Word: ladders
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Dates: during 1880-1889
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...story is told by the Cambridge firemen which ought not to miss getting into print. At the recent fire in the Cambridge car-shops, in Dunster street, one of the engineers wanted help in raising a ladder, and, seeing a man standing on the sidewalk near by, he called to him, "Here, you, give us a lift." The man responded with alacrity, and a moment later when the engineer took a better look at him he discovered that his assistant was President Eliot of Harvard University. An apology was begun, but the president graciously declared it was all right...
...runs the picturesque ventilator, which might be converted into an elevator for passengers to the tower (two cents a trip). After much climbing we reach the balcony (where the pigeon holes are), and here the elevator ends and the misery from coal-gas begins. After climbing an almost perpendicular ladder for about thirty feet through the "top-loft," we pass through the last of the many trap-doors and stand upon the summit of "our boarding house." Although it was raining at the time of our visit, yet the "view" made us wish to camp up there for a week...
...balcony is so low that any lover endowed with tolerable agility could vault to the side of his mistress with the greatest of ease. The window could clearly be high enough to warrant Romeo's employment of "cords made like a tackled stair" - that is to say, a rope ladder - to reach it. There is truth, however, in the statement that Irving's several attempts to reach Miss Terry's hand, "which is just out of reach, and his desperate clutches and frantic gestures, approach within a dangerous distance of the ridiculous...
...constructed that there is always a powerful up-draft in each entry. Let a fire get under a good headway on the bottom floor and the entry will become a death-trap to those above. There is no escape except by jumping from the windows. Matthews has a fire ladder, but Thayer, the largest and highest building, has no means of escape, except the wooden fire ladders under the chapel, which are not long enough to reach the upper story. A fire, occurring in a building like Thayer during the night, would probably destroy life, thereby injuring Harvard more than...
...with a suitably attached knotted rope long enough to reach the ground. In each of the old buildings and in Farnam much the same contrivance is to be adopted in each entry, the rope, however, being attached at the highest of the hallway. In the old chapel an iron ladder is to be permanently attached in the rear, reaching from the window of the room in the gable to the sill of the blind window about eight feet above the ground. These fire-escapes are to be placed in position soon." Meanwhile Harvard is left to the saving grace...