Read "The Burning of Chelsea" by Walter Merriam Pratt online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
As the sky grew light and the morning mist cleared away, it disclosed a vast expanse of smoking ruins. The night had passed, and what a night! filled with vivid, awful memories of the dead and injured, the homeless and destitute. The great blackened tract over which the fire had swept, which only the day before had been covered with dwellings, stores, and public buildings, was deserted, save for the soldiers, and here and there little groups of firemen, tired and worn out, but still working. As it grew lighter more people appeared. On the playground to the west soldiers were pitching tents for the homeless. As far as one could see lay nothing but a barren waste, with here and there the ragged walls of a church or school standing out against the sky, like the ruins of some old castle.
On the sides of Bellingham Hill, with the exception of the walls of the Highland School, nothing remained. Far off in the distance towards the west stood the ruins of the big Frank B. Fay School, named for Chelsea's war mayor.