Daily tobacco leaf-chronicle. (Clarksville, Tenn.) 1890-1895, 1890-05-16
MADE MAD az sLunpeas.
a me- y fipmau Drif'wooa nom

A me N Human nriftwo0d from asa
Great Johnstown Hood.
Twas going up Broadway The other d 3
with brave physician Of Johnstown, n !.
one Of the horoes who, oblivious Of the ~ 4
that a majority og his relatives had bel b
swept away TO a horrid death, aud that q
slower but no less horrid death by pest I
once menaced all who remained IN that x 0
rnile charnel house, did not desert tto
stricken vale 81 death.
"HelloW be said There goes Abe MI
ply. | haven't seen him IN many a day
He pointed toa poor, broken down, di',
jectcd figure Of a man, who, with head ben
and muttering lips, was slowly shuillini'
up the street
'Johnstown manW asked.
eyes"
"yictim Of the fioodf'
"No; victim Of the III lortakers-lils
many another"
us he madY"
"Crazy as u bedbug."
"You see" he went on, when our great
harvest of death took place Johnstown was
simply paralyzed for means 10 house and
identify its dead before burying it. At first
there was no attempt, or only the slightest,
at identification. Pittsburg sent raft of
volunteer undertakers, and the first and
only thought was to get the bodies under
ground and save the living from pestilence.
But in time the thing was supposed to be
organized, and men were paid to properly
handle and register the corpses and care
for their valuables as fast as they were
brought to light The way in which this
work was done was shameful in the ex-
IRENE. Not only were there wholesale rob
berries Of valuables from the bodies of the
dead--that is, the known dead-but the
records were mixed up in a manner to
make the heart sick. Men were buried for
women and children for men, and then the
numbers, as it seemed, were all put in
a box and shook up, so that it became a
lottery to find your loved ones, even after
you had found description which was
reasonably sure to hit the case.
"Well, sir, poor Abe Murphy suffered
All his family, wife and six children
went down in the flood, and he has only
been able to find one child living, and he
big Ounce of boy. He worked like good
fellow at the time of the flood, saved sew
eral lives, and afterward turned in with a
will to help to gather the harvest of bodies
and do other labor which called for strong
arms and willing heart. Only now and
then he would knock off work and go look
ing for his own among the dead. He was
big, strong fellow, and even the agony of
his grief showed no signs of turning his
head But there came a time when he be-
gan to search among the lists describing
the dead and their supposed location, and
after awhile he came upon the description
of his favorite daughter, which was so full
and accurate that there could be no mis-
take about it, 1t bore certain number in
one of the cemeteries Procuring the
necessary authority and filled with hope,
he went and had the grave bearing this
number opened and what do you think
they found2 The body of full grown
mani The cemetery officials sought long
and earnestly to find the child, and many
graves were disturbed. But there seemed
fate against it. Only Gabriel's trump
will make that child come forth and
answer i am here
Later he had similar experience with
another child, and then with his wife. The
latter, though, was merely q case of care
less describing or of mistaken supposing
on the part of Abe. But it was all the
same to him by this time. His tortured
mind had crossed the ragged edge of rea-
son, and everything in the way of disap-
pointment only added to his insanity, until
it became incurable What he suffered no
man knows. He got to haunting the GEM
eteries and the dead houses until he be-
came nuisance and finally the medical
staff, assisted by the Red Cross funds, took
him away and put him into merciful con
inement He is now harmless and shows
no desire to so back to Johnstown, and, as
he has bit of property, he is allowed his
liberty. His son is working on farm in
the west. The father has no interest in
him. New York Herald.