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I suppose you think by pyrotechny I mean the old-fashioned methods of set pieces, ghastly portraits in fire, big, spouting wheels, rockets, war scenes from contemporary history, seaside stuff, badly done and flowery squibs. My boy, all that, still admired by our country cousins, is the very infancy of my art.
That was "back in the Sixties," when his lapses were as far apart as they were unrivalled in consumption, span, and pyrotechny. By the late Eighties he had disappeared into the north, and the careless city knew him no more.
We may then see again the famous men-at-arms all covered with armor, and horses also will require the same protection. While there is doubt about the realization of these fears, it is, however, certain that artillery and pyrotechny have made advances which should lead us to think of modifying the deep formation so much abused by Napoleon. We will recur to this in the chapter on Tactics.
He bought and carefully studied a work on pyrotechny. The villagers knew that he was a remarkably skilful young man, and they all said, "We shall have a great treat next 4th of July." Meanwhile Pettingill worked away. The great day came at last. Thousands poured into the little village from far and near. There was an oration, of course. Yes; there was an oration.
But, perhaps, the others would be more successful, and, with a flushed face, and in a voice scarcely as firm as before, he said: "The next specimen of pyrotechny will go up in the air, bust, and become an eagle. Said eagle will soar away into the western skies, leavin' a red trail behind him as he so soars." But, alas! again.
And beyond each mystery lies another. This will be our new religion." Gerald had caught the enthusiasm of this swelling prologue and rose, his face alight with curiosity. "And that art is is ?" he stammered. "That art is pyrotechny." It was too much for the young man's nerves, and he fell back in his chair, purple with suppressed laughter.
In ultra-Catholic countries the descent of the sacred fire is represented by some secretly arranged pyrotechny, and the credulous laity, believing they have witnessed a miraculous display, eagerly solicit Paschal candles lit from it; and in imitation of the ancient festivities in honor of the return of spring, all Catholic churches, and most of Protestant ones, are adorned with flowers, the bells ring out their merriest peals, and "Gloria in Excelsis" and other jubilant songs, similar to the lays of the ancient Hilaries, are sung.
A Yankee, with the soaring imagination of that imaginative race, proposes to set fire to the Horseshoe Fall, and thus get up a grand nocturnal exhibition, to which the Surrey Zoological pyrotechny would bear the same ratio as a sky-rocket to Vesuvius.
But alas! it didn't. It only ploughed a little furrow in the green grass, like its unhappy predecessor. The masses laughed at this, and one man a white-haired old villager said, kindly but firmly, "Reuben, I'm 'fraid you don't understand pyrotechny." Reuben was amazed. Why did his rockets go down instead of up?
Is it not as if one should have, through majestic powers of science, the comets given into his hand, or the planets and their moons, and should draw them from their orbits to glare with the municipal fireworks on a holiday night, and advertise in all towns, "very superior pyrotechny this evening!"
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