The blaze and noise, indispensable to patriotic celebrations among all peoples, was produced a century ago in America by simple agencies. Washington’s Birthday was ushered in by cannon salutes in every garrisoned place in the United States, and boys the country over built bonfires as they still do in old New England towns to celebrate the day. But the Fourth of July was the great hurrah time of the year, when every youth who owned a gun or could borrow one, brought it into use as a contribution to the general noise. He might lack shoes and be short of shot and bullets for hunting, but for this occasion no young man was so poor as to have failed to lay in a hornful of powder, and at the stroke of twelve midnight, which began the day, he and his companions blazed away with guns loaded to the danger point, and kept up their fusillade as long as ammunition lasted. For demonstrations on a larger scale, a small cannon was secured if possible, but lacking this, two blacksmith’s anvils were made to do the same service, the hole in the top of one being filled with powder, a fuse laid into it and the second anvil placed as a stopper upon the first before the charge was exploded. A favorite firearm for celebration purposes was one of the old “Queens Arm” muskets which were common in country communities, being trophies captured from the British during the Revolutionary War. One of these cumbersome flint-lock pieces might be loaded halfway to the muzzle and fired without bursting, and would roar in the discharge in a way highly pleasing to patriotic ears. It was near the close of the eighteenth century that Chinese firecrackers first came into use in celebrating the American Independence Day. For many years they were used sparingly and only in large cities. They had been known in the New England coast cities ever since the year 1787, when Elias Haskett Derby’s ship of Salem, the first American vessel to engage in deep-water commerce, returned from her voyage to Calcutta, China and Isle of France. Among the things she brought back--more as a curiosity than as an article of cargo--was a consignment of Chinese firecrackers. Their capabilities in aiding the uproar on the Fourth of July were quickly recognized, and thereafter every ship that made the voyage from Massachusetts Bay to India or China brought back firecrackers with the tea, silks and rice. In time, rockets, squibs and torpedoes were included in the consignment, but it was not until the middle of the nineteenth century that their use became general in America. [Illustration: INTERIOR OF ROCKET FINISHING SHOP] [Illustration: INTERIOR OF SHELL FINISHING SHOP] [Illustration: INTERIOR OF TORPEDO SHOP]