Credit Given

There is an ominous stir in the night near your house--people's voices, running feet, cars arriving, shouts, a muffled crackling. Hurrying out of doors you see, through the windows of a neighbor's home, the ugly surge of fire.

You run to help. You hear the flames roar as a window bursts. You grab the arm of the first person you meet and ask: ''Is everyone out of the house?''

"I don't know," says the man. "I don't know," says the next man. All is confusion. The firemen have not yet come. The front hall is full of flames. Some men are pounding at the locked backdoor.

You see your neighbor's wife, wrapped in a comforter. Their children are with her. The husband comes running from behind the house. His eyes are crazy.

"It's in the kitchen now," he cries. ''We can't get up that way."

He shouts at the crowd, "A ladder! Get a LADDER!"

It seems their servant was asleep on the top floor. They called her, she said she was coming, there was time--but she isn't out yet!

No ladder comes; the crowd mills around helplessly.

Then a knot of people collects suddenly at one side, looking and pointing up at a window. You go to see what they see. Up in the window, against a background of glowing smoke, a man is trying to raise the sash.

"Kick it open!" people scream. "Break it! Smash it! Jump!"

The man gets the window open. His coat is wrapped around the servant's head. She is helpless and he nearly so. He lowers her out and the crowd catches the body. He crawls out, starts to climb down, slips, tumbles. They catch him too, but his shirt is steaming. His arms and neck are fearfully scorched. He faints. . . .

Next day every one talks about the brave fellow who, while others dithered, plunged in through the burning hall and saved a life. The burned-out neighbors thank him profusely. The servant thanks him. He is a hero, for a while--and then life gets back to routine. The fire becomes a legend.

But you, or any one else that thinks of it, can help to have lasting credit given where due. You can do what many another has done under similar circumstances and write to the Hero Fund Commission, Carnegie Institute, Pittsburgh, Pa. The Commission will acknowledge your let ter, ask your references, investigate the fiery rescue and, unless it is an unusual year for heroism, your hero is likely to receive a Carnegie Medal, the only award of its kind in the U. S. made by an organization other than a club or the Government.

Last week, the Commission recognized 24 acts of heroism. Some dated back as far as 1924. One Hugh O. Smith obtained nationwide mention for the hamlet of Stronghurst, in western Illinois, by receiving the one silver medal awarded. Four years ago, Hugh O. Smith rescued three boys from a burning house.

Negaunee, Mich.; Emporia, Kan.; Pal myra, N. Y. ; Houston, Ark.; Commerce, Mo.; Pewee Valley, Ky. ; Waxahachie and Jacksonville, Tex.; Belfast, Me.; Oelwein, Iowa; Virginia Beach, Va., were other places whence the new Carnegie heroes hailed. Besides Hero Smith's silver medal, 23 bronze medals were awarded, ten of them posthumously, for rescue or attempts at rescue from drowning, burning and onrushing trains. Hero Bert V. McMinn of Jacksonville, Tex., extracted his man from a caved-in well.

Where deserved and needed, the Hero Fund Commission accompanies its medals with cash, scholarships, pensions, homes for poor people. Last week's medals car ried a total of $19,500 such awards -- the money being interest on a fund established in 1904 by the wrinkled little Scot, Andrew Carnegie, whose career from bobbin-boy in a cotton mill to overlord of $500,000,-000 worth of oil, iron, steel and railroads, had taught him the worth of instantaneous courage.