On Wednesday evening at fifteen minutes…
source date: 1891
availability: public-domain

On Wednesday evening at fifteen minutes to eight o’clock, while the lights were being extinguished in Aaron Schutz’s store, a large lamp containing a gallon of oil fell, spilling some of the oil which immediately caught fire. At great risk of being severely injured, Clarence Bain caught up the blazing lamp and threw it into the street. But the oil which had spilled had set fire to the whole front of the building on the inside. Several persons tried whipping it out with sacks and drenching it with water from buckets at hand, but to no avail until Mr. H. D. Gilbert threw a couple of hand grenade bottles into the flame, which quickly brought the fire under sufficient control to entirely ex- tinguish it by use of water from buckets. The use of the hand grenades was very timely as a few minutes more and it would have been necessary to turn on the hose which the fire laddies had in readiness. Had the hose been turned on the damage to the stock would have run up into the thousands, while the present loss will be covered by a few hundreds. Mr. Clarence Bain is entitled to great credit for his prompt action in throwing out the blazing lamp, which still contained a large quantity of oil, which would have added fresh fuel and fury to the flame and have caused much greater loss than it did.