That same year, 1876, a panic resulted in the Chinese theater of San Francisco from a cry of fire. A lighted cigar which someone playfully dropped into a spectator's coat pocket caused a smell of burning wool. The audience became panic stricken and rushed madly for the exits. At the time there were about 900 Americans in the auditorium, and of this number one-quarter were seriously injured. The fire itself was of no consequence. The destruction of the Ring theater at Vienna, Dec. 8, 1881, remains the greatest horror of the kind in the history of civilization. It was preceded on March 23 of the same year, by the burning of the Municipal theater in Nice, Italy, caused by an explosion of gas, and in which between 150 and 200 people perished miserably, but the magnitude of the Vienna holocaust made the world forget Nice for the time. The feast of the Immaculate Conception was being celebrated by the Viennese, and Offenbach's "Les Contes d'Hoffman," an opera bouffe, was the play. The audience numbered 2,500. Fire was suddenly observed in the scenery, and a wild panic started. An iron curtain, designed for just such emergencies, was forgotten, and the flames, which might thus have been confined to the stage, spread furiously through the entire building. The scene was changed from light-hearted revelry, with gladsome music, to one of lurid horror. The exits from the galleries were long and tortuous and quickly became choked. As in the Iroquois theater fire, those who had occupied the gallery seats were the ones who lost their lives. But few escaped from the galleries. The great majority of the spectators were burned beyond recognition by their nearest relatives. One hundred and fifty were so charred that they were buried in a common grave, and the city's mourning was shared by all the world. The next fire of this nature to attract the world's attention and sympathy was the destruction of the Circus Ferroni at Berditscheff, Russian Poland. Four hundred and thirty people were killed and eighty mortally injured. Many children were crushed and suffocated in the jam, and horses and other trained animals perished by the score. This was on Jan. 13, 1883, and the origin of the conflagration was traced to a stableman who smoked a cigarette while lying in a heap of straw. TWO GREAT PARISIAN HORRORS. The burning of the Opera Comique in Paris, May 25, 1887, was a spectacular horror. Here again an iron curtain that would have protected the audience was not lowered. The first act of "Mignon" was on, when the scenery was observed to be ablaze. The upper galleries were transformed into infernos, in which men knocked other men and women down and trampled them in their eagerness to save themselves, while the flames reached out and enveloped them all.