sucked
dry, the water in the well being exhausted. The residents were not yet
conquered. Some of them threw open their cellar doors and, calling for
assistance, began to roll out barrels of red wine. Barrel after barrel
appeared, until fully five hundred gallons were ready for use. Then the
barrel heads were smashed in and the bucket brigade turned from water to
wine. Sacks were dipped in the wine and used for fighting the fire. Beds
were stripped of their blankets and these soaked in the wine and hung
over exposed portions of the cottages, while men on the roofs drenched
the shingles and sides of the houses with wine. The postscript to this
queer story is that the wine won and the firefighters saved their homes.
The story is worth retelling, though it may be added that wine, if
it contained much alcohol, would serve as a feeder rather than as an
extinguisher of flame.

A striking description of the aspect of the city on that terrible
Wednesday is told by Jerome B. Clark, whose home was in Berkeley, but
who did business in San Francisco. He left for the city early Wednesday
morning, after a minor shake-up at home, which he thus describes:

A VIVID FIRE PICTURE.

"I was asleep and was awakened by the house rocking. With the exception
of water in vases, and milk in pans being spilled, and one of our
chimneys badly cracked, we escaped with nothing but a bad scare, but I
can assure you it was a terrific and terrifying experience to feel that
old house rocking, jolting and jumping under us, with the most terrible
roar, dull, deep and nerve-racking. It calmed down after that and we
went back to bed, only to get up at six o'clock to find that neighbors
had suffered by having vases knocked from tables, bric-a-brac knocked
around, tiles knocked out of grates and scarcely a chimney left
standing. We thought that we had had the worst of it, so I started over
to the city as usual, reaching there about eight o'clock, and it is just
impossible to describe the scenes that met my eyes.

"In every direction from the ferry building flames were seething, and
as I stood there, a five-story building half a block away fell with a
crash, and the flames swept clear across Market Street and caught a
new fireproof building recently erected. The streets in places had sunk
three or four feet, in others great humps had appeared four or five feet
high. The street car tracks were bent and twisted out of shape. Electric
wires lay in every dire