Over the entrance of what was once the Iroquois Theater, hangs a head, which the sculptor probably intended for the Goddess of Music. As I gaze upon the head its outlines become first blurred and then transformed. A Death’s head stands out in bold relief! The noble image of the Indian Chieftain that was once there, has been consigned to the Limbo of the Forgotten—to the Valley of Dead Lumber. The Death’s head grins and grins—grins sardonically. One can almost hear a chuckle, as the horrid thing looks down upon the heedless, hurrying crowd in the busy street. Seeing the thing above the door as I passed by in the midst of the throng to-day, I wondered why it grinned,—why it did not weep. Did it grin because it knew how soulless were the human things that inspired the hand which carved it; because it and the men who placed it there were of the same brotherhood of ghouls; because it felt that it was a grim satire upon humanity? Have men whose hearts are adamant, whose souls are sordid, the right to stamp their own shamelessness upon a helpless block of stone; the right to hang it where it must perforce reflect their own cold, calculating, emotion defying inner consciousness upon the man in the street?

Beneath the grinning head, and flanking it below on either side, are impudently assertive, glaring legends that proclaim in lurid blatant type—“The Iroquois is no more.” The new temple of Thespis which, Phoenix like, has risen from the ashes of the old, is a “Music Hall.”

More harshly grating than all is the legend which announces that the new place of amusement will open to-night. Thus have insensate paint, paper and ink become accessories to a crime.

Yes, to-night the theater re-opens. “Refined Vaudeville” with a “Galaxy of Stars,” the bill boards say. And as the players caper about and sing, dance and perpetrate their quips and jokes, will they not see? They will gaze out upon the audience that applauds, and how can they fail to see the wraiths of that other audience? They will all be there, those ghostly ones. Sitting bolt upright where they died, piled row upon row in the aisles, massed in bewildering tangles at the doors—those delusive doors that would not open—they will all be there. And will they applaud, think you?

In this commercial age there is little room for sentiment. A people that will permit the fair face of Nature to be disfigured by the painter of patent medicine ads; that will gaze calmly upon a pictured ham or the announcement of the birth of a new “liver-pad” on the Palisades; that will tolerate on our boulevards flaming advertisements of the latest thing in corsets or “union suits,” is not likely to protest against a Death’s head that merely grins over the gate of a charnel house. And yet the people know. They have read of the awful things that lie behind that awful grin. Many of them have suffered, still more have seen. A few, a very few, go by on the other side of the street with suffused eyes averted, and great sobs of agony welling up in their throats.

“An’ I should live a thousand years,” I could not forget. Many horrible sights had I seen; much suffering had I witnessed; the faces of the dead had long since ceased to be a novelty to me and were no longer awesome;—I fancied I had grown callous. But that awful fire! Would that I could blunt the memory of it. Would that I might shelve it as but another experience in the land of Work-a-day.

As I looked upon the Death’s head, it seemed to single me out from the crowd, leering at me triumphantly. Did it note my emotion and gloat over it?

I raged inwardly and was tempted to—But, had I seized a paving stone and smashed that vile image to bits, I could not have made them understand. Least of all could I have compelled the understanding of that huge policeman, who stood idly by, swinging his club in a way that suggested danger to sentimental cranks. When that team of horses swung around the corner, narrowly missing a woman who, bundles in arms and children at her side, was frantically trying to cross the street, the officer was gazing at a figure of Gambrinus in the saloon window across the way. He had appetites, but no sentiment, that man in blue.

Standing there in the street, jostled and elbowed by the surging crowd that had no time for dreaming, there rose before me a picture which the Death’s head also saw;—its expression showed that. When on that fateful afternoon the call came for physicians to succor the hapless victims of that pitiless massacre of the innocents, there was no hesitancy upon the part of all who were within call. They hastened to respond, and stood not upon the order of their going. Humanity cried for aid—that was enough. When I arrived at the scene, only a few moments after the occurrence of the frightful disaster, the firemen had just forced their way into the foyer. The air within had begun to be barely breathable. Noticing several firemen groping their way up one of the marble stairways, I followed them. The air was so full of pungent smoke that objects were with great difficulty to be made out. At the top of the stairs, on the landing just outside the only door that was open in the front of the theater, the firemen met with an obstruction—a solid, monstrous cube of human bodies, as high as one could reach. This ghastly mass of bodies was free upon two sides—at the upper steps of the main stair and at the top of several steps leading to a main balcony within the foyer. On the other side the mass was hemmed in by the wall of the stairway. Behind it were piled the bodies of other human beings who had tried to climb over those in front and had failed. These last extended from the choked up door almost to the lower balcony rail within the theater. There was another door, but this was closed tight, and staunchly held by a strong lock and a heavy something behind it.

Seeing this wall of bodies I stopped short;—I confess it. The awful shock of it all came over me. For a moment I felt my knees give way beneath me. I grew faint and sick,—and then started back the way I had come. Half way down the stairs I stopped, and pulling myself together went back to duty. And then I stayed, like a soldier who runs away at the first volley of shot, but comes back and fights to the end.

The firemen were pulling at the mass of bodies, vainly trying to dislodge them. Several of the men climbed on top of the awful pile and tried to disentangle the bodies, bruising and crushing the while the upturned faces and helpless limbs with their cruel boots.

Alas! The mass of bodies was not to be untangled until too late, far too late. And yet, the pile was free upon two sides, and it looked easy enough to extricate those who were there. And so we tugged, and strained, and pulled, and pried at them. “My God!” I thought. “If we can only break the dead-lock and get them started!”

“Break the dead-lock?” Well, perhaps we might have done so if we had worked longer and more systematically. But the firemen said, “It’s no use.”

A big policeman who stood idly by, too dignified to help in the work of rescue, said to me, “Gwan out o’ that!”

“But,” I answered, “I’m a doctor. Some of these people must be alive. I can’t go away without trying to get a body out. If I get only one out we may break the lock.”

And again he said, “Gwan out o’ that, or I’ll—” and he brandished his club menacingly.

And so I went “out o’ that.” I climbed over the bannister and on to the balcony and attacked the bodies from the other side, unnoticed by the officer and free from interference by the firemen, who had all gone, save two or three whose feet were still grinding and crushing the inanimate forms on the top of the pile.

Again I tugged and pulled at the bodies, this time with better success. Down in one corner of the mass, protected somewhat by the marble pillar forming the arch which connected the landing with the balcony, lay a little boy of perhaps ten years of age. I drew him out quite easily. He still breathed. Next to him lay the body of a grey haired woman. Her face was gashed across by a blow from the boot of some one caught in the death struggles of that pile. As I dragged her body from beneath the towering mass of death, an opera glass, innocent accessory to murder, fell from her nerveless hand and clattered upon the marble floor of the balcony. She, too, was alive.

Curiosity seekers had by this time entered the building. I impressed several of them into service, and between us we carried the bodies of the old woman and the boy down the stair by which they had climbed to their deaths, to the street, and into the restaurant next-door, which was rapidly becoming transformed into a morgue and hospital emergency ward. Leaving the poor creatures to the care of some of my brother physicians, I rushed back to that pile of bodies—to again attempt to break that awful dead-lock.

As I re-entered the door of the theater I heard a man wildly expostulating with several policemen. He madly insisted on entering, and they as strenuously refused to allow him to do so. His voice seemed familiar, and I turned to look. He sprang past the opposing arms of the officers, grasped me by the shoulders and cried, “My God! man, can’t you help me? My daughters are in there somewhere!” He was one of my oldest and dearest friends. I had watched his children grow up from babyhood to childhood, from childhood to womanhood and loved them.

“Surely,” I said, “you are mistaken.”

“No, no, I am sure!” he cried, in agony. “Help me to find them, oh, help me to find them!”

“Come with me,” I replied, as I sprang up the stairs. Pointing to the pile of bodies on the landing, I said, “If they were in the theater at all, let us hope that they have either escaped or are here in this pile. Help me, Harry, let us try to get these bodies free.”

Imprisoned in the mass of bodies, hanging several feet above the floor, caught only by the lower limbs, with the head, trunk and arms perfectly free, was the body of a powerful man. Surely this one could be removed. My friend, one of the strongest men I know, assisted me, and we pulled at the body until—well, until my poor friend weakened and fled. And then two other sturdy men came to my aid, and we tugged at the body until a policeman drove us away. And my dear friend’s children were in that heap of dead all the while!

Not until the theater proper was entered, and the bodies that were heaped up behind them removed, did it become possible to remove the dead upon the landing. Oh, the pity of it! There they lay, apparently outside the zone of danger and death. And the hands that would fain have saved them were impotent. Untangle them? Think of a lot of huge angle-worms massed together; give those angle-worms legs and arms to twist and intertwine, hands to grip in the death throes, and heads to interlock, and you may understand. And yet, perhaps not,—I myself could not understand, nor believe, had I not seen.

Looking back upon that awful scene of desolation I can find but one crumb of comfort—only one consolation. At the time I felt that many in that pile of human forms must surely be alive and could be saved, if only they could be extricated. Oh, the horror of the idea! It overwhelmed me then. But now as my mind reverts to that scene of death, I am sure that very few could have been alive, surer still that none were conscious. I recall that not a sound came from those lost ones. Not a cry for help, not a moan of distress, not even a sigh to indicate that life was still there. Oh, the awful stillness of it all! The stillness of the dead lying on the dripping slabs of a morgue. The stillness of the subjects lying upon the tables of the dissecting room. Even the man whose trunk and head were free gave forth no sound. He was caught only up to his hips. Had he been alive, surely he would have made some sign. He was not crushed, save perhaps as to his lower limbs, and that could not have been mortal. The weight of bodies does not crush limbs as does machinery. No, he certainly must have been dead.

And why did all these people fall upon the landing? Of what did they die?

Plunging in the dark, pell mell through that one narrow door, the poor creatures stumbled down several steps that led from the door to the landing. Cunningly devised trap this—wise architect that designed it. Those who went down, rose not again. They lay crushed by the weight of the tangled up scores of other hapless ones who followed after. A small part of the crowd, those who were not caught in the tangle, flowed, as it were, over the top. A few, just a very few, thus escaped.

As the helpless creatures lay there in that fearful jam, at the only available exit in the front of the house, the smoke, and flame, and noxious gases were drawn irresistibly to that same door. They too, sought an exit at the front, and found only that death trap. The draught must have been fierce, the flames like a breath from hell. While the still breathing, palpitating mass of crushed and bruised humanity lay there imprisoned, the smoke and gases were sucked through the door into the foyer, diffusing themselves through the writhing human hecatomb, and giving those not yet dead a painless coup de grace. How soon it must have been over! How useless the emotions that shook my very soul as I gazed upon the slaughtered ones. And how solacing the conclusions with which calm retrospection has replaced the horrible immediate impressions of the scene itself.

Merciful indeed, the smoke and those noxious gases, especially for those luckless ones who lay on the top of the pile of victims. These were scorched and burned—not badly, but enough to show that with the death-dealing smoke and gases the flames came also. A fearful gust or two—perhaps only one, and the work was done.

And the scene at the open door of death was but a fragment of the frightful holocaust. Death’s barbecue lay behind that heap of bodies. Towering up behind that other front door which would not open, were scores of blackened bodies, some burned and distorted out of all semblance to their living form. Still others sat upright where Death had surprised them. They died in their seats without resistance, overcome doubtless, by the deadly gases.

There, standing erect, like soldiers, packed like sardines, on a stair case behind a locked iron gate, was row on row of dead, who had lost their lives trying to escape from the gallery to join the panic-stricken ones in the lower balcony. Hopeless effort—what matter where they died? As well meet death face to face, there upon that inner stair behind that merciless trap gate, as in that pile upon the landing—perhaps better, who knows?

Over yonder is an “exit,” one of many similar delusions. This one leads into a blind hallway. Here again, stand the dead bodies of unfortunate beings who died fighting for life against invincible odds.

Scattered about in the aisles between the balcony rail and the death trap “exits”—oh, the mockery of the word!—lay bodies burned to a cinder. Among them lay the body of a noble youth, the son of one of my friends, whose life was so full of promise, so replete with possible future usefulness, so suggestive of future greatness even, that I do not wonder the father was crushed to the earth. I loved the lad, and if, deep down, my friend’s grief were tinged with resentment against the ordering of things, I could understand and sympathize.

What foolishness have I attempted here? Describe that scene within the Iroquois? Never was quill wrought, that could do the subject justice! Do you, those curious ones, who idly stood in crowds about the building, watching the poor victims who sprang from the windows in the upper galleries or attempted to pass on a frail ladder to the building across the alley, only to be hurled to the ground and mangled to death or permanent disability, think you could picture it? If so, your storm centers of emotion have no more potential energy than a babbling brook—no more dynamic capacity than the breeze that ripples a mill pond. Do you, my friend, who stood with gaping mouth, watching the charred, blackened forms brought forth from the maw of hell by the firemen, think you could depict the fearful sight? If so, I can only say: “You did not see.”

Within the restaurant, the doctors worked like beavers. They did not always work systematically—that was impossible, in that confused mass of people. Confusion? Ye Gods! Was there ever such another scene? Distracted friends and relatives in search of their loved ones, nurses, doctors, firemen, policemen, and others who were trying to lend a helping hand, all contributed to the seething crowd of excited humanity that packed the place. Then there were the vulgar, bestial ones who stood and gaped sensually at the nudity of the fire victims who were being partially stripped by the doctors in their efforts to save. Yes, such were there, and they were numerous enough to make one blush for humanity. These cursed blots upon the face of nature, these moral monstrosities, and the other morbidly curious beings were alike obstructive. The first might not be killed without process of law, and there was so much to do that time could not be spared to throw the latter out upon the street. Once I very nearly forgot my surroundings. I asked a man who stood near to help me lift some dead bodies from a table to the floor, to make room for others in which there might still be life. He refused and moved away, saying, “You can do your own dirty work.” It was then I so nearly forgot, and said sundry sulphurous things. Had there been time, perhaps I should have entirely forgotten. But I fancy the cur was frightened, for after our brief and forceful interview he started for the door and I did not see him again.

Meanwhile, in the midst of the closely packed throng the stalwart firemen and policemen pushed their way as best they could, bearing the bodies of the dead. The work of rescue was going on very slowly. Even the doctors were not using their skill to the best advantage. In some instances a veritable throng of them were working, or attempting to work, simultaneously upon one body. A clear headed layman grasped the situation and, with the assistance of some of the physicians, evolved order out of chaos. Three doctors were assigned to each table; the police cleared out many of the drones in the crowd, and things began to move more swiftly. The police in general did excellent work. A glaring exception was a certain well-known captain. Noticing his insignia of office, I asked him to clear away the people who were obstructing the passage of the men who were carrying in the bodies. He replied, “I’ve got no time for you. Hunt up the man who has charge of the police detail.” And then the heartless brute went on gaping and getting in the way along with the rest of the morbidly curious.

I wonder if many realize what it means to see dead bodies so numerous that they might be estimated by the cord. Those who do, may perhaps picture to themselves the harrowing scenes about those tables where the physicians worked. As soon as a body was pronounced dead, it was hurriedly laid aside to make room for a possibly hopeful case. Cases in which resuscitation was accomplished were carried to the waiting ambulances and taken to the hospitals. But, alas! these cases were few.

The bodies were brought to us in a seemingly endless stream. As body after body was pronounced lifeless and laid aside, the piles of dead upon the tables grew higher and higher, grew until, as I have said, they could only be compared to piles of cord wood.

And what a difference in those bodies! Some were so seared, so blistered and blackened from the fire and smoke, that in the handling of them the skin, and even the flesh, came off in one’s hands in great shreds and rolls. A far greater number were so free from mar or discoloration, and their faces were so calm and peaceful that it was hard to believe them dead. Indeed, it was difficult to believe even that animation was suspended. They apparently had just fallen asleep.

And these last were to me the most awful sight of all. The others—well, they were better dead than living disfigured and maimed, and besides, there had at no time been hope for them. But these, ah, these! If only they had not lain so long. A little stimulant for the heart, a few compressions and relaxations of the chest, and the life giving oxygen would have entered their lungs and blood. They would have been saved.

What pathetic incidents there were in that restaurant.

A doctor friend of mine, a big hearted, broad shouldered Nature’s nobleman, was pushing his way here and there through the crowd. I noted him towering above those about him as he jostled the people about, and called to him, “Will you take a table?” But he did not answer. He did not seem to see or hear. He went on through the crowd from table to table and finally disappeared. I marvelled then, for I did not know. Poor fellow, his two daughters, beautiful young women, had gone to the Iroquois that day. He was looking, and looking,—for that which was bound to crush him, and hoping,—ah! hoping against hope, as the sequence proved. His light had gone out—and it has stayed out.

And I have just an inkling of what it all meant to the bereaved ones. I had not yet had time to ascertain whether my own wife and children had chanced to go to the Iroquois that afternoon. I recalled however, that I had taken them to see the same play a few days before, and concluded that they were not likely to attend it again soon, but still—

The horrible doubt had just begun to befog my mind, when a new subject was laid upon the table where I was working. It was the body of a young girl. As I took the first hasty glance at this latest unfortunate, I was almost stunned. The resemblance to my younger daughter was so startling that I was all but sure it was she. It was but a fleeting moment before I knew, but that ephemeral space of time was enough. And then I understood, oh, so well.

“A father’s heart should not be deceived, even for a moment,” I fancy I hear some one say. Perhaps not, yet there was one unhappy man in that frantic throng of those who were seeking their beloved ones, whom I beheld, thrice in succession, identifying a strange child as his own. And that father had a heart of hearts, as I have occasion to know.

Lying beneath one of the tables lay the body of a beautiful little girl of about twelve years of age. Fair was she, with golden hair and cheeks still red. A doctor saw her lying there and paused, wondering to himself whether his brethren had worked quite long enough. She surely did not look as if she were dead.

As the doctor stood wondering thus, a group of young lads approached him from the other side of the table. One of them cried appealingly:

“Oh, doctor, won’t you please try once more to save that little girl. We know her, and know her folks, and it will kill them if she dies.” Another physician who was passing by, overhearing said, “No use, old man. We worked over her for forty minutes before we gave her up,” and he hurried on to another table.

“Oh, but doctor,” said one of the boys appealingly, “I just saw her eyes quiver.”

“Yes,” said another, “and one of her fingers just moved.”

“Dear, optimistic little liars,” said the doctor afterward, “I just couldn’t stand it. I pulled the body off the pile on which it lay, put it on the table, and worked like a horse over it for thirty minutes. And when the poor little chest made a few pitifully gasping sounds under my efforts, the expression of joy and hope on the faces of those lads was wonderful to see.

“And when through sheer fatigue I at last gave up the self imposed task that I knew was hopeless at the beginning, one of the boys approached me and tearfully whispered, ‘Please, doctor, won’t you tell me your name? We want to see that you get paid for trying to save our little friend. You did just the best you could.’

“And,” said the doctor, “I couldn’t answer him as I would have done had he been grown up. The poor boy would not have understood. I just choked up and sputtered, ‘See you again, by and by, my boy, I’m in a hurry now.’

“Just think,” concluded the doctor, “here was a rara avis—a dead person’s friend who thought a doctor should be rewarded for doing the best he could.”

And when I heard the story I said, “Old fellow, that boy’s sentiments were awfully out of place, but who shall say that they were out of tune?”

There are many book-made heroes, but few of real flesh and blood. There was one among the injured ones who were brought in unconscious and laid upon the tables at that restaurant. He was a boy of some twelve or fourteen years of age. He remained unconscious for fully half an hour. Just as the doctors were about to give him up as hopeless, he began to revive, and was soon out of danger. Several policemen approached him.

“What’s your name, sonny?” asked one of the officers.

“I won’t tell you my name,” replied the boy.

“Yes, but you must tell me your name.”

“But I won’t do it, so there now,” and the boy set his teeth defiantly.

Curious to know why the boy objected to telling who he was, I motioned the officers aside and asked quietly,

“Why don’t you give the policemen your name, my boy?”

“’Cause,” replied the boy, “if I do, my pa and my ma’ll hear about my bein’ hurt an’ it’ll scare ’em most to death.”

And the boy would not be cajoled until I told him the only way to prevent shock to his parents was to notify them that he was safe. He grasped the situation and smiled happily as he gave his name and started for the ambulance.

Ah, Jimmy Kerwin, you are a thoroughbred, if ever there was one.

But why recall all the details of that frightful disaster—the most awful experience I have ever met with. Have I not told enough to justify the indignation that filled me when I saw the Death’s head and read those heartless legends?

The new Music Hall opened last evening as per schedule. I was not surprised to read in the papers this morning that the opening night was a brilliant success. Every seat was sold. The audience was as enthusiastic as it was large. This was well—a smaller audience would not have been a fitting crown to Chicago’s shame and humanity’s disgrace. Humanity has glossed itself over with a veneer of what it pleases to term civilization, but primitive man peeps out from beneath its edges and obtrudes itself whenever and wherever the veneer is cracked ever so little. And so, a large audience was to have been expected. The managers of the place well knew human nature.

The applause of that audience was the apotheosis of poor old Rip Van Winkle’s lament, “How soon we are forgot.” Things inanimate revolted at the sight and sound of it. A drop curtain caught, precisely as that cheap, flimsy asbestos fraud did on that memorable day at the Iroquois. And then the insensate human things remembered—remembered that they were not fire proof. They remembered, not the dead, but that other caught curtain, the flame, the gas, the trampling, crushing, tearing rush of madmen fighting for life, and the farcical exits. They remembered themselves only, and were startled, affrighted, ripe for a panic for a moment, and then—they laughed again!

Human beings seeking gay diversion in a crypt of death, splitting the air of a charnel house with vociferous applause, startling the ghosts that people the place by boisterous laughter—faugh!

The performance over, the callous ones filed slowly out of the hall, chatting like magpies and discussing the merits of the various features of the performance. They traversed the same road over which the ghastly forms of that other audience were carried. And as the pleasure seekers gaily tripped along, they passed between and over scores and scores of recumbent ghosts. Had the forms of these poor wraiths been more substantial there would have been brushings against them, stumblings over them.

Over the door the Death’s head still grinned. Chicago’s shame was complete. Her burnt offerings on the altar of Mammon were forgotten.