e lived on the third
floor; on the ground was a shop, in which cutlery and some fireworks were
sold. It befell that George Ward and I were very early in the morning
sitting on a bench before the Ober-Pollinger, waiting for a stage-coach,
which would take us to some place out of town; when bang! bang! crack! I
heard a noise in the firework shop, and saw explosions puffing smoke out
of the bursting windows. Great God! the front shop was on fire; it was
full of fireworks, such as rockets and crackers, and I knew there was a
barrel of gunpowder in the back-shop! I had found it out a few days
before, when I went there to buy some for my pistols. And the family
were asleep. In an instant I tore across the street, rushed screaming
upstairs, roused them all out of bed, howling, "It burns!--there's
gunpowder!" Yet, hurried as I was, I caught up a small hand-bag, which
contained my money, as I got the girls and their mother downstairs. I
was just in time to see a gigantic butcher burst open the two-inch door
with an axe, and roll out the barrel containing two hundred pounds of
gunpowder, as the flames were licking it. I saw them distinctly.

It was the awful row which I made which had brought the people out
betimes, including the butcher and his axe. But for that, there would
have been a fearful blow-up. But the butcher showed himself a man of
gold on this occasion, for he it was who really saved us all. A day or
two after, when I was jesting about myself as a knightly rescuer of
forlorn damsels, in reply to some remark on the event, George Ward called
me to order. There was, as he kindly said, too much that he respected in
that event to make fun of it.

George Ward is deeply impressed on my memory. He was a sedate young
fellow, with a gift of dry humour, now and then expressed in quaint
remarks, a gentleman in every instinct, much given to reading and
reflecting. When he said anything, he meant it, and this remark of his
struck me more than the event itself had done.

And to think that I quite forgot, in narrating my Princeton experiences,
to tell of something very much like this incident. It was in my last
year, and my landlady had just moved into a new house, when, owing to
some defect in the building, it caught fire, but was luckily saved after
it had received some damage. I awoke in the night, flames bursting into
my room, and much smoke. It happened that the day before a friend in
Alabama had sent me elev