But I should first tell you that our town has enjoyed a long immunity from fires; and although we possess a Volunteer Fire Brigade, at once efficient and obliging, and commanded by Mr. Patrick Sullivan (an Irishman), the men have had little or no opportunity of combating their sworn foe.  The Brigade was founded in the early autumn of 1873, and presented by public subscription with a handsome manual engine and a wooden house to contain it.  This house, painted a bright vermilion, is a conspicuous object at the top of the hill above the town, as you turn off towards the Rope-walk.  The firemen, of course, wear an appropriate uniform, with brazen helmets and shoulder-straps and a neat axe apiece, suspended in a leathern case from the waistband.  But the spirit of make-believe has of necessity animated all their public exercise, if I except the 13th of April, 1879, when a fire broke out in the back premises of Mr. Tippett, carpenter.  His shop was (and is) situated in the middle of the town, and in those days a narrow gatehouse gave, or rather prevented, access to the town on either side.  These houses stood, one at the extremity of North Street, beside the Ferry Slip, the other at the south end of the Fore Street, where it turns the corner by the Ship Inn and mounts Lostwithiel Hill.  With their low-browed arches, each surmounted by a little chamber for the toll-keeper, they recalled in an interesting manner the days when local traffic was carried on solely by means of pack-horses; but by an unfortunate oversight their straitness had been left out of account by the donors of the fire-engine, which stuck firmly in the passage below Lostwithiel Hill and could be drawn neither forwards nor back, thus robbing the Brigade of the result of six years’ practice.  For the engine filled up so much of the thoroughfare that the men could neither climb over nor round it, but were forced to enter the town by a circuitous route and find, to their chagrin, Mr. Tippett’s premises completely gutted.  For three days all our traffic entered and left the town perforce by the north side; but two years after, on the completion of the railway line to Troy, these obstructive gatehouses were removed, to give passage to the new Omnibus.

Let me proceed to the story of our more recent alarm.  At twenty minutes to five, precisely, on Christmas Eve, Mr. Wm. Freethy left his engine-room by the door which opens on the Quay; turned the key, which he immediately pocketed; and proceeded towards his mother’s house, at the western end of the town, where he invariably takes tea.  The wind was blowing strongly from the east, where it had been fixed for three days, and the thermometer stood at six degrees below freezing.  Indeed, I had remarked, early in the morning, that an icicle of quite respectable length (for a small provincial town), depended from the public water-tap under the Methodist Chapel.  About twenty minutes after Mr. Freethy’s departure, some children, who were playing about the Quay, observed dense volumes of smoke (as they thought) issuing from under the engine-room door.  They gave the alarm.  I happened to be in the street at the time, purchasing muscatels for the Christmas snap-dragon, and, after rushing up to the Quay to satisfy myself, proceeded with all haste to Mr. Sullivan, Captain of the Brigade.