"Of course out of school I was ... a boy. My delight used to be Branch's carpenter's shop ... Branch used to set me to work to chisel out mortices, use the saw or straighten nails! . . .What games we had in the saw pit and shavings

. . .The blacksmith's shop too delighted me ... how I enjoyed the sparks flying from the anvil ... the red-hot iron and the welding -...Although not allowed to go into the refineries, still I went there, and learned all about sugar refining. All the men knew me and so kept an eye over me as I knew no danger. Many a licking I got for going in, as I always came out dirty ... oh so dirty and my shoes sticky from the sugar on and off the floor."

"But my greatest passion was gunpowder. It was of no use telling the grocer not to sell or give me any ... I got it whenever I had money. I made fiz gigs ... trains ... crackers and what not on the sly ... fired off cannon, which I made out of anything, even holes in the brick walls surrounding the yard.

Kegs in the days I am speaking of were hollow. No keg was safe or sacred ... they were so good, all I had to do was to file a little hole in the barrel and lo a cannon!... Of course all this powder business was done on the sly, but there lived two maiden ladies in the next house, the windows of which looked into my yard. I was a terror to these poor women, imagining I would blow the house up ... a second Guy Fawkes.