THE LESSONS OF GALVESTON 383 



one of the few great forces of nature to which human ingenuity and 

 strength must bow.* 



These physical lessons are hard — but they are needful. 



There is a fourth lesson, which is human ; and it is soft and pleas- 

 ant and promising as the physicial lessons are cruel and gloom3^ 

 When the stricken city critd out in anguish, her appeal was met as 

 was no other appeal in history ; within a few hours fifty million 

 hearts were touched, and five million fellow-citizens either sent, or 

 sought for means of seniling, sympathy enriched by substance. 

 Evidences of the perfect solidarity of a nation united by the en- 

 during bonds of liberty and equality were not wanting before; 

 but it remained for the city of Galveston, the State of Texas, and 

 the first Republic of America to produce the world's brightest ex- 

 ample of charity growing out of the community of citizenship. Nor 

 was the wave of sympathy broken at our shores ; within a few hours 

 more, messages from the leading nations of the earth proved that 

 the appeal had echoed around the globe, and demonstrated the 

 solidarit}^ of nations and the unity of all mankind in a manner un- 

 precedented in history. Galveston taught the costly but profitable 

 lesson that the city no longer lives unto itself, like Memphis and 

 Athens and Rome of old, but forms an integral part of a nation; 

 that its successes and failures, and the consequences of its wisdom 

 or folly, fall not alone on its own citizens but are shared by millions 

 of men ; and that, just as every city is entitled to appeal for sympa- 

 thy, so it is morally bound to guard against disasters which wring 

 the heart of a nation. 



The makers of Galveston erred in building their houses on the 

 sands, in planting their city within reach of the waves, in domicil- 

 ing their hel})less ones on a sinking coast; they have been forgiven 

 their error, more fully and freely than ever were citj^-makers before; 

 but it behooves them to remember, as they turn toward the future, 

 that charity should not be strained, and that their fellow-citizens 

 have the right to be spared the shock of the inevitable disaster which 

 would follow rebuilding on their devastated sand-bank. 



*Tlif! siihsidfMici- ijf our coastH has been treato<I more fully elsewhere. Cf. "The (iulf of 

 Mexieo as a Measure of Isostasy " (Amerioan .Journal of .Seienee, vol. .\liv, 1802, pp. 177-l!i2) ; 

 " Kneroachinents of the Sea" (Forum for .Inne, ISiHi, p[). •t:{7-44!t) ; ami •'The Lafayette for- 

 mation" (Twelfth Ann. Kept. U. S. Gool. Survey, pp. Ml-:vl\). 



