EARTHQUAKE VICTIMS

 

"We are not Mary and Dee. We are friends who wish to find friends on earth."

'Is Mary there?'

"Not now: but she is willing that we should write. When she comes she will tell you that she has given us permission."

Mary, our leader on that side, usually guards the writing very carefully to prevent undeveloped or malicious spirits from bothering.

"We wish to know if any one has survived the great catastrophe which brought us over?"

Sis had been reading about recent mine disasters in the papers, and naturally this was in her mind. But the pencil went on, quite away from that thought:—

"We were killed in the earthquake in Japan, and so many came, we wonder if any were left?"

'Were you Japanese?'

"We were Americans, resident in Yokohama. We came as suddenly as if shot out of a cannon. I cannot describe the awfulness. We were not the first to come, and so had the terror, the horrible scenes of prevailing death, before we ourselves were killed."

'How were you killed?'

"Falling walls, opening ground, and tidal waves all seemed to combine for the one unendurable moment in which we found our destruction. Then all was blank, all silence—knowledge faded— fear departed—leaving a sense of deep and quiet rest."

(This seems to us to give in a few words a wonderful picture of the moment of death.)

'Do you know the response the United States made for help?' And Sis related some of the things that were done.

"That is like the U. S. A., all one way or all the other! Will they now be at peace with Japan, I mean in the true sense of neighborliness?"

'I am afraid the old color prejudice is too strong.'