Part 1

FIREBRANDS

BY

FRANK E. MARTIN

AND

GEORGE M. DAVIS, M.D.

WITH ILLUSTRATIONS FROM PHOTOGRAPHS

School Edition

BOSTON LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY 1912

_Copyright, 1911_, BY LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY.

_All rights reserved_

Printers S. J. PARKHILL & CO., BOSTON, U. S. A.

PREFACE

Every year fire destroys an enormous amount of property in the United States. Of this great loss by which our country is made just so much poorer, for property destroyed by fire is gone forever and cannot be replaced, a large proportion is due to carelessness, thoughtlessness, and ignorance. Nor is it a property loss only. Every fire endangers human life, and the number of lives lost in this way in one year is truly appalling.

It has been estimated that if all the buildings burned in one year were placed close together on both sides of a street, they would make an avenue of desolation reaching from Chicago to New York City. At each thousand feet there would be a building from which a severely injured person had been rescued, and every three-quarters of a mile would stand the blackened ruins of a house in which some one had been burned to death.

Children are allowed to burn dry leaves in the fall, and their clothing catches fire from the flames; women pour kerosene on the fire in their kitchen stoves, or cleanse clothing with gasoline near an open blaze; thoughtless men toss lighted cigars and cigarettes into a heap of rubbish, or drop them from an upper window into an awning; the head of a parlor match flies into muslin draperies; a Christmas-tree is set on fire with lighted candles, or a careless hunter starts a forest fire which burns for days and destroys valuable timber lands. There are hundreds of different ways in which fires are set. The majority of these fires, which cause great loss of life and property and untold suffering, are preventable by ordinary precaution.

This little book has been written for the special purpose of teaching children how to avoid setting a fire, how to extinguish one, or how to hold one in check until the arrival of help. Each story tells how a fire was started, how it should have been avoided, and how it was put out: Mr. Brown Rat builds his nest with matches which were left around the house; Careless Joe pours hot ashes into a wooden box; or boys light a bonfire and leave the hot embers, and then old North Wind comes along and has a bonfire himself.

At the end of each lesson there are instructions regarding the fire in question. There are also chapters on such subjects as our loss by forest fires, the work of our firemen, common safeguards against fire, how to act in case the house is on fire, and first aid to those who are injured by fire,--how to treat scalds and burns, how to revive persons who are suffocated by smoke, etc. A thoughtful reading of this book should make the present generation a more careful and less destructive people, and the entire country richer and more prosperous.

CONTENTS

PAGE

PREFACE v

BROWNIE'S MISFORTUNE 1

"CARELESS JOE" 9

MAY DAY 18

CAMPING OUT 30

THELMA'S BIRTHDAY 42

THE "E. V. I. S." 52

FOREST FIRES 61

PINCH AND TEDDY 67

THE BUSY BEES 77

THE COUNTY FAIR 86

"LITTLE FAULTS" 98

TEN YOUNG RATS 105

HOW NOT TO HAVE FIRES. I 116

THE KITCHEN FIRE 123

HOW NOT TO HAVE FIRES. II 133

THE SUNSHINE BAND 140

VACATION AT GRANDPA'S 148

THE FIRE DRILL 159

FIGHTING THE FIRE 169

VERNON'S BROTHER 176

THE WORLD'S GREAT FIRES 184

NEW YEAR'S EVE 189

CHRISTMAS CANDLES 200

WHAT TO DO IN CASE OF FIRE 211

FIRST AID 216

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Fighting the Fire _Frontispiece_

The Flying Squadron _Page_ 44

The horses are led away to a place of safety " 88

The horses gallop madly down the street " 102

In the largest cities the firemen find their hardest work " 142

The water-tower pours a stream into the upper windows " 172

Fire Drill for the Firemen " 202

Fire raging through the deserted streets in San Francisco " 216

FIREBRANDS

BROWNIE'S MISFORTUNE

Polly's cage had just been hung out on the back porch, and she was taking a sun bath. She ruffled up her feathers and spread out her wings and tail.

She knew she was pretty, and as the sun brightened her plumage, she arched her neck, and looked down at herself, saying over and over, "Pretty Polly! Polly! Pretty Polly!"

Then she threw back her head and laughed one of those jolly, contagious chuckles that made everyone laugh with her.

While she sat there, talking and laughing, a big brown rat came creeping up the steps. Polly had often seen him before, for he came to the house every day to find something to eat; and as he always stopped to have a chat, the two had become good friends.

"Good morning, Polly," said Mr. Brown Rat. "You seem very happy this morning."

"Why shouldn't I be happy?" replied Polly. "See how pretty I am. Besides, I have nothing to do all day but sit here and eat crackers and watch the people. By the way, Brownie, run into the house and get me a cracker now."

"I can't get any more crackers, Polly," replied the rat. "The last time I went to the pantry the crackers were in a stone jar that had a heavy cover."

Polly ruffled up her feathers, and spread out her wings so that they would shine in the sun.

"You are very pretty, Polly," said Mr. Brown Rat, "but you haven't such a fine long tail as I have;" and he spread it out on the piazza and twisted his head to look at it.

"Ha, ha! you wait until the cat gets hold of it and it won't be very long," replied Polly. "Why don't you shave off your whiskers, Brownie?"

"I couldn't smell any cheese if I lost my whiskers," said Brownie. "And, besides, they make me look dignified with my family.

"Polly, I am going to build a new house," he added. "I am tired of living in barns and stone walls, and I want my family together where it is warm and comfortable. Do you happen to know where I can find some matches?"

"Why, yes," replied Polly, "my master is very careless with his matches. He leaves them around loose wherever he goes. You see, he doesn't use the matches that have to be struck on a box, and every time he lights his pipe he scratches the matches on anything that is handy. They are snapping and cracking all day long. Sometimes they break off and fly away, all on fire. You can find them almost anywhere in the house. But what do you want to do with matches, Brownie?"

"Well, you see, Polly, the little sticks make a good framework for my house. The wood is good to chew and can be made soft for lining the nest; and the bits of flint in the head of the match are fine for sharpening and filing my teeth."

"You and your family won't be able to file out of the house if you light one of those matches while you are filing your teeth," said Polly, and she gave another of her famous chuckles.

"I'll look out for that," replied Mr. Brown Rat, as he scampered across the piazza.

"Don't you dare to build a nest with matches in my house," Polly screamed after him; but Brownie slipped through a hole in the clapboards under the kitchen window and didn't make any promises.

Polly didn't see her friend again for some time and she began to miss him.

One day she heard her master say, "I wonder what becomes of all my matches?" and this set her to thinking.

She sat still on her perch for a long time, scratching her head with first one foot and then another. "I believe Brownie is really building his nest in this house," she said to herself at last; "and he is using matches, too, after I told him not to."

Then she became very angry. She screamed and bit the bars of her cage with her sharp bill until the cook came out and scolded her for being so cross.

Two or three days later Polly was hanging on the back porch again, and the sun was shining on her feathers. She was spreading out her wings, and cocking her head on one side, when, all of a sudden, she saw a thin curl of blue smoke creeping out between the clapboards.

"Hello! Help! Come in!" she screamed. "Hello! Help! Fire! Fire!"

Some boys who were playing in the street came running up to the house at the cry of fire.

"Get a move on!" cried Polly, dancing about in her cage and trying her best to open the door.

"Where's the fire?" asked one of the boys.

"Get busy!" screamed Polly, as she pulled herself up to the top of the cage.

Just then a wagon came tearing down the street. "Whoa!" cried Polly, and, sure enough, the horses stopped in front of the house.

The driver saw the smoke, and he went to work in a hurry, tearing off the clapboards, and showing the boys where to pour water in between the walls, until the fire was all out.

When the man had gone away, and everything was quiet, Mr. Brown Rat came creeping out of the hole, wet and bedraggled, with his whiskers all burned off.

Polly caught sight of him in a moment. "You rascal," she screamed, "you set that fire. You ought to know better than to build a house with matches."

"I do now, and I'll never do it again, never again," replied Brownie meekly, as he went limping away.

_Why did the brown rat come out on the back porch?_

_How did he build his nest?_

_Of what material was it constructed?_

_Why do rats like matches?_

_Why is it dangerous to leave matches scattered around the house?_

That rats and mice are responsible for many fires is no longer doubted. The evidence has been plainly seen. Rats and matches are a dangerous combination. For this reason matches should not be scattered around the house.

In most of the European countries only safety matches can be used; this is one reason for the small number of fires in foreign lands as compared with those in the United States.

"CARELESS JOE"

"I didn't mean to lose my coat, Father. We boys were playing ball, and I threw it down on the ground and forgot all about it until I got home. Then I went back for it and it was gone. Some thief had stolen it, I suppose. I can't help it now, can I?"

"No, Joe, of course you can't," his father answered; "but you are always doing something like this, and I want you to learn to be more careful. It is just the same with your work. Half of it is forgotten, and the other half is not well done. I can't trust you to do anything. You are so forgetful and careless that even your school-mates call you 'Careless Joe.' It is no wonder that your mother and I are discouraged."

Mr. and Mrs. Patten were very fond of Joe, who was their only son, and they did everything they could for his happiness; but the boy had grown so careless and selfish that his father and mother were at their wits' end to know what to do with him.

As for Joe, he was a pleasant-faced, good-hearted, jolly boy; but his parents knew that this one bad habit of carelessness would soon spoil him if it were not corrected. They had done everything they could to help him overcome his fault, but he only seemed to grow more careless every day.

Finally Mr. Patten said to his wife, "Let's send Joe to visit Grandfather Knight. He knows how to manage boys pretty well."

Of course Joe was delighted when he heard of the plan, for who ever saw a boy who didn't like to visit his grandfather?

Mrs. Patten wrote to Grandma Knight about Joe's bad habit, which was giving them so much trouble; and the two old people talked it all over and felt sure that they would know what to do when the time came.

"I'll keep the boy so busy that he won't have any time to forget," said his grandfather. "There is always plenty of work on a farm for a good boy."

"He can help me, too," added Grandma. "I'll pay him with cookies;" and she hurried out to the kitchen to make a big jarful of the round sugar cookies that Joe liked best.

Joe was delighted with everything on the farm, and for several days he did very well.

"He isn't such a bad boy after all," Grandpa told Grandma when Joe had gone upstairs to bed one night.

But the very next morning he gave Joe a bucket of grain to feed the hens, and in the afternoon he found the bucket in the barn, still full of grain. When he spoke to Joe about it, the boy answered carelessly, "Oh, yes, I did forget it; but it won't matter much, will it? Hens can't tell the time of day."

"I suppose not," his grandfather replied; "but I don't believe they like to go hungry any better than you do."

The next night Joe went to the pasture to get the cows, and came home driving nine, when he knew very well that his grandfather had ten. He never noticed the difference until Grandpa spoke to him about it, and then he seemed to care so little that the good old man began to think Joe one of the most careless boys he ever saw.

Two or three days later Mr. Knight went to market, leaving Joe to feed the horses at noon. When he reached home at night, the horses had not been fed, and Joe said he didn't think they would mind going without one dinner.

Grandma Knight heard this remark, and she decided that it was about time for Joe to have a lesson. When the boy came in to supper, feeling very hungry after a good game of ball, there sat his grandmother knitting a stocking.

He glanced around the kitchen in surprise. "My stomach feels pretty empty," he said; "but I don't see anything to eat. Isn't it almost supper-time?"

"Yes, my boy," his grandmother answered, with a twinkle in her eye, "it is supper-time; but I thought you wouldn't mind going without one supper, so I didn't get any to-night."

Joe frowned and hung his head. He knew very well what his grandmother meant, and things went a little better for a day or two; but the boy soon fell back into his old tricks.

Every morning Joe emptied the ashes from the kitchen stove for his grandmother. Grandpa Knight had told him over and over again never to empty them until they were cool, and always to put them in an iron barrel that stood in the shed.

One morning Joe went as usual to empty the ashes, which happened to have a good many live coals in them. The iron barrel was full, but Joe was in a hurry to get away for a game of ball. He couldn't bother to empty the barrel, and he surely couldn't wait for the ashes to cool, so he tipped them into a wooden box, live coals and all, and ran off to his game.

Grandma Knight was making another big batch of cookies, and it was not long before she began to smell smoke. She looked all around the stove, but she couldn't find anything that was burning.

"It must be some paper I threw into the fire," she said to herself, and she went on with her baking.

But the smell of smoke grew stronger and stronger, and when she came out of the pantry to slip the first pan of cookies into the oven, she could see a thin blue haze in the kitchen.

"The house is on fire!" she cried, and she ran down cellar and upstairs as fast as she could go, opening all the doors and looking in all the closets to find out what was burning.

On her way through the hall she caught up a fire-extinguisher; but she couldn't find a sign of the fire anywhere. At last she ran out through the shed to call Grandpa Knight from the barn, and there was the wooden box blazing merrily, and sending little tongues of hot flame across the floor.

It took only a few minutes to put out the fire with the fire-extinguisher which she still held in her hand; but when Grandpa came into the house a few minutes later, there was Grandma Knight sitting beside the kitchen table, holding a pan of black cookies, with tears running down her wrinkled cheeks.

"I never burned a cooky before in all my life," she said, trying to smile through the tears; "but I couldn't let the house burn down!" and then, all trembling with excitement, she told about the fire in the shed, and the box of hot ashes.

When Careless Joe came home to dinner there was a pan of burned cookies beside his plate, and that afternoon he had a talk with his grandfather which he never forgot.

From that day he really did try to overcome his careless, selfish ways, and to be more thoughtful and manly. He had learned that fire is not to be trifled with, and that a boy must always have his mind on his work.

_Why was this boy called "Careless Joe"?_

_In what way was he careless?_

_What lesson did his grandmother teach him?_

_What happened which taught him a more serious lesson?_

_How should ashes be cared for?_

_What kind of a barrel should they be kept in?_

_What should be done with rubbish and waste paper?_

Ashes should never be kept in wooden barrels or boxes, but in iron barrels or brick bins. There should never be an ash-heap against a fence or near the side of a house. Paper and rubbish should not be mixed with ashes, but kept in a separate barrel.

Cellars and basements should be clean, orderly, and well-lighted. Rubbish is a fire-breeder, and may be the means of destroying your home.

MAY DAY

It was May Day, and all the children who went to school in the little brick schoolhouse at the foot of the hill were going "Maying."

Every sunny morning in April they had begged their teacher to go with them to the woods to gather flowers; but Miss Heath kept telling them to wait until the days were a little warmer, and the woods less damp.

"By the first of May," she said, "there will be ever so many more flowers. If May Day is bright and sunny we will have no school,--except the school of the woods, no lessons but those the birds and flowers teach us. Wear your oldest clothes, and don't forget your lunches. You will be as hungry as squirrels when you have played out of doors all the morning."

The first morning in May was warm and sunny enough to make everyone long to spend the whole day in the woods.

At half-past eight all the pupils in Miss Heath's school were at the schoolhouse door, eager for the Maying. There were only sixteen of them, and they were of all ages, from five to fourteen, for the little brick schoolhouse was in the country, far away from the graded city schools.

The mothers had not forgotten the lunches, and it was a happy band of boys and girls that set off at nine o'clock for the woods. They climbed the hill and followed a cart-path until they came to a shady hollow where a tiny brook rippled over its stony bed.

"We'll stay here for a little while and watch the birds," said Miss Heath. "Sit down under this pine tree, and keep as still as mice until you have seen five different birds."

Joe Thorpe saw the first one,--a robin that came down to the brook for a drink of water. Alice Fletcher caught sight of a black and white warbler that was hopping about in the pine tree, and Grace Atkins pointed out a woodpecker that was rapping on the trunk of an old oak.

A golden oriole flew to the top of a tall elm and called down to them, "Look, look, look! Look up here! Look up here! Look up here!" But the fifth bird was hard to find. They had almost given him up when Miss Heath held up her hand. "Listen!" she whispered, and in a moment a song sparrow that had lighted in a little bush near by sang them his sweetest song,--sang it over and over, with his head held high and his tiny throat swelling with the music.

"There are the five birds," said Miss Heath, when the song sparrow flew away; "now for our flowers!" and she jumped up and led the way across the brook and down a gentle slope toward an old pasture that was half overgrown with underbrush.

"You must notice all the different shades of green in the new leaves on the trees, with the yellows and reds on the bushes," she said, as they stood looking across the pasture. "There are almost as many colors among the trees in the spring as there are in the fall, but they are not so brilliant.

"Now, run and look for flowers," she added, when they had climbed over a stone wall and found a narrow foot-path across the pasture. "I will wait here, under this chestnut tree, and you can come back when you are ready; but if I call, you must come at once. It will be lunch-time almost before you know it."

That old pasture was a splendid place to find spring flowers, and the children scattered in all directions, by twos and threes, peeping under bushes and poking away dead leaves to hunt for sprays of arbutus, or Mayflowers as they always called them.

Grace and Alice found some beautiful clusters of the fragrant pink and white blossoms, but poor little Joe Thorpe didn't have good luck at all, so he wandered off by himself to look for hepaticas.

He found them, too, among the rocks at the farther end of the field, blue ones and white ones, and some that were pink and lavender; and when he had picked a good handful for Miss Heath, he saw some "spring beauties," white blossoms striped with pink that swayed gently on their slender stems.

Just then he heard the call to lunch, and although he hurried back to the big chestnut tree he found all the children there before him, their hands filled with flowers. There were bunches of blue violets and white violets, hepaticas and spring beauties. One girl had found yellow adder's tongues with their spotted leaves, and a boy brought a Jack-in-the-pulpit, standing up stiff and straight to preach its little sermon.

After Miss Heath had admired all the flowers, and had sent three of the boys back to the brook for water, the children opened the baskets and spread their lunch on newspaper tablecloths.

Then what a merry picnic they had! They exchanged cakes and cookies, gingerbread and doughnuts. They shared pickles and apples, and divided turnovers and saucer pies,--and they all picked out the very best of everything for Miss Heath, until she laughingly declared that she couldn't eat another single mouthful.

After lunch they told stories and played games, until, all at once, the teacher noticed that the sun had hidden his face behind a heavy cloud.

"I am afraid it is going to rain," she said; "we must hurry home."

But even before the children could gather up their baskets and flowers, the big rain-drops began to patter down on their heads.

"I don't care," said little Joe Thorpe. "It is nothing but an April shower."

"April showers bring Mayflowers!" quoted Grace and Alice, and then they held their thumbs together and wished, because they had both said just the same thing at just the same moment.

"They bring wet dresses, too," said Miss Heath, "and not one of us has an umbrella. Let's run over to that little pine grove and play the trees are umbrellas. That's what the birds do when it rains."

The children ran down the narrow path and gathered under the spreading branches of the pines, and the trees held out their arms and tried to keep them dry. But the rain-drops came down faster and faster, and it was not long before the little girls' cotton dresses were wet through.

As soon as the shower was over Miss Heath said, "Now you must run home as fast as you can, and put on dry clothing. I don't want anyone to catch cold when we have had such a happy day together."

So away the children scampered, some in one direction, some in another. At the foot of the hill Alice stopped suddenly and said to Grace, "My mother will not be at home. She was going to the village this afternoon to do some marketing."

"Come to my house," said Grace. "You can put on one of my dresses while yours is getting dry."

When they reached Grace's house her mother was not at home, either; but Grace found the key to the back door behind the window blind, and the two little girls went into the kitchen.