is, I would have seen it, if I had looked out of my hotel window. But I'd run two miles to see a burning haystack in the afternoon, and I was so dead tired that I slept right through the performance that night. And once I did see a row of stores burn, back in Homeburg—at the distance of a mile. I was in school, and the teacher wouldn't dismiss us. By stretching my neck several feet I could just see the flames leaping over the trees, but that was all. Some of the bad boys sneaked out of the door, but I was a good boy, and waited one thousand years until school was out and the fire was ditto. I've never felt quite the same since toward either goodness or education.

Some men run faithfully to fires year after year and view a fine collection of burning beefsteaks and feverish chimneys and volcanic wood-sheds, while others stroll out after dinner in a strange city and spend a pleasant evening watching a burning oil-refinery make a Vesuvius look pale and sickly in comparison. Luck is distributed in a dastardly way, and as for myself I've quit trying. I don't run to fires at all any more. The big cities have fooled me long enough by sending out forty pieces of apparatus to smother a defective flue. I stay behind and watch the crowd. It's more amusing and not half so much work.

Of course in Homeburg it's different. You city people don't realize what a blessing the fire-fiend is to a small town. Fires mean a whole lot to us. They keep us from petrifying altogether during the dull seasons. And they don't have to be real fires, either. Any old alarm will do. Our fire-bell sounds just as terrible for a little brush fire as it would for a flaming powder-mill. It's an adventure merely to hear the thing. Take a winter night in the dull season after Christmas, for instance. You have begun to go to sleep right after supper. You've finished the job at nine o'clock, and by two a.m. you're sailing placidly southwest of Australia in a seagoing automobile.

Suddenly the pirate-ship in the rear, which you hadn't noticed before, slips up and begins potting away at you with a dull metallic boom. The auto slips its clutch, and the engine begins to clang and clatter, and somebody off behind a red-hot mountain in the distance begins ringing an enormous bell just as you slide downward into a crater of flame—and then you wake up entirely, and the fire-bell is going "clang-clang-clang-clang-clang," while below you hear the ringing crunch of your neighbor's feet on the cold snow, and outside the north window there is a red glare which may be either the end of the world or another exploded lamp in 'Bige Brinton's chicken-incubator; you won't know which until you have stabbed both feet into one pants-leg, crawled all over the cold floor for a missing sock, and run half a mile, double-reefing your nightshirt to keep it from trailing out from under your overcoat. That's what a fire-alarm means in Homeburg.

It's just as interesting in the daytime too. Imagine a summer afternoon in Homeburg about three o'clock. It's hotter than a simoon in the Sahara, and the aggregate business being done along Front Street is nineteen cents an hour. The nearest approach to life on the street is Sam McAtaw sitting in a shady spot on the edge of the sidewalk and leaning against a telephone-pole, sound asleep. You're sitting in your office chair, with your feet on the desk, dozing, when suddenly you hear footsteps outside. Whoever is making them is turning them out with great rapidity, and that in itself is novel enough to be interesting. The footsteps go by, and you look at their maker. It is Gibb Ogle surging up the walk and yanking his ponderous feet this way and that with tremendous energy. Nothing but a fire or a loose lion can make Gibb run, and you don't take any stock in the lion theory; so you tumble out after him.

By this time Sim Bone is on the street, and Harvey McMuggins is coming up behind, while half a dozen heads have suddenly sprouted from as many doorways. Your heart beats with suspense when Gibb comes to the town-hall corner. Hurrah! He's steering for the fire-house. You're overhauling him rapidly, and by a big sprint you beat out Clatt Sanderson, and grab one handle of the fire-bell ropes. Gibb grabs the other, and then you let her have it for all there is in you.

Did I say anything about Homeburg being asleep? Forget it. Before you've hit the bell a dozen taps you can't hear it for the tramp of feet. Every store in town is belching forth proprietors and clerks. They are coming bareheaded and coatless; some of them are collarless. Chief Dobbs, who shoes horses in his less glorious moments and keeps his helmet hanging on the forge-cover, dashes into the engine-room, grabs his trumpet, and begins firing orders, not singly, but in broadsides. There's nobody there to order yet, but he's just getting his hand in, and ten seconds later, when the first member of the company arrives, he is saluted with nineteen stentorian commands in one blast. Half a minute later the engine-house is clogged with fire-fighters, and the air is a maelstrom of orders, counter orders, suggestions, objections, and hoarse yells. Then a roar of wheels sounds outside, and you drop the bell-rope handle and go out to see the finest sight of all.

I suppose those old Romans thought the chariot-races were pretty nifty, but if an old Roman should reassemble himself and watch the dray-race to a Homeburg fire, he'd wonder how he ever managed to sit through a silly little dash around an arena. From the south comes a cloud of dust and a terrific racket. At an equal distance from the east comes another cloud of dust and an even more terrible uproar, Clay Billings's dray having more loose spokes than Bill Dorgan's. The clouds approach with tremendous speed. Bill is a little ahead. He is lashing his horses with the ends of the reins, while from the bounding dray small articles of no value, such as butter-firkins and cases of eggs, are emerging and following on the road behind.

But Clay isn't beaten—not by a thousand miles. He's going to make it a dead heat or better—no, Bill hit the crossing first. By George! That Clay boy is a wonder. He deliberately pulled in and shot across behind Bill, cutting off a good fifty feet. His team stops, sliding on their haunches, and ten seconds later is being hitched to the hose-cart, while Clay is on the seat clanging the foot-bell triumphantly. It's the fiftieth race, or thereabouts, between the two, and the score is about even. The winner gets two dollars for the use of his team. I've seen horse-races for a thousand-dollar purse which weren't half as exciting.

In the meanwhile more messengers have arrived from the fire. It is in the Mahlon Brown barn, and late advices indicate terrible progress. As fast as forty-nine rival fingers can do it, the tugs are fastened, and the cart is off down the street with a long trail of citizens after it.

Bill's team, badly blown, is hitched to the hook-and-ladder truck, and willing hands push it out through the door. There is always more or less of a feud between the hook-and-ladder boys and the hose-cart boys, because the former get the second team and rarely arrive at the fire in time to hoist the beautiful blue ladders before the hose-cart gang puts the conflagration out. Indeed, the feeling has gotten so strong at times that the hook-and-ladder gang has threatened to double the prize-money by private subscription and get their rig out first, but patriotism has thus far prevented this.

You have rung the bell until you are tired, by this time, and, besides,