School Edition
BOSTON
LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY
1912
Copyright, 1911,
By Little, Brown, and Company.
All rights reserved
Printers
S. J. Parkhill & Co., Boston, U. S. A.
PREFACE
Every year fire destroys an enormous amount of property in the United States. Of this great loss by which our country is made just so much poorer, for property destroyed by fire is gone forever and cannot be replaced, a large proportion is due to carelessness, thoughtlessness, and ignorance. Nor is it a property loss only. Every fire endangers human life, and the number of lives lost in this way in one year is truly appalling.
It has been estimated that if all the buildings burned in one year were placed close together on both sides of a street, they would make an avenue of desolation reaching from Chicago to New York City. At each thousand feet there would be a building from which a severely injured person had been rescued, and every three-quarters of a mile would stand the blackened ruins of a house in which some one had been burned to death.