Excerpt from Remarks of Nathaniel Paine, at a Meeting of the Worcester Fire Society: January 2, 1899 The facilities for extinguishing fires in the early days of this country, before the introduction of fire-engines, were of the crudest kind, - buckets and pails, and sometimes ladders for reaching the second stories of houses and stores, were about the extent of the apparatus; although in some of the towns a long pole with a large swab at the end was also used. This was to be dipped into water and applied where it would seem to do the most good. In other places the law required householders to have barrels filled with water near their houses; and in case of an alarm of fire they were expected to fill their buckets before starting, so that on their arrival at the building in danger they would be prepared to render immediate assistance. Carpenters too were required to take their axes in case of an alarm of fire. There was a provision that if buckets or axes were lost at the fire the town was to make the loss good to the owners. It was customary to have the buckets marked with the owner's name or initials, and sometimes they were decorated with a coat of arms or other ornamentation. It is not unlikely that there may now be in the possession of members of this society buckets that had been in use in the town long before our society was organized. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.