limit of power of black gunpowder.
"Now try dynamite," said he.
There was a break in the chain of reports, and he wrote the useful,
asking him why he did not report. Still no answer.
After waiting some days, the idea suddenly struck the financier that
possibly the process had proved successful and that the useful planned
to betray him. He accordingly sent a peremptory telegram to him to
report at once on pain of discharge.
The next day a vision, swathed and bandaged and perambulating on
crutches, entered his office.
"You infernal old scoundrel!" yelled the wreck, as he entered. "Blow a
man up with dynamite, and then threaten to discharge him for not
reporting!"
THE ELEVATION OF WOMANHOOD
I had a certain man in my employ down at Maxim by the name of Benjamin
Billings, whom we called Ben Billingsgate. Ben held views very strongly
prejudicial to dogs and matrimony. He was all that is implied by the
term "all-round useful." Though an erratic fellow, he was bright and
energetic and seemed to be able to do anything under the sun when he set
about it. But he lacked initiative, except in the expression of his
opinions about those two abominations--dogs and matrimony.
When he was young and ardent he had married Sukyanna, a maiden who was
dominated by the delusion that she had been born with a mission, to
which all other considerations were secondary and should be
subordinated. She was also a woman with a pug dog. Benjamin's nerves had
been frazzling out for some time, and his patience was sorely tried by
the division of the lady's affections between him and the dog--with a
decided leaning toward the dog.
One day he brought home to his wife a beautiful Christmas present, which
consisted of a large colored photograph of himself, mounted in an
exquisite gilt frame. The expense of the thing represented a week's hard
labor, but he wanted to create an impression upon his wife. He believed
in doing things by wholes and in striking hard to win. His wife was very
pleased--with the frame.
On his return from work the following evening, he took a sidelong glance
toward the mantel over which the picture had been hung. He did not
recognize himself. There in the frame was a life-size photograph of the
pug in place of his, which Sukyanna had removed.
He uttered never a word, but his whole mental mechanism was turning
somersaults. The next day, at roll-call, that dog was reported among the
missing.
Benjamin pretended to sympathize and to condole with his wife, but she
was disconsolate. Some Gypsies had passed that way during the day, and
it was suspected that they might have stolen the dog. The horse was
accordingly hitched up and a drive of ten miles was taken. When the
Gypsies were overhauled and rounded up, the pug was not discovered. Then
an advertisement was inserted in all the town papers. Still no pug. The
canine continued a persistent absentee.
As a matter of fact, Benjamin had devoted ingenuity enough to the
destruction of that dog to form the basis of a Sherlock Holmes detective
story. He had prepared a sort of canister-bomb, adapted to go off by a
strong thump of any sort. The dog, the bomb and a stout rawhide string,
with which to tether the bomb to the dog, were confidingly placed in the
hands of a small boy in the neighborhood, known to have both a sense of
humor and a taste for the mischievous. The boy was, however, fond of
dogs, and it eventuated that he decided to keep the dog for himself.
Hence the delay in the finale of this story.
But the urchin's sense of humor finally got the better of his affection.
He found it impossible to choke off the appeal to his imagination of
hitching that bomb to the dog's tail. Consequently he took the pug out
and carefully tied the canister to its tail. Following the ingenious
instructions of Benjamin, as soon as he had done so he dodged into the
house and shut the door before the dog realized what had happened.
When the pug discovered itself a part of an infernal machine,
old-home-week associations rose up in its memory, and it made a bee-line
for home and human mother.
Benjamin had made a little miscalculation about the amount of thumping
that would be required to actuate the exploding mechanism of his
ingenious bomb, and it did not explode immediately, as expected. The dog
and bomb, consequently, hurtled through space like a comet with a head
on both ends of the tail.
On the dog's arrival, Sukyanna was going about her household duties,
with a book in one hand written by Miriam Mushroom on The
Transcendentalism of the Universal, and Its Relevancy to the Elevation
of Womanhood; while, with the other hand, directed only by subconscious
mental process born of habit, she was preparing supper for Benjamin. She
prided herself on that power of concentration and absorption, so common
to the artistic temperament, which can resist for a while the
battering-ram assaults on consciousness of howling children, barking
dogs, or a house on fire.
As a result, she did not hear or see puggy as, with whine and din and
clatter, he rushed into the room where she stood. Not receiving the
expected attention and consolation, puggy in his impatience circled
around the human mother, entwining the shanks of her in the strong
rawhide cord, until dog and bomb had effectually hobbled her skirts,
when, tripping, she went down on both.
This mean trick on the part of Benjamin bruised her artistic soul and
proved far too much; she instantly separated from Benjamin--in the
direction of the empyrean.
She had at last achieved the realization of the Elevation of Womanhood.
DIDN'T KNOW IT WAS LOADED
At the works of the Maxim-Nordenfelt Company in England, when some of
the early experiments with smokeless powders were being made in that
company's laboratory, a strong hydraulic cylinder, which had been
employed for compressing experimental explosive materials, was thrown
out of commission by the ram, or plunger, sticking in the cylinder. The
cylinder was taken to the shop, and the job of getting the plunger out
of it was given to one of the workmen. He thereupon commenced in his own
peculiar way by heating the cylinder over a forge, thinking to expand it
sufficiently to allow the plunger to be removed.
He succeeded before long, with an effectuality that perfectly
dumbfounded his slow sense of expedition. The contained explosive
naturally ignited, and the plunger was blown out like a shot from a
cannon. The cylinder itself was blown downward, demolishing the forge,
passing through the plank floor, and burying itself in the ground,
while the plunger whizzed upward through the roof, and disappeared in
the direction of Scotland.
THE WRONG TAP
The worker among high explosive materials must never relax his ceaseless
vigilance. Not only his own life, but also the lives of those working at
his side, hang upon the thread of infinite care. This fact is
emphatically illustrated by an experience of my own, while conducting
some experiments with a continuous process for making nitroglycerin
which I had invented.
Orders were waiting, and it would take a week of constant labor on my
part to complete the apparatus. I therefore crowded the week into three
days, working constantly day and night, without a moment's sleep or
rest.
I had thought out every detail of the process with the utmost care. I
had tested every step, unit by unit, so I was confident not only that
the process would prove successful, but also that it would be safe to
operate.
On the forenoon of the third day, everything being at last in
readiness, I now prepared to turn on the acids and the glycerin. I was
well aware of the grim possibilities of my being killed, for if I had
made a miscalculation or any wrong determination, I knew that my life
might be the forfeit. I gave little thought to the likelihood of my
being incautious due to the tremendous strain to which I had so long
subjected myself. As it happened, I was so worn out that at the very
outset I turned on the glycerin first, instead of the acids. My hand was
actually upon the acids tap before I realized my error.
In that vital moment, some secret sense or instinct called back my
wandering wits in the nick of time, and, shuddering, I dropped my
fingers from the tap. Had I turned it on after the glycerin began to
flow, I must inevitably have been blown to pieces.
"WHENCE ALL BUT HIM HAD FLED"
I have a literary friend by the name of Marvin Dana, who, although he
was for years editor of the _Smart Set_, once failed in a bit of à
priori perspicuity. Some Italians were blasting out a bit of rock at
Landing for the foundation of a new bridge, to carry the roadway over
the railroad in that village. They had just finished charging a big,
deep hole with dynamite, and had lighted the fuze, when Marvin started
to cross the temporary bridge with his usual measured stride of
ever-conscious dignity. The Italians, who had withdrawn to a safe
distance, seeing him coming, and they being unable to speak English,
gesticulated wildly, and pointed excitedly in the direction of the blast
under the bridge.
The littérateur concluded that there must be something extraordinary
going on down below there--something quite worth looking at, and,
walking directly above the blast, leaned over the bridge and looked
down. Just at that instant the mine exploded.
He was, happily, unhurt by any of the flying stones and débris, but the
knock-down argument of the shock from the blast convinced him that such
carelessness on the part of those Italians, with never a guard to wave a
red flag warning pedestrians, was, indeed, truly shocking.
BREAKING HIS NERVE
Just back upon the hills that rise up from the southern shores of Lake
Hopatcong, there is one of the most important dynamite works in the
country. James Wentworth began his labors there first as an errand boy,
at the age of twelve, soon after the works started. It was his brag that
he had grown up with the works, but that he had never gone up with them,
although he had seen many another go up, when, on occasion, by some
freak of chance, a packing-house or a nitroglycerin apparatus would be
blown to the four winds of heaven, spraying wreckage of men and timber
over the whole celestial concave.
Jim had no lack of courage. He had worked in every department of the
business; had made nitroglycerin and nitrogelatin, and had become one of
the most skillful dynamite packers. As he did piece-work, he made money
rapidly.
One day, at a church strawberry festival, he was drawn into the vortex
of that swirling passion, love, and married. The young wife importuned
him to give up the dynamite business, as he had already laid up
sufficient money to start him in another business. Yielding to her
wishes, he gave notice that his resignation was to take effect at the
end of two weeks.
On the third day of the period of his notice, on the advent of the noon
hour, he was seized with an uncontrollable impulse to take his
dinner-pail and himself out of the packing-house where he was working.
He said afterward that he got to thinking, "Suppose this packing-house
should blow up; what would become of Susie?"--to say nothing of his own
dispersion.
He went to the top of an elevation to eat his dinner, in full view of
the packing-house, continuing his pessimistic reflections.
The place began to look suspicious. For the first time in his life he
felt fear. On a sudden, that packing-house became a white, dazzling ball
of flame, and he was knocked down by the concussion.
He told the superintendent that the three days he had served on his
notice must suffice--he had lost his nerve!
THE GRIZZLY CANNON BALL
In the early days, when there was more individual and less corporate
mining in the gold country of the West, a long and lean Yankee, Jim
Evans, who was once a neighbor of mine in Maine, contracted the
gold-fever, and went West.
Luckily, he almost immediately struck a pay streak high up the face of a
cliff, where there was a wide shelf of rock that afforded a very
convenient roadway for his use, as well as considerable area for the
transaction of his operations.
Someone before him had started operations on the same site, but had
become discouraged and quit, leaving a big steel tank, open at one end,
lying upon its side, the open end pointing, like a huge cannon, over the
mining settlement a thousand feet below. Jim used this tank to warehouse
certain edibles, together with a keg of black gunpowder.
One day, on Jim's return from grubbing in the ground, he was amazed to
find the entrance to his warehouse blocked by a huge grizzly bear that
had crawled in to get at the edibles, and that fitted the big tube like
a wad in a gun.
Jim was addicted to humor, and as there was a three-quarter-inch hole in
the tank near the closed end right over the keg of gunpowder, the head
of which had been removed, it occurred to him that he might make it
somewhat interesting for the bear by lighting a piece of fuze and
dropping it into the gunpowder. This he proceeded to do, and the bear
proceeded to leave that tube after the manner of a cannon ball.
Hearing the report, and seeing a large volume of smoke, the townspeople,
looking skyward and Jim-ward, were astonished at seeing a ton of grizzly
hurtling outward from Jim's place and descending upon them.
On Jim's return to the village that evening, he was surrounded by
numerous interrogators regarding the bear. "Oh," he said, casually, "I
found the bear in my shack, and just threw him out, that's all."
THE JOKE WAS NOT ON THE CHINAMEN
When the Alaskan gold excitement was at its height, a couple of
adventurous spirits, prospectors from California, had expended several
months of precious, good old summer-time and exhausted their resources
in an endeavor to locate pay dirt by sinking a shaft into a narrow table
of land which jutted out from a high mountain near its base.
After thawing and grubbing and blasting through fifty feet of earth,
with no gold in sight, they came upon solid ice underlying the cover of
earth through which they had penetrated.
They kept on, however, for several weeks more, in an endeavor to
penetrate through the ice; but they found ice, and only ice, for another
fifty feet.
Then it was that it occurred to them to salt that ice with fine gold
dust and sell out to some tenderfoot sucker.
They very easily found the desired victims in two Chinamen, with evident
ample means and sufficient lack of experience.
The two prospectors had about a ton of dynamite on hand. This they
lowered into the shaft and concealed it in a side drift just deep enough
and big enough to hold it, calculating that the first shot fired by the
Chinamen would set off the dynamite and, by completely demolishing the
shaft, conceal their fraud.
The first blast made by the Chinamen did explode the dynamite, which not
only wrecked the shaft, but also lifted the whole jutting bit of
tableland--ice, earth, everything--sending it--an avalanche--down the
mountain slope several hundred feet, exposing a thick stratum of glacial
detritus, under where the ice had been, so full of gold that it proved
to be one of the richest finds ever made in Alaska. The one blast had
made the Chinamen millionaires.
CHINESE FIREWORKS
During the gold-digging days of California, before there was a
restriction imposed upon the immigration of Chinese, a big American
sailing vessel, while in Chinese waters, had taken aboard a large cargo
of fireworks and a few tons of gunpowder of a special brand, which was
safely housed in the hold, while all the sleeping quarters except those
occupied by the crew, and all available deck spaces, were filled with a
cargo of coolies to man California mines.
The vessel was one of those staunch, fast, sail-driven craft brought to
their highest perfection in the shipyards of Maine just before the
advent of the steamship.
When the ship was about a day out on its homeward voyage, the captain
learned, through his faithful Chinese cook, that a big part of the
Chinamen that he had picked up were half-breed Malay and Chinese pirates
who had taken passage for the sole purpose of capturing the ship for
piratical purposes, and that they were armed to the teeth, so that
resistance offered by his crew of only twelve would be utterly hopeless.
While the captain was deliberating upon what to do, word was brought by
his cook that the pirate horde were beginning to act very ugly, and had
already taken possession of the fore part of the vessel, preparatory to
a final assault upon the crew.
The captain ordered two lifeboats immediately to be filled with water
and provisions and lowered, while he went below decks and lighted a
train to the cargo of gunpowder and fireworks. Then the captain and his
crew, together with the Chinese cook, manned the lifeboats and pulled
away, to the amazement of the Chinese pirates, who seemed immensely
pleased that they had captured the ship without a struggle.
The captain and the crew, in his two boats, lay on their oars at a safe
distance quietly watching events, while the ship, which had now been
turned about, was sailing away landward. When at a distance of about
half a mile, that ship turned volcano. The whole above-water portion
went up into the air with a belch of fire and thunder-roar like another
Krakatoa, whose eruption shook the whole earth in 1883.
In their upward flight, Chinamen raced with rockets, while the heaven
was filled with burning fireworks--and then it rained Chinamen. In fact,
it was a real cloudburst of Chinamen, fire-crackers and ship's
wreckage.
BROWN, THE GUNNER
For many years, all inventors and manufacturers having occasion to
attend experiments with their productions at the Naval Proving Grounds
at Indian Head, were aided in their work by Brown, the gunner. He was a
very ingenious, genial, gigantic fellow, one of the most likable men in
the world. There was nothing about the mechanism of guns and gunnery
unfamiliar to him.
Once, during the early years of his service there, a fragment from an
exploding gun struck him in the forehead, leaving a great dent. As soon
as he recovered, he returned to his duties undeterred, although he had
had many other close calls.
One day, a few years ago, he walked in on me at my summer home on Lake
Hopatcong. During his visit, he asked me if I believed in presentiments.
He said he had had a very strange presentiment of impending danger in
his work at Indian Head. He told me that he had confided this to the
commanding officer there, who laughed at him, and said, "Oh, Brown, at
last you are losing your nerve. Go and take a two weeks' vacation, and
then come back."
Brown did go back at the end of his vacation.
A few weeks later, while testing a new heavy gun, something went wrong.
The breech block blew out, and Brown was killed.
THE HAPPENING OF THE UNEXPECTED
Some time ago, a young lady who had been my private secretary for about
four years got married. Thinking that one of the best ways of securing
another competent stenographer and typist to take her place would be to
go to an employment agency, Mrs. Maxim and I called upon the manager of
one of those institutions.
Mrs. Maxim, according to the habitude of her sex, led in the
conversation. She told the manager about the unusual requirements that
the person engaged must have--that she must have a good general
education, must be very expert as stenographer and typist, and above
all, must be an exceptionally good speller. Furthermore, Mrs. Maxim
placed especial emphasis upon one stipulation--that we did not want a
girl under twenty or a woman over thirty-five, for the reason that a
girl under twenty is very apt to lack the necessary experience and
serious-mindedness for such a position, while a woman around and above
forty is apt to be set in her ways, and to lack the necessary
flexibility of mind and nature readily to adapt herself to anything to
which she has not always been accustomed, and is, furthermore, likely to
be unable to learn anything new with the facility of a younger person.
The manager was all suavity, pleasant manners and promises, and assured
us that he had on his waiting list a number of young women who would
exactly meet our requirements, and that he would send three of them over
that very evening.
We learned from the bit of experience which followed that employment
agencies and those who are sent by them to apply for positions, are apt
to be governed by reasoning similar to that of the small boy, who,
seeing an advertisement that twenty-five dollars' reward would be paid
for a Pekinese spaniel, thought it would do no harm to try, and so he
called to claim the reward with a huge mongrel--a cross between a
Newfoundland and a St. Bernard.
Well, at the appointed hour, two archaic dilapidations wafted themselves
in upon us, who looked as though their nascency had a priority on the
Stone Age and they had been vouchsafed to us among the antediluvian
survivors of Noah's Ark.
The first one--a slip of a girl of some sixty-seven to the nth-power
summers and as many winters--betrayed her lack of typistical experience
by mistaking a national cash register for a typewriter. Then she
confided in us the little confidence that she really knew nothing about
typewriting as yet, but that, in the sweet long ago, in the days of auld
lang syne, she used to drum quite a lot on the piano, and, consequently,
she imagined that typewriting, being a sort of mere finger play, would
come so easy to her that she would have little difficulty in acquiring
the necessary aptitude on a typewriter to qualify for the position.
The next applicant was a tall, slight, sinuous, willowy, sylph-like and
ethereal creature of the hippopotamus variety, who floated into our
presence like a breath of old winter, made sweet summer by the mingled
odor of violets, lilacs, musk and new-mown hay. I gave her a short
dictation, which she took down in longhand. I asked her why she did not
write shorthand. She said she did write shorthand, unless she was in a
hurry. Contemplating her huge bulk, I insinuated that we should want
someone a little lighter on her corns than she, as one of the desirable
accomplishments in a private secretary was that she should be able to
play tennis. She said that although she had never played tennis herself,
still it ran in the family, because her grandchildren were expert tennis
players.
When the third antique entered, the thing began to get monotonous, as
Mark Twain remarked, when a mule had fallen through his tent three times
in one evening. We were getting out of patience. I told the old lady at
once that we did not want anyone under twenty or over thirty-five. She
assured me that she was not under twenty. I told her that I had guessed
as much, and asked, "How about the other limit!" She sharply retorted
that she had never, in all her life, touched thirty-five. "Well," said
I, "if that be so, you must have been skidding some when you went by
that numeral."
Disappointed, and highly indignant, we called again the next day upon
that manager of the employment agency. He was profoundly apologetic,
and said that he happened to have waiting in another room a young lady
who was exactly what we wanted. She was immediately asked into the
private office, where Mrs. Maxim and I examined her. She was about
twenty-five years of age, and was, as they say down in Maine, as smart
as a steel trap. I gave her a dictation replete with multi-syllabic
terminology, and with unusual words of difficult orthography, but she
took down everything with lightning speed, read back her notes to
perfection, and transcribed them rapidly on the typewriter without a
mistake.
We asked for what salary she would be willing to come to us. The salary
asked was pretty high, but we instantly agreed to pay it. The manager
and the young lady exchanged glances, and both looked a bit surprised.
Mrs. Maxim and I then asked if we might talk with the young lady alone
for a few minutes.