| Notes |
May 6, 1907
We are all in a terrible turmoil here as yet, and are trying to feel around and discover approximately where we are at. No description that you may have read in the papers can at all equal the days and nights of horror that we have passed through as we fought to save the poor remnnt of our home that survives. The recollection of the time from Wednesday to Saturday that we passed among earthquake shocks, conflagrations, falling walls, dynamite explosions and rifle shots – for many a battle was fought in the blazing streets and the bodies thrown into the flames – will remain with me until the day I die – and after. The relief furnished us by the country has been most ample and adequate – without it we would have simply starved – for had one had a million dollars in his pocket he could have bought nothing, for there was nothing to buy. So we all took to the breadline and mighty glad to get into it. Now coms the hardest time, the fitting oneself, sanely, to the changed conditions. Personally, the fire went through me in great shape. It destroyed the Merchants' Exchange Building where our offices were located and everything went with it. We did not save a single paper, deed, note or anything else, either of our own or those intrusted to us by cients. The Exchange being 'earthquake and fire-proof,' we carried no insurance like the other tenants. Later in the day my house burned. We saved a gripful of foolish things there and the rest of it went. Thank God, however, my wife and boy were unharmed and are now safely at the farm in the Santa Clara Valley, some 45 miles from here. Apropos of that to show you the conditions that prevailed on the day after the shake, when Mrs. Barnes started for the country it took her twenty-five hours to make the trip we make in ordinary times, in an hour and a half. I write this of myself because you asked me to and at the risk of being a bore. I have not seen any of our fellows isnce the 'troubles' but you may rest assured that they are all right physically, for the lists of killed wounded and missing are now complete and no man of ours is among them. I greatly fear I shall be deprived of the pleasure and privilege of coming to our 20th, for with me, as with so many others, the 18th of April swept away the fruits, such as they were, of twenty years of hard work, and I have to begin again. But we are unterrified and hopeful and will cut our coats according to our cloth. On the day before I had written a letter to Gordon Woodbury at Mancester, telling him that I was coming on and was looking forward so much to seeing the boys. Well, man proposes and something else disposes. Nevertheless, my dear fellow, I trust that you will give the class an affectionate greeting from me. If thre is one fine, big drink to be got in this one busted town on the day and hour of our dinner, I will connect with it and drink your health, collectively and separately." [10]
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1864 - Bef 1910 (45 years)
[1, 2, 3] 
