As the "Empress" was steaming up the harbour, from Digby, on the night of the fire, the passengers on board, many of whom belonged to St. John, beheld the city in flames. Some of them even saw from the water their own residences on fire, and witnessed the alarming rapidity of the flames and the almost powerless efforts of the people to stay their ravages. One can imagine the feelings of those passengers who had left children at home, and who now began to experience the greatest anguish and suffering. What made the matter worse was, that some time had to elapse before the captain could venture to approach his wharf, and this added largely to the bitterness of the fathers and mothers on board. A mother who had left a little one in the city, while absent on a journey to Nova Scotia, told the writer that the agony she endured while making the approach to the city completely deadened and prostrated her. She grew perfectly helpless, and for a time nothing could rouse her from the seeming state of insensibility under which she sank.
Those were terrible moments of suffering—awful moments of uncertainty.
Among the curious incidents of the fire which are constantly coming to the surface, is the rather good story which is told of one of our neatest housekeepers. Her house is noted for its spotlessness, and some who profess to know, say that such a thing as a spider's web could not be seen about the premises, even in the cellar or wood-shed. The lady has a natural abhorrence of those pests, the moths which will get into our furs sometimes and defy all the camphor and snuff in existence to keep them out. One day, about six months ago, some handsome newly upholstered chairs were purchased, and duly placed in the parlour. In a week a moth was found in one of the new chairs, and there was much consternation thereat. The rest of the furniture was examined carefully, and the offending chair was sent to the upholsterer for his examination. The result proved to the lady's satisfaction that she was right, and that the flock which had been put into the chair with the hair had caused all the mischief. The whole set was sent back to the furniture-man, and he was ordered to take the flock out. He returned them after a time, but in less than a week the persevering house-keeper succeeded in finding moths in every one of the chairs. She sent them to another upholsterer this time, and was awaiting their return when the fire occurred, and they were burned up, moths and all, while her own house was untouched.
A newly-married lady fearing the fire would reach her
dwelling, succeeded in hiring a team, and putting into it her best furniture, bedding, husband's clothes, and all her silver, sent them up to her mother's house at about four o'clock in the afternoon. At six o'clock her mother's residence was burned down, and with it all that was in it, while her own house was about half a mile from the vicinity of the fire. The lady was quite annoyed when the folks came in for a night's lodging that night, shortly after tea was over.
Considerable consternation prevailed among the people when it was known that nearly all the flour in town had been burned. The estimated loss was considered to be about fifty or sixty thousand barrels. One man is said to have hurried out and paid $18 for a barrel, while there were several persons who paid twenty cents a loaf for bread.
A good many people who feared the fire was coming their way moved out, and put their furniture, etc., in the street, and watched it till after midnight, when the expected flames not arriving, they marched the effects back again. The goods were almost as much damaged as if they had remained in the fire. Large quantities of material were lost in this way, and a lady saved an old pewter-box which once contained her husband's sleeve-buttons and studs, while she wrapped the latter up in a bag and never saw them again.
Quite a number of cases of petty thieving occurred. A drug store, shortly before the fire came to it, was filled with a gang of roughs and pickpockets, who insisted on
helping the proprietor to save a few things. They were saving them with a vengeance; opening every box and package that came in their way, and taking a dip out of each. One young man, whose face bore the picture of health, had managed to save, when detected, enough Blood Mixture to cure the scrofula in his family for the next fifteen years. Boys, who should have stolen soap, were going in for that excellent capillary restorer, Mrs. Allen's Zylobalsamum, and a man, hobbling along with a wooden leg, was filling his pockets with bunion and corn plasters. The boxes had a neat look, and he thought he would see the next day what the contents were good for. Everyone wanted to help, and one could not but admire the zeal with which these gentry emptied drawers and boxes on the floor, and scrambled for the contents. One young gentleman in his anxiety to save a mirror-stand, which certainly could never be of any use to him, cut it in two and hastened away, leaving a drawer full of toothpicks, and a bottle of rat poison behind him, which he might have had just as well as not. A citizen, who said he felt dry after working so hard all day, regaled himself with a pint bottle of Ipecacuanha wine, and left immediately after it was down, to see how the fire was getting along in another place. One can never forget these little acts of kindness. It is the performance of deeds like these which exalts a nation, and makes us feel that the world is not altogether a fleeting show or a snare.
The cry of incendiarism was raised during the first