Mr. Peterkin thought there actually was no danger, and he should be sorry to give up the pea-nut. He thought it an American institution, something really belonging to the Fourth of July. He even confessed to a quiet pleasure in crushing the empty shells with his feet on the sidewalks as he went along the streets. Agamemnon thought it a simple joy. In consideration, however, of the fact that they had had no real celebration of the Fourth the last year, Mrs. Peterkin had consented to give over the day, this year, to the amusement of the family as a Centennial celebration. She would prepare herself for a terrible noise,--only she did not want any gunpowder brought into the house. The little boys had begun by firing some torpedoes a few days beforehand, that their mother might be used to the sound, and had selected their horns some weeks before. Solomon John had been very busy in inventing some fireworks. As Mrs. Peterkin objected to the use of gunpowder, he found out from the dictionary what the different parts of gunpowder are,--saltpetre, charcoal, and sulphur. Charcoal, he discovered, they had in the wood-house; saltpetre they would find in the cellar, in the beef barrel; and sulphur they could buy at the apothecary's. He explained to his mother that these materials had never yet exploded in the house, and she was quieted. Agamemnon, meanwhile, remembered a recipe he had read somewhere for making a "fulminating paste" of iron-filings and powder of brimstone. He had written it down on a piece of paper in his pocket-book. But the iron filings must be finely powdered. This they began upon a day or two before, and the very afternoon before laid out some of the paste on the piazza. [Illustration] Pin-wheels and rockets were contributed by Mr. Peterkin for the evening. According to a programme drawn up by Agamemnon and Solomon John, the reading of the Declaration of Independence was to take place in the morning, on the piazza, under the flags. The Bromwicks brought over their flag to hang over the door. "That is what the lady from Philadelphia meant," explained Elizabeth Eliza. [Illustration] "She said the flags of our country," said the little boys. "We thought she meant 'in the country.'" Quite a company assembled; but it seemed nobody had a copy of the Declaration of Independence. Elizabeth Eliza said she could say one line, if they each could add as much. But it proved they all knew the same line that she did, as they began:-- "When, in the course of--when, in the course of--when, in the course of human--when in the course of human events--when, in the course of human events, it becomes--when, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary--when, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people"--