“Towards seven o’clock, all trees commanding a view of the enclosure
where the fireworks were prepared had received their share of venturous
climbers, whose good positions excited envy, and made them excellent
marks, not merely for the jokes, but for the missiles of the vulgar
crowd below. A perfect storm of turfs and sods, torn from the grass, was
hurled at the people who swarmed the trees, many of whom were speedily
dislodged; but others, who had secured the uppermost branches, remained
possessors of their positions to the end. Foiled in their attempt to
dislodge the arboreal class of spectators, the roughs commenced an
indiscriminate assault on the crowd, hurling clods and pieces of turf
among the more densely packed masses. The assailants became, in turn,
the assailed, and many a long and annoying battle was waged, and no
small share of angry feeling created by these discreditable proceedings.
Any person with a decent coat or hat was sure to become a mark for the
mischievous young urchins who indulged in those freaks, and it was only
when some two or three persons had the good sense to administer a little
wholesome chastisement to the young rascals, that temporary peace was
secured.
“At length the hour of nine o’clock arrived, and a signal rocket sent up
announced that the long expected display was about to commence, and it
was immediately followed by a grand display of white, red, green and
yellow fires, with a continuous discharge of maroons. Scarcely had the
brilliant colours ceased, when 100 rockets went screeching and screaming
through the air in their graceful course, and shell after shell exploded
in rapid succession. Then came wheel pieces and gold streamers, and blue
and yellow rockets and green and yellow shells; then pearl streamers,
blue and yellow rockets, and serpents and yellow shells, and numbers of
fixed pieces and tailed stars, and rocket wheels and Scotch stars, and
parachutes and pearl rain, and twelve-pointed stars and crackers, and
Saxon hoops and silver rain, and diamond pieces and looking glasses, and
kaleidoscopes and Maltese crosses, and turning suns and tourbillons, and
five-pointed lances and ten-stars, and a variety of other things known
only to the initiated in the mystery of the pyrotechnic art.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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