It was a matter of several months before the full-sized torpedo apparatus with which we were to experiment was completed and erected, and the necessary quantity of motorite made.
On the day before the regular test was to be conducted, I was called to Morristown, as expert on a case in court, and I left orders with my assistant to make up an additional small quantity of sealing compound, used for sealing the discs of motorite together in building up the bars. This sealing material was made of a mixture of nitroglycerin, guncotton, camphor and acetate of amyl.
As I did not receive the telegram to go to Morristown until after I left home that morning, my wife expected that I would be working at the laboratory that day, but knew that I might possibly have a call to Morristown.
On my way home that evening, I was informed by a neighbor that there had been an explosion in my laboratory, that my assistant had been killed, and that the place had been burned down. I hastened to the spot and found my wife there waiting for me. All that was left of my assistant lay in an adjacent building covered with a piece of sacking.
That was one of the saddest moments of my whole life. It is impossible to know what little slip or misjudgment may have produced the explosion. A little inadvertence in the handling of a bottle of nitroglycerin may have been the cause.
The manner in which my wife was informed of the accident was about on a par with that employed by the Irishman who took the remains of a fellow-workman, killed by an explosion, home to his wife in a wheelbarrow, and, knocking upon the door, asked:
“Does the widdy McGinnis live here?”
She replied: “Indade, and I’m not a widdy.”
And he said: “And faith ye are, for I have his rimnants here in the wheelbarry with me.”
A butcher was the messenger-bearer to Mrs. Maxim. He said: