t about half past four o'clock, two students at the west end of
College Hall, on the fourth floor, were awakened and saw a fiery
glow reflected in their transom. Getting up to investigate, they
found the fire burning in the zoological laboratory across the
corridor, and one of them immediately set out to warn Miss Tufts,
the registrar, and Miss Davis, the Director of the Halls of
Residence, both of whom lived in the building; the other girl
hurried off to find the indoor watchman. At the same time, a
third girl rang the great Japanese bell in the third floor center.
In less than ten minutes after this, every student was out of
the building.

The story of that brief ten minutes is packed with self-control
and selflessness; trained muscles and minds and souls responded
to the emergency with an automatic efficiency well-nigh unbelievable.
Miss Tufts sent the alarm to the president, and then went to the
rooms of the faculty on the third floor and to the officers of the
Domestic Department on the second floor. Miss Davis set a girl
to ringing the fast-fire alarm. And down the four long wooden
staircases the girls in kimonos and greatcoats came trooping,
each one on the staircase she had been drilled to use, after she
had left her room with its light burning and its corridor door shut.
In the first floor center the fire lieutenants called the roll of
the fire squads, and reported to Miss Davis, who, to make assurance
doubly sure, had the roll called a second time. No one said the
word "fire"--this would have been against the rules of the drill.
For a brief space there was no sound but "the ominous one of
falling heavy brands." When Miss Davis gave the order to go out,
the students walked quietly across the center, with embers and
sparks falling about them, and went out on the north side through
the two long windows at the sides of the front door.

And all this in ten minutes!

Meanwhile, Professor Calkins, who does not live at the college
but had happened to spend the night in the Psychology office on
the fifth floor, had been one of the earliest to awake, had wakened
other members of the faculty and helped Professor Case and her
wheel-chair to the first floor, and also had sent a man with an ax
to break in Professor Irvine's door, which was locked. As it
happened, Professor Irvine was spending the night in Cambridge,
and her room was not occupied. Most of the members of the faculty
seem to have come out of the b