Brinton's chicken-incubator; you won't know which
until you have stabbed both feet into one pants-leg, crawled all over
the cold floor for a missing sock, and run half a mile, double-reefing
your nightshirt to keep it from trailing out from under your overcoat.
That's what a fire-alarm means in Homeburg.

It's just as interesting in the daytime too. Imagine a summer afternoon
in Homeburg about three o'clock. It's hotter than a simoon in the
Sahara, and the aggregate business being done along Front Street is
nineteen cents an hour. The nearest approach to life on the street is
Sam McAtaw sitting in a shady spot on the edge of the sidewalk and
leaning against a telephone-pole, sound asleep. You're sitting in your
office chair, with your feet on the desk, dozing, when suddenly you hear
footsteps outside. Whoever is making them is turning them out with great
rapidity, and that in itself is novel enough to be interesting. The
footsteps go by, and you look at their maker. It is Gibb Ogle surging up
the walk and yanking his ponderous feet this way and that with
tremendous energy. Nothing but a fire or a loose lion can make Gibb run,
and you don't take any stock in the lion theory; so you tumble out after
him.

By this time Sim Bone is on the street, and Harvey McMuggins is coming
up behind, while half a dozen heads have suddenly sprouted from as many
doorways. Your heart beats with suspense when Gibb comes to the
town-hall corner. Hurrah! He's steering for the fire-house. You're
overhauling him rapidly, and by a big sprint you beat out Clatt
Sanderson, and grab one handle of the fire-bell ropes. Gibb grabs the
other, and then you let her have it for all there is in you.

Did I say anything about Homeburg being asleep? Forget it. Before you've
hit the bell a dozen taps you can't hear it for the tramp of feet. Every
store in town is belching forth proprietors and clerks. They are coming
bareheaded and coatless; some of them are collarless. Chief Dobbs, who
shoes horses in his less glorious moments and keeps his helmet hanging
on the forge-cover, dashes into the engine-room, grabs his trumpet, and
begins firing orders, not singly, but in broadsides. There's nobody
there to order yet, but he's just getting his hand in, and ten seconds
later, when the first member of the company arrives, he is saluted with
nineteen stentorian commands in one blast. Half a minute later the
engine-house is clogged with fire-fighters, and the air i