of fellows
passing buckets to the ladder, and a line up the ladder. What big sparks
those are! Puts you in mind of Fourth of July. How the roof steams! Must
be hot up there.

O-o-o-oh!

A universal indrawn breath from all spectators proclaims their horror.
One of the men on the roof missed his footing and slipped, rolling over
and over till he reached the roof of the porch, where he spread-eagled
for a fall. The women begin to moan. Some poor fellow gone to his death.
Or, if he be so lucky as to miss death itself, he is doomed to languish
all his days a helpless cripple. Like enough the sole support of an aged
mother; or perhaps his wife is sitting up for him at home now, tiptoeing
into the bedroom every little while to look at the sleeping children.
That's generally the way of it. Who is there so free and foot-loose
that, if harm befall him, some woman will not go mourning all her days?
It must take the heart out of brave men to think what their women folk
must suffer, mothers and wives and--Who? Dan O'Brien? Oh, he'll be all
right. He'll light on his feet like a cat. I believe that boy is made of
India rubber. He never gets hurt. Why, one time--Ah! There he goes
now up the ladder as if nothing had happened. Hooray-ayayay!
Hooray-ay-ay-ay! I thought he'd broken his neck as sure as shooting.

Wandering about one cannot fail to encounter what the gallant
fire-laddies have rescued from the devouring element. There is the piano
with a deep scratch across the upper part, and the top lid hanging by
one hinge. It caught in the door, and the boys were kind of in a hurry.
There is the parlor carpet, plucked up by the roots, as it were; and
two tubs, the washboard and a bag of clothes-pins; a stuffed chair,
with three casters gone, the coffee-pot, a crayon enlargement, a winter
overcoat, a blanket, a pile of old dresses, the screw-driver and a paper
of tacks in the colander, the couch with a triangular rip in the cover,
the coal-scuttle, a pile of dishes, the ax and wood-saw, a fancy pillow,
the sewing-machine with the top gone, the wash-boiler, the basket of
dirty clothes, with the stove-shaker and the parlor clock in together,
and a heap of books, all spraddled and sprawled every which way. Upon
this pitiful mound sits Mrs. Swope with her baby sound asleep upon her
bosom. She mingles her tears with the sustaining tea that Mrs. Farley
has made for her. Swope, still in his socks and with his wife's
shoulder-cape upon him, ca