This is a meeting for action; but are we not told that eloquence is _action, action, action_? And most true is it now. Help for the suffering is the highest eloquence. The best speech is a subscription. And he is the orator whose charity is largest. “Thrice he gives who quickly gives.” This is a familiar saying from the olden time. Never was it more applicable than now. Destruction has been swift; let your gifts be swift also. If the Angel Charity is not as quick of wing as the Fire-Fiend, yet it is more mighty and far-reaching. Against the Fire-Fiend I put the Angel Charity. According to another saying handed down by ancient philosophy, that is the best government where a wrong to a single individual is resented as an injury to all. This sentiment is worthy of careful meditation. It implies the solidarity of the community, and the duty of coöperation. There is no wrong now, but an immense calamity, in which individuals suffer. Be it our duty to treat this calamity of individuals as the calamity of all. Who does not know Chicago? Most have visited it, and seen it with the eye; but all know its pivotal position, making a great centre, and also its immense growth and development. In a few years, beginning as late as 1833, it has become a great city; and now it is called to endure one of those visitations which in times past have descended upon great cities. Much as it suffers, it is not alone. The catalogue discloses companions in the past. The fire of London, in September, 1666, raged from Sunday to Thursday, with the wind blowing a gale, reducing two-thirds of the city to ashes. Thirteen thousand two hundred houses were consumed, and eighty-nine churches, including St. Paul’s, covering three hundred and seventy-three acres within and sixty-three without the walls. The value of buildings and property burned was estimated at between ten and twelve millions sterling, which, making allowance for difference of values, now would be more than one hundred million dollars. I doubt if the population of London then was larger than that of Chicago. And yet an English historian, recounting this event, says, “Though severe at the time, this visitation contributed materially to the improvement of the city.”[129] Ancient Rome had her terrible conflagration, hardly less sweeping, when populous quarters were devoured by the irresistible flame; and history records that out of this destruction sprang a new life.