One afternoon Mr. Peter Dewsnap was seated in the great library in which he passed most of his leisure time, busily engaged on a work in which he had taken a great deal of interest. A tap on the door interrupted his labor, and in response to his invitation Bruce Decker entered the room, cap in hand, and saluted him.
“Ah, it’s you, young Decker, is it?” said the old gentleman, as he rose to greet his visitor. “Well, how is the chief to-day?”
“He’s very well,” answered the boy, in hesitating tones, “and the fact is it was at his advice that I accepted your invitation to come up and see your library.”
“Very glad to see you, indeed, my young friend,” responded the old gentleman, cordially. “As you said yourself the other day I’m an old fire crank, and I like nothing better than talking to young men of your age about what I think is the most important branch of public service in the country. Sit down here, Decker, and if you’ve an hour to spare it won’t do you any harm to hear an old man talk about a subject that’s nearest to his heart.”
Bruce in Mr. Dewsnap’s ‘fire library.’—Page 79.
79Bruce seated himself in one of the big leather arm-chairs and glanced about the room. He had never seen as many books in handsome bindings in all his life, and he was particularly struck with the fact that one side of the room was completely filled with oaken shelves containing only books bound in red morocco. About the room were also scattered a number of old colored prints representing, for the most part, pictures of fires and of engines.
“Those books in red constitute my fire library,” said Mr. Dewsnap, “and I am proud to say that it is one of the best, if not the very best, in this country. I have books in French, German and English, for you know that the service has a much greater literature than most people have any idea of.”
Then Mr. Dewsnap lit a cigar, puffed thoughtfully at it for a moment or two, and went on: “The trouble with most of the boys who want to become firemen is that they are so carried away with the idea of jumping out of bed at a moment’s notice and tearing away through the streets at full gallop, and then turning streams on the flames and climbing up ladders and all the rest of it, that they entirely 80forget the fact that there is a serious side to it all, and that being a good fireman involves more in the way of training, both physical and mental, than almost any other public career that is open to them.
“As I told you the other day, people have been in the habit, or to speak more correctly, were in the habit during the ante-bellum days, of regarding firemen as a lot of toughs and loafers who got together to have a good time and a big hurrah, and sometimes even for political purposes, and comparatively few really knew what a fireman’s life meant. Well, when you look at those books there, many of which were written by people of the highest eminence in science or literature, you realize that there must be something in the art of overcoming the most destructive and dangerous of all the elements to excite the attention and enlist the brains of these men. Now take this book for example and glance through it.”
Bruce took a large flat volume which Mr. Dewsnap handed him, opened it, and glanced attentively at some of its copper plates. They represented men in quaint, old-fashioned costumes, engaged in putting out fires by the most primitive of means, chiefly by leather buckets passed from hand to hand. The book, 81as Mr. Dewsnap explained, was printed in 1735 in Holland by Jan vander Heiden, the first inventor of flexible hose. It was an exhaustive treatise on conflagrations and the art of extinguishing them.
“What did they make the hose of in those days?” asked Bruce, as he studied the old-fashioned prints with deep attention.
“Leather,” replied Mr. Dewsnap. “And leather continued to be used until forty years ago. In fact, it’s used to a great extent to this very day in the smaller towns and cities where fires are of rare occurrence. There are some men who claim that it is better than rubber because it lasts longer and does not rot so easily, but I just showed you that book because its pictures would give you some idea of the enormous advancement that has been made in the last century and a half. Here’s another book written in German that is devoted entirely to the burning of the Theatre Comique in Paris a few years ago. Four books in all have been written and published on that subject alone, but strange to say, no book has yet been written in regard to the burning of the Brooklyn Theatre, which was a catastrophe involving an infinitely greater loss of life. It is interesting, by the way, to know that every great fire 82teaches us some important lesson, and the direct result of the Brooklyn Theatre fire was a number of new laws which govern the construction of theatres, and provides for various improvements and appliances for safety that ha............