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"It was Sunday and an unusually warm evening for October eighth, so Daniel 'Peg Leg' Sullivan left his stifling little house in the West Side of Chicago and went to visit neighbors. One of his stops was at the shingled cottage of Patrick and Catherine O'Leary. The one-legged Sullivan remembered getting to the O'Learys' house at around eight o'clock, but left after only a few minutes because the O'Leary family was already in bed...."
It was about 8:45 PM, author Jim Murphy continues in The Great Fire, his account of the Great Chicago Fire of 1871, when Sullivan first spotted trouble--"a single tongue of flame shooting out the side of the O'Learys' barn."
"Sullivan didn't hesitate a second. 'FIRE! FIRE! FIRE!' he shouted as loudly as he could.... The sound of music and merrymaking stopped abruptly, replaced by the shout of 'FIRE!' It would be a warning cry heard thousands of times during the next thirty-one hours."
These passages from The Great Fire illustrate some of Murphy's strengths as a writer: his attention to detail, exacting research, and ability to make history come to life.
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