powder barrel

“There’s a lot in the local powder barrel that we can’t get a lid on,” the city’s mayor, Michael Galander, told the German daily Die Tageszeitung last year.

But that first shot was the spark that touched off the powder barrel.

As the folds of the familiar banner caught the breeze and floated out over the flat-roofed houses of the little town, Ide, the late chief of the three-weeks republic, jumping on a powder barrel, swung his sombrero in the air and shouted: "Now, boys, all together, three cheers for the Union!"

It is burning toward the powder barrel.

Another lit a cigar by the side of a powder barrel, in order to see, to know, to tempt Destiny, for a jest, to have the pleasure of suspense, for no reason at all, out of caprice, out of idleness.