The Emporia news. [volume] (Emporia, Kan.) 1859-1881, 1871-01-13
THE FIRE AT RICHMOND.

Christmas Eve was over at Richmond,
and the city lay peacefully under thin
covering of frozen snow. The cold, for
that southern region; was intense, and
most of those who were awake during
the early hours of Christmas morning,
thought of the cold and darkness as the
worst foes of human comfort ,and would
have said that the light and the heat
were, at that moment, of all the most to
be desired. In the Spottswood House,
the guests were TRANQUILITY sleeping, save
few passengers for the Southern train,
who, probably, looked forward some
what ruefully to passing into outer air
with the thermometer only degrees
above zero. Ten minutes later, and the
temperature outside was the thing least
thought of by all the startled inmates of
the great hotel. Inside the beneficent
heat had given place to the demon fire,
and men all pale and breathless made
frantic endeavors to clutch some of their
property out of the jaws of the destroy
er, while shrieking, half-clad women
rushed out barefooted to the shelter of
the friendly cold and darkness. 1t SEEM
ed as if the fire king had arisen to dis
pute the empire of the frost, and to
show that his sceptre was still more
powerful. And the frost, too, had
chained up the only element that could
dispute the progress of the destroying
flame, and for some fatal minutes the
fire engines stood idly awaiting the
thawing of the water. Everything
seemed to be against the doomed build
ing, for even the firemen's ladders, that,
in that terrible emergency, should have
saved the human beings who were rush
ing madly into the encircling arms of
the flames, were found to be too short,
as if no one had ever dreamed that SO
tall an edifice could ever become the
prey of fire.
The wild and unreasoning panic of
the inmates, as the alarm sped along the
corridors, was such as has too many
counterparts in the past, and will have
many more in the future. AS one
crowded behind another, in the feverish
struggle to reach the door, the door it.
self was prevented from being opened
by the press of the shouting and strain
ing crowd behind it. The fire was at
their backs and the nearest avenue of
escape was before, and so the blind, ami
NAL instinct that teaches every sentient
thing to fly from the one, prove more
powerful than the calm reason that
should have prevented the temporary
closing up of the other. At the WIN
dows women appeared gasping for air,
and wildly gesticulating for the help
| that did not come. One man was merci-
fully smitten with idiocy before meet
ing the doom that awaited him. Ankle
ty to save personal property lost proba-
bly, more than one life-eagerness to Sc
cure the safety of children nearly cost
another. A man in the fourth story
descended like squirrel from cornice
to cornice, and never allowed his nerve
| to fail, or his blistered hands to slip till
! he had reached the ground. What
scenes passed within which the seethins
mass of smoke and fame concealed for.
ever from sight, we need hardly attempt
to CONJECTURE. The fact, more eloquent
than all description, is that nearly &
dozen human beings have persisted il
the swift and terrible coniagration tina
so disastrously ushered in the gladstone
Christmas morning to Richmond.-N
| Y Times