CHARLES FORRESTER.

drop their hose and run. No. 33 did so, but No. 13 were too proud to lose their hose, and attempted to take it with them. The wall fell, and three of them were crushed, not twenty-five feet from where I stood. A wall of a burning building will totter for a little while, but when it comes. it comes like distress. I always regretted that fire, because I felt that I was the cause of those men's death. Well, if they had obeyed orders, like 33, they wouldn't, any of them, have been caught.

"At a fire in Orange Street, now Baxter Street, Chief Anderson ordered one of his engineers to get a stream upon the burning building from the rear in Mulberry Street. To do so it was necessary to take the hose through the house behind, through a room in which two men were sleeping on two beds. The engineer thought that they were negroes, they looked so tawny. Presently one of his assistants cried out that the sleepers had the black small-pox.' The pipe was dropped, the firemen decamped, followed in hot haste by the engineer. They hauled their hose out after them, and they weren't reported for disobeying orders either.

"At the large fire in 1835 a number of engines were present from the neighboring cities, among them the Northern Liberties, of Philadelphia, which reached the scene of the disaster on the second night. The railroad communication was not com

man Street, there was a tunnel through the snow. Oh, we don't have any such winters now! The charm of it all lay in the excitement of the running, in the victory over rivals, and in the daring feats in and about burning buildings. Many men lost their lives. There, for instance, was the great fire in West Street, near the Battery, in 1841 or 1842, the worst I ever knew. I was an engineer at that time, and had two streams, one from Engine 33, and the other from Hose 13, playing up the hatchway of the building; but the water came back upon us so scalding hot that it was like cards of needles in our backs ev-plete; there was a stretch of six miles in ery time it struck us. At length Chief Anderson ordered me to back the men out, and go to the rear of the building, to prevent the fire from getting into Washington Street. His plan always was, 'If the fire is in its infancy, go into the building; if it is well under way, go to the rear, and protect that, for the front will protect itself,' since there are always engines arriving that will help it. When we reached the rear, the floors fell in, and I saw the walls tottering. I ordered my men to

New Jersey, over two sand-hills, where the rails had not been laid. Passengers were accustomed to cover the distance in stagecoaches, but the Philadelphia boys dragged their engine across those sand-hills with unflagging energy. They arrived too late to be of service, but their New York brothers handsomely dined and wined them for their pains.

"At No. 231 Water Street, near Beekman, in 1842, a stove store caught fire on the third floor. I had two streams on the

second floor, and was throwing them up "At the famous Crystal Palace fire, in the hatchway. The floor above suddenly 1858, some statuary-figures of the Twelve gave way, and the weight of the stoves Apostles, which had been sent from France on it carried every staircase down into the in the hope that they would be bought for cellar. We looked around for means of the adornment of a Catholic church in the escape, and found an old sign-board cov-city-was destroyed. The commissioners ered with a preparation of smalts-small of the exhibition had notified the owners pieces of broken glass. We put one end of the board on a window-sill, and the other down on a small out-house below, forming a very steep inclination. Then we slid down. Each of us lost the seat of his trousers, and I parted with some flesh besides, so that I didn't sit down for some time afterward.

"At the Buck's Horn Tavern fire, in 1842 or 1843, at the junction of the Boston Post-road and the Bloomingdale Road, near where the Fifth Avenue Hotel now stands, the engines were ordered to form a hose line' in order to save the barn. I opened the nearest hydrant, and the next, and the next, but there was no water. They had been building a fountain in Union Square, and had shut the water off. I couldn't get a drop till I got to Fourth Street. Then we began to pump from one engine into another, and so on to the end of the line; but the hose was so leaky that all the water escaped before it reached the fire, all because the Common Council had refused to make an appropriation for new hose. Finally we found a cistern near the barn, and used that.

to remove them before the fire started, but
the latter had neglected to do so. Horace
Greeley was one of the commissioners,
and not long afterward, while on a visit
to Paris, was thrown into Clichy Prison
by the owners, who were trying to make
him indemnify them for their loss. They
never got any money from him, though.
I remember Horace well. He used to
come down to the post-office to get his
newspaper exchanges, and carried them
home himself. He was then editor of the
Log-Cabin, a General Harrison campaign
sheet. His shoes had no strings; his trou-
sers caught in them behind; he wore the
old white coat which James Gordon Ben-
nett made famous; his hat was on the
back of his head; and his neckcloth, when
he wore one, showed its knot under his
ear. Was it affectation? No; it was care-
lessness or recklessness. After he got
married his wife rather improved him.
"At a fire in Ann Street in 1836, one
morning at about sunrise, old Mr. Ben-
nett, who had just opened an office in
Clinton Hall, next door to the corner of
Beekman and Nassau streets, where the

Nassau Bank now stands, came out upon the front steps, and presented each one of a crowd of two thousand persons or more with a copy of that day's Morning Herald. He stood in the open air, and gave a paper to everybody that came. It was a curious sight to see the entire company, seated on curb-stones and stoops, reading the Morning Herald. It was the best advertisement he ever had.

"At a fire in Broad Street in 1845, which burned through to Broadway and down almost to Bowling Green, there was an explosion, said to be of several tons of saltpetre, although afterward it was a popular conundrum whether saltpetre would explode at all. Some of Five's men were on the roof of the building. The roof went down, and they walked off unhurt to the pavement. One of them said that the sensation was 'as if the roof had been hoisted up and then squatted down.'

"At a fire in 1812 in Chatham Street hundreds of houses were burned to the ground. A sailor climbed up the steeple of Dr. Spring's Brick Church, which occupied the site of the Times Building, went out upon the roof, and extinguished the flames that had just started there. A reward was offered for his feat of valor, but | he could never be found. This was considered the greatest fire in New York city up to the conflagration of 1835.

the property in the yard were totally destroyed. This is one of the few instances where a New York fire-engine, taken out to extinguish a fire, was itself extinguished.

"The thermometer stood at more than 100° Fahrenheit one Sunday in July, 1824, when a fire broke out in a rope-walk on Orchard Street, extending into the fields. So intense was the heat that seven firemen died from the effects of it. Mr. Thomas Franklin, then Chief Engineer, father of Mr. Morris Franklin, now president of the New York Life-insurance Company, was seriously affected by the same cause.

"The Bowery Theatre has been burned three times; the first time was in 1828, when it was the finest theatre in New York city, and when Mlle. Celeste, Monsieur and Madame Achilles, Monsieur and Madame Hutin, the first importation of French dancers into this country, were drawing immense houses, and creating extraordinary excitement. Some stables south of the theatre, near Bayard Street, took fire, and the neighboring houses served as a bridge for the flames, which soon attacked the eaves of the theatre, then the roof, and in a short time the interior. For hours the conflagration was beyond the control of the firemen, notwithstanding the presence and activity of every one of the forty-seven engines and nine trucks belonging to the Department, each engine representing forty men. The difficulty of obtaining water was very great. A line was formed of not less than seventeen engines, stretching from the foot of Catherine Street to the burning building, and engaging the services of six hundred and eighty men. The water was pumped from the East River by the first engine in the line, and thence into the second engine, which pumped it into the third, and thence into the fourth, which pumped it into the fifth, and so on. The law then, and until 1835, required each householder to keep in the hall of his house two leather buckets, and to throw them into the street when an alarm of fire was heard in his neighborhood. They were picked up for use by citizens, who put themselves in lines between the fire and the nearest cisterns and pumps, and proceeded to fill the engines as rapidly as possible, passing the buckets from hand to hand. Each bucket was marked with the name and address of its owner, and was When the

"At a fire which broke out at three o'clock one Sunday morning in March, 1824, in the ship-yard of Adam and Noah Brown, bounded by Stanton, Houston, and Goerck streets and the East River, my engine itself, known as Black Joke, No. 33, was so burned that nothing remained of it but a blackened scrap heap. This en gine was the first on the ground. Its odd name was the name of an Albany sloop which, during the Revolutionary war, was transformed into a privateer, and distinguished itself by capturing a number of prizes off the coast of Nova Scotia. In the yard were two steamboats nearly finished, and two ships on the stocks, one of them under cover of the ship-house. Although Black Joke, 33, got to work very expeditiously, the flames spread so rapidly that the firemen were soon driven away from the engine, some of them being compelled to jump into the river in order to save their lives, while others were rescued in a row-boat. An unsuccessful attempt had been made to launch the ships that were on the stocks. Every vessel and all | returned to him after the fire.

creased scope of operation. When the tober, 1716, that "a committee be appoint