requires unusual
strength. No particular skill is needed. A man need only have steady
nerve, and the strength to raise the long pole by its narrow end, and
jam the iron hook through a window which he cannot see but knows is
there. Once through, the teeth in the hook and the man's weight upon
the ladder hold it safe, and there is no real danger unless he loses
his head. Against that possibility the severe drill in the school of
instruction is the barrier. Any one to whom climbing at dizzy heights,
or doing the hundred and one things of peril to ordinary men which
firemen are constantly called upon to do, causes the least discomfort,
is rejected as unfit. About five percent of all appointees are
eliminated by the ladder test, and never get beyond their probation
service. A certain smaller percentage takes itself out through loss of
"nerve" generally. The first experience of a room full of smothering
smoke, with the fire roaring overhead, is generally sufficient to
convince the timid that the service is not for him. No cowards are
dismissed from the department, for the reason that none get into it.

The notion that there is a life-saving corps apart from the general
body of firemen rests upon a mistake. They are one. Every fireman
nowadays must pass muster at life-saving drill, must climb to the top
of any building on his scaling-ladder, slide down with a rescued
comrade, or jump without hesitation from the third story into the
life-net spread below. By such training the men are fitted for their
work, and the occasion comes soon that puts them to the test. It came
to Daniel J. Meagher, of whom I spoke as foreman of Hook-and-Ladder
Company No. 3, when, in the midnight hour, a woman hung from the
fifth-story window of a burning building, and the longest ladder at
hand fell short ten or a dozen feet of reaching her. The boldest man
in the crew had vainly attempted to get to her, and in the effort had
sprained his foot. There were no scaling-ladders then. Meagher ordered
the rest to plant the ladder on the stoop and hold it out from the
building so that he might reach the very topmost step. Balanced thus
where the slightest tremor might have caused ladder and all to crash
to the ground, he bade the woman drop, and receiving her in his arms,
carried her down safe.

No one but an athlete with muscles and nerves of steel could have
performed such a feat, or that which made Dennis Ryer, of the crew of
Engine No. 36, famous thre