a South Street warehouse, two pipemen had to
be chopped from their ladder with axes, so thick was the armor of ice
that had formed about and upon them while they worked.

The terrible beauty of such a sight is very vivid in my memory. It was
on the morning when Chief Bresnan and Foreman Rooney went down with
half a dozen of their men in the collapse of the roof in a burning
factory. The men of the rank and file hewed their way through to the
open with their axes. The chief and the foreman were caught under the
big water-tank, the wooden supports of which had been burned away, and
were killed. They were still lying under the wreck when I came. The
fire was out. The water running over the edge of the tank had frozen
into huge icicles that hung like a great white shroud over the bier of
the two dead heroes. It was a gas-fixture factory, and the hundreds of
pipes, twisted into all manner of fantastic shapes of glittering ice,
lent a most weird effect to the sorrowful scene. I can still see Chief
Gicquel, all smoke-begrimed, and with the tears streaming down his
big, manly face,--poor Gicquel! he went to join his brothers in so
many a hard fight only a little while after,--pointing back toward the
wreck with the choking words, "They are in there!" They had fought
their last fight and won, as they ever did, even if they did give
their lives for the victory. Greater end no fireman could crave.

Winter in New York has its hardships and toil, and it has its joys as
well, among rich and poor. Grim and relentless, it is beautiful at all
times until man puts his befouling hand upon the landscape it paints
in street and alley, where poetry is never at home in summer. The
great city lying silent under its soft white blanket at night, with
its myriad of lights twinkling and rivalling the stars, is beautiful
beyond compare. Go watch the moonlight on forest and lake in the park,
when the last straggler has gone and the tramp of the lonely
policeman's horse has died away under the hill; listen to the whisper
of the trees, all shining with dew of Boreas's breath: of the dreams
they dream in their long sleep, of the dawn that is coming, the warm
sunlight of spring, and say that life is not worth living in America's
metropolis, even in winter, whatever the price of coal, and I shall
tell you that you are fit for nothing but treason, stratagem, and
spoils; for you have no music in your soul.

A CHIP FROM THE MAELSTROM

"The cop j