Daily Kennebec journal. [microfilm reel] (Augusta, Me.) 1870-1975, 1874-12-03
"Only an honest man
Doing his duty

Doing his duty
and human life, like human labor. is cheap
10 Russia
And SO, through the long night. the fire
roars and RACES; and when the day dawns
upon it at last, there is but little left fol
the destroyer to feed on. Slowly and sui.
lenly his rage dies away in hoarse growls
and gaspings. and the silence of utter des-
olation now sinks upon that great wilder
ness of ruin.
While the fire ragged, the Understandable
magnifcence of the spectacle made one hall
forget its horror, and the ruin which it en-
tailed: but tn the gray of early morning
when the roar and excitement are over, i
is dreary and hideous sight. Over Tho
whole place broods guilty silence, an ali
of hopelessness and lifelessness, a blank
unseeing stare from the gaping windows
which makes one feel like the accomplcp
of some mysterious crime. The great
warehouse, where the fire did its worst, i.
Quilted from roof to basement. only II few
blackened beams, like the ribs of Il skele-
ton, bridge the space between the smol-
dering walls. Overhead. the clear sky is
blotted with creeping smoke while the
ground is covered far and wide with half
consumed bales, mounds of singed hemp,
masses Of iron plating bent and twisted i'll
every direction, charred planks and smoke
blackened rafters floating in pools of wa
ter; and among the chaos stand groups OF
curious spectators, not noisy or excited,
but with cool, scientific appreciation
which seems seems to saw, 1--WE have seen
the like often before, but it issalways
worth seeing again"
1t needs little Imagination to transform
the whole scene into great battlefield
the blackened ruins of the contested en-
trenchment standing grimly up in front
the charred bales and broken planking
strewing the ground like heaps OF slain
amid which the strips of scarlet cloth show
like trickling streams of blood-while the
helmeted firemen who toll amid the chad,
might we'll pass for The few survivors Of
the conquering army paying the last hon
ors to their fallen brethren. And that
nothing may be wanting to complete the
tragedy, amid the thickest of the ruin lies
strange, formless heap, oozing out
thick. white, nanseOus smoke-a kind of
unctuous, pitchy cinder, from which the
most case-hardened veterans OF the fire
brigade avert their eyes in horror, There
are five men missing this morning from the
gang of the Tootchkaff Wharf, and this is
all that is left of them
Turning away in disgust | suddenly
come face TO face with the Russian ac
quaintance mentioned at the opening of
my story, who is surveying the dismal
scene with the air of connoisseur
WELL" remarks he, with quiet smile
Che is a man who would make a joke upon
anything), zone advantage OF all this is,
that after such destruction of hemp it
will be simply impossible for men OF mod
crate means to hang themselves for some
time to come !"
So goes the march of events A ca
tastrophe unparalleled within the men,
CRY Of man, the destruction of three mil
lions worth Of property, half Il dozen men
killed by the cruellest OF all death-and all
this Is summed up in ten or twelve
careless lines of print and lhe passing
Jest of dilettante But the counter-ob-
seryation OF an old fireman who is work
ing near US sends me away somewhat
comforted.
Poor fellows" mutters the veteran,
crossing, himself as he looks askance at
the shapeless mass into which five living
men have been melted down, there's
little enough LETT Of them now, but God
will know them when they come TO Him. "
--(HsseXs Md0nzi1ae