.

I want to ask you--isn't that a pleasant interruption on a dead day? It
makes life worth living, and I really wonder that there isn't more
incendiarism in small towns throughout the United States.

Of course all the alarms aren't fizzles. Sometimes we have a real fire,
and then the scene defies description. When a fair-sized house burns
down, Chief Dobbs is so hoarse that he can't talk for a week, and when
the row of wooden stores on the south side went up in flames a few years
ago, the old chief, Patrick McQuinn, burst a blood-vessel and had to
retire, the doctor having warned him that he must never use a
speaking-trumpet again.

I was away at the time, but they tell me that was a grand fire for the
hook-and-ladder boys. They were right in the middle of it, and every
ladder in the truck was out. There was some trouble over the fact that
the big extension ladder was too tall for the buildings, and when Art
Simms had climbed to the top, he managed to fall fifteen feet to the
roof of the furniture-store, bruising himself badly. But, on the whole,
great good was done, and the second story workers were kings that day.
When the hotel caught, and the hook-and-ladder gang got into it, the way
the upper windows belched mattresses, mirrors, toilet-sets, pictures and
beds was unbelievable. Almost everything in the building was saved, and
some of it was successfully repaired afterward.

The axmen had their innings that day, too. It was a great sight to see
Andy Lowes leap nimbly up the ladder and poke in window after window
with his spiked ax, stepping backward now and then into nozzleman
Jones's face in order to view the effect. The axmen got glory enough to
last for years, and it was an axman who put out the last scrap of fire.
Frank Sundell was the hero. He was sitting on the ridge-pole of
Emerson's restaurant when he noticed a few blazing spots on the shingle
roof beneath him. He might have called the hose department; but, as I
have said, there is a good deal of rivalry between the two, and,
besides, Sundell had had a slow time that day, Lowes doing most of the
display work. So Frank reached cautiously down with his trusty ax, cut
out a blazing section of shingles, and tossed it to the ground. The
crowd cheered, and he was so encouraged that he cut out the rest of the
hot spots and put out the fire single-handed. Sundell is one of our very
best firemen and stands in line for a nozzleman's position some day.

Of course