Rensselaer Republican, Volume 16, Number 19, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 17 January 1884 — The Old-time Fireman of New York. [ARTICLE]

The Old-time Fireman of New York.

There was many a man worth $1,000,000, many a man of high social, commercial, or political position, who waited Monday patiently for three hours with the one purpose—to see the parade of the old Volunteer Fire department. Not a citizen of New York, whose locks are grizzling or thinning in middle age, fails to remember the swing, the elan, the “gallusness” (if the word may be allowed) that made a part of the active life of the city before the war, and not one forgets that the “fire laddie” of twenty-five years ago was the typical, “rough and ready,” and at once the typical good citizen of the town. Memories of riots in the Bowery; traditions of the old-time feuds that were settled or kept alive by the battles, from which the old “Leatherhead” police judiciously retired, and prond recollections of the gallantry and heroism of the red-shirted boys who, without pay or reward, fought fire and faced death in manly contempt for peril whenever the call to duty came—all these were stirred in the minds of the men who stood yesterday in the pelting rain waiting for the firemen to go by.— New York Times.