A few pieces had been shot off, a few bunches of crackers had had their tails tied together and been hung over a wire clothes line, like cats, to fight it out, and the crowd was holding its breath for the next boom, when there was an explosion; the earth seemed to tremble, and the air was full of all kinds of fire-works.  The whole supply of fire-works had become ignited, and were blowing off where they listeth, without regard to anybody’s feelings.

The crowd became panic stricken, and there never was another such a scene, and never will be until the last great day, when a few thousand people suddenly find that they have got into hell, by mistake, when they thought they were ticketed through to the other place.  It was perfectly awful.  Prominent citizens who usually display great pluck, became fearfully rattled.

A man named Martindale, a railroad man who weighs over two hundred pounds, was standing near a telegraph pole, and as the firing commenced he climbed up the pole as easy as a squirrel would climb a tree, and when it was over they had to get a fire ladder to get him down; as his pants had got caught over the glass telegraph knob, and he had forgotten the combination, and besides he said he didn’t want to take off his clothes up there and come down, even if it was dark, because it would be just his luck to have some one fire off a Roman candle when he got down.

[Illustration:  MARTINDALE CLIMBS A POLE.]

The Hon. Norton J. Field was another man who lost his nerve.  He was explaining to some ladies one of the pieces that was to be fired off, which was an allegorical picture representing the revolution, when the whole business blew up.  He thought at the time, that the explosion was in the programme, and was just reassuring the ladies, by telling them it reminded him of battle scenes he had witnessed when he was on the military committee in the assembly, when he noticed a girl near him whose polonaise had caught fire, and he rushed up to her, caught her by the dress, intending, with his cool hands, to put out the fire.

The girl felt some one feeling, as she supposed, for her pocket-book, and she started to run, yelling, “pickpocket,” and left the burning polonaise in Mr. Field’s hands.  He blushed, and was about to explain to his lady friends how the best of us are liable to have our motives misconstrued, when somebody threw a box of four dozen of those large firecrackers right at his feet, and they were all on fire.  Ten of them exploded at once, and he grabbed the polonaise in one hand and his burning coat tail in the other, and started west on a run.

The steward of the Gideon’s Band Club House, at Burlington, said he arrived there at daylight on the morning of the 5th, and he still held the pieces of dress, but the whole back of his coat was burned off, and the suspenders just held by a thread.  He said the comet struck the earth at Racine, at 9:30 the night before, and knocked the town into the lake, and he and another fellow were all that escaped.