The gun fired perhaps fifty rounds before it stopped. Then it stuck, and my assistant worked at the belt and lever, attempting to start it again. I told him to put down the safe so that the gun could not fire, which he did. I was then about to step around the gun in front, which I confess was a very careless thing to do, when it began firing again. I was already so close to the muzzle that my clothes were cut by the bullets and burned by the gunpowder. The trigger had been pulled, and held pulled, by the sand, so that the safe did not prevent it from firing. It is pretty good practice to keep away from the business end of a loaded gun. A PICKANINNY'S TREASURE TROVE Once at Annapolis, while we were firing a six-pounder semi-automatic gun in a speed test, we had succeeded in firing forty-two aimed shots in a minute into a huge earth butt, which, owing to recent rains, was merely a heap of mud. The day following, a negro boy, about fourteen years old, found one of the projectiles, which had penetrated the butt, and glancing, came out at the top without exploding. This he brought up to where my assistant was doing some work on the gun, and showed what he had found. My assistant shouted at him, "Look out! That's loaded, and if you drop it, it might go off." Frightened, the negro immediately dropped the projectile upon the hard cement pavement, and, as it struck point down, it did go off, and took off one of his legs; and a fragment of the shell came dangerously close to the head of my assistant. NOT TO BE BUNCOED The great Du Pont Powder Company had in its employ at one time a faithful, patient and lucky fellow, an Italian, who worked constantly, with not a day off except Sundays, for twenty-one years in the corning mill, breaking black gunpowder press cake into grains. During that period the coming mill had blown up seven times, once every three years, but each time Giovanni had happened, by the merest chance, to be outside for a few seconds to get a drink of water or on some other brief errand. Twice he had had his clothes nearly ripped off him, and his face and hands burned, such had been his proximity on these occasions to the crater of fire as the mill went up, and once he had been rendered unconscious by the shock. Finally, at the end of twenty-one years of service, having put aside a snug little fortune, sufficient for the remainder of his life in sunny Italy, he packed up his belongings and turned his face toward his old home. Arriving in New York, his ticket purchased, he hied himself to a noted Italian hostelry, to await the coming of the joyous morrow when he should actually be on the big steamer, headed for home. Giovanni had no bad habits, and the bunco man failed to lure him. He took no stock in the dapper, polished-mannered compatriot just recently from his home place, who was acquainted with all the folks. His cash was sewed into his clothes, and those clothes would not come off until he reached his destination.