And so, there we were, ten or twelve of us, lying concealed in the wood. Dawn began to break. Birds and squirrels awoke in the trees over our heads. On the road that came out from town buggies and surreys appeared. The visitors tied their horses far away, by an old sawmill, near the town’s edge, and came afoot to the field. Now it was quite light and we could begin to recognize the men of the party, solid respectable men, with money in the bank. There was Penny Jacobs, who kept a little candy store; Seth McHugh, cashier of the bank; Wilmott the lawyer, a dozen others. No doubt Em Harkness was there. Of that I cannot be quite sure. He was a man of our town, who ran a small general store and brother, I believe, to that other Harkness who later became a man of vast wealth and a figure in the Standard Oil Company. His money built the Harkness Memorial at Yale, and if our town did not achieve the prominent position in the Industrial Age of which we all at that moment dreamed, we had at least among us the kin of royalty. We were not entirely left in the cold outside world. A Harkness was a Harkness and we had a Harkness. But to return to that significant moment in the field. As we lads lay in the wood, well concealed from the eyes of our elders, we were silent. Solemnity lay like a frost over our young souls. Even the giggling and whispering that had gone on among us died now. The well-shooter was there and he had turned out to be just an ordinary looking teamster with whiskers, but that did not matter. Greater and more significant things were astir. Even the birds stopped singing and the squirrels chattered no more. A long tube, containing no doubt the nitro-glycerine, had been lowered into the hole in the ground and the honored guests of the occasion ran quickly across the field and stood among the trees near our hiding place. They were dressed, these serious-minded citizens, as for a wedding or a funeral. Even Penny Jacobs had put on what was called among us “a boiled shirt.” What an occasion! Now we were, all of us, as we stood or lay under the trees--we were all one thing; and presently there would be a terrific explosion, far down in the earth, below our bellies as we lay sprawled in the wet grass--there would be this explosion, and then would we not all, at that moment, become something else? “Bang!” we would go into the New Age--that was the idea. In the presence of our elders, who now stood in silence very near us, we lads all felt a little ashamed of our ragged clothes and our unwashed faces. Perhaps some of us had been to Sunday school and had heard the parable of the virgins who did not keep their lamps trimmed and filled.