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Show . There are as many heroes in the world today as there were in the days of Vishnu or of Erin H the Red. It merely takes a great catastrophe or H an , impending, crisis to bring them into the lime- light. H Nor knave nor fool had ever thought that H there was a hero on the staff of the Herald, un- H til .the recent conflagration in the Herald building H which threatened the obliteration of that sacred H bureau of Democracy in its undefiled form. The fire that brought out the heroic attributes , of the Herald Faber-destroyers began in the pan- torium of Mr. Wells, whose gaudy tweeds are displayed on the Main street side of the building. ; T$he -first intimation the Herald had that flames were thirstily grasping at Mr. Wells' fashion ' patterns reached the Herald when the aforesaid sartorial artisan dashed vividly into the office, waited upon by vast clouds of smoke, announced that the building was aflame and detonated to Hj the effect that someone should turn on the fire H alarm. IH This the electrified Herald did at once, and in jjH a unique way. Over the Bell rang the excited ac- cents of Mrs. Coray; through another phone, City Editor Gene Palmer sounded the alarm with his syncopated tenor. Each message was quite simi-lar simi-lar to the other. Each informed the operator that there was a fire and requested that she send in the alarm at once. The minor detail as to where the fire was raging was entirely over-looked, over-looked, but the fire department did a guessing specialty favorable to the paved district, and Started. It was at this acute crisis that the Herald heroism became evident. The corridors of the building were already filled with smoke ema-nating ema-nating from the habiliments of some . of Mr.; Wells' best customers. City Editor Palmer was. first in the fray. On the wall were a number of Skinum's Fire Extinguishers. He seized one of these frenziedly, and grappled with it like a panther pan-ther toping with a dill pickle. But the extinguisher extinguish-er was obdurate, and stubbornly refused to respond re-spond to any kind of treatment. Palmer threw it down, jumped on it and sobbed over it, but still the Skinum fluid remained intact. By this time the smoke had become omnipotent, and Palmer retired, sneezing and swearing volubly. It was here that big Bill Rishel arrived. Smoke had no terrors for Bill. Long assimilation of the fumes from his Chaldean pipe, which for years he has kept constantly loaded with press clippings, clip-pings, had made him an immune to smoke. The sporting editor grappled with a set of hose, and soon had a pliant stream playing into space. He did something that the janitor had overlooked for years; he carefully washed the doors and windows win-dows of the building, but like some of the prizefighters prize-fighters he writes about, failed to land on a vital spot. Becoming discouraged at his ineffectual onslaught, he retreated to his sanctum for salvage. He left his typewriter, his can of perique, he would probably have left his wife, but he got a firm half-Nelson on his sporting dope, wherein was shown every hit made from the days of the Teal Duckers to the Pacific League, and the result re-sult of every contest from Jem Mace to Mike Schreck. Laden with these, Bill and his briar sought the cooler confines of Main street. Right here the real hero appeared. Joel Lambert Lam-bert Priest, editor and savant, wafted into the smoke. He looked at the typewriters, at his half-spun editorials, and then back at the smoke. He did not hesitate. "Boys," said Lambert, and his tones never before sounded such depths of feeling, "boys," he repeated, and Ajax defying an electrical storm could not have looked more heroically picturesque, "me for the fire escape. See you later." , I . The closing scenes were almost too thrilling for description. The editor made the fire escape, descended as swiftly as his face did when the returns re-turns of the late election came in, and then for a moment at the base of the fire escape stood palsied. pal-sied. There was a drop of ten feet. A moment only he hesitated, for again the scent of new-mown new-mown smoke was wafted to him. Joel, hero, rescuer, bon vivant and editor, dropped. And so passes out of this narative. Meanwhile the fire department had received accurate information from another source regarding regard-ing the location of the blaze, the windows that Rishel had washed were broken in and soon the blazing fashion plates of Sartor Wells were no more. All of which goes to show that, as stated ' heretofore, heroes still parade the world, even if it takes the threatened destruction of a pellucid editorial to bring them out. And to the names of Hobson, Mad Mullah and Aguinaldo, we may now conscientiously and reverently add those of Bill Rishel, Gene Palmer and Joel Priest. I |