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Indomitable Conflagration Breaks Out Twice in Building in Harvard Square

Undergraduates Heave Hoses As Mob Cheers Axe-Swinging Smoke-Eaters

NO WRITER ATTRIBUTED

Not content to remain extinguished permanently, a fire that broke out yesterday afternoon in a third-story room in the Concord Building, Harvard Square, blazed forth again last evening at 6:45 o'clock, in a typewriter-renting office on the second floor.

According to Chief John J. Darvis of Engine Company 15 the first fire was caused by wooden studding which had been built too close to a defective chimney leading up from a restaurant below. The blase, which never got beyond a suffocating smudge, was quickly controlled.

A Mr. M. J. McAllister thought he smelled smoke at 3:15 o'clock and, verifying the message of his olfactory organ, notified the Fire Department immediately. An enthusiastic group of spectators urged firemen on with cries of, "Come on you, break it in!" directed at several smoke-eaters who were climbing up to the third-floor windows. However, the firemen did not comply with these demands. Shouldering their axes, they entered the building the usual way: by opening windows.

'17 firemen, gleefully tearing down walls and ceiling, were packed into the tiny room from which the smoke poured. Meanwhile, co-operative Crimson stalwarts helped pull hoses up to the roof of the building. Their ardor was some-what dampened when boisterous fire-fighters above, testing a hose, directed the stream of water at the undergraduates.

Chimney Causes Second Outbreak

The second fire broke out in a type-writer-renting office directly below the room that was the scene of the afternoon's blaze. Chief Herman E. Gutheim, head of the Cambridge forces, said that the same defective chimney caused both fires.

An undergraduate, attempting to peer into the flaming closet, was ejected by a captain with the following words: "You've get more nerve than I've get, brother, and I'm an officer!" The same local fire eater carried the first piece of burning wood out into the street, and was greeted by lend applause from the assembled crowd.

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