"Mein Herr, it is six o'clock."
THE DYNAMITE WORKER
I
THE STORY OF SOME MILLIONAIRE HEROES AND THE WORLD'S GREATEST POWDER EXPLOSION
THERE is illustrated in this career of the explosive maker a splendid fact touching courage, that, once a man has begun to practise it, the habit holds him with stronger and stronger grip, so that he must be brave whether he will or no. I think a fireman, for instance, who for years had jumped at the tap of a bell into any peril, would show the same fine courage all alone, let us say, in some crisis on a desert island. He couldn't turn coward if he tried.
It is good to know, too, that these fearless qualities may be transmitted from father to son, so that we have whole families born, as it were, to be brave, and we see the son of a pilot facing the seasick torture for twenty-odd years, as his father faced it before him for thirty. Nor is it possible to be in close relations with a very brave man without yielding in some measure to his personality; heroes produce heroes through a sort of neighborhood influence, just as surely as thieves produce their kind. Thus the brother-in-law of a lion-tamer, though previously a mild enough man, takes to taming lions, and does it well. And wives of acrobats find themselves one day quietly facing perils of the air that would surely have blanched their cheeks had they married, let us say, photographers.
All of which brings me to a remarkable family of explosive makers—the Duponts of Wilmington, who for generations now have had practical monopoly in this country of the powder-making business, including dynamite and nitroglycerin. In this enterprise a great fortune has accumulated, so that the Duponts of to-day are very rich men, far beyond any need of working in the mills themselves, and have been for years. Yet, work in the mills they do, all of them, practically, and direct in detail every process of manufacture, and face continually in their own persons the same terrible dangers that the humblest mixer faces. There has grown in their hearts through the century, along with riches, a great pride of courage, like that of the officer who leads his men into battle—a pride far stronger than any longing for idleness or pleasure. And they cannot, if they would, leave these slow-grinding mills, where any day a spark may bring catastrophe to make the whole land shudder, as it has shuddered many times after the fury of these giant magazines.