ations upon which he insisted are now part of the general
tenement-house law.

Chief Bresnan died leading his men against the enemy. In the Fire
Department the battalion chief leads; he does not direct operations
from a safe position in the rear. Perhaps this is one of the secrets
of the indomitable spirit of his men. Whatever hardships they have to
endure, his is the first and the biggest share. Next in line comes the
captain, or foreman, as he is called. Of the six who were caught in
the fatal trap of the water-tank, four hewed their way out with axes
through an intervening partition. They were of the ranks. The two who
were killed were the chief and Assistant Foreman John L. Rooney, who
was that day in charge of his company, Foreman Shaw having just been
promoted to Bresnan's rank. It was less than a year after that Chief
Shaw was killed in a fire in Mercer Street. I think I could reckon up
as many as five or six battalion chiefs who have died in that way,
leading their men. The men would not deserve the name if they did not
follow such leaders, no matter where the road led.

In the chief's quarters of the Fourteenth Battalion up in Wakefield
there sits to-day a man, still young in years, who in his maimed body
but unbroken spirit bears such testimony to the quality of New York's
fire-fighters as the brave Bresnan and his comrade did in their death.
Thomas J. Ahearn led his company as captain to a fire in the
Consolidated Gas-Works on the East Side. He found one of the buildings
ablaze. Far toward the rear, at the end of a narrow lane, around which
the fire swirled and arched itself, white and wicked, lay the body of
a man--dead, said the panic-stricken crowd. His sufferings had been
brief. A worse fate threatened all unless the fire was quickly put
out. There were underground reservoirs of naphtha--the ground was
honeycombed with them--that might explode at any moment with the fire
raging overhead. The peril was instant and great. Captain Ahearn
looked at the body, and saw it stir. The watch-chain upon the man's
vest rose and fell as if he were breathing.

"He is not dead," he said. "I am going to get that man out." And he
crept down the lane of fire, unmindful of the hidden dangers, seeing
only the man who was perishing. The flames scorched him; they blocked
his way; but he came through alive, and brought out his man, so badly
hurt, however, that he died in the hospital that day. The Board of
Fire Commissioners