I happened about this time to be acting as president of an insurance
company on Canal Street. Summer was coming in again. One hot sunny day,
when the wind was high and gusty, the secretary was remarking to me what
sad ruin it might work if fire should start among the frame tenement
cottages which made up so many neighborhoods that were destitute of
watermains, when right at our ear the gong sounded for just such a region
and presently engine after engine came thundering and smoking by our open
windows. Fire had broken out in the street where Manouvrier's new house
stood, four squares from that house, but straight to windward of it.

We knew only too well, without being there to witness, that our firemen
would find nothing with which to fight the flames except a few shallow
wells of surface water and the wooden rain-water cisterns above ground,
and that both these sources were almost worthless owing to a drouth. A man
came in and sat telling me of his new device for lessening the risks of
fire.

"Where?" asked I, quickly.

"Why, as I was saying, on steamboats loaded with cotton."

"Oh, yes," said I, "I understand." But I did not. For the life of me I
couldn't make sense of what he said. I kept my eyes laboriously in his
face, but all I could see was a vision of burning cottages; hook-and-
ladder-men pulling down sheds and fences; ruined cisterns letting just
enough water into door-yards and street-gutters to make sloppy walking;