There are some interesting items in connection with Old St. Andrew's personal history which are worth recording.
The solid silver communion service which was used was the gift, in the year 1818, of the Earl and Countess of Dalhousie, and Miss Campbell gave the two peculiarly shaped silver plates which contained the bread when the Sacrament was administered. These articles were saved, and are now in the possession of William Girvan, Esq. Mrs. James Lawton, about the year 1839, presented the Church with the Pulpit Bible. This was unfortunately burned, as well as the two oil paintings which hung in the vestry, and were portraits of Revs. Drs. Burns and Donald. It was to see these pictures that Dr. Burns's nephew came to St. John on the very day of the fire, but before he arrived they were no more.
VICTORIA HOTEL.
Very little time was lost between the destruction of Trinity, the Germain Street Methodist, and "Old St. Andrew's." They took fire nearly at the same time, and within an hour of each other the three were consumed. The fire was extraordinarily rapid in its work, and the frame buildings seemed to add zest to its voracious appetite. An engine might have saved the Victoria Hotel, but it was far away, and helplessly the people looked on and saw one after the other of their cherished churches, hotels, houses of entertainment and dwellings, sink down before the red glare of the serpent, which wound its coils round-about and encompassed all with its fangs and fork-like tongue. It was a sight that the eye sickened at, and the heart grew faint, and despair fell upon the people, and many moved away. But there were others who gazed on the tottering ruins with a fixed and glassy stare, and as
the huge boulders came thundering down from the heights above, and the half famished flames shot out in long, thin lines from the windows, and darted back again like a wiry thing of life, and shouts rent the air from the lips of the wounded, these men never moved from the spot on which they stood. The church was in ashes, and the great walls of the Victoria were red with the demon flames. They scaled the heights, they flew back again. They hid in the chimneys, they ran along the roof, they melted the sashes and tore down the door-ways. The marble steps were in fragments, and all through the long corridors of the house the shrieks of startled women rang, and hastening refugees from the flames leapt with the courage and skill of acrobats into the crowded street. It was a time in which men held their breath. The fascination of that sight was terrible. All were dismayed. All were paralyzed. The "Victoria," that Grand Hotel which was St. John to every traveller who came here—that massive pile of brick and stone—was no longer the standing monument of the city's enterprise. An engine might have saved it, but the engine was not there.
The Burland Desbarats Lith. Co. Montreal