I have a literary friend by the name of Marvin Dana, who, although he was for years editor of the Smart Set, once failed in a bit of à priori perspicuity. Some Italians were blasting out a bit of rock at Landing for the foundation of a new bridge, to carry the roadway over the railroad in that village. They had just finished charging a big, deep hole with dynamite, and had lighted the fuze, when Marvin started to cross the temporary bridge with his usual measured stride of ever-conscious dignity. The Italians, who had withdrawn to a safe distance, seeing him coming, and they being unable to speak English, gesticulated wildly, and pointed excitedly in the direction of the blast under the bridge.
The littérateur concluded that there must be something extraordinary going on down below there—something quite worth looking at, and, walking directly above the blast, leaned over the bridge and looked down. Just at that instant the mine exploded.
He was, happily, unhurt by any of the flying stones and débris, but the knock-down argument of the shock from the blast convinced him that such carelessness on the part of those Italians, with never a guard to wave a red flag warning pedestrians, was, indeed, truly shocking.
BREAKING HIS NERVE
Just back upon the hills that rise up from the southern shores of Lake Hopatcong, there is one of the most important dynamite works in the country. James Wentworth began his labors there first as an errand boy, at the age of twelve, soon after the works started. It was his brag that he had grown up with the works, but that he had never gone up with them, although he had seen many another go up, when, on occasion, by some freak of chance, a packing-house or a nitroglycerin apparatus would be blown to the four winds of heaven, spraying wreckage of men and timber over the whole celestial concave.
Jim had no lack of courage. He had worked in every department of the business; had made nitroglycerin and nitrogelatin, and had become one of the most skillful dynamite packers. As he did piece-work, he made money rapidly.
One day, at a church strawberry festival, he was drawn into the vortex of that swirling passion, love, and married. The young wife importuned him to give up the dynamite business, as he had already laid up sufficient money to start him in another business. Yielding to her wishes, he gave notice that his resignation was to take effect at the end of two weeks.
On the third day of the period of his notice, on the advent of the noon hour, he was seized with an uncontrollable impulse to take his dinner-pail and himself out of the packing-house where he was working. He said afterward that he got to thinking, “Suppose this packing-house should blow up; what would become of Susie?”—to say nothing of his own dispersion.