When I departed from Harvard for Stanford University last December,
almost the last good-by I got was that of my old Californian friend B:
"I hope they'll give you a touch of earthquake while you 're there, so
that you may also become acquainted with that Californian institution."
Accordingly, when, lying awake at about half past five on the morning
of April 18 in my little "flat" on the campus of Stanford, I felt the
bed begin to waggle, my first consciousness was one of gleeful
recognition of the nature of the movement. "By Jove," I said to
myself, "here's B'ssold [Transcriber's note: 'B's old'?] earthquake,
after all!" And then, as it went _crescendo_. "And a jolly good one
it is, too!" I said.
Sitting up involuntarily, and taking a kneeling position, I was thrown
down on my face as it went _fortior_ shaking the room exactly as a
terrier shakes a rat. Then everything that was on anything else slid
off to the floor, over went bureau and chiffonier with a crash, as the
_fortissimo_ was reached; plaster cracked, an awful roaring noise
seemed to fill the outer air, and in an instant all was still again,
save the soft babble of human voices from far and near that soon began
to make itself heard, as the inhabitants in costumes _negligés_ in
various degrees sought the greater safety of the street and yielded to
the passionate desire for sympathetic communication.
The thing was over, as I understand the Lick Observatory to have
declared, in forty-eight seconds. To me it felt as if about that
length of time, although I have heard others say that it seemed to them
longer. In my case, sensation and emotion were so strong that little
thought, and no reflection or volition, were possible in the short time
consumed by the phenomenon.
The emotion consisted wholly of glee and admiration; glee at the
vividness which such an abstract idea or verbal term as "earthquake"
could put on when translated into sensible reality and verified
concretely; and admiration at the way in which the frail little wooden
house could hold itself together in spite of such a shaking. I felt no
trace whatever of fear; it was pure delight and welcome.
"_Go_ it," I almost cried aloud, "and go it _stronger_!"
I ran into my wife's room, and found that she, although awakened from
sound sleep, had felt no fear, either. Of all the persons whom I later
interrogated, very few had felt any fear while the shaking lasted,
although many had had a "turn," as they realized their narrow escapes
from bookcases or bricks from chimney-breasts falling on their beds and
pillows an instant after they had left them.
As soon as I could think, I discerned retrospectively certain peculiar
ways in which my consciousness had taken in the phenomenon. These ways
were quite spontaneous, and, so to speak, inevitable and irresistible.
First, I personified the earthquake as a permanent individual entity.
It was _the_ earthquake of my friend B's augury, which had been lying
low and holding itself back during all the intervening months, in
order, on that lustrous April morning, to invade my room, and energize
the more intensely and triumphantly. It came, moreover, directly to
_me_. It stole in behind my back, and once inside the room, had me all
to itself, and could manifest itself convincingly. Animus and intent
were never more present in any human action, nor did any human activity
ever more definitely point back to a living agent as its source and
origin.
All whom I consulted on the point agreed as to this feature in their
experience. "It expressed intention," "It was vicious," "It was bent
on destruction," "It wanted to show its power," or what not. To me, it
wanted simply to manifest the full meaning of its name. But what was
this "It"? To some, apparently, a vague demonic power; to me an
individualized being, B's earthquake, namely.
One informant interpreted it as the end of the world and the beginning
of the final judgment. This was a lady in a San Francisco hotel, who
did not think of its being an earthquake till after she had got into
the street and some one had explained it to her. She told me that the
theological interpretation had kept fear from her mind, and made her
take the shaking calmly. For "science," when the tensions in the
earth's crust reach the breaking-point, and strata fall into an altered
equilibrium, earthquake is simply the collective _name_ of all the
cracks and shakings and disturbances that happen. They _are_ the
earthquake. But for me _the_ earthquake was the _cause_ of the
disturbances, and the perception of it as a living agent was
irresistible. It had an overpowering dramatic convincingness.
I realize now better than ever how inevitable were men's earlier
mythologic versions of such catastrophes, and how artificial and
against the grain of our spontaneous perceiving are the later habits
into which science educates us. It was simply impossible for untutored
men to take earthquakes into their minds as anything but supernatural
warnings or retributions.
A good instance of the way in which the tremendousness of a catastrophe
may banish fear was given me by a Stanford student. He was in the
fourth story of Encina Hall, an immense stone dormitory building.
Awakened from sleep, he recognized what the disturbance was, and sprang
from the bed, but was thrown off his feet in a moment, while his books
and furniture fell round him. Then with an awful, sinister, grinding
roar, everything gave way, and with chimneys, floor-beams, walls and
all, he descended through the three lower stories of the building into
the basement. "This is my end, this is my death," he felt; but all the
while no trace of fear. The experience was too overwhelming for
anything but passive surrender to it. (Certain heavy chimneys had
fallen in, carrying the whole centre of the building with them.)
Arrived at the bottom, he found himself with rafters and _débris_ round
him, but not pinned in or crushed. He saw daylight, and crept toward
it through the obstacles. Then, realizing that he was in his
nightgown, and feeling no pain anywhere, his first thought was to get
back to his room and find some more presentable clothing. The
stairways at Encina Hall are at the ends of the building. He made his
way to one of them, and went up the four flights, only to find his room
no longer extant. Then he noticed pain in his feet, which had been
injured, and came down the stairs with difficulty. When he talked with
me ten days later he had been in hospital a week, was very thin and
pale, and went on crutches, and was dressed in borrowed clothing.
So much for Stanford, where all our experiences seem to have been very
similar. Nearly all our chimneys went down, some of them
disintegrating from top to bottom; parlor floors were covered with
bricks; plaster strewed the floors; furniture was everywhere upset and
dislocated; but the wooden dwellings sprang back to their original
position, and in house after house not a window stuck or a door scraped
at top or bottom. Wood architecture was triumphant! Everybody was
excited, but the excitement at first, at any rate, seemed to be almost
joyous. Here at last was a _real_ earthquake after so many years of
harmless waggle! Above all, there was an irresistible desire to talk
about it, and exchange experiences.
Most people slept outdoors for several subsequent nights, partly to be
safer in case of recurrence, but also to work off their emotion, and
get the full unusualness out of the experience. The vocal babble of
early-waking girls and boys from the gardens of the campus, mingling
with the birds' songs and the exquisite weather, was for three or four
days delightful sunrise phenomenon.
Now turn to San Francisco, thirty-five miles distant, from which an
automobile ere long brought us the dire news of a city in ruins, with
fires beginning at various points, and the water-supply interrupted. I
was fortunate enough to board the only train of cars--a very small
one--that got up to the city; fortunate enough also to escape in the
evening by the only train that left it. This gave me and my valiant
feminine escort some four hours of observation. My business is with
"subjective" phenomena exclusively; so I will say nothing of the
material ruin that greeted us on every hand--the daily papers and the
weekly journals have done full justice to that topic. By midday, when
we reached the city, the pall of smoke was vast and the dynamite
detonations had begun, but the troops, the police and the firemen
seemed to have established order, dangerous neighborhoods were roped
off everywhere and picketed, saloons closed, vehicles impressed, and
every one at work who _could_ work.
It was indeed a strange sight to see an entire population in the
streets, busy as ants in an uncovered ant-hill scurrying to save their
eggs and larvae. Every horse, and everything on wheels in the city,
from hucksters' wagons to automobiles, was being loaded with what
effects could be scraped together from houses which the advancing
flames were threatening. The sidewalks were covered with well-dressed
men and women, carrying baskets, bundles, valises, or dragging trunks
to spots of greater temporary safety, soon to be dragged farther, as
the fire kept spreading!
In the safer quarters, every doorstep was covered with the dwelling's
tenants, sitting surrounded with their more indispensable chattels, and
ready to flee at a minute's notice. I think every one must have fasted
on that day, for I saw no one eating. There was no appearance of
general dismay, and little of chatter or of inco-ordinated excitement.
Every one seemed doggedly bent on achieving the job which he had set
himself to perform; and the faces, although somewhat tense and set and
grave, were inexpressive of emotion. I noticed only three persons
overcome, two Italian women, very poor, embracing an aged fellow
countrywoman, and all weeping. Physical fatigue and seriousness were
the only inner states that one could read on countenances.
With lights forbidden in the houses, and the streets lighted only by
the conflagration, it was apprehended that the criminals of San
Francisco would hold high carnival on the ensuing night. But whether
they feared the disciplinary methods of the United States troops, who
were visible everywhere, or whether they were themselves solemnized by
the immensity of the disaster, they lay low and did not "manifest,"
either then or subsequently.
The only very discreditable thing to human nature that occurred was
later, when hundreds of lazy "bummers" found that they could keep
camping in the parks, and make alimentary storage-batteries of their
stomachs, even in some cases getting enough of the free rations in
their huts or tents to last them well into the summer. This charm of
pauperized vagabondage seems all along to have been Satan's most
serious bait to human nature. There was theft from the outset, but
confined, I believe, to petty pilfering.
Cash in hand was the only money, and millionaires and their families
were no better off in this respect than any one. Whoever got a vehicle
could have the use of it; but the richest often went without, and spent
the first two nights on rugs on the bare ground, with nothing but what
their own arms had rescued. Fortunately, those nights were dry and
comparatively warm, and Californians are accustomed to camping
conditions in the summer, so suffering from exposure was less great
than it would have been elsewhere. By the fourth night, which was
rainy, tents and huts had brought most campers under cover.
I went through the city again eight days later. The fire was out, and
about a quarter of the area stood unconsumed. Intact skyscrapers
dominated the smoking level majestically and superbly--they and a few
walls that had survived the overthrow. Thus has the courage of our
architects and builders received triumphant vindication!
The inert elements of the population had mostly got away, and those
that remained seemed what Mr. H. G. Wells calls "efficients." Sheds
were already going up as temporary starting-points of business. Every
one looked cheerful, in spite of the awful discontinuity of past and
future, with every familiar association with material things
dissevered; and the discipline and order were practically perfect.
As these notes of mine must be short, I had better turn to my more
generalized reflections.
Two things in retrospect strike me especially, and are the most
emphatic of all my impressions. Both are reassuring as to human nature.
The first of these was the rapidity of the improvisation of order out
of chaos. It is clear that just as in every thousand human beings
there will be statistically so many artists, so many athletes, so many
thinkers, and so many potentially good soldiers, so there will be so
many potential organizers in times of emergency. In point of fact, not
only in the great city, but in the outlying towns, these natural
ordermakers, whether amateurs or officials, came to the front
immediately. There seemed to be no possibility which there was not
some one there to think of, or which within twenty-four hours was not
in some way provided for.
A good illustration is this: Mr. Keith is the great landscape-painter
of the Pacific slope, and his pictures, which are many, are
artistically and pecuniarily precious. Two citizens, lovers of his
work, early in the day diverted their attention from all other
interests, their own private ones included, and made it their duty to
visit every place which they knew to contain a Keith painting. They
cut them from their frames, rolled them up, and in this way got all the
more important ones into a place of safety.
When they then sought Mr. Keith, to convey the joyous news to him, they
found him still in his studio, which was remote from the fire,
beginning a new painting. Having given up his previous work for lost,
he had resolved to lose no time in making what amends he could for the
disaster.
The completeness of organization at Palo Alto, a town of ten thousand
inhabitants close to Stanford University, was almost comical. People
feared exodus on a large scale of the rowdy elements of San Francisco.
In point of tact, very few refugees came to Palo Alto. But within
twenty-four hours, rations, clothing, hospital, quarantine,
disinfection, washing, police, military, quarters in camp and in
houses, printed information, employment, all were provided for under
the care of so many volunteer committees.
Much of this readiness was American, much of it Californian; but I
believe that every country in a similar crisis would have displayed it
in a way to astonish the spectators. Like soldiering, it lies always
latent in human nature.
The second thing that struck me was the universal equanimity. We soon
got letters from the East, ringing with anxiety and pathos; but I now
know fully what I have always believed, that the pathetic way of
feeling great disasters belongs rather to the point of view of people
at a distance than to the immediate victims. I heard not a single
really pathetic or sentimental word in California expressed by any one.
The terms "awful," "dreadful" fell often enough from people's lips, but
always with a sort of abstract meaning, and with a face that seemed to
admire the vastness of the catastrophe as much as it bewailed its
cuttingness. When talk was not directly practical, I might almost say
that it expressed (at any rate in the nine days I was there) a tendency
more toward nervous excitement than toward grief. The hearts concealed
private bitterness enough, no doubt, but the tongues disdained to dwell
on the misfortunes of self, when almost everybody one spoke to had
suffered equally.
Surely the cutting edge of all our usual misfortunes comes from their
character of loneliness. We lose our health, our wife or children die,
our house burns down, or our money is made way with, and the world goes
on rejoicing, leaving us on one side and counting us out from all its
business. In California every one, to some degree, was suffering, and
one's private miseries were merged in the vast general sum of privation
and in the all-absorbing practical problem of general recuperation.
The cheerfulness, or, at any rate, the steadfastness of tone, was
universal. Not a single whine or plaintive word did I hear from the
hundred losers whom I spoke to. Instead of that there was a temper of
helpfulness beyond the counting.
It is easy to glorify this as something characteristically American, or
especially Californian. Californian education has, of course, made the
thought of all possible recuperations easy. In an exhausted country,
with no marginal resources, the outlook on the future would be much
darker. But I like to think that what I write of is a normal and
universal trait of human nature. In our drawing-rooms and offices we
wonder how people ever do go through battles, sieges and shipwrecks.
We quiver and sicken in imagination, and think those heroes superhuman.
Physical pain whether suffered alone or in company, is always more or
less unnerving and intolerable. But mental pathos and anguish, I
fancy, are usually effects of distance. At the place of action, where
all are concerned together, healthy animal insensibility and heartiness
take their place. At San Francisco the need will continue to be awful,
and there will doubtless be a crop of nervous wrecks before the weeks
and months are over, but meanwhile the commonest men, simply because
they _are_ men, will go on, singly and collectively, showing this
admirable fortitude of temper.
[1] At the time of the San Francisco earthquake the author was at
Leland Stanford University nearby. He succeeded in getting into San
Francisco on the morning of the earthquake, and spent the remainder of
the day in the city. These observations appeared in the _Youth's
Companion_ for June 7, 1906.
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