had become
ignited, and were blowing off where they listeth, without regard to
anybody's feelings.

The crowd became panic stricken, and there never was another such a scene,
and never will be until the last great day, when a few thousand people
suddenly find that they have got into hell, by mistake, when they thought
they were ticketed through to the other place. It was perfectly awful.
Prominent citizens who usually display great pluck, became fearfully
rattled.

A man named Martindale, a railroad man who weighs over two
hundred pounds, was standing near a telegraph pole, and as the firing
commenced he climbed up the pole as easy as a squirrel would climb a tree,
and when it was over they had to get a fire ladder to get him down; as his
pants had got caught over the glass telegraph knob, and he had forgotten
the combination, and besides he said he didn't want to take off his
clothes up there and come down, even if it _was_ dark, because it would be
just his luck to have some one fire off a Roman candle when he got down.

[Illustration: MARTINDALE CLIMBS A POLE.]

The Hon. Norton J. Field was another man who lost his nerve. He was
explaining to some ladies one of the pieces that was to be fired off,
which was an allegorical picture representing the revolution, when the
whole business blew up. He thought at the time, that the explosion was in
the programme, and was just reassuring the ladies, by telling them it
reminded him of battle scenes he had witnessed when he was on the military
committee in the assembly, when he noticed a girl near him whose polonaise
had caught fire, and he rushed up to her, caught her by the dress,
intending, with his cool hands, to put out the fire.

The girl felt some one feeling, as she supposed, for her pocket-book, and
she started to run, yelling, "pickpocket," and left the burning polonaise
in Mr. Field's hands. He blushed, and was about to explain to his lady
friends how the best of us are liable to have our motives misconstrued,
when somebody threw a box of four dozen of those large firecrackers right
at his feet, and they were all on fire. Ten of them exploded at once, and
he grabbed the polonaise in one hand and his burning coat tail in the
other, and started west on a run.

The steward of the Gideon's Band Club House, at Burlington, said he
arrived there at daylight on the morning of the 5th, and he still held the
pieces of dress, but the whole back of his coat was burned off,