echoing shout of "Merry Christmas!" had been whirled away on the
storm, now grown fierce with bitter cold, when a lonely wanderer came
down the street. It was a lad, big and strong-limbed, and, judging
from the manner in which he pushed his way through the gathering
drifts, not unused to battle with the world, but evidently in hard
luck. His jacket, white with the falling snow, was scant and worn
nearly to rags, and there was that in his face which spoke of hunger
and suffering silently endured. He stopped at the gate in the stone
fence, and looked long and steadily at the cottage in the chestnuts.
No life stirred within, and he walked through the gap with slow and
hesitating step. Under the kitchen window he stood awhile, sheltered
from the storm, as if undecided, then stepped to the horse shed and
rapped gently on the door.
"'Liza!" he called, "'Liza, old girl! It's me--Jim!"
A low, delighted whinnying from the stall told the shivering boy that
he was not forgotten there. The faithful beast was straining at her
halter in a vain effort to get at her friend. Jim raised a bar that
held the door closed by the aid of a lever within, of which he knew
the trick, and went in. The horse made room for him in her stall, and
laid her shaggy head against his cheek.
"Poor old 'Liza!" he said, patting her neck and smoothing her gray
coat, "poor old girl! Jim has one friend that hasn't gone back on him.
I've come to keep Christmas with you, 'Liza! Had your supper, eh?
You're in luck. I haven't; I wasn't bid, 'Liza; but never mind. You
shall feed for both of us. Here goes!" He dug into the oats-bin with
the measure, and poured it full into 'Liza's crib.
"Fill up, old girl! and good night to you." With a departing pat he
crept up the ladder to the loft above, and, scooping out a berth in
the loose hay, snuggled down in it to sleep. Soon his regular
breathing up there kept step with the steady munching of the horse in
her stall. The two reunited friends were dreaming happy Christmas
dreams.
The night wore into the small hours of Christmas morning. The fury of
the storm was unabated. The old cottage shook under the fierce blasts,
and the chestnuts waved their hoary branches wildly, beseechingly,
above it, as if they wanted to warn those within of some threatened
danger. But they slept and heard them not. From the kitchen chimney,
after a blast more violent than any that had gone before, a red spark
issued, was whirled upward and beaten against the shingle roof of the
barn, swept clean of snow. Another followed it, and another. Still
they slept in the cottage; the chestnuts moaned and brandished their
arms in vain. The storm fanned one of the sparks into a flame. It
flickered for a moment and then went out. So, at least, it seemed. But
presently it reappeared, and with it a faint glow was reflected in the
attic window over the door. Down in her stall 'Liza moved uneasily.
Nobody responding, she plunged and reared, neighing loudly for help.
The storm drowned her calls; her master slept, unheeding.
But one heard it, and in the nick of time. The door of the shed was
thrown violently open, and out plunged Jim, his hair on fire and his
clothes singed and smoking. He brushed the sparks off himself as if
they were flakes of snow. Quick as thought, he tore 'Liza's halter
from its fastening, pulling out staple and all, threw his smoking coat
over her eyes, and backed her out of the shed. He reached in, and,
pulling the harness off the hook, threw it as far into the snow as he
could, yelling "Fire!" at the top of his voice. Then he jumped on the
back of the horse, and beating her with heels and hands into a mad
gallop, was off up the street before the bewildered inmates of the
cottage had rubbed the sleep out of their eyes and come out to see the
barn on fire and burning up.
Down street and avenue fire-engines raced with clanging bells, leaving
tracks of glowing coals in the snow-drifts, to the cottage in the
chestnut lots. They got there just in time to see the roof crash into
the barn, burying, as Joe and his crying wife and children thought,
'Liza and their last hope in the fiery wreck. The door had blown shut,
and the harness Jim threw out was snowed under. No one dreamed that
the mare was not there. The flames burst through the wreck and lit up
the cottage and swaying chestnuts. Joe and his family stood in the
shelter of it, looking sadly on. For the second time that Christmas
night tears came into the honest truckman's eyes. He wiped them away
with his cap.
"Poor 'Liza!" he said.
A hand was laid with gentle touch upon his arm. He looked up. It was
his wife. Her face beamed with a great happiness.
"Joe," she said, "you remember what you read: 'tidings of great joy.'
Oh, Joe, Jim has come home!"
She stepped aside, and there was Jim, sister Jennie hanging on his
neck, and 'Liza alive and neighing her pleasure. The lad looked at his
father and hung his head.
"Jim saved her, father," said Jennie, patting the gray mare; "it was
him fetched the engines."
Joe took a step toward his son and held out his hand to him.
"Jim," he said, "you're a better man nor yer father. From now on, you
'n' I run the truck on shares. But mind this, Jim: never leave mother
no more."
And in the clasp of the two hands all the past was forgotten and
forgiven. Father and son had found each other again.
"'Liza," said the truckman, with sudden vehemence, turning to the old
mare and putting his arm around her neck, "'Liza! It was your doin's.
I knew it was luck when I found them things. Merry Christmas!" And he
kissed her smack on her hairy mouth, one, two, three times.
HEROES WHO FIGHT FIRE
Thirteen years have passed since,[2] but it is all to me as if it had
happened yesterday--the clanging of the fire-bells, the hoarse shouts
of the firemen, the wild rush and terror of the streets; then the
great hush that fell upon the crowd; the sea of upturned faces, with
the fire-glow upon it; and up there, against the background of black
smoke that poured from roof and attic, the boy clinging to the narrow
ledge, so far up that it seemed humanly impossible that help could
ever come.
[Footnote 2: Written in 1898.]
But even then it was coming. Up from the street, while the crew of the
truck company were laboring with the heavy extension-ladder that at
its longest stretch was many feet too short, crept four men upon long,
slender poles with cross-bars, iron-hooked at the end. Standing in one
window, they reached up and thrust the hook through the next one
above, then mounted a story higher. Again the crash of glass, and
again the dizzy ascent. Straight up the wall they crept, looking like
human flies on the ceiling, and clinging as close, never resting,
reaching one recess only to set out for the next; nearer and nearer in
the race for life, until but a single span separated the foremost from
the boy. And now the iron hook fell at his feet, and the fireman stood
upon the step with the rescued lad in his arms, just as the pent-up
flame burst lurid from the attic window, reaching with impotent fury
for its prey. The next moment they were safe upon the great ladder
waiting to receive them below.
Then such a shout went up! Men fell on each other's necks, and cried
and laughed at once. Strangers slapped one another on the back, with
glistening faces, shook hands, and behaved generally like men gone
suddenly mad. Women wept in the street. The driver of a car stalled in
the crowd, who had stood through it all speechless, clutching the
reins, whipped his horses into a gallop, and drove away yelling like a
Comanche, to relieve his feelings. The boy and his rescuer were
carried across the street without any one knowing how. Policemen
forgot their dignity, and shouted with the rest. Fire, peril, terror,
and loss were alike forgotten in the one touch of nature that makes
the whole world kin.
Fireman John Binns was made captain of his crew, and the Bennett medal
was pinned on his coat on the next parade-day. The burning of the St.
George Flats was the first opportunity New York had of witnessing a
rescue with the scaling-ladders that form such an essential part of
the equipment of the fire-fighters to-day. Since then there have been
many such. In the company in which John Binns was a private of the
second grade, two others to-day bear the medal for brave deeds: the
foreman, Daniel J. Meagher, and Private Martin M. Coleman, whose name
has been seven times inscribed on the roll of honor for twice that
number of rescues, any one of which stamped him as a man among men, a
real hero. And Hook-and-Ladder No. 3 is not especially distinguished
among the fire-crews of the metropolis for daring and courage. New
Yorkers are justly proud of their firemen. Take it all in all, there
is not, I think, to be found anywhere a body of men as fearless, as
brave, and as efficient as the Fire Brigade of New York. I have known
it well for twenty years, and I speak from a personal acquaintance
with very many of its men, and from a professional knowledge of more
daring feats, more hairbreadth escapes, and more brilliant work, than
could well be recorded between the covers of this book.
Indeed, it is hard, in recording any, to make a choice and to avoid
giving the impression that recklessness is a chief quality in the
fireman's make-up. That would not be true. His life is too full of
real peril for him to expose it recklessly--that is to say,
needlessly. From the time when he leaves his quarters in answer to an
alarm until he returns, he takes a risk that may at any moment set him
face to face with death in its most cruel form. He needs nothing so
much as a clear head; and nothing is prized so highly, nothing puts
him so surely in the line of promotion; for as he advances in rank and
responsibility, the lives of others, as well as his own, come to
depend on his judgment. The act of conspicuous daring which the world
applauds is oftenest to the fireman a matter of simple duty that had
to be done in that way because there was no other. Nor is it always,
or even usually, the hardest duty, as he sees it. It came easy to him
because he is an athlete, trained to do just such things, and because
once for all it is easier to risk one's life in the open, in the sight
of one's fellows, than to face death alone, caught like a rat in a
trap. That is the real peril which he knows too well; but of that the
public hears only when he has fought his last fight, and lost.
How literally our every-day security--of which we think, if we think
of it at all, as a mere matter of course--is built upon the supreme
sacrifice of these devoted men, we realize at long intervals, when a
disaster occurs such as the one in which Chief Bresnan and Foreman
Rooney[3] lost their lives three years ago. They were crushed to
death under the great water-tank in a Twenty-fourth Street factory
that was on fire. Its supports had been burned away. An examination
that was then made of the water-tanks in the city discovered eight
thousand that were either wholly unsupported, except by the
roof-beams, or propped on timbers, and therefore a direct menace, not
only to the firemen when they were called there, but daily to those
living under them. It is not pleasant to add that the department's
just demand for a law that should compel landlords either to build
tanks on the wall or on iron supports has not been heeded yet; but
that is, unhappily, an old story.
[Footnote 3: Rooney wore the Bennett medal for
saving the life of a woman at the disastrous fire
in the old "World" building, on January 31, 1882.
The ladder upon which he stood was too short.
Riding upon the topmost rung, he bade the woman
jump, and caught and held her as she fell.]
Seventeen years ago the collapse of a Broadway building during a fire
convinced the community that stone pillars were unsafe as supports.
The fire was in the basement, and the firemen had turned the hose on.
When the water struck the hot granite columns, they cracked and fell,
and the building fell with them. There were upon the roof at the time
a dozen men of the crew of Truck Company No. 1, chopping holes for
smoke-vents. The majority clung to the parapet, and hung there till
rescued. Two went down into the furnace from which the flames shot up
twenty feet when the roof broke. One, Fireman Thomas J. Dougherty, was
a wearer of the Bennett medal, too. His foreman answers on parade-day,
when his name is called, that he "died on the field of duty." These,
at all events, did not die in vain. Stone columns are not now used as
supports for buildings in New York.
So one might go on quoting the perils of the firemen as so many steps
forward for the better protection of the rest of us. It was the
burning of the St. George Flats, and more recently of the Manhattan
Bank, in which a dozen men were disabled, that stamped the average
fire-proof construction as faulty and largely delusive. One might even
go further, and say that the fireman's risk increases in the ratio of
our progress or convenience. The water-tanks came with the very high
buildings, which in themselves offer problems to the fire-fighters
that have not yet been solved. The very air-shafts that were hailed as
the first advance in tenement-house building added enormously to the
fireman's work and risk, as well as to the risk of every one dwelling
under their roofs, by acting as so many huge chimneys that carried the
fire to the windows opening upon them in every story. More than half
of all the fires in New York occur in tenement houses. When the
Tenement House Commission of 1894 sat in this city, considering means
of making them safer and better, it received the most practical help
and advice from the firemen, especially from Chief Bresnan, whose
death occurred only a few days after he had testified as a witness.
The recommendations upon which he insisted are now part of the general
tenement-house law.
Chief Bresnan died leading his men against the enemy. In the Fire
Department the battalion chief leads; he does not direct operations
from a safe position in the rear. Perhaps this is one of the secrets
of the indomitable spirit of his men. Whatever hardships they have to
endure, his is the first and the biggest share. Next in line comes the
captain, or foreman, as he is called. Of the six who were caught in
the fatal trap of the water-tank, four hewed their way out with axes
through an intervening partition. They were of the ranks. The two who
were killed were the chief and Assistant Foreman John L. Rooney, who
was that day in charge of his company, Foreman Shaw having just been
promoted to Bresnan's rank. It was less than a year after that Chief
Shaw was killed in a fire in Mercer Street. I think I could reckon up
as many as five or six battalion chiefs who have died in that way,
leading their men. The men would not deserve the name if they did not
follow such leaders, no matter where the road led.
In the chief's quarters of the Fourteenth Battalion up in Wakefield
there sits to-day a man, still young in years, who in his maimed body
but unbroken spirit bears such testimony to the quality of New York's
fire-fighters as the brave Bresnan and his comrade did in their death.
Thomas J. Ahearn led his company as captain to a fire in the
Consolidated Gas-Works on the East Side. He found one of the buildings
ablaze. Far toward the rear, at the end of a narrow lane, around which
the fire swirled and arched itself, white and wicked, lay the body of
a man--dead, said the panic-stricken crowd. His sufferings had been
brief. A worse fate threatened all unless the fire was quickly put
out. There were underground reservoirs of naphtha--the ground was
honeycombed with them--that might explode at any moment with the fire
raging overhead. The peril was instant and great. Captain Ahearn
looked at the body, and saw it stir. The watch-chain upon the man's
vest rose and fell as if he were breathing.
"He is not dead," he said. "I am going to get that man out." And he
crept down the lane of fire, unmindful of the hidden dangers, seeing
only the man who was perishing. The flames scorched him; they blocked
his way; but he came through alive, and brought out his man, so badly
hurt, however, that he died in the hospital that day. The Board of
Fire Commissioners gave Ahearn the medal for bravery, and made him
chief. Within a year he all but lost his life in a gallant attempt to
save the life of a child that was supposed to be penned in a burning
Rivington Street tenement. Chief Ahearn's quarters were near by, and
he was first on the ground. A desperate man confronted him in the
hallway. "My child! my child!" he cried, and wrung his hands. "Save
him! He is in there." He pointed to the back room. It was black with
smoke. In the front room the fire was raging. Crawling on hands and
feet, the chief made his way into the room the man had pointed out. He
groped under the bed, and in it, but found no child there. Satisfied
that it had escaped, he started to return. The smoke had grown so
thick that breathing was no longer possible, even at the floor. The
chief drew his coat over his head, and made a dash for the hall door.
He reached it only to find that the spring-lock had snapped shut. The
door-knob burned his hand. The fire burst through from the front room,
and seared his face. With a last effort, he kicked the lower panel out
of the door, and put his head through. And then he knew no more.
His men found him lying so when they came looking for him. The coat
was burned off his back, and of his hat only the wire rim remained. He
lay ten months in the hospital, and came out deaf and wrecked
physically. At the age of forty-five the board retired him to the
quiet of the country district, with this formal resolution, that did
the board more credit than it could do him. It is the only one of its
kind upon the department books:--
_Resolved_, That in assigning Battalion Chief Thomas J. Ahearn to
command the Fourteenth Battalion, in the newly annexed district,
the Board deems it proper to express the sense of obligation felt
by the Board and all good citizens for the brilliant and
meritorious services of Chief Ahearn in the discharge of duty
which will always serve as an example and an inspiration to our
uniformed force, and to express the hope that his future years of
service at a less arduous post may be as comfortable and pleasant
as his former years have been brilliant and honorable.
Firemen are athletes as a matter of course. They have to be, or they
could not hold their places for a week, even if they could get into
them at all. The mere handling of the scaling-ladders, which, light
though they seem, weigh from sixteen to forty pounds, requires unusual
strength. No particular skill is needed. A man need only have steady
nerve, and the strength to raise the long pole by its narrow end, and
jam the iron hook through a window which he cannot see but knows is
there. Once through, the teeth in the hook and the man's weight upon
the ladder hold it safe, and there is no real danger unless he loses
his head. Against that possibility the severe drill in the school of
instruction is the barrier. Any one to whom climbing at dizzy heights,
or doing the hundred and one things of peril to ordinary men which
firemen are constantly called upon to do, causes the least discomfort,
is rejected as unfit. About five percent of all appointees are
eliminated by the ladder test, and never get beyond their probation
service. A certain smaller percentage takes itself out through loss of
"nerve" generally. The first experience of a room full of smothering
smoke, with the fire roaring overhead, is generally sufficient to
convince the timid that the service is not for him. No cowards are
dismissed from the department, for the reason that none get into it.
The notion that there is a life-saving corps apart from the general
body of firemen rests upon a mistake. They are one. Every fireman
nowadays must pass muster at life-saving drill, must climb to the top
of any building on his scaling-ladder, slide down with a rescued
comrade, or jump without hesitation from the third story into the
life-net spread below. By such training the men are fitted for their
work, and the occasion comes soon that puts them to the test. It came
to Daniel J. Meagher, of whom I spoke as foreman of Hook-and-Ladder
Company No. 3, when, in the midnight hour, a woman hung from the
fifth-story window of a burning building, and the longest ladder at
hand fell short ten or a dozen feet of reaching her. The boldest man
in the crew had vainly attempted to get to her, and in the effort had
sprained his foot. There were no scaling-ladders then. Meagher ordered
the rest to plant the ladder on the stoop and hold it out from the
building so that he might reach the very topmost step. Balanced thus
where the slightest tremor might have caused ladder and all to crash
to the ground, he bade the woman drop, and receiving her in his arms,
carried her down safe.
No one but an athlete with muscles and nerves of steel could have
performed such a feat, or that which made Dennis Ryer, of the crew of
Engine No. 36, famous three years ago. That was on Seventh Avenue at
One Hundred and Thirty-fourth Street. A flat was on fire, and the
tenants had fled; but one, a woman, bethought herself of her parrot,
and went back for it, to find escape by the stairs cut off when she
again attempted to reach the street. With the parrot-cage, she
appeared at the top-floor window, framed in smoke, calling for help.
Again there was no ladder to reach. There were neighbors on the roof
with a rope, but the woman was too frightened to use it herself.
Dennis Ryer made it fast about his own waist, and bade the others let
him down, and hold on for life. He drew the woman out, but she was
heavy, and it was all they could do above to hold them. To pull them
over the cornice was out of the question. Upon the highest step of the
ladder, many feet below, stood Ryer's father, himself a fireman of
another company, and saw his boy's peril.
"Hold fast, Dennis!" he shouted. "If you fall I will catch you." Had
they let go, all three would have been killed. The young fireman saw
the danger, and the one door of escape, with a glance. The window
before which he swung, half smothered by the smoke that belched from
it, was the last in the house. Just beyond, in the window of the
adjoining house, was safety, if he could but reach it. Putting out a
foot, he kicked the wall, and made himself swing toward it, once,
twice, bending his body to add to the motion. The third time he all
but passed it, and took a mighty grip on the affrighted woman,
shouting into her ear to loose her own hold at the same time. As they
passed the window on the fourth trip, he thrust her through sash and
all with a supreme effort, and himself followed on the next rebound,
while the street, that was black with a surging multitude, rang with a
mighty cheer. Old Washington Ryer, on his ladder, threw his cap in the
air, and cheered louder than all the rest. But the parrot was
dead--frightened to death, very likely, or smothered.
I once asked Fireman Martin M. Coleman, after one of those exhibitions
of coolness and courage that thrust him constantly upon the notice of
the newspaper men, what he thought of when he stood upon the ladder,
with this thing before him to do that might mean life or death the
next moment. He looked at me in some perplexity.
"Think?" he said slowly. "Why, I don't think. There ain't any time to.
If I'd stopped to think, them five people would 'a' been burnt. No; I
don't think of danger. If it is anything, it is that--up there--I am
boss. The rest are not in it. Only I wish," he added, rubbing his arm
ruefully at the recollection, "that she hadn't fainted. It's hard when
they faint. They're just so much dead-weight. We get no help at all
from them heavy women."