FIRES IN THE HUB.
A GRAPHIC DESCRIPTION OF THE MANNER IN WHICH FIRES ARE FOUGHT BY THE BOSTON FIRE DEPARTMENT.
When an alarm of fire is rung in, whether in the busy hours of the day, or the still hours of the night, one's attention is arrested, momentarily, at least, almost mechanically one counts the number of the box, if he does nothing more, but, if his disposition is such, each stroke is an added provocation for excitement and bustle. It may truthfully be said, that an alarm of fire makes conspicuous the various phases of human nature. For instance, one person beholds the excitement and thrilling scenes of a fire with the utmost indifference and unconcern. He feels that it is not his funeral, and it is nothing to him that lives are lost and millions of dollars worth of property is destroyed, the clatter and rush of the apparatus as it is hurried to the scene, and the shouts of the Firemen move him not. He would not go a block out of the way to see the biggest conflagration. Even the often sublime spectacle presented by the flames as they shoot upward in seeming anger, seizing everything combustible as prey, and shedding a lurid light over the scene, and the smoke, as it pours forth in clouds of inky blackness, fail to stir a feeling or motion in his heart.
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