LOOK UP YOUR GEOGRAPHY. CAPT. WELLS!
Of course, Captain Wells, chief officer of the London fire brigade, may have been incorrectly reported; but the mere fact of nine lives having been lost at a recent fire in the British metropolis because there was no ladder long enough to reach up to a fourth story window-some fifty feet above the level of the street proves that it would have been better to have kept in service the eighty-five-foot American ladder, which once formed part of the outfit of the Metropolitan fire brigade, and of which he is repre sented as speaking so contemptuously. That piece of insular prejudice, however, is as nothing when compared with the amazing ignorance of geography displayed by Captain Wells, an officer of the British navy, and, therefore, presumed to be possessed of at least the minimum of knowledge as to the principal seaports of America. Even Lord Macaulay’s pet prig of a schoolboy could have told him that Hoboken, N. J., has about as much geographical, or municipal connection with New York as Gateshead with Newcastle-on-Tyne or North Shields with South Shields. Each happens to face on the same water, and that is all there is to it. Why, therefore, should New York's fire chief embody the account of the Hoboken disaster in his annual report?
Of course, Captain Wells, chief officer of the London fire brigade, may have been incorrectly reported; but the mere fact of nine lives having been lost at a recent fire in the British metropolis because there was no ladder long enough to reach up to a fourth story window-some fifty feet above the level of the street proves that it would have been better to have kept in service the eighty-five-foot American ladder, which once formed part of the outfit of the Metropolitan fire brigade, and of which he is repre sented as speaking so contemptuously. That piece of insular prejudice, however, is as nothing when compared with the amazing ignorance of geography displayed by Captain Wells, an officer of the British navy, and, therefore, presumed to be possessed of at least the minimum of knowledge as to the principal seaports of America. Even Lord Macaulay’s pet prig of a schoolboy could have told him that Hoboken, N. J., has about as much geographical, or municipal connection with New York as Gateshead with Newcastle-on-Tyne or North Shields with South Shields. Each happens to face on the same water, and that is all there is to it. Why, therefore, should New York's fire chief embody the account of the Hoboken disaster in his annual report?
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