it
follows that he is liable to be called out several times every night;
and, in point of fact, this actually takes place very often. Sometimes
he has barely returned from a fire, and put off his drenched garments,
when he receives another "call," and is obliged to put them on again,
and go forth weary--it may be fasting--to engage in another skirmish
with the flames. In all weathers and at all seasons--hot or cold, wet
or dry--he must turn out at a moment's notice, to find himself, almost
before he is well awake, in the midst of stifling smoke, obliged to face
and to endure the power of roasting flames, to stand under cataracts of
water, beside tottering walls and gables, or to plunge through smoke and
flames, in order to rescue human lives. Liability to be called
_occasionally_ to the exercise of such courage and endurance is severe
enough; it is what every soldier is liable to in time of war, and the
lifeboat-man in times of storm; but to be liable to such calls several
times every day and night all round the year is hard indeed, and proves
that the Red Brigade, although almost perfect in its organisation and
heroic in its elements, is far too small. Paris has about seven hundred
fires a year; New York somewhere about three hundred; yet these cities
have a far larger body of firemen than London, which with little short
of two thousand fires a year, does her work of extinction with only
three hundred and seventy-eight men!

She succeeds because every man in the little army is a hero, not one
whit behind the Spartans of old. The London fireman, Ford, who, in
1871, at one great fire rescued six lives from the flames, and perished
in accomplishing the noble deed, is a sample of the rest. All the men
of the Brigade are picked men--picked from among the strapping and
youthful tars of the navy, because such men are accustomed to strict
discipline; to being "turned out" at all hours and in all weathers, and
to climb with cool heads in trying circumstances, besides being, as a
class, pre-eminently noted for daring anything and sticking at nothing.
Such men are sure to do their work well, however hard; to do it without
complaining, and to die, if need be, in the doing of it. But ought they
to be asked to sacrifice so much? Surely Londoners would do well to
make that complaint, which the men will _never_ make, and insist on the
force being increased, not only for the sake of the men, but also for
the sake of themselves;