"I shall be likely to remember that without."

Meanwhile the fire department were working energetically to put out
the fire. Stream after stream was directed against the burning
building, but the fire had gained too great headway. It kept on its
victorious course, triumphantly baffling all the attempts that were
made to extinguish it. Then efforts were made to prevent its spreading
to the neighboring buildings, and these were successful. But the
building itself, old and rotten, a very tinderbox, was doomed. In less
than an hour the great building, full as a hive of occupants, was a
confused mass of smoking ruins. And still the poor people hovered
around in uncertainty and dismay, in that peculiarly forlorn condition
of mind induced by the thought that they knew not where they should
lay their heads during the coming night. One family had saved only a
teakettle to commence their housekeeping with. A little girl had
pressed close to her breast a shapeless and dirty rag baby, her most
valued possession. A boy of twelve had saved a well-used pair of
skates, for which he had traded the day before, while an old woman,
blear-eyed and wrinkled, hobbled about, groaning, holding in one hand
a looking-glass, an article the most unlikely of all, one would think,
to be of use to her.

"Did you save nothing, Mrs. Donovan?" asked Paul.

"Shure and I saved my flatirons, and my tub I threw out of the window,
but some spalpeen has walked off with it. I wish it had fallen on his
head. What'll my Pat say when he comes home from work?"

"It's lucky no lives were lost."

"Thrue for you, Mrs. Hoffman. It might have been a dale worse. I don't
mind meself, for I've strong arms, and I'll soon be on my fate again.
But my Pat'll be ravin'. He had just bought a new coat to go to a ball
wid tomorrow night, and it's all burnt up in the fire. Do you see that
poor craythur wid the lookin' glass? I'm glad I didn't save mine, for I
wouldn't know what to do wid it."

"Well, Mrs. Donovan, we must find a new home."

"I've got a sister livin' in Mulberry street. She'll take me in till I
can get time to turn round. But I must stay here till my Pat comes
home, or he would think I was burnt up too."

The crowd gradually diminished. Every family, however poor, had some
relations or acquaintances who were willing to give them a temporary
shelter, though in most cases it fed to most uncomfortable crowding.
But the poor know how to sympathize with the poor