Genre:

Short Fiction, Drollery

Subjects:

War, Gender, Narcotics, Chemistry, Vulcanology

    The narrator's father, uncle, and aunt are discussing the war with China. His aunt cannot understand going to war over opium, which she had always thought 'a lulling, soothing sort of thing, more likely to compose people's passions than to stir them up' (108). She thinks the 'Sulphur question' quite a different thing: 'That's all about brimstone and combustibles; and it would only be of a piece if we were to send our men-of-war, and frigates, and fireships, to bombard Mount Vesuvius'. The narrator's father laughs to himself at the 'proposed Grand Display of Pyrotechnics!'. (109)