"Fireman" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... WILLIAM ALCOTT, fireman. Camden, Nov., 1874.—Last Monday afternoon his widow, mother, relatives, mates of the fire department, and his other friends, (I was one, only lately it is true, but our love grew fast and close, the days and nights of those eight weeks by the chair of rapid decline, ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... river down there, but nobody ever drowns in it where I can have a hitch at him; and if there's a freshet, everybody at once gets out of reach. If there's a fire, all the inmates get away safe, and no fireman ever falls off a ladder or stands where a wall might flatten him out. No, sir; I don't have a fair show. There was that riot out at the foundry. In any other place three or four men would have been killed, and there'd a been fatness for the coroner; but of course, bein' in my ...
— Elbow-Room - A Novel Without a Plot • Charles Heber Clark (AKA Max Adeler)
... priest, or a lawyer, or a woman herself. It isn't often that a woman's heroism works in a straight line, like a soldier's, or a fireman's. It generally pops at you round some queer corner, where it takes you by surprise. Before leaving Omaha I'd come to see that Amalia Gramm was by no means the least ...
— The Wild Olive • Basil King
... fireman. 'The other day we found part of a brass chandelier, and wound all around it was a perfect mop of long, silky hair—with a piece of skin, big as your two hands, at the end of it. Some woman got tangled up that way in the flood ...
— A Story of the Red Cross - Glimpses of Field Work • Clara Barton
... engine. The author was given this privilege on a bleak, frosty day, early last winter. He was told by the officials that he took the ride at his own risk, and as a matter of personal favor, and that he must not interfere with the engineer or fireman in the execution of their duties. The guest was received kindly by both engineer and fireman, and was given a seat whence he could see along expanse of track over which the locomotive had to draw the train of cars. To a novice the sensation of a first ride on a locomotive is ...
— My Native Land • James Cox
... and desired by A, a wealthy coin collector, to complete a set, would the consideration be sufficient? An offer shouted from a fourth story window just as the roof is about to fall, in consequence of which offer a fireman at unusual personal risk successfully attempts the rescue. An offer and acceptance for a horse which is afterwards discovered to have been dead at time of sale. A promise made under threat of spreading an infamous report. An agreement for the purpose of securing the postponement of the payment ...
— Studies in Civics • James T. McCleary
... his early days, which he told with great relish, related to his experience as a fireman on a Mississippi ferryboat. His limited knowledge of English was regarded by the captain as a personal affront, and that fire-eating old-timer made it his particular business to let young Pulitzer feel the weight of his authority. At last the overwork and the ...
— An Adventure With A Genius • Alleyne Ireland
... immediately that the chance for a guileless woman to show her coolness to her lover was to occur. This postponement was not due to the coolness or to the good sense of Philip. When the catastrophe came, his first impulse was that of a fireman who plunges into a burning building to rescue the imperiled inmates. He pictured in his mind a certain nobility of action in going forward to the unfortunate family with his sympathy, and appearing to them in the heroic ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... to have any other employment to occupy their time. The department claims their whole duty. A certain number are required to be always at the engine house. In case of an alarm being sounded during the absence of a fireman from the engine house, he runs directly to the fire, where he is sure to find his company. Everything is in readiness to leave the house at a moment's notice. The horses stand ready harnessed, and are so well trained that but a few seconds suffices ...
— The Secrets Of The Great City • Edward Winslow Martin
... Stephenson, Knight of the Order of Leopold, F.B.S., the originator of our railway system. This eminent engineer is a rare example of a self-taught genius. Born of parents too poor to give him any schooling, at eighteen years of age, when full grown, and following the occupation of a fireman, he was not ashamed to commence his education at an evening school. His steady industry and unconquerable perseverance ultimately won for him a position second to none in his profession. Looking at the influence of his labours on the whole ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... referred to by the missing fireman, this particular Chinaman had joined the shades of his ancestors. I think that final blow, which had felled him, had brought his shaven skull in such violent contact with the wall that he had died of ...
— Tales of Chinatown • Sax Rohmer
... bearing even the most remote resemblance to the feats of the first explorers of those waterless wastes; whatever admiration we feel in connection with his trip is reserved for the traffic-superintendent, engineer, fireman, and brakeman. But as regards the less-known continents, such as South America, we sometimes fail to remember these obvious truths. There yet remains plenty of exploring work to be done in South America, as hard, as dangerous, and almost as important as any that has already been ...
— Through the Brazilian Wilderness • Theodore Roosevelt
... abusing speech. I climb into engine an' say polite to engineer to turn on steam. He insult me. So I put my foot on him an' run engine myself. I am Wampus. I understan' engine—all kinds. Brakeman he swear; he swear so bad I put him off train. Conductor must have lump of coal in eye to keep quiet. Fireman he jus' smile an' whistle soft an' say nothing; so we friends. When I say 'shovel in coal,' he shovel. When we pass stations quick like, he whistle with engine loud. So now we ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces and Uncle John • Edith Van Dyne
... with a regularity that must have been discouraging to its human rivals. A train of flat-cars, almost loaded, was on the track of the cut, and a dinky engine attached to them wheezed steam from a safety valve, the engineer and fireman lounging out of the cab window, ...
— 'Firebrand' Trevison • Charles Alden Seltzer
... they were shaken by princes and savans—the lightning did not despise them. Garibaldi's fingers were soiled with candle-grease, but they have moulded a free nation. Stephenson's fingers were black with coal, and soiled with machine oil of a fireman's work, but they pointed out highways to commerce and revolutionized civilization. There are those" (Whittaker and his set looked crestfallen here) "who will gladly take the hand of worthless loafers, or of genteel villains" ...
— Queer Stories for Boys and Girls • Edward Eggleston
... man, from captain and pilot down to fireman and roustabout, carried and posted Wardelow's circulars wherever they went—up Red River, the Yazoo, the White, the Arkansas, the Missouri, and all the smaller ...
— Romance of California Life • John Habberton
... as a green brakeman, but he had come back as a hero, with a Tribune reporter posing him against a furniture car for a two-column photo. For the strikers had stoned his train, half killed the "scab" fireman, stalled him in the yards and cut off two thirds of his cars and shot out the cab-windows for full measure. But in the cab with an Irish engine-driver named O'Hagan, Blake had backed down through the yards again, picked up his train, crept up over the tender and along the car tops, recoupled his ...
— Never-Fail Blake • Arthur Stringer
... wife, and folded away her most objectionable tidies and table-covers, replacing them with our own pretty draperies. There were only two pictures in the sitting-room, and as an artist I would not have parted with them for worlds. The first was The Life of a Fireman, which could only remind one of the explosion of a mammoth tomato, and the other was The Spirit of Poetry calling Burns from the Plough. Burns wore white knee-breeches, military boots, a splendid ...
— Penelope's Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... out in the heart of this great gray wilderness lay the track-end of this railroad pushing across the continent. When Franklin descended from the rude train he needed no one to tell him he had come to Ellisville. He was at the limit, the edge, the boundary! "Well, friend," said the fireman, who was oiling the engine as he passed, and who grinned amiably as he spoke, "you're sure at ...
— The Girl at the Halfway House • Emerson Hough
... fell aboard the Sevastopol, exploding on her armoured deck. Yet another of our shells struck a train which happened to be just entering Port Arthur station, destroying the locomotive and, as we subsequently learned, killing the engine-driver and severely wounding the fireman. Finally, the Retvisan adopted our own tactics and retaliated by firing her heavy guns over the intervening high ground, while some of the forts did the same, a party of signallers being stationed on the crest ...
— Under the Ensign of the Rising Sun - A Story of the Russo-Japanese War • Harry Collingwood
... was looking in at my window, but he did not know the room was mine, and with eyes twice as good as he had he could not have seen through my mosquito-bar. I wondered, but lay still till he had started softly down the steps. Then I sprang out of bed on the dark side, and dressed faster than a fireman. ...
— Strong Hearts • George W. Cable
... a fireman. He had lived so long in an atmosphere of constant alarms and danger, that he was always ready for almost any emergency. His room was equipped with the end in view that he could ...
— Tom Swift and his Aerial Warship - or, The Naval Terror of the Seas • Victor Appleton
... programme," he said in his clear voice, "is a song by Petty Officer Dawson, entitled, 'The Fireman's Daughter,'" and sat down ...
— A Tall Ship - On Other Naval Occasions • Sir Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... detached from the party. His task was one which, if he failed in it, would make all that long ride go for nothing. He was to take the train far up, ride down as blind baggage to the Murchison Pass, and then climb over the tender into the cab, stick up the fireman and the engineer, and make them bring the engine to a halt at the mouth of the pass, with Gidding Creek and safety for all that train only five minutes away. There was a touch of the Satanic in this that pleased Andrew and made Allister show ...
— Way of the Lawless • Max Brand
... The fireman arranged his fires at a station, and did little or nothing except to smoke his pipe and enjoy the scenery until he reached the next station. An incident occurred to prove that we were not playing with the machine. They told me one morning that we should ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 561, October 2, 1886 • Various
... which it stopped, would seem to have gone for an hour or so after the fall. Great interest had been taken in a poor linnet in a cage, hanging in the wind and rain high up against the broken wall. A fireman got it down alive, and great exultation had been raised over it. One woman, who was dug out unhurt, staggered into the street, stared all round her, instantly ran away, and has never been heard of since. It is a most extraordinary sight, and of ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 2 (of 3), 1857-1870 • Charles Dickens
... installed in the Broadway Central, but not for long. He was in no shape or mood to do the scrub work that exists about the foundation of every hotel. Nothing better offering, he was set to aid the fireman, to work about the basement, to do anything and everything that might offer. Porters, cooks, firemen, clerks—all were over him. Moreover his appearance did not please these individuals—his temper was too lonely—and they made it ...
— Sister Carrie • Theodore Dreiser
... The fireman, seeing that I still advanced on the burning ruin, wheeled round on me with his hose, and before I could count five had drenched me through and through, and half-stunned me with the force of the water into ...
— Parkhurst Boys - And Other Stories of School Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... military. There were soldiers everywhere! Vlassof said to his comrades, 'I will save you;' and his comrades saw him mount the engine with a woman. That woman was—well, there she sits. Vlassof's fireman had been killed the evening before, on a barricade; it was Annouchka who took his place. They busied themselves and the train started like a shot. On that curved line, discovered at once, easy to attack, under a shower of bullets, Vlassof developed a speed of ninety ...
— The Secret of the Night • Gaston Leroux
... during which we watched all sorts and conditions of Huns passing up and down the main staircase. Amongst them we saw several colonels, a general and a very smart monocled major, whose helmet was rather the shape of a fireman's, showing that he was in some crack cavalry regiment—dragoons, I think. They mostly wore pale blue-grey overcoats, and their buttons, sword-hilts and golden eagles on their helmets glittered exquisitely. The general appearance was ...
— 'Brother Bosch', an Airman's Escape from Germany • Gerald Featherstone Knight
... were examined, and that she was allowed to proceed. The message added that the Normandy rescued three American citizens who were members of the crew of the Leo, and names them as Walter Emery, seaman, of Swan Quarter, N.C.; Harry Whitney, steward, of Camden, N.J., and Harry Clark, fireman, of 113 East ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 5, August, 1915 • Various
... in a few minutes. Here's where we oil up." Jim watched the operation with interest while the engineer and his fireman went methodically from part to part of the engine with their long billed ...
— Frontier Boys in Frisco • Wyn Roosevelt
... were never far away from the human equation. During the afternoon we had a touch of it. It was discovered by the Prince that his train was being driven by a V.C., or, rather, one of the men on the engine, the fireman, was a V.C. This man, Staff-Sergeant Meryfield, had won the distinction at Cambrai, and had returned to his calling in the ordinary way. He came back from the engine cab through the train, a very modest fellow, to be presented to the Prince, who ...
— Westward with the Prince of Wales • W. Douglas Newton
... the only son of a widow, Mrs. Roscoe Dare. Her husband had died several years previous, leaving her a small income, barely sufficient to support herself and her son. It may be added here that Mr. Dare had been a city fireman before his marriage. This, perhaps, accounted in a measure for the interest Herbert took in all alarms ...
— The Young Firemen of Lakeville - or, Herbert Dare's Pluck • Frank V. Webster
... here. I believe I am speaking to the right people when I ask you to pray. Unprayed for, I feel very much as if a diver were sent down to the bottom of a river with no air to breathe, or as if a fireman were sent up to a blazing building and held an empty hose; I feel very much as a soldier who is firing blank cartridge at an enemy, and so I ask you earnestly to pray that the Gospel may take saving and working effect ...
— James Gilmour of Mongolia - His diaries, letters, and reports • James Gilmour
... lever." It is at the side next the engine-driver, you see, and he can pull it back so as to save his steam, and not use too much; he "expands" it and makes a little keep the train going after it has once got into its pace. There are the steam and water "gauges," to tell the "driver" and fireman when the steam is at proper pressure, and when the water is high enough in the boiler. The steam gauge is like a clock, or an Aneroid barometer, right before the driver. Those other handles near it are the whistle-handles. ...
— Little Folks (July 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... she goes; And as she vanishes there comes to view Steam locomotive engine number forty-two. Observe her mighty wheels, her easy roll, With William J. Macarthy in control. They say her engineer some time ago Lived on a farm outside of Buffalo Whereas his fireman, Henry Edward Foy, Attended School in Springfield, Illinois. Thus does the race of man decay or rot— Some men can hold their jobs and ...
— Behind the Beyond - and Other Contributions to Human Knowledge • Stephen Leacock
... from?" demanded Judge Dowling, who had in his earlier life been a fireman and later a police officer. "From the statutes of 1876, your honour," was the reply. "Well, you needn't read any more," retorted the judge; "I'm judge in this Court, and my statutes are good enough law for anybody." ...
— Law and Laughter • George Alexander Morton
... comments were indignant and sulphurous, while the big fireman turned back his shirt sleeves as if preparing to chastise the man rash enough to interfere with express freight traffic. Geoffrey, reaching for ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss
... dawned the Stoker[FN235] of the bath came to his work and, finding Zau al-Makan cast on his back, exclaimed, "Why did they not throw their dead body anywhere but here?" So saying, he gave him a kick and he moved; whereupon quoth the Fireman, "Some one of you who hath eaten a bit of Hashish and hath thrown himself down in whatso place it be!" Then he looked at his face and saw his hairless cheeks and his grace and comeliness; so he took pity on him and knew that he was sick and a stranger in the land. And he ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... be compared with that of the Forest Guard. A city fireman is only one of a company huddled together in a little house, not greatly busy until the fire telegraph signal rings. But suppose there were only one fireman for the whole city, that he alone were responsible for the safety of ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Foresters • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... is a brave fellow! He fears nothing, least of all fire! Well, the fireman in question, who had gone to make a round of inspection in the cellars and who, it seems, had ventured a little farther than usual, suddenly reappeared on the stage, pale, scared, trembling, with his eyes starting ...
— The Phantom of the Opera • Gaston Leroux
... carrier gathering the mail, the district messenger boy, the express company, the delivery wagon of the stores, have all come in since Washington died. In his day the law required every householder in the city to be a fireman. His name might not appear on the rolls of any of the fire companies, he might not help to drag through the streets the lumbering tank which served as a fire engine, but he must have in his hall, or beneath the stairs, or hanging up behind his shop door, at least one ...
— A School History of the United States • John Bach McMaster
... locomotive coupled to a single coach stood panting like a fierce animal, a cloud of spark-lit smoke rolling from its low stack. The coach was merely a short caboose; but the girl stepped into it without a moment's hesitation, and the engine took the track like a spirited horse. As the fireman got up speed the car began to rock and roll violently, and Johnson remarked to the girl: "I guess you'd better take my chair; it's bolted to the floor, and you can hang on when we go ...
— Money Magic - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... Grand Trunk by the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy. It had bright brass bands all over, the woodwork beautifully painted, and everything highly polished, which was the custom up to the time old Commodore Vanderbilt stopped it on his roads. After running about fifteen miles the fireman couldn't keep his eyes open (this event followed an all-night dance of the trainmen's fraternal organization), and he agreed to permit me to run the engine. I took charge, reducing the speed to about twelve miles an ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... hiss the scalding water leaped out in a stream. Jack stood well forward now and with the hose swept the crowd, as a fireman might sweep a burning building. Driven by the tremendous force of the internal steam, the boiling water knocked the men in front headlong over; then, as he raised the nozzle and scattered the water broadcast over the crowd, wild yells, screams, and curses broke on the night air. Another move, ...
— Facing Death - The Hero of the Vaughan Pit. A Tale of the Coal Mines • G. A. Henty
... real existence, a real meteorologist, suspecting that cinders had come from a fire engine—would have asked a fireman. ...
— The Book of the Damned • Charles Fort
... checking steam losses through the useless blowing of safety valves, the operative should be made to realize the great amount of steam that it is possible to get through a pipe of a given size. Oftentimes the fireman feels a sense of security from objections to a drop in steam simply because of the blowing of safety valves, not considering the losses due to such a cause and makes no effort to check this flow either by manipulation of dampers or regulation ...
— Steam, Its Generation and Use • Babcock & Wilcox Co.
... "Not like our firemen. I wouldn't be that kind," He had always wanted to be a fireman who ...
— The Bobbsey Twins in the Country • Laura Lee Hope
... York and London in his queer stilted way. He had been a fireman on board ship, a teacher of jiujitsu, a juggler, a quack dentist, Heaven knows what else. Driven by the conscientious inquisitiveness of his race, he had endured hardships, contempt and rough treatment ...
— Kimono • John Paris
... said, Bert and Nan were rather tall and thin, while Flossie and Freddie were short and fat. Mr. Bobbsey used often to call Flossie his "Fat Fairy," which always made her laugh. And Freddie had a pet name, too. It was "Fat Fireman," for he often played that he was a fireman; putting out makebelieve fires, and pretending he was a fire engine. Once or twice his father had taken him to see a real one, and this ...
— The Bobbsey Twins at School • Laura Lee Hope
... end of the trouble, for before I had recovered my breath a fireman broke in one of the front windows, and a whole company followed him through, and they dradged hose around, and mussed things all over the house, and then the foreman wanted to thrash me because the house was ...
— The Universal Reciter - 81 Choice Pieces of Rare Poetical Gems • Various
... go farther, who was this George Stephenson? A collier-boy,—his father fireman to an old pumping-engine which drained a Northumbrian coal-mine,—his highest ambition of boyhood to be "taken on" to have something to do about the mine. And he was taken on to pick over the coal, and finally to groom ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... sinking is not yet officially confirmed are the Florazan, which was torpedoed at the mouth of the Bristol Channel on March 11, all of her crew being landed at Milford Haven, with the exception of one fireman, and the Andalusian, which was attacked off the Scilly Islands on March 12. The crew of the Andalusian is reported to have ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... The trap passed the fireman who stood sentinel at the entrance, [the headquarters of the fire brigade and the police stations are generally together in Moscow] drove into the yard of the police station, and stopped at one of the doors. In the yard several firemen with their sleeves tucked ...
— Resurrection • Count Leo Tolstoy
... that grew fainter and fainter, crying, "Run for your lives!" He heard the hose-wagon horses somewhere back in the smoke go plunging away, mad with fright and their burns. He was alone with the fire, and the skin was hanging in shreds on his hands, face, and neck. Only a fireman knows how one blast of flame can shrivel up a man, and the pain over the bared surfaces was,—well, there is no pain worse than that of fire scorching in upon the ...
— Good Stories For Great Holidays - Arranged for Story-Telling and Reading Aloud and for the - Children's Own Reading • Frances Jenkins Olcott
... players and the other train passengers found a scene of desolation awaiting them as they alighted. But it was not as bad as might have been expected, and no one had been killed. In fact, no one was hurt, save the fireman and engineer of the passenger train, and ...
— The Moving Picture Girls at Oak Farm - or, Queer Happenings While Taking Rural Plays • Laura Lee Hope
... agonising moments of doubt he hung up his three types of headgear upon the hat-stand and, shutting his eyes, he twirled himself round twice and made a grab at them. His hand touched the helmet of the Veterans' Fire Brigade. Fate had decided. Seizing his fireman's axe he ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Apr 2, 1919 • Various
... a fight over this job," said the skipper. "I'm dead sure of it. Go down and load the two muskets, and give them to the safest men. When the lighters DO come, borrow the fireman's iron rods. I've lent the steward my bowie that I got at Charleston, and you can try and hold that old bulldog straight. We mustn't show ...
— Stories by English Authors: The Sea • Various
... unthinking precision which comes of long practice, the many little duties pertaining to her several offices, and when the wheels began once more to clank, and she had waved her hand to the fireman, the brakeman, and the conductor, and had seen the dirty flags at the rear of the swaying caboose flap out of sight around the low, sage-covered hill, she turned rather dismally to the parlor end of the office, ...
— Good Indian • B. M. Bower
... Bench was awful in its reflection of the labouring flames—it rose out of sight like the flame-tops till the columns of water brought them down. I thought of my father, and of my watch. The two girls were not visible. 'A glorious life a fireman's!' said Temple. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... stopped short. The elevator boy, who had had a little trouble with his starting apparatus and had not as yet descended, heard the scream which broke from her lips, and a fireman in an adjacent corridor came running up almost at the same moment. Lenora was on her knees by her mistress's side. Ella was still lying in the easy-chair in which she had been seated, but her head was thrown back in an unnatural fashion. There was a red mark just across her ...
— The Black Box • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... policeman would perform work which ordinarily comes within the domain of the fireman. In November, 1896, an officer who had previously saved a man from death by drowning added to his record by saving five persons from burning. He was at the time asleep, when he was aroused by a fire in a house a few doors away. Running over the ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... cracked, even though his grandmother had knit him a pair of enormous red mittens. He appreciated the warmth of the mittens, but he hated the color. Why in the name of all that was inartistic did she choose red; not a deep, rich crimson, but a screeching vermilion, like a fireman's shirt? ...
— The Portygee • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... his youthful career nearly every boy has an ambition to be an Indian fighter, or a pirate, or a locomotive engineer, or a fireman and save people from burning buildings at the risk of his own life, or to be a hunter of ferocious wild animals. Grenfell had dreamed of a romantic and adventurous career. Now he realized that these ambitions must give ...
— The Story of Grenfell of the Labrador - A Boy's Life of Wilfred T. Grenfell • Dillon Wallace
... o'clock that night Engine 266, Williams, engineer, and Blackmar, fireman, was chalked up on the Red Butte Western roundhouse bulletin-board to go west at midnight with the new superintendent's service-car, running as ...
— The Taming of Red Butte Western • Francis Lynde
... And in a few seconds he and a fireman could be seen climbing from a ladder upon a ledge, a carved string-course, which connected the eastern and western oriels above the main doorway. They crawled along the ledge like flies, clinging to every projection, every stem of ivy, the ...
— Delia Blanchflower • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... is, next to a marine engine, the most sensitive thing man ever made; and No. .007, besides being sensitive, was new. The red paint was hardly dry on his spotless bumper-bar, his headlight shone like a fireman's helmet, and his cab might have been a hard-wood-finish parlour. They had run him into the round-house after his trial—he had said good-bye to his best friend in the shops, the overhead travelling-crane—the big world was just outside; and the other locos were taking stock of him. He looked ...
— The Day's Work, Volume 1 • Rudyard Kipling
... by wireless were very brief, and on the second day of the revolution Gisela went by special train to Berlin. It was the King's own train, and always ready to start. The engineer and fireman avowed themselves "friends of the revolution," but they performed their duties with two armed women in the cab and fifty more in the ...
— The White Morning • Gertrude Atherton
... fireman scraped the iron floor for his last two shovelfuls of coal-dust and the train wheezed wearily into the dark station, Grim began to busy himself in mysterious ways. Part of his own costume consisted of a short, curved scimitar attached to an embroidered belt— the sort of thing that Arabs ...
— Affair in Araby • Talbot Mundy
... fireman's hat, Charlie?" asked Sue, who was looking for some one to help her pin her dress ...
— Bunny Brown and his Sister Sue Giving a Show • Laura Lee Hope
... little engagement at Poli's. Won't you drop around and see me? I promise not to compel you to play the fireman. ...
— Andy at Yale - The Great Quadrangle Mystery • Roy Eliot Stokes
... of the two deck hands; but Ben Bowman, the second fireman, and the cabin-waiter were available when there was any extra work to be done. Buck Lingley and Hop Tossford, the deck hands, were sent aloft by the mate to loose sails, while the others manned the halyard and the braces. In a very short time the topsail was drawing full, ...
— Up the River - or, Yachting on the Mississippi • Oliver Optic
... times, since I can remember, about what I will be when I am grown up. Sometimes I have thought I should like to be an officer and die in battle; sometimes I settled to be a clergyman and preach splendid sermons to enormous congregations; once I quite decided to be a head fireman and wear a brass helmet, and be whirled down lighted streets at night, every one making way for me, on errands ...
— Brothers of Pity and Other Tales of Beasts and Men • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing
... had happened. The engine had taken a drift edge-way, had canted up, and then rolled over against the walls of the cutting. Luckily, the carriages had kept the rails. The driver was up to his neck in the snow, but the fireman was not visible. ...
— Acton's Feud - A Public School Story • Frederick Swainson
... the tearful 'Senorita' who has so long knelt and so constantly wagged her doll's head at his side; the mules of the other bandits were upset, and they themselves roughly seized. The full-length statue of P. T. Barnum fell down of its own accord, as if disgusted with the whole affair. A red-shined fireman seized with either hand Franklin Pierce and James Buchanan by their coat-collars, tucked the Prince Imperial of France under one arm and the Veiled Murderess under the other, and coolly departed for the street. Two ragged boys ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton
... code of the fireman has no exceptions or amendments. It is a simple thing—as simple as the rule of three. There was the heedless unit in the right of way; there was the hose-cart and the iron pillar of ...
— The Trimmed Lamp • O. Henry
... that they had not come to the skating to warm themselves, but the mayor, heeding no one, opened the door and beckoned to someone with his crooked finger. A workman and a fireman ...
— The Horse-Stealers and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... the engineer. "How do you expect my fireman to keep up a blaze under that boiler on the shag-end of nothing? I tell you the fire's going out in less than an hour. She ain't making a pound of ...
— Nan Sherwood's Winter Holidays • Annie Roe Carr
... have gone through this first course of study, they begin their real fireman's training. They attend more lectures in which they learn how to handle the various ladders and machines which firemen use. They have to learn how a fire engine is put together, what are the uses of every wheel and valve, and how to clean ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 26, May 6, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... Colonel Kirby, leaning from the seat of his high dogcart to speak to the English fireman who stood sentry over ...
— Winds of the World • Talbot Mundy
... belief which I transferred, long afterwards again, to Mr. Sweedlepipe, in Martin Chuzzlewit), worked generally, side by side. Bob Fagin was an orphan, and lived with his brother-in-law, a waterman. Poll Green's father had the additional distinction of being a fireman, and was employed at Drury Lane theatre; where another relation of Poll's, I think his little sister, did imps in ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... a battle!" she shuddered. As she spoke the Rosemary stopped with a jerk and McGrath's fireman darted past to set ...
— A Fool For Love • Francis Lynde
... Jack answered as truthfully as he dared. Ross looked him over again and asked him how he would like to be a fireman. Whereat Jack ...
— The Lookout Man • B. M. Bower
... [Reappears in his fireman's uniform.] You get out o' the way here, old lady. Go an' attend to things upstairs. Nothin' to be done here with a syringe. You go up to my wife. Hold on! We gotta have the key to ...
— The Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann - Volume I • Gerhart Hauptmann
... found the disturbance had subsided, and presently fell into talk with a man on the opposite seat who asked for some tobacco. He told Dick he was a locomotive fireman, but had got into trouble, the nature of which he did not disclose. Dick never learned much more about his past than this, but their acquaintance ripened and Kemp proved a ...
— Brandon of the Engineers • Harold Bindloss
... tender and ordered the runner to hold up. All this was regular programme, as I had explained to Miss Cullen, but here had been a variation which I had never heard of being done, and of which I couldn't fathom the object. When the train had been stopped, the man on the tender had ordered the fireman to dump his fire, and now it was lying in the road-bed and threatening to burn through the ties; so my first order was to extinguish it, and my second was to start a new fire and get up steam as quickly ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds
... vicinity of Tammany Hall, fearless of detection, for no one could have recognized the Broadway exquisite in his assumed garb. His upper garment was an old great coat razeed into a frock; his feet were cased in heavy fireman's boots, which, with their impermeable uppers and ponderous soles, were equally serviceable for keeping out snow-water and kicking niggers' shins; his head was protected by a stout leather cap, and in his hand he carried a hickory, not so ponderous as Lloyd's stick, but none the less capable ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... looking about for a weapon, calling for help at the top of her lungs, caught sight of a fireman's ax in a glass case on the wall. She ran over, smashed the glass with the small hammer, and took out the ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science July 1930 • Various
... idle time in playing cards. Of the passion for gaming, thus excited, an instance has been narrated to us upon the most credible authority, which surpasses the highest wrought fictions of the gambler's fate. A colored fireman, on board a steamboat running between Saint Louis and New-Orleans, had lost all his money at poker with his companions. He then staked his clothing, and being still unfortunate, pledged his own freedom for a small amount. Losing this, ...
— Scientific American magazine, Vol. 2 Issue 1 • Various
... said Dr. McMullen to Carroll as they turned away. The physician drew his tall slender figure to its height. "Brave chaps, every one of them. But, do you know, to my mind, the bravest of them all are that nigger—and his fireman—nailed down in the hold where they can't see nor know what's going on, and if—if—" the good doctor blew his nose vigorously five or six times—"well, it's just like a rat in a hole." He shook his head vigorously and looked out to sea. "I read last evening, ...
— The Riverman • Stewart Edward White
... course of a few minutes a small raft, bearing a heaving-line which the yachtsmen had streamed, drifted down upon the tug, clearing the bow by a few feet. Dan leaned out and caught it with his boat-hook, bringing the line aboard. Then he and his fireman tailed on to the end of it, bringing in the attached hawser hand over hand. This they hurried to the stern bitts, taking a pass also around the steam winch. Leaving the fireman to watch it, Dan dashed into the pilot-house and sounded ...
— Dan Merrithew • Lawrence Perry
... for hookin' things," added another. "Last v'y'ge I made, there was a fireman we called Sandy, as I'd seen hangin' around my sea-chest jist afore I missed suthin'. So I fixed a fish-hook to the lock, and nex' day Mr. Sandy had a precious sore finger somehow; and from that day for'ard we never called him nothing but 'Sandy Hook'. [A loud ...
— Harper's Young People, April 6, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... heat, there is no danger of a lack of reaction, and consequently no occasion for fears that the rash might be "driven in." A physician afraid of using water freely in violent cases of scarlet-fever, would resemble a fireman afraid of using his engine, for fear of spoiling ...
— Hydriatic treatment of Scarlet Fever in its Different Forms • Charles Munde
... led the twins over the other track so that they would be sufficiently far from the train. To his surprise the engine began to slow down, the engineer and fireman waved their hands as they leaned out of the window and door of the cab, and by and by the ...
— Six Little Bunkers at Cowboy Jack's • Laura Lee Hope
... fluid" is a popular name with many unscrupulous dealers in the cheap and nasty. "Burning fluid" is usually another name for naphtha, or something worse. Gasoline, naphtha, benzine, kerosene, paraffine, and many other dangerous fluids which make the fireman's vocation necessary are all the product of petroleum. These oils are produced by the distillation or refining of crude petroleum, and inasmuch as the public, especially firemen, are daily brought into contact with them it ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 288 - July 9, 1881 • Various
... is no unusual thing in lively times for the subjects to be given at the last moment by telegram to Mr. Sambourne; so that his condition of mind during the Thursday following the Dinner may not inaptly be compared to that of an anxious fireman waiting for a "call." The contributions of the rest of the artistic Staff—Mr. du Maurier, Mr. Bernard Partridge, and Mr. E. T. Reed—do not form the subject of Wednesday's cogitation; nor is it true, as has publicly been stated, that when jokes fail it is customary ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... honor the valiant soldier, sailor, fireman? For obedience to duty? Not at all; that alone—without the peril—seldom elicits remark, never evokes enthusiasm. It is because he faced without flinching the risk of that supreme disaster—or what we feel ...
— The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays - 1909 • Ambrose Bierce
... felt like trying to push it along with something inside me all the time till I was as tired as though I had been really pushing it. At one place the train stopped in the middle of a bog—some one had pulled the communication cord—and the guard and the fireman ran along the carriages, using frightful language, only to pull out seven drunken men going home from a fair, in charge of one small boy who was sober. He was explaining that he couldn't wake them up at the last station, and that as soon as they came awake ...
— Love of Brothers • Katharine Tynan
... humble workman, who filled the position of fireman of the pumping-engine in use at the colliery, at three dollars a week. With a wife and six children to support, there was not much left after satisfying the cravings of hunger. The children, soon as opportunity afforded, were set at work to help support the family. We find young George ...
— Hidden Treasures - Why Some Succeed While Others Fail • Harry A. Lewis
... into a snow-bank. The cars lurched, but the snow was flung off and the train went roaring through another shed. Here was where the defective rail had been reported. No matter. A greater danger was pressing behind. The fireman piled on coal until his clothes were wet with perspiration, and fire belched from the smoke-stack. The passengers, too, having been warned of their peril, had dressed themselves and were anxiously watching at the windows, ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... fireman, and reached out his arms for her just as she fell back fainting. Grasping her firmly, the brave man dragged her out of the window, and began his perilous descent. When about half way down, the ladder fell, but its burden was expected, and mattress and bed-clothing ...
— The Right Knock - A Story • Helen Van-Anderson
... an adventure yesterday. He being fireman with another was in the furnace room among three or four others, when the officer of the day, one of the surgeons, passed around on inspection. "Stand up," he ordered them, wishing to be saluted. The others arose; but by no means ...
— The Record of a Quaker Conscience, Cyrus Pringle's Diary - With an Introduction by Rufus M. Jones • Cyrus Pringle
... badger scratched dad's bare feet, and a young eagle I had began to screech, and dad began to have a fit. He said the air seemed fixed, and he opened the window, and sat on the window sill in his night shirt, and a fireman came up a ladder from the outside and turned the hose on dad, then the police came and broke in the door, and the landlord was along, and the porter, and all the chambermaids, and everybody. I had turned in all the alarms there were, and everybody ...
— Peck's Bad Boy With the Cowboys • Hon. Geo. W. Peck
... bound on a steamer from Melbourne when they made their minds up; and Isaac Lunn, the oldest fireman aboard—a very steady old teetotaler—gave them a lot of good advice about it. They all wanted to rejoin the ship when she sailed agin, and 'e offered to take a room ashore with them and mind their money, giving 'em what 'e called ...
— Odd Craft, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... go before he found what he was looking for—the body of a little girl who had fallen and been overcome by the smoke. He picked her up and with little difficulty carried her out to the street, where a fireman ...
— The Boy Scout Fire Fighters - or Jack Danby's Bravest Deed • Robert Maitland
... unnaturally large, while the gaunt Indians, in their fantastic costume, assumed the form of giants striding along apparently on the gleaming surface of the ocean itself. They were outlined with that sharp, black distinctness which is seen when at night a fireman runs along the outer walls ...
— Adrift in the Wilds - or, The Adventures of Two Shipwrecked Boys • Edward S. Ellis
... shall not prevent a street railway company from transporting free of charge any member of the police force or fire department while in the discharge of his official duties, nor prohibit the acceptance by any such policeman or fireman of ...
— Civil Government of Virginia • William F. Fox
... the locomotive, born, the son of a poor colliery engineman, at Wylam, near Newcastle; was early set to work, first as a cowherd and then as a turnip-hoer, and by 15 was earning 12s. a week as fireman at Throckley Bridge Colliery, diligently the while acquiring the elements of education; married at 21, and supplemented his wage as brakesman at Killingworth Colliery by mending watches and shoes; in 1815 invented a safety-lamp for miners, ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... something of that sort to look back upon. There are no roses along the pathway he has traversed. In the end, perhaps, he wonders if it has been worth while. David Cable was a General Manager; he had been a fireman. It had required twenty-five years of hard work on his part to break through the chrysalis. Packed away in a chest upstairs in his house there was a grimy, greasy, unwholesome suit of once-blue overalls. The garments were just as old as his railroad career, for he had ...
— Jane Cable • George Barr McCutcheon
... "I was fireman under ingeneer Walker on the lokymotive 'Gin'l Borygyard,' what most ginerally hauled Freight No. 2. The ingines goes now by numbers, but we ole hands ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... was really called Philippe Burgos. He had been in New York. He criticised someone for saying "Yes" to us, one day, stating that no American said "Yes" but "Yuh"; which—whatever the reader may think—is to my mind a very profound observation. In New York he had worked nights as a fireman in some big building or other and slept days, and this method of seeing America he had enjoyed extremely. Mexique had one day taken ship (being curious to see the world) and worked as chauffeur—that is to say in the stoke-hole. He had landed in, I think, Havre; had missed his ship; had ...
— The Enormous Room • Edward Estlin Cummings
... Why, I saw fellows fresh from the States pass out, some of them not a week on their first run. If the diseases and the railroad didn't get them, then it was the Spiggoties got them. But it just wasn't my fate, even that time I rode my engine down to the bottom of a forty-foot washout. I lost my fireman; and the conductor and the Superintendent of Rolling Stock (who happened to be running down to Duran to meet his bride) had their heads knifed off by the Spiggoties and paraded around on poles. But I lay snug as a bug under a ...
— The Red One • Jack London
... go to the fiery hell in front. As I look the roof crashes in and we are showered by falling sparks. I see a fireman run back. He is swathed in flame. Madly he rolls in the snow. The hotel is like a cascade of flame; it spouts outward like water, beautiful golden water. In its centre is a wonderful whirlpool. I see the line of a black girder leap out, and hanging over it a limp, ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... same moment the lifting fire-ladder reached the sill of the third-story window, and a fireman, shielding his face from the flames, peered into the blazing room. What he saw showed him there were no lives to rescue. Stretched on the floor, with their clothing in cinders and the flames licking at the flesh, were the bodies ...
— The Lost House • Richard Harding Davis
... spare herself the trouble of getting dinner, and passed the entire day with uncombed hair, in a dressing-sacque, reading novels, and telling her fortune with cards. The grocer's daughter declared she had met her one evening, at a dancing-hall, seated with a fireman before a salad-bowl full of wine, prepared in the ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... found no preparations making there for any attempt to save the barges and their enormously rich cargoes, or even to rescue the helpless men who had been left on board of them. The engineer of the tug, who always slept on board, was there, and so were the two deck hands and the fireman, but the fires were banked, and the captain had not responded to the duty call ...
— A Captain in the Ranks - A Romance of Affairs • George Cary Eggleston
... locomotive to tooting for all she is worth as he sees a "strayed or stolen" cycler, slowly bumping along ahead of his train. But he has no need to slow up, for occasional cross-beams stick out far enough to admit of standing out of reach, and when he comes up alongside, he and the fireman look out of the window of the cab and see me squatting on the end of one of these handy beams, and ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... If there were you would soon see the toy Fireman and the Fire Engine starting out," replied the China Cat. "I don't like fires myself, and I detest the water they squirt on them. We cats don't like ...
— The Story of a Nodding Donkey • Laura Lee Hope
... considerable importance, as you shall see. I had occasion to pay a visit to the stoke-hole, where one of the men had injured his hand, and I had finished my work and was mounting the grubby wire ladder, when a fireman passed me with averted face. I hardly glanced at him, and certainly did not pause the least fraction of a second; but to the half-glance succeeded a shock. The nerves, I suppose, took a perceptible instant of time to convey the ...
— Hurricane Island • H. B. Marriott Watson
... to the lot of the country community. In the course of the round year there is, in thousands of farming communities in Pennsylvania, Indiana and Illinois, no single meeting that brings all the people together. The small town has its fireman's parade, to the small city comes once a year the circus and to the great city comes an anniversary or an exposition. Every year there is some common experience which welds the population, increases ...
— The Evolution of the Country Community - A Study in Religious Sociology • Warren H. Wilson
... peasant, and with absolutely nothing of the infantine swagger of the small French bourgeois. These miners here wear a picturesque and practical costume, something between the garb of a sailor and the garb of a fireman, and as their life—like the life of a fireman or a sailor—is lived a good deal apart from the lives of other men, and has a constant spice in it of possible danger, they acquire a certain self-reliance and self-possession ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... way to see: a medium-sized picture gallery, a small museum of antiquities, and half a palace, and you are through with the entire thing and can enjoy yourself. Harris did not know it was an official he was insulting. He took it for a fireman (it looked liked a fireman), and he called ...
— Three Men on the Bummel • Jerome K. Jerome
... fireman was right," said Daddy Horton gravely. "Coats and rubbers are not important enough, Sunny Boy, even if they were trimmed with gold fur, to risk one's life for. I hope there'll be no more fires till you are grown up and able to judge ...
— Sunny Boy and His Playmates • Ramy Allison White
... knife? A knife! A knife!" shouted a fireman in the bow. He was bare to the waist and perspiration stood out in drops on his face and chest and made streaks through the coal dust with which his skin ...
— "And they thought we wouldn't fight" • Floyd Gibbons
... boy stood there calmly watching the train ahead of them. Nearer and nearer to it did they draw. They could see the engineer and fireman leaning from their cab, looking back. Phil waved a hand to them, to which the ...
— The Circus Boys on the Plains • Edgar B. P. Darlington
... thousand small lights in the street went straight up into the darkness among the interlacing telegraph wires, and just at the edge of the shining haze, on a sort of pigeon-trap, forty feet above ground, sat a Japanese fireman, wrapped up in his cloak, keeping watch against fires. He looked unpleasantly like a Bulgarian atrocity or a Burmese 'deviation from the laws of humanity,' being very still and all huddled up in his roost. ...
— Letters of Travel (1892-1913) • Rudyard Kipling
... ladder by which to scale the cliff! Why, you have told us that it was three hundred feet in sheer height? The longest ladder in the world would not reach a third of the way up such a precipice. Even a fireman's ladder, that is made to reach to the tops of the highest houses, would be of no use for such a ...
— The Plant Hunters - Adventures Among the Himalaya Mountains • Mayne Reid
... Bedford Forrest built the cut between Forrest City and Madison for the road, I was his cook and the first fireman to make the run through the cut. I used to drive a stagecoach over the Old Military Road through Pine Tree on the stage run from Memphis to ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Arkansas Narratives Part 3 • Works Projects Administration
... had rather hoped to find the bedroom equipped with an old-fashioned German feather bed. I had heard that one scaled the side of a German bed on a stepladder and then fell headlong into its smothering folds like a gallant fireman invading a burning rag warehouse; but this hotel happened to be the best hotel that I ever saw outside the United States. It had been built and it was managed on American lines, plus German domestic service—which made an incomparable ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... crowd began a hasty retreat, till the pressure upon the back lines made it impossible for those in front to escape. From over the heads of the crowd rocks began to fly. A number of his specials were wounded and for a moment the advance hung fire. Down through the crowd came a fireman, dragging with him a hose preparatory ...
— To Him That Hath - A Novel Of The West Of Today • Ralph Connor
... bell had sounded, and the fireman leaned far out for the signal. The gong struck sharply the conductor shouted, "All aboard," and raised his hand; the tired ticket-seller shut his window, and the train moved out of the station, gathered way as it cleared the outskirts of the town, rounded a curve, entered on an absolutely ...
— Short Story Classics (American) Vol. 2 • Various
... the Titanic from the Oceanic, where I had served as a fireman. From the day we sailed the Titanic was on fire, and my sole duty, together with eleven other men, had been to fight that fire. We had ...
— Sinking of the Titanic - and Great Sea Disasters • Various
... piano came to an untimely end almost before its career began. The man inside the calliope, the fireman, was too industrious. He filled the stove with damp straw, poured kerosene oil over it and applied a match. The parade was in the midst of the public square, in Canton, Ohio. Thousands had congregated to witness ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field
... why, it's pale and noiseless—just ghosts scuffling in a fog. Dear me, what would this barren vocabulary get out of the mightiest spectacle?—the burning of Rome in Nero's time, for instance? Why, it would merely say, 'Town burned down; no insurance; boy brast a window, fireman brake his neck!' ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... fired in the air, except once when I shot the fireman who was killing Mr. Sedgwick ...
— The Pirate of Panama - A Tale of the Fight for Buried Treasure • William MacLeod Raine
... was raised to the roof, and a fireman went up. He had to be careful on the sloping roof, on account of the slippery snow that covered it. But another ladder, laid on the shingles, ...
— The Curlytops and Their Playmates - or Jolly Times Through the Holidays • Howard R. Garis
... two after the quiet fireman had entered, the night-dressed little ones disappeared from the other windows and congregated, as if by magic, at the window just above the head of the Escape. Almost simultaneously the fly-ladder of the Escape—used for upper windows—was swung out, and when the quiet fireman ...
— Dusty Diamonds Cut and Polished - A Tale of City Arab Life and Adventure • R.M. Ballantyne
... was carried into this room, with all the care necessitated by his fragility. It was not intended to break his second ear in the hurry of moving. Leon ran to light the fire under the boiler, and M. Nibor created him Fireman, on ...
— The Man With The Broken Ear • Edmond About
... been able to write to you, or any one lately, whom I don't want to tease, except Dr. Brown, whom I write to for counsel. My time is passed in a fierce steady struggle to save all I can every day, as a fireman from a smoldering ruin, of history or aspect. To-day, for instance, I've been just in time to ascertain the form of the cross of the Emperor, representing the power of the State in the greatest political ...
— Hortus Inclusus - Messages from the Wood to the Garden, Sent in Happy Days - to the Sister Ladies of the Thwaite, Coniston • John Ruskin
... a fireman," she said, "and he has always told me that if ever there was a cry of fire when I was in school, I must remain quiet in my seat, for that was the safest way. I was dreadfully frightened; but I knew that what father had told me was best; and so I sat still, ...
— The Life of Jesus Christ for the Young • Richard Newton |
