Brown did go back at the end of his vacation.
A few weeks later, while testing a new heavy gun, something went wrong. The breech block blew out, and Brown was killed.
THE HAPPENING OF THE UNEXPECTED
Some time ago, a young lady who had been my private secretary for about four years got married. Thinking that one of the best ways of securing another competent stenographer and typist to take her place would be to go to an employment agency, Mrs. Maxim and I called upon the manager of one of those institutions.
Mrs. Maxim, according to the habitude of her sex, led in the conversation. She told the manager about the unusual requirements that the person engaged must have—that she must have a good general education, must be very expert as stenographer and typist, and above all, must be an exceptionally good speller. Furthermore, Mrs. Maxim placed especial emphasis upon one stipulation—that we did not want a girl under twenty or a woman over thirty-five, for the reason that a girl under twenty is very apt to lack the necessary experience and serious-mindedness for such a position, while a woman around and above forty is apt to be set in her ways, and to lack the necessary flexibility of mind and nature readily to adapt herself to anything to which she has not always been accustomed, and is, furthermore, likely to be unable to learn anything new with the facility of a younger person.
The manager was all suavity, pleasant manners and promises, and assured us that he had on his waiting list a number of young women who would exactly meet our requirements, and that he would send three of them over that very evening.
We learned from the bit of experience which followed that employment agencies and those who are sent by them to apply for positions, are apt to be governed by reasoning similar to that of the small boy, who, seeing an advertisement that twenty-five dollars’ reward would be paid for a Pekinese spaniel, thought it would do no harm to try, and so he called to claim the reward with a huge mongrel—a cross between a Newfoundland and a St. Bernard.
Well, at the appointed hour, two archaic dilapidations wafted themselves in upon us, who looked as though their nascency had a priority on the Stone Age and they had been vouchsafed to us among the antediluvian survivors of Noah’s Ark.