on; rushing with fearful speed, their eyeballs dilated and glaring with terror, and every motion betokening delirium of fright. Some had been badly burned, and must have plunged through a long space of flame in the desperate effort to escape. Following considerably behind came a solitary horse, panting and snorting and nearly exhausted. He was saddled and bridled, and, as we first thought, had a bag lashed to his back. As he came up we were startled at the sight of a young lad lying fallen over the animal's neck, the bridle wound around his hands, and the mane being clinched by the fingers. Little effort was needed to stop the jaded horse, and at once release the helpless boy. He was taken into the house, and all that we could do was done; but he had inhaled the smoke, and was seemingly dying. Some time elapsed and he revived enough to speak. He told his name--Patrick Byrnes--and said: 'Father and mother and the children got into the wagon. I don't know what became of them. Everything is burned up. I am dying. Oh! is hell any worse than this?'"[1] How vividly does all this recall the book of Job and the legends of Central America, which refer to the multitudes of the burned, maimed, and wounded lying in the caverns, moaning and crying like poor Patrick Byrnes, suffering no less in mind than in body! When we leave Wisconsin and pass about two hundred and fifty miles eastward, over Lake Michigan and across the whole width of the State of Michigan, we find much the same condition of things, but not so terrible in the loss of human life. Fully _fifteen thousand people were rendered homeless by the fires_; and their food, clothing, crops, horses, and cattle were destroyed. Of these five to six thousand were burned out the _same night that the fires broke out in Chicago and Wisconsin_. The [1. See "History of the Great Conflagration," Sheahan & Upton, Chicago, 1871, p. 383.] {p. 420} total destruction of property exceeded one million dollars; not only villages and cities, but whole townships, were swept bare. But it is to Chicago we must turn for the most extraordinary results of this atmospheric disturbance. It is needless to tell the story in detail. The world knows it by heart: Blackened and bleeding, helpless, panting, prone, On the charred fragments of her shattered throne, Lies she who stood but yesterday alone." I have only space to refer to one or two points. The fire was spontaneous. The story of Mrs. O'Leary's cow having started the conflagration by kicking over a lantern was proved to be false. It was the access of gas from the tail of Biela's comet that burned up Chicago! The fire-marshal testified: "I felt it in my bones that we were going to have a burn." He says, speaking of O'Leary's barn: "We got the fire under control, and it would not have gone a foot farther; but the next thing I knew they came and told me that St. Paul's church, about two squares north, was on fire."[1]