A Mother’s Heart
One summer afternoon a fire broke out in a five-story tenement house. It started in the basement, where an Italian rag-gatherer had stored his stock in trade. With furious violence the flames burst into the hall and rapidly mounted to the upper floor, almost immediately cutting off all access to the entrance.
Pale, frightened faces of men, and especially of women and children, began to appear at the windows. The air was filled with the heart-rending cries of those in peril, and of the excited spectators who gathered near the burning house.
Looking down from their windows the tenants of the upper flats saw the lower stories wrapped in smoke and flames, and hastily retreated, evidently to try to escape by way of the roof. But the dwellers on the lower floors, being cut off from the stairways, began to climb down the narrow, rickety fire-escapes. Some even prepared to jump from their windows, but the bystanders entreated them not to attempt so hazardous a leap.
The police, aided by the bravest among the crowd, almost threw themselves into the fire in their efforts to help the unfortunate tenants to escape, but in a few moments it was impossible for even the most daring to render any assistance. The flames cut off every approach to the building, and no one was visible within the house.
By this time the flames were issuing from the windows of the upper floors.
Near an open window on the fifth floor stood an old, gray-haired woman. She motioned with her hands as though appealing to the crowd to save her. Then the seething flames seemed to enfold her for a moment, and a cry of despair and terror went up from the hundreds of lookers-on.
The woman stepped out on the fire-escape. "It is old Mrs. Scholum!" exclaimed the neighbors, who recognized the gray-haired woman, and they wrung their hands in distress, while she stood motionless as though dazed and bewildered by the horror of her situation.
The bells of the fire engines were heard, and the crowd began shouting to the unfortunate woman, urging her not to lose courage, and assuring her that help was close at hand.
From windows near where she stood the smoke was pouring forth in denser clouds. She seemed doomed to a dreadful death. Suddenly she moved, as though waking from sleep, and then quickly sprang back into her room.
"She is lost!" exclaimed many voices, and the crowd stood horror-stricken.
"Perhaps she had forgotten a child," suggested some one, with no little concern.
"Or, perhaps, money," said another.
But the neighbors who knew Mrs. Scholum well were so alarmed that