that
happened in New York on St. Patrick's Day, 1899. It was a pleasant
afternoon, and Fifth Avenue was crowded with people gathered to watch
the parade. A gayer, pleasanter scene it would have been hard to find at
three o'clock, or a sadder one at four.

The Ancient Order of Hibernians, coming along with bands and banners,
were nearing Forty-sixth Street, when suddenly there sounded hoarse
shouts and the angry clang of fire-gongs, and down Forty-seventh Street
came Hook and Ladder 4 on a dead run, and swung into Fifth Avenue
straight at the pompous Hibernians, who immediately became badly scared
Irishmen and took to their heels. But the big ladders went no farther.
They were needed here, oh, so badly needed; for the Windsor Hotel was on
fire--the famous Windsor Hotel at Fifth Avenue and Forty-seventh Street.
It was on fire, far gone with fire before ever the engines were called;
and the reason was that everybody supposed that of course _somebody_ had
sent the alarm. And so they all watched the fire, and waited for the
engines, ten, fifteen minutes, and by that time a great column of flame
was roaring up the elevator-shaft, and people on the roof, in their
madness, were jumping down to the street. Then some sane citizen went to
a fire-box and rang the call, and within ninety seconds Engine 65 was
on the ground. And after her came Engines 54 and 21. But there was no
making up that lost fifteen minutes. The fire had things in its teeth
now, and three, four, five alarms went out in quick succession.
Twenty-three engines had their streams on that fire in almost as many
minutes. And the big fire-tower came from Thirty-sixth Street and Ninth
Avenue, and six hook-and-ladder companies came.

Let us watch Hook and Ladder 21 for a moment. She was the mate of the
fire-tower, and the rush of her galloping horses was echoing up the
avenue just as Battalion Chief John Binns made out a woman in a
seventh-story window on the Forty-sixth Street side, where the fire was
raging fiercely. The woman was holding a little dog in her arms, and it
looked as if she was going to jump. The chief waved her to stay where
she was, and, running toward 21 as she plunged along, motioned toward
Forty-sixth Street. Whereupon the tiller-man at his back wheel did a
pretty piece of steering, and even as they swung the long truck in the
turn the crew began hoisting the big ladder. Such a thing is never done,
for the swaying of that ten-ton mass might easily