Genevieve May was in hysterics from the minute the first high-powered gun was fired. She kept screaming for everyone to keep cool. And at last, when they got some kind of order, she went into a perfectly new fit because her Frenchman was missing. She kept it up till they found the poor man. He was found, without his crutch, at the far end of the hall, though no one has ever yet figgered how he could get there through the frenzied mob. He was on a chair, weak and trembling, behind a fancy quilt made by Grandma Watkins, containing over ten thousand pieces of silk. He was greenish yellow in colour and his heart had gone wrong. That'll show you this bombardment wasn't any joke. The poor man had been exhausted by Cousin Egbert's well-meant efforts to show him something exciting, and he was now suffering from sure-enough shell shock, which he'd had before in more official circumstances. He was a brave man; he'd fought like a tiger in the trenches, and had later been shot down out of the air four times, and was covered with wounds and medals and crosses; but this here enfilade at the fair hands of the beautiful Madam Popper, coming in his weak state, had darn near devastated what few nerves the war had left him. It was a sad moment. Genevieve May was again exploding, like her own handiwork, which wasn't through itself yet by any means, because a solitary shot would come now and then, like the main enemy had retreated but was leaving rear guards and snipers. Also, people that had had exhibits in the art section and the fancy-work section was now setting up yells of rage over their treasures that had been desecrated by the far-flung ketchup. But tender hands was leading the stricken Frenchman back of the lines to a dressing station, and all was pretty near calm again, except for G.H. Stultz, who was swearing--or words to that effect. It really took a good hour to restore perfect calm and figure up the losses. They was severe. Of course I don't mean to say the whole three hundred bottles of this ammunition dump had exploded. Some had been put up only a short while and hadn't had time to go morbid; and even some of the old stuff had remained staunch. The mincemeat shrapnel had proved fairly destructive, but the turnip marmalade didn't seem to of developed much internal energy. All of them jars of marmalade proved to be what they call "duds." But you bet enough had gone up to make a good battle sketch. The ketchup, especial, was venomous. I met G.H. Stultz as I left the trenches. He'd been caught in a machine-gun nest of ketchup and had only wiped about half of it off his face. He looked like a contagious disease. "Say, look here," he says; "you can't tell me there isn't a Providence ever watching over this world to give some of us just what's coming to us!" That was very silly, because I'd never told him anything of the sort.