Democratic Sentinel, Volume 21, Number 48, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 3 December 1897 — Cider Well Applied. [ARTICLE]

Cider Well Applied.

Scott Fergus of Chicago told a reporter of the News about the important part which a barrel of cider played in the great tire of twenty-five years ago. Said the head of the Fergus Printing Company: In 1871 there was on Grant street, in North Chicago, a small frame dwelling house perhaps a little farther removed from its neighbors than they were from each other and set back from the street about twenty feet. On October 9th the man who owned the place saw that the fire was headed his way and knew that the house would soon, like thousands of others, be wrapped in flames. From Us apparent seclusion the thought entered his mind that there might be a fighting chance of saving the place If only he bad a supply of water. He had resolved to remove hi* family, as the neighbors all around him were doing, and save what they could carry, when he remembered that in the cellar was a barrel of cider. He would use that. Quickly removing the liquid from lta cool storage-place he gave dippers and other vessels to the different members of the household, and with instruction* to watch for every little blaze, the resolute band of amateur firemen and firewomen worked and watched, and while every house for blocks on every side became the prey of the flames, this little home was saved—and that by a barrel of cider. A genuine hearty laugh Is an aid to digestion, a stimulus to the circulation of the blood and a positive beautlfier. The whole gystem Is benefited by a cheerful, merry laugh, and one’s friends are attracted by the bright, wholesome nature that ripples out In sunny music like a happy woodland stream. Flattery is a sort of bad money to which our vanity gives currency Locke.