Most of you have known what it is to be awakened in the night by the tolling of fire-bells, or perhaps you have been frightened by hearing somebody rushing past the door shouting "Fire! fire!" at the top of his voice. It is always an alarming and thrilling experience, and none of us ever grow used to it. But if you have read in this number the article entitled "A Forest Fire," and have looked at the picture of the lonely dog lingering beside the ruins of his home, you are sure that no fire you have ever seen was so dreadful as that. Think of the poor birds scorched, or blown to sea and drowned, and the wild animals so terrified that for the time they grew tame! One little girl of whom we heard was determined to save her canary-bird, so she took it with her, under some carpet which her father kept wet while the family crowded close together beneath its thick folds. The poor pet was dead when they at last were able to stir from their shelter. Hundreds of children who had comfortable homes like yours were deprived of them during those dreadful days of smoke and wind and flame. We are permitted to make some quotations from a private letter written by a young lady to a friend in Brooklyn: PORT SANILAC, MICHIGAN. You asked some of us to write a vivid account of the fire to you, but to do so goes entirely beyond the power of my pen. It was simply _awful_! During those dreadful days I was too frightened to know what I was doing. I cried every time I would think that just as we had got a home it would all be swept away in a minute. I was nearly sick when the danger and excitement were over. The heat was perfectly unbearable. It seemed as if we would suffocate unless we could get a free breath of fresh air. The air was just as if it had come from an oven, and the leaves on our trees in front of the house are as brown as if they had been put into an oven and baked, and this even after all the rain we have had since. It was so dark here on the Monday after you left that we lit our lamps at two o'clock, and at five I went out of the door to go into the office, and I could not see my hand before my face, and so hot! It was enough to make stouter hearts than mine quail. Most of the people here had their trunks packed. We did not, because we felt, if our house went, we did not care for anything else. My eyes ache so that I can not see to write much in the evenings now, or to do any work. I send you some papers giving fuller descriptions of the calamity than I can. EVA.