It was generally eight or nine o’clock before we got our hurried breakfast and met again at the public square. We visited the shops and stores, and went up to the little knots of men and women to hear what they had to say about the cannonading, and intimated very broadly that we could tell who did it if we only would. Then we lighted our bits of punk and began the fusillade of fire-crackers that was next in order on our programme. At this time the cannon fire-cracker, with all its terrors, had not come; and though here and there some boy had a small cannon or a pistol, the noise was confined almost entirely to fire-crackers. Most of us had to be very saving of them; they were expensive in those days, and our funds were low especially after the heavy firing in the early hours. We always felt that it was not fair that we should be obliged to get up before daylight in the morning and do the shooting, and buy the powder too, and once or twice we carried around a subscription paper to the business-men to raise funds for the powder; but this met with poor success. Farmington never was a very public-spirited place. There were always plenty of boys who could shoot a fire-cracker and hold it in their hands until it went off, and now and then one who could hold it in his teeth with his eyes shut tight. But this last exploit was considered dangerous, and generally was done only on condition that we gave a certain number of fire-crackers to the boy who took the risk. While we were all together, to hear someone else shoot fire-crackers was a very different thing from shooting them yourself. Although you did nothing but touch the string to a piece of lighted punk and throw the fire-cracker in the air, it sounded better when you threw it yourself than when some other boy threw it in your place.