the first to recover. He carried down the man he
had saved, and saw him sent off to the hospital. Then first he noticed
that he was not a negro; the smut had been rubbed from his face.
Monday had dawned before he came to, and days passed before he knew
his rescuer. Sergeant Vaughan was laid up himself then. He had
returned to his work, and finished it; but what he had gone through
was too much for human strength. It was spring before he returned to
his quarters, to find himself promoted, petted, and made much of.

From the sublime to the ridiculous is but a little step. Among the
many who journeyed to the insurance patrol station to see the hero of
the great fire, there came, one day, a woman. She was young and
pretty, the sweetheart of the man on the window-sill. He was a lawyer,
since a state senator of Pennsylvania. She wished the sergeant to
repeat exactly the words he spoke to him in that awful moment when he
bade him jump--to life or death. She had heard them, and she wanted
the sergeant to repeat them to her, that she might know for sure he
was the man who did it. He stammered and hitched--tried subterfuges.
She waited, inexorable. Finally, in desperation, blushing fiery red,
he blurted out "a lot of cuss-words." "You know," he said
apologetically, in telling of it, "when I am in a place like that I
can't help it."

When she heard the words which her fiance had already told her,
straightway she fell upon the fireman's neck. The sergeant stood
dumfounded. "Women are queer," he said.

Thus a fireman's life. That the very horses that are their friends in
quarters, their comrades at the fire, sharing with them what comes of
good and evil, catch the spirit of it, is not strange. It would be
strange if they did not. With human intelligence and more than human
affection, the splendid animals follow the fortunes of their masters,
doing their share in whatever is demanded of them. In the final
showing that in thirty years, while with the growing population the
number of fires has steadily increased, the average loss per fire has
as steadily decreased, they have their full share, also, of the
credit. In 1866 there were 796 fires in New York, with an average loss
of $8075.38 per fire. In 1876, with 1382 fires, the loss was but
$2786.70 at each. In 1896, 3890 fires averaged only $878.81. It means
that every year more fires are headed off than run down--smothered at
the start, as a fire should be. When to the verdict of "f