at every pause. Some sweet-marjoram
pots, tin cans filled with crackers which were lighted, went off with
great explosions.

At the most exciting moment, near the close of the reading, Agamemnon,
with an expression of terror, pulled Solomon John aside.

"I have suddenly remembered where I read about the 'fulminating paste'
we made. It was in the preface to 'Woodstock,' and I have been round to
borrow the book to read the directions over again, because I was afraid
about the 'paste' going off. READ THIS QUICKLY! and tell me, Where is
the fulminating paste?"

Solomon John was busy winding some covers of paper over a little parcel.
It contained chlorate of potash and sulphur mixed. A friend had told him
of the composition. The more thicknesses of paper you put round it the
louder it would go off. You must pound it with a hammer. Solomon John
felt it must be perfectly safe, as his mother had taken potash for a
medicine.

He still held the parcel as he read from Agamemnon's book: "This paste,
when it has lain together about twenty-six hours, will of itself take
fire, and burn all the sulphur away with a blue flame and a bad smell."

"Where is the paste?" repeated Solomon John, in terror.

"We made it just twenty-six hours ago," said Agamemnon.

"We put it on the piazza," exclaimed Solomon John, rapidly recalling the
facts, "and it is in front of our mother's feet!"

He hastened to snatch the paste away before it should take fire,
flinging aside the packet in his hurry. Agamemnon, jumping upon the
piazza at the same moment, trod upon the paper parcel, which exploded at
once with the shock, and he fell to the ground, while at the same moment
the paste "fulminated" into a blue flame directly in front of Mrs.
Peterkin!

It was a moment of great confusion. There were cries and screams. The
bells were still ringing, the cannon firing, and Mr. Peterkin had just
reached the closing words: "Our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred
honor."

"We are all blown up, as I feared we should be," Mrs. Peterkin at
length ventured to say, finding herself in a lilac-bush by the side of
the piazza. She scarcely dared to open her eyes to see the scattered
limbs about her.

It was so with all. Even Ann Maria Bromwick clutched a pillar of the
piazza, with closed eyes.

At length Mr. Peterkin said, calmly, "Is anybody killed?"

There was no reply. Nobody could tell whether it was because everybody
was killed, or because they were too