January 11.
Dear Judy:
I hope my two cablegrams didn't give you too terrible a shock. I would
have waited to let the first news come by letter, with a chance for
details, but I was so afraid you might hear it in some indirect way.
The whole thing is dreadful enough, but no lives were lost, and only one
serious accident. We can't help shuddering at the thought of how much
worse it might have been, with over a hundred sleeping children in this
firetrap of a building. That new fire escape was absolutely useless. The
wind was blowing toward it, and the flames simply enveloped it. We saved
them all by the center stairs--but I'll begin at the beginning, and tell
the whole story.
It had rained all day Friday, thanks to a merciful Providence, and the
roofs were thoroughly soaked. Toward night it began to freeze, and the
rain turned to sleet. By ten o'clock, when I went to bed the wind was
blowing a terrible gale from the northwest, and everything loose about
the building was banging and rattling. About two o'clock I suddenly
started wide awake, with a bright light in my eyes. I jumped out of bed
and ran to the window. The carriage house was a mass of flames, and
a shower of sparks was sweeping over our eastern wing. I ran to the
bathroom and leaned out of the window. I could see that the roof over
the nursery was already blazing in half a dozen places.
Well, my dear, my heart just simply didn't beat for as much as a minute.
I thought of those seventeen babies up under that roof, and I couldn't
swallow. I finally managed to get my shaking knees to work again, and I
dashed back to the hall, grabbing my automobile coat as I ran.
I drummed on Betsy's and Miss Matthews' and Miss Snaith's doors, just as
Mr. Witherspoon, who had also been wakened by the light, came tumbling
upstairs three steps at a time, struggling into an overcoat as he ran.
"Get all the children down to the dining room, babies first," I gasped.
"I'll turn in the alarm."
He dashed on up to the third floor while I ran to the telephone--and oh,
I thought I'd never get Central! She was sound asleep.
"The John Grier Home is burning! Turn in the fire alarm and rouse the
village. Give me 505," I said.
In one second I had the doctor. Maybe I wasn't glad to hear his cool,
unexcited voice!
"We're on fire!" I cried. "Come quick, and bring all the men you can!"
"I'll be there in fifteen minutes. Fill the bathtubs with water and put
in blankets." And he hung up.
I dashed back to the hall. Betsy was ringing our fire bell, and Percy
had already routed out his Indian tribes in dormitories B and C.
Our first thought was not to stop the fire, but to get the children to a
place of safety. We began in G, and went from crib to crib, snatching a
baby and a blanket, and rushing them to the door, and handing them out
to the Indians, who lugged them downstairs. Both G and F were full of
smoke, and the children so dead asleep that we couldn't rouse them to a
walking state.
Many times during the next hour did I thank Providence--and Percy
Witherspoon--for those vociferous fire drills we have suffered weekly.
The twenty-four oldest boys, under his direction, never lost their heads
for a second. They divided into four tribes, and sprang to their posts
like little soldiers.
Two tribes helped in the work of clearing the dormitories and keeping
the terrified children in order. One tribe worked the hose from the
cupola tank until the firemen came, and the rest devoted themselves to
salvage. They spread sheets on the floor, dumped the contents of lockers
and bureau drawers into them, and bundled them down the stairs. All of
the extra clothes were saved except those the children had actually been
wearing the day before, and most of the staff's things. But clothes,
bedding--everything belonging to G and F went. The rooms were too full
of smoke to make it safe to enter after we had got out the last child.
By the time the doctor arrived with Luellen and two neighbors he had
picked up, we were marching the last dormitory down to the kitchen, the
most remote corner from the fire. The poor chicks were mainly barefooted
and wrapped in blankets. We told them to bring their clothes when we
wakened them, but in their fright they thought only of getting out.
By this time the halls were so full of smoke we could scarcely breathe.
It looked as though the whole building would go, though the wind was
blowing away from my west wing.
Another automobile full of retainers from Knowltop came up almost
immediately, and they all fell to fighting the fire. The regular fire
department didn't come for ten minutes after that. You see, they have
only horses, and we are three miles out, and the roads pretty bad. It
was a dreadful night, cold and sleety, and such a wind blowing that you
could scarcely stand up. The men climbed out on the roof, and worked in
their stocking feet to keep from slipping off. They beat out the sparks
with wet blankets, and chopped, and squirted that tankful of water, and
behaved like heroes.
The doctor meanwhile took charge of the children. Our first thought was
to get them away to a place of safety, for if the whole building should
go, we couldn't march them out of doors into that awful wind, with only
their night clothes and blankets for protection. By this time several
more automobiles full of men had come, and we requisitioned the cars.
Knowltop had providentially been opened for the week end in order to
entertain a house party in honor of the old gentleman's sixty-seventh
birthday. He was one of the first to arrive, and he put his entire
place at our disposal. It was the nearest refuge, and we accepted it
instantaneously. We bundled our twenty littlest tots into cars, and ran
them down to the house. The guests, who were excitedly dressing in order
to come to the fire, received the chicks and tucked them away into their
own beds. This pretty well filled up all the available house room, but
Mr. Reimer (Mr. Knowltop's family name) has just built a big new stucco
barn, with a garage hitched to it, all nicely heated, and ready for us.
After the babies were disposed of in the house, those helpful guests
got to work and fixed the barn to receive the next older kiddies. They
covered the floor with hay, and spread blankets and carriage robes over
it, and bedded down thirty of the children in rows like little calves.
Miss Matthews and a nurse went with them, administered hot milk all
around, and within half an hour the tots were sleeping as peacefully as
in their little cribs.
But meanwhile we at the house were having sensations. The doctor's first
question upon arrival had been:
"You've counted the children? You know they're all here?"
"We've made certain that every dormitory was empty before we left it," I
replied.
You see, they couldn't be counted in that confusion. Twenty or so of the
boys were still in the dormitories, working under Percy Witherspoon
to save clothing and furniture, and the older girls were sorting over
bushels of shoes and trying to fit them to the little ones, who were
running about underfoot and wailing dismally.
Well, after we had loaded and despatched about seven car loads of
children, the doctor suddenly called out:
"Where's Allegra?"
There was a horrified silence. No one had seen her. And then Miss Snaith
stood up and SHRIEKED. Betsy took her by the shoulders, and shook her
into coherence.
It seems that she had thought Allegra was coming down with a cough, and
in order to get her out of the cold, had moved her crib from the fresh
air nursery into the store room--and then forgotten it.
Well, my dear, you know where the store room is! We simply stared at one
another with white faces. By this time the whole east wing was gutted
and the third-floor stairs in flames. There didn't seem a chance that
the child was still alive. The doctor was the first to move. He snatched
up a wet blanket that was lying in a soppy pile on the floor of the
hall and sprang for the stairs. We yelled to him to come back. It simply
looked like suicide; but he kept on, and disappeared into the smoke. I
dashed outside and shouted to the firemen on the roof. The store room
window was too little for a man to go through, and they hadn't opened it
for fear of creating a draft.
I can't describe what happened in the next agonizing ten minutes. The
third-floor stairs fell in with a crash and a burst of flame about five
seconds after the doctor passed over them. We had given him up for lost
when a shout went up from the crowd on the lawn, and he appeared for an
instant at one of those dormer windows in the attic, and called for the
firemen to put up a ladder. Then he disappeared, and it seemed to us
that they'd never get that ladder in place; but they finally did, and
two men went up. The opening of the window had created a draft, and they
were almost overpowered by the volume of smoke that burst out at the
top. After an eternity the doctor appeared again with a white bundle in
his arms. He passed it out to the men, and then he staggered back and
dropped out of sight!
I don't know what happened for the next few minutes; I turned away and
shut my eyes. Somehow or other they got him out and halfway down the
ladder, and then they let him slip. You see, he was unconscious from
all the smoke he'd swallowed, and the ladder was slippery with ice and
terribly wobbly. Anyway, when I looked again he was lying in a heap on
the ground, with the crowd all running, and somebody yelling to give him
air. They thought at first he was dead. But Dr. Metcalf from the village
examined him, and said his leg was broken, and two ribs, and that aside
from that he seemed whole. He was still unconscious when they put him on
two of the baby mattresses that had been thrown out of the windows and
laid him in the wagon that brought the ladders and started him home.
And the rest of us, left behind, kept right on with the work as though
nothing had happened. The queer thing about a calamity like this is that
there is so much to be done on every side that you don't have a moment
to think, and you don't get any of your values straightened out until
afterward. The doctor, without a moment's hesitation, had risked his
life to save Allegra. It was the bravest thing I ever saw, and yet the
whole business occupied only fifteen minutes out of that dreadful night.
At the time, it was just an incident.
And he saved Allegra. She came out of that blanket with rumpled hair
and a look of pleased surprise at the new game of peek-a-boo. She was
smiling! The child's escape was little short of a miracle. The fire had
started within three feet of her wall, but owing to the direction of the
wind, it had worked away from her. If Miss Snaith had believed a little
more in fresh air and had left the window open, the fire would have
eaten back. But fortunately Miss Snaith does not believe in fresh air,
and no such thing happened. If Allegra had gone, I never should have
forgiven myself for not letting the Bretlands take her, and I know that
Sandy wouldn't.
Despite all the loss, I can't be anything but happy when I think of the
two horrible tragedies that have been averted. For seven minutes, while
the doctor was penned in that blazing third floor, I lived through
the agony of believing them both gone, and I start awake in the night
trembling with horror.
But I'll try to tell you the rest. The firemen and the
volunteers--particularly the chauffeur and stablemen from
Knowltop--worked all night in an absolute frenzy. Our newest negro cook,
who is a heroine in her own right, went out and started the laundry
fire and made up a boilerful of coffee. It was her own idea. The
non-combatants served it to the firemen when they relieved one another
for a few minutes' rest, and it helped.
We got the remainder of the children off to various hospitable houses,
except the older boys, who worked all night as well as any one. It was
absolutely inspiring to see the way this entire township turned out and
helped. People who haven't appeared to know that the asylum existed came
in the middle of the night and put their whole houses at our disposal.
They took the children in, gave them hot baths and hot soup, and tucked
them into bed. And so far as I can make out, not one of my one hundred
and seven chicks is any the worse for hopping about on drenched floors
in their bare feet, not even the whooping cough cases.
It was broad daylight before the fire was sufficiently under control
to let us know just what we had saved. I will report that my wing is
entirely intact, though a little smoky, and the main corridor is pretty
nearly all right up to the center staircase; after that everything is
charred and drenched. The east wing is a blackened, roofless shell.
Your hated Ward F, dear Judy, is gone forever. I wish that you could
obliterate it from your mind as absolutely as it is obliterated from the
earth. Both in substance and in spirit the old John Grier is done for.
I must tell you something funny. I never saw so many funny things in my
life as happened through that night. When everybody there was in extreme
negligee, most of the men in pajamas and ulsters, and all of them
without collars, the Hon. Cyrus Wykoff put in a tardy appearance,
arrayed as for an afternoon tea. He wore a pearl scarf pin and white
spats! But he really was extremely helpful. He put his entire house
at our disposal, and I turned over to him Miss Snaith in a state of
hysterics; and her nerves so fully occupied him that he didn't get in
our way the whole night through.
I can't write any more details now; I've never been so rushed in the
whole of my life. I'll just assure you that there's no slightest reason
for you to cut your trip short. Five trustees were on the spot early
Saturday morning, and we are all working like mad to get affairs into
some semblance of order. Our asylum at the present moment is scattered
over the entire township; but don't be unduly anxious. We know where
all the children are. None of them is permanently mislaid. I didn't know
that perfect strangers could be so kind. My opinion of the human race
has gone up.
I haven't seen the doctor. They telegraphed to New York for a surgeon,
who set his leg. The break was pretty bad, and will take time. They
don't think there are any internal injuries, though he is awfully
battered up. As soon as we are allowed to see him I will send more
detailed particulars. I really must stop if I am to catch tomorrow's
steamer.
Good-by. Don't worry. There are a dozen silver linings to this cloud
that I'll write about tomorrow.