Page 76 - An Amateur Fireman

how to use the scaling ladder which had just been introduced, and the idea seemed to work so well that it
gradually grew, kind of swelled out, so to speak, till it became a reg'lar school. First off, before the new
headquarters was built, the city hired an old sugar warehouse on One Hundred and Fifty-eighth Street and
North River, where the men were shown how to use scaling ladders and a life net, and I've been there when
one class counted up sixty scholars, all of us old hands at the business. Remember this, Amateur, you'll never
be too old to go to school, leastways that's what I've found.

"After the new headquarters building was opened in '87 the sugar warehouse was given up, and we firemen
had what you might almost call a college. There's a yard at the back of the building nigh on to a hundred feet
square, which is put up in such shape that water can be used the same as you would at a fire, and here drills go
on like this, for instance: An alarm is sent out for a certain company when they least expect it, and the men
find themselves called into headquarters to show what they can do. All that you're going to see, lad, and
talking about getting points, why, you can learn more there in one exhibition drill than you could at forty fires,
'cause you're understanding just how the thing is going to be done.

"You'll find when one of these unexpected drills comes off that the engine is run into the yard, hose coupled
on to the hydrant, dragged up to the top of the building, water started and shut off, ladders used, and in fact the
whole business gone through the same as if a hundred lives were in danger."

"Do the men really work as hard there as they do at a fire?" Seth asked.

"Do they, Amateur? Well, now, you can be mighty certain they do, 'cause it's owing to what they show at such
times that gives them their rating. Now, for instance, Ninety-four's company is in the first grade; Eighty-six,
that we bucked up against on that storage warehouse, is in the second grade; and there ain't a great many third
grade nowadays, 'cause the men are drilled too well. And here's a point I want you to understand, Amateur: In
case some man comes along and tries to tell you that the Department in this city or that is better than what
we've got here, stick straight up for the fact that the New York Fire Department heads the world, and you
won't be a grain away from the truth. Taking it all in all I'm free to say, open and above board, that you can't
find a Department anywhere that can beat this, and I'm reckoning pretty strong that you wouldn't find one to
equal us, taking all things into consideration.

"Now, we'll suppose you was old enough, and stout enough, and plucky enough, and knew enough to pass a
civil-service and a physical examination for admission to the Department. You wouldn't be put into regular
service, but sent up to headquarters, where we're going now, and drilled in the yard, raising ladders, tossing
'em 'round, setting 'em up, and keeping at that kind of work till you could handle one the same's you might a
knife or fork. Now, considering the fact that the lightest of 'em weighs twenty and the heaviest sixty-five
pounds, with a length of from fourteen to twenty feet, you can see that you've got to be pretty nimble before
getting through the first lesson, eh?

"Then we'll allow you've satisfied them as are giving the lesson. You'll be set at climbing up to the first
window to start with; after you can do that, to the second, and so on till you've got to the top of the building
by aid of the scaling ladders. It ain't such a mighty easy thing when you come to do it yourself as it looks
while you're watching somebody else; about the time you're half-way up the hair on your head will come
pretty nigh to standing on end; but bless you, Amateur, a man soon gets over that, till shinning outside of a
building don't seem more'n child's play.

"Then there's the drill of building a chain-making a line of ladders from the roof to the street--and getting
from the upper window out over the cornice. Straddling sills is another lesson you'll have to learn, till you can
get astride of one, and by holding on with your knees, work as handy as on the ground. Standing on sills;
working the life-line; climbing crosswise so's to step from one window and go to the next story on a slant,
instead of straight up; using the life net by jumping down, or holding it for others to leap into--and if it so
chances that you are ever set to holding one, Amateur, my boy, you'll find it ain't child's play. I've heard it said