MARTYAS TO MODESTY.

Hokitika Guardian, 25 March 1920, Page 1

MARTYAS TO MODESTY.

NEW YORK, Jan. 18. Last night, though the thermometer registered 10' degrees of frost, snow was .idling steadily, and an icy wind from the north swept the city, six men stood in their shirts on the roof of a building in Brooklyn, the chief Long Island suburb of New York, and refused to descend. Two storeys beneath them Haines and smoke revealed the presence of a fierce blaze which was qpickly consuming the entire structure. ■ The°iron fire escape offered an avenue of escape ,but although the firemen shouted to them to hurry, the shivering six refused to budge. The reason was to be found in the courtyard below, on which opened the emergency exits ot the assembly rooms on the ground floor, where a dance had been m pro- ” In the courtyard were 100 women and "ills who had been hastily sent out into the yard when the fire broke out, and the ordeal of descending the lire escape in the face of dozens, qf Warned feminine eyes was too much foi th chilled but truly modest occupants o not health cranky but candidates for admission to the Rio gcwood Lodge Of Masons. T ey l^ b ordered to strip to their shirts foi the initiation and were, awaiting a summons to the presence of menlbeis Te lod"e when the fire alarm was riven. Forgetting both ceremony one clothes, the six rushed to the roof to escape tVio flatties. Their predicament ended a plank was pushed across to them < the next building. Over this they escaped with complete decorum.