The Child's Book of Common Things Author:Worthington Hooker Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: her. This will put out the fire. Why ? Because it shuts the air out from the burning clothes. I knew' a very great fire to happen once because a man did not u... more »nderstand such things. Some shavings got on fire in a carpenter's shop. There was a loose door standing close by. Now if the man had taken this, and laid it very carefully down on the shavings, it would have put the fire out at once. Why would it ? Because the door would shut out the air from the shavings. It would smother the fire, as we say. But he did not do this. He caught up the door very quickly, and threw it down on the shavings. This blew the air down upon them, and so scattered them about very much. Only a few of them were under the door when it was fairly down. The scattered shavings set the other shavings about the shop on fire. Soon the whole shop was in a blaze ; and this set fire to a long block of buildings. This was one of the greatest fires they ever had in the city of Boston. And all this might have been saved, if the man in the shop had only laid that door down carefully. How well it is for people to understand just how to do things. Now I will tell you about a man that did understand things. As he was walking along in the country, a woman called to him from a house, " Do come in quick, sir, the house is on fire." He ran in and saw the fire blazing all up the wood-work over the fire place. A pail of water stood on the floor, butthe woman trembled so with fright that she could not throw it on the fire. She asked him to throw it on. He did not, but asked her if she had any more water. "No," cried she, "but do throw it on." " Is there any more water close by ?" asked he, " No, no, there is none but at the spring, a good way off, but do throw it on." " Give me your mop,"., said he. " Throw it on,'' said s...« less