1906] The Earthquake at Stanford 



their singing, and the face of Nature, brazen with 

 spring, seemed absolutely to deny the catastrophe. 



The temblor over, Knight, who had been sleeping 

 on the roof each night for a week, came down and 

 reported that the University was "gone bum/' 

 Clinging to a wabbling balustrade around his high 

 perch, he had witnessed much of the destruction 

 the fall of the beautiful Church tower with its graceful 

 flying buttresses, the collapse of the Memorial Arch, 

 the stones of which flew in every direction "like water 

 from a fountain," and the crumbling of the great un- 

 finished library and almost-completed gymnasium, 

 which (having no adequate support of steel) went 

 down like a house of cards. This was staggering 

 news. The whole lower floor of our home was an Chaos in 

 indescribable wreck furniture, books, pictures, and thf home 

 vases thrown down and mingled with great heaps of 

 plaster, the piano standing rakishly in the middle of 

 the room over the now wingless Victory, the four 

 grates opening into the cellar like yawning gulfs 

 but up to the moment of the boy's announcement it 

 had not occurred to either my wife or me that stone 

 buildings could have seriously suffered. 



Full of apprehension, I hurried as quickly as possi- 

 ble to the University. The Inner Quadrangle and 

 Encina Hall, the former of a single story, the latter 

 having all its angles strengthened within by vertical 

 bars of railroad iron, 1 and both built of massive 

 blocks cemented together, showed comparatively 

 little damage. Yet the two high stone chimneys on Damage at 

 the Hall were each thrown down, one of them com- 

 pletely demolishing the six rooms below and carrying 

 twelve lads in a pile of stratified rubbish to the base- 



1 The solidest form of structure then known. 



1:169:1 



