Democratic Sentinel, Volume 14, Number 27, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 25 July 1890 — Unknown Hero. [ARTICLE]

Unknown Hero.

There are everywhere men and women ■who have in them the qualities of heroism, but not so large a number, perhaps, wi o prefer, when they have done a brave act, that no one should know who they are. In New York City, late one night in April last, a tall tenement-house, in a, crowded down-town district, took fire in its basement. The fire, spreading rapidly, reached the stairway, and cut off the escape of the fifteen families who occupied the building. All these people, however, were sound asleep in the upper rooms. 'Unless they could be aroused by so mo means, they must, it seemed, all be suffocated or burned alive. Just at th.s time three men who were passing by saw through a window the iiames climbing the stairway. Two of; these persons ran at once to alarm the! police and firemen. The third, a young man, thrust his shoulder to the locked 1 outer door, and tried to force it in, in ■ order that be mi.ht alarm the inmates, and enable them to escape. But the door was too much far his strength. Glancing above, he saw that the iron ladder of the fire escape ended \ with the second story. Next do-orthere was a butcher’s shop, and on the door posts were two or three iron hooks. ‘Raising himself by one of these hoots, and •then by another, the young man was able to climb, by a noble effort, to the'base <®f the fire-escape, and mount upon it Then he kicked in the windows of the second story, and shouted in and waked the sleepers. As soon as he had seen that they were engaged in saving themsehve'k, he climbed to the third floor, repeated his i alarm, and started the people oat down the fire-escape. Climbing thus from story to story, he ; alarmed all'the people in the house, and oversaw their escape down the iron ladder. for all this time the stairwav was . quite impassible by reason of fire and smoke. All the 'inmates succeeded in getting • out, and when the young man himself . came down to the ground, a crowd pressed i ; about him and asked his name. “My name doesn’t make any differ--ence,” he said. “I’m a fireman off dutv on laave, and ituvould be strange if I didn’t .know how to climb. ” Then he disappeared in the crowd. Not one of the newspapers which recorded the'incident was able to publish the name of the young hero.