Railroading may seem to have been a humdrum business in the midst of excursions and alarms like these during a period when provincial politics were furiously on the boil, with the one time republican Portage the centre of many a blistering splash. How could it be otherwise when our most prominent lawyer was the redoubtable Joe Martin, who died last year, after having been in turn attorney-general of Manitoba, M.P., at Ottawa, Premier of British Columbia and member of the British House of Commons--the only man in history, I believe, who sat in four British Legislatures. The Martin firm, even after its head became attorney-general, was very keen in fighting for its own hand in local affairs. The east-and-west bitterness lasted right into the post-firebug period, as I very well know. The civic government became demoralized. Something like a fresh start was imperative. The Manitoba and North Western accountant, auditor and man-of-all-work generally, was persuaded to become one of the Town Council of six. A new fire hall was needed. We proposed to put it in the centre of the town, where it now stands. There was a demand that it be placed in the east end. Smith Curtis of the Martin firm was active to that end. He called an indignation meeting to protest against what the council was expected to do. The council met early the same night. The council used to meet where the fire engine was installed, and sometimes the citizen spectators of our doings would be seated on the engine. As the protest meeting was going on the council filed in, and there were calls for the chairman of the finance committee, who happened to be the accountant aforesaid. He rose and said only that the contract for the new fire hall had been signed half an hour ago. H u b b u b. If municipal experts are looking for something novel in fire protection they may find it, possibly, in a phase of Alphabetical Hay’s civic patriotism. After we lost our first fire hall and engine, he got an idea that the engine could be made to work again. The town had lent him money. He was to be forgiven the debt if he could restore the engine. He restored the engine, but owing, to temperamental difficulties, didn’t hand it to the town for a year, during which time several fire-bug conflagrations were extinguished by the town’s engine, through courtesy of Mr. Hay.