Humanizing Effects of the Hurricane
SUCH disasters as the hurricane always bring to the surface the very best in mankind, and I wonder if this manifestation of universal brotherhood is not a part of the divine order.
I had lived in the northwest section of Miami, at Sixth Avenue and 43rd Street, since April and had not become acquainted with my neighbors until the hurricane huddled us together.
When I awoke at dawn of Friday, September 17, 1926, it was with a feeling akin to suffocation. Great beads of perspiration had exuded upon my brow and I felt a clammy sickness. I went into the kitchen to brew my morning coffee. Soon appeared Catherine Kelly, our faithful housekeeper, who had come to us from Chicago two years ago.
"Catherine," said I, "have you ever seen a hurricane?"
She replied in the negative.
"Then you are soon to see one, for this certainly is hurricane weather, " said I.
My words were prophetic, though at the time I had no sense of divination. My body was my barometer. All during the day I suf fered physical and mental depression. In the afternoon the newspapers carried storm warnings, and unusually early the streets were crowded with motor cars scurrying homeward.
One of my office associates had offered to take me home Thursday afternoon and as we rode toward the bay on Northeast Second street I invoked his attention to the unusual beauty of the sky and landscape—the olive green of the trees and foliage outlined against the boiling gold of the firmament, with the sullen grey and green of the bayshore and waters between. There was a tense quiet over everything; not a leaf stirred and all sounds seemed strangely near. These things, I had learned, are omens of a hurricane.
Upon my arrival at home Friday afternoon I informed my wife of the impending storm and at once she suggested that we move the children's beds in from the back sleeping porch. I opposed the idea because it seemed needless to take such a precaution until the evidence of its necessity became more urgently apparent; nevertheless when bedtime came we put two of the children, who usually slept on the porch, in my wife's bed and I took the third in bed with me o
