The Mayor was replied to by Adam Pentz, President of the Fire Department, as follows :

" In behalf of the Fire Department, I thank you cordially for the presentation of this elegant token of the approbation and kind feeling of the Common Council, and for the handsome and complimentary terms in which you have been pleased to convey it. I am sensible that no language of mine, could give any thing like an adequate expression of the

gratification experienced by the Department upon this occasion. That gratification is not diminished, but enhanced, by the reflection, that no extensive conflagration, recently subdued by the energy and activity of the Department, has awakened in a generous community a disposition to thus express its approbation ; but that those into whose hands the people have entrusted the guardianship of these interests, regarding our institution as a most efficient agent of public good, and not unmindful of the services and sacrifices to which its

members are subjected, have in this public manner marked their appreciation of the past, while at the same time they have held out a stimulus to the future. The occasion upon which we are assembled, commemorating the completion of one of the most stupendous public works of the Union or of the age, furnishing so rational a cause for rejoicing, is welcomed by no portion of your fellow citizens with more sincere pleasure, than by that portion which I have the honor to represent. While some have looked merely to the introduction of pure and wholesome water into the city as being an indispensible requisite of