Rensselaer Republican, Volume 16, Number 41, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 19 June 1884 — Worse than Dynamite. [ARTICLE]

Worse than Dynamite.

“These dynamite explosions over in England,” said the sleeping-car conductor, “remind me of an old woman and her jug of yeast. She got on at a small station out beyond Steubenville, carrying a gallon jug in her hand, which she told me contained a fine quality of home-made yeast. It was well corked and tied, and the old lady carried it to her berth with her, taking as much care of it as if it had been a babe. An hour or so later, when everybody was asleep, there was the most tremendous explosion ever heard in a sleeping-car, and all the neighbors of the woman had a shower-bath of the frothy stuff from the shattered jug. It was dark, and they thought they were covered with their own blood. Such screaming you never heard, and the old woman herself was the most frightened of the lot. The shaking of the car had made the yeast livelier than dynamite, and an extra heavy lurch had set it off The bed-clothes of four sections had to be changed.”