Long as the day, and trying as our experiences had been, our labours were not yet over. The Duke's fame as an amateur of fire-engine work had been proclaimed and insisted upon in the American papers, and it would be difficult to say whether an ordinary reader thought the principal object of his Grace's visit was to buy railway shares or land, or to put out fires in the United States. If there is any one of the many things of which Americans are proud, that they take more pride in than another, it is their Fire Department. And their pride is not at all diminished by the reflection that fires are perhaps more frequent and destructive in the United States than in any country in the world, not even excepting Russia. Mr. Butler Duncan had arranged before dinner that we should visit a fire-station; but it was understood that no warning should be given, and that we were to take any station near at hand _à l'improviste_. Accordingly we went from one of the clubs down Fifth Avenue, and turned up a cross street to a house not distinguishable from those on either side of it, except by a lamp and the name and number of the station. On the ringing of a bell the door was opened by a man in a kind of uniform, and we were shown into a hall occupying the whole of the ground floor, in the centre of which there was a fire-engine and tender, and at one side stalls, in which four horses were peaceably nibbling their fodder by gas-light. The officer in charge summoned his chief, who came downstairs partly dressed, and who, when made acquainted with the desires of his visitors, quickly set to work to carry them out. On his pressing a brass knob in the side of the wall, we heard the clang of an alarm-bell, and in a second or two, down the stairs, pell-mell, there came a gang of firemen, who had evidently been sleeping in their boots and breeches, and who were hastily buttoning their coats as they descended. In the twinkling of an eye they were in their places on the fire-engine and the horses trotted out and placed themselves in position of their own accord, so that by an electric arrangement the harness was lowered on their backs from the ceiling, and secured in a moment. The gate in the wall was thrown open in front to the street, and out dashed the engine ready for work. All this was exceedingly well done. The Duke was so pleased with it that the experiment was repeated again, and we retired thanking the courteous chief of the establishment for the trouble he had taken, and with the conviction that if they do not always put out fires in New York, it is not owing to any deficiency in the speed with which the engines are turned out of the stations, or the efficiency of the Fire Department.