Rambles about Portsmouth. Sketches of persons, localities, and incidents of two centuries: principally from tradition and unpublished documents. By Charles W. Brewster.

STORIES OF ESCAPES. 235
to enable the firemen to obtain water in our own and the
adjoining yard; and as I stepped from a chair to place the
last remaining article in a basket, the bright blade of an
axe came crushing through the back of the closet, in the
very position where my head had been but an instant before.
iMy escape seems little short of a miracle as I think of it, to
this day. After leaving the house, as we supposed, for the
last time, it occurred to my brother that there still remained
in the garret a trunk of family relics, including some valuable brocade dresses, once the property of our grandmother, and he expressed a determination to go and rescue
it. We tried to dissuade him from the idea, but without
success, and I went with him. When we reached the garret,
the room was in flames, and the heat was so great that we
could scarcely breathe. I was afraid to go further than the
door, but my brother went onward, and seizing the trunk
by one of its handles, was dragging it to the stairway,
when a large portion of the boards of the roof, burnt to a
cinder, fell through from the rafters, and covered the floor
with blazing coals. It was an awful moment, for through
the aperture thus made in the roof, the wind came with the
force of a tornado, driving the fire and smoke before it, but
my brother kept on with his burden, after an instant's
delay, and did not stop until it was safe in the street. Half
an hour afterwards, the pleasant home where our childhood
had been spent was one bright flame from the foundation
to the ridgepole."
"Grandpa," who, in his comfortable chair, has been
reading the last " JOURNAL," and a fresh copy only two days
old, of Major Ben RusselPs f' Boston Centinel," says, as he
picks up the fallen brands and adds a fresh forestick to
the fire, that he will tell them a story of a:" nice young
man,;' who, he has always thought, did more good than any
one else the night of the fire. He was here and there, and
everywhere, wherever his aid was most needed for the