“Yes, it is as Mr. Norwood has said. My boy was brought home unrecognizable beyond any words of mine to describe—as though all the agencies of hell had been employed to hurt and disfigure his little body. His once fair face was so gored with powder and blotched with colored fires, that not a vestige of likeness remained.”
Mr. Cornwallis paused and closed his eyes. The room was deathly still—as still as though the audience had been actually looking at little Laurens’ mutilated face. His wife clasped his hand and Ruth whispered: “Have courage, Father! Have courage!”
Then he went on more calmly than before:
“We never knew where he got the fireworks. They must have been given to him; nor does it seem possible that one person could have given him all that he appeared to have had. Mr. Schwarmer distributed fireworks very freely that day but he insisted that he did not give any to Laurens and not enough to any one boy to injure himself with. My idea is that some one who was assisting Schwarmer in his distributions, must have given him some of the colored pieces intended for evening display; and that he was seized upon, or induced by other boys to go into the woods and stack them together, in order to have a big explosion, and that he was the victim of that explosion. Facts and circumstances have since come to light which have confirmed this belief. Schwarmer brought a lad with him from the city to help him celebrate. There were a great many strange boys in town. They came from the surrounding country, walking in on the railroad tracks or rowed down the river in rickety boats. There was a rumor that one boat load of boys went over the falls and were drowned. Be that as it may, there were undoubtedly a large number of rough characters attracted to this place by Mr. Schwarmer’s free distribution of fireworks, and by the alluring advertisements that appeared in all the country newspapers hereabouts, with regard to it.”
Mr. Cornwallis paused again, and again there was silence—the silence of expectancy. He went on:
“I have only one word more to say. The Lord help me to say it. I charge no man with the death of my son, still I believe we are all more or less to blame. We are surely to blame for allowing our National Day to be turned into a fiery Moloch for the sacrifice of the youth of our land. I see it as plain now as though it were written in letters of fire; and I ought to have seen it before. I ought to have been doing something to guard our little ones from this dreadful monster all these years while I have been mourning for my boy; but the misery was so great, the mystery so incomprehensible that I could not bear to think of it. It seemed as though I should go crazy. Besides I had great fears for my wife and still greater for my daughter. But all that has passed by, thank God, and I am ready now to join you in the good cause.”
He sat down amidst cries of “Amen” and “Amen!”
Ruth leaned back in her seat and looked at Ralph radiantly. He continued his statistics:
“The next year two boys died of lockjaw, caused by the blank cartridges known to have been given them by Mr. Schwarmer. Several others lost fingers and eyes. If there are any of the latter present will they please make it manifest?”
Three young men rose to their feet. One was totally blind and the others partially.