Worcester daily spy. [volume] (Worcester [Mass.]) 1850-1888, 1871-10-19

The Cradle Of the FIRE.
Major John Hay writes as follows to the New
York Tribune:
NIau is the only animal who wastes his time
| in efforts 10 tiud out how things began for the
| mere pleasure Of knowing We are not satisfied
| with our pleasures until we have poisoned them
with the favor of realism, We pursue our Bur
gUndy until we have hunted 1t down to the watts
where it spirits under the broad feet or the peas.
ants of Beaune. And we are equally Unwisc in
dwelling on the source of our troubles, instead
of looking forward 10 the end of them, and then
forgetting them wholly. The Nile is better
worth seeing at Karnak and Cairo than ut Ny
ANA. The Mississippi is far more enjoyable
stream at Spunky point or Alton than at tlsa-
ca lake. Yet, good men, sensible in the main,
waste their lives in tracking them TO those saw
age thckets, where nature has hidden away
their cradles safe from the tread Of the world.
see the folly of all this plainly enough, but
the human nature in me will not LET me follow
my own precept. | have here before me six
miles, more or less, of the finest confSgration
ever seen. | have smoking ruins and ruins
which have broken themselves Of smoking
churches as romantic in their dilapidation as
Melrose by moonlight; mountains Of brick and
mortar and forests Of springing chimneys; but
| turned from them all this morning 10 hunt for
the spot where the fire started. Ii is the gr. at
est and most brilliant appariiOn Of the nine
teenth century-mOre reckless than Fisk, more
remorSeess than Bismarck. Some details of its
early life might not be without edificatiOn.
There may be lessons in its cradle and in its
grave. These were the Thoughts that justified
me in going TO Dekov2n street, thouL i the real
reason was that was curious to see the first
footprint of the monster who had trampled u
great city out of existence in day.
Nothing could be more ignoble and common
place than this quarter of Chicago. ! reached
it by crossing over the long drawbrdge at
Twelfth street, which was swinging gracefully
on its pivot as came. The streets were all filed
with wagons loaded down with furniture which
exposed TO the gaze of the loungers the broken
life of the family. The air Of the quarter was
wholly foreign and not quite reputable. Even
the little church OF ST. Wenzcl added TO the BO-
hemiau air of the district. German volunteers
were guarding the relief stores from hungry
Cgechs, who would make irregular tOrdys on the
provisions. Both sides thought their dignity re-
quired they should speak English instead of
their native tongue. "keep your fingers Won
dem pretzels of, or you'll get a het on YOU"
Yes | bet you got a heap O style, don't j"
Those coloquies sometimes give us moments Of
conjecture as TO the final doom of our language.
| found DelSoven street at last, Il mean little
street of shabby wooden houses with dirty door
yards and implanted fences falling to decay 1t
had no look of Chicago about it. Take il up
bodily and drop il out on the prairie and its
name might be Lickskilet station as well as
anything else The street was unpaveG and lit
tered with old boxes and widowed papers, and
a dozen absurd geese wandered about with rustic
familiarity. Slatternly women lOunged at the
gates and barc-leggcd children kept up an evil
IDENTIFY traditional warfare Of skirmiShmg with
the geese. On the south side of the street not
house was touched. On the north only one re-
manned. All the restwere simply ashes. There
were no piles Of ruin here. The wooden novels
left no landmarks except here and there
a stunted chimney too squat TO fall.
The grade had been raised in places
10. Ill IL.
now, as in the north DIVISION the roads seemed
like viaducts, and scorched and blackened trees
seemed growing out of sodded cellars. But OF
all the miserable plain stretching out before me
to the burning coal heaps in the northern dis
trict, | was only interested in the narrow block
between Dekoyen and Taylor streets, now quite
fiat and cool, with small gutter boys marching
through the lots. some kicking with bare feet in
the light ashes for suspected and sporadic Goals,
and Others prudenty mounted on stills, which
sunk from time to time in the spOnEy soil and
caused the young acrObats TO descend ignomn'
ouSly and pull them out. This was the Mecca
of my pilgrimage, for here the fire began. One
squalid little hOvel alone remained intact in all
that vast eXpause. 4 warped and weather.
| beaten Shanty of two rooms, perched ON thin
| piles, with tin plate nailed half way down them
| like dirty pautalets. There was no dirtier hut
in Chicago or Tipperary. But it stood there
safe, while a city had persisted before it and
around it. 1t was preserved by its own destruct-
i've significance. 1t was made sacred by the
curse that rested on tia curse more deadly than
that which Garkened the lintels OF the house
| of Thyestes. For out of that house, last Sun
| day night came a woman with lamp to the
| barn behind the house. to milk the COW with the
| Crumbled temper, that kicked the lamp, that
| spilled the kerosene, that fired the straw, that
| burnt Chicago. And there to this hour stands
that craven little house, holding on tightly to
| its miserable existence.
| | stooI m the sidewalk pnnpsifp os in In f,r
bound, calling up the appropriate emotions. A
strange, wunkled face on dwar!ish body came
up and said, CHATS dreadful sight" / as
sented, and he continued in melancholy Groom
'FOrty year Eve lived here-aud there wasn't a
brick house but wan, and that was the Lakeside
house, and it's gone now an yen behave me
SOor niYer see a fire loike that" | believed
him thoroughly, and he went away. My emo
tons not being satisfactory from front
view of the shanty, | went around
to the rear, and there found the man o
the house, sitting with two of his friends
His wife, Our Lady Of the Lamp-frcighled with
heavier disaster than that which PSYCHE carried
to the bedside OF EroS-Sat at the window, knit
ting. l approached the man of the house and
gave him good-day. He glanced MP with sleepy
furtiYe eyes. | asked him what he knew about
the origin of the fire. He glanced ut his friend,
and said, civily, he knew very li.tlc; lie was
walked up about nine O'Clock by the alarm, anC
fought from that time to save his house; al
every sentence he turned to his friends and said
81 can prove it by them" to which they nodded
assent. He seemed fearful that all Chicago wa,
coming down upon him for prompt and integra
payment of that 5000, 600 900 hscow had kick
ed over. His ncighbOrs say this story is an in
Yention dating from the second day OF the fire
There was something unutterably grotesque il
this ultimate atom feeling a sense Of responsi
biity for 4 catastrophe so stupendous, aud striv
ing by fiction, which must have heavily taXet
his highest powers OF Imagination, TO cscap,
a-reckOning he was already free from,
Like his fellows the nudge and tine nit
Through minuteness, to wit.