04
The Great Disaster con,rasted.

For hundreds of years history has i'm
pressed upon the human imagination the idea
that the burial Of the city of Pompeii by the
Eruption of Vesuyius was one of the most
terrible catastrophes that ever befel a COM
pany Of the human race. The vivid descrip
tions of the two celebrated letters of Pliny,
the younger, who witnessed the wonderful
and fearful destruction, and the stories of
modern novelists like Bulwer- Lytton, who
saw the ruins centuries later, have given to
the trial of Pompeii prominence of woe
attributed to the victims of few other calam
tiles. But the best modern authorizes do not
give to Pompeii population of over 1900
people, and all authorities agree that nearly
all, except the sick, prisoners, sentinels and
few who had returned to secure some
treasures probably escaped. Johnstown,
Pennsylvania, had population of within
three or four thousand as many as are given
to Pompeii by the best authorities. Its peo-
pie were more refined than those of Pompeii
more capable of enjoying life. and more
sensitive, no doubt, to the horrors of sudden
and terrible death. No time was given them
for flight; but upon them ALL the well as
well as the sick. the strong as well as the
weak, came the catastrophe in an instant,
too suddenly for everything but the agony
and terror Of death prolonged through name
less horrors. The blind leading the blind in
Pompeii was a peaceful sight beside the
scenes on the flood at Johnstown. The ac-
tual numbers of those who persisted at
Pompeii and Herculaneum, together were
probably not nearly the numbers of the
missing at Johnstown
The horror of the catastrophe at Johns
town is less likely to be measured at its full
significance than tmore. For in these days
mankind have become accustomed to tales of
woe Through the telegraph and the press
the whole world knows at once the woes of
any part of it. The whole world knows that
last year hundreds of thousands of hap
less Chinese were swallowed up by
the relentless Hoang-Ho, the river of
death; three years ago it knew that five
thousand dreamy Hindoos were swallowed
up by one of the great rivers of India. But
the one who pauses an instant must realize
that this is really more memorable ealam-
lty than either of those. The Chinese and
the Hindoos were human beings; and life
undoubtedly was sweet to them. But neither
-
to their fate the thought, the interest or the
sympathy that they will give to the ten or
fifteen thousand men and women and chill
dren lost at Johnstown. The people of
Pompeii have been the objects of the COM
miseration Of the ages because they were
Romans; with thoughts and feelings with
which men of all time could sympathize. A
greater trial Detailing the Parthians or the
Scythians would have been forgotten speed
lily even had it been recorded. The people
who have been blotted out at Johnstown are
not nameless heather; but men and women
OF education, of culture. of the great hopes
that are born of civilization and Christianity.
With their fate enlightened mankind will
feel melancholy interest and lively SYM
pathy SO long as language shall preserve the
record. Because of the people who suffered
as well as because of the extraordinary fate
that befel them the Johnstown catastrophe
must stand among the few that live in til Q
minds of the men of many generations.