236 ROAD, TRACK, AND STABLE. 
But, as we were just saying, an alarm sounds, and 
the scene changes. In a corner of the ceiling, near 
the front door, is a circular opening, through which, 
rising from the floor, passes a shining brass pole. 
When the men are called out, they throw themselves 
on this pole, and come down like a flash of lightning ; 
the feet of the second man almost touching the head 
of the first, and so on. The horses scramble on their 
legs, the doors in front of them fly open, and out 
they rush, their heavy iron-shod hoofs thundering 
over the floor. Each horse goes to his proper place; 
the driver, from his seat, lets down the harness; two 
or three men standing at the pole snap the collars to- 
gether, fasten the reins to the bits, and off they go. 
There is nothing more to be done: the girths are not 
used in running to a fire; the traces are already at- 
tached to the whiffletrees and the pole-straps to the 
collars, so that the fastening of two collars and four 
reins constitutes the harnessing. Often, perhaps com- 
monly, the horses are harnessed and everything is 
ready for a start before the gong has finished telling 
the number of the box. Half a minute is about the 
maximum time for companies in a first class depart- 
ment to make ready and leave the house; and the 
ordinary time is, I believe, fifteen or twenty seconds. 
The fire marshal of the Chicago department informs 
me that, “on the test of a certain engine, with men 
in bed and horses in stalls, the hind wheels of the 
apparatus crossed the threshold in eleven seconds.” 
For the Brooklyn department the time is given as 
“from four to eight seconds, according to distance of 
horses from the engine.” 
To teach a green nag to come out of his stall at the 
