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 that ginger beer of Anson's," was the reply. Then there was another explosion, this time one of laughter. "Anson's ginger-beer" was getting a reputation, but it was not exactly the sort of a reputation that I wanted it to have. I was willing to close out the business even at a sacrifice, and this I did. I saved more in proportion of my money than my customers did of the ginger beer I had sold them. This was one consolation. CHAPTER XXXVI. WITH THE KNIGHTS OF THE CUE.