SCENES AT THE MORGUE.
At eight o’clock, work was begun upon the wreck. Guards were stationed
about the spot. Planks were placed upon the ice. Men were employed to
remove the debris of wood and iron. Boxes were procured, in which to
place the dead. A special policeman was stationed at the head of the
stairway; no one was permitted to go on the ice, except the workmen,
who were engaged in removing the debris.
The mayor of the city was on the ground; the stationing of the police
was at his request, but the removal of bodies and the preservation of
relics, was in the charge of an official of the road.
The superintendent of bridges and the train-dispatcher, assisted in
the work. Even Mr. Collins, himself, the chief engineer, was there,
and worked in the water, and forgot himself, in the sympathy he felt.
Throughout the day the work continued, and the crowds passed to and fro.
Men were employed who, in long rubber boots and water-proof coats,
worked all day long in the ice and snow; it was a difficult and tedious
task. The wind blew cold, the water was deep, the beams were heavy, the
iron was netted together, and the wreck was imbedded in the stream. The
bodies were frozen, they were packed among the debris, and buried in
the snow, but they were, by degrees, removed.
The remains of men and women and children, were taken by strangers’
hands, and placed in the rude deposits prepared for the occasion.
This was under the idle gaze of many a spectator, who had gathered
there. The hands of friends were not there to lift the tender forms,
many of these were far away. Those who could have been there, and
whose every nerve and fibre cried out for their loved and lost, were
detained by the trains in the distant city. It was difficult for even
the citizens who were present, to realize what sacredness there was to
these precious forms. Death had been robbed of its solemnity, and now
it seemed a piece of business, to remove the bodies which had burned.
The friends had been purposely kept back, that the revolting spectacle
might be kept from their sight, or that some decent disposal might
be made before they arrived. These bruised and broken and blackened
things, did not seem like human beings, and the sorrowing hearts alone
could realize how sacred and precious they were, even in all their
deformity. It was well that the shock was spared to many, until the
distance could be traversed.
Yet it was an awful, shocking sight, when the removal had been
accomplished. It was a horrid thing to take these bodies, in all their
deformed and distorted shapes, from their beds of ice and snow and iron
and ashes and the coals of wood, but it was still more horrid, to look
upon them as they were gathered in that gloomy morgue.
The freight house was turned into the place for the dead; its doors
were closed, and the darkness of a winter’s day settled down in that
cheerless place; it was cold, and bare and gloomy, a fit place for
death.
As the sleds arrived from the deep gorge below, bringing the awful
human freight, this large room was nearly filled with the ghastly rows.
Thirty-six bodies were arranged, in boxes, in a double line along the
sides; a few had been taken out, with their bodies uninjured, except as
they had died from the breath of fire. These were placed by themselves
upon the floor, and from their very attitude, showed how awful had
been their death. They were mostly men. There they lay, with limbs
distorted, with hands uplifted, with averted faces, and with all the
agonized and awful shapes which death by fire must produce. One had
endeavored to throw his coat over his face, and lay with arms and coat
above his head, caught by the flames and transfixed in that shape.
Another had twisted his neck and face away, until the head rested upon
the shoulders and back, and only the burned hair and whiskers could be
seen. Another lay with limbs drawn up and body doubled, and yet his
graceful shape and form could be read, through the agony of death.
Others seemed to have stood, and held up beseeching arms and hands.
With some, even the stumps of arms were outstretched, as if in mute
appeal. A few were drenched, with their clothing on, but partly burned,
as if the water and the fire together conspired for their death. These
all impressed the eye, with the agony of death by fire. The fear of
such a fate, was that which the survivors felt the most.
The agony, depicted in these few distorted forms and faces, showed how
well founded was that fear. But, fortunately, there were but few. Not
a dozen bodies were taken out that, to any human appearance, could
have lived, if this fire had been kept down. The rest were broken and
bruised, or else their bodies had been completely burned.
A more affecting sight was that, of those who were placed in the boxes,
broken and bruised, as they were, in every limb. The boxes could not
contain them, as their clothes were stiffened by the water and ice and
snow. Those, too, whose clothes had been burned away, were so distorted
in limb and body that no box could hold their forms.
Though dead, and stiff and cold, they seemed as if they would start
from their graves, and escape the fearful fate, which had seized and
destroyed their life.
And yet, even these would move the heart. They were those whom somebody
loved, and, though seen in their distorted shapes and in that horrid
place, were dear to their friends and gratefully recognized. Some
even impressed the eye with what they were in life. Strong men, with
enough of clothing left, or with their form and features sufficiently
preserved, to show their gentle breeding or their business habits,
betokened, through all the smoke and ruin, what they were and how
esteemed. Women, too, were there, whose clothes were sufficiently
preserved, to show what taste and culture they may have possessed, and
in their forms, though blackened and burned, retained the grace and
beauty which had been admired.
A little child was there, beautiful in death; the delicate little foot
hid beneath the closely fitting shoe, the nicely tapered limbs, the
graceful, lovely form, the tasteful dress, the hands so tiny and so
touching in their shape, one could but love the little thing. Even the
stranger wanted to take that sweet, that precious child, and clasp it
to the heart; but no, that awful gash, that cruel blow had stricken
all the beauty from the lovely face. If now, the mother would kiss her
darling child, she must press her lip upon vacant air, hoping that, as
she pressed that loved form to her aching heart, an angel spirit might
catch the fond caress.
There were other more revolting scenes than these, but let the veil
be drawn. The deformity of death must not distress the living, and
yet those were happy, whose loved and lost had been reduced to ashes,
in that fearful burning, rather than that they should thus find their
precious forms, for the sight would shock their very hearts, and send
back its warm affection to a chilled, an appalled, a horror stricken
soul. No! the remnants of those deformed, defaced and half destroyed
human forms, were better in the hands of strangers than with their
friends. The grim certainty of their death, but the uncertainty as to
whom the life belonged, were better with those who had less of the
yearning for possession, than the friends.
Citizens could take up the poor remains, when no one else could claim
them, and could bury them with all the attention and kindness which was
in their hearts, but no sense of possession was ever theirs; therefore,
they were happy who felt and knew that the sacred ashes of their loved
had been covered by the beautiful snow, and the valley was their grave.
The stream could sound their requiem; the lake could moan its lament,
and every wave might be supposed to carry a portion of their precious
forms to distant shores; but God alone could gather the elements, and
fashion it for the future love. Nothing but the sacred urn of earth,
which contains all that is mortal of the human race--nothing but this,
is the depository of those loved forms which were once so full of life;
but everything in nature becomes the more precious to the longing
heart. Unseen fingers shall weave their garments in the spring, and the
songs shall burst forth from those forest hills, but the better land
contains their spirits, and to that, the living must go to claim their
own.
[Illustration: THE NEW BRIDGE, WITH TEMPORARY UNDERPINNING.
[From a Photograph by Kitzsteiner & Greene, Cleveland.]]