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.