THE KILLSBURY WOMEN ARREST THEMSELVES.

On the fifteenth of July Schwarmer came as he was expected to do; for besides being a blunt man, he was known to be one who rarely broke his promise. He arrived on the morning train and in the afternoon while he was sitting in his beautiful office with the Golden Rule President on one side of him and Lawyer Rattlinger on the other, the door opened suddenly and disclosed a very pretty sight—namely a procession of ladies tastefully hatted and gowned. The ribbons which were fastened daintily on their shoulders fluttered like wings in the strong breeze caused by the opening of the door.

He had been informed that a delegation of ladies would do themselves the honor of calling upon him to ask a favor, the nature of which was not apparent, so he arose to his feet at once, with his broad smile and blunt speech.

“Bless you ladies! Really ladies! This is a great and unexpected surprise. A truly great and truly happy one. Bless you all. How lovely you look. You do me proud, most assuredly you do. Ask me any faver you choose. I almost know what it will be before you open your pretty lips—pardon or excuses for your husbands or sons for the destruction of my property. Ladies are always doing something of that kind, God bless them! I feel like accepting even before you ask me to, most assuredly I do. I know it wasn’t your fault. I know ladies don’t approve of such violent doings or go into them, unless dragged in by their husbands or sweethearts. I understand that. I shouldn’t be my mother’s son if I didn’t, ladies. You may make your requests without fear or trembling. I am blunt in my speech but I trust my treatment of ladies is exactly the reverse.”

The lawyer winked at the President as much as to say that exactly the reverse of blunt would be sharp; but his wife was among the crowd and as she was a lady who laughed easily he felt obliged to keep his countenance of the usual length.

“The ladies, God bless them,” Schwarmer continued in his closing peroration. “They are all angels—all except those that are very strongly tempted to be the reverse.”

The President’s wife laughed this time in spite of her husband’s long drawn face. Several others caught the infection. No knowing where it would have ended had not Mr. Schwarmer sat down suddenly. They knew that their time had come and the thought sobered them.Mrs. Muelenberg was the first to speak. She said:

“We know you are very kind, Mr. Schwarmer, and we have come to make our confessions and ask you for substantial proofs of your kindness. We all had a hand in the destruction of your property—a free hand, and we are going to tell you why and pay the damages. We are averse to the technicalities, expense and delay of the law, so after we have made our plea—that is, all the plea we can make, we trust that you will make out your bill. We have brought our purses and wish to settle the damages on the spot.”

“Damages against the ladies!” gasped Schwarmer, looking with dismay at the purses conspicuously displayed. “My intention is to settle this little matter with the men who had a hand in it. I don’t want any pay for my property, dear ladies. Rest assured I am not that sort of a man. All that I shall insist upon is to have the law respected—the rights of property regarded.”

“And all that we shall insist on, if it goes to the courts, is that the rights of mothers be respected and the lives of their children properly regarded,” said Mrs. Rattlinger. “I am not a lawyer but I am a lawyer’s wife and I think I know about where we should stand in such a case.”

“Of course you do,” replied Schwarmer, “and being a wife and mother, very naturally you would, as one and all thus situated. I shall see to it that no harm comes to you, rest assured I shall. I have an almost unbounded respect for mothers and a great tenderness for children and would be more than willing to do all I could to prevent them from injury on our natal day, without interfering with its proper enjoyment, most assuredly I would. I am very fond of them all. I lament with our lamentable President that there are not more mothers and more children. There can’t be too many of them to suit me. It takes a great many to keep up the supply, as they are more prone to accidents than grown people, especially on and around our glorious Fourth—for the reason that their little hands and pockets which patriotism requires us to fill with firecrackers, are so much nearer their little eyes than ours are. Most assuredly they are. For these and other reasons of a similar nature, there can’t be too many children born into the world. They make it lively. Truly, ladies, I am a very blunt man and I must say that I think mothers should have many more children than they do have. Yes, a great many more and be happy to do so. Very happy indeed, ladies. There is no sight on earth so perfectly lovely in my estimation as that of a mother surrounded with her children. Completely surrounded I should say—north and south, east and west—surrounded as with a halo, so to speak.”

Schwarmer’s pronunciation of halo sounded so much like hello that Sybil Bolt, whose little boy had lost a finger three years before, in consequence of his Independence Day gift, whispered to the woman who stood next to her:

“Yes a fine hello—young ones with their fingers blown off, eyes blown out, and faces scarred.”

She whispered loud enough to be heard across the room and Schwarmer may or may not have heard her. He continued:

“Don’t be alarmed, my dear ladies. I wouldn’t have the heart to hurt a hair of your heads, nor a hair that belonged to your children. Be assured I shall lay up nothing against you, and I’m not going to be hard with your husbands and lovers either, rest assured I am not. Go in peace.”

He waved his hand as though waving them out; but they did not “follow the wave.”

Mrs. Normander came to the front and gave the list of accidents as Ralph had done at the mass meeting. She also repeated the statement that the list was out of all proportion to that of other towns throughout the state. Then she turned upon him squarely.

This being the case the question was, why it was so? “You know how that question was settled at the meeting, Mr. Schwarmer, and the result.”

“Yes, I know,” said Schwarmer, “that my property was meddled with and I know that accidents occur or are liable to occur all over the country on the Fourth, and we don’t know where they will occur, nor how many will occur at a given point, most assuredly we don’t, and we don’t know just how many occur in our own town. They are not always reported, or made much of. There will be accidents on that day as a matter of course, truly there always have been and must be—it’s an accidental world—full of accident policies—eh, ladies? The Fourth of July wouldn’t be the Fourth without accidents, surely it wouldn’t, would it ladies?”

“Yes it would,” said Mrs. Normander. “We have had one this year—a lovely Fourth. We all enjoyed it—especially the children. They said they had never had such a splendid Independence Day. They had no fireworks and not a single one was hurt. We heard there was quite a serious accident at your place where you had an elaborate pyrotechnic display.”

“O! a small one, ladies, a very small one—truly very small—not worth mentioning, ladies.”

“Not for you,” cried out a voice angrily; “but for the poor mother who lost her child!”

She broke off sobbing. She was the widow whose little boy had died of tetanus a few years before. The ladies all knew it and were visibly affected.

“Beg your pardon, dear woman,” said Schwarmer fussing with his pocket handkerchief. “Beg your pardon, one and all, dear ladies, I meant no harm—no insult to your sex—most assuredly not. I’m all sympathy for any one in a delicate condition and exceedingly sorry for any loss they may sustain and would not do or say anything willingly to aggravate the one or the other. I trust you know I would not. You know also that accidents of that kind do happen very frequently, and without any fright from pyrotechnics. The only damage that can be truly chargeable to the rocket, was very slight indeed, very—only a matter of a few bundles of straw and an old tumble down shed. It made quite a blaze of course, you know it would ladies, and the excitement may have been the one straw too much for the mother delicately situated but there is no real proof of it—that is, no absolute proof you understand ladies. I mean to say that something else might have happened that would have led to the same disaster—something quite trifling, such as a husband coming in late and slamming the door. To speak bluntly we have all heard of such things bringing on premature difficulties. Truly we have, have we not, my dear ladies?”

“I see, I see, silence gives consent,” continued Mr. Schwarmer quite jauntily, “and I know you have forgiven me any little hand I may have had in the matter—which was very slight indeed, I assure you. The pyrotechnics referred to were under the auspices of a much greater than I—that is pyrotechnically considered. No less a person than the young son of a billionaire friend of mine who has a great taste for pyrotechnics. The piece which caused the premature loss referred to was designed by him. It was very original and powerful—most assuredly it was—almost too powerful for inland display. It would have been truly gorgeous out at sea or off Coney Island or Manhattan Beach. He’s a great genius, the young fellow is, and an aspiring one and needs a great deal of room to display his talents, as all geniuses of any size, invariably do. When he was abroad he was royally entertained by the greatest of living Pyrotechnists, King Pang, whose father was knighted by the queen for doing something splendid. I have forgotten just what it was. By the way, he made a very good pun out of the little accident he had here, after he got back to the city. He said that his ‘Pet Rocket rocked the cradle prematurely’—or attempted to rock it, or something of the kind. I can’t quite remember which; but really it was very good and characteristic also. He always spoke of his creations as though they were live creatures and really they are very lively—very lively indeed, I assure you, ladies.”

“They are fiends in disguise,” exclaimed Ruth rising suddenly and lifting the rim of her hat so he might recognize her without difficulty. She had managed to hide herself from his observation, she hardly knew why. She had a mixed sort of a feeling that she would like to see him let himself entirely out and that he would be more likely to do so if he did not know she were there. She meant to have her say. She had come prepared for it; but she would not say a word until her whole soul was in it and she could hold back no longer. She had brought the spent rocket that had come so near killing or injuring Ralph’s mother. She held it up so everybody could see it plainly.

“Yes,” she went on with righteous indignation. “They are fiends in disguise. Here is one of them, with its pretty red, white and blue wrapping torn off. Look at it one and all. It’s only a rough stick and a lump of lead. It looks dull and harmless now but backed by powder and dynamite it can do terrible execution. Look at it Mr. Schwarmer. It was sent over from the hill on last Fourth and came within a hair breadth of hitting a lady’s shoulder! If it had, it would have laid her arm open to the bone, for it dashed down the whole length of it and buried itself in the ground. What kind of a pun would your City Pyro King have made of that? What does he care for the homes made desolate, the youths that are slain and mutilated, this son of a millionaire, so that he adds more millions to his possessions? What does he care for such misery as I have suffered? Every year for seven years I had to be taken from my home and sent to Canada in order to escape our Independence day horror. Every year since the terrible accident to my little brother. You all know about that. I was only eleven years old then. I did not fully understand what the English officers meant when they said ‘Very sensitive to foreign foes Americans are, and yet they arm the home foes and ignorant boys with enough powder and dynamite to kill and wound thousands every year.’ ‘A very free country that whose people have to fly to Europe or to us for safety.’ But it dawned on me little by little, year after year. Last year I saw it all. This year I am here, determined to leave no stone unturned to do away with the cruel, barberous idiotic celebration of our national day.

“Think of it, Mr. Schwarmer! How would you feel to have your little innocent brother, or child, frightfully scarred, burned or torn to pieces by fireworks that some careless person had put into his hands? Take it to your heart and conscience. Remember, we do not assume that you are a bad man because you distribute fireworks among the children of this town. We know you don’t think when you give a lot of boys a lot of toy pistols that they are going to kill or injure each other with them. You are just like a great many others. You have been brought up to think it right for boys to celebrate our Independence Day and you don’t stop to think of the new elements of danger which have been, and are constantly being introduced. The firecracker and the torpedo were always dangerous nuisances and should have been done away with long ago for something harmless and more sensible. Instead of that they have been developed into giants and are now manufactured in enormous quantities—enough to burn up the whole world; and they do burn up millions of dollars worth of property each year.

“Think of it! It’s not only the loss of life that is to be considered but it’s the waste of money. It’s a pity to see it recklessly burned up when we are needing so many things. We need a public library. All we have now are a few old ragged books. We need a public park, where the children can go to fly their kites, look at the gold fishes, listen to the music, smell of the flowers, laugh, play and sing, and be out of the dust and danger of the crowded thoroughfare. We need good roads and bridges. There isn’t a thoroughly good road in town except the speedway, which the corporation helped you build over beyond the hill. The sewers and water works are incomplete. You have about all there are at your place and the towns-people have paid the corporation taxes, although they have been doubled since your coming, without grumbling. Think of all these things, Mr. Schwarmer. Investigate this whole matter for yourself and see if you can’t do something better for us than you have been doing. You have refused to take pay from us for the destruction of your property. We thank you but we do not wish you to think that we did not give our whole strength and influence to the work. What I did was to put it into the head of my husband (that now is) to help me do something at once, to prevent the horrible burnt sacrifice that would surely take place if your fireworks were distributed here as usual. I could not rest after hearing the English boast as I did last year that a shrewd English Pyro-king had sold millions of dollars worth of fireworks to the American people to burn up on their ‘awful Independence Day’ as they called it, and that the demand was so great that he had to send a supply from the London manufactory. You see how it is, Mr. Schwarmer. I have heard and thought about these things through days and nights of suffering and exile on English soil. And now I have to confess that I am the instigator-in-chief of the destruction of your property. You will be kind enough to reckon with me if you do with anybody. We bid you good day and a God speed in the right direction.”

The ladies withdrew without being waved out.