FIFTY-two people are reported dead, most of them by suffocation, and 200 injured, in a fire which swept through the 20-storey Lasalle Hotel, Chicago, early today. Without waiting for safety nets to be spread, scores of panic-stricken guests jumped from the windows and were taken to hospital, where some died.

IT is no uncommon thing to head and read of hard-working curates; but we question if even, in fiction, a more remarkable instance of clerical activity than the one furnished by the Birmingham Gazette was ever met with. In a parish, it says, not a hundred miles from the centre of the 'black country', the following, it is assured on good authority, was the programme of a curate's Sunday work only a week or two ago. He read prayers at three full services, and preached three sermons, assisting, in addition, at the celebration of Holy Communion in the morning, and reading the office in the evening for the churching of women. He read the marriage service for six couples - we trust once only for the six - officiated at the interment of four corpses, baptised ten infants, and superintended the Sunday-schools, teaching one of the classes himself.

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