would go off with a sound like that made
by a whole regiment firing by platoons. It was by long odds the
liveliest ginger-beer that had ever been placed upon the market. There
was entirely too much life in it. That was the trouble. Sitting among a
lot of fancy glassware on a back bar it looked as innocent of evil as a
newborn babe, but, presto change! and a moment afterwards it was its
Satanic Majesty on a rampage, and that back bar with its glassware
looked as if it had been struck by a Kansas cyclone.

Complaints began to pour in to the factory from all kinds and classes of
customers, and I began to be afraid to walk the streets for fear
that some one would accuse me of having bottled dynamite instead of
ginger-beer.

I sold a case of it to a friend of mine who kept a noted sporting resort
on South Clark street, Chicago. It was harmless enough when I sold it to
him. It was young then, and its propensity for mischief had not been
fully developed. It developed later. One evening when all was quiet
there was an explosion in the cellar. It sounded like the muffled report
of a dynamite cartridge. The billiard players dropped their cues and
some of them started for the door. A second explosion followed and the
coon porters' hair stood fairly on end and their faces became as near
like chalk as a black man's can.

The proprietor started down cellar to investigate. He had gotten half
way down when there came a third explosion.

He came back again more hastily than he had gone down, and ordered one
of the porters to ascertain the cause of the trouble.

The porter was a brave man, and he refused to do it.

I did not blame him when I heard of it.

In the meantime the rest of the ginger-beer bottles had caught the
contagion and the fusillade became fast and furious, and it did not stop
until the billiard-room and the last bottle of ginger beer were both
empty.

After silence had reigned for some time and it had become apparent that
danger was all past, my friend the proprietor grew courageous again and,
lamp in hand, he visited the cellar to investigate.

Where the case of ginger beer had set there was a mass of wreckage.
Broken glass was everywhere, while the flooring, ceiling and walls were
strained in a hundred different places. As he emerged from the cellar
with a look of supreme disgust on his countenance, he was surrounded by
an anxious group who asked as one man:

"What's the matter down there, Louis?"

"It's