GUNPOWDER AND FIREBRANDS.

Feilding Star, Volume III, Issue 48, 2 December 1882, Page 2

GUNPOWDER AND FIREBRANDS.

♦ A good story comes from a neighbouring town concerning a well-known storekeeper, who, for the nonce, we shall eaU Importer. Besides having a large place of business, a number of assistants and servants, and doing a thriving trade, Importer possesses some peculiarities of character. He is at times given to melancholia and abstraction. While in one of his moods (common, as some poet has said, with all men of genius) he enacted the role of leading character in a performance that narrowly escaped terminating in a startling and tragic tableaux. Importer, being of a mechanical turn of mind, had, after much thought and study, invented a new fire brand, wherewith to mark his stock, &c, and which he intended to patent. A few days since one of Importer's assistants had been using the brand, and had left it remaining in the stove, where it was soon in a white heat. Importer determined to see for himself how the thing worked, so taking it in his hand wandered about his warehouse seeking for a fit object on which to put " his mark." Some small and " innocent looking" kegs attracted his attention He approached them and with a smile of conscious triumph he planted tiie red hot iron firmly against the side of one of the kega. His attention was suddenly diverted from his task, and the brand fell from his nerveless grasp, when he saw, what appeared to his astonished gaze, the sudden insanity of aU his employes : for one and aU took rapid aid headlong flight out of the warehouse as though pursued by the Evil One. Importer stood for a few seconds until the side of the brand, touching his boot, awakened him to a sense of the responsibilities ef this life, and elicited from him a startled yell. This cry induced one of the less timid of the men to peep into the building, and, seeing the condition of his master, warned him that the cask he was branding contained "gunpowder." Importer, since that day, has been careful to avoid any allusion to the subject of branding, and his invention is not yet patented.