A YOUNG MAN IN NEW YORK 17 
solved to attend a theater even though (or perhaps because) 
at home such straying from the straight and narrow path had 
been called ‘‘taking the first step toward Hell.”” As his daugh- 
ter later expressed it, “Being of an inquiring mind he deter- 
mined, as so many country lads have done before and since, 
upon giving one of the first evenings in the city to finding out 
for himself what Hell was like.” For a green boy of fifteen, 
receiving the salary of a dollar a week, this was a rash deter- 
mination. It is interesting to note, as showing the customs 
of the times, that some New York theaters seated “women of 
ill fame” apart from the rest of the audience. 
When he wrote home, his letters described, not his impres- 
sions of the New York theater, but another sensational sight 
for a small-town boy—a big fire. On Christmas day, 1835, he 
wrote to his father that he had seen “‘the largest fire ever 
known in this country. It burned about 674 buildings, most 
of which were wholesale stores, and laid waste all of thirty 
acres of this city. I was up all night to the fire, and last Sun- 
day was on duty with David as a guard to prevent people from 
going to the ruins to steal property that was saved from the 
fire and laying [sic] in heaps in the streets. ‘The awful state 
that the city was in can be better imagined than described.” 
This was the great fire of 1835, which caused a loss of twenty 
million dollars and which made a glow visible in Philadel- 
phia and New Haven. Ironically enough, the city’s scanty 
water system was frozen at the time. This fire temporarily 
stopped the city’s growth that the Erie canal had heightened. 
It wrecked the insurance companies and many business firms 
and it helped to bring the financial panic of 1837. 
A typical postscript to Cyrus’ letter added: “I wish mother 
would make for me a black frock-coat (she knows the kind 
that I want) and a plain black stock. Perhaps you had better 
send me the $6 that you were to let me have.” The postscript 
was signed “‘C. W. Field” although the main letter was signed 
“Your affectionate son, Cyrus.” A year later he wrote his 
