I will get the pressure up to one hundred pounds before I----" BANG!!! As soon as the major began to realize the situation he crawled out from beneath his overturned desk, wiped the contents of the inkstand from his face and hair with the copy of that unfinished article upon "The Necessity for Speedy Resumption," and looked about him.

Mr.Partridge was lying in the corner with a splintered table over his legs, his head in a spittoon, and fragments of ruined machinery bursting out through enormous rents in his trousers and his coat.

His cast-iron undershirt protruded in jagged points from a dozen orifices in his waistcoat.

As the major took him by the leg to haul him out of the _debris_ Partridge opened his eyes wearily and said, "Awful clap, wasn't it?
You ought to've had lightning-rods on this building.

Struck by lightning, wasn't I ?" [Illustration: BANG!!!] "You intolerable ass!" exclaimed the major as the clerks and reporters came rushing in and began to place Partridge on his legs; "it wasn't lightning.