From a photograph taken in London, Can., shortly after the Chicago Fire A LETTER FROM THE FIRE BEING AN ACCOUNT OF THE GREAT CHICAGO FIRE WRITTEN IN 1871 BY THOMAS D. FOSTER PRIVATELY PRINTED 1923 THE TORCH PRESS CEDAR RAPIDS IOWA...

Since the days of Sodom and Gomorrah, now slumbering eternally beneath the waters of the Dead Sea, the pages of history have been illumined at intervals by the glare of mighty conflagrations, and the Fire Fiend has never ceased to exact his toll from the world’s most famous cities. In the year 504 B.C. the Ionians and Athenians burned Sardis, once one of the most splendid and opulent cities of the East; one hundred and seventy-six years later Alexander the Great startled the world when he applie

All Hallowe’en,      October 31, 1871, Chicago, Ill.       My dear Father and Mother: I am ashamed to put you off any longer without a long letter. I have been waiting to get the office comfortable so that I could spend some evening in it, when it would be nice and warm, and give you a longer account of the fire. We are into the middle of another week, no desks, and no fire, so muffle myself up, and collect my thoughts the best way I can. For a beginning, we should have been very busy today, wit