connected with the asphalt corporations as stockholders and officers. The Board of Local Improvements not long since made the announcement that it was preparing to levy special assessments during the coming year to the amount of $10,000,000. The people may weep and protest, while the contractor smiles and urges. The one department of the city government, unsurpassed by any of its kind in the world, is the Fire Department. The officers and men are of the best material, of the highest courage, and serve under the strictest discipline. They are fire fighters, not politicians. Their chief is a man of independence of character, honest, taciturn, a strict disciplinarian--a general in command of a corps of which he is justly proud. He tolerates no political interference with his men. In this respect, particularly, he is, always was, and always will be sustained by the entire community. Any attempted management of the department which would tend to lessen its efficiency meets with the chief's stern resistance. Aside from his own moral and physical courage, his admirable sense of duty, and the fact that the public honor him and support him, he has the powerful assistance of the board of underwriters in any case of damaging intermeddling with his command. Knowing his worth and the merits of his department that intermeddling would bring, instantly, a threat of the rise in insurance rates from this board, a threat which would touch the pockets of many property owners, and consequently one which would solidify them in support of the chief. He shares with his men the dangers of their calling. The gallant men, who during the past year lost their lives in saving the property and lives of others, testified by their sacrifice to the hazardous nature of that calling. A recital of the heroic deeds of those men would not be surpassed by the stories of gallantry in the field of battle with which the pages of American history are replete. While Dennis J. Swenie's strength holds out he will command his famous batallions to his own honor, and to that of the city of which he is so faithful and loyal a citizen. Even the possibility of his being supplanted in his command, which appeared recently in the failure to reappoint him at the first opportunity afforded the Mayor, aroused the people to a united protest, which, indications prove, was timely and effective. The omission to send his name to the council with the first of the Mayor's appointees, may have been, as it was claimed "accidental," but it is nevertheless the belief that that omission was in the nature of a test of public opinion. If so, the power of public opinion retained him in command, despite political purpose to the contrary.