three o'clock in the afternoon
Others tore off their coats and attempted to bag a few cubic inches of the gas in these garments . But the police , with a devotion to duty that was beyond praise , kept the mob in check and themselves bore the brunt of the lingering acid . Only one man , who leaped from an office-window with an improvised parachute , really succeeded in getting into the middle of the Boulevard , and he refused to be ejected on the ground that he was chief of the street-cleaning department . This department , by the way , was given a remarkable illustration of the fine public spirit of the citizens , for by three o'clock in the afternoon two hundred thousand applications had been received from those eager to act as volunteer street-cleaners and help scour the Boulevard after the passage of the great parade . As the echoes of the parade died away , public excitement was roused to fever by the discovery that evening of an infernal machine in the City Hall . Leaning against one of the great marble pillars in the lobby of the building , a gleaming object -LRB- looking very much like a four-inch shrapnel shell -RRB- was found by a vigilant patrolman . To his horror he found it to be one of the much-dreaded thermos bottles .