Next morning one of the journeymen block-printers--whose employment was at the Palmerstown print-works, but who lodged at Chapelizod--woke with a parched throat and headache. He asked himself where he had been. He had been seeing the King away; drinking, with thousands more, Dunleary out of, and Kingston into, the map of Ireland. Presently, his confused memory brought him a vision of a fire: he had a thirsty sense of having been carrying buckets of water; of hearing the hissing of water on hot iron floors; of the clanking of engines, and shouts of people working the pumps, and of himself tumbling about with the rest of the mob, and rolling over one another in streams of liquefied wreck, running from the burning starch stores.
He would rise, dress, go out, inquire about the fire, find his shopmates, and see if it was to be a working day, or once again a drinking day. He tried to dress; but--a--hoo!--his clothes were gummed together. His coat had no entrance for his arms until the sleeves were picked open, bit by bit; what money he had left was glued into his pockets; his waistcoat was tightly buttoned up with--what? Had he been bathing with his clothes on, in a sea of gum-arabic--that costly article used in the print-works?
This man was not the only one whose clothes were saturated with gum. He and four of his shopmates held a consultation, and visited the wreck of the starch factory. In the roadway, the starch, which, in a hot, calcined state, had been watered by the fire-engines the night before, was now found by them lying in soft, gummy lumps. They took some of it home; they tested it in their trade; they bought starch at a chandler's shop, put it in a frying-pan, burned it to a lighter or darker brown, added water, and at last discovered themselves masters of an article, which, if not gum itself, seemed as suitable for their trade as gum-arabic, and at a fraction of the cost.
It was their own secret; and, could they have conducted their future proceedings as discreetly as they made their experiments, they might have realized fortunes, and had the merit of practically introducing an article of great utility--one which has assisted in the fortune-making of some of the wealthiest firms in Lancaster (so long as they held it as a secret), and which now the Government of the British empire manufacture for themselves.