Once I almost saw a big grain-elevator
burn in a Western town. That is, I would have seen it, if I had looked
out of my hotel window. But I'd run two miles to see a burning haystack
in the afternoon, and I was so dead tired that I slept right through the
performance that night. And once I did see a row of stores burn, back in
Homeburg--at the distance of a mile. I was in school, and the teacher
wouldn't dismiss us. By stretching my neck several feet I could just see
the flames leaping over the trees, but that was all. Some of the bad
boys sneaked out of the door, but I was a good boy, and waited one
thousand years until school was out and the fire was ditto. I've never
felt quite the same since toward either goodness or education.
Some men run faithfully to fires year after year and view a fine
collection of burning beefsteaks and feverish chimneys and volcanic
wood-sheds, while others stroll out after dinner in a strange city and
spend a pleasant evening watching a burning oil-refinery make a Vesuvius
look pale and sickly in comparison. Luck is distributed in a dastardly
way, and as for myself I've quit trying. I don't run to fires at all any
more. The big cities have fooled me long enough by sending out forty
pieces of apparatus to smother a defective flue.
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