LINES TO A LADY
Some years ago, when I was conducting experiments with detonators for my safety delay-action fuze, which was adopted by the United States Navy in 1908 as the service detonating fuze for high-explosive projectiles, I received instructions that a parcel of fulminate detonators, made at the torpedo station, had been received and were being held for me at Fort Lafayette, and I was told to go to the Brooklyn Navy Yard, whence I would be taken in a tug to the Fort for them.
After having procured the package, I concluded that it would be much more expeditious for me to take a trolley car home than to return by the tug. On entering the car and seating myself, I placed the package beside me on the seat, keeping my eye constantly upon it. It was, by the way, perfectly safe to carry if subject to merely ordinary handling, but it would not do to jump on it or to kick it about much, for, in that case, there might be some energetic results.
No sooner had I comfortably seated myself in the car than a huge, determined, militant-looking woman entered, brushing a few small men aside. Seeing all the seats occupied except the space where the package was, she turned and hurled herself backward and downward.
Her movements were so quick that I had barely time to throw my left arm firmly under her, and, although I am unusually strong, I had all I could do to support her enormous bulk. When she felt my arm beneath her, protecting the package, she was all the more indignant and determined to crush the package in order to teach me a lesson, and she glared upon me fiercely. I finally succeeded, by throwing my shoulder against her, in toppling her sufficiently to remove the package with my right hand, and then I let her down upon the seat.
I seldom wax poetical, and never permit myself to write verses to ladies when I am not sure that they will be gratefully received. But, in this case, I side-stepped a little from my usual course, and, taking my note-book from my pocket, wrote the following lines, which I folded up nicely, and when I arrived at my street, I handed the paper to Her Militancy:
Dear Madam, I’m an anarchist.
That package was a bomb.
I’m on my way
Someone to slay,
And this is really true—
I didn’t want to waste that bomb
On just the likes of you.