On Wednesday afternoon, December 30, a fireproof theatre in Chicago, crowded with fashionable citizens seeing the pantomime, suddenly took fire. The entire audience, numbering 1300 persons, made a rush for the doors, and in the pell-mell panic that ensued nearly 900 persons, mostly women and children, were trampled to death. The flames, generated by a spark from the electric lighting, had caught the flimsy draperies of the stage, and in a few minutes were raging through the entire building. The wise of the press are very sorry about the matter, and are earnestly inculcating more scientific workmanship in theatre construction.
By no means are they repenting of their Sadduceeism and long disregard of the wrath of God revealed from heaven against the theatre and other works of the flesh. The multitude of funerals all at once in Chicago is a thing that made the citizens very emotional. It is reported that by general consent of all the ministers the mangled and disfigured victims of the god of pleasure were sung to their graves to the strains of Newman’s nebulous hymn, “Lead kindly light.” A Puritan revival is sorely needed in the land of the Pilgrim fathers and among the children of Jonathan Edwards and Thomas Shephard.