In 1922, women are singing a hymn when a sexton sees a fire burning in the flue. The sexton takes off to “raise the alarm”, but the women continue to sing their hymn. This brings to question as to who has more faith in this story: the women who continued singing or the sexton who ran out.
Women Sing As Fire Threatens Chapel
Bible Class Continues Hymn as Firemen Come and Extinguish Blaze.
While firemen yesterday afternoon ripped away flaming beams caught from a fire in a flue connecting with a register in the Mothers’ Bible Singing and Class Room in the Mizpah Chapel of the Central Presbyterian Church, No. 420 West 57th Street, the women of the class continued singing, “My Faith Looks Up to Thee.”
Charles Cadley, the sexton, who discovered the burning flue, dashed madly out to turn in an alarm, but the women went on singing, and when the firemen arrived there was no pause until the hymn was finished. Then the women gathered about the fire fighters to watch them at work. The men with hose and axe quickly extinguished the flames, then removed their hats and bowed themselves out.
“The coolest lot of women I ever saw,” said Acting Battalion Chief, when recounting the incident today.
Source: The Evening World newspaper. December 14, 1922. New York, N.Y.
