Some years ago, soon after I had built my experimental laboratory near Lake Hopatcong, a dear old friend came to visit me. He had seen hard times in the interval that had separated us, and had suffered from both business reverses and ill health since the days when he and I were chums. He was plunged in the depths of pessimism, while I was optimistic. He was in the throes of abject discouragement. Though I made him many offers of assistance in varied forms, none of them seemed to cheer him in the least.

When I knew him in our youth, he had been one of the bravest men that ever lived; now, he appeared to have lost all his former courage. Often, however, he made the remark that he was minded to make an end of everything, since life offered him nothing worth while. I frequently importuned him against the folly of contemplating suicide.

It came about that one day I was in need of fulminate of mercury. As this material cannot be taken upon a train or sent by express, it was necessary to go for it with horse and wagon. Both my assistants and myself were just then too busy to be spared from the work in hand. So, it occurred to me that my old friend would be exactly the person to send on the quest. Since he was even then engaged in meditating suicide, he would not be in the least afraid of fetching the stuff for me. Of course, I should not have thought of sending him had I believed there was any particular danger. Certainly there would be none if the material were handled properly, and in a wet state.

My old friend started on the mission valorously enough, but he lost his courage presently, and returned empty-handed.

I then sent one of my helpers, a spare man who worked for me occasionally, as he had been long connected with the manufacture and handling of explosives. I gave him the necessary money for the purchase of the material, for the hire of the team and his other expenses, and as there would be two or three dollars over, I told him he could spend that in any way he liked, for his own use and behoof.

He returned along toward evening, left the horse and wagon at the stable, and started up to the works with a bag containing ten pounds of fulminate, placed in a small hand-valise. Fortunately I saw him coming soon after he had abandoned the vehicle.

The road was altogether too narrow for him; the ground seemed to reel under his feet, and he was steadying himself by swinging the valise back and forth from side to side with great violence. A drunker man never walked.

I took the valise away from him, and carried it to the works myself. The next day, when we opened it, we found that instructions had not been followed about wetting the fulminate. The bag of dry fulminate had, when he procured it, been merely set in a pail of water for a few minutes, and only long enough to wet a thin stratum of the explosive, leaving the whole interior perfectly dry.

It is surely a wonder that the drunken man had not exploded this mass of dry fulminate in the rough handling he had given it. Had he fallen with the bag, he must almost certainly have caused an explosion by the shock of the impact of the fulminate against the ground.