Once he brought along for her a large self-made serpent--a
long cardboard hose, filled with gunpowder, bent in the form of a
harmonica, and tied tightly across with a cord. He lit it, and the
serpent for a long time with crackling jumped over the dining room
and the bedroom, filling the place with smoke and stench. Liubka
was scarcely amazed and said that this was simply fireworks, that
she had already seen this, and that you couldn't astonish her with
that. She asked, however, permission to open the window. Then he
brought a large phial, tinfoil, rosin and a cat's tail, and in
this manner contrived a Leyden jar. The discharge, although weak,
was produced, however.
"Oh, the unclean one take you, Satan!" Liubka began to cry out,
having felt the dry fillip in her little finger.
Then, out of heated peroxide of manganese, mixed with sand, with
the help of a druggist's vial, the gutta-percha end of a syringe,
a basin filled with water, and a jam jar--oxygen was derived. The
red-hot cork, coal and phosphorus burnt in the jar so blindingly
that it pained the eyes.
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