# Colbert & Chamberlin, Chicago and the Great Conflagration (1871), p. 436: the "squibs" about the De Koven Street cow
# Source: Internet Archive item chicagogreatconf00colb, OCR text file chicagogreatconf00colb_djvu.txt
# URL: https://archive.org/download/chicagogreatconf00colb/chicagogreatconf00colb_djvu.txt  (item page https://archive.org/details/chicagogreatconf00colb)
# Printed pages: p. 436 (IA leaf 468)
# OCR text lines 18720-18733 of the djvu.txt; uncorrected OCR (whitespace normalised only). Fetched 2026-09-14T06:22:15Z.
# 

Thomas and the Emperor Xero?

" Answer. The one fiddled awayt while his Rome was burn-
ing, and the other roamed away while his fiddles were burning."

Various squibs soon began to float, having reference to the
dire cow of De Koven Street; and what purported to be accu-
rate likenesses of the cow with crumpled horn, that kicked the
lamp, that lit the straw, that fired the barn, that burned Chi-
cago up, were published in some of the flash newspapers. The
name of the lecturers who presently set out through the coun-
try to tell what they knew about the fire, was legion; and the
happy thought struck some one, that the notorious bovine
would be a good " card," if she could be taken around and ex-