On the dog’s arrival, Sukyanna was going about her household duties, with a book in one hand written by Miriam Mushroom on The Transcendentalism of the Universal, and Its Relevancy to the Elevation of Womanhood; while, with the other hand, directed only by subconscious mental process born of habit, she was preparing supper for Benjamin. She prided herself on that power of concentration and absorption, so common to the artistic temperament, which can resist for a while the battering-ram assaults on consciousness of howling children, barking dogs, or a house on fire.
As a result, she did not hear or see puggy as, with whine and din and clatter, he rushed into the room where she stood. Not receiving the expected attention and consolation, puggy in his impatience circled around the human mother, entwining the shanks of her in the strong rawhide cord, until dog and bomb had effectually hobbled her skirts, when, tripping, she went down on both.
This mean trick on the part of Benjamin bruised her artistic soul and proved far too much; she instantly separated from Benjamin—in the direction of the empyrean.
She had at last achieved the realization of the Elevation of Womanhood.
DIDN’T KNOW IT WAS LOADED
At the works of the Maxim-Nordenfelt Company in England, when some of the early experiments with smokeless powders were being made in that company’s laboratory, a strong hydraulic cylinder, which had been employed for compressing experimental explosive materials, was thrown out of commission by the ram, or plunger, sticking in the cylinder. The cylinder was taken to the shop, and the job of getting the plunger out of it was given to one of the workmen. He thereupon commenced in his own peculiar way by heating the cylinder over a forge, thinking to expand it sufficiently to allow the plunger to be removed.
He succeeded before long, with an effectuality that perfectly dumbfounded his slow sense of expedition. The contained explosive naturally ignited, and the plunger was blown out like a shot from a cannon. The cylinder itself was blown downward, demolishing the forge, passing through the plank floor, and burying itself in the ground, while the plunger whizzed upward through the roof, and disappeared in the direction of Scotland.