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114 through the densely populated tenement-house district like the rush of a prairie fire, and at once there arose in a babel of many tongues the universal cry: "To the bridges; to the bridges!" And to the bridges they swept, men, women, and children, Jew, Italian, Greek, and Russian, bearded rabbi and toddling child, in a wild stampede to put the river between themselves and the bursting shells. Eastward to the bridges they surged, half a million strong; the mob becoming denser as it converged on the various approaches.

Overwhelmed by that human flood, vehicular traffic stopped. Roadways and footways, subway tracks and trolley tracks, all were submerged. The Manhattan Bridge, among others, in spite of its width of 120 feet, was packed from rail to rail with the fleeing host, and when the crush was at its worst the inevitable happened. Somewhere a fugitive slipped, a foot