The officers, however, were obdurate. They told him bluntly that he must either stand behind the bomb-proof, or his gun would not be tested.
He replied:
“Very well, if Uncle Sam does not want my gun enough to let me test it in my own way, then I will sell it to foreign governments, and make Uncle Sam feel very sick and sorry.”
On his return with his gun to Staten Island, he gathered together a party of neighbors and some representatives of the press, to witness the experiments that Uncle Sam had missed. When the gun was ready to fire, the little knot of spectators frayed out, and peeped from cover. There was but one shot, which was not a shot, but an explosion.
After waiting for some time for the inventor to come down and explain, the spectators went home, disappointed.
THE DOG THAT ATE DYNAMITE
In the early nineties I was experimenting with a new fulminate compound as a detonator for fuzes in high explosive projectiles. The compound consisted of fulminate of mercury with gelatinated guncotton and nitroglycerin.
One of my workmen had a pup of a miscellaneous breed, which would eat anything under the sun that he could masticate, and when anything was thrown into his mouth not too big for him to bolt, he swallowed it without the formality of chewing it.