As I was ascending a steep grade along a narrow road, on the return trip, I saw a big touring car bearing down upon me, with a party of four young men and two young women in it. They were traveling like the wind. I turned out of the road as far as I possibly could, and stopped my car, and signaled with my hand to them to slow down, pointing to the narrowness of the road.
They gave little heed to this, and rushed by me like a tornado, coming so close that they could not have missed my machine, hub to hub, more than an inch.
There is little consolation in the fact that, had they struck us, they never would have known how foolish a thing they had done.
THE JETS OF BLUE
A chemist friend of mine once invented a process of converting nitro-benzole into tri-nitro-benzole by a very quick and labor-saving method, which consisted in mixing the nitro-benzole with nitric acid, confining the mixture in a large, strong, steel cylinder, then gradually heating the cylinder until the required pressure should be produced, which was expected to effect the desired reaction.
Accordingly, five hundred pounds of nitro-benzole was mixed with the necessary quantity of nitric acid of the requisite strength, and the heating process was begun.
While anxiously watching this infernal machine, my friend saw a peculiar blue flame emerge from the seam around the head. Being of an alert nature, and able to take a hint without being kicked by an elephant, he withdrew from the vicinity of that cylinder. He did not merely sidle away from the perilous place—he fairly flew with an alacrity born of desperation. He had barely emerged from the laboratory when there was a terrific explosion that leveled the building, and formed an enormous crater in the earth where he had stood, the concussion knocking him senseless. And, today, he still swears, with solemn earnestness, that a freight car could have been buried in the hole that was blown in the ground when his pet project went off.
This experience so impressed him that he concluded that explosive compounds possess properties which place them in a class by themselves, and that it is a good class to avoid.