The Evening Tribune

An American Girl Escapes

Was at the Charity Bazaar When It Was Burned.

Miss Florence Gilmour, a former Cincinnati girl, now of Paris, had a narrow escape from burning in the destruction of the charity bazaar. She writes in answer to a tender message of solicitude from a Cincinnati friend:

"In trying to escape by the main entrance I found all the 1,200 people were trying to do the same thing. With a marvelous presence of mind I realized that way meant death, and I might as well be burned as crushed to death, so I turned back hopeless to my booth, when some one smashed in a window ingeniously hidden, and I saw a means of escape. It is useless to say I lost not a second and landed in a vacant lot. By that time this cursed building of wood and pasteboard was a seething mass of flames. On one side was a high wall. I skirted that, and in doing so was burned on the arm, neck and hands and face.

"I thought even then I should not escape, but some one broke down a fence into the street, and thus I was saved. I had been separated from the Vicomtesse le Savigny and Marie (my maid), and it was not until I came to my hotel that I knew they were saved. My wounds are not serious, only painful, and I am doing nicely. God knows how I was saved when so many perished. It has been the most terrible and heart-rending thing I ever heard of—so unnecessary. I can only be thankful to heaven for my escape from that holocaust. The scenes were beyond description. I shall never forget them. My friends say they were a 'little' frightened while hunting for me around the blazing building and among the dead and wounded." St. Louis Globe-Democrat.