This sorrow was continued. Day after day brought new scenes. Each train brought in new groups of friends. All were moved by a common feeling, but their sorrow was visible. In that dreadful morgue there were scenes which can never be described; God only knows what agony was in the hearts of many. The sorrowing company trooped in and out, and varied every hour; men and women, fathers and mothers, brothers and sisters, husbands and wives, and even the children of the lost. Some already were dressed in mourning. Others had come in haste and stopped for nothing. The friends of the deceased from different places would meet at this spot drawn together from a distance by the common bereavement. Different circles had been bereft by each one of those who had so suddenly died. Often two or three would come looking for the same person. A different state of feeling concentrated at each separate spot. The morgue, the office, and the wreck, all had their circles and their scenes. Citizens and friends as they came, visited each in succession. The search for relics on the ice; the search for bodies in the morgue; and the sending of messages in the busy office, brought different feelings to those sensitive hearts. There was a language in each place which spoke more than words.
In the hotels at the upper town, there were also many exciting scenes. As the friends gathered from near and far, they passed from place to place, watching for some trace of the lost. Some became so overwhelmed by the great calamity that they were obliged to go home, and send others who were less afflicted to continue the search. Fathers were almost crushed by the fearful blow, and went in and out of the gloomy morgue and upon the cheerless ice, and into the busy depot, sick at heart, and depressed, and would return to their hotels, weary with the search, and lonely amid the throngs, for the sons or daughters on whom they doted, had gone forever. A young man came alone, and sought his mother for four long and weary days, but could find no trace. Each night he returned to the hotel with every lineament of his face expressive of the grief which was in his heart, and would sit down among the throngs of strangers, desolate and bereaved.