消防部门。

消防部门。

Recent visitors to Kansas City have noticed an air of indifference around fire headquarters, and the reason is that bold Fireman John Egner carried a damsel down a life line from a fifth story window the other day. The damsel said she thought it was great fun. Her name is Miss Abelone Barrison. and she plays Hattie Griffin in “ Niobe,” which is running at the Coates house. George R. Edeson, who plays Peter Amos Dunn in “Niobe,” years ago belonged to the volunteer fire department in New York. He"is an old and warm fiiend of Chief George Hale of the Kansas City Fire Department. So it came to pass that Mr. Edeson and a dozen more members of the “Niobe” company went to fire department headquarters to pay their respects to Chief Hale and to have a look at Kansas City’s fire fighters and their machines. The men at headquarters are always proud to show their machines to visitors, and these being friends of the chief of course they got an extra show. The quick hitching drills were repeated several times, and the pompier corps were turned out. This corps practices on the five-story tower on the north side of the building. The ladies of the “ Niobe ” company were much interested in watching the pompiersmen run up their scaling ladders and make the long drop from this tower. Miss Barrison said she believed she would like that. Someone dared her to the trial, and she straightway accepted the challenge if some fireman would offer to carry her. Department Secretary John Egner, who used to be a pompiersman, volunteered for that hazardous courtesy, and Miss Barrison was escorted to the roof and thence to the highest platform. She was duly bundled up, tucked under the arm of John Egner, and down they sailed amidst great applause from the crowd which had filled the streets.

A few days ago fire broke out in the sixth story of the big furniture factory of Otis Corbett in Twenty-third street, this city. But for the presence of the water tower a most disastrous fire would have resulted, say the firemen, as the entire building was on fire when the apparatus arrived. The utility of the water tower in cities has been so often demonstrated that the wonder is that any city would dare to be without one.