Europeanism wandered
happily into the veins of the city with the broad grin of a pleased
child. It was not burdened with baggage, cares or ambitions. Its
body was lithely built and clothed in a sort of foreign fustian;
its face was brightly vacant, with a small, flat nose, and was
mostly covered by a thick, ragged, curling beard like the coat
of a spaniel. In the pocket of the imported Thing were a few
coins--denarii--scudi--kopecks--pfennigs--pilasters--whatever the
financial nomenclature of his unknown country may have been.

Prattling to himself, always broadly grinning, pleased by the roar
and movement of the barbarous city into which the steamship cut-rates
had shunted him, the alien strayed away from the sea, which he
hated, as far as the district covered by Engine Company No. 99.
Light as a cork, he was kept bobbing along by the human tide, the
crudest atom in all the silt of the stream that emptied into the
reservoir of Liberty.

While crossing Third avenue he slowed his steps, enchanted by the
thunder of the elevated trains above him and the soothing crash of
the wheels on the cobbles. And then there was a new, delightful
chord in the uproar--the musical clanging of a gong and a great
shining juggernaut belching fire and smoke, that people were
hurrying to see.

This beautiful thing, entrancing to the eye, dashed past, and the
protoplasmic immigrant stepped into the wake of it with his broad,
enraptured, uncomprehending grin. And so stepping, stepped into the
path of No. 99's flying hose-cart, with John Byrnes gripping, with
arms of steel, the reins over the plunging backs of Erebus and Joe.

The unwritten constitutional code of the fireman has no exceptions
or amendments. It is a simple thing--as simple as the rule of three.
There was the heedless unit in the right of way; there was the
hose-cart and the iron pillar of the elevated railroad.

John Byrnes swung all his weight and muscle on the left rein. The
team and cart swerved that way and crashed like a torpedo into the
pillar. The men on the cart went flying like skittles. The driver's
strap burst, the pillar rang with the shock, and John Byrnes fell
on the car track with a broken shoulder twenty feet away, while
Erebus--beautiful, raven-black, best-loved Erebus--lay whickering
in his harness with a broken leg.

In consideration for the feelings of Engine Company No. 99 the
details will be lightly touched. The company does not like to be
reminded