All of which brings me to a remarkable family of explosive makers--the
Duponts of Wilmington, who for generations now have had practical
monopoly in this country of the powder-making business, including
dynamite and nitroglycerin. In this enterprise a great fortune has
accumulated, so that the Duponts of to-day are very rich men, far beyond
any need of working in the mills themselves, and have been for years.
Yet, work in the mills they do, all of them, practically, and direct in
detail every process of manufacture, and face continually in their own
persons the same terrible dangers that the humblest mixer faces. There
has grown in their hearts through the century, along with riches, a
great pride of courage, like that of the officer who leads his men into
battle--a pride far stronger than any longing for idleness or pleasure.
And they _cannot_, if they would, leave these slow-grinding mills, where
any day a spark may bring catastrophe to make the whole land shudder, as
it has shuddered many times after the fury of these giant magazines.

There came a day, for instance--this was a long time ago--when a swift
flame swept through one of the mixing-rooms, nearly empty of powder at
the time, yet so permeated with the stuff in floor and walls that
instantly the building was burning fiercely. No man can say what started
it. The cause of trouble at a powder-mill is seldom known; it comes too
quickly, and usually leaves no witness. A nail overlooked in a workman's
heel may have done the harm by striking a stone, though of course there
is an imperative rule that all footgear made with nails be left outside
the walls; or a heavy box slid along the wooden floor may have brought a
flash out of the dry timbers. At any rate, the flash came, and the blaze
followed on it so swiftly that the building was wrapped in fire before
men inside could reach the door, and they presently burst out blazing
themselves, for their clothing, as it must be, was sifted through with
explosive dust. Indeed, it is always true in fires at powder-mills that
the workmen themselves are a serious menace to the buildings by reason
of their own inflammability.

So the next thing was a plunge into the placid Brandywine, which winds
across the yards between willow-hung banks. In went the men, in went
young Alexis Dupont, and with a little hiss their flaming garments were
extinguished. Then, as they struck out into the stream, they looked back
and saw that the wi