Regretting that the nurse that morning had seen fit to encase me in snug-fitting linen breeches instead of woolen ones, I wandered about carrying my saw in one hand and with the other hand from time to time rubbing a certain well-defined area of my small person to allay the afterglow. In the barnyard I came upon an egg lying on the edge of a mud puddle under the protecting lee of the chicken-yard fence. I can shut my eyes and see that egg right now. It was rather an abandoned-looking egg, stained and blotched with brownish-yellow spots. It had the look about it of an egg with a past--a fallen egg, as you might say. Some impulse moved me to squat down and draw the toothed blade of my saw thwartwise across the bulge of that egg. For the first time in my little life I was about to have dealings with a genuine antique, but naturally at my age and with my limited experience I did not realize that. Probably I was actuated only by a desire to find out whether I could saw right through the shell of an egg amidships. That phase of the proceedings is somewhat blurred in my mind, though the dénouement remains a vivid memory spot to this very day. I imparted a brisk raking movement to the saw. It is my distinct recollection that a fairly loud explosion immediately occurred. I was greatly shocked. One too young to know aught of the chemical effect on the reactions following the admission of fresh air to gaseous matter, which has been forming to the fulminating point within a tightly sealed casing, would naturally be shocked to have an egg go off suddenly in that violent manner. Modern military science, I suppose, would classify it as having been a contact egg. Not only was I badly shocked, but also I had a profound conviction that in some way I had been taken advantage of--that my confidence had in some strange fashion been betrayed. I left my saw where I had dropped it. At the moment I felt that never again would I care to have anything to do with a tool so dangerous. I also left the immediate vicinity of where the accident had occurred and for some minutes wandered about in rather a distracted fashion. There did not seem to be any place in particular for me to go, and yet I could not bear to stay wherever I was. I wished, as it were, to get entirely away from myself--a morbid fancy perhaps for a mere six-year-old to be having, and yet, I think, a natural one under the circumstances.