"
"Tut, tut, tut," said Mr. Cossart, laughingly; "that's an
impossibility."
"No, sir," said Robert, "there is nothing impossible."[A]
[Footnote A: He proved that this was not impossible, for he had his
display, making his rockets himself, and after his own model.]
"Robert was known," says one of his biographers, "to purchase small
quantities of quicksilver from Dr. Adam Simon Kuhn, druggist, residing
opposite the market-house. He was trying some experiments that he did
not wish to make public, and which the workmen in Mr. Fenno's and Mr.
Christian Isch's shops were anxious to find out, but could not. He was
in the habit almost daily of visiting those shops, and was a favorite
among the workmen, who took advantage of his talent for drawing by
getting him to make ornamental designs for guns, and sketches of the
size and shape of guns, and then giving the calculations of the force,
size of the bore and balls, and the distances they would fire; and he
would accompany them to the open commons near by potter's field, to
prove his calculations by shooting at a mark. On account of his
expertness in his calculations, and of their ineffectual efforts to
discover the use he was making of quicksilver, the shop-hands nicknamed
him 'quicksilver Bob.
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