Tuesday afternoon I came home from school quite tired at 3:45 as usual thinking I'd get a glass of milk a few crackers and then lie down for awhile.

Someone came into the refectory and said: "There is a fire over in the old fine arts room." For old timers, that's that's music room number seven. I thought, it's going to take more than a little ol' fire to move more one inch from this chair. The phone rang and the fire siren shrilled (pardon the verb--but that's what it did). Someone ran into the house and shouted: "There's a fire in the old building." Just then fire engines shrieked into our back yard. That stirred me. I said: "Whee! We even rate a fire engine! Let's go and see where the fire is."

When we looked out our south door we could see the smoke billowing rather gently from cracks of the wall on the basement floor level. It seemed to be coming mostly from the corners where the building parts were joined. Firemen and high school boys were running around wildly trying to locate a flame or at least to locate or at least to localize the smoke.

While we watched --- and all within 10 minutes after I left that refectory---that billowing smoke seemed to be coming from every place. It rose and rose before our very own eyes until it was coming out along the roof under the eaves. And still the firemen could not locate any blaze. After what seemed an interminable length of time, but which was really about 10 minutes, a flame broke out in the old telephone room, Sister Claire's portress room (or for the old timers) what used to be Sisters Alice's music room.

At the first indication of the smoke some of the boys and sisters were going over to the top floor of the grade school building, the new wing------1910, to rescue some thousand dollars worth of choral and graduation gowns and some precious costumes hanging in the boarders old wardrobe between the west dorms. They couldn't make it past the first floor. That quickly the two buildings had filled with smoke. Firemen ordered all out of the building and watch.