PREFj4T0RY.
 

In placing this book before the public, I have aimed to
introduce subjects calculated to impart a greater interest to
its pages than if I confined the contents exclusively to dry
details concerning the organization and ftnctions of the
md Paid Fire Departments of New York and
Of the history of the Volunteer Departments of
cities I have endeavored, in m,y reminiscences of these
's, to tell the truth ; and if I differ from others on
some points, it is because I have sacrificed romance to his¬
torical accuracy.

In preparing this volume it has been my purpose to
com,bine with the statistical details of the history and prog¬
ress of the Fire Departments of New York and Brooklyn,
from their earliest period to the present time, such biograph¬
ical and anecdotal reminiscences of the firem.en as were
available.

Statistics are at the best dry reading. The romance of
history, with its excitements,- its heroic episodes, its tinge
of the marvelous, and the splendor of its pageants, lives in