mpty-handed, more dead than alive. John O'Connell, of Truck
No. 1, at length succeeded in reaching his comrade and tying a rope
about him, while from above they drenched both with water to keep them
from roasting. They drew up a dying man; but John G. Reinhardt dead is
more potent than a whole crew of firemen alive. The story of the fight
for his life will long be told in the engine-houses of New York, and
will nerve the Kings and the Sheridans and the O'Connells of another
day to like deeds.

How firemen manage to hear in their sleep the right signal, while they
sleep right through any number that concerns the next company, not
them, is one of the mysteries that will probably always remain
unsolved. "I don't know," said Department Chief Bonner, when I asked
him once. "I guess it is the same way with everybody. You hear what
you have to hear. There is a gong right over my bed at home, and I
hear every stroke of it, but I don't hear the baby. My wife hears the
baby if it as much as stirs in its crib, but not the gong." Very
likely he is right. The fact that the fireman can hear and count
correctly the strokes of the gong in his sleep has meant life to many
hundreds, and no end of properly saved; for it is in the early
moments of a fire that it can be dealt with summarily. I recall one
instance in which the failure to interpret a signal properly, or the
accident of taking a wrong road to the fire, cost a life, and,
singularly enough, that of the wife of one of the firemen who answered
the alarm. It was all so pitiful, so tragic, that it has left an
indelible impression on my mind. It was the fire at which Patrick F.
Lucas earned the medal for that year by snatching five persons out of
the very jaws of death in a Dominick Street tenement. The alarm-signal
rang in the hook-and-ladder company's quarters in North Moore Street,
but was either misunderstood or they made a wrong start. Instead of
turning east to West Broadway, the truck turned west, and went
galloping toward Greenwich Street. It was only a few seconds, the time
that was lost, but it was enough. Fireman Murphy's heart went up in
his throat when, from his seat on the truck as it flew toward the
fire, he saw that it was his own home that was burning. Up on the
fifth floor he found his wife penned in. She died in his arms as he
carried her to the fire-escape. The fire, for once, had won in the
race for a life.

While I am writing this, the morning paper that is le