An Innocent Anecdote

On February 23, 1858, an accidental fire broke out in Archbishop Innocent Veniaminov's cell in the Monastery of the Savior, located in the frozen Siberian city of Yakutsk. The fire burned up most of his papers which hadn't already been lost at sea on one of his many voyages to parts in Alaska and around the world. The holy hierarch, however, was unperturbed by this sudden tragedy, and remarked to his future biographer Ivan Barsukov, "They would have burned up at any rate with the earth in the apocalypse!"

(Information taken from Paul Garrett's biography, "St. Innocent: Apostle to America," page 14.)