I then said to the audience that I must beg their pardon for displaying my underwear as I had done; that I appreciated the fact that it was an unsightly display, and, to accommodate them, I would immediately proceed to get it out of sight. I then touched it off with an electrical igniter, and that laundry disappeared in one great bright flash of flame.
There happened to be in my audience an ingenious fellow with some knowledge of chemistry, who was a noted wag and practical joker. Taking the hint from my nitrated laundry, he nitrated a cotton handkerchief and sent it to the Chinese laundry with the rest of his wash.
When he called for his clothes, he found John Chinaman with his right arm in a sling. However, John was all smiles, and apologized for the absence of the one handkerchief, but said nothing more about it.
A short time after the fellow had put on his clean underwear, he developed a very severe case of prickly heat, followed, a little later, by a sensation like that of needles being stuck into his body over the entire surface. Anyone who has taken a bite of a wild Indian turnip knows what that sensation is. The Chinaman had charged his customer’s garments with a preparation extracted from a Chinese variant of the Indian turnip. It took a couple of weeks, with the aid of a physician, for the wag to recover from the little unpleasantness which the Chinaman had inflicted upon him.
THE FRIGHTENED FISHERMAN
When testing big guns at Sandy Hook, the officers are often greatly annoyed by fishing boats that persist in getting within range of the guns and in remaining there, entirely regardless of the work or wishes of the officers of Uncle Sam.
It is a curious circumstance that, according to the law of the country, these ships have the right of way, and even the officers of the Government Proving Grounds have no power to compel a fishing smack to move out of range.
There was one boat of this kind that persisted in anchoring daily exactly in the range of a ten-inch gun that was under test, and day after day the tests had to be delayed.