step with the firecrackers and basket, where they go down into
the basement. Pa and Ma came out the front door, and down the steps,
and Pa saw the football, and the burning fuse, and he said 'Great God,
Hanner, we are blowed up!' and he started to run, and Ma she stopped to
look at it. Just as Pa started to run I touched off the fire cracker,
and my chum arranged it to pour out the broken glass on the brick
pavement just as the fire cracker went off."

[Illustration: Great God, Hanner, we are blowed up 048]

"Well, everything went just as we expected, except Ma. She had examined
the foot-ball, and concluded it was not dangerous, and was just giving
it a kick as the firecracker went off, and the glass fell, and the
firecracker was so near her that it scared her, and when Pa looked
around Ma was flying across the sidewalk, and Pa heard the noise and
he thought the house was blown to atoms. O, you'd a died to see him go
around the corner. You could play crokay on his coat-tail, and his face
was as pale as Ma's when she goes to a party. But Ma didn't scare much.
As quick as she stopped against the hitching post she knew it was us
boys, and she came down there, and maybe she didn't maul me. I cried
and tried to gain her sympathy by telling her the firecracker went off
before it was due, and burned my eyebrows off, but she didn't let up
until I promised to go and find Pa.

"I tell you, my Ma ought to be engaged by the British government to hunt
out the dynamite fiends. She would corral them in two minutes. If Pa had
as much sand as Ma has got, it would be warm weather for me. Well, me
and my chum went and headed Pa off or I guess he would be running yet.
We got him up by the lake shore, and he wanted to know if the house fell
down. He said he would leave it to me if he ever said anything against
the Fenians, and I told him he had always claimed that the Fenians were
the nicest men in the world, and it seemed to relieve him very much.
When he got home and found the house there he was tickled, and when Ma
called him an old bald-headed coward, and said it was only a joke of the
boys with a foot ball, he laughed right out, and said he knew it all the
time, and he ran to see if Ma would be scared. And then he wanted to
hug me, but it wasn't my night to hug and I went down to the theater. Pa
don't amount to much when there is trouble. The time Ma had them cramps,
you remember, when you got your cucumbers first last season, Pa came