Democratic Sentinel, Volume 7, Number 15, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 11 May 1883 — NITRO-GLYCERINE. [ARTICLE]

NITRO-GLYCERINE.

Borne Singular Stories Concerning Its Tremendous Kx plosive [New YOrk SpeeUL] One of my friends in this conference had been an eminent contractor, and something was said about the Irish making a dynamite war on England, on which this gentleman remarked: “I have had a good deal to do with nitroglycerine. I did some important Government work, such as the making of breakwaters, where the took brought io me in large pieces, tad we had to blow it up, and used nitroglycerine for thit purpose; It is the most destructive thing you can Conceive Ot A little cartridge Of it as thick as the end of a musket barrel, dropped to the bottom of an oil well, will shatter the most tremendous primitive rock. Yon can take a piece of it half as big as your hand andit will blow a rock as big as this room in which we are sitting ’all to flinders. I can tell you of a very singular property about nitro-glycerine. On one evasion an ordinance was passed in a certain city where I was doing public work imposing a penalty of SSOO forbringing nitro-glycerine within the city limits. I had to haVe it, so I told tny foreman tb put that glycerine Under my table, at which I sat writing. As it is exploded by concussion, you may imagine that for a few days I was a little skittish. There was enough glycerine there concealed by that tablecloth to have blown up half a dozen blocks of that city. People used to come into my room, sit a few minutesj and suddenly one or more would put their hands to their head and complain of headache. Not being subject to headaches myself, I could not under stand it. I suppose that from one-half to three-fourths Of all my visitors who fiat with me more than ten minutes would have those headaches. One day a man came into my office who had been blowing out oil-wells in Pennsylvania. He sat there fifteen minutes and suddenly said: * Why , I have a headache; you must have nitro-glycerine here.’ ‘Oh, no,’said I, with a smile. ‘Yes,’ said he, ‘ this is a nitro-glycerine headache. I think I smell it, too.’ He began to sniff his nose. ‘There is a very slight odor, hardly perceptible, in the stuff, and it looks like a box Of lard.’ With this my visitor lifted the tablecloth and said: ‘ Have you got it there ?’ pointing to the boxes. * Yes,’ said I, with a laugh, ‘that is nitro-glycerine.’ ‘ Well,’ said he, *it gives the headache to a large proportion of people who sit near it.’ * “Did you have any accident?” said I. “No, I did not; but a follow-contrac-tor, who was doing some work in Canada, was driven out of that country by an accident that happened to him in a very simple way. He had been using nitro-glycerine, and it is supposed that some of it got spilled on the tire of a wagon, which. was left unmoved for sometime. One day he hitched ahorse to the wagon and started to drive it off, and then that small amount of stuff adhering to the tire blew up as the wheels moved, and really destroyed two-thirds of that little town. The people around were killed, the hotel was blown to pieces, two or three blocks were devastated, and my associate was unable to do any contracting work in Canada. He hastily sold whrft he left there to a native, and crossed the river and came away, otherwise they would have sued him for all the damage done to that town.”

Arkansas Bob’s Prayer for Briggs. It was a touching sight to see how the boys stood around the dead form of Briggs and endeavored to hide their emotion and failed.

The tears ran down the face of Arkansas Bob like rain off the gable-end of a com-crib, and Ted Williams and Jim Henderson and several more bowed their heads, while their forms shook with the sobs they would not allow to to escape. The boys dug a grave on the banks of the Brazos river, and that night, as the clouds drifted away and the moonlight fell upon the snow-covered ground and sparkled amid the ice-laden limbs of the tall forest trees, we laid poor Briggs down in his narrow resting place. The only requiem that was sung was the turbid Brazos as it surged along on its way to the sea—a mass sung by nature.

When the grave had been filled, Jim Henderson said: “I think we ought to have some kind of service. It ain’t right, by a dam sight, to go away without sayin’ somethin’ over the grave—any you fellows got a Bible ?” No one had a Bible, nor had seen one in a number of years. “Well, suppose some, one say a sorter of a prayer,” The boys scratched their heads, glanced at one another for a moment, and then looked away off into the woods.

Finally some one whispered, “Sish! Arkansas Bob’s goin’ to pray,” and he did. “Oh, Lord," he said, “I guess in your opinion I’m pretty tough, but I ain’t askin’ nuthin’ for myself, it’s for Briggs. He is dead now, but was as white a man as ever walked. He never did no man a hurt, and he had a heart in him as big as a mule, and no one, as I’ve heard, ever said a word agin him. I don’t know as what I say will have much influence, but Briggs stood well - with us down here, and, although I don’t know much about his career, or his history, or his family, he was a man you could bank on every clatter. He gave a sick Mexican $4.50 once for medicine, and then turned right round and nursed him through a fever, but the infernal Greaser hadn’t been well more’n two days before he stole Briggs’ saddle-bags. Ah! Lord, there hain’t any preacher nowhere ’round here, or we’d had him to say something more pinted to you-than I can say it. I never pattered any with the Bible, and can’t just now remember a hymn-song, but I’m a man of my word; I mean what I say, and Briggs, if he gets a chance, will make a good record in heaven as any one that ever got there. He had, away down in his heart, something that was square and as true as steel, and, oh, Lord, you mustn’t go back on that kind of a -man, ’cause they’re too skeerce in -these parts. Amen. ” The prayer was as rough as Bob, but no more sincere, as was evidenced by his tearful eye and trembling lip. After the prayer the boys ranged themselves on one side of the grave, and, drawing their six-shooters, fired a salute over their dead comrade, and, while the sharp reports were still echoing through the vaults of the forest, they turned and left the scene.— New Orleans Times-Democrat. ■