When I was a boy I had a strong liking for cannon. I might have become an Armstrong, a Rodman, or a Dahlgren, if nothing had interfered to prevent the development of my tastes in that direction. But— Ah, that "but"! It is as troublesome as the "if" which spoils so many good things.
Would the boys like to hear the story? I began with a formidable piece of ordnance—an eighty-one-grain gun. It was an old key that I had picked up somewhere, and I tell you it made a very good miniature cannon. I was even more proud of it than of my first pair of boots, for I had manufactured it all myself. I felt that I had converted a useless old piece of iron into a weapon of modern warfare. At the end of the tube I filed a priming hole, fastened it to a wooden gun-carriage, and a jolly good bang I got out of it. Larger keys followed, and then brass cannon mounted on wheels, until somehow or other I got possessed—I can't remember how—of a monster cannon.
No common cast-brass toy this, but a homespun, wrought-iron gun: an iron bar, drilled, as near as I remember, with a three-quarter-inch drill; an unscientific-looking instrument, quite ignorant of lathe and emery-paper, but one that would and did go off.
Various small trial charges had been set off, until, on Fourth of July it was determined by a select committee on heavy ordnance, assembled in my father's garden, that in the evening an experiment should be made that would determine once for all its full powers.
We had had a good deal of fun of one kind and another all day, but for me nothing was one-half as interesting as that cannon. It seemed as if all the other boys in the neighborhood thought so too, for when the critical hour arrived there was something over two dozen of us in the garden. We formed a circle around my cannon, and the business of loading began. A fire-poker was secured for a ramrod, and a real good charge was rammed home. In the excitement of the moment the poker was left in the cannon!
A heap of soil at the end of the garden was chosen as the "earthwork," on which our big gun was fixed, pointing upward, though unnoticed by us, point-blank at the parlor windows. A small heap of shavings was put around the weapon, and one was appointed to light it. "To cover!" at once was the order, and each one rushed to a safe place. I tremble at this moment when I remember that, a second before the explosion, the inevitable small boy rushed from one cover to another right in front of the cannon's mouth.
What a bang! and what a crash! Oh, horror! Four panes of glass gone at once, the window-frame broken, and— We did not act the coward and fly. No, boys, never turn coward if you get into a scrape—and few boys of spirit but do sometimes get into one. Stand your ground, boys, and bear or pay whatever is fairly earned. Some of us stood our ground until father appeared. He had been a boy himself once, and though he looked very serious he did not scold us. At the first brush it was set down to atmospheric concussion, but on further investigation it was found that the brick-work was chipped and the wood-work broken; and, worse still, inside the parlor was found the fatal poker doubled up, having just escaped a splendid crystal chandelier hanging in the middle of the room. How crest-fallen I felt and looked! Father said that to remind me of the necessity of care in handling such a dangerous toy, I should pay for two of the panes. You can imagine I was glad not to be more severely punished.
That cannon was never again fired by me. The hair-breadth escape of that small boy haunts me even now. I have never fired a gun in my life; but for experimental purposes I have handled the strongest explosives, including the notorious dynamite; yet never in my life has such a thrill passed through me as did when I realized the almost miraculous escape of my playmate, when the doubled-up projectile was picked up on our parlor floor.
Boys, let an old one beg of you to be careful in handling explosives. Don't touch guns or pistols until you have a little more age upon you, lest some playmate or school-fellow meet with an untimely end. Don't reckon upon the lucky escape I had of being unintentionally a murderer.