THIRTY-FOURTH SUNDAY

382. La chaîne se forma. — In former times, before the invention of hydraulic engines, the fire-engines were filled by hand, and fire-buckets were considered a necessary part of household furniture ; while in banks, insurance-ofiices, and public buildings generally, long rows of thèse leathern buckets were conspicuously hung in some accessible place. In fact, a few are still to be seen in some of the banks of our city ; and Dickens, in his late novel " Hard Times," alludes to their existence in English banks, as a " respectable tradition never to be separated from a place of business claiming to be wealthy ; and, though calculated to be of no physical utility on any occasion, yet observed to exercise a fine moral influence, almost equal to bullion, on mcst beholders."

On an alarm of fire, thèse buckets were seized by the first corners, and carried to the fire. A double line of men was then formed, extending from some pump or well to the fire-engine ; — one for the transmission from hand to hand of the full buckets, and the qther for the return of the empty ones. At the great fire in Beacon-street, for example, which took place in 1824, a double row of men extended from the Frog-Pond to the engines in Beacon-street. After a fire, the buckets were tlirown together in a heap, from which each citizen selccted his own.