The thanks of the people of St. John are largely due to C. J. Brydges, Esq., and R. Luttrell, Esq., of the Intercolonial Railway, who promptly placed fast trains at the service of the Relief Committee, and forwarded free passengers and supplies. Excellent service was thus performed, and Mr. Luttrell lost no time in meeting the emergency. Indeed he spent several days in relieving the wants of the sufferers. Few will forget these kindly acts.
In concluding this chapter I might add that the Orange Lodges which met in Mr. Thos. H. Hall's building, King street, lost quite heavily. Their regalia was, for the most part, entirely consumed, but the banners were saved. The insurance on the hall and furniture was only five hundred dollars. The members had gone to a great deal of expense lately in fitting up their lodge-room, which was one of the tastiest in the city. The decorations were very handsome. The loss will reach at least two thousand dollars. A relief organization has been formed by leading brethren of the order, and the wants of sufferers by the fire are being looked after. The Grand Master, Edward Willis, and Messrs. A. G. Blakslee, John A. Kane, J. B. Andrews, Walter McFate, W. A. King, W. Roxorough, James Elliott, and Samuel Devenne, comprise the Relief Committee.
CHAPTER XIX.
The Books we have Lost—"The Lost Arts"—The Libraries of St. John which were Burned—The Pictures which were Lost—The Few that were Saved—A Talk about Books and Pictures—The Future—What St. John men must Do—Acknowledgments—Conclusion of the Story of the Fire.
It is only when we come to look around us that we can discover how much we have lost. In one's lifetime a thousand little things are gathered and put away, and we find ourselves turning to them every now and then. Money cannot supply these. Many of them are endeared to us through association. Some are the gifts of friends who have since passed away, never to return, and others again came into our possession in various ways. We may supply, with a portion of our insurance money, a few books, copies of the ones which we have lost, but these will not be the same. They will not be our copies. We love to read our own books. No Suckling can be the same as the one we lost the other day. It was not a rich copy, but it was a whole-souled, generous old fashioned
volume, full of the old Knights daintiest bits of melody. We used to love to linger over the little age-stained page, and recover lines we had lost. And dear old Shenstone, too, is gone. We can easily get another Shenstone, but it won't seem at all like the old copy. In our own books we know just where to find what we want, and new copies never seem the same. And then there are books
we like to take up now and then, just to fill in the odd moments of our lives; books of engravings and the like, and volumes of Punch, and great volumes of cartoons of say forty and fifty years ago. These are all gone now and few can be replaced.
What great inroads the fire has caused among our private libraries, what a wreck it has made of those precious books we all loved so dearly. And those pamphlets, too, upon which we placed so much value, and the thousand little odds and ends of literature which we so tenderly gathered year in and year out. And our scrap-books—great, good-natured fellows, with broad sides and liberal pages, ready to take in all sorts of matter. These are no more. And whole hosts of unbound magazines, which we had tied together, and expected every day to send off to the binders. These are ashes too. We hesitate before we turn over the books we rescued from the burning, lest we discover greater losses, and miss fairer treasures. How many sets of books have been destroyed, how many massive tomes have been withered by the heat, how many dainty books of poetry have been swept away!