As a bottler of ginger beer I achieved at another time great distinction and there are some men in the country right now who have a very vivid remembrance of the beverage that I was unfortunate enough to put upon the market. My experience as a ginger beer manufacturer was laughable, to say the least of it, though I confess that I did not appreciate the fact at the time as much as did some of my friends and acquaintances. During several of my visits to Canada in search both of players and pleasure I had made the acquaintance of a Mr. William Burrill, who at that time conducted a clothing store at London, Canada, and who had treated both myself and Mrs. Anson with great kindness. This gentleman finally went "down the toboggan slide" in a business way and at last turned up in Chicago with a very little money and a formula for making and bottling ginger beer. He needed, according to his own estimate, about $500 more capital than he was possessed of and wished me to join him in manufacturing it. He was a nice fellow, I was anxious to help him along, and, besides that, viewed from a business standpoint, it looked like a good thing, and as I was never averse to taking a chance when there was a good thing in sight I concluded to join him in the venture. The $500 that I was originally required to invest grew into $1,500, however, before we got the thing on the market, and then the sales started off in lively fashion, and so, not long afterwards, did the ginger beer. There was a flaw in the formula somewhere, just what it was I never have been able to ascertain, but--well, there was something the matter with it. It wouldn't stay corked, that was its worst feature, but would go off at all times of the day and night and in the most unexpected fashion. If the cork would hold, the bottle wouldn't, and as a result there would be an explosion that would sound like the discharge of a small cannon. Sometimes only one bottle out of a dozen would explode, and then again the whole dozen 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.