Edgar laughed—“You will see but very few, I can tell you,” said he, “houses, in your day, were built too slightly to stand the test of _one_ century. At one time, the corporation of the city had to inspect the mortar, lest it should not be strong enough to cement the bricks! And it frequently happened that houses tumbled down, not having been built strong enough to bear their own weight. A few of the public buildings remain, but they have undergone such changes that you will hardly recognize them. The City Hall, indeed, stands in the same place, but if you approach it, in the rear, you will find that it is of marble, and not freestone as the old Recorder says it was in your time. But since the two great fires at the close of the years 1835 and 1842 the city underwent great alterations.” “Great fires; in what quarter of the city were they? They must have been disasters, indeed, to be remembered for three hundred years.” “Yes, the first destroyed nearly seven hundred houses, and about fifteen millions of property; and the second, upwards of a thousand houses, and about three millions of property; but excepting that it reduced a number of very respectable females to absolute want, the merchants, and the city itself, were greatly benefited by it. There were salutary laws enacted in consequence of it, that is, after the second fire; for instance, the streets in the burnt districts were made wider; the houses were better and stronger built; the fire engines were drawn by horses, and afterwards by a new power: firemen were not only exempt from jury and militia duty, but they had a regular salary while they served out their seven years’ labour; and if any fireman lost his life, or was disabled, his family received the salary for a term of years. The old Recorder says that there was not a merchant of any enterprise who did not recover from his losses in three years.” “But what became of the poor women who lost all their property? did they lose insurance stock? for I presume the insurance companies became insolvent.”