The Minneapolis journal. [volume] (Minneapolis, Minn.) 1888-1939, 1906-04-26
City News
FRISCO A HE'LL,
SAYS FREMSTAD
A FORMER MINNEAPOLIS GIRL
TELLS OF ESCAPE.
Diva with the Metropolitan Opera Com
! pany in the Stricken City-Fled with
Her Maid and Reached Ogden, Utah,
After Trying Experiences in Califor-
mia Metropolis. q

There was "welcome home' which
they will remember all their lives for,
Olive Fremstad, the former Minneapo-
lis girl, and Josephine Jacoby, the
first members of the Metropolitan op-
era company, to reach New York from
San Francisco. Miss Fremstad, who
had been heralded as heroine in the
first dispatches, was one OF the first OF
the singers out Of the burning city.
She escaped on Wednesday night, the
night after the quake, to Oakland and
boarded an east-bound local train. Miss
Jacoby caught the Overland limited on
Thursday morning and the first news
she had of any other member OF the
company was when Miss Fremstad got
aboard her train at Ogden, Utah, next
day. -
me-" Miss Fremstad said to. New
| York Sun reporter, "to hear you speak
that Welcome home I am awfully
| thankful to have escaped alive. L IN
jolly now, but I tell you that what we
all went thru out there was a hell.
company. STAYING at the Hotel St.
Dunstan, which was at Van Ness ave
nue. and Suffer street, twelve blocks
| from the Palace. / had sung Gar
men, the night before and did not get
to sleep till 2 o'clock; so tired that !
did not even read the cards on my
bookcase Of flowers. It was the San
Francisco people who gave me my great
success the year before. ~
Neither Heard or Saw, but Felt;
"When the earthquake camel didn 7
hear or see, I felt. To wake up seemed
like dreaming. I found myself on thu
floor, everything rocking, Then l stooc
up, and the house seemed to go up ane
/. down, so that I staggered to the win
dow. Out there the air seemed to b'
full of yellow smoke. l was chokins
and so seasick that I don It know, ,bu
it seemed as if the air was full Of sui
phur. 1t was all like a terrier shaking
a rat, you felt so helpless. I was alon'
on the first floor, with no one to speaf
to. Ny maid was on the seventh floor
"Down behind the hotel the are'
seemed full of parts Of buildings tina
had fallen. I saw. Chinese servant il
the back yard of one Of the houses
looking calmly up at the clouds Of vel
low smoke.
-"People were running thru the hall
in their nightclothes. I had sens
enough left to dress, yes, just as yo1
see me now, and was just turning to g
out, when, as l opened my door, ther
stood my maid.
"How I shall respect that woman t
my dying day. She stood there her
the singer stood up with folded arm
and deep voice-"and said rs Their
anything L can do, MADAME said, or
!. Marie, we must get away She sale
mo, 1 stay here. I will not leave til
things L said to her, Very well, bu
if she got frightened to come out int
the small open square by the hotel.
was not going to stay indoors. -"
Second Shock at O'Clock.
"There had been two earthquake
shocks at first, then it was quiet an
many people were already in the dinin
room trying to get breakfast. It mus
have been around s O'Clock when th
third great shock came. They all RAJ
tumbling over tables and chairs ik
rats out of a. trap. We went out int
the park and sat down, clutching at til
: grass to keep still. The sensation We
| terrible. saw people carrying tt
: wounded and dying into a hospit'
r across the way. -:
| "Suddenly [ realized that in esca1
3 ing from my room I had brought mott
, ing but my arms full Of flowers
Carmen bouquets. I said: Her