poppa needs shorts given valid data, you can reach completely wrong conclusions. but given a wrong conclusion, you can still get a right answer! walt and leigh richmond illustrated by john schoenherr little oley had wandered into forbidden territory again--big brother sven's ham shack. the glowing bottles here were an irresistible lure, and he liked to pretend that he knew all there was to know about the mysteries in this room. of course, sven said that not even _he_ knew all of the mysteries, though he admitted he was one of the best ham operators extant, with qsos from eighteen countries and thirty-eight states to his credit. at the moment, sven was busily probing into an open chassis with a hot soldering iron. "short's in here some place," he muttered. "what makes shorts, sven?" oley wasn't so knowledgeable but what he would ask an occasional question. sven turned and glared down. "what are you doing in here? you know it's a federal offense for anybody to come into this room without i say so?" "momma and hilda come in all the time, and you don't say so." oley stood firm on what he figured were legal grounds. "what makes shorts?" sven relented a little. this brother had been something of a surprise to him, coming along when sven was a full ten years old. but, he reflected, after a few years maybe i should get used to the idea. actually, he sort of liked the youngster. "shorts," he said, speaking from the superior eminence of his fourteen years to the four-year-old, "is when electricity finds a way to get back where it came from without doing a lot of hard work getting there. but you see, electricity like to work; so, even when it has an easy way, it just works harder and uses itself up." this confused explanation of shorts was, of course, taken verbatim, despite the fact that oley couldn't define half the words and probably couldn't even pronounce them. "i don't like shorts. i don't like these pink shorts momma put on me this morning. is they electrics, sven?" sven glanced around at the accidentally-dyed-in-the-laundry, formerly white shorts. "um-m-m. yeah. you could call 'em electric." with this oley let out whoop and dashed out of the room, trailing a small voice behind him. "momma, momma. sven says my shorts is electric!" "i'll short sven's electrics for him, if he makes fun of your shorts!" oley heard his mother's comforting reply. * * * * * in the adult world days passed before oley's accidentally acquired pattern of nubilous information on the subject of shorts was enlarged. it was only days in the adult world, but in oley's world each day was a mountainous fraction of an entire lifetime, into which came tumbling and jumbling--or were pulled--bits, pieces, oddments, landslides and acquisitions of information on every subject that he ran into, or that ran into him. nobody had told oley that acquiring information was his job at the moment; the acquisition was partly accidental, mostly instinctive, and spurred by an intense curiosity and an even more intense determination to master the world as he saw it. there was the taste of the sick green flowers that momma kept in the window box and, just for a side course, a little bit of the dirt, too. there were the patterns of the rain on the window, and the reactions of a cat to having its tail pulled. the fact that you touch a stove one time, and it's cool and comfortable to lay your head against, and another time it hurts. things like that. and other things--towering adults who sometimes swoop down on you and throw you high into the air; and most times walk over you, around you, and ignore you completely. the jumble of assorted and unsorted information that is the heritage of every growing young inquiring brain. in terms of time, it was only a couple of weeks, if you were looking at it as an adult, until the next "shorts" incident. oley was sitting peacefully at the breakfast table, doing his level best to control the manipulation of the huge knife-fork-and-spoon, plate-bowl-and-glass, from which he was expected to eat a meal. things smelled good. momma was cooking doste, and that to oley smelled best of all. the doster ticked quietly to itself, then gave a loud pop, and up came two golden-brown slices of doste. dostes? oley wasn't sure. but he hadn't really begun paying too much attention to whether one doste was the same as two doste or what, though he could quite proudly tell you the difference between one and two. out it came, and fresh butter was spread on it, and in went two shiny white beds, for some more doste. little oley watched in fascination. and now he reached for the tremendous glass sitting on the table in front of him. but his fingers didn't quite make it. somehow, the glass was heavy and slippery, and it eluded him, rolled over on its side, and spilled the bright purple juicy contents out across the table in a huge swish. oley wasn't dismayed, but watched with a researcher's interest as the bright purple juice swept across the table towards the busily ticking doster. momma, of course, wasn't here, or she would have been gruff about it. she'd just gone into the other room. [illustration] the juice spread rapidly at first, and then more and more slowly, making a huge, circuitous river spreading across the table, first towards the doster and then away from it towards the frayed power-cord lying on the table. it touched and began to run along the cord. not a very eventful recording so far, but oley watched, charmed. as he watched, a few bubbles began to appear near the frayed spot. a few wisps of steam. and then, suddenly, there was a loud, snarling splat--and momma screamed from the doorway. "that juice is making a short!" the information, of course, was duly recorded. juice makes shorts. it was a minor item of information, mixed into a jumble of others, and nothing else was added to this particular file for nearly another week. * * * * * oley was playing happily on the living room floor that night. here there was much to explore, though an adult might not have thought twice about it. back in the corner behind momma's doing bachine a bright, slender piece of metal caught oley's attention. bigger on one end than the other, but not really very big anywhere, the sewing machine needle proved fascinating. as a first experiment, oley determined that it worked like a tooth by biting himself with it. after that he went around the room, biting other things with it. information, of course, is information, and to be obtained any way one can. the brown, snaky lamp cord was the end of this experiment. oley bit it, viciously, with his new tooth, and had only barely observed that it had penetrated completely through when there was a loud splat, and all the lights in the room went out. in the darkness and confusion, of course, oley moved away, seeking other new experiences. so the cause of the short that momma and poppa yakked so loudly about was never attributed to oley's actions, but only to "how could a needle have gotten from your sewing machine into this lamp cord, alice?" but the sum of information had increased. neatles stuck into lamp cords had something to do with shorts. more time passed. and this time the file on shorts was stimulated by poppa. the big, rough, booming voice had always scared oley a bit when it sounded mad, like now. "alice, i've just got to have some more shorts!" poppa was rummaging in a drawer far above oley's head, so he couldn't see the object under discussion. but all he already knew about shorts--the information passed in review before him. shorts are useful. they help electrics to work harder. shorts you wear, and they are electrics. wires are electrics. shorts can be made by juice. shorts can be made by neatles, that bite like teeth. poppa needs more shorts. but oley wasn't motivated to act at the moment. just sorting out information and connecting it with other information files in the necessarily haphazard manner that might eventually result in something called intelligence, although he didn't know that yet. it was a week later in the kitchen, when momma dropped a giant version of the neatle on the floor, that his information file in this area increased again. "is that a neatle?" oley asked. his mother laughed quietly and looked fondly at her son as she put the ice pick back on the table. "i guess you could call it a needle, oley," she told him. "an ice needle." oley instinctively waited until momma's back was turned before taking the nice neatle to try its biting powers; and instinctively took it out of the kitchen before starting his experiments. as he passed the cellar door he heard a soft gurgling and promptly changed course. pulling open the door with difficulty, he seated himself on the cellar stairs to watch a delightful new spectacle--frothing, gurgling water making its way across the floor towards the stairs. it looked wonderfully dirty and brown, and to oley it was an absorbing phenomenon. it never occurred to him to tell momma. suddenly above him the cellar door slammed open, and poppa came charging down the stairs, narrowly missing the small figure, straight into the rising waters, intent, though oley couldn't know it, on reaching the drain pipe in the far corner of the cellar to plug it before water from the spring rains could back up farther and really flood the cellar out. halfway across the cellar, poppa reached up and grasped the dangling overhead light to turn it on, in order to see his way to the drain--and suddenly came to frozen, rigid, gasping stop as his hand clamped firmly over the socket. little oley watched. there was juice in the cellar. poppa had hold of an electric. was poppa trying to make the shorts he needed? oley wasn't sure. he thought it probable. and from the superior knowledge of his four years, oley already knew a better way to make shorts. neatles make good shorts. juice don't do so well. suddenly, oley decided to prove his point: nice neatles probably made even better shorts than other neatles--and there was a big electric running up the side of the stairs--an electric fat enough to make a real good shorts. maybe lots of shorts. raising his nice neatle, oley took careful aim and plunged it through the 220-volt stove feeder cable. * * * * * oley woke up. the strange pretty lady in white was a new experience. somebody he hadn't seen before. and there seemed to be something wrong with his hand, but oley hadn't noticed it very much, yet. "well, my little hero's awake! and how are you this morning? your momma and poppa will be in to see you in just a minute." the pretty lady in white went away, and oley gazed around the white room with its funny shape, happily recorded the experience, and dozed off again. then suddenly he was awakened again. momma was there; and poppa. and sven. but they all seemed different somehow this morning. momma had been crying, even though she was smiling bravely now. and poppa seemed to have a new softness that he'd seldom seen before. sven was looking puzzled. "i still say, pop, that he's a genius. he _must_ have known what he was doing." "oley," poppa's voice was husky--gruff, but kinder and softer than usual. "i want you to answer me carefully. but understand that it's all right either way. i just want you to tell me. why did you put the ice pick through the stove cable? you saved my life, you know. but i'd like to know how you knew how." little oley grinned. his world was peaceful and wonderful now. and all the big adults were bending and leaning down and talking to him. "nice neatle," he said. "big electric. poppa needed shorts." transcriber's note: this etext was produced from _analog science fact & fiction_ january 1964. extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the u.s. copyright on this publication was renewed. minor spelling and typographical errors have been corrected without note. the word _nubilous_ appears in place of the originally printed _nubient_. lamp.--xxiii. x-rays, and how the bones of the human body are photographed.--xxiv. the electric motor and how it does work.--xxv. electric cars, boats and automobiles.--xxvi. a word about central stations.--xxvii. miscellaneous uses of electricity. this book explains, in simple, straightforward language, many things about electricity; things in which the american boy is intensely interested; things he wants to know; things he should know. it is free from technical language and rhetorical frills, but it tells how things work, and why they work. it is brimful of illustrations--the best that can be had--illustrations that are taken directly from apparatus and machinery, and that show what they are intended to show. this book does not contain experiments, or tell how to make apparatus; our other books do that. after explaining the simple principles of electricity, it shows how these principles are used and combined to make electricity do every-day work. _everyone should know about electricity._ a very appropriate present third edition how two boys made their own electrical apparatus. containing complete directions for making all kinds of simple electrical apparatus for the study of elementary electricity. by professor thomas m. st. john, new york city. the book measures 5 × 7½ in., and is beautifully bound in cloth. it contains 141 pages and 125 illustrations. complete directions are given for making 152 different pieces of apparatus for the practical use of students, teachers, and others who wish to experiment. price, post-paid, $1.00. the shocking coils, telegraph instruments, batteries, electromagnets, motors, etc., etc., are so simple in construction that any boy of average ability can make them; in fact, the illustrations have been made directly from apparatus constructed by young boys. the author has been working along this line for several years, and he has been able, _with the help of boys_, to devise a complete line of simple electrical apparatus. =_the apparatus is simple because the designs and methods of construction have been worked out practically in the school-room, absolutely no machine-work being required._= =_the apparatus is practical because it has been designed for real use in the experimental study of elementary electricity._= =_the apparatus is cheap because most of the parts can be made of old tin cans and cracker boxes, bolts, screws, wires and wood._= =address, thomas m. st. john,= =407 west 51st street,= =new york.= how two boys made their own electrical apparatus. =contents:= _chapter_ i. cells and batteries.--ii. battery fluids and solutions.--iii. miscellaneous apparatus and methods of construction.--iv. switches and cut-outs.--v. binding-posts and connectors.--vi. permanent magnets,--vii. magnetic needles and compasses.--viii. yokes and armatures.--ix. electro-magnets.--x. wire-winding apparatus.--xi. induction coils and their attachments.--xii. contact breakers and current interrupters.--xiii. current detectors and galvanometers.--xiv. telegraph keys and sounders.--xv. electric bells and buzzers.--xvi. commutators and current reversers.--xvii. resistance coils.--xviii. apparatus for static electricity.--xix. electric motors.--xx. odds and ends.--xxi. tools and materials. "the author of this book is a teacher and wirier of great ingenuity, and we imagine that the effect of such a book as this falling into juvenile hands must be highly stimulating and beneficial. it is full of explicit details and instructions in regard to a great variety of apparatus, and the materials required are all within the compass of very modest pocket-money. moreover, it is systematic and entirely without rhetorical frills, so that the student can go right along without being diverted from good helpful work that will lead him to build useful apparatus and make him understand what he is about. the drawings are plain and excellent. we heartily commend the book."--_electrical engineer._ "those who visited the electrical exhibition last may cannot have failed to notice on the south gallery a very interesting exhibit, consisting, as it did, of electrical apparatus made by boys. the various devices there shown, comprising electro-magnets, telegraph keys and sounders, resistance coils, etc., were turned out by boys following the instructions given in the book with the above title, which is unquestionably one of the most practical little works yet written that treat of similar subjects, for with but a limited amount of mechanical knowledge, and by closely following the instructions given, almost any electrical device may be made at very small expense. that such a book fills a long-felt want may be inferred from the number of inquiries we are constantly receiving from persons desiring to make their own induction coils and other apparatus."--_electricity._ "at the electrical show in new york last may one of the most interesting exhibits was that of simple electrical apparatus made by the boys in one of the private schools in the city. this apparatus, made by boys of thirteen to fifteen years of age, was from designs by the author of this clever little book, and it was remarkable to see what an ingenious use had been made of old tin tomato-cans, cracker-boxes, bolts, screws, wire, and wood. with these simple materials telegraph instruments, coils, buzzers, current detectors, motors, switches, armatures, and an almost endless variety of apparatus were made, in this book mr. st. john has given directions in simple language for making and using these devices, and has illustrated these directions with admirable diagrams and cuts. the little volume is unique, and will prove exceedingly helpful to those of our young readers who are fortunate enough to possess themselves of a copy. for schools where a course of elementary science is taught, no better text-book in the first-steps in electricity is obtainable."--_the great round world._ exhibit of experimental electrical apparatus at the electrical show, madison square garden, new york. while only 40 pieces of simple apparatus were shown in this exhibit, it gave visitors something of an idea of what young boys can do if given proper designs. [illustration: "how two boys made their own electrical apparatus" gives proper designs--designs for over 150 things.] fun with photography book and complete outfit. [illustration] =photography= is now an educational amusement, and to many it is the most fascinating of all amusements. the magic of sunshine, the wonders of nature, and the beauties of art are tools in the hand of the amateur photographer. a great many things can be done with this outfit, and it will give an insight into this most popular pastime. =the outfit= contains everything necessary for making ordinary prints--together with other articles to be used in various ways. the following things are included: one illustrated book of instructions, called "fun with photography;" 1 package of sensitized paper; 1 printing frame, including glass, back, and spring; 1 set of masks for printing frame; 1 set of patterns for fancy shapes; 1 book of negatives (patent pending) ready for use; 6 sheets of blank negative paper; 1 alphabet sheet; 1 package of card mounts; 1 package of folding mounts; 1 package of "fixo." =contents of book:=--=chapter i. introduction.=--photography.--magic sunshine.--the outfit.--=ii. general instructions.=--the sensitized paper.--how the effects are produced.--negatives.--prints.--printing frames.--our printing frame.--putting negatives in printing frame.--printing.--developing.--fixing.--drying.--trimming.--fancy shapes.--mounting.--=iii. negatives and how to make them.=--the paper.--making transparent paper.--making the negatives.--printed negatives.--perforated negatives.--negatives made from magazine pictures.--ground glass negatives.--=iv. nature photography.=--aids to nature study.--ferns and leaves.--photographing leaves.--perforating leaves.--drying leaves, ferns, etc., for negatives.--flowers.--=v. miscellaneous photographs.=--magnetic photographs.--combination pictures.--initial pictures.--name plates.--christmas, easter and birthday cards. _the book and complete outfit will be sent, by mail or express, charges prepaid, upon receipt of 65 cents, by_ =thomas m. st. john, 407 w. 51st st., new york.= fun with magnetism. book and complete outfit for sixty-one experiments in magnetism... [illustration] children like to do experiments; and in this way, better than in any other, _a practical knowledge of the elements of magnetism_ may be obtained. these experiments, although arranged to _amuse_ boys and girls, have been found to be very _useful in the class-room_ to supplement the ordinary exercises given in text-books of science. to secure the _best possible quality of apparatus_, the horseshoe magnets were made at sheffield, england, especially for these sets. they are new and strong. other parts of the apparatus have also been selected and made with great care, to adapt them particularly to these experiments.--_from the author's preface._ =contents.=--experiments with horseshoe magnet.--experiments with magnetized needles.--experiments with needles, corks, wires, nails, etc.--experiments with bar magnets.--experiments with floating magnets.--miscellaneous experiments.--miscellaneous illustrations showing what very small children can do with the apparatus.--diagrams showing how magnetized needles may be used by little children to make hundreds of pretty designs upon paper. =amusing experiments.=--something for nervous people to try.--the jersey mosquito.--the stampede.--the runaway.--the dog-fight.--the whirligig.--the naval battle.--a string of fish.--a magnetic gun.--a top upsidedown.--a magnetic windmill.--a compass upsidedown.--the magnetic acrobat.--the busy ant-hill.--the magnetic bridge.--the merry-go-round.--the tight-rope walker.--a magnetic motor using attractions and repulsions. _the book and complete outfit will be sent, post-paid, upon receipt of 35 cents, by_ =thomas m. st. john, 407 w. 51st st., new york.= fun with shadows book and complete outfit for shadow pictures, pantomimes, entertainments, etc., etc. [illustration] =shadow making= has been a very popular amusement for several centuries. there is a great deal of _fun_ and instruction in it, and its long life is due to the fact that it has always been a source of keen delight to grown people as well as to children. in getting material together for this little book, the author has been greatly aided by english, french and american authors, some of whom are professional shadowists. it has been the author's special effort to get the subject and apparatus into a practical, cheap form for boys and girls. =the outfit= contains everything necessary for all ordinary shadow pictures, shadow entertainments, shadow plays, etc. the following articles are included: one book of instructions called "fun with shadows"; 1 shadow screen; 2 sheets of tracing paper; 1 coil of wire for movable figures; 1 cardboard frame for circular screen; 1 cardboard house for stage scenery; 1 jointed wire fish-pole and line; 2 bent wire scenery holders; 4 clamps for screen; 1 wire figure support; 1 wire for oar; 2 spring wire table clamps; 1 wire candlestick holder; 5 cardboard plates containing the following printed figures that should be cut out with shears: 12 character hats; 1 boat; 1 oar-blade; 1 fish; 1 candlestick; 1 cardboard plate containing printed parts for making movable figures. =contents of book:= one hundred illustrations and diagrams, including ten full-page book plates, together with six full-page plates on cardboard. _chapter_ i. introduction.--ii. general instructions.--iii. hand shadows of animals.--iv. hand shadows of heads, character faces, etc.--v. moving shadow figures and how to make them.--vi. shadow pantomimes.--vii. miscellaneous shadows. _the book and complete outfit will be sent, =post-paid=, upon receipt of 35 cents, by_ =thomas m. st. john, 407 west 51st st., new york city.= fun with electricity. book and complete outfit for sixty experiments in electricity.... [illustration] enough of the principles of electricity are brought out to make the book instructive as well as amusing. the experiments are systematically arranged, and make a fascinating science course. no chemicals, no danger. the book is conversational and not at all "schooly," harry and ned being two boys who perform the experiments and talk over the results as they go along. "the book reads like a story."--"an appropriate present for a boy or girl."--"intelligent parents will appreciate 'fun with electricity.'"--"very complete, because it contains both book and apparatus."--"there is no end to the fun which a boy or girl can have with this fascinating amusement." =there is fun in these experiments.=--chain lightning.--an electric whirligig.--the baby thunderstorm.--a race with electricity.--an electric frog pond.--an electric ding-dong.--the magic finger.--daddy long-legs.--jumping sally.--an electric kite.--very shocking.--condensed lightning.--an electric fly-trap.--the merry pendulum.--an electric ferry-boat.--a funny piece of paper.--a joke on the family cat.--electricity plays leap-frog.--lightning goes over a bridge.--electricity carries a lantern.--and _=40 others=_. the =_outfit_= contains 20 different articles. the =_book of instruction=_ measures 5 x 7½ inches, and has 38 illustrations, 55 pages, good paper and clear type. _the book, and complete outfit will be sent, by mail or express, charges prepaid, upon receipt of 65 cents, by_ =thomas m. st. john, 407 w. 51st st., new york.= fun with puzzles. book, key, and complete outfit for four hundred puzzles... the book measures 5 × 7½ inches. it is well printed, nicely bound, and contains 15 chapters, 80 pages, and 128 illustrations. the key is illustrated. it is bound with the book, and contains the solution of every puzzle. the complete outfit is placed in a neat box with the book. it consists of numbers, counters, figures, pictures, etc., for doing the puzzles. =contents:= _chapter_ (1) secret writing. (2) magic triangles, squares, rectangles, hexagons, crosses, circles, etc. (3) dropped letter and dropped word puzzles. (4) mixed proverbs, prose and rhyme. (5) word diamonds, squares, triangles, and rhomboids. (6) numerical enigmas. (7) jumbled writing and magic proverbs. (8) dissected puzzles. (9) hidden and concealed words. (10) divided cakes, pies, gardens, farms, etc. (11) bicycle and boat puzzles. (12) various word and letter puzzles. (13) puzzles with counters. (14) combination puzzles. (15) mazes and labyrinths. "fun with puzzles" is a book that every boy and girl should have. it is amusing, instructive,--educational. it is just the thing to wake up boys and girls and make them think. they like it, because it is real fun. this sort of educational play should be given in every school-room and in every home. "fun with puzzles" will puzzle your friends, as well as yourself; it contains some real brain-splitters. over 300 new and original puzzles are given, besides many that are hundreds of years old. =secret writing.= among the many things that "f. w. p." contains, is the key to _secret writing_. it shows you a very simple way to write letters to your friends, and it is simply impossible for others to read what you have written, unless they know the secret. this, alone is a valuable thing for any boy or girl who wants to have some fun. _the book, key, and complete outfit will be sent, postpaid, upon receipt of 35 cents, by_ =thomas m. st. john, 407 west 51st st., new york city.= fun with soap-bubbles. book and complete outfit for fancy bubbles and films.... [illustration] =the outfit= contains everything necessary for thousands of beautiful bubbles and films. all highly colored articles have been carefully avoided, as cheap paints and dyes are positively dangerous in children's mouths. the outfit contains the following articles: one book of instructions, called "fun with soap-bubbles," 1 metal base for bubble stand, 1 wooden rod for bubble stand, 3 large wire rings for bubble stand, 1 small wire ring, 3 straws, 1 package of prepared soap, 1 bubble pipe, 1 water-proof bubble horn. the complete outfit is placed in a neat box with the book. (extra horns, soap, etc., furnished at slight cost.) =contents of book.=--twenty-one illustrations.--introduction.--the colors of soap-bubbles.--the outfit.--soap mixture.--useful hints.--bubbles blown with pipes.--bubbles blown with straws.--bubbles blown with the horn.--floating bubbles.--baby bubbles.--smoke bubbles.--bombshell bubbles.--dancing bubbles.--bubble games.--supported bubbles.--bubble cluster.--suspended bubbles.--bubble lamp chimney.--bubble lenses.--bubble basket.--bubble bellows.--to draw a bubble through a ring.--bubble acorn.--bubble bottle.--a bubble within a bubble.--another way.--bubble shade.--bubble hammock.--wrestling bubbles.--a smoking bubble.--soap films.--the tennis racket film.--fish-net film.--pan-shaped film.--bow and arrow film.--bubble dome.--double bubble dome.--pyramid bubbles.--turtle-back bubbles.--soap-bubbles and frictional electricity. "there is nothing more beautiful than the airy-fairy soap-bubble with its everchanging colors." _the best possible amusement for old and young._ _the book and complete outfit will be sent, =post-paid=, upon receipt of 35 cents, by_ =thomas m. st. john, 407 west 51st st., new york city.= the study of elementary electricity and magnetism by experiment. by thomas m. st. john, met. e. the book contains 220 pages and 168 illustrations; it measures 5 × 7½ in. and is bound in green cloth. price, post-paid, $1.25. this book is designed as a text-book for amateurs, students, and others who wish to take up a systematic course of elementary electrical experiments at home or in school. full directions are given for....... _two hundred simple experiments._ the experiments are discussed by the author, after the student has been led to form his own opinion about the results obtained and the points learned. in selecting the apparatus for the experiments in this book, the author has kept constantly in mind the fact that the average student will not buy the expensive pieces usually described in text-books. the two hundred experiments given can be performed with simple apparatus; in fact, the student should make at least a part of his own apparatus, and for the benefit of those who wish to do this, the author has given, throughout the work, explanations that will aid in the construction of certain pieces especially adapted to these experiments. for those who have the author's "how two boys made their own electrical apparatus," constant references have been made to it as the "apparatus book," as this contains full details for making almost all kinds of simple apparatus needed in "the study of elementary electricity and magnetism by experiment." _if you wish to take up a systematic course of experiments--experiments that may be performed with simple, inexpensive apparatus,--this book will serve as a valuable guide._ condensed list of apparatus for "the study of elementary electricity and magnetism by experiment." _number_ 1. steel needles; package of twenty-five.--2. flat cork.--3. candle.--4-15. annealed iron wires; assorted lengths.--16. horseshoe magnet; best quality; english.--17. iron filings.--18. parts for compass.--19, 20. wire nails; soft steel.--21, 22. spring steel; for bar magnets.--23. iron ring.--24. sifter; for iron filings.--25. spring steel; for flexible magnet.--26, 27. ebonite sheets; with special surface.--28. ebonite rod.--29. ebonite rod; short.--30. flannel cloth.--31. tissue paper.--32. cotton thread.--33. silk thread.--34. support base.--35. support rod.--36. support wire.--37. wire swing.--38. sheet of glass.--39. hairpin.--40. circular conductor.--41. circular conductor.--42. electrophorus cover.--43. insulating table.--44. insulated copper wire.--45. rubber band.--46. bent wire clamps.--47. cylindrical conductor.--48. discharger; for condenser.--49. aluminum-leaf.--50. wires. 51. dry cell.--52. mercury.--53. insulated copper wire; for connections.--54. spring connectors; two dozen.--55. parts for key.--56. metal connecting plates.--57. parts for current reverser.--58. parts for galvanoscope.--59. parts for astatic galvanoscope.--60-63. zinc strips.--64. carbon rod.--65, 66. glass tumblers.--67, 68. copper strips.--69. galvanized iron nail.--70, 71. wooden cross-pieces.--72. brass screws; one dozen.--73. porous cup.--74. zinc rod.--75. copper plate.--76. iron strip.--77, 78. lead strips.--79. parts for resistance coil.--80. parts for wheatstone's bridge.--81. german-silver wire; size no. 30.--82. german-silver wire; no. 28.--83--85. plate binding-posts.--86. copper sulphate.--87. copper burs; one dozen.--88. combination rule.--89. coil of wire; on spool for electromagnet.--90. coil of wire; on spool for electromagnet.--91. carbon rod.--92, 93. soft iron cores with screws.--94. combined base and yoke.--95. combination connecting plates.--96. long iron core.--97. round bar magnet, 5 × 3/8 in.--98. thin electromagnet.--99. degree-card; for galvanoscope.--100. scale for bridge.--101, 102. soft iron cores with heads.--103, 104. flat bar magnets; these are 6 × ½ × ¼ in.; highly polished steel; poles marked.--105. compass. =_illustrated price catalogue upon application._= electrical apparatus for sale a complete electric and magnetic cabinet for students, schools and amateurs. six extraordinary offers =this cabinet of electrical experiments= contains three main parts: (_a_) apparatus; (_b_) text-book; (_c_) apparatus list. (_a_) =the apparatus= furnished consists of one hundred and five pieces. over three hundred separate articles are used in making up this set. most of it is ready for use when received. seven pieces, however, are not assembled; but the parts can be readily finished and put together. (sold, also, _all_ pieces assembled.) (_b_) =the text-book=--called "the study of elementary electricity and magnetism by experiment"--gives full directions for two hundred experiments. (see table of contents, etc.) price, post-paid, $1.25. (_c_) =the apparatus list= is an illustrated book devoted entirely to this special set of apparatus. not given with first offer. _the apparatus is simple because the designs and methods of construction have been worked out with great care._ _the apparatus is practical because it has been designed for real use in "the study of elementary electricity and magnetism by experiment."_ _the apparatus is cheap because the various parts are so designed that they can be turned out in quantity by machinery._ =1st offer:= pieces 1 to 50 $1.00 =2d offer:= pieces 51 to 105, with part (_c_) 3.50 =3d offer:= pieces 1 to 105, with part (_c_) 4.00 =4th offer:= complete cabinet, parts (_a_), (_b_), (_c_) 5.00 =5th offer:= apparatus only, all pieces assembled 4.60 =6th offer:= complete cabinet, all pieces assembled 5.60 =_express charges must be paid by you. estimates given._= a "special catalogue," pertaining to the above, with complete price-list, will be mailed upon application. =thomas m. st. john, 407 west 51st st., new york city= fun with telegraphy book and complete outfit. [illustration] =telegraphy= is of the greatest importance to all civilized nations, and upon it depend some of the world's most important enterprises. every boy and girl can make practical use of telegraphy in one way or another, and the time it takes to learn it will be well spent. =the outfit.=--mr. st. john has worked for a number of years to produce a telegraph outfit that would be simple, cheap, and practical for those who wish to make a study of telegraphy. after making and experimenting with nearly one hundred models, many of which were good, he has at last perfected an instrument so simple, original, and effective that it is now being made in large quantities. the sounders are so designed that they will work properly with any dry cell of ordinary strength, and this is a great advantage for practice lines. dry batteries are cheap and clean, and there are no dangers from acids. the outfit consists of the following articles, placed in a neat box: one book of instruction, called "fun with telegraphy"; one telegraph "key"; one telegraph "sounder"; insulated copper wires for connections. the "key" and "sounder" are mounted, with proper "binding-posts," upon a base of peculiar construction, which aids in giving a large volume of sound. =contents of book.=--telegraphy.--the outfit.--a complete telegraph line.--connections.--the telegraph key.--the sounder.--the battery.--a practice line.--a two-instrument line.--operation of line.--the morse telegraph alphabet.--aids to learning alphabet.--cautions.--office calls.--receiving messages.--remember.--extra parts. =about batteries.=--for those who cannot easily secure batteries, we will furnish small dry cells, post-paid, at 15 cents each, in order to deliver the outfits complete to our customers. this price barely covers the total cost to us, postage alone being 6 cents. _=fun with telegraphy, including book, key, sounder, and wire (no battery), post-paid, 50 cents, by=_ =thomas m. st. john, 848 ninth ave., new york= tool sets for students the following tool sets have been arranged especially for those who wish to make use of the designs contained in "how two boys made their own electrical apparatus," "real electric toy-making for boys," "electric instrument-making," etc. it is very poor economy to waste valuable time and energy in order to save the cost of a few extra tools. =note.=--save money by buying your tools in sets. we do not pay express or freight charges at the special prices below. =for $1.00.=--one _steel punch_; round, knurled head.--one light _hammer_; polished, nickel-plated, varnished handle.--one _iron clamp_; japanned, 2¼ in.--one _screw-driver_; tempered and polished blade, cherry stained hardwood handle, nickel ferrule.--one _wrench_; retinned skeleton frame, gilt adjusting wheel.--one _awl_; tempered steel point, turned and stained wood handle, with ferrule.--one _vise_; full malleable, nicely retinned, 1-3/8 in. jaws, full malleable screw with spring.--one pair _steel pliers_; 4 in. long, polished tool steel, unbreakable, best grooved jaw.--one pair of _shears_; carbonized steel blades, hardened edge, nickel-plated, heavy brass nut and bolt.--one _file_; triangular, good steel.--one _file handle_; good wood, brass ferrule.--one _foot rule_; varnished wood, has english and metric system.--one _soldering set_; contains soldering iron, solder, resin, sal ammoniac, and directions. one _center-punch_; finely tempered steel. =for $2.00.=--all that is contained in the $1.00 set of tools, together with the following: one pair of _tinner's shears_; cut, 2¾ in., cast iron, hardened, suitable for cutting thin metal.--one _hollow handle tool set_; very useful; polished handle holds 10 tools, gimlet, brad-awls, chisel, etc.--one _try square_; 6-in. blue steel blade, marked in 1/8s, strongly riveted.--one 1-lb. _hammer_; full size, polished head, wedged varnished hardwood handle.--one _hack saw_; steel frame, 9½-in. polished steel blade, black enamel handle; very useful. =for $3.50.=--two _steel punches_; different sizes, one solid round, knurled head, polished; the other, point and head brightly polished, full nickel, center part knurled.--one _light hammer_; polished and nickel plated, varnished handle.--one regular _machinist's hammer_; ball peen, solid cast steel, with varnished hardwood handle; a superior article.--two _iron clamps_; one opens 2¼ in., the other 3 in., japanned.--one _screw-driver_; tempered and polished blade, firmly set in cherry stained hardwood handle with nickel ferrule.--one _wrench_; retinned, skeleton frame, gilt adjusting wheel.--one _awl_; tempered steel blade, ground to point, firmly set in turned and stained handle with ferrule.--one _steel vise_; 2¼-in., jaws, steel screw, bright polished jaws and handle; a good strong vise.--one pair of _steel pliers_; 6 in. long, bright steel, flat nose, 2 wire-cutters, practically unbreakable.--one pair of _shears_; carbonized steel blades, hardened edges, nickel plated, heavy brass nut and bolt.--one _file_; triangular and of good steel.--one _file handle_; good wood, with brass ferrule.--one _foot rule_; varnished wood, has both the english and metric systems.--one _soldering set_; contains soldering iron, solder, resin, sal ammoniac, and directions; a very handy article.--one _center-punch_; finely tempered steel.--one pair of _tinner's shears_; these are best grade, inlaid steel cutting edges, polished and tempered, japanned handles; thoroughly reliable.--one _hollow handle tool set_; very useful; the polished handle holds 10 tools, gimlet, chisel, brad-awl, etc.--one _try square_; 6-in. blue steel blade, marked both sides in 1/8s, strongly riveted with brass rivets.--one _hack saw_; steel frame, 9½-in. polished steel blade, black enamel handle; very useful for sawing small pieces of wood. =for $5.00= will be included everything in the $3.50 offer, and the following: one _glue-pot_; medium size, with brush and best wood glue; inside pot has hinge cover.--one _ratchet screw-driver_; great improvement over ordinary screw-drivers; well made and useful.--one _hand drill_; frame malleable iron; hollow screw top holding 6 drills; bores from 1-16 to 3-16-in. holes; solid gear teeth; 3-jawed nickel plated chuck; a superior tool, and almost a necessity. =give the boy a set of tools= =thomas m. st. john, 848 ninth ave., new york= real electric toy-making for boys _by_ thomas m. st. john, met. e. this book contains 140 pages and over one hundred original drawings, diagrams, and full-page plates. it measures 5 x 7½ in., and is bound in cloth. price, post-paid, $1.00 =contents:= _chapter_ i. toys operated by permanent magnets.--ii. toys operated by static electricity.--iii. making electromagnets for toys.--iv. electric batteries.--v. circuits and connections.--vi. toys operated by electromagnets. vii. making solenoids for toys.--viii. toys operated by solenoids.--ix. electric motors.--x. power, speed, and gearing.--xi. shafting and bearings.--xii. pulleys and winding-drums.--xiii. belts and cables.--xiv. toys operated by electric motors.--xv. miscellaneous electric toys.--xvi. tools.--xvii. materials.--xviii. various aids to construction. while planning this book, mr. st. john definitely decided that he would not fill it with descriptions of complicated, machine-made instruments and apparatus, under the name of "toy-making," for it is just as impossible for most boys to get the parts for such things as it is for them to do the required machine work even after they have the raw materials. great care has been taken in designing the toys which are described in this book, in order to make them so simple that any boy of average ability can construct them out of ordinary materials. the author can personally guarantee the designs, for there is no guesswork about them. every toy was made, changed, and experimented with until it was as simple as possible; the drawings were then made from the perfected models. as the result of the enormous amount of work and experimenting which were required to originate and perfect so many new models, the author feels that this book may be truly called "real electric toy-making for boys." =every boy should make electrical toys.= the electric shooting game> a most original and fascinating game patent applied for and copyrighted [illustration] _=shooting by electricity=_ =the electric shooting game= is an entirely new idea, and one that brings into use that most mysterious something--_electricity_. the game is so simple that small children can play it, and as there are no batteries, acids, or liquids of any kind, there is absolutely no danger. the electricity is of such a nature that it is perfectly harmless--but very active. the "_game-preserve_" is neat and attractive, being printed in colors, and the birds and animals are well worth hunting. each has a fixed value--and some of them must not be shot at all--so there is ample opportunity for a display of skill in bringing down those which count most. "_electric bullets_" are actually shot from the "_electric gun_" by electricity. this instructive game will furnish a vast amount of amusement to all. _=the "game-preserve,"--the "electric gun,"--the "shooting-box,"--the "electric bullets,"--in fact, the entire electrical outfit, together with complete illustrated directions, will be sent in a neat box, post-paid, upon receipt of 50 cents, by=_ =thomas m. st. john, 848 ninth ave., new york= * * * * * transcriber's note: obvious punctuation errors were corrected. page 46, "turnnd" changed to "turned" (be turned to 1) page 66, word "a" added to text (in a glass jar) experiments and observations tending to illustrate the nature and properties of electricity. in one letter to _martin folkes_, esq; president, and two to the _royal society_. by _william watson_, f. r. s. _london_: printed for c. davis, printer to the _royal society_, against _gray's-inn, holborn_. mdccxlvi. [price one shilling.] the preface. _the following sheets were not intended to be made publick, but as part of the philosophical transactions. as those works are printed in the order of time they are read; these observations, communicated to the_ royal society _at different meetings, would, upon that account, have been publish'd separate in different numbers of those transactions. to satisfy therefore the impatience of several learned and very valuable friends, to whose importunities i have neither will, nor inclination to deny any thing in my power to grant, i caused a few copies to be printed, that the whole might be seen together, and then broke up the press. this has excited the curiosity of the publick, and raised a demand for these experiments much beyond what i had reason to expect. i therefore found it necessary to send them to the press a second time, lest some of those over-officious gentlemen, who are always ready on these occasions, should do it for me; so that whoever has an inclination, may now be made acquainted, by what means the several surprizing phænomena of electricity have been brought about._ _i chose to lay these papers before the publick in the same dress wherein they appeared before the very honourable and learned body, to whom, as the various effects of electricity presented themselves, they were regularly communicated, and from whom they met with a very favourable reception. many members of the_ royal society, _as well as several other persons of great rank and quality, have been repeated witnesses of the facts which are here laid before the world; particularly the present worthy president_, martin folkes, esq; _whose extensive abilities and great knowledge in every branch of useful literature are exceeded only by his candour and zeal in promoting science. the advice and assistance of this gentleman, whose friendship i shall always esteem as one of the greatest happinesses of my life, has been of great moment in the prosecution of these discoveries. i therefore take this publick manner of testifying my sincerest obligations as well to him, as to sir_ hans sloane, bart. _who, although retired from business, is nevertheless attentive to whatever tends to the advancement of philosophy. upon a report made to him of these experiments and observations, he, as surviving executor of sir_ godfrey copley, _was pleased to appoint me last year to receive the annual prize-medal of gold, given by the_ royal society _in consequence of sir_ godfrey's _benefaction. the honour of being so particularly taken notice of by gentlemen of such distinguished merit, as it cannot but give me the highest pleasure, so shall it ever continue to raise in me sentiments of the truest gratitude, and most profound respect._ _if it should be asked, to what useful purposes the effects of electricity can be applied, it may be answered, that we are not as yet so far advanced in these discoveries as to render them conducive to the service of mankind. perfection in any branch of philosophy is to be attained but by slow gradations. it is our duty to be still going forward; the rest we must leave to the direction of that providence, which we know assuredly, has created nothing in vain. but i make no scruple to assert, that notwithstanding the great advances, which have been made in this part of natural philosophy within these few years, many and great properties remain still undiscover'd. future philosophers (some perhaps even of the present age) may deduce from electrical experiments, uses extremely beneficial to society in general._ _no present advantage accrued to those persons, or to that age, which first discover'd the properties of the magnet. many hundreds of years intervened, before they were applied to the great uses of navigation. had these remain'd a secret till now, what other methods could have been substituted in their place, by which we could securely traverse the vast ocean? all the advantages we receive from distant commerce, we must still have been strangers to, but for this fortunate application of the magnetical power. and even the discoveries thus far had been very imperfect, without the knowledge of the variation of the compass. but the present age, and even this nation, boasts of a gentleman[1], who seems to be entrusted with the magnetical powers themselves. he makes artificial magnets, increases in a few minutes the powers of real ones to a surprizing degree, changes at pleasure their poles, and makes that newly acquired polarity, permanent. the world, i hope, will not long be deprived of the manner, by which these extraordinary changes are produced, which as yet this gentleman thinks proper to conceal. as electricity has some properties in common with magnetism, as will be shewn in the course of these observations; some new lights probably may be thrown upon both. but to return; admitting even, that no substantial advantages could arise from the inquiries before us, (which, however, we can by no means grant, upon our considering the effects we already perceive of its operations upon human bodies) whatever tends to enlarge the conceptions of the mind, and to implant in us still more lofty ideas of the almighty author of nature, deserves certainly, independent of other considerations, our highest regard._ _these experiments were all made with glass tubes of about two foot long; the bore about an inch in diameter. but a scrupulous exactness in these proportions is no ways necessary. the thinner and lighter these tubes are, the sooner they are excited; though they, 'tis true, don't retain their power so long as those, which are more thick and substantial. but where you intend to communicate the electrical power, as fast as you excite it, i should prefer a light tube; though it ought never to be less than 1/12 of an inch thick, because of the danger of breaking it by the friction._ _the tube, before it is rubbed, should be always made dry and warm, which may be done by laying it before the fire. but i cannot omit hereupon making one further remark_; viz. _that glass tubes, exactly of the same dimensions, made at the same time, and with the same materials, vary considerably with regard to their fitness for electrical purposes. clear and dry air with some degree of cold is most eligible, though i have succeeded in the greatest fogs, but with more difficulty._ to _martin folkes_, esq; p. r. s. _sir_, the society having heard from some of their correspondents in _germany_, that what they call a vegetable quintessence had been fired by electricity, i take this opportunity to acquaint you, that on _friday_ evening last i succeeded, after having been disappointed in many attempts, in setting spirits of wine on fire by that power. the preceding part of the week had been remarkably warm, and the air very dry, than which nothing is more necessary towards the success of electrical trials; to these i may add, that the wind was then easterly and inclining to freeze. i that evening used a glass sphere as well as a tube; but i always find myself capable of sending forth much more fire from the tube than from the sphere, probably from not being sufficiently used to the last. i had before observ'd, that although[2] non-electric bodies made electrical, lose almost all that electricity by coming either within or near the contact of _non-electrics_ not made electrical; it happens otherwise with regard to _electrics per se_, when excited by rubbing, patting, _&c_; because from the rubbed tube i can sometimes procure five or six flashes from different parts, as though the tube of two foot long, instead of being one continued cylinder, consisted of five or six separate segments of cylinders, each of which gave out its electricity at a different explosion. the knowledge of this theorem is of the utmost consequence towards the success of electrical experiments; inasmuch as you must endeavour by all possible means to collect the whole of this fire at the same time. professor _hollman_ seems to have endeavour'd at this and succeeded, by having a tin tube, in one end of which he put a great many threads, whose extremities touch'd the sphere when in motion, and each thread collected a quantity of electrical fire, the whole of which center'd in the tin tube, and went off at the other extremity. another thing to be observ'd, is to endeavour to make the flashes follow each other so fast, as that a second may be visible before the first is extinguish'd. when you transmit the electrical fire along a sword or other instrument, whose point is sharp, it often appears as a number of disseminated sparks, like wet gunpowder or _wild-fire_; but if the instrument has no point, you generally perceive a pure bright flame, like what is vulgarly call'd the _blue-ball_, which gives the appearance of stars to fired rockets. the following is the method i made use of and was happy enough to succeed in. i suspended a poker in silk lines; at the handle of which i hung several little bundles of white thread, the extremities of which were about a foot at right angles from the poker. among these threads, which were all attracted by the rubbed tube, i excited the greatest electrical fire i was capable, whilst an assistant near the end of the poker held in his hand a spoon, in which were the warm spirits. thus the thread communicated the electricity to the poker, and the spirit was fired at the other end. it must be observ'd in this experiment, that the spoon with the spirit must not touch the poker; if it does, the electricity without any flashing is communicated to the spoon, and to the assistant in whose hand it is held, and so is lost in the floor. by these means, i fired several times not only the ætherial liquor or phlogiston of _frobenius_ and rectified spirit of wine, but even common proof spirit. these experiments, as i before observ'd, were made last _friday_ night, the air being perfectly dry. _sunday_ proved wet and _monday_ somewhat warm, so that the air was full of vapour; wind south-west and cloudy. under these disadvantages, on _monday_ night i attempted again my experiments; they succeeded, but with infinitely more labour than the preceeding, because of the unfitness of the evening for such trials. _your candour_ will not permit you to think my minuteness trivial, with regard to the circumstances of the weather, who know, how many things must concur to make these experiments succeed. i shall wait with impatience for a proper opportunity to have these experiments repeated in your presence, and am, with the utmost respect, _sir, your most obedient,_ _humble servant_, w. watson. _aldersgate-street, march 27. 1746._ to the royal society. gentlemen, i lately acquainted you, that i had been able to fire spirit of wine, _phlogiston_ of _frobenius_, and common proof spirit, by the power of electricity. since which (till yesterday) we have had but one very dry fine day; _viz._ _monday, april 15_. wind e. n. e.; when about four o'clock in the afternoon, i got my _apparatus_ ready, and fired the spirit of wine four times from the poker as before, three times from the finger of a person electrified, standing upon a cake of wax, and once from the finger of a second person standing upon wax, communicating with the first by means of a walking cane held between their arms extended. the horizontal distance in this case between the glass tube and the spirit was at least ten feet. you all know, that there is the repulsive power of electricity, as well as the attractive; inasmuch as you are able, when a feather or such-like light substance is replete with electricity, to drive it about a room, which way you please. this repulsive power continues, until either the tube loses its excited force, or the feather attracts the moisture from the air, or comes near to some non-electric substance; if so, the feather is attracted by, and its electricity lost in, whatever non-electric it comes near. in electrified bodies, you see a perpetual endeavour to get rid of their electricity. this induced me to make the following experiment. i placed a man upon a cake of wax, who held in one of his hands a spoon with the warm spirits, and in the other a poker with the thread. i rubbed the tube amongst the thread, and electrified him as before. i then ordered a person not electrified to bring his finger near the middle of the spoon; upon which, the flash from the spoon and spirit was violent enough to fire the spirit. this experiment i then repeated three times. in this method, the person by whose finger the spirit of wine is fired, feels the stroke much more violent, than when the electrical fire goes from him to the spoon. this method for the sake of distinction, we will call the repulsive power of electricity. the late dr. _desaguliers_ has observed in his excellent dissertation concerning electricity, "that there is a sort of capriciousness attending these experiments, or something unaccountable in their phænomena, not to be reduced to any rule. for sometimes an experiment, which has been made several times successively, will all at once fail." now i imagine that the greatest part, if not the whole of this matter, depends upon the moisture or dryness of the air, a sudden though slight alteration in which, perhaps not sufficient to be obvious to our faculties, may be perceived by the very subtle fire of electricity. for _1st_, i conceive, that the air itself (as has been observed by dr. _desaguliers_) is an _electric per se_ and of the vitreous kind; therefore it repels the electricity arising from the glass tube, and disposes it to electrify whatever non-electrical bodies receive the effluvia from the tube. _2dly_, that water is a _non-electric_, and of consequence a conductor of electricity; this is exemplified by a jett of water being attracted by the tube, _from either electric_'s _per se_ conducting electricity, and _non-electric_'s more readily when wetted; but what is more to my present purpose, is, that if you only blow through a dry glass tube, the moisture from your breath will cause that tube to be a conductor of electricity. these being premised; in proportion as the air is replete with watery vapours, the electricity arising from the tube, instead of being conducted as proposed, is, by means of these vapours, communicated to the circum-ambient atmosphere and dissipated as fast as excited. this theory has been confirmed to me by divers experiments, but by none more remarkably than on the evening of the day i made those before-mention'd; when the vapours, which in the afternoon by the sun's heat, and a brisk gale were dissipated, and the air perfectly dry, descended again in great plenty upon the absence of both, and the evening was very damp. for between seven and eight o'clock, i attempted again the same experiments in the same manner, without being able to make any of them succeed; though all those mention'd in this paper with others of less note, were made in half an hour's time. i am the more particular in this, being willing to save the labour of those, who are desirous of making these kind of trials; for although some of the lesser experiments may succeed almost at any time, yet i never could find that the more remarkable ones would succeed but in dry weather. _i am, gentlemen,_ _your most obedient,_ _humble servant,_ w. watson. _london, april 25. 1745._ [illustration] to the royal society. gentlemen, in some papers i lately did myself the honour to lay before you, i acquainted you of some experiments in electricity; particularly i took notice of having been able to fire spirit of wine by what i call'd the repulsive power thereof; which i have not heard had been thought of by any of those _german_ gentlemen, to whom the world is obliged for many surprizing discoveries in this part of natural philosophy. how far strictly speaking the spirit in this operation may be said to be fired by the repulsive power of electricity, or how far that power, which repels light substances when fully impregnated with electricity, fires the spirit, may probably be the subject of a future inquiry; but as i am unwilling to introduce more terms into any demonstration than what are absolutely necessary for the more ready conception thereof, and as inflammable substances may be fired by electricity two different ways, let the following definitions at present suffice of each of these methods. but first give me leave to premise, that no inflammable substances will take fire, when brought into or near the contact of _electrics per se_ excited to electricity. this effect must be produced by non-electrical substances impregnated with electricity received from the exciting _electrics per se_. but to return, _1st_, i suppose that inflammable substances are fired by the attractive power of electricity, when this effect arises from their being brought near excited non-electrics. _2dly_, that inflammable substances are fired by the repulsive power of electricity; when it happens, that the inflammable substances, being first electrified themselves, are fired by being brought near non-electrics not excited. this matter will be better illustrated by an example. suppose that either a man standing upon a cake of wax, or a sword suspended in silk lines are electrified, and the spirit, being brought near them, is fired, this is said to be perform'd by the attractive power of electricity. but if the man electrified as before holds a spoon in his hand containing the spirit, or the same spoon and spirit are placed upon the sword, and a person not electrified applies his finger near the spoon, and the spirit is fired from the flame arising from the spoon and spirit upon such application; this i call being fired by the repulsive power. of the two mention'd kinds i generally find the repulsive power strongest. since my last communication, the spirit has been fired both by the attractive and repulsive power through four persons standing upon electrical cakes; each communicating with the other either by the means of a walking cane, a sword, or any other non-electric substance. it has likewise been fired from the handle of a sword held in the hand of a third person. i have not only fired _frobenius_'s phlogiston, rectified-spirit and common proof-spirit, but also sal volatile oleosum, spirit of lavender, dulcified spirit of nitre, peony water, _daffy_'s elixir, _helvetius_'s stiptic, and some other mixtures where the spirit has been very considerably diluted; likewise distilled vegetable oils, such as that of turpentine, lemon, orange peels and juniper, and even those of them, which are specifically heavier than water, as oil of sassafras; also resinous substances, such as balsam capivi and turpentine; all which send forth, when warmed, an inflammable vapour. but expressed vegetable oils, as those of olives, linseed, and almonds, as well as tallow, all whose vapours are uninflammable, i have not been able yet to fire; but these indeed will not fire on the application of lighted paper. besides, if these last would fire with lighted paper, unless their vapours were inflammable, i can scarce conceive they would fire by electricity; because in firing spirits, _&c._ i always perceive that the electricity snaps before it comes in contact with their surfaces, and therefore only fires their inflammable vapours. as an excited non-electric emits almost all its fire, if once touch'd by a non-electric not excited, i was desirous of being satisfy'd, whether or no the fire emitted would not be greater or less in proportion to the volume of the electrified body. in order to this i procur'd an iron bar about five feet long and near 170 pounds in weight; this i electrified lying on cakes of wax and rosin, but observed the flashes arising therefrom not more violent than those from a common poker. in making this experiment, being willing to try the repulsive force, it once happen'd that whilst the bar was at one end electrifying, a spoon lay upon the other, and upon an assistant's pouring some warm spirit into the spoon, the electrical flash from the spoon snapped and fired the first drop of the spirit, which unexpectedly fired not only the whole jett as it was pouring, but kindled likewise the whole quantity in the pot, in which i usually have it warm'd. i find, in firing inflammable substances from the finger of a man standing upon wax, that _cæteris paribus_ the success is more constant, if the man instead of holding the thread (the use of which i communicated in a former paper) in his hand, the thread is suspended at the end of an iron rod held in one hand, and he touches the spirit with one of the fingers of the other. if a man, standing upon the electrical cake with a dish or deep plate of water in one hand, and the iron rod with the thread in the other, is made electrical; and a person not electrified touches any part either of the plate or water, the flashes of fire come out plentifully, and wherever you bring your finger very near, the water rises up in a little cone, from the point of which the fire is produced, and your finger, though not in actual contact, is made wet. the same experiment succeeds through three or more people. in firing inflammable substances, the person who holds the spoon in his hand to receive the electrical flashes, when the finger of the electrified person is brought near thereto, not only feels a tingling in his hand, but even a slight pain up to his elbow. this is most perceptible in dry weather, when the electricity is very powerful. there is a considerable difficulty in firing _electrics per se_, such as turpentine, and balsam capivi, by the repulsive power of electricity; because in this case these substances will not permit the electricity to pass through them; therefore when you would have this experiment succeed, the finger of the person, who is to fire them, is to be applied as near to the edge as possible of these substances when warm'd in a spoon, that the flashes from the spoon (for these substances will emit none) may snap, where they are spread the thinnest, and then fire their effluvia. this experiment, as well as several others, serves to confute that opinion, which has prevail'd with many, that the electricity floats only upon the surfaces of bodies. if an electrical cake is dipp'd in water, it is thereby made a conductor of electricity, the water hanging about it transmitting the electrical effluvia in such a manner, that a person standing thereon can by no means be electrified enough to attract the leaf gold at the smallest distance; though the person standing upon the same cake when dry, attracted a piece of fine thread hanging at the distance of two feet from his finger. we must here observe that the cake being of an unctuous substance, the water will no where lie uniformly thereon, but adhere in separate moleculæ; so that in this instance the electricity jumps from one particle of water to another, till the whole is dissipated. from the appearance of the threads amongst which i rub the tube, i can frequently judge, though the spirit may be many feet distant from them, whether or no it will fire; because when the persons standing upon the wax are made electrical enough to fire the spirit, the threads repel each other at their lower parts, where they are not confin'd, to a considerable distance, and this distance is in proportion as the threads are made electrical. if two persons stand upon electrical cakes at about a yard's distance from each other, one of which persons, for the sake of distinction, we will call a, the other b: if a when electrified touches b, a loses almost all his electricity at that touch only, which is receiv'd by b and stopp'd by the electrical cake; if a is immediately electrified again to the same degree as before and touches b, the snapping is less upon the touch; and this snapping, upon electrifying a, grows less and less, till b being impregnated with electricity, though receiv'd at intervals, the snapping will no longer be sensible. that glass will repel and not conduct the electricity of glass, has been mention'd by others, who have treated of this subject; but the experiments to determine this matter must be conducted with a great deal of caution; for unless the glass tube, intended to conduct the electricity, be as warm as the external air, it will seem to prove the contrary, unless in very dry places and seasons. thus, i sometimes have brought a cold, though dry, glass tube near three feet long into a room, where there has been a number of people; when upon placing the tube upon silk lines, and laying some leaf silver upon a card at one end and rubbing another glass tube at the other, the silver has, contrary to expectation, been thrown off as readily as from an iron rod. at first i was surpriz'd at this appearance, but then conjectur'd, that it must arise from the coldness of the glass, condensing the floating vapour of the room; in order then to obviate this, i warm'd the tube sufficiently, and this effect was no longer produced, but the silver lay perfectly still. if a number of pieces of finely spun glass cut to about an inch in length, little bits of fine wire of the same length of what metal you please, and small cork balls, are either put all together, or each by themselves, into a dry pewter plate, or upon a piece of polish'd metal, they make in the following manner a very odd and surprizing appearance. let a man, standing upon electrical cakes, hold this plate in his hand with the bits of glass, wire, _&c._ detached from each other, as much as conveniently may be; when he is electrified, let him cause a person standing upon the ground to bring another plate, his hand, or any other non-electric, exactly over the plate containing these bodies. when his hand, _&c._ is about eight inches over them, let him bring it down gently: as it comes near, in proportion to the strength of the electricity, he will observe the bits of glass first raise themselves upright; and then, if he brings his hand nearer, dart directly up and stick to it without snapping. the bits of wire will fly up likewise, and as they come near the hand, snap aloud; you feel a smart stroke, and see the fire arising from them to the hand at every stroke; each of these, as soon as they have discharged their fire, falls down again upon the plate. the cork balls also fly up, and strike your hand, but fall again directly. you have a constant succession of these appearances as long as you continue to electrify the man, in whose hand the plate is held; but if you touch any part either of the man or plate, the pieces of glass, which before were upon their ends, immediately fall down. some few years ago, sir _james lowther_ brought some bladders fill'd with inflammable air, collected from his coal-mines, to the royal society. this air flam'd upon a lighted candle being brought near it. this inflammability has occasion'd many terrible accidents. mr. _maud_, a worthy member of this society, made at that time by art, and shew'd the society, air exactly of the same quality. i was desirous of knowing if this air would be kindled by electrical flashes. i accordingly made such air by putting an ounce of filings of iron, an ounce of oil of vitriol and four ounces of water into a florence flask; upon which an ebullition ensued, and the air, which arose from these materials, not only fill'd three bladders, but also, upon the application of the finger of an electrified person, took flame and burnt near the top and out of the neck of the flask a considerable time. when the flame is almost out, shake the flask and the flame revives. you must with your finger dipped in water, moisten the mouth of the flask as fast as it is dried by the heat within, or the electricity will not fire it: because the flask being an electric _per se_ will not snap at the application of the finger, without the glass being first made non-electric by wetting. it has sometimes happen'd, if the finger has been applied before the inflammable air has found a ready exit from the mouth of the flask, that the flash has fill'd the flask, and gone off with an explosion equal to the firing of a large pistol, and sometimes indeed it has burst the flask. the same effect is produced from the spirit of sea salt, as from oil of vitriol; but as the acid of sea salt is much lighter than that of vitriol, there is no necessity to add the water in this experiment. those who are not much acquainted with chemical philosophy, may think it very extraordinary, that from a mixture of cold substances, which both conjunctly and separately are uninflammable, this very inflammable vapour should be produced. in order to solve this, it may not be improper to premise, that iron is compounded of a metallic as well as a sulphurous part. this sulphur is so fix'd, that, after heating the iron red hot, and even melting it ever so often, the sulphur will not be disengaged therefrom: but upon the mixture of the vitriolic acid, and by the heat and ebullition which are almost instantly produced, the metallic part is dissolved, and the sulphur, which before was intimately connected therewith, being disengaged, becomes volatile. this heat and ebullition continues 'till the vitriolic acid is perfectly saturated with the metallic part of the iron, and the vapour once fired continues to flame, until this saturation being effected, no more of the sulphur flies off. i have heretofore mentioned, how considerably perfectly dry air conduces to the success of these experiments; but we have been lately informed by an extract of a letter, that _abbé nolet_ was of opinion, that they would succeed in wet weather, provided the tubes were made of glass, tinged blue with zaffer. i have procured tubes of this sort, but, after giving them many candid trials, i cannot think them equal to their recommendation. i first tried one of them in a smart shower of rain after a dry day, when the drops were large, and the spirit fired three times in about four minutes; the same effect succeeded, under the same circumstances, from the white one; but after three or four hours raining, when the air was perfectly wet, i never could make it succeed. and to illustrate this matter further, i have been able when the weather has been very dry, with once rubbing my hand down this blue tube, and applying it to the end of an iron rod six feet long, to throw off several pieces of leaf-silver lying upon a card at the other end of this rod, whereas i never have been able to throw it off by any means in very wet weather. besides, i am of opinion, that after the electrical fire is gone from the tube, the tube has no share in the conducting of it; my sentiments on that head i laid before you in a former paper: for if the silk lines are wetted, they diffuse all the electricity, and the same effects happen when the air is wet, be your glass of what colour it will. it may not be improper here to observe, that zaffer, which is used by the glass-makers and enamellers, is made of cobalt or mundick calcin'd after the subliming the flowers. this being reduced to a very fine powder, and mixt with twice or thrice its own weight of finely powdered flints, is moisten'd with water and put up in barrels, in which it soon runs into a hard mass and is call'd zaffer. a dry sponge hanging by a pack-thread at the end of an electrified sword, or from the hand of an electrified man, gives no signs of being made electrical; if it is well soak'd in water, wherever it is touched, you both see and feel the electrical sparks. not only so, but if it is so full of water, that it falls from the sponge, those drops in a dark room, receiv'd upon your hand, not only flash and snap, but you perceive a pricking pain. if you hold your hand, or any non-electrical substances, very near, the water which had ceased dropping when the sponge was not electrified, drops again upon its being electrified, and the drops fall in proportion to the receiv'd electricity, as though the sponge were gently squeez'd between your fingers. i was desirous to know if i was able to electrify a drop of cold water, dropping from the sponge, enough to fire the spirit; but after many unsuccessful trials, i was forced to desist; because the cold water dropping from the sponge not only cool'd the spirit too much, but also render'd it too weak; likewise, every drop carried with it great part of the electricity from the sponge. i then consider'd, in what manner, i could give a tenacity to the water, sufficient to make the drops hang a considerable time, and this i brought about by making a mucilage of the seeds of fleawort. a wet sponge then, squeez'd hard and fill'd with this cold mucilage, was held in the hand of an electrified man, when the drops forced out by the electricity, assisted by the tenacity of the liquor, hung some inches from the sponge, and by a drop of this i fir'd not only the spirit of wine, but likewise the inflammable air before mentioned, both with and without the explosion. what an extraordinary effect is this! that a drop of cold water (for the seeds contribute nothing but add consistence to the water) should be the medium of fire and flame. camphor is a vegetable resin, and of consequence an electric _per se_. this substance, notwithstanding its great inflammability, will not take fire from the finger of a man or any other body electrified, though made very warm and the vapours arise therefrom in great abundance. because, neither electric's _per se_ excited, or electrified bodies, exert their force by snapping upon electric's _per se_, though not excited. if you break camphor small and warm it in a spoon, it is not melted by heat like other resins; but if that heat were continued it would all prove volatile. to camphor thus warm'd, the finger of an electrified man, a sword or such-like, will in snapping exert its force upon the spoon, and the circum-ambient vapour of the camphor will be fired thereby, and light up the whole quantity exposed. the same experiment succeeds by the repulsive power of electricity. a poker thoroughly ignited put into spirit of wine, or into the distilled oil of vegetables, produces no flame in either; it indeed occasions the vapours to arise from the oil in great abundance. but if you electrify this heated poker, the electrical flashes presently kindle flame in either. the experiment is the same with camphor. these experiments, as well as the following, sufficiently evince, that the electrical fire is truly flame, and that extreamly subtil. i have made several trials in order to fire gunpowder alone, which i tried both warm and cold, whole and powder'd, but never could make it succeed; and this arises in part from its vapours not being inflammable, and in part from its not being capable of being fir'd by flame, unless the sulphur in the composition is nearly in the state of accension. this we see by putting gunpowder into a spoon with rectified spirit, which, when lighted, will not fire the powder, 'till by the heat of the spoon from the burning spirit, the sulphur is almost melted. likewise, if you hold gunpowder ground very fine in a spoon over a lighted candle, or any other flame, as soon as the spoon is hot enough to melt the sulphur, you see a blue flame, and instantly the powder flashes off. the same effects are observ'd in the _pulvis fulminans_, compos'd of nitre, sulphur, and fixed alkaline salt. besides, when the gunpowder is very dry and ground very fine, it (as you please to make the experiment) is either attracted, or repell'd; so that in the first case, the end of your finger when electrified, shall be cover'd over with the powder, though held at some distance; and in the other, if you electrify the powder, it will fly off at the approach of any non-electrified substance, and sometimes even without it. but i can at pleasure fire gunpowder, and even discharge a musket, by the power of electricity, when the gunpowder has been ground with a little camphor or with a few drops of some inflammable chemical oil. this oil somewhat moistens the powder, and prevents its flying away; the gunpowder then being warm'd in a spoon, the electrical flashes fire the inflammable vapour, which fires the gunpowder: but the time between the vapour firing the powder is so short, that frequently they appear as the same and not successive operations, wherein the gunpowder itself seems fired by the electricity; and indeed the first time this experiment succeeded, the flash was so sudden and unexpected, that the hand of my assistant, who touch'd the spoon with his finger, was considerably scorch'd. so that there seems a fourth ingredient necessary to make gunpowder readily take fire by flame, and that such a one, as will heighten the inflammability of the sulphur. in common cases the lighted match or the little portion of red hot glass, which falls among the powder, and is the result of the collision from the flint and steel, fires the charcoal and sulphur, and these the nitre. but if to these three ingredients you add a fourth, _viz._ a vegetable chemical oil, and gently warm this mixture, the oil by the warmth mixes intimately with the sulphur, lowers its consistence, and makes it readily take fire by flame. in these operations, notwithstanding i always made use of the finest scented oils of orange peel, lemons, and such like, yet upon the least warming the mixture, the rank smell of balsam (_i. e._ the ready solution) of sulphur was very obvious. read before the r. s. _oct. 24. 1745_. _a continuation of the above._ read, _feb. 6. 1745_. as water is a non-electric, and of consequence a conductor of electricity, i had reason to believe that ice was endowed with the same properties. upon making the experiment i found my conjectures not without foundation; for upon electrifying a piece of ice, wherever the ice was touched by a non-electric, it flashed and snapped. a piece of ice also held in the hand of an electrified man, as in the beforementioned processes, fired warm spirit, chemical vegetable oils, camphor, and gunpowder prepared as before. but here great care must be taken, that by the warmth of the hand, or of the air in the room, the ice does not melt; if so, every drop of water therefrom considerably diminishes the received electricity. in order to obviate this, i caused my assistant, while he was electrifying, to be continually wiping the ice dry upon a napkin hung to the buttons of his coat, and this being electrified as well as the ice, prevented any loss of the force of the electricity. the experiment will succeed likewise, if, instead of the ice, you electrify the spirit, _&c._ and bring the ice not electrified near them. i must observe, that ice is not so ready a conductor of electricity as water; so that i very frequently have been disappointed in endeavouring with it to fire inflammable substances, when it has been readily done by a sword or the finger of a man. in the first paper[3] i had the honour to lay before you upon this subject, i took notice of my having observed two different appearances of the fire from electrified substances; _viz_. those large bright flashes, which may be procured from any part of electrified bodies, by bringing a non-electric unexcited near them, and with which we have fired all the inflammable substances mentioned in the course of these observations; and those, like the firing of wet gunpowder, which are only perceptible at the points or edges of excited non-electrics. these last also appear different in colour and form according to the substances from which they proceed: for from polished bodies, as the point of a sword, a silver probe, the points of scissors, and the edges of the steel-bar made magnetical by the ingenious dr. _knight_, the electrical fire appears like a pencil of rays, agreeing in colour with the fire from _boyle_'s phosphorus; but from unpolished bodies, as the end of a poker, a rusty nail or such-like, the rays are much more red. the difference of colour here, i am of opinion, is owing rather to the different reflection of the electrical fire from the surface of the body from which it is emitted, than to any difference in the fire itself. these pencils of rays issue successively as long as the bodies, from which they proceed, are exciting; but they are longer and more brilliant, if you bring any non-electric not excited near them, though it must not be close enough to make them snap. if you hold your hand at about two or three inches distance from these points, you not only feel successive blasts of wind from them, but hear also a crackling noise. where there are several points, you observe at the same time several pencils of rays. * * * * * it appears from experiments, that besides the several properties, that electricity is possess'd of peculiar to itself, it has some in common with magnetism and light. proposition i. in common with magnetism, electricity counteracts, and in light substances overcomes the force of gravity. like that extraordinary power likewise, it exerts its force _in vacuo_ as powerfully as in open air, and this force is extended to a considerable distance through various substances of different textures and densities. corollary. gravity is the general endeavour and tendency of bodies towards the center of the earth; this is overcome by the magnet with regard to iron, and by electricity with regard to light substances both in its attraction and repulsion; but i have never been able to discern that vortical motion, by which this effect was said to be brought about by the late dr. _desaguliers_ and others, having no other conception of its manner of acting than as rays from a center, which indeed is confirmed by several experiments. one of which, very easy to be tried, is, that if a single downy seed of cotton grass is dropped from a man's hand, and in its fall comes within the attraction of the rubbed tube; the down of this seed, which before seemed to stick together, separates, and forms rays round the center of the seed: or if you fasten many of these seeds with mucilage of gum arabic, round a bit of stick, the down of them when electrified, which otherwise hangs from the stick, is raised up, and forms a circular appearance round the stick. as these light bodies are directed in their motions, only by the force impressed upon them, and as their appearance is constantly _radiatim_, such appearance by no means squares with our idea of a vortex. some have imagined a polarity also, when they have observed one end of an excited glass tube repel light substances, and the other attract them. but this deception, arising from the whole length of the tube not being excited, but only such part of it as has been rubbed; so that as much of the tube as is held in the hand, remains in an unexcited state, and permits light substances to lie still thereon, though forcibly repell'd at the other end. this attractive power of electricity acts not only upon non-electrics, as leaf-gold, silver, thread, and such like, but also upon originally electrics, as silk, dry feathers, little pieces of glass and resin; it attracts all bodies, that are not of the same standard of electricity, (if i may be allowed the expression) as the excited body from which it proceeds. i have found no body however dense, whose pores are not pervious to electricity by a proper management, not even gold itself. proposition ii. in common with light, electricity pervades glass, but suffers no refraction therefrom; i having from the most exact observations found its direction to be in right lines, and that through glasses of different forms, included one within the other, and large spaces left between each glass. corollary. this rectilineal direction is observable only as far as the electricity can penetrate through unexcited originally-electrics, and those perfectly dry; nor is it at all material, whether these substances are transparent, as glass; semidiaphanous, as porcelain or thin cakes of white wax; or quite opake, as thick woollen cloth, as well as woven silk of various colours; it is only necessary that they be originally-electrics. but the case is widely different with regard to non-electrics; wherein the direction, given to the electricity by the excited originally-electric, is alter'd as soon as it touches the surface of a non-electric, and is propagated with a degree of swiftness scarcely to be measured in all possible directions to impregnate the whole non-electric mass in contact with it, or nearly so, however different in itself, and which must of necessity be terminated by an originally electric, before the electricity exerts the least attraction, and then this power is observed first at that part of the non-electric the most remote from the originally-electric. thus for example, by an excited tube held over it, leaf gold will be attracted through glass, cloth, _&c._ held horizontally in the hand of a man standing upon the floor, and this attraction is exerted to a considerable distance. on the contrary, the rubbed tube will not attract leaf gold or other light bodies, however near, through silver, tin, the thinnest board, paper, or any other non-electric, held in the manner before-mentioned. but if you rub the paper over with wax melted, and by that means introduce the originally-electric therein, you observe the electricity acts in right lines, and attracts powerfully. and here i must beg leave to remind you, not only of the former corollary, but of some of the former experiments also; by which it appears, that although, to make a non-electric exert any power, we must excite the whole mass thereof, yet we can excite what part, and what only, of an originally-electric we please. thus we observe, that leaf-gold, and the seed of cotton-grass, (which grows upon boggs and is a very proper subject for these inquiries) are attracted under a glass jar made warm[4], and turned bottom upwards, upon which are placed books and several other non-electrics; and that the motions of the light bodies underneath correspond with the motions of the glass tube held over them, the electricity seeming instantaneously to pass through the books and the glass. but this does not happen, till the electricity has fully impregnated the non-electrics, which lie upon the glass, which received electricity is stopped by the glass, and then these non-electrics dart their power directly through the upper part of the glass after the manner of originally-electrics. but if the thinnest non-electric, even the finest paper, as i before mentioned, is held in the hand of a man at the smallest distance over the leaf-gold, and the electricity is not stopped, not the least power will be exerted, and the gold will lie still. i must here remark likewise, that this law of electricity is so constant and regular, that i have not found one deviation from it; so that even the quicksilver, spread thin as it usually is at the back of a plate of a looking-glass, will prevent the passing through of the electrical attraction, unless stopped by an originally-electric. this penetration of the electrical power through originally-electrics is much greater than has hitherto been imagined, and has caused the want of success to great numbers of experiments. i have been at no small pains to determine, how far this power can penetrate through a dry originally-electric; and have found by repeated trials, that either in a cake of wax alone, or of wax and resin mixed, when the electricity is very powerful, it has passed, i say, in straight lines through these cakes of the thickness of 2 inches and 4/10; but i never could make it act through one of 2 inches 8/10, for in this it was perfectly stopped. so that the cakes commonly made use of to stop the electricity, by being too thin, suffer a considerable quantity of the electrical power to pervade them, and be lost in the floor. i make no doubt, if the electrical power could be more increased, it would penetrate much further through these originally-electric bodies. proposition iii. electricity, in common with light likewise, when its forces are collected and a proper direction given thereto upon a proper object, produces fire and flame. corollary. the fire of electricity (as i have before observed) is extremely delicate, and sets on fire, as far as i have yet experienced, only inflammable vapours. nor is this flame at all heightned by being superinduced upon an iron rod, red hot with coarser culinary fire, as in a preceeding experiment; nor diminished by being directed upon cold water. however i was desirous of knowing, if this flame would be effected by a still greater degree of cold; and in order to determine this, i made an artificial cold; by which the mercury, in a very nice thermometer adjusted to _fahrenheit_'s scale, was depressed in about 4 minutes from 15 degrees above the freezing point to 30 degrees below it, that is, the mercury fell 45 degrees. from this cold mixture, when electrified, the flashes were as powerful and the stroke as smart as from the red hot iron. i could have made the cold more intense, but the above was sufficient for my purpose. this experiment seems to indicate, that the fire of electricity is affected neither by the presence or absence of other fire. for as red hot iron, by sir _isaac newton_'s scale of heat, is fixed at 192 degrees, and as the ratio between sir _isaac_'s degrees and _fahrenheit_'s is as 34 to 180, it necessarily follows, that the difference of heat between the hot iron and the cold mixture is 1040 degrees; and nevertheless this vast difference makes no alteration in the appearance of the electrical flame. we find likewise, that as the fire, arising from the refraction of the rays of light by a _lens_, and brought to a _focus_, is observed first at some small distance from their surfaces, to set on fire combustible substances; the same effect, as i have before observ'd, is produced in like manner by electrical flame. i may perhaps be thought too minute in some of the before-mentioned particulars; but in inquiries abstruse as these are, where we have so little _a priori_ to direct us, the greatest attention must be had to every circumstance, if we are truly desirous of investigating the laws of this surprizing power. for, as has been said upon another occasion by my ever honoured friend martin folkes, esq; our most worthy president, "that electricity seems to furnish an inexhaustible fund for inquiry; and sure phænomena so various and so wonderful can arise only from causes very general and extensive, and such as must have been designed by the almighty author of nature for the production of very great effects, and such as are of great moment to the system of the universe." if these observations receive the countenance of this learned society, i shall think myself sufficiently recompensed, and am, _gentlemen, with the highest esteem,_ _your most obedient_ _humble servant_, w. watson. _finis._ ----footnote 1: dr. _gowin knight_, f. r. s. footnote 2: i call _electrics per se_ or originally-_electrics_, those bodies, in which an attractive power towards light substances is easily excited by friction; such as glass, amber, sulphur, sealing-wax, and most dry parts of animals, as silk, hair, and such like. i call _non-electrics_ or conductors of electricity, those bodies, in which the above property is not at all or very slightly perceptible; such as wood, animals living or dead, metals and vegetable substances. see _gray_, _du fay_, _desaguliers_, _wheler_, in the philosophical transactions. footnote 3: page 6. footnote 4: i have constantly observed, that the electrical attraction through glass is much more powerful, when the glass is made warm, than when cold. this effect may proceed from a two-fold cause: first, warm glass does not condense the water from the air, which makes the glass, as has been before[5] demonstrated, a conductor of electricity: secondly; as heat enlarges the dimensions of all known bodies, and consequently causes their constituent parts to recede from each other, the electrical effluvia, passing in straight lines, find probably a more ready passage through their pores. footnote 5: page 13. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- transcriber's note: all footnotes moved to the end of the text. page 5, 'contract' changed to 'contact,' "the contact of non-electrics..." page 6, 'power' changed to 'poker,' "i suspended a poker in silk lines;" page 7, second 'it' struck, "if it does..." page 9, 'o'clock' rejoined. page 9, period added to 'e. n. e.' page 22, 'erectified' changed to 'electrified,' "and a person not electrified..." page 49, 'it' changed to 'itself,' "not even gold itself." [illustration: first direct-connected electric generator unit of large capacity ever constructed up to the time it was made by thomas a. edison in june, 1881. capacity, 1200 incandescent lamps of 16 candle-power each] a-b-c of electricity by william h. meadowcroft harper & brothers publishers new york & london a-b-c of electricity copyright, 1888, 1909, by william h. meadowcroft copyright, 1915, by harper & brothers printed in the united states of america published may, 1915 from the laboratory of thomas a. edison orange, n. j. mr. w. h. meadowcroft, _new york city_. _dear sir_: _i have read the ms. of your "a-b-c of electricity," and find that the statements you have made therein are correct. your treatment of the subject, and arrangement of the matter, have impressed me favorably. _yours truly_, _thos. a. edison_ contents chap. page introduction to new edition viii preface x i. 1 ii. definitions 3 iii. magnetism 16 iv. the telegraph 23 v. wireless telegraphy 33 vi. the telephone 40 vii. electric light 54 viii. electric power 87 ix. batteries 95 x. conclusion 127 introduction to new edition the favor with which this book has been received has brought about the preparation of this new edition. the present volume has been enlarged by the addition of certain new material and it has been entirely reset. some new illustrations have been made, and in its new dress the book, it is hoped, will be found to afford an even larger measure of usefulness. the principles of the science remain the same, but the author is glad of the opportunity to note certain developments in their application. w. h. m. edison laboratory, _april, 1915_. preface while there is no lack of most excellent text-books for the study of those branches of electricity which are above the elementary stage, there is a decided need of text-books which shall explain, in simple language, to young people of, say, fourteen years and upward, a general outline of the science, as well as the ground-work of those electrical inventions which are to-day of such vast commercial importance. there is also a need for such a book among a large part of the adult population, for the reason that there have been great and radical changes in this science since the time they completed their studies, and they have not the time to follow up the subject in the advanced books. as instances of those changes just spoken of, the electric light, telephone, and storage batteries may be mentioned, which have been developed during the last ten or twelve years, with the result of adding very many features that were entirely new to electricians. with these ideas in view i have prepared this little volume. it is not intended, in the slightest degree, to be put forward as a scientific work, but it will probably give to many the information they desire without requiring too great a research into books which treat more extensively and deeply of this subject. w. h. m. a-b-c of electricity a-b-c of electricity i we now obtain so many of our comforts and conveniences by the use of electricity that all young people ought to learn something of this wonderful force, in order to understand some of the principles which are brought into practice. you all know that we have the telegraph, the telephone, the electric light, electric motors on street-cars, electric bells, etc., besides many other conveniences which the use of electricity gives us. every one knows that, by the laws of multiplication, twice two makes four, and that twice two can never make anything but four. well, these useful inventions have been made by applying the _laws of electricity_ in certain ways, just as well known, so as to enable us to send in a few moments a message to our absent friends at any distance, to speak with them at a great distance, to light our houses and streets with electric light, and to do many other useful things with quickness and ease. but you must remember that we do not know what electricity itself really is. we only know how to produce it by certain methods, and we also know what we can do with it when we have obtained it. in this little book we will try to explain the various ways by which electricity is obtained, and how it is applied to produce the useful results that we see around us. we will try and make this explanation such that it will encourage many of you to study this very important and interesting subject more deeply. in the advanced books on electricity there are many technical terms which are somewhat difficult to understand, but in this book it will only be necessary to use a few of the more simple ones, which it will be well for you to learn and understand before going further. ii definitions the three measurements most frequently used in electricity are the volt, the ampère, the ohm. we will explain these in their order. [illustration: fig. 1] _the volt._--this term may be better understood by making a comparison with something you all know of. suppose we have a tank containing one hundred gallons of water, and we want to discharge it through a half-inch pipe at the bottom of the tank. suppose, further, that we wanted to make the water spout upward, and for this purpose the pipe was bent upward as in fig. 1. if you opened the tap the water would spout out and upward as in fig. 1. [illustration: fig. 2] the cause of its spouting upward would be the _weight_ or _pressure_ of the water in the tank. this pressure is reckoned as so many _pounds_ to the square inch of water. now, if the tank were placed on the roof of the house and the pipe brought to the ground as shown in fig. 2, the water would spout up very much higher, because there would be _many more pounds_ of pressure on account of the height of the pipe. so, you see, the force or pressure of water is measured in pounds, and, therefore, a pound is the unit of pressure, or force, of water. now, in electricity the unit of pressure, or force, is called a volt. this word "volt" does not mean any weight, as the word "pound" weight does. you all know that if you have a pound of water you must have something to hold it, because it has weight, and, consequently, occupies some space. but _electricity itself has no weight_ and therefore cannot occupy any space. when we desire to carry water into a house or other building we do so by means of hollow pipes, which are usually made of iron. this is the way that water is brought into houses in cities and towns, so that it may be drawn and used in any part of a dwelling. now, the principal supply usually comes from a reservoir which is placed up on high ground so as to give the necessary pounds of pressure to force the water up to the upper part of the houses. if some arrangement of this kind were not made we could get no water in our bedrooms, because, as you know, water will not rise above its own level unless by force. the water cannot escape as long as there are no holes or leaks in the iron pipes, but if there should be the slightest crevice in them the water will run out. in electricity we find similar effects. the electricity is carried into houses by means of wires which are covered, or _insulated_, with various substances, such, for instance, as rubber. just as the iron of the pipes prevents the water from escaping, the insulation of the wire prevents the escape of the electricity. now, if we were to cause the pounds of pressure of water, in pipes of ordinary thickness, to be very greatly increased, the pipes could not stand the strain and would burst and the water escape. so it is with electricity. if there were too many volts of pressure the insulation would not be sufficient to hold it and the electricity would escape through the covering, or insulation, of the wire. it is a simple and easy matter to stop the flow of water from an ordinary faucet by placing your finger over the opening. as the water cannot then flow, your finger is what we will call a non-conductor and the water will be retained in the pipe. we have just the same effects in electricity. if we place some substance which is practically a non-conductor, or insulator, such as rubber, around an electric wire, or in the path of an electric current, the electricity, acted upon by the volts of pressure, cannot escape, because the insulation keeps it from doing so, just as the iron of the pipe keeps the water from escaping. thus, you see, the volt does not itself represent electricity, but only the pressure which forces it through the wire. there are other words and expressions in electricity which are sometimes used in connection with the word "volt." these words are "pressure" and "intensity." we might say, for instance, that a certain dynamo machine had an electromotive force of 110 volts; or that the intensity of a cell of a battery was 2 volts, etc. we might mention, as another analogy, the pressure of steam in a boiler, which is measured or calculated in pounds, just as the pressure of water is measured. so, we might say that 100 pounds steam pressure used through the medium of a steam-engine to drive a dynamo could thus be changed to electricity at 100 volts pressure. _the ampère._--now, in comparing the pounds pressure of water with the volts of pressure of electricity we used as an illustration a tank of water containing 100 gallons, and we saw that this water had a downward force or pressure in pounds. let us now see what this pressure was acting upon. it was forcing the quantity of water to spout upward through the end of the pipe. now, as the quantity of water was 100 gallons, it could not all be forced at once out of the end of the pipe. the pounds pressure of water acting on the 100 gallons would force it out at a _certain rate_, which, let us say, would be one gallon per minute. this would be the _rate of the flow_ of water out of the tank. thus, you see, we find a second measurement to be considered in discharging the water-tank. the first was the force, or pounds of pressure, and the second the _rate_ at which the quantity of water was being discharged per minute by that pressure. this second measurement teaches us that a _certain quantity_ will pass out of the pipe in a _certain time_ if the pressure is steady, such quantity depending, of course, on the size or friction resistance of the pipe. in electricity the volts of pressure act so as to force the quantity of current to _flow through the wires at a certain rate_ per second, and the rate at which it flows is measured in ampères. for instance, let us suppose that an electric lamp required a pressure of 100 volts and a current of one ampère to light it up, we should have to supply a current of electricity flowing at the rate of one ampère, acted upon by an electromotive force of 100 volts. you will see, therefore, that while the volt does not represent any electricity, but only its pressure, the ampère represents the _rate of flow_ of the current itself. you should remember that there are several words sometimes used in connection with the word "ampère"--for instance, we might say that a lamp required a "current" of one ampère or that a dynamo would give a "quantity" of 20 ampères. _the ohm._--you have learned that the _pressure_ would discharge the _quantity_ of water at a certain rate through the pipe. now, suppose we were to fix _two_ discharge-pipes to the tank, the water would run away very much quicker, would it not? if we try to find a reason for this, we shall see that a pipe can only, at a given pressure, admit so much water through it at a time. therefore, you see, this pipe would present a certain amount of _resistance_ to the passage of the total quantity of water, and would only allow a limited quantity at once to go through. but, if we were to attach two or more pipes to the tank, or one large pipe, we should make it easier for the water to flow, and, therefore, the total amount of resistance to the passage of the water would be very much less, and the tank would quickly be emptied. now, as you already know, water has substance and weight and therefore occupies some space, but electricity has neither substance nor weight, and therefore cannot occupy any space; consequently, to carry electricity from one place to another we do not need to use a pipe, which is hollow, but we use a solid wire. these solid wires have a certain amount of _resistance_ to the passage of the electricity, just as the water-pipe has to the water, and (as it is in the case of the water) the effect of the resistance to the passage of electricity is greater if you pass a larger quantity through than a smaller quantity. if you wanted to carry a quantity of electricity to a certain distance, and for that purpose used a wire, there would be a certain amount of resistance in that wire to the passage of the current through it; but if you used two or more wires of the same size, or one large wire, the resistance would be very much less and the current would flow more easily. suppose that, instead of emptying the water-tank from the roof through the pipe, we had just turned the tank over and let the water all pour out at once down to the ground. that would dispose of the water very quickly and by a short way, would it not? that is very easy to be seen, because there would be _no resistance_ to its passage to the ground. well, suppose we had an electric battery giving a certain quantity of current, say five ampères, and we should take a large wire that would offer no resistance to that quantity and put it from one side of the battery to the other, a large current would flow at once and tend to exhaust the battery. this is called a _short circuit_ because there is little or no resistance, and it provides the current with an easy path to escape. remember this, that _electricity always takes the easiest path_. it will take as many paths as are offered, but the largest quantity will always take the easiest. as the subject of resistance is one of the most important in electricity, we will give you one more example, because if you can obtain a good understanding of this principle it will help you to comprehend the whole subject more easily in your future studies. we started by comparison with a tank holding 100 gallons of water, discharging through a half-inch pipe, and showed you that the pounds of pressure would force the quantity of gallons through the pipe. when the tap was first opened the water would spout up very high, but as the water in the tank became lower the pressure would be less, and, consequently, the water would not spout so high. so, if it were desired to keep the water spouting up to the height it started with, we should have to keep the tank full, so as to have the same pounds of pressure all the time. but, if we wanted the water to spout still higher we should have to use other means, such as a force-pump, to obtain a greater pressure. now, if we should use too many pounds pressure it would force the quantity of water more rapidly through the pipe and would cause the water to become heated because of the resistance of the pipe to the passage of that quantity acted upon by so great a pressure. this is just the same in electricity, except that the wire itself would become heated, some of the electricity being turned into heat and lost. if a wire were too small for the volts pressure and ampères of current of electricity the resistance of such wire would be overcome, and it would become red-hot and perhaps melt. electricians are therefore very careful to calculate the resistance of the wires they use before putting them up, especially when they are for electric lighting, in order to make allowances for the ampères of current to flow through them, so that but little of the electricity will be turned into heat and thus rendered useless for their purpose. the unit of resistance is called the _ohm_ (pronounced like "home" without the "h"). all wires have a certain resistance per foot, according to the nature of the metal used and the size of the wire--that is to say, the finer the wire the greater number of ohms resistance it has to the foot. water and electricity flow under very similar conditions--that is to say, each of them must have a channel, or conductor, and each of them requires pressure to force it onward. water, however, being a tangible substance, requires a hollow conductor; while electricity, being intangible, will flow through a solid conductor. the iron of the water-pipe and the insulation of the electric wire serve the same purpose--namely, that of serving to prevent escape by reason of the pressure exerted. there is another term which should be mentioned in connection with resistance, as they are closely related, and that is _opposition_. there is no general electrical term of this name, but, as it will be most easily understood from the meaning of the word itself, we have used it. let us give an example of what opposition would mean if applied to water. probably every one knows that a water-wheel is a wheel having large blades, or "paddles," around its circumference. when the water, in trying to force its passage, rushes against one of these paddles it meets with its opposition, but overcomes it by pushing the paddle away. this brings around more opposition in the shape of another paddle, which the water also pushes away. and so this goes on, the water overcoming this opposition and turning the wheel around, by which means we can get water to do useful work for us. you must remember, however, that it is only by putting opposition in the path of a pressure and quantity of water that we can get this work. the same principle holds good in electricity. we make electricity in different ways, and in order to obtain useful work we put in its path the instruments, lamps, or machines which offer the proper amount of resistance, or opposition, to its passage, and thus obtain from this wonderful agent the work we desire to have done. you have learned that three important measurements in electricity are as follows: the _volt_ is the practical unit of measurement of _pressure_; the _ampère_ is the practical unit of measurement of the _rate of flow_; and the _ohm_ is the practical unit of measurement of _resistance_. iii magnetism now we will try to explain to you something about magnets and magnetism. there are very few boys who have not seen and played with the ordinary magnets, shaped like a horseshoe, which are sold in all toy-stores as well as by those who sell electrical goods. well, you know that these magnets will attract and hold fast anything that is made of iron or steel, but they have no effect on brass, copper, zinc, gold, or silver, yet there is nothing that you can see which should cause any such effect. you will notice, then, that magnetism is like electricity; we cannot see it, but we can tell that it exists, because it produces certain effects. and here is another curious thing--magnetism produces electricity, and electricity produces magnetism. this seems to be a very convenient sort of a family affair, and it is owing to this close relation that we are able to obtain so many wonderful things by the use of electricity. we shall now show you how electricity produces magnetism, and, when we come to the subject of electric lighting we will explain how magnetism produces electricity. [illustration: fig. 3] the easiest way to show how electricity makes magnetism is to find out how magnets are made. suppose we wanted to make a horseshoe magnet, just mentioned above; we would take a piece of _steel_ and wind around it some fine copper wire, commencing on one leg of the horseshoe and winding around until we came to the end of the other leg. then we should have two ends of wire left, as shown in the sketch. (fig. 3.) we connect these two ends with an electric battery, giving, say, two volts, and then the ampères of current of electricity will travel through the wire, and in doing so has such an influence on the steel that it is converted into a magnet, such as you have played with. the current is "broken"--that is to say, it is shut off several times in making a magnet of this kind, and then the wire is taken away from the battery and is unwound from the steel horseshoe, leaving it free from wire, just as you have seen it. this horseshoe is now a _permanent magnet_--that is, it will _always_ attract and hold pieces of iron and steel. now, if you were to do the same thing with a horseshoe made of soft iron instead of steel it would not be a magnet after you stopped the current of electricity from going through the wires, although the piece of _iron_ would be a stronger magnet while the electricity was going through the wire around it. the steel magnet is called a permanent magnet, and its ends, or "poles," are named north and south. there is usually a loose piece of steel or iron, called an "armature," put across the ends, which has the peculiar property of keeping the magnetism from becoming weaker, and thereby retaining the strength of the magnet. the strongest part of the magnet is at the poles, while, at the point marked + (which is called the neutral point) there is scarcely any magnetism. it will be well to remember the object of the _armature_ as we shall meet it again in describing dynamo machines. the magnets made of iron are called electromagnets because they exhibit magnetism only when the ampères of current of electricity are flowing around them. they also have two poles, north and south, as have permanent magnets. electromagnets are used in nearly all electrical instruments, not only because they are stronger than permanent magnets, but because they can be made to act instantly by passing a current of electricity through them at the most convenient moment, as you will see when we explain some of the electrical instruments which are used to produce certain effects. (fig. 4.) [illustration: fig. 4] of course there are a great many different shapes in which magnets are made. the simplest is the _bar magnet_, which is simply a flat or round piece of iron or steel. suppose you made a magnet of a flat piece of steel and put on top of it a sheet of paper, and then threw on the paper some iron filings, you would see them arrange themselves as is shown in the following sketch. (fig. 5.) the filings would always arrange themselves in this shape, no matter how large or small the magnets were. and, if you were to cut it into two or half a dozen pieces, each piece would have the same effect. this shows you that each piece would itself become a magnet and would have its poles exactly as the large one had. [illustration: fig. 5] now, we have another curious thing to tell you about magnets. if you present the north pole of a magnet to the south pole of another magnet, they will attract and hold fast to each other, but if you present a south pole to another south pole, or a north pole to a north pole, they will repel each other, and there will be no attraction. you can perform some interesting experiments by reason of this fact. we will give you one of them. take, say, a dozen needles and draw them several times in the same direction across the ends of a magnet so that they become magnetized. now stick each needle half-way through a piece of cork, and put the corks, with the needles sticking through them, into a bowl of water. then take a bar magnet and bring it gradually toward the middle of the bowl and you will see the corks advance or back away from the magnet. if the ends of the needles sticking up out of the water are south poles and the end of the magnet you present is a north pole, the needles will come to the center; but will go to the side of the bowl if you present the south pole. you can vary this pretty experiment by turning up the other ends of part of the needles. you will remember that when we explained what "resistance" meant, we told you that electricity would always take the easiest path, and while part of it will flow in a small wire, the largest portion will take an easier path if it can get to something larger that is a metallic substance. electricity will only flow easily through anything that is made of metal. you will also remember that you learned that when electricity took a short cut to get away from its proper path it was called a _short circuit_. all this must be taken into consideration when magnets are being made. in the first place, the wire we wind around steel or iron to make magnets must always be covered with an insulator of electricity. magnet wire is usually covered with cotton or silk. if it were left bare, each turn of the wire would touch the next turn, and so we should make such an easy path for the electricity that it would all go back to the battery by a short circuit, and then we would get no magnetic effect in the steel or iron. _the only way we can get electricity to do useful work for us is to put some resistance or opposition in its way._ so you see that if we make it travel through the wire around the iron or steel, there is just enough resistance or opposition in its way to give it work to get through the wire, and this work produces the peculiar effect of making the iron or steel magnetic. the covering on the wire, as you will remember, is called "insulation." iv the telegraph every one knows how very convenient the telegraph is, but there are not many who think how wonderful it is that we can send a message in a few seconds of time to a distant place, even though it were thousands of miles away. and yet, though the present system of telegraphing is a wonderful one, the method of sending a telegram is simple enough. the apparatus that is used in sending a telegram is as follows: the battery. the wire. the telegraph key. the sounder. the different kinds of electric batteries will be mentioned afterward, so we will not stop now to describe them, but simply state that a battery is used to produce the necessary electricity. as you all know what wire is, there is no necessity of describing it further. the telegraph key is shown in the sketch below. (fig. 6.) [illustration: fig. 6] this instrument is usually made of brass, except that upon the handle there is the little knob which is of hard rubber. the handle, or lever, moves down when this knob is pressed, and a little spring beneath pushes it up again when let go. you will see a second smaller knob, the use of which we will explain later. the sounder is shown on the following page. (fig. 7.) the part consisting of the two black pillars is an electromagnet, and across the top of these pillars is a piece of iron called the "armature," which is held up by a spring. [illustration: fig. 7] now let us see how the battery and wire are placed in connection with these instruments. you have seen that we usually have two wires for the electricity to travel in, one wire for it to leave the battery, and the other to return on. but you will easily see that if two wires had to be used in telegraphing it would be a very expensive matter, especially when they had to be carried thousands of miles. so, instead of using a second wire, we use the earth to carry back the electricity to the battery, because the earth is a better conductor even than wire. although a quantity of ground equal in size to the wire would offer thousands of times greater resistance than the wire, yet, owing to the great body of our earth, its total resistance is even less than any telegraph wire used. when two electric wires are run from a battery and connected together through some instrument, this is called a "circuit," because the electricity has a path in which it can travel back to the battery. this would be a "metallic" circuit; _but when one wire only_ is used, and the other side of the battery is connected with the earth, it is called a "ground" or "earth" circuit, because the electricity returns through the earth. [illustration: fig. 8] if you look at this sketch (fig. 8) you will see how the telegraph instruments are connected and will then be able to understand how a message can be sent. here we have two sets of telegraph apparatus, one of which, let us say, is in new york and the other in philadelphia. you will see that one wire from the battery is connected with the earth, and the other wire with the sounder. another wire goes from the sounder to one leg of the key so as to make the brass base of the key part of the circuit. the other leg of the key is "insulated" from the brass base by being separated therefrom with some substance which will not carry electricity, such, for instance, as hard rubber. we will suppose that there is already a wire strung up on poles between new york and philadelphia, and that the key, sounder, and battery in the latter city are connected in the same way as those in new york. now, to enable us to send a message from one city to the other we must connect the ends of the wires to the instruments in each city; so we connect one end to the insulated leg of the key in new york, and the other end to the insulated leg of the key in philadelphia. everything is now completed, and, as soon as we find out what is the use of that part of the key that has a little round, black handle, we shall be ready to start. this is called the "switch." if you will look once more at the picture of the key you will see under the long handle (or lever) a little point which the lever will touch when it is pressed down. now this little point is part of that insulated leg, and, therefore, this point is also insulated from the base. if a current of electricity were sent along the wire it could not get any farther than this point unless we put in some arrangement to complete the path, or circuit, for it to travel in. we therefore put in the switch. one end of the switch (which is made of brass with a rubber handle) is fastened on the base of the key, so that it may be moved to the right or left. the other end, when the switch is moved to the left (or "closed"), touches a piece of brass fastened to the little point we have mentioned, and so makes a free path for the electricity to go through the base of the key and through the wire to the sounder, and from there to the battery, and so back to the earth. this switch must be opened before the sounder near it will respond to its neighboring key. now we are ready to send a message. suppose we want to send a telegram from new york to philadelphia. the operator in new york opens his switch and presses down his key several times. the switch on the philadelphia key being closed, the electricity goes through to the sounder, and, this being made an electromagnet by the current passing through the wire, the iron armature is attracted by the magnetism and drawn down to the magnet with a snap. it will stay there as long as the new york operator keeps his lever pressed down, but, when he allows it to spring up, there is no current passing through the philadelphia sounder and there is no magnetism, consequently the armature springs up again with a click. as often as the operator presses down his key lever and lets it spring up again, the same action takes place in the sounder, and it makes that click, click, which you have heard if you have ever seen telegraph instruments in operation. let us continue, however, to send our message. the new york operator, having pressed down his key several times to signal the philadelphia operator, closes his switch to receive the answer from philadelphia. the operator in the latter city then opens his switch and presses down his key several times, which makes the new york sounder click, in the same way, to let the operator there know that he is ready to receive the message. he then closes his switch and receives the telegram which the new york operator sends after opening _his_ key. telegraphic messages are sent and received in this way and are read by the sound of the clicks. these sounds may be represented on paper by dots, dashes, and spaces. for instance, if you press down the key and let it spring back quickly, that would represent a dot. if you press down the key and hold it a little longer before letting it spring up again, it would represent a dash. a space would be represented by waiting a little while before pressing down the key again. we show you below the alphabet in these dots, dashes, and spaces, and these are the ones now used in sending all telegraphic messages. [illustration] thus, you see, if you were telegraphing the word "and" you would press down your key and let it return quickly, then press down again and return after a longer pause, which would give the letter a; then slowly and quickly, which would be n; then slowly and twice quickly, which would be d. any persevering boy can learn to operate a telegraph instrument by a little study and regular practice; and, as complete learner's sets can be purchased very cheaply, this affords a pleasant and useful recreation for boys. there are many cases where two boys living near each other have a set of telegraph instruments in their homes and run a wire from one house to the other, thus affording many hours of pleasant and profitable amusement. in giving the above explanation of telegraphing we have described only the simple and elementary form. in large telegraph lines, such as those of the western union, there are many more additional instruments used, which are very complicated and difficult to understand; such, for instance, as the quadruplex, by which four distinct messages can be sent over the same wire at the same time. we have, therefore, described only the simplest form in order to give the general idea of the working of the telegraph by electromagnetism, which is the principle of all telegraphing. when you study electricity more deeply you will find this subject and the many different instruments very interesting and wonderful. v wireless telegraphy if it has seemed extraordinary to you that only one wire should be necessary for sending a message by the electric telegraph, and that our earth can be used instead of a second wire, how much more wonderful it is to realize that in these days we can exchange telegraphic messages with different points without any connecting wires at all between them, even though the places be many hundred miles apart. thus, two ships on the ocean, entirely out of sight of each other, may intercommunicate, or may telegraph to or receive despatches from a far-distant shore; indeed, telegraphy without wires has been accomplished across the atlantic ocean. in the language of the day, this is called "wireless telegraphy," although it is more correct to think of it as aerial, or space, telegraphy. as you will naturally want to know how this is effected, we will try to explain the main principles in a simple manner. if you drop a stone into a quiet pond, you will see the water form into ring-like waves, or ripples, which travel on and on until they die away in the far distance. these waves are caused, as we have seen, by a disturbance of the body of water. probably you have already learned in school that all known space is said to be filled with a medium called "ether," and that this medium is so exceedingly thin that it penetrates, or permeates, everything, so that it exists in the densest bodies as well as in free space. for the sake of obtaining a clear idea of this theory we may imagine that the ether envelops and permeates every thing in the entire universe. hence we can easily realize that, although we cannot see or feel the ether, any disturbance of it will set it in wavelike motion. modern science accounts for light, radiant heat, and electrical phenomena by reason of wavelike disturbances, vibrations, or pulsations of this ether. thus, if you should strike a light, the ether would be disturbed, causing waves to form, which, like the waves in the water, would travel in every direction. when these waves reached the eyes of another person within seeing distance, that person's eyes would be so acted upon by the waves that he would see the light which you had made, and would see it instantly, for light waves travel about 186,000 miles per second. so, if you create an electrical disturbance, the same kind of an effect will be produced; that is to say, waves in the ether will be created, or propagated, and will travel on and on in every direction. now, if some form of electrical appliance can be made that will be of the right kind to respond to them (as the eye responds to light rays), these electric waves can be made practically useful for transmitting messages through space. this is just what has been done, and we will now give you a brief general description of one kind of apparatus used. for "sending," or "transmitting," as it is usually termed, there is used an induction-coil, having rather large brass balls on the secondary terminals; suitable batteries, a condenser, a morse telegraph key, and an "aerial," or wire which is carried away up into the air vertically, and is made fast to a pole or special tower. when these are connected properly, the closing of the circuit with the key will cause sparks to jump between the brass balls. this electrical discharge, or oscillation, is carried by the aerial into the upper air and causes intense pulsations in the ether, which set up waves as already mentioned. if the circuit is opened again the disturbance ceases. so, by alternately closing and opening the circuit, the morse characters can be imitated. but how can these signals be received by the man for whom they are intended, who may be a hundred miles or more away? he has a "receiving" set, consisting of a sensitive relay, batteries, resistance-coils, a morse register, an aerial, and a special device called a "coherer." this is the important part of the whole set, because it is sensitive to the electrical waves. it consists of a little glass tube about as large around as an ordinary lead-pencil, and perhaps two inches long. in the tube are two metallic plugs, each having a wire attached so that one wire projects from each end of the tube. the plugs are separated inside the tube by a very small space, and in this space are some metal filings. one wire from the coherer is connected to the aerial and the other to the ground. when there are no electrical ether waves to influence them, these filings, being loosely separated, are at rest and offer high resistance; but when the ether is disturbed by electrical vibrations and the waves arrive at the coherer (through the aerial), these filings are drawn together, or cohere. this lowers their resistance and they become a better conductor. now, the coherer wires are also connected through a battery to the relay, which in turn is connected through another battery to a morse register. therefore, when the filings become a conductor, the current flows through them and the circuit to the relay is closed. that attracts an armature which closes the circuit of the morse register and thus marks the electrical impulse on a strip of paper tape. in the mean time, a restoring device, called a "decoherer," operated also by the relay circuit, has tapped upon the coherer, thus shaking the filings loose again, so that they are ready to cohere again and register another impulse, or character. thus, by pressing the key at the transmitting end for long or short periods, to represent morse characters, long and short waves are propagated in the ether and are received and recorded at the receiving end through the coherer and other parts of the receiving set. in this way telegraphic messages are sent and received through space, between points separated by hundreds or thousands of miles. we have tried to describe to you the general principles underlying the art of wireless telegraphy as plainly as possible, using for illustration the simplest kind of apparatus employed for the practical sending and receiving of messages. at the present day there are several systems in actual practice, and with the growth of the art there have been many elaborations of apparatus that have come into use. for instance, the coherer is not as much used as formerly. in its place there are employed several kinds of "wave-detectors" as they are now termed, and in many of the systems the electrical pulsations are generated by a dynamo-machine instead of batteries. then, again, instead of the messages being recorded by a morse register at the receiving end, the operator receives them by means of a telephone receiver, through which he hears the morse characters and writes them down in words as he hears them. generally the aerial, or "antennæ," as it is sometimes named, consists of several wires, sometimes a large number, carried to a considerable height. there are a great many other details which might be written to explain all the complicated apparatus which is used in some of the systems, but it is not intended in this book to offer more than a general explanation of main principles. we must leave it to you to study the details elsewhere if you so desire after you have read these pages. vi the telephone you probably all know that the telephone is an electrical instrument by which one person may talk to another who is at a distance. not only can we talk to a person who is in a different part of the city, but such great improvements have been made in these instruments that we can talk through the telephone to a person in another city, even though it be hundreds of miles away. the main principle of the telephone is electromagnetism, as in the telegraph, but there are other important points in addition to those we mentioned in describing the latter. let us take first the induction-coil you will remember that an electromagnet is made by winding many turns of wire around a piece of iron and sending a current of electricity through this wire. now, suppose this current of electricity was being supplied by two cells of a battery. if you took in your hands the wires coming from these _two cells_, giving, say, four volts, you could not feel any shock; but if you were to take hold of the ends of _the wires_ on the _electromagnet_ and _separate_ them while this same current was going through, you would get a decided shock. this separation would "break" the circuit, and the reason you would get a shock is that, while the electricity is acting on the wire, the iron itself is magnetized, and on breaking the circuit reacts upon the wire, producing for a moment more volts of pressure in every turn of it. thus, you see, this weak pressure of electricity as it travels through the wire can yet produce, through its magnetism, strong momentary effects, but _you cannot feel it unless you break the circuit_. how the induction-coil is made the object of the induction-coil is to produce high intensity, or pressure, from a comparatively weak pressure and large current of electricity; so, if we add still more wire, the magnet has a larger number of turns to act upon and thus makes a very strong pressure, or large number of volts, but a lesser number of ampères. instead of taking one piece of iron, as we would for an ordinary electromagnet, we take a bundle of iron wires in making an induction-coil, as these give a stronger effect. around this bundle of wires we wrap many turns of insulated copper wire. this is called the _primary coil_, and the ends of this wire are to be attached to the battery. [illustration: fig. 9] on top of, or over, this primary coil we wrap a great many turns of very fine wire, of which, as it is so fine, a great length can be used. this is called the _secondary coil_, and it is in this coil that the volts, or pressure, of electricity become strongest. above we show you a sketch of an induction-coil. (fig. 9.) at the left-hand side of the cut is a "circuit-breaker," which is simply a piece of iron (armature) on a spring placed opposite the iron core. this armature is made a part of the wire leading to the primary coil. when the current from the battery is sent through the wires, the core becomes magnetized and draws this armature away from a fixed contact point, thus breaking the circuit, but the spring pulls it back, again completing the circuit, and so it keeps going back and forth very rapidly with a br-r-r-ing sound. if you were now to take hold of the ends of the secondary coil you would get a continuous series of quick shocks which would feel like pins and needles running into you. perhaps most of you have taken hold of the handles of a medical battery and have had shocks therefrom. in so doing, you have simply had the current from the secondary of an induction-coil. the current may be made weaker by sliding a metallic cover over part of the iron core and so shutting off part of the magnetic effect. sparking coils while on this subject we may add that these coils will produce sparks from the two ends of the wire of the secondary coil. these sparks vary in length according to the amount of wire in the coil. small ones are made which give a spark a quarter of an inch in length, while others are made which will give sparks 10, 12, and 16 inches in length. in the latter, however, there are many miles of wire in the secondary coil. the largest induction-coil known is one which was made for an english scientist. there are 341,850 turns, or 280 miles, of wire in the secondary coil. with 30 cells of grove battery this coil will give a spark 42 inches in length. you may form some idea of the effect of this induction-coil when we state that if we desired to produce the same length of spark direct from batteries, without using an induction-coil, we should require the combined volts of pressure of 60,000 to 100,000 cells of battery. having explained to you briefly the induction-coil--how it is made and its action--we must ask you to bear these principles in mind, and presently we will tell you how it is used in the telephone. the next thing we shall try to explain will be the vibrating diaphragm did you ever take the end of a cane in your hand, raise it up over your head, and then bring it down suddenly and sharply, so that it nearly touched the ground, as though you were about to strike something? if not, try it now with a thin walking-cane or with a pine stick about three feet long and one-half inch thick, and you will find that there is a peculiar sound given out. it is not the stick that makes this sound, but it is owing to the fact that you have caused the air to vibrate, or tremble, and thus give out a sound. [illustration: fig. 10] if you strike a tuning-fork sharply you will see the ends vibrate and a sound will be given. if you put your fingers on top of a silk hat and speak near it you will feel vibrations of your voice. every time you speak you cause vibrations of the air; and the louder and higher you speak the greater the number of vibrations. suppose you take a thin piece of wood in your hands (say, for instance, the lid of a cigar-box cut in the shape shown in the picture, fig. 10) and hold it about two inches from your mouth and then speak. you will feel the wood tremble in your hand. this is because the vibrations of the air cause the wood to vibrate in the same manner. these vibrations are very minute and cannot be seen with the naked eye, but they actually take place, and could be measured with a delicately balanced instrument. [illustration: fig. 11] now let us try another experiment in further illustration of this principle. we will take a tube about three inches long and one and one-half or two inches in diameter. this tube may be made of cardboard. now cut out a piece of thin cardboard which will just fit over one end of the tube. this piece we will call the "diaphragm." fasten the diaphragm by pasting it with two strips of thin paper to the tube. these strips of paper should be fastened only on the ends, and the middle of the paper allowed to be slack, as shown in the picture, so that the diaphragm may work backward and forward easily. take a small shot about the size seen in the sketch and tie it to a single thread of fine silk, then let it hang as shown in the sketch (fig. 11), so that it will only just touch the diaphragm. now, if you speak into the open end of the tube the diaphragm will vibrate and the shot will be seen to move to and from it according to the strength of the vibrations. if we could by any means make a diaphragm in another tube reproduce these same vibrations, we should hear the same words respoken, if the tube were held to the ear. [illustration: fig. 12] while the vibrations caused by the human voice are too minute to be seen, it may seem surprising that they can be made to produce power. this is done by an ingenious mechanism called a phonomotor, perfected by the great inventor thomas a. edison, of whom every one has probably heard. this mechanism, when spoken or sung at (or into) immediately responds by causing a wheel to revolve. no amount of blowing will start the wheel, but it can instantly be set in motion by the vibrations caused by sound. the phonomotor (which is shown in the engraving fig. 12) has a diaphragm and mouthpiece. a spring, which is secured to the bedpiece, rests on a piece of rubber tubing placed against the diaphragm. this spring carries a pawl that acts on a ratchet or roughened wheel on the fly-wheel shaft. a sound made in the mouthpiece creates vibrations in the diaphragm; the vibrations of the diaphragm move the spring and pawl with the same impulses, and as the pawl thus moves back and forth on the ratchet-wheel it is made to revolve. the instrument, therefore, is of great value for measuring the mechanical force of sound waves, or vibrations, produced by the human voice. the transmitter that part of the telephone into which we speak is called the transmitter. this is usually a piece of hard rubber having a round mouthpiece cut through it. at the other side of this mouthpiece is placed a diaphragm made of a thin piece of metal, which is held m place by a light spring. behind this diaphragm, and very close to it, is placed a carbon button. between this carbon button and the diaphragm is a small piece of platinum, which is placed so as to touch both the button and diaphragm very lightly. this platinum contact piece is connected with one of the wires running to the primary of the induction-coil, and the spring attached to the carbon button is connected with the battery to which the other wire of the primary is connected. this is all shown in the sketch of a transmitter. (fig. 13.) [illustration: fig. 13] a is the mouthpiece; b, the diaphragm; c, the carbon button; d, the wire at the end of which is the platinum contact; e, the battery; and f, the induction-coil; p, p are the wires to the primary, and s, s to the secondary wires. we will now say a few words about the receiver, and then describe the manner in which the telephone works. the receiver this is that part of the telephone which is held to the ear, and by which we can hear the words spoken into the transmitter of the telephone at the other end of the line. [illustration: fig. 14] the receiver is made of hard rubber, and contains a permanent bar magnet, which is wound with wire so as to make it also an electromagnet when desired. in front of this magnet is placed loosely a diaphragm of thin sheet iron. this diaphragm is placed so as to be within the influence of the magnet, but just so that neither one can touch the other. fig. 14 is a sketch of the receiver. a and b are the wires leading to the magnet, c, and d is the diaphragm. e and f are where the wires connect, one from the secondary of the induction-coil in the other telephone, and the other connected with the earth. the carbon button the little carbon button plays an important part in the telephone. you will see from the sketch of the transmitter that the current of electricity will flow through the carbon button to the contact point and through the wire to the primary of the induction-coil. now, carbon has a peculiarity, which is this, that if we press this carbon button, ever so slightly, against the platinum contact, there would be less resistance to the flow of the electricity through the wire to the primary, and the more we press it the less the resistance becomes. the consequence of this would be that more current would go to the primary, and the secondary would become correspondingly stronger. if the carbon button were left untouched, and nothing pressed against it, the flow of current through it would be perfectly even. having examined the inside of the transmitter and receiver, and understanding the effect of pressure on the carbon button, let us now see how the telephone works when we speak into the mouthpiece of the transmitter, the vibrations of the air cause the diaphragm to vibrate very rapidly, and, of course, every movement of the diaphragm presses _more or less_ against the carbon button, in consequence of which the currents passing through the primary of the induction-coil are constantly increased or diminished and thus produce similar effects, but magnified, in the secondary. the effect of this is that the magnet in the receiver of the other telephone is receiving a rapidly changing current, which, producing corresponding magnetic changes, makes the magnet alternately weaker or stronger. this influences, by magnetism, the iron diaphragm accordingly, and makes it reproduce the same vibrations that were caused by the speech at the transmitter of the sending telephone. thus, the same vibrations being _reproduced_, the original sounds are given out, and we can hear what the person at the sending telephone is saying. the action of the telephone illustrates well the wonderfully quick action of the electric current by the reproduction of these sound waves, or air vibrations, for they number many thousands in one minute's speech. vii electric light we have now arrived at a very interesting part of the study of electricity, as well as a more difficult part than we have yet told you of, but one which you can easily understand if you read carefully. you must all have seen electric lights, either in the streets or in some large buildings, for so many electric lights are now used that there are very few people who have not seen them. but perhaps some of you have only seen the large, dazzling lights that are used in the streets, and do not know that there is another kind of electric light which is in a globe about the size and shape of a large pear, and gives about the same light as a good gas-jet. these two kinds of electric lights have different names. the large, dazzling lights which you see in the streets are called "arc-lights," and the small, pear-shaped lamps, which give a soft, steady light, are called "incandescent lights." we will tell you later why these names are given to them. [illustration: fig. 15] the incandescent lights are generally used in houses, stores, theaters, factories, steamboats, and other places where a number of small lights are more pleasant to the eyes. the arc-lights (fig. 15) are used to light streets and large spaces where a great quantity of light is wanted. it would not be pleasant to have one of these dazzling arc-lamps in your parlor--although it would give a great deal of light--because your eyes would soon become tired. but two or three of the small incandescent lights (fig. 16) would be very agreeable, because they would give you a nice, soft light to read or work by, and would not tire your eyes. so, you see, these two different kinds of lamps are very useful in their proper places. now, if you will read patiently and carefully, we will try and explain how both these lights are made. [illustration: fig. 16] you have seen that the telegraph, telephone, electric bells, etc., are worked by batteries. electric lights, however, require such a large amount of current that it is too expensive to produce them in large quantities by batteries. a small number of lamps could be lighted by batteries, but if we were to attempt to use them to light 500 or 1,000 lamps together, the expense would be so enormous as to make it entirely out of the question. there are many millions of incandescent lamps in use in the united states, but you will easily see that there could not be that number used if we had to depend on batteries to light them. you will understand this more thoroughly when you have finished reading this little book. well, you will ask, if we cannot use batteries, what is used to produce these electric lights? machines called "dynamo-electric machines," or "generators," which are driven by steam-engines or water-power, are used to produce the electricity which makes these lamps give us light. you will remember that in the chapter on magnetism we explained to you how electricity makes magnetism, and now we will explain how, in the dynamo, magnetism makes electricity. [illustration: fig. 17] it has been found that the influence of a magnet is very strong at its poles, and that this influence is always in the same lines. this influence has been described as "lines of force," which you will see represented in the sketch above by the dotted lines (fig. 17). of course, these lines of force are only imaginary and cannot be seen in any magnet, but they are always present. the meaning of this term "lines of force," then, is used to designate the strength of the magnet. many years ago the great scientist faraday made the discovery that, by passing a closed loop of wire through the magnetic lines of force existing between the poles of a magnet, the magnetism produced the peculiar effect of creating a current of electricity in the wire. if the closed loop of wire were passed down, say from u to d, the current flowed in the wire in one direction, and if it were passed upward, from d to u, the current flowed in the other direction. thus, you see, magnetism produces electricity in the closed loop of wire as it cuts through the magnetic lines of force. just why or how, nobody knows; we only know that electricity is produced in that way, and to-day we make practical use of this method of producing it by embodying this principle in dynamo-machines, as we will shortly explain. in carrying this discovery into practice in making dynamo-machines we use copper wire. if iron were used, there would be a current of electricity generated, but it would be much less in quantity, because iron wire has much greater resistance to the passage of electricity than the same size of copper wire. perhaps you can understand it more thoroughly if we state that when a closed loop of wire is passed up and down between the poles of a strong magnet there is a very perceptible opposition felt to the passage of the wire to and fro. this is due to the influence of the magnetism upon the current produced in the wire as it cuts through the lines of force, and, inasmuch as these lines of force are always present at the poles of a magnet, you will see that, no matter how many times you pass the loop of wire up and down, there will be created in it a current of electricity by its passage through the lines of force. [illustration: fig. 18] suppose that, instead of using one single loop of copper wire, you wound upon a spool a long piece of wire like that in fig. 18, and that you turned this spool around rapidly between the poles of the magnet, you would thus be cutting the lines of force by the same wire a great many times, and every time one length of the wire cut through the lines of force some electricity would be generated in it, and this would continue as long as the spool was revolved. but, as each length would only be a part of the one piece of wire, you will easily see that there would be a great deal of electricity generated in the whole piece of wire. [illustration: fig. 19] all we have to do, then, is to collect this electricity from the two ends of the wire, and use it. if we should attach two wires to the two ends of this wire on the spool, they would be broken off when it turned around, so we must use some other method. we fix on the end of the spool (which is called an "armature") two pieces of copper, so that they will not touch each other (as in fig. 19), and fasten the ends of the wire to these pieces of copper. this is called a "commutator," and, as you see, is really the ends of the wire on the spool. now we get two thin, flat pieces of copper and fix them so that they will rest upon the copper bars of the commutator, but will not go round with it. these two flat pieces of copper are called the "brushes," and they will collect from the commutator the electricity which is gathered in the wire around the spool. as the brushes stand still, two wires can be fastened to them, and thus the ampères of current of electricity, acted upon by the volts pressure, can be carried away to be used in the lamps, for you must remember that as long as the spool turns around it gathers more electricity while there is any magnetism for the wire on the spool to pass through. the constant revolving of the spool creates so much electricity that it is driven out from the wire on the spool, through the commutator to the brushes, and there it finds a path to travel away from the pressure of the new electricity which is all the time being made. in this way we get a continuous current of electricity in the two wires leading from the commutator, and can use it to light electric lamps or for other useful purposes. in explaining this to you, so far, we have used as an illustration of the magnet one of the steel permanent magnets in order to make the explanation more simple, but now that you understand how the electricity is made, we must explain to you something about the magnets that are used in dynamo-machines. we can perhaps make this more clear by giving another example. suppose you had a dynamo which was lighting up 100 of the incandescent lamps, each of 200 ohms resistance and each requiring 100 volts pressure. now each lamp would take just a certain quantity of electricity, say half an ampère; so, the 100 lamps would require one hundred times that quantity. but, if you turned off 50 of these lamps at once, the tendency would be for the pressure to rise above the 100 volts required for the other 50, and they would be apt to burn out quicker. it is plainly to be seen, then, that we must have some means of regulating the magnetism so as to regulate the lines of force for the wire on the armature to cut through. we can do this with an electromagnet, but not with a permanent magnet, because _we cannot easily regulate the amount of magnetism which a permanent magnet will give_. there is another reason why we cannot use permanent magnets in a dynamo, and that is because _they cannot be made to give as much magnetism as an electromagnet will give_. thus you will see that there are very good reasons for using electromagnets in making dynamo-machines. let us see now how these electromagnets and dynamos are made, and then examine the methods which are followed to operate and use them. you must remember, to begin with, that in referring to wire used on magnets and armatures and for carrying the electricity away to the lamps, we always mean wire that is _covered_ or _insulated_. in electric lighting, insulated wire is _always_ used, except at the points where it is connected with, the dynamo, the lamps, a switch, or any point where we make what is called a "connection." as the shape of the magnets is different in the dynamos of various inventors, we will take for illustration the one that is nearest the shape of the horseshoe and the shape that is generally used in illustrating the principle of the dynamo. this is the form used by mr. edison, whom we have previously mentioned. this form is shown in fig. 20. now, although this magnet appears to be in one piece, it really consists of five parts screwed together so as to make, practically, one piece. the names of the parts are as follows: f, f are the "cores"; c the "yoke," which binds them together; and p, p the "pole pieces," where the magnetism is the strongest. these pole pieces are rounded out to receive the _armature_, which, as you will remember, is the part that turns around. [illustration: fig. 20] the cores, f, f, are first wound with a certain amount of wire, which depends upon the use the dynamo is to be made for. thus, you will see, there will be on each core two loose ends of the wire that is wound around it--namely, the beginning of the wire and the end where we leave off winding, which on the two cores together will make four ends of wire. we will tell you presently what is done with them. after the cores are wound, they are screwed firmly to the yoke and to the pole pieces, so as to make, for all practical purposes, one whole piece pretty nearly the shape of a horseshoe magnet. [illustration: fig. 21] now, to make the dynamo complete, we must put in the armature between the poles, which are rounded off, as you will see, to accommodate it. the armature is held up by two "bearings," which you will see in the sketch of the complete dynamo above. (fig. 21.) the armature in a practical dynamo-machine consists of a large spool made of thin sheets of iron firmly fastened together and having a steel shaft run through the center, upon which it revolves. this spool, or armature, is wound with a number of strands of copper wire. the commutator, instead of consisting of two bars, is made in many dynamos with as many bars as there are strands of wire, and the ends of these wires are fastened to the bars of the commutator so as to make, practically, one long piece of wire, just as we showed you in explaining how the electricity was produced. the brushes, resting upon the commutator, carry away the electricity from it into the wires with which they are connected. now we have our dynamo all put together and ready to start as soon as we properly connect these four loose ends of wire on the cores. if you will turn back to fig. 20 you will see that two of the wires are marked i, and the other two o. the letter i means the inside wire, or where the winding began, and the letter o means the outside wire, or where we left off winding. now, if we fasten together (or "connect") the two ends of wires, i and o, near the top of the magnet, we make the two wires round the cores into one wire, which starts, say, at i near the poles, goes all around one core, crosses over and around the other core down to the other end of the wire to o, near the poles. so far we have called the iron a magnet, although it is not a magnet until electricity is put into it; so, when the dynamo is started for the first time, these two ends of wire, i and o, are connected to a battery or other source of current for the purpose of sending electricity through the wire on the cores. when the electricity goes into this wire the iron immediately becomes a magnet, and the lines of force are present at the poles. now, the armature is turned around rapidly by a steam-engine, and, as the wire on the armature cuts the lines of force with great rapidity and so frequently, there is quickly generated a large quantity of electricity, which passes out as fast as it is made through the commutator and the brushes to the lamp. and so long as the armature is revolved and the battery attached, the electricity will be made, or, as it is usually termed, "generated." as we stated above, a battery is used _the first time the dynamo is run_, and now we will explain why it is not needed afterward. although iron will not become a permanent magnet, like steel, it _does not lose all its magnetism_ after it has been once thoroughly charged. when the dynamo is stopped, after the first trial, and the battery is taken away, you will discover only traces of magnetism about the poles. they will not readily attract even a needle or iron filings; but there is, nevertheless, a very small amount of magnetism left in the iron. small as this magnetism is, however, it is enough to make very faint and weak lines of force at the poles of the magnet. after the battery is taken away, the ends of the wire on the cores, which were connected to the battery, are connected, instead, to the wires which carry away the electricity from the brushes to the lamps. thus, you will see, if any electricity goes from the dynamo to the lamps, part of it must also find its way through the wires which are around the cores. we will now start up the dynamo without having any battery attached and see what happens. the armature turns around and the wires upon it cut through those very faint lines of force which are always at the poles. this, as you know, makes some electricity; very little, to be sure, but it comes out through the brushes to the wires leading to the lamps, and there it finds the wires leading back to the cores. well, part of this weak current of electricity goes into these wires and travels back round the cores and so makes the magnetism stronger. the consequence of this is that the lines of force become stronger and, as the armature keeps turning around, the electricity naturally becomes stronger, and so there is more of it going through the wires back to the cores and increasing the strength of the magnet all the time, until the dynamo becomes strong enough to generate all the current it was intended to give for the lamps. of course, you understand that the stronger the magnet becomes, the greater will be the lines of force and the greater the amount of electricity made by the turning of the armature. now, there is naturally a limit to what can be done with any particular dynamo; so, while the electricity continues to strengthen the magnetism and the magnetism increases the electricity, this cannot go beyond what is called the "saturation" point of the magnet. saturation means that the iron is full of magnetism, and will hold that much but no more. you will learn more as to the saturation of magnets when you study electricity more deeply, and we therefore do not intend to enter into that subject in this book. we will only state, however, that the magnets of dynamos are not always charged up to their saturation point. the lamps so far you have learned how the current of electricity is produced, and now we will follow along the wires to find out how it makes the lamps give out both strong lights and the smaller, pleasant ones. suppose we take first the large, dazzling lights we see in the streets, which, as you know, are called arc-lights those who have seen the arc-lamps will readily recognize them from the picture in fig. 22. you will see that there are two sticks, or "pencils," of carbon. now you will remember that in the chapter on magnetism we told you that _in order to have electricity do work for us we must put some resistance or opposition in its way_. when we get light from an electric lamp it is because we make the electricity do some work in the lamp, and this work is in pushing its way through a resistance or opposition which is in the lamp. [illustration: fig. 22] when we generate electricity in the dynamo and put two wires for it to travel in, the current goes away from the dynamo through one of the wires and will go back to the dynamo through the other one if it can possibly get a chance to get to this other one. now, the electricity which is constantly being made fills the wires and acts as a pressure to force the current through the wires back to the dynamo, and, if we put no resistance or opposition in the way, it would have a very easy path to travel in and would do no work at all. the wires leading to an electric lamp should have very little resistance, not sufficient to require any work from the current in passing through. so, if we bring the two carbons in an arc-lamp together they really form part of the wire, and do not interrupt the current in its travels, but, if we _separate the carbons_, we make a gap which the current must jump across if it wants to go on. as the volts, or pressure, is so great, the current must jump, and this _against the resistance or opposition_ in an arc-lamp is that which gives the current so much work to do. indeed, so hard is it for the current to jump across this gap that it breaks off from one carbon a shower of tiny particles as fine as the finest dust, and makes them white hot in passing to the other. this shower of fine carbon dust, together with the ends of the carbons, being white hot, of course makes a light, and this is the dazzling light which you see in the arc-lamp. of course, when the electricity has jumped over from one carbon to the other, it goes through it to the wire, and so passes on to the next lamp, where it has to jump again, and so on until it has gone through the last lamp, then it has an easy path to get back to the dynamo. now, we want you to understand more thoroughly how that much resistance or opposition will cause heat, so we will try to give you a simple example. most of you know that if you were holding a rope tightly in your hands and some one pulled it through them quickly and suddenly, it would get very hot and your hands would feel as though they were being burned. this is heat caused by your hands resisting or opposing the passage of the rope through them, and if you could hold on tightly enough and the rope was drawn through quickly enough, it would take fire. this fire would, therefore, cause heat and light. it is just this principle of resistance to the passage of the current which causes the light in an arc-lamp, as we have shown you. incandescent lamps you have just learned that the light in an arc-lamp is caused by the current forcing off from the carbon sticks tiny particles and heating them up until they give a brilliant light. so, you see, in an arc-light there is a wearing away of carbon by electricity, and therefore these sticks, or pencils, of carbon in time are all burned away. in practice the carbon pencils last about eight or ten hours, and then new ones must be put in. now, in the incandescent lamp there is also carbon used, but the light is not produced by the combustion or wasting away of the carbon, as we will show you. the picture below will show you the appearance of an incandescent lamp. (fig. 23.) [illustration: fig. 23] you will see that this lamp consists of a pear-shaped globe, and inside is a long u-shaped strip of carbon no thicker than an ordinary thread. this is a strip of bamboo cane[1] which has been carbonized to a thread of charcoal. it is joined to two wires which come through the glass. these two wires come down through the bottom of the globe, and one is fastened to a brass screw-ring, while the other wire is fastened to a brass button at the bottom of the lamp. these two (the ring and button) must, as you know, be separated from each other by something which will not carry electricity, or they would make a short circuit when the electricity was applied. we separate the ring and the button in various ways. now, if we took the ends of two wires which were charged with the proper amount of electricity and put one wire on the screw-ring and the other on the button, the lamp would light up, because there would be a complete path for the current to travel in. [illustration: fig. 24] it will, however, be plain to you that it would be awkward to light the lamps in this way, so we use a "socket" into which the lamp is screwed. (fig. 24.) the wires from the dynamo carrying the electricity are connected in the socket, one wire with the screw thread into which the screw-ring fits, and the other with a button which the button on the lamp touches when the lamp is screwed into the socket. thus we have a connected path for the current to travel in, or, as it is termed, a _complete circuit_. you will notice that in the incandescent lamp the electricity does not need to jump, as it does in the arc-light, because we give it one continuous line to travel in. in order, however, to get the current to do work for us, we put some resistance in its path, which it must overcome in order to travel back to the dynamo. the resistance in an incandescent lamp is the u-shaped carbon strip (or, as it is called, "filament"). this charcoal filament has so much greater resistance than the wires that it opposes, or resists, the passage of the electricity through it; but the electricity _must_ go through, and, as it is strong enough to force its way, it overcomes this resistance and passes on through the carbon to the wire at the other end. you see it is a struggle between the carbon and the electricity, the current being determined to go on and the carbon trying to keep it back; and, in the end, the electricity, being the stronger, gets the best of it; but the struggle has been so hard that the carbon has been raised to a white heat, or incandescence, and so gives out a beautiful light, which continues as long as the current of electricity flows. you will remember that in the arc-light the carbons are slowly consumed and new ones must be put in. if the carbon in the incandescent light were consumed, it would not last many minutes, because it is only about the size of a horsehair. now, you will naturally inquire why this fine strip is not burned up when it is raised to so high a heat. well, we will tell you. you know that if you light a match and let it burn the wood will all be consumed. but did you ever light a match, put it into a small bottle, and put the cork in? if you never did, do so now as an experiment, and you will see that the match will keep lighted for an instant and then go out without consuming the wood. the reasons for this are very simple. in order to burn anything up entirely it is absolutely necessary to have the gas called oxygen present, and, as the air you live in contains a very large amount of oxygen, there is more than sufficient in your room to cause the wood of the match to be entirely consumed after it is lighted. but there is such a small quantity of oxygen in the bottle that it is not enough to keep the fire going in the match, and, consequently, it will not burn up the wood. the reason the filament in an incandescent lamp is not burned up is because there is _no oxygen_ inside the globe. after the carbon is put in its place all the oxygen is drawn out through a tube, and the glass is sealed up so that no more oxygen can get in. this is called obtaining a "vacuum," and vacuum means a space without air. there being no oxygen in the globe, it is impossible for the carbon to burn up; so the incandescent lamp will continue to give its light for a very long time, some of them lasting for thousands of hours. some day, however, from a great variety of obscure causes, the filament becomes weak in some particular spot and breaks, and the light ceases. when this happens, we unscrew the lamp and put another one in, and the light goes on as usual. now you have learned how the incandescent lamp is made to give light. we will add that it is a beautiful, soft, white light, almost without heat, it will not explode, throws off no poisonous fumes like gas or oil lamps, and has many other points of comfort and convenience which make it very desirable. electric-light wires before closing the subject of electric light you would perhaps like to know something about the way in which we place the wires leading to the lamps. [illustration: fig. 25] if you remember what we told you about measurements in the beginning of this book, it will be easy to understand what follows: you know that if you have a very great pressure you can force a quantity through a small conductor. this is the principle upon which the arc-lamps are run. every arc-lamp takes about 40 to 50 volts and from 5 to 10 ampères to produce the light, and they are connected with the wires as shown in fig. 25. this is called running lamps in "series," and, as you will see from the sketch, the wire starts out from the dynamo and connects with one carbon of the first arc-lamp, and to the other carbon is connected another wire which goes on to the next lamp, and so on until the last lamp is reached, and then the wire goes back to the dynamo. this forms, practically, one continuous loop from one brush to the other of the dynamo. the current starts out, makes its way through the first lamp, goes on to the next, makes its way through that, and so on till it has jumped the last one; then it goes back to the dynamo. now, as each of these jumps requires a pressure of 40 or 50 volts, you will easily see that the total pressure, in volts, of the electricity must be as many times 40 or 50 volts as there are lamps to be lighted; so, if there were 60 lamps in circuit, there would be 2,400 to 3,000 volts pressure, which, while it gives very fine lights, might cause instant death to any one touching the wires. suppose anything happened to the first lamp, which stopped the current from jumping through it. there would be no path for the current to travel farther, and, consequently, all the lights would go out. to get over this difficulty there is sometimes used what is called a "shunt," which only acts when the lamp will not light. this shunt carries the current round the lamp to the other wire, so that it may travel on and light up the other lamps. wires for incandescent lamps the wiring for incandescent lamps is carried out in an entirely different way, which you can see by comparing fig. 25 a with fig. 25 which shows the wiring for arc-lamps. [illustration: fig. 25 a] this is called connecting in "multiple arc." you will notice that the two wires running out from the dynamo (which are called the main wires) do not form one continuous loop as in the arc-light system, but that a smaller wire is attached to one of the main wires and then connected with the screw-ring in the lamp-socket; then another wire is connected with the button in the socket and afterward to the other main wire. every lamp forms an independent path through which the current can travel back to the dynamo. now, if we turn one of these incandescent lamps out, we simply shut off one of these paths and the electricity travels through the other lamps, and, if we wish, we can turn out all the lamps but one and there will still be a way for the electricity to go back to the dynamo. in the arc-lamps we must have a very high number of volts pressure, because the electricity has only one path, and it all has to pass through the first and other lamps till it comes to the last one. in the incandescent light the electricity has as many paths as there are lamps, so we only need to keep _one_ certain _pressure_ in volts in the main wires all the time. this pressure is _even_ all the way through the main wires, and, therefore, it is ready to light a lamp the instant it is turned on, because, as you have seen, electricity will always get back to the dynamo if there is a possible chance, and the lamp opens a path. the volts pressure used to operate any number of incandescent lamps is altogether very much less than for a number of arc-lights. for example, in the edison system the pressure (sometimes called "electromotive force") is only about 110 volts, which is very mild and not at all dangerous. this electromotive force would be _the same_ if there were _one lamp or ten thousand_ lighted. while this edison current would not hurt any one, you should remember that it is much the better plan not to touch _any_ electric-light wires until you have learned a great deal more on this subject. we may add that each of the standard incandescent lamps requires only about one-quarter of an ampère of current to make them give a light of 16 candle-power, which is about the light given by a very good gas-jet, and while the electromotive force, or pressure, would only be about 110 volts, whether there were one lamp or ten thousand lighted, there must be sufficient ampères in the wires to give each lamp its proper quantity. switches we have made mention several times of turning on or off one or more lights, and now, perhaps, you would like to know how this is done. suppose the electricity was traveling through wires to one or several lamps, it would light up those lamps as long as the wires provided a path to travel in, but if you were to cut out one of them, which is called "breaking the circuit," there would be no road for the electricity to follow, and, consequently, its course would be stopped short and the lamps would go out. you will remember that _electricity must have a complete circuit_ or it can do no work, and in electric lighting it is always a _metallic circuit_ that is used. now, the switch is simply a device which is used to break the circuit so that the current cannot pass on. the simplest form of switch is seen in the sketch. (fig. 26.) [illustration: fig. 26] you will see that there is a wire cut in two, and to one piece is attached a metallic piece, a, which turns one way or the other, and when it is turned so as to touch the other part of the wire the circuit is closed and the electricity goes from the lower part of the wire through the metallic piece a to the other part of the wire, thus making a complete circuit or path for the electricity to travel in. if we turn the piece a away from the upper wire this breaks the circuit and cuts off the path, and, of course, the lamps would go out. this is the principle of the switch, and, although they are made in thousands of ways, switches all have the same object--namely, the closing and breaking of the circuit, whether it is for one or a hundred lamps. wire on dynamos in explaining to you the construction and working of dynamo-machines, we did not state anything about the amounts of wire used in winding the machine. it is not our intention to say exactly how much is used on any one dynamo, because that is among the things you will have to learn when you come to study the subject of electricity more deeply. we simply want to have you understand that upon the number of turns of wire on any one machine depends the effect that that amount of wire, carrying electricity, will have upon a certain weight of iron when the armature is revolved a certain number of turns per minute. a certain number of strands of wire on an armature will only do a certain amount of work at the most, so you will see that a small dynamo will not produce as much electricity as a larger one containing more iron and wire. for high pressure there must be more strands of wire cutting the lines of force more frequently than would be required for low pressure; and, to produce a great many ampères, the armature must be larger and the wire upon it thicker than it would need to be if only a small number of ampères were wanted. this of itself is a very deep and complicated subject, and many books have been written upon it alone. we shall, therefore, not attempt to go more deeply into it in this little book, but simply content ourselves with giving you the general idea, which will be sufficient until you make a thorough study of the subject. viii electric power one of the most convenient uses to which electricity is put is in producing motive power for driving all kinds of machines, from a sewing-machine to a railway train, and we will now try to explain how we can get this kind of work from electricity. to begin with, you all know that a piece of machinery is usually made to work by revolving a wheel which is part of the machine, either by means of a steam-engine or by water-power, or, as a sewing-machine, by foot-power. now, when we work a piece of machinery by electricity we do just the same thing by using, instead of the steam-engine or water or foot power, an electric-engine called an "electromotor," which operates in the same way--namely, by turning the wheel of the machine it is applied to. foot-power is hard work for the person who is applying the power, and, as you can easily see, one person can make only a very little power by use of the feet. steam and water power can be used for any large amount of work, but the work must be within a few hundred feet of the engine or the power cannot be used. if there were a factory using steam-power a block or two away from where you lived, and you had a lathe in your house which you would like to have run by the steam-power in the factory, it would be practically impossible to do this. now, if the factory were still farther away from your house, it would be still more impossible, and if it were a mile away it would be foolish to dream of taking steam-power from a place so far away. suppose, however, that this factory was lighted by electric lights, it would be a very easy matter to take some of the power over to your house. this could be done, even if the factory were miles away, by taking two wires from their electric-light wires and running them into your house to an electromotor connected with your lathe. this electromotor would then run your lathe just as well as if it were belted to a steam-engine. so, you see, power can be carried in the form of electricity through two wires over very great distances and made to do work at a long way from the engine which is turning the dynamo to make the electricity. thus, you may have brought into your house wires which will give lights and, at the same time, power to run a sewing-machine, a lathe, or any other piece of machinery. having learned so far that a dynamo will make a continuous current of electricity, and that two wires will carry this current to any place where it is wanted, let us now see what takes place in the electromotor to transform the electricity into power. an electromotor (which we will now call by its short name, motor) is simply a machine made like a dynamo. curious as it may seem to you, it is a fact that if you take two dynamo-machines exactly alike, and run one with the steam-engine so as to produce electricity, and then take the two main wires and attach them to the brushes of the other dynamo, the electricity will drive this other dynamo so as to produce a great deal of power which could be used for driving other machines. thus, the second dynamo would become a motor. in the chapter on dynamos we explained something about the way they were made and how the electricity was produced. the motor you will remember that the armature consists of a spool wound with wire. this spool is made of iron plates fastened together so as to form one solid piece. the armature of a motor may be made in the same way; in fact, the whole motor is practically a dynamo-machine. there is something more about magnetism which we will tell you of here, because you will more easily understand it in its relation to an electromotor. if we take an ordinary piece of iron and bring one end of it near to (but not touching) one pole of a magnet, this piece of iron will itself become a weaker magnet as long as it remains in this position. this is said to be magnetism by "induction." the end of the piece of iron nearest to the magnet will be of the opposite polarity. for instance, if the pole of the magnet were north, the end of the iron which was nearest to this north pole would be south, and, of course, the other end would be north. to make this more plain we show it in the following sketch. (fig. 27.) this would be the same whether the magnet were a permanent or an electromagnet. you will remember also that the north pole of one magnet will _attract the south pole_ of another magnet, but will _repel a north pole_. these are the principles made use of in an electromotor, and we will now try to show you how this is carried into practice. [illustration: steel permanent magnet iron fig. 27] although a motor is made like a dynamo, we will show a different form of machine from the dynamo already illustrated, because it will help you to understand more easily. (fig. 28.) here we have an electromagnet with its poles, and an iron armature wound with wire, just as in the dynamo we have described, except that its form is different. [illustration: fig. 28] a commutator and brushes are also used, but the electricity, instead of being taken away from the brushes, is taken _to_ them by the wires connected with them. two wires are also connected which take part of the electricity around the magnet, just as in the dynamo. now, when the volts pressure and ampères of electricity coming from a dynamo or battery are turned into the wires leading to the brushes of the motor, they go through the commutator into the armature and round the magnet, and so create the lines of force at the poles and magnetize the iron of the armature. let us see what the effect of this is. the poles of the magnet become north and south, and the four ends on the armature also become north and south, two of each. by referring to fig. 28 again we shall see what takes place. the north pole of the magnet is doing two things: it is repelling, or forcing away, the upper north pole of the armature and at the same time drawing toward itself the lower south pole of the armature. in the mean time the south pole of the magnet is repelling the south pole of the armature and at the same time drawing toward itself the north pole of the armature. this, of course, makes the armature turn around, and the same poles are again presented to the magnet, when they are acted upon in the same manner, which makes the armature revolve again, and this action continues as long as electricity is brought through the wires to the brushes. thus, the armature turns around with great speed and strength, and will then drive a machine to which it is attached. the speed and strength of the motor are regulated by the amount of iron and wire upon it, and by the volts pressure and ampères of electricity supplied to the brushes. motors are made from a small size that will run a sewing-machine up to a size large enough to run a railway train, and are often operated through wires at a great distance from the place where the electricity is being made, sometimes miles away. they are also made in a great many different forms, but the principle is practically the same as we have just described to you. ix batteries so far we have only described one way of producing electricity--namely, by means of a dynamo-machine driven by steam or water power. the supply of electricity so obtained is regular and constant as long as the steam or water power is applied to the dynamo. there is another and very different way of producing electricity, and this is by means of a chemical process in what is called a battery. to obtain electricity from the dynamo we must spend money for the coal to make the steam which operates the steam-engine, or for the water which turns the water-wheel, as well as for an engineer in both cases. when we obtain electricity from a battery we must spend money for the chemicals and metals which are constantly consumed in the battery. primary batteries an electrical battery is a device in which one or more chemical substances act upon a metal and a carbon, or upon two different metals, producing thereby a current of electricity, which will continue as long as there is any action of the chemicals upon the metal and carbon, or upon the two metals. batteries for _producing_ electricity may be divided into two classes, called "open circuit" batteries and "closed circuit" batteries. open-circuit batteries are those which are used where the electricity is _not_ required constantly without intermission--for instance, in telephones, electric bells, burglar alarms, gas-lighting, annunciators, etc. closed-circuit batteries are those which are used where the effect produced must be continuous every moment, as, for instance, in electric lights and motors. the open-circuit battery is made in many different ways, so we only describe two of the principal ones. as we told you in an early part of this book, we do not know just what electricity is, nor why it is produced under the conditions existing in a battery. but we do know that by following certain processes and making certain chemical combinations we can make as much electricity and in such proportions as we want. the two metals, or the metal and carbon, in a battery are called the "elements," and to these are connected the wires which lead from the battery to the instruments to be worked by it. _the leclanché battery._--this form of open-circuit battery consists of a glass jar in which is placed the elements. one element consists of a rod of zinc, and the other element is carbon and powdered black oxide of manganese. these two (the carbon and black oxide of manganese) are placed in an earthenware vessel called a "porous cup." this is simply a small jar made of clay which is not glazed. thus, the liquid which is in the glass jar penetrates through the porous cup to the carbon and manganese which it contains, and so the chemicals affect both these and the zinc at once, for, in order to obtain electricity, you will remember that the chemical action must take place at the same time upon both the elements in the same vessel. (fig. 29.) the chemical substance used in this battery is sal-ammoniac, or salts of ammonia. a certain quantity of this salt is dissolved in water, and this solution is poured into the glass jar. when this is done the battery will generate electricity at once. [illustration: fig. 29] it should be remembered that the proper term for the chemical mixture which acts upon the elements in any battery is "electrolyte." _the dry battery._--the cleanliness, convenience, high efficiency, and comparatively low internal resistance of the dry cell has brought it into great favor in the last few years. it is now extensively used in preference to the leclanché and other open-circuit batteries having liquid electrolyte for light work, such as bells, gas-lighting, burglar alarms, ignition on motor-boats, automobiles, etc. the dry cell is also used in great numbers for pocket flash-lamps, and in other ways where it would be impossible to employ batteries containing liquids. a dry cell consists of zinc, carbon, and the electrolyte, which is a mixture so made that it is in the form of a gelatinous or semi-solid mass, so that it will not run or slop over. a piece of sheet zinc is formed into a long tube, and a round, flat piece of zinc is soldered at one end, thus making a cup open at one end. this forms the cell itself, and at the same time becomes one of the elements. the other element is a piece of battery carbon which is long enough to project out of the top of the cell about half an inch or more. while the cell is being filled with the electrolyte the carbon is held up by a support so that it does not touch the zinc at the bottom of the cup. of course, the zinc cup and the carbon are provided with proper binding-posts or other attachments, so that conducting wires can be connected. the electrolyte is packed into the cup and around the carbon in such a way that the cup is entirely filled within about half an inch from the top, and then some melted tar or pitch is poured over the top of the electrolyte. this seals the cell and binds the contents solidly together. just before the sealing compound hardens, one or two holes are made in it so that the gases may escape. the composition of the electrolyte itself is not exactly alike in all dry cells, as the various manufacturers follow their own particular formulas. however, as you may be curious to know something about it, we would state that one formula embraces flour, water, plaster of paris, granulated carbon, zinc chloride, ammonium chloride, and manganese binoxide. you will remember that the leclanché and the dry batteries are purely open-circuit cells, and that they can be used to advantage for electric bells, annunciators, burglar alarms, gas ignition, etc., where _the current of electricity is not doing_ continuous work, but only for a few seconds at a time. consequently, the batteries have a little rest in between, if only for a few seconds. now, if we were to attempt to use open-circuit batteries for electric lights or motors, where the electricity must work constantly every second, the batteries would "polarize"--that is to say, they would only work a few minutes and then stop, because the chemicals used in them are of that kind that they will only allow the battery to do a little work at a time. the batteries we have been describing will do the ordinary work for which they are intended for sometimes a year without requiring any attention, but if we try to make them do work for which they were not intended, they would only last a few days. if we should want to operate electric lights or motors continuously from a battery we must, therefore, use closed-circuit batteries there is a great variety of ways in which closed-circuit batteries are made, but, as the main principles are very much alike, we will only describe two general kinds, those with and those without a porous cup.[2] in the first place, we must state that closed-circuit batteries proper usually consist of a glass jar and two elements--carbon and zinc. sometimes a porous cup is used; for what reason you will soon learn. the chemicals that are used are usually different from those used in the open-circuit batteries and are much stronger. these chemicals are usually sulphuric acid and bichromate of potash (or chromic acid), which are mixed with water. we will now examine two of the types of closed-circuit batteries, taking first the one without the porous cup, of which the grenet is a good example. [illustration: fig. 30] this battery, as you see, consists of a glass jar, in which are placed two plates of carbon and one of zinc. (fig. 30.) the latter is between the two carbon plates and is movable up and down, so that it may be drawn up out of the solution when it is not desired to use the battery. when the zinc is in the solution there is a steady and continuous current of electricity developed, which can be taken away by wires from the connections on top of the battery. if the zinc were left in the solution when the battery was not in use, the acid would act upon it almost as much as though the electricity were not being used, and thus the zinc would be eaten away and the acid would be neutralized, so that no more action could be had when we wanted more electricity. now, in the grenet battery we can light a lamp or run a motor for several hours continuously, but at the end of that time the solution would become black and it would do no more work. then we must throw out that solution and put in fresh, and the battery will do the same work again, and so on. if you should only want to light your lamp or run your motor for a few minutes, you could pull the zinc up from the solution and put it down again when you wanted the electricity once more. the carbon element in the battery is not consumed by the acid, although the zinc is. [illustration: fig. 31] now you will see the use of the porous cup. we will take as an illustration of this type an ordinary battery in which a porous cup is used. (fig. 31.) here, you will see, the carbon is placed in the porous cup, while the zinc is outside in the glass jar. in the glass cell with the zinc is usually used water made slightly acid, and the strong solution of sulphuric acid and bichromate of potash (or chromic acid) is poured in the porous cup, where the carbon is placed. the strong solution penetrates the porous cup very slowly and gets to the zinc, when it immediately produces a current of electricity. but the acid does not get at the zinc so freely as it does in the battery without a porous cup, and, consequently, neither the acid nor the zinc is so rapidly used up. where porous cups are used, the batteries will give a continuous current for a very much longer time than without them, and will, sometimes, give many hours' work every day for several months without requiring any change of solution. _polarization._--there is one other reason why a longer working time can be had from a battery with a porous cup, and that is, in a battery without a porous cup the action of the acid upon the zinc is so rapid that the carbon plates become covered with gas, and, therefore, the proper action by the acid cannot take place upon them. thus, the battery ceases to work, and is said to be "polarized." when a porous cup is used, the action of the acid upon the zinc is slow enough to give off only a small amount of gas, and thus the acid has a chance to act upon the carbon plates and develop a steady current of electricity. the work done by batteries the pressure and quantity of electricity given off continuously by open and closed circuit batteries is very different. the pressure (or "electromotive force") of one cell of an ordinary open-circuit battery is only about one volt, and the current is usually very much less than one ampère, except in a dry cell, which may give more. in the closed-circuit batteries described, the electromotive force of each cell is about two volts, while the current varies from 1 to perhaps 50 ampères, according to the size of the zinc and carbon plates. it would not matter if you made one cell as big as a barrel, nor if you put in a _dozen carbons and zincs_, the _electromotive force would not exceed the volts mentioned for each type of battery_, but the _ampère capacity would be greater_ than in a smaller cell on account of the larger size of the carbon and zinc plates. _internal resistance._--there is one other point which affects the number of ampères which can be obtained from a closed-circuit battery, and that is whether there is a large or small internal resistance in the battery itself. this depends upon the solution which is used and the arrangement of the plates. if there is a high resistance in the battery itself (called "internal resistance"), the electricity must do work to overcome this resistance before it can get out of the battery to do useful work through the wires, and, consequently, the capacity in ampères is limited. if, on the other hand, there is very little resistance in the battery, the current has very little work to flow to the wires leading from the battery, and we can get a larger quantity, or greater number of ampères. thus, you will see that while the closed-circuit battery is the stronger, and will do all that the open-circuit battery will do, and even more, in a short time the latter, though weaker, will do about as much work for the same amount of zinc and carbon as the former, but takes a much longer time. batteries for electric light as we have explained to you, closed-circuit batteries are used for producing incandescent electric lights in small numbers, as well as for running motors. to operate incandescent lights, a number of batteries connected together are used. the number used depends upon the pressure which the lamps require to make them give the required light. we will now explain how the batteries are connected together for this purpose. [illustration: fig. 32] suppose you wished to light an incandescent lamp of, say, three candle-power, which required six volts. we would take three closed-circuit batteries which would each give two volts, and connect by a piece of wire the zinc of the first to the carbon of the second, and the zinc of the second to the carbon of the third, as shown in the sketch. (fig. 32.) we would then attach a wire to the carbon of the first and one to the zinc of the third, and there would be six volts in these two wires, which would light up one six-volt lamp nicely. this is called connecting in series, or for intensity. now if each of these cells gave ten ampères alone, the three will only give ten ampères together when they are connected in series. if our lamp only required one ampère, you would naturally think that ten similar lamps put on the wires would give as good light as the one, but that is not so. although you might light up two lamps, the pressure would drop and the lights would become less brilliant if you put on the whole number. so, if we wished to put on the whole ten lights we would connect another battery and thus increase the pressure, which would probably make these ten lamps burn brightly. these rules hold good for connecting any number of batteries for lamps of any number of volts--that is to say, there should be calculated about two volts for each cell and an allowance made for drop in pressure. connecting in multiple there is another way of connecting batteries, and that is to obtain a larger number of ampères. this is called connecting in multiple arc, or for quantity. [illustration: fig. 33] let us take again for an illustration the three cells giving each 2 volts and 10 ampères. this time we connect the carbon of the first to the carbon of the second, and the carbon of the second to that of the third; then we connect the zinc of the first to that of the second, and the zinc of the second to that of the third, as shown in the sketch. (fig. 33.) we then attach a wire to the zinc and one to the carbon in the third cell, and we then can obtain from these two wires _only 2 volts_, but 30 ampères. there are, again, many ways of connecting several of these sets together, but it is not intended in this book to go into these at length, for the reason that we only set out to give a simple explanation of the first principles of this subject. we shall therefore only give an illustration of one more method of connecting batteries which will be easy to understand. this is called multiple series the sketch we have last given shows three batteries connected in multiple. these we will call set no. 1. now, suppose we take three more batteries exactly similar and connect them together just in the same manner. let us call this set no. 2. now take the wire leading from the carbon of set no. 2 and connect it with the wire leading from the zinc of set no. 1. then take a wire leading from the zinc of set no. 2, and a wire leading from the carbon of set no. 1, and connect them with the lamps or motors. these two sets being connected in multiple series, we shall get 4 volts and 30 ampères. this is called connecting in multiple series, and may be extended indefinitely with any number of batteries. we should add that one of the elements in a battery is called "positive," and the other "negative." the edison primary battery as this type of battery will work efficiently on _either_ open or closed circuit, we have thought best to describe it separately at this place, in order not to confuse your ideas while reading about batteries generally. the type of cell we will now describe was originated by an inventor named lalande, and was known by that name; but it has been greatly improved and rendered more efficient by edison, and is now manufactured and sold by him under the name of the edison primary battery. before describing the cell itself, let us consider the action that takes place in a battery of this kind. if certain metals are placed in a suitable solution, and are connected together, outside of the solution, by wires, vigorous chemical action will take place at the surfaces of the metals, and electrical energy will be produced. the plates must be of different metals, and the solution should be one that will dissolve neither of them except when an electric current is allowed to flow. one of the metals is usually zinc, which is gradually eaten away or dissolved by the solution while the battery is delivering electrical energy. it is the chemical combination of the zinc and the solution that produces this energy, which leaves the zinc in the form of an electric current, and passes through the solution to the other metal, out of the cell to the wire, and thence back by another wire to the zinc, where it is once more started on its circuit. at the surface of the other metal, which may be, and frequently is, copper, small bubbles of the gas called hydrogen are produced. this gas rises to the surface of the liquid and gradually passes off into the air. but its presence offers resistance to the passage of the current; so that generally there is associated with the copper a supply of the gas oxygen. oxygen and hydrogen are always very eager to mix with each other, and, therefore, when the hydrogen bubbles appear they are quickly taken up by the oxygen near by. the mixture of these two gases forms water, which becomes part of the solution. all of this happens so quickly that the hydrogen cannot be perceived so long as there is any oxygen left in the copper-oxide plate. [illustration: fig. 34] in the edison primary battery (fig. 34) the plates are zinc, known as the negative, and copper oxide (copper and oxygen), or the positive. these are suspended in a solution of caustic soda and water, the plates and solution being contained in jars of glass or porcelain. the plates are provided with suitable wires for connecting the cells with one another and with the lamps, motors, or other devices which they are to operate. there are usually two zinc plates and one copper-oxide plate, or multiples thereof. the quantity of current that may be withdrawn depends on the size and number of the plates, as well as upon their construction and arrangement. the voltage of these cells is low, being about 0.65 volt each; but this is more than compensated for by the fact that the internal resistance of the battery is so low that the voltage is not perceptibly affected even at continuous high-discharge rates, and that the voltage remains practically constant throughout the life of the cell. furthermore, when the battery is not in use there is practically no local action. consequently, the cells may remain on open circuit (that is, doing no work) for years and there will be no loss of energy. the cell will then operate with the same practical efficiency as if it were new. in some classes of work this battery remains in service from four to six years without attention. another peculiar advantage of this battery lies in the fact that the plates and the electrolyte are so well proportioned that they are all exhausted at the same time, and then new plates and solution can be put in the jar, restoring it to its original condition. these batteries are used in great numbers for railway signal work and for other purposes, such as fire and burglar alarm systems, various telephone functions, operation of electric self-winding and programme clock systems, small electric-motor work, for low candle-power electric lamps, gas-engine ignition, electro-plating, telegraph systems, chemical analysis, and other experimental work where batteries are required that will remain in use for long periods of time without requiring any attention or renewal. the remarks that have been made on previous pages about connecting up batteries in series, multiple, and multiple series apply also to these edison primary cells. fig. 35 shows a battery of four of these cells connected in series. secondary, or storage, batteries the open and closed circuit batteries we have so far described are used to produce electricity by the action of the chemicals upon the elements contained in them. they are called primary batteries. [illustration: fig. 35] the batteries which we will now tell you of are called secondary, or storage, batteries, and do not of themselves make any primary current, but simply act as reservoirs, so to speak, to hold the energy of the electric current which is led into them from a dynamo or primary battery. at the proper time and under proper conditions these secondary batteries will give back a large percentage of the energy of the electric current which has been stored in them. this class of battery has been called by these three names: "secondary battery," "accumulator," and "storage battery"; but as the latter name is used almost exclusively in this country, we shall use it in the following description. two types there are two distinct types of storage battery. one is called the "lead" or "acid" storage battery, and the other the "alkaline" or "nickel-iron" storage battery. each of them simply acts as a reservoir to hold the energy of the electric current which is led into it, and each of them, under proper conditions, will give back that energy. as the lead storage battery is the oldest in point of discovery and invention, we will describe it first. the lead storage battery a lead storage battery usually consists of a glass or hard-rubber jar containing lead plates and a solution consisting of water and sulphuric acid. a single unit is usually called a "cell." (fig. 36.) there are always at least two lead plates in a storage-battery cell of this kind, although there may be any number above that. for the sake of making a clearer explanation to you, we will take as an illustration a cell containing only two plates.[3] [illustration: fig. 36] we have, then, a glass or hard-rubber jar containing two lead plates and a solution consisting of water and sulphuric acid. these plates are called the "elements," and one is called the positive and the other the negative element. the solution is called the "electrolyte." the positive element is a sheet of lead upon which is spread a paste made of red-lead. the negative element is a similar sheet of lead upon which is spread a paste made of litharge. now, when these plates are thus prepared, they are put into the acid solution in the jar, and a wire attached to each plate is connected with the two wires from a dynamo or other source of electric current, just as a lamp would be connected. the electric current then goes into the storage-battery cell, entering by the positive plate and coming out by the negative. these plates and the paste upon them offer some resistance, or opposition, to the passage of the current, so the electricity must do some work to get from one to the other. the work it does in this case is to so act upon the paste that its chemical nature is changed. so, after the primary current has been passed from one plate to the other for some time, and after several "discharges," the storage battery may be disconnected, being now "formed." the paste on the lead plates is now found to have changed its chemical nature, the paste on the positive plate having been transformed into peroxide of lead, and that on the negative plate into spongy lead. on arriving at this condition, the paste on the plates is called "active material." this process of "formation" is absolutely essential before the lead storage battery is ready to be used for actual work. so, when the plates have been fully "formed," the storage battery may be again connected with a source of electric current which again enters by the positive plate and leaves by the negative. this current so acts on the active material that it combines with the acid solution and, through the energy of the charging current, forms other chemical compounds which may for convenience be called "sulphates." when the charging current has flowed through the battery long enough to produce these changes in the active material the battery is said to be "charged," and is ready for useful work. if the two wires attached to the plates are now connected with electric lamps, or a motor, or other device, the active material will develop energy in the effort to again change its nature. this energy takes the form of an electric current, which leaves the battery and passes through the conductors and operates the lamps, motors, or other devices in its passage. in this way the battery is said to be "discharged," and at the end of its discharge it can again be charged and discharged in a similar manner for a long time, until the active material is either used up or drops off the plates. so far as the actual details of construction are concerned, lead storage batteries are made in a great many different ways, but the materials are, in general, of the same nature as those we have mentioned above. the alkaline storage battery we shall now describe an entirely different type of storage battery, which contains neither lead nor acid. it is one of the many inventions of thomas a. edison. in the alkaline storage battery the gas called oxygen plays a very important part, and we will try to make it clear to you what this part is. you are well aware of the fact that if you leave your pocket-knife out in the air it will get rusty. the reason for this is that iron or steel quickly tends to combine with the oxygen of the air, and this combination of oxygen and iron is rust, otherwise called oxide of iron, or iron oxide. this iron oxide, or rust, is therefore the result of a chemical action between the iron and the oxygen. now as all chemical actions require the expenditure of energy, there has been developed either heat or electricity in the process. the oxygen may be taken away from the iron oxide, chemically; but here again would be another chemical action which would require energy to be once more expended. iron oxide may be made chemically in many different ways. it is frequently made in the form of a powder. therefore, we do not have to depend upon iron rust for a supply of this material. before going further we must consider another oxide--namely, nickel oxide. it is characteristic of nickel that when it is combined with oxygen to a certain degree so as to form the compound known as nickel oxide, it will receive still more oxygen. now, if under proper conditions we compel iron oxide to give up its oxygen to some other kind of chemical compound, such as nickel oxide, we must expend energy. but, on the other hand, if this nickel oxide gives back the oxygen to the iron--which it will do if opportunity is given--there is energy produced again in receiving the oxygen. in other words, the energy previously expended, or part of it, is now returned. this action and reaction are practically those that take place in the edison alkaline storage battery. for simplicity of illustration we will consider a cell containing only two plates, one positive and one negative. the negative plate is made up of a number of small, flat, perforated pockets containing iron oxide in the form of a fine powder. the positive plate is made up of small, perforated tubes containing nickel oxide mixed with very thin flakes of metallic nickel. (fig. 37 illustrates these plates, the positive being in front.) [illustration: fig. 37] these two elements, positive and negative, having wires or conductors attached, are placed in a nickeled-steel can containing the electrolyte, which consists of a potash solution. you will see that this differs from a lead storage battery, in which the electrolyte is sulphuric acid and water. if we were to put this acid solution into a metallic can (except one made of lead) the can would not last long, as the acid would quickly eat holes through it. now let us see what takes place in the edison alkaline storage battery. if an electric current from a dynamo or other source of electricity is caused to pass through the positive to the negative plate the oxygen present in the iron oxide passes to and remains with the nickel oxide. during all the time this is going on the battery is said to be "charging," and when all the oxygen has been removed from the iron oxide and is taken up by the nickel oxide, then the battery is said to be "charged," and the flow of current into the battery is stopped. a change has now taken place. the powder in the negative plate is no longer iron oxide, but has been reduced to metallic iron, because the oxygen has been removed. the powder in the positive plate is now raised to a higher or super oxide of nickel, because it has taken the oxygen that was in the iron. but the nickel oxide will readily give up its excess of oxygen, and the iron will receive it back freely if permitted. if the proper conditions are established, this transfer of oxygen will take place, but the iron cannot receive it without delivering energy. [illustration: fig. 38] the proper conditions are established by providing a conducting circuit between the two elements, in which lamps, motors, or other electrical devices are placed. as soon as this circuit is provided, the opportunity is given to the iron to receive the oxygen. this it does, and in so doing develops electrical energy. this energy is in the form of electric current which is then delivered by the battery on what is called the "discharge," and this current may be used for lighting lamps or for operating motors or other electrical devices. the battery is said to be discharging as long as the iron is receiving oxygen from the nickel oxide. as soon as it becomes iron oxide once more, the giving out of energy ceases and the battery is said to be "discharged," and must again be charged to obtain further work from it. such a battery can be charged and discharged an indefinite number of times. this type of battery is very rugged, and its combinations are not self-destructive. it is very simple, as it provides chiefly for the movement of the oxygen back and forth; besides, it gives much more current for its weight than the lead type of storage battery. (fig. 38 shows the plates of a standard edison cell removed from container.) connecting storage batteries on the discharge, one cell of a lead storage battery gives an average of about 2 volts, and a cell of alkaline storage battery about 1.2 volts, no matter what its size or the number of plates may be. when there are more than two plates in one cell, all the positives in that cell are connected together by metallic strips or bands, and all negatives in the cell are connected together in a similar way. although we cannot obtain more than the above-named electromotive force from one cell of either type of storage battery, we can obtain a greater ampère capacity by using large plates instead of small ones, or by using a larger number of small size. the same effects are produced by connecting the cells in series, or multiple, or multiple series, as we showed you in regard to primary batteries; and the storage batteries may be charged as well as discharged when connected in any one of these ways. charging current the current which is used for charging must always be greater in pressure than that of the storage batteries which are being charged. if it is not, the storage batteries will be the stronger of the two and will overpower the charging current and so discharge themselves. x conclusion we will now bring this little volume to a close, having given you a brief outline of the simplest rudiments of that wonderful power of nature, electricity. we may compare this subject to a beautiful house the inside of which you would like to examine from top to bottom. we have opened the door for you; now walk in and examine everything. there may be a great many stairs to climb, but what you see and learn will repay for all the trouble. the end footnotes: [1] the filaments in modern "mazda" lamps, as made at the edison lamp works, are strips of metallic tungsten. [2] the batteries we will now describe are for closed-circuit work _only_, and they are never used for open-circuit work. but there is a type of battery made that is available for either open or closed circuit operation. this is the edison primary battery, which will be described later on. [3] practically, there is always one more negative plate than positive plates in a _regular_ storage-battery cell. consequently, a standard cell always contains an odd number of plates. transcriber's note -plain print and punctuation errors fixed. note: project gutenberg also has an html version of this file which includes the original illustrations. see 38036-h.htm or 38036-h.zip: (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/38036/38036-h/38036-h.htm) or (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/38036/38036-h.zip) idaho agricultural extension service bulletin 396 june, 1962 t-1 electricity for the 4-h scientist safety uses economy division i 4-h electric university of idaho college of agriculture how to use this book in fulfilling the goals of the 4-h electric project for the first and succeeding years the minimum goals for credit in the 4-h electric project vary according to the 4-h member's age and the number of years he or she has taken the electric project. for example, if you are a 4-h member beginning the 4-h electric project at the age of 10, you will not be required to earn as many credit points as a 14-year-old 4-h member beginning the 4-h electric project. however, if you are a 12-year-old in your second year of electricity you must earn as many credit points in that year as a 14-year-old does in his or her first year. each lesson or goal has been designated a certain number of credit points. these are shown near the title of each lesson or goal. you decide on the lessons you want to study, list them, and add up the credit points. for a full year's 4-h project credit, the total of your credit points should be at least as many as shown in the following table: examples of reading the table below are as follows: (a) an 11-year-old member is required to complete 13 credit points the first year, (b) a 14-year-old is required to complete 17 credit points his first year, (c) a 14-year-old taking the electric project for the third year must complete 16 credit points that year. we recommend that, if you are taking the 4-h electric project, you start with the first lesson in the book and go on through to the back of the book in advanced years. but you may skip the less important or less interesting parts so long as you learn the basic lessons. a way to find out whether you know the basic lessons is to read them through and try to answer all questions under the heading "what did you learn." if you can answer these questions you may not wish to spend the time doing the things listed under "what to do." minimum number of credit points required for each year's work in the 4-h electric project 4-h member's| 4-h member's year in 4-h electric project age | | 1st year | 2nd year | 3rd year | 4th or | | | | later years 10-11 | 13 | 15 | | 12-13 | 15 | 17 | 19 | 20 14-15 | 17 | 19 | 21 | 21 16 & over | 19 | 21 | 21 | 21 this system of credit points makes it possible for you to do the things you want to do with electricity and get credit for them in the 4-h electric project. 4-h electric, division i table of contents lesson credit page number title points number how to use this book 1 b-1 getting acquainted with electricity 3 2 b-2 tools for electricians 4 7 b-3 rewire a lamp--be a lamp detective 3 11 b-4 make a trouble light 3 15 b-5 what makes motors run 5 18 b-6 taking care of electric motors 3 23 b-7 reading the electric meter 4 26 b-8 ironing is fun 3 30 b-9 let's be friends with electricity 2 35 b-10 how electric bells work--for you 3 39 b-11 first aid for electrical injuries 2 43 b-12 how electricity heats 3 47 b-13 mysterious magnetism 2 50 b-14 give your appliances and lights a square meal 2 54 b-15 you can measure electricity 4 58 university of idaho college of agriculture agricultural extension service eric b. wilson, extension agricultural engineer 1962 published and distributed in furtherance of the acts of may 8 and june 30, 1914, by the university of idaho extension service, james e. kraus, director; and the u. s. department of agriculture, co-operating. lesson no. b-l credit points 3 getting acquainted with electricity electricity serves you best when you understand how it works and use it properly. as a 4-h member, you should know about electricity and help to show others the way to obtain its tremendous work-saving benefits as well as how to use it with safety. a good way to think of electricity is to compare it with water. it acts a lot like water. however it is made of tiny parts of atoms called electrons. when there are more than the normal number of electrons in anything, it is said to be negatively charged; when there is a shortage of electrons, it is positively charged. as water flows downhill, "seeking it's level," electrons flow from negative to positive, seeking to "balance" the charge. electrical conductors even if you're never going to repair a lamp or make a chick brooder, you should know about conductors and insulators. this is because you happen to be a fairly good conductor of electricity. electricity will pass easily through you to other conductors--the ground, for instance. when this happens you may get a shock, burn, or serious injury. but it doesn't ever have to happen, if you learn to understand your friend, electricity. silver, copper, iron, aluminum and many other metals are very good conductors. water, acids, and salts are too. electricity passes over or through them very easily. like water pipes, the larger the conductor, the more electricity it can carry. when conductors are too small for the amount of electrons trying to move over them, they get hot, melt, may start fires. that's why wire size is important. electrical insulators insulators are the opposite of conductors. electricity has trouble passing through some materials. rubber, most plastics, dry wood, oils and glass are some of the good insulators. it's the amount and kind of insulation that counts. if it has enough force, electricity can pass through just about anything--even jump gaps! electricity, like water, flows along the easiest paths. it is always trying to get to the ground. the earth attracts it. it stays on the wires unless a person, a wet branch, or some other conductor gives it a path to the ground. do not touch any wire which might be carrying electricity. play it safe if you should touch a "hot" wire accidentally and are standing on a dry piece of wood, the conducting pathway to the ground is not good and the electricity may keep running along its wire. but do not touch some other conductor with another part of your body. this would complete a circuit through your body and would be very dangerous. always make sure there is plenty of good insulation material or plenty of distance between you and anything which might be carrying electricity. remember, too, insulation is of little use when it is wet. dew, mist, rain, condensation, a damp floor can change the whole picture. if you understand electricity and how it acts, you'll be safe enough, because you won't take chances or expose yourself to injury. electrical terms _alternating current_--usually referred to as "ac," alternating current is current which reverses its direction of flow at regular intervals, 60 times a second. _direct current_--"dc" current flows only in one direction. battery current is dc. _ampere_--amperes are units by which the rate of flow of electrical current (electrons) is measured. an ampere is 6.3 billion electrons passing one point in a circuit, in one second. this compares with the way the flow of water is measured in gallons per second. _volts_--a volt is a unit to measure the tendency of electrons to move when they are shoved. voltage is the amount of "push" behind the electrons. it's like water pressure in a pipe. home power lines carry 115 volts (110 to 120 volts). for appliances such as electric stoves, washers and driers, a second 115-volt line should be added, giving 230 volts (220 to 240 volts). _watts_--watts equal volts times amperes. light bulbs, electric irons and other appliances are usually marked with the voltage they require and the number of watts. _kilowatts_--your electric bill usually reads in kilowatt hours. a kilowatt is 1000 watts. a kilowatt hour equals 1000 watts used for 1 hour. one kilowatt equals about 1-1/3 horsepower. a kilowatt is usually indicated by "kw" and a kilowatt hour by "kwh." _circuits_--a closed circuit is one in which the electricity is flowing, lighting a light, running a motor, or some other appliance. the circuit runs all the way from the place the electricity is being generated to your home, through the appliance or light bulb, and back to the generator. circuits are opened and closed by switches. when the circuit is opened, the electricity stops at the switch. before working on a switch, socket, fuse, or any part of the wiring be sure to open the main switch. the main switch is usually at the fuse box or near it. appliances should be disconnected when you work on them. everyone in the family should know where the main switch is so it can be pulled in case of accidents, fire, flood, or windstorm damage. _fuses and circuit breakers_--these are the safety valves of your electrical system. the different electrical circuits in your home are meant to carry only certain amounts of electricity. some carry only 15 amps, others can carry 20 or more. they are marked to show capacity. when a fuse burns out or a circuit breaker opens, look for an overload of lights and appliances on the circuit before you try to replace the fuse or close the circuit breaker. without these safeguards, the overloaded electric line will heat up and may start a fire. even if no fire starts, electricity will be wasted and the homeowner will be paying for electricity that's doing no good. remember: if you ever have to replace a fuse, pull the main switch first. keep a flashlight handy in your house. it seems that fuses usually blow at night, and it doesn't pay to stumble or fumble around electric wires in the dark. what to do: make a circuit board so that you can show others how electricity travels from here to there, and how it behaves under different conditions, make an electric circuit board. _materials needed:_ piece of 3/4" board about 4" x 6" l-l/2-volt no. 6 dry cell battery two pieces of bell wire, each 24" long, one black, one white two 10-penny box nails (3") three 3-penny box nails (1") two small screws or carpet tacks two 2-inch rubber bands two miniature sockets with solder terminals two l-l/2-volt flashlight bulbs _tools needed:_ ruler, pencils, hammer, pliers or vise. _making the board:_ 1. lay out the board with a pencil and ruler as indicated in figure 1. 2. bend the three-inch nail as shown in figure 2, using pliers, vise and hammer. 3. pound the one-inch nails into the board for a half-inch at points a, c, and d. use the three-inch nail to make a hole a half-inch deep at b. put the crank nail in this hole and pound in a little farther. attach the lamp socket brackets at e and f. stretch the rubber band as in figure 3. 4. lay out the electricity path, the circuit (figure 3). use the black wire for the positive side of the circuit (the center pole of battery). twist it around the switch crank b, and the center pole of battery. run another piece to the outside terminal of bulb socket at e. run white piece to negative pole of battery from the other terminal at e. [illustration: figure 1 (circuit board)] [illustration: figure 2 (switch)] 5. close the switch. the rubber band should hold the switch nail tightly against nail at c. does the bulb light? __________ if it doesn't, check the connections. now you have a circuit--a closed circuit when the electricity runs all the way from the positive pole to the negative pole. the black wire is the hot side, the live wire, because it carries the full load of the battery up to the bulb. remember, battery current is direct current, dc. in the case of alternating current, ac, such as most homes and buildings use, the electricity flows in first one direction and then the other. [illustration: figure 3 (closed circuit)] parallel wiring to make this circuit hookup, attach another white wire to the negative pole of battery and a terminal of the second flashlight bulb. run a black wire from the other terminal to the switch terminal at c (figure 4). close switch. both bulbs will light. trace the circuit. electricity is going equally to each bulb, the same amount that went to the single bulb. the difference is that the battery will last only half as long. it's like a pail of water with two open spigots. the pail empties twice as fast as it would with just one spigot open. this type of wiring is called parallel wiring. if one bulb is unscrewed, the other will stay lit. [figure 4 (parallel wiring)] series wiring to do this, run the negative wire to one terminal of the second bulb and attach a wire from the other terminal to a terminal of the first bulb. the other terminal connects with the switch at c (figure 5). this is series wiring. if one bulb is unscrewed, the other will fail to light because the circuit is broken for both. anything that breaks the circuit has the effect of opening the switch. [illustration: figure 5 (series wiring)] show there is a circuit through the bulb by screwing and unscrewing it. also, "jump" the socket by running the wire from c to the other terminal of the bulb at e while it is unscrewed. bulb at f will light. trace this circuit. suggested demonstrations using the circuit board, you can give many demonstrations of the way electricity flows, works and behaves. water and electricity to help others understand electricity better, draw a water system on an electric circuit board paralleling the circuit. for the battery show a water tank, pipes instead of wires, faucets instead of switches. somewhere on the board paste a comparison of electrical terms with terms used in describing water, such as the following: wire equals pipe volts equal pressure amperes equal rate of flow gallons per second watts equal pressure times rate of flow switch equals faucet current equals flowing water show how to figure the wattage that a circuit protected by a 15 ampere fuse can handle. do it with actual things or cut-out pictures of light bulbs, irons, toasters, coffee-makers, etc. you know that amperes times volts equal watts. if the voltage is 115, a 15 amp circuit can handle 115 volts times 15 amps, or 1725 watts. the name plates on electric motors indicate the amperage at full load. you can convert this to watts, of course, by multiplying amperage by the line voltage. motors require an additional amount of electricity when they start. you need to allow for this fact, so fuses will not blow or circuits trip when a motor is turned on. you will learn more about this when you study electric motors. for more information your leader has many other sources of information about electricity and demonstrations you can perform. ask him. also, libraries have many books about electricity and its history, which are very interesting and useful. maybe you can find an electrician, someone from your power supplier, or an equipment dealer who will talk to your club on electricity or electrical safety. what did you learn? (underline the correct answers then discuss in the group.) 1. in a water pipe system water flows. in an electrical circuit (electrons) (atoms) (charges) flow. 2. electricity or electrons flow (easier) (harder) (about the same) in a conductor than in an insulator. 3. rubber is a good (conductor) (insulator) (ground). 4. the most common material used as an electrical conductor is (glass) (silver) (copper). 5. the unit of electrical pressure or push is the (ampere) (volt) (watt). 6. the rate of flow of electricity is measured in (gallons) (amperes per minute) (amperes). 7. volts times amperes equals (watts) (kilowatt hours) (alternating current). 8. a dry cell battery (stores) (makes) (uses) electrical energy. 9. in a parallel circuit the electricity has (one) (two or more) (no) paths to travel. 10. in a series circuit with two bulbs and a switch the bulbs are (brighter) (dimmer) (the same) as when they were in the parallel circuit. lesson no. b-2 credit points 4 tools for electricians who goeth a borrowing goeth a sorrowing few lend (but fools) their working tools tusser 1524-1580 whenever a job comes up, it saves time and trouble when you have the right tools and they are all where you can find them. electrical work takes some special tools and some everyday tools. if you have ever watched a good electrician at work, you've seen how neatly he stores his tools in a box so every one of them is handy. when a lineman climbs a pole, he has his regular tools in a holster on his belt. special tools are kept in a box in racks in the repair truck, all ready for instant use. wouldn't you like to have electrician's tools all handy, ready for use, and know how to use them properly? basic tools for electrical work _knife_ a good knife with a sharp blade is one of the most useful tools. a camper's or electrician's type knife is probably best because it has other useful parts besides the cutting blades--a screwdriver or punch, for instance. of course, you'll never use the cutting blades as a screwdriver. this knife should be kept clean, dry, sharp, and free from rust. put a little oil on the joints from time to time. remember, "never whittle toward you and you'll never cut yourself." _pliers_ a pair of electrician's pliers should be part of your kit. wrap the handles with plastic insulating tape. even though you're not going to work on "hot" electric lines, it pays to play safe. later on, as you learn more about electricity, you'll want a pair of needle-nose pliers for the fine work. _screwdrivers_ you'll want a screwdriver which has true corners. a 4 to 6 inch plastic handled screwdriver with a narrow blade is best. you'll probably need more than one size to fit the various size screws you'll be turning. screwdrivers are easily damaged if you try to use them as chisels and pry bars, or use them in screw slots which are too large for the blade. you can be hurt by the screwdriver if you try to screw or unscrew things you are holding in your hand. keep your free hand away from the end of the screwdriver. place the work on a bench or where it can be handled easily. _soldering iron_ a good 100 to 250-watt electric soldering iron will be useful. later on you may want to buy a soldering gun, but unless you are doing a lot of soldering it won't be necessary. a supply of resin-core electrician's solder will be needed. acid-core solder reacts with copper and in time causes a bad splice. _tape_ once it was necessary to use two types of tape on splices--rubber tape with friction tape over it. now there is a plastic tape on the market which takes the place of both and has good insulating quality. it is called electrical tape, or plastic tape, and resists water, oils (which would damage rubber tape), and acids. you'll need a lot of tape in your electrical work, so keep a roll on hand. _other tools and equipment_ as you go along in electrical work, you'll be adding tools and other equipment, such as a trouble light and maybe an ammeter or voltmeter. other tools you'll want to add will be a phillips screwdriver, open end wrenches, a crescent wrench, small hack saw, hand drill and bits. you'll also be using some regular carpenter's tools such as hammers, saws, and so on. unless you use them frequently, you don't need to keep them in your electrical kit. it's a good idea to start acquiring a supply of electrical parts--lengths of wire, fuses, switches, sockets, plugs, and other items that will come in handy. there are parts you can salvage from old lamps, motors, and other equipment. such a collection can be a real treasure chest when you need a part in a hurry. but be sure to throw away all faulty parts. [illustration: figure 1. completed tool chest.] what to do: build a tool chest to keep your tools always ready for use, a tool chest will be very handy. it's the 4-h way to work. you'll be surprised how much easier it makes a job when you have your tools, various parts and repair equipment all in one place. you can make the chest (figure 1) with a saw, plane, screwdriver, pencil, ruler or carpenter's square, and hammer. _materials you'll need:_ a piece of lumber 1" by 10" by 8 feet long. (1" lumber is actually only 3/4" thick--this is the thickness you'll be working with.) 2 small hinges, with wood screws 1 small hasp, with wood screws 2 small handles with wood screws, or one large handle 1 small chain, 10" to 12" long some no. 6 penny finishing nails or wood screws about the same length _making the chest:_ 1. cut your lumber into the following pieces: 1 piece 10" x 18" for top 1 piece 8-1/2" x 16-1/2" for bottom 2 pieces 6" x 8-1/2" for two ends 2 pieces 6" x 18" for front and back 2. lay out pieces as shown in figure 2. [illustration: figure 2] then, set up the two end pieces and nail to bottom section. refer back to figure 1 as you go along to see that box is shaping up as shown. nail the front and back sections to the ends along the bottom. wood screws can be used instead of nails. 3. lay the top in place and attach hinges to the back side, about two inches in from each end. 4. attach one part of hasp to the top, and the other part to front board in center. fasten the handles to each end. 5. attach chain to the top and front so the top will stay open when chain is fully extended. now you can invent your own improvements for your chest. you can paint it, put your name on it, and your club emblem and name if you wish. you can put a rack on the inside of the cover to hold your work sheets and other booklets and materials. you can install special slots or straps to hold each tool in its place along the sides of the box. maybe you will want to put some partitions in the box to separate various electrical equipment such as wires, fuses, switches, and plugs. _a working kit_ an accessory which you may want to add to your tool chest is an apron or holster to wear when you are moving around on the job. an apron can be made of a size of cloth about 18 by 20 inches. it should be folded up from the bottom, and sewn to fit the number and size of tools you have. figure 3 shows such an apron. [illustration: figure 3. apron.] you can make a lineman's holster in the same way, using plastic or soft leather. merely make belt loops by cutting on the dotted lines. a snap fastener will hold the flap over the tools so they won't fall out. [illustration: figure 4. lineman's holster.] demonstrations you can give show and tell others the proper handling, care and use of tools. show and tell how to build an electrician's tool kit. for further information ask your power supplier or an electrician to tell the club about the various tools of the electrician's trade and demonstrate them. ask your leader how to get exhibit material or information about electrical tools and their use and then tell the club about them. lesson no. b-3 credit points 3 rewire a lamp--be a lamp detective [illustration: the line-up of lamp suspects] one of the duties of a law officer is to prevent crime. it's that way with the lamp detective. you can become one. in the average home there are lamps about to commit the crime of shocking people, starting fires, and stealing electricity. some are refusing to do their job well and some are no-goods, sitting in closets or attics, doing nothing. you can put these lamps to working again safely and well. become the lamp expert in your family. what's in a lamp? a lamp gives light for comfortable and convenient use in the home. it consists normally of a stand, switch, cord, lampshade holder, and shade. some lamps have diffusing bowls which reduce glare and shadows. the most common fault found in an old lamp is in the cord, but sometimes the switch or the wiring in the lamp is bad. look over all the lamps in your home and find the ones needing to be fixed. what to do--rewire a lamp somewhere around your house you can probably find a lamp that is no longer used or needs repairing. you can make it useful again and at the same time learn how to wire a lamp. _materials needed_: tools: pocket knife, small or medium screwdriver, and pliers (electrician type is best). _new lamp cord_: for each lamp to be rewired, you'll need 6 feet of cord plus the length of wire within the lamp stand. lamp cord wire comes in two sizes, no. 18 and no. 16 awg (american wire gauge). no. 18 is smaller than no. 16, but is adequate for most lamps. cords are made with surface coverings of several different materials: braided cotton, rayon or silk, and molded rubber or plastic. braided cord is decorative, but rubber or plastic is easier to work with and is usually more desirable. _switch_: if the switch is bad, get a new one. socket switches are made with push-through, turn-knob, or pull-chain controls. the pull-chain type is seldom used on modern table or floor lamps. your lamp may have a separate push-switch in the base. in this case, get the same kind for replacement. some switches are "3-circuit" switches for use with high, medium, and low-light bulbs. _plug_: plugs are made of various materials, mostly hard rubber or molded plastic. some have a shank or handle for better grasping. this type is more desirable. the plug on the old cord may be good, and if so, may be used on the new cord. how to do it: 1. if the plug on the old cord is good and you plan to use it, remove it from the old cord. 2. measure and cut a new lamp cord equal to the length of the cord within the lamp, plus 6 feet. 3. pass one end of the new cord through the center of the plug. strip 2 inches of the fabric insulation off cord, or in case of a rubber cord, split cord back two inches. be sure no bare wire shows in long split section (figure 1). 4. use knife to strip insulation off wire for 3/4" on end of each cord. be careful. don't cut yourself. don't cut wires. use a light touch, slope the knifeblade and slice with knife edge away from you (figure 1). [illustration: figure 1 (ready to wire plug)] 5. twist exposed strands of each wire tightly to make a good conductor, and place each conductor around its proper terminal in the direction in which the screw tightens (figure 2). 6. tighten screws on terminal posts. pull cord until slack is out. lay aside until ready to attach to lamp. [illustration: figure 2 (attaching cord to plug)] 7. remove lamp shade, shade-holder, bulb, and diffusing bowl, if there is one. 8. separate the metal shell of socket from its cap by pressing on shell at place marked "press," and pull socket from cap. 9. pull on socket body to get some slack in lamp cord. loosen screws and detach cord. pull cord out through base of lamp. you can splice new cord to the old one and use the latter to "string" the new wire. 10. pass the new cord up through the lamp base and socket cap, tie a simple half-hitch knot in the cord to prevent strain on the terminals, and attach wires to the terminals on the socket (figure 3). if there is likely to be any strain on cord, use an underwriters' knot. twist strands and attach wire in direction in which screw tightens. 11. pull slack out of cord in lamp so that socket rests in socket cap, replace shell and reconnect cap. be sure the fiber insulator is in the shell. you'll feel or hear a click when the notches in shell are locked to the projections in the cap. 12. replace bulb, inspect carefully, and test. (in floor lamps where the cord runs through the center post and out under the base, the cord will last longer if it is fastened with tape so it doesn't rub edge of lamp base when lamp is moved.) 13. if the lamp has a porcelain socket, simply disconnect the wires at the terminals, remove the old wire and connect the new one. [illustration: figure 3 (socket and switch assembly)] what did you learn? underline correct answers then discuss in the group. (there may be more than one correct answer.) 1. the part of the lamp that usually wears out first is (the socket) (the cord) (the plug). 2. lamps that waste electricity are those which have (bad wiring) (frayed cords) (dirty shades or bulb). 3. to unplug a lamp you should grasp (cord) (plug) firmly and pull. 4. wire in lamp cord usually comes in sizes 16 or 18. size 16 is the smaller (true) (false). 5. in fastening wire around a terminal post it should go around in a (clockwise) (counter-clockwise) direction. 6. when the switch on a lamp is turned off, the electricity only goes as far as (the wall plug) (the switch). 7. an underwriters' knot should be used (only when there is room for it in the plug) (whenever there is likely to be strain on the cord, even if you have to replace the plug with a larger one). suggested demonstrations show how to inspect a lamp and its cord. you might tie tags on the cord and lamp at points of danger or failure--at the plug, wear points next to lamp base, bad sockets. demonstrate the process of repairing a lamp cord, socket and plug. make a board display of the parts of the lamp socket showing cord attached. make a display of the types of lamp cords and plugs in common use. using two lamps, one with clean bulb and shade, the other dusty, show how the former gives more light. for more information lamps have an interesting history. look it up in your local library. ask someone from your power supplier or electric dealer to talk to the club about the different kinds of lamps. your leader has or can get additional information on lamps, if you wish. [illustration] what did you exhibit what did you demonstrate lesson no. b-4 credit points 3 make a trouble light. a handy piece of equipment in the home and on the farm is a heavy-duty extension cord with a shielded light and a side outlet on it. when you want to work on the car or tractor in the yard at night, the trouble light is better than a flashlight. you can use it both for light and as an extension cord. it is safer than matches or a lantern, especially around the garage or barn. it is easy to make a trouble light, and it gives you good practice in electrical work. of course you can buy one, but you wouldn't have the fun of making it nor would it suit your needs. trouble lights are not for permanent use--they're for emergency use and to provide light or electricity in places where they are seldom needed. when you find a trouble light being used as permanent wiring, that's the place to install an outlet. what size cord? choose the right kind of cord. what length will be best for your various uses? a cord too long may be bothersome to use and store. what will be the heaviest load you are likely to put on the cord, in amperes? check appliances you may want to connect to it. no. 16 wire can carry 10 amperes safely for a distance of 50 feet, while no. 18 can carry only up to 7 amperes for a distance of 40 feet. you'll want a "hard service" cord, called s, st, or so-type cord by electricians. junior hard service cords, known as sj, sjt, or sjo, are fine for lighter duty. cord, plug and guard a rubber-handled socket should be used for safety and to withstand hard knocks. it should have a switch on it, preferably a push switch in a recess in the handle. the connector or attachment plug should be of rubber or solid plastic and have a metal cord grip fastened to it. this grip will hold the cord firmly and prevent strain on the terminal connections. [illustration: finished trouble light] get a good lamp guard. if the wire is too light, it may bend and break the bulb when hit or dropped. for the lamp itself, get a rough service lamp. an ordinary lamp won't last long with rough usage. how to make the trouble light _tools needed:_ your 4-h electrician's kit or screwdriver, knife and soldering iron _materials needed:_ 1. about 20 feet of 2-wire, no. 16 heavy duty (hard service) 2. a rubber-handled socket with switch and a side outlet 3. a shielded lamp guard [illustration: materials needed] 4. a good connector plug cap, preferably with a clamp-type grip for the cord 5. a rough service lamp bulb 6. solder and flux _steps to take:_ 1. remove about 2 inches of the outer covering of cord at one end. 2. separate the wires and cut away the filler material. 3. remove 3/4 inch of the conductor insulation from the end of each wire and tightly twist the strands together to form a firm conductor. be careful not to cut any of the fine wires. ends may be soldered. 4. slide the plug in position on the cord. 5. if there is no cord grip, tie the underwriters' knot (figure 1). if there isn't room enough, make an "s" loop by passing the wires around the prongs before fastening them to the terminal screws as explained in the next step. 6. loop the bare part of the wire around the screw in the direction the screw is turned to tighten (clockwise direction). this will prevent the wires from being forced out from under the head of the screw as it is tightened. now repeat with the second wire, wrapping it around the other prong of the plug. _connecting the socket._ 1. separate the parts of rubber-handled socket (figure 2). 2. prepare the other end of the cord as in steps 1, 2, and 3 above. 3. insert the cord through the rubber handle and socket guard. 4. tie the holding knot (underwriters' knot) as explained in step 5. 5. connect wires to terminal screws and assemble the rubber-handled socket. 6. screw in the rough service lamp and test your cord. 7. put the shielded lamp guard on the socket and tighten the holding clamp until it is firmly in place. you are now ready to use or demonstrate your trouble light. 8. after you've made your trouble light, decide on a good place to keep it where it will be handy for use. loop it carefully and hang it over a wooden dowel rather than a nail. it will last longer. [illustration: figure 1 tying an underwriter's knot] [illustration: figure 2 disassembled light] what did you learn? (underline correct answer) 1. a junior hard service cord is known as an (so-type) (sjo-type) cord. 2. you disconnect a cord by (jerking it from the socket) (grasping plug and pulling it out). 3. brass sockets are unsafe because (they break too easily) (the exposed metal can cause short circuits). 4. rubber-covered cord is safer for emergency cords than fabric because (it will stretch) (it will insulate and protect the wires inside). 5. in a trouble light (any kind of bulb will do) (a rough service bulb is best). ideas for demonstrations and exhibits 1. show how to make your trouble light and a method of storing it. 2. show a safe trouble light, and an unsafe trouble light with danger points marked. 3. show cutaway pieces of different types of cord. for more information ask your power supplier, county highway engineer, police official or leader to tell you about various types of portable emergency lights and their uses. lesson no. b-5 credit points 5 what makes motors run what makes an electric motor run? can you make an electric motor that will run? certainly you can, and by doing so you'll learn why it runs. it won't be mysterious any more and you'll be ahead of all the millions of people who use motors every day and never know why or how the motor converts electrical energy into useful power. [illustration] motors are magnets you know how one end of a compass needle always points to north. no matter how you turn the compass, the same end of the needle always swings to the north. the earth itself and that small compass are both magnets (figure 1). each has a north pole and a south pole. around the poles of each there are magnetic fields, invisible lines of force that attract and repel. [illustration: figure 1. the same end of the compass needle always points to the earth's magnetic north pole.] the n poles _repel_ each other and so do the s poles. the n and s poles _attract_ each other. in other words, opposite poles attract; poles that are alike repel each other. lay 2 bar magnets on a table side-by-side. if both n poles are at one end, they'll repel each other and almost flip around until there's a n pole lying next to a s pole (figure 2). [illustration: figure 2. small bar magnets laid side by side move so that the north pole of one is near the south pole of the other.] now suppose we place one of the bar magnets on the table. the other, we'll fix on a pivot so it can spin around. this one we'll move so its n pole almost touches the fixed magnet's n pole. as soon as we release it, the movable magnet will spin around so its s pole will be near the n pole of the stationary magnet. that's an electric motor--almost. [illustration: figure 3. a movable bar magnet pivots so its south pole is near the north pole of a stationary magnet.] it's not quite a motor because the rotating magnet will just move as far as it has to in order to get the opposite poles together. you might be able to cause the movable bar magnet to make turn after turn. you could do this by turning the fixed magnet quickly end for end. this wouldn't be very practical as a motor. we can improve it if we could change the pole on one end of the rotating magnet just as soon as it reaches the attracting pole, it could make a complete circle. in doing that, the pole at the near end of the rotating magnet would be repelled by the stationary magnet and pushed away. as soon as the opposite end of the rotating magnet would come into the magnetic field, it would be drawn to the stationary magnet. in order to keep the "motor" running, we would have to constantly change the poles at each end on every half revolution. we need an electromagnet we can't reverse the poles on simple bar magnets, but we can on _electromagnets_. we can make one by wrapping a wire several times around an iron core to form a coil. this magnet will also have a n and a s pole when connected to electrical current. the big difference is that the poles can be changed instantly by reversing the current in the wire. switching poles automatically the rotating electromagnet will have to be connected to the 2 wires through which we pass the current. since it's rotating on a center shaft, we can't have a solid connection. instead we have to extend the wires from the coil out along the shaft and let the electric contact be made with brushes which touch the wires along the shaft. [illustration: figure 4. a rotating electromagnet changes poles as contacts are made first one way, then the other.] this is a simple way to reverse the current in the coil of the electromagnet. increasing efficiency instead of using only one pole of a stationary magnet, we can use both. this is done by shaping the stationary magnet around the path of the rotating electromagnet. this way we have the benefit of the attracting and repelling forces from both poles. the effect is doubled. we can also wrap wires around this circular iron and make an electromagnet of it. but when we wire this magnet we use no brushes because we want the current to flow in one direction only. the stationary electromagnet is called the _field_. the rotating electromagnet is the _armature_. what to do: make a motor _tools needed:_ pocket knife, hammer, vise (or 2 pairs of pliers). _materials needed_: 1 roll of no. 24 enameled wire 1 roll of electrician's tape 3 4" (20-penny) nails 4 2-1/2" (8-penny) nails 4 3" brads (10 penny) wood board for motor base 2 staples or 4 small brads 2 tacks 2 3 volt dry cell batteries (or a 6 volt transformer). step no. 1-armature wrap about 1-1/2" of a 4" nail with two layers of tape. this will be the shaft. the iron core will be made of two pairs of 2-1/2" nails. wrap tape around each pair with heads and points alternated. center both pairs on each side of the shaft. place them about 1" from the head of the shaft nail. wrap them together with two layers of tape from tip to tip. start at the shaft and wind no. 24 enameled wire to one end and back. then do the same on the other end. always wind in the same direction. leave 6" of spare wire at start and finish. step no. 2-commutator scrape all insulation off the ends of the wire. bend the bare ends back and forth as shown. lay them flat over the taped shaft-one on each side of the shaft. hold the commutator down with narrow strips of tape. wrap tightly near the core and at the opposite end. step no. 3-field make the core by bending two 4" nails in the middle at right angles. space the heads about 3" apart to form a horseshoe. wrap together with two layers of tape. wind about 400 turns of wire around the center. leave 4" of spare wire at start and finish. attach to wood base with staples at each end of the wire. small brads, bent over, will do just as well. step no. 4--armature supports and brushes scrape the insulation from the ends of two 6" pieces of wire. tack them to the base and bend them as shown to make brushes. drive two pairs of 3" brads into the base about 3-1/4" apart and in a line midway between the field poles. wrap wire around the supports to form armature bearings. scrape insulation off ends of wire from the field. connect one end to a brush wire. _assemble as shown_ adjust the position of commutator and tension of brushes against it for best operation. take the armature off the motor and connect the commutator wires to a dry cell battery. test the polarity of each end of the armature with a compass. switch the connections on the commutator and test again. see how the compass needle changes direction? with the armature still off, connect the field coil directly to the dry cell. test the polarity of each end of the field with the compass. how can you reverse the polarity? try it. it's easy. reassemble the motor again and start it. push the field poles slightly out of alignment with the turning armature. what happens to the motor's speed? can you tell why? this time, push the field poles completely out of the way. test the polarity of the armature as you slowly turn it by hand. do you see what happens and why it does? try to reverse the direction of rotation of your motor by reversing the connections at the battery. what happens? can you explain why? demonstrations you can give make a display board showing the parts of the toy motor and explain how each part works compared with the parts of a commercial motor. for further information there are several other types of toy motors you can build. your club leader or power supplier can help you find information about them. 1. did your toy motor run? 2. did your motor speed up or slow down when you pushed the field poles out of line? why? 3. what happens to the magnetic polarity of the armature when you turn it slowly by hand and check it with a compass? 4. how can you reverse the direction of rotation of your toy motor? is there another way too? what is it? lesson no. b-6 credit points 3 taking care of electric motors through the magic of electric motors, much of our work is done faster and better at lower cost than we could do it without the help of the electric motor. people who use motors and treat them properly have much more time for other work and for leisure time activities. a 1/4-horsepower motor running quietly and steadily hour after hour will do the work of one man, and operate all day for about 5 cents without tiring. on many jobs it will work without "supervision", turning on and off automatically, as required. it does this on water pumps, in heating and cooling units, and on fans and similar appliances. all that a motor needs to do its work is electricity and a little care. let's see what you can do to give proper care to motors in your home and on your farm. you'll need a light oil (sae 10) for motors of less than one horsepower and a slightly heavier oil (sae 20) for larger motors. see if you need grease for cups which may be on large motors. if so, be sure you use ball-bearing grease and not ordinary cup grease. cotton waste or clean rags will be needed for wiping off the motors, and a tire pump or vacuum cleaner for blowing out the dust or dirt. [illustration: some motors have instructions for oiling on the name-plate.] what to do 1. first, make a list of all the electric motors that work for your home. you may wish to make a separate list for your farm buildings. you'll probably be surprised at how many there are. don't forget the sewing machine, the refrigerator, the freezer, the vacuum cleaner and other small but important motors. don't touch any motor that is running. disconnect them before you touch them. 2. make a motor service chart with columns headed: use, location, horsepower, volts, amperes, service required, date serviced and what was done. (see sample) then list all the motors that require any servicing. some will have the instructions on the motor or appliance; the instruction booklet that came with the motor or appliance will also tell what servicing is required. _step 1._ plan the job. start with the motors in the home. then you can care for the motors on the farm. _step 2._ be sure that any motor on which you are going to work is disconnected. then wipe the outside case clean with a cloth. if the motor has openings in the end, use a vacuum cleaner to suck out dust, dirt or chaff. a tire pump may also be used to blow out this dirt. if you use compressed air, be sure the pressure is not high as it may damage wiring inside the motor. dust-proof motors should be used in dusty or dirty places. _step 3._ [illustration: if there are oil holes, oil according to the manufacturer's instructions.] if there are no instructions, remember a little oil goes a long way as far as motors are concerned. motors of less than one horsepower require only 3 or 4 drops (not squirts) of oil every 3 or 4 months if the motor is used frequently. too much oil can damage the motor. it spoils the insulation. if there are no oil holes or grease cups on the motor, it is probably lubricated by means of grease sealed in the bearings at the factory, or it may use greaseless bearings, and does not need to be oiled or greased periodically. indicate on your chart all motors which need periodic care and see that it is given according to schedule. wipe away any excess oil or grease. be sure oil holes are capped or covered. _step 4._ reconnect motor and run for a moment. _step 5._ record on the chart the date you serviced the motor and what was done. what did you learn? how many motors are there in your home? ______ on the farm? ______ how many motors need regular oiling or grease? ______ how many are less than one-horsepower? ______ sae oil ______ is used to oil motors up to 1/2 horsepower. how much oil?______ sae oil______ is used for larger motors. demonstrations you can give 1. show how to clean a small motor. 2. explain proper lubrication of motors. 3. using the chart prepared in this work sheet, give a talk about the motors that work for you-the job each one does, which ones need oil or grease, which need no attention, and why, etc. 4. use a homemade toy motor to explain "what makes motors run." 5. show proper way to replace worn cord on a small motor. for further information ask your county extension agent or 4-h leader for more literature on motors. they can help you obtain a film or a speaker such as a power supplier, a local electric dealer, or electrical contractor to discuss motors. also visit your public library and see a science teacher for more information on motors. electric motors service chart sample use a table like the following to list the motors around your farm and home. --------------------------------------------------------------------- motor | location |h.p.|volt |amp |service |date serviced and use | | | | |needed |what was done --------------------------------------------------------------------- food | kitchen |1/6 |120 |4.4 |clean & oil; |9/1-cleaned mixer | | | | |cord needs |w/cloth. repair | | | | |repair |oiled w/#10 oil; | | | | | |repaired cord --------------------------------------------------------------------- tool | farm |1/4 |120 |5.8 |clear, oiling; |10/6-cleaned grinder | shop | | | |have switch |w/vacuum oiled #10 | | | | |have switch |oil. 10/20-had | | | | |repaired |switch repaired --------------------------------------------------------------------- pump |pump |1/3 |120 |7.2 |oiling, |9/26-cleaned |house | | | |cleaning |w/tire pump; | | | | | |oiled w/10 oil ---------------------------------------------------------------------lesson no. b-7 credit points 4 reading the electric meter there is no question but what electricity is one of the lowest cost services in the home and on the farm. a few pennies worth of electricity will provide the power to run machines that take the place of a man or of several men working all day. however, we all like to know what things cost. sometime you may have to decide between different methods--man, horse, gasoline engine or electric motor power. then you'll want to know how to figure the cost of electricity, as well as the cost of the original equipment. first of all, you should know how to read an electric meter. reading a meter electric meters read in kilowatt hours, just as a water meter reads in gallons and a gas meter in cubic feet. a kilowatt hour is the electrical energy consumed by 1000 watts of electricity used for one hour. ten 100-watt light bulbs burning for one hour would use one kilowatt-hour--one kwh. [illustration: figure 1. some meters give the reading directly, like the mileage total on a speedometer.] some meters are read directly, as shown in figure 1. the more common type has four dials which are read from right to left--just the opposite from the way things are usually read. the hand on the extreme right turns clockwise, the next hand turns counter-clockwise, the next clockwise; the last hand on the left turns counter-clockwise. the first dial on the right can register up to 10 kilowatt-hours; the second up to 100 kwh; the third, to 1000 kwh; the fourth, to 10,000 kwh. after that, the meter starts over again. to take a reading you must read all four dials of the meter, from right to left. [illustration: figure 2. meter dials are read from right to left.] to read each dial, you use the number last passed by the dial hand. this may not be nearest the hand. for instance, if the pointer has passed 6 and is almost on 7, you read it as 6. write down the figures in the same order you read the dial, from right to left. practice reading the meters shown in figure 3 on the following page. what's your electric bill? meters aren't set back each month when the meter reader comes around. the difference in the readings from one month to the next shows how many kilowatt-hours have been used. if you know your electric rates, you can figure your bill by yourself. your power supplier will furnish you with a rate schedule on request. [illustration: figure 3. see if you can read the above correctly. the answers are shown in a box on the next page.] it will be interesting to you to find out how much it costs to operate the various electric appliances in your home. a sample rate schedule is shown in figure 4. [illustration: figure 4. sample rate schedule. note that as the use of electricity increases, the average cost per kwh is reduced.] estimating operating costs to find the cost of operating any single appliance, three steps are necessary: 1. learn the wattage of the appliance. 2. estimate how many hours the appliance is used. 3. find its operating cost. _to find wattage:_ watts, you know, are the measure of electrical power. they are the product of voltage (pressure) times amperes (rate of flow). volts times amps equals watts. the nameplate on the appliance will give the voltage required for proper operation as well as either amperage or watts. if it gives wattage, you have the information you want. otherwise you must multiply volts times amps to get the wattage. when voltage is given as 110-120, use 120 as your voltage. 120 volts is nominal today. _how much will you use?_ now that you know the wattage of the appliance, multiply this figure by number of hours the equipment operates in one day. divide this by 1000 to get the kwh. now multiply the result by the number of days the appliance is used each month. this tells you the number of kwh used by the appliance during the month. |---------------------------------------------| | | |example no. 1 | |_yard light:_ 300-watt lamp | | | |amount of use: 3 hours per night. | | | |multiply lamp wattage times hours of use | |per night to get watt-hours per night. | | | |300 times 3 = 900 watt-hours per night. | | | |divide watt-hours by 1000 to get kwh per | |night. | | | |900 divided by 1000 = .9 kwh per night. | | | |multiply kwh per night times 30 to get kwh | |per month. | | | |.9 times 30 = 27 kwh per month. | | | |if the yard light is used 3 hours per night, | |it consumes 27 kwh per month. | |---------------------------------------------| example no. 2 _coffee maker_: 120 volts, 550 watts (from nameplate) amount of use: 1/2 hour per day. multiply wattage of coffee maker times hours of use per day to get watt-hours per day. 550 times 1/2 hour = 275 watt-hours per day. divide watt-hours by 1000 to get kwh per day. 275 divided by 1000 = .275 kwh per day. multiply kwh per day times 30 to get kwh per month. .275 times 30 = 7.250 kwh per month. if the coffee maker is used l/2 hour daily, it consumes 7.25 kwh per month. _calculate operating cost per month_ now that you know the number of kilowatt hours an appliance uses, go to your rate schedule and your electric bill to see what the average kwh costs. find the average cost of 1 kwh by dividing the amount of your bill by the total number of kwh used in a month. _example_: 410 kwh used. $14.35 total monthly bill average cost per kwh equals $14.35 divided by 410 kwh-3-1/2 cents per kwh. therefore, the cost of operating the coffee maker for a month would be 3-1/2 cents times 7.25 kwh--25.4 or 25 cents. cost of operating the yard light would have been 94.5 or 95 cents a month. (a) 6357 (b) 1963 (c) 8996 correct answers to the meter readings shown on the preceding page. adding low cost helpers you can see, by looking at your rate schedule, that the average cost per kwh gets lower as you use more electricity. to find the cost of operating additional electrical equipment, the cost per kilowatt hour is found from the last "step" in the bill--the lowest cost per kwh of the electricity you're now using. sometimes power suppliers give special rates for such equipment as electric water heaters. what to do: find the cost of operating electrical equipment make and fill in the blanks of a chart showing the electrical equipment you have and the operating costs per month. make a chart for the home (refer to chart one). show the probable operating cost of equipment you might add to what you now have. demonstrations you can give show how to read a meter, making one with plywood or cardboard. dials can be painted on the main board. arrows can be attached so they will revolve to give different readings. show how to find the wattage of various types of equipment. show how to figure the cost of the average kwh in a home. for further information your leader can get additional material for you or you may want to have someone from your power supplier talk to your club, telling about meters, how they work and how they are regularly checked for accuracy. chart one-the home column no. 1. 2. 3. 4. item wattage hours kwh per cost per rating used month month per (col. 1x2)/ (col. 3 x av. remarks month 1000 kwh cost) electric iron 1100 30 33 .80 stove 880 60 52.8 1.21 (special rate) lesson no. b-8 credit points 3 ironing is fun with the modern hand iron when you are getting ready to go to school or to a party, it probably gives you a good feeling to put on a clean, freshly-ironed skirt, blouse or dress. but did you ever think about the electric iron that helps so much to give you that well-dressed feeling? when you were younger, you may have had a play iron and pretended to iron your doll's dresses. now you are old enough to learn about real irons--the different kinds of irons, how the iron heats, the kind of cord needed, the type of outlet necessary, how to use safety rules when you iron, and even how to help with the ironing. important things to know there are many different irons, but the two kinds most important for you to know about now are the regular dry iron and the combination steam-and-dry iron. [illustration: the thermostat keeps the iron at an even temperature.] it isn't weight alone that makes an iron do its job, but the heat of the iron. the heat is given off in the sole plate. the automatic iron has what is called a _thermostatic_ control which holds the temperature of the iron at the heat you want. some clothes need to be ironed with a very hot iron, while others need only to be pressed lightly with a cool iron. the thermostat keeps the iron at an even temperature after you set it for the heat you want. the thermostat is the heart of the iron. take a look at the iron used in your home. it isn't heavy to lift, and has a handle that fits your hand easily. it looks graceful and has a smooth bottom, called the sole plate. and it may have a narrow, pointed tip which is helpful in ironing pleats, corners and gathers. [illustration: your iron has a smooth bottom called the sole plate.] the iron and safety if you are going to learn to do some ironing yourself, the most important thing for you to remember is safety. you should read all about the iron first in the instructions which came with it. never use an iron carelessly. remember the safety rules: 1. an iron should never be left even for a few minutes without being disconnected. turn off by removing the plug from the outlet, or by turning the control lever to "off." [illustration: take hold of the plug--not the cord--when you disconnect it from the outlet.] 2. let the iron cool before putting it away. 3. wrap the cord carefully around the iron after it is cold. 4. always stand the iron where it will not fall off on a child or pet or your own toes. what to do: learn about your iron materials needed: an automatic iron, some old play clothes, towels, napkins or handkerchiefs, and an ironing board. steps to take: 1. watch an experienced person iron. 2. ask questions about what clothes need to be sprinkled. 3. study the thermostat settings on the dial or indicator. [illustration: most irons have a dial to set for the proper heat for different fabrics.] 4. ask about the kind of fabric each piece of clothing is--cotton, linen, silk, nylon, etc.--and why the iron should be at high heat for some, cooler for others. 5. set the thermostat for the amount of heat needed, and with an older person watching you, iron some handkerchiefs, napkins, bath towels, and a pair of play shorts or blue jeans. 6. during a month iron some of these articles for your family, keeping a record of how many you do and what they were. 7. take care of your iron. be responsible for storing it. +--------+-----------------+-------------------+---------------------+ | | no. | | store iron properly | | date | articles ironed | type of article | (check) | +--------+-----------------+-------------------+---------------------+ | | | | | +--------+-----------------+-------------------+---------------------+ | | | | | +--------+-----------------+-------------------+---------------------+ ironing is fun 1. i (use) (do not use) an adjustable ironing board at home. if i do, i adjust it to the height that just clears my knees easily as i sit in a comfortable chair. yes no 2. there are three kinds of irons usually used--dry iron, steam iron or a combination steam or dry iron. i use a ---iron. 3. i (have) (do not have) the instruction book. (if you do, read about the iron.) i know the iron's parts by their correct names. they are----. 4. i disconnect the iron if i leave it even for only a minute. this is a safety measure as fires have been known to start from irons left connected. yes no 5. i take hold of the plug--not the cord--when disconnecting the iron. yes no 6. i wait until the iron is cold before wrapping the cord around the handle and storing the iron because----. 7. most irons have a thermostatic control. the iron i am using has settings for----. 8. the purpose of the thermostat is----. 9. these fabrics need high temperature.---these fabrics need medium temperature.---these fabrics need low temperature.---10. these fabrics need sprinkling.---11. the heat and smoothness of the sole plate smoothes the wrinkles. pushing down on the handle or moving the iron rapidly only makes ironing hard work. i will iron slowly and steadily arranging and moving the garment with the left hand while guiding the iron with the right hand. (or the other way for the left handed.) yes no 12. i have watched an experienced person iron. yes no 13. i have practiced on handkerchiefs, napkins and pillow cases. 14. here is my record of ironing for one month. month --- your name --- date i have ironed: ---------+----------------------------------------------- | | demonstrations you can give 1. show a dry iron and a steam-and-dry iron. tell the difference between them and when each is to be used. 2. display garments that look nice because they have been ironed properly, and those that have been ironed improperly. explain about the heat, thermostat, type of iron and why results differ. for more information at a club meeting ask a parent to give a demonstration of ironing different articles. some power suppliers or dealers have people who will demonstrate the proper way to iron, and how to care for irons. lesson no. b-9 credit points 2 let's be friends with electricity plan a hazard hunt electricity can be your important lifelong friend and helper, so you will want to know all you can about it and how to treat it properly. however, careless and improper use of electricity can do a lot of harm. used properly, and treated with respect, electricity can do wonderful things to help you every day in many ways. for safe and proper use of electricity, all wiring, fittings, insulation, cords and plugs must be in good condition. you can be a detective and track down defects in any such type of electrical equipment that you may be using in your home or on your farm. when you find anything that is wrong, and know where it is, and know what to do about it, you can very likely correct the condition yourself, such as replacing a worn extension cord with a new one. if you find defects in permanent wiring, or some places where wires are bare or terminals are needed, you should tell your parents about them. safety first, remember, should always be on your mind when working with anything electrical. what to do: _1. have a hazard hunt_ go on a hazard hunt to see how many electrical hazards you can find. look for defects such as broken insulation, worn cords, splices that are not properly soldered and taped, loose connections, or switches that aren't working properly. there are many ways to have a hazard hunt. choose the method that will be the most fun. use the hazard hunt guide in this outline to check your home, and other buildings. maybe you'll want to have a friend help check your home, then you help him check his. or, why not give each member of your family a hazard hunt guide and have a contest? parents may want to team up against you and other younger members of your family to see which team can find the most electrical hazards in some set time--say 30 minutes. have a hazard hunt committee in your club check all member's homes and buildings and report its findings at the next club meeting. _to make it more fun_ 1. put a hazard tag, like the one shown, (figure 1) by each hazard that is found. leave it until the hazard is corrected. have another contest to see which member of the family corrects the most hazards. [illustration: figure 1] 2. report on your hazard hunt at the next club meeting. tell about the hazards found, and what you have done or plan to do about them. 3. suggest that the entire club have an electric hazard hunt at your club meeting places or any community building. this could be part of one meeting. 4. have a contest between two teams in the club to see which team can get the most homes in your community checked by the hazard hunt guide. losers could give a party for the winners. _2. get others interested_ promote a community electric hazard hunt. enlist the support of power suppliers, electric supply and equipment dealers, schools, newspapers, radio and television stations. _what to look for_ make a complete tour of your home and other buildings and see how many hazards you can locate. when you find a hazard, put a tag near it to mark it. safety tips put hazard tags _near_ the hazard but _not_ directly on broken or frayed wires, insulators, fittings, or other wiring equipment. do not touch them either. badly-frayed wires should be disconnected immediately from the power supply. in this way, you will not expose yourself to shock by accidentally touching an exposed live wire that may be carrying current. 4-h electric hazard hunt guide _wiring and protective devices_ 1. cable or conduit splices not in boxes---2. cable or conduit not securely clamped in boxes---3. conduit or armored cable not properly grounded---4. cracked or broken insulators (figure 2)---5. wire not completely covered with insulation---6. worn insulation on wire---[illustration: figure 2] 7. old unused wiring not yet removed---8. outlets, junction and switch boxes not securely fastened and covers not in place---9. switches not working properly (sparks fly as switch is flipped) (figure 3)---10. fuses not of proper ampere rating for circuit---11. extension cord used in place of permanent wiring---12. pull chain socket without an insulating link in the chain---13. pull chain socket near plumbing fixtures or where hands may be wet or one may stand in water---[illustration: figure 3] 14. no moisture-proof cords for outside weather conditions or heavy rubber cords for motors and motor driven appliances _lighting_ 1. fixtures in farm buildings installed so that they might be easily damaged 2. lights in haymows and other dusty locations not protected by dustproof globes 3. outside sockets not waterproof 4. heat lamps not properly supported by non-current carrying wire, chains, or brackets (figure 4) 5. light bulbs not frosted, shaded, or placed so that light is diffused to prevent glare [illustration: figure 4] _auxiliary wiring_ 1. outlets overloaded--in other words, "octopus wiring" 2. extension cords placed under rugs 3. extension cords run through doorways (figure 5) [illustration: figure 5] 4. extension cords or lamp cords should use underwriters' knot (figure 6) [illustration: figure 6] 5. plug connections fuzzy (figure 7) [illustration: figure 7] 6. extension cords run over heaters or radiators 7. extension cords, or appliance or lamp cords, worn or frayed 8. heating appliances without regular asbestos covered wire 9. open sockets or outlets where a baby or small child might stick a finger or metal toy 10. broken plugs (figure 8)---11. loose prongs on appliance or lamps plugs---[illustration: figure 8] how many hazards did you find? make a chart listing the hazards, their locations and what you did about them. make your own chart and list what you find. demonstrations you can give show and tell others how to have a hazard hunt. for further information check with your leader, then ask your power supplier or a local electrician to tell you about safe electrical wiring, connections and fixtures. +-------------------------+-------------+------------------------+ |hazard | location |what i did | +-------------------------+-------------+------------------------+ |_loose prong on lamp plug|living room |replaced with new plug_ | +-------------------------+-------------+------------------------+ |_cracked insultor on |back of house|notified power _ | |_service wire in house | |supplier_ | +-------------------------+-------------+------------------------+ |_conduit not securely |basement by |notified parents_ | |_clamped to box |fuse box_ | | +-------------------------+-------------+------------------------+ |_extension cord, old and |basement, by |replaced with new_ | |_worn |washing |rubber-covered one and_ | | |_machine |protected it from _ | | | |_water_ | +-------------------------+-------------+------------------------+ lesson no. b-10 credit points 3 how electric bells work--for you when was the last time you wanted to get a simple message like "you're wanted on the telephone," "there's someone here to see you," or "there's a car in the driveway," to someone around your place? did you have to walk or run some distance and perhaps shout, too, to be heard by the other person? perhaps you had to stop some other work, or interrupt your favorite kind of fun, to do this bit of messenger work. if the nature of the message is like one of those mentioned, and the number of people in hearing is not too great, then perhaps you can use bells or buzzers or both to do some of your messenger work for you. even though a bell or a buzzer can't talk, it can convey a message. what to do 1. learn how bells and buzzers work, and learn about the many different kinds. 2. plan and install a bell system for your home or farm. bells and buzzers can tell a lot electric bells and buzzers use the same basic principle as the telegraph system, invented by samuel morse in 1840. although not as important today as it was before radio, telephone, and teletype became common, the telegraph is still in use. bells and buzzers, however, are very common and have many uses. they are most often seen in the form of doorbells, and rare is the new home that does not have one or more. service stations have bell systems to let the operator know that a car is waiting at the gas pumps. a clock signal reminds the homemaker when the cooking time is completed. children are called to and released from school classes by means of bells and buzzers. also, various alarms employing bells and buzzers warn us when it's time to get up, or even that the place is on fire, or that a burglar is trying to break in! let's find out how bells and buzzers work, what different kinds there are, the different ways you can control them, and how you can put them to work for you. you'll find that buzzers and bells can help you with your 4-h projects, and with the proper controls, can be your eyes and voice in a dozen places at once. why they buzz or ring--electromagnetism if we were to look at an electric bell with the cover off, we'd find that it would be very much like figure 1. a push on the button, which is just a switch that is normally held "open" or off by means of a spring, sends the current from the battery or transformer through the circuit. [illustration: figure 1] you will see that the current passes first through two small coils of wire, and each coil has at its center a piece of soft iron called the core. when the current is on, the core becomes magnetized and attracts another piece of iron called the armature with its clapper attached. this action rings the bell, but it also breaks the current by pulling the spring away from the screw on its return to the power supply. with the power off, the electromagnet lets the spring return the armature to its normal position, contact is made again, and the cycle starts all over again--just as long as you continue to push on the button. buzzers work exactly the same way, except that they do not have a bell and depend instead on the vibration of the armature for a noise that's not as loud or as musical. gongs or chimes, that strike only once when the button is pushed, are made by connecting the armature with the screw by means of a flexible wire. a special kind of electricity most buzzers and bells work on a much lower voltage than you normally find in the wires in your house. some are made to work at 6 volts, others at 10 volts, and still others at slightly higher voltages. you can get these low voltages by using one or more batteries, or by using a transformer connected to your house current. most bells and buzzers are now powered through transformers. how to control them the push button is the most common means of control. you can use one button to control several bells, or several buttons to control one bell, or have several buttons control several bells. because low voltage is used, adding extra buttons is simple, inexpensive, and safe. buzzers and bells can also be controlled by: _clocks_, as in the interval timer on an electric range or in a school class bell system; _temperature detectors_, as in a fire alarm or freezer alarm; _door and window trips_, as in a one-man repair shop or in a burglar alarm; and _treadles_, as in the driveway of a service station. [illustration: figure 2] pick the right bell or buzzer some of the many different types of bells, and various ways of controlling them are suggested in the table below. just remember that no matter what the job or conditions, you can probably find a bell or buzzer and controls that suit your need. some typical jobs for bells & buzzers ------------------------------------------------------------------- number and type of location number and bell or of bells type of location job buzzer and buzzers control of controls -------------------------------------------------------------------- summon others in the house- enough to push one at the to the small to cover all buttons telephone telephone medium buzzers usual work and each in locations extension outbuildings- phone medium to large bells outdoors- large weatherproof bell all transformer powered -------------------------------------------------------------------- notify club medium to large one may be hose one--in member that bell- enough--if diaphragm the car is at his transformer mounted on driveway produce stand powered the back of ---------------------- the stand (complete driveway including control, are available, ready to plug in.) ------------------------------------------------------------------- warn of power battery-powered one near relay, one, at failure to buzzer, medium the held open main incubator or size poultryman's as long as switch of brooder bedroom power is on, hatchery closed by or spring if brooder interruption house occurs ------------------------------------------------------------------- warn of battery-powered one, in or temperature one, with dangerously buzzer, medium near the detector bulb warm size kitchen (sensitive inside temperature thermostat) freezer in freezer --------------------------------------------------------------------how to plan your system to save your time and steps when the telephone rings for someone else in your family who is some distance away, you can install a simple bell or buzzer system to summon that person. first, you must plan what you are going to do. on a large sheet of paper, draw to scale (roughly) a plan of your house and grounds, including those places where phones are located. it will help if you rule off your paper in 1/8" or 1/4" squares and let each square equal one foot. show the location of poles supporting your wiring. next, pick out those areas where you or others would likely be when someone else would answer the phone and want to call you to it. after you have thought about this, and talked it over with members of your family, show locations on your plan where you think you would like to have buzzers or bells, and show a button beside each telephone. (generally, you should have a bell or buzzer near each phone, also.) figure 3 shows diagrams of various types of systems, and will help you determine the number of wires you will have to install to connect the buttons and bells that you have planned. inside, you will connect your transformer and the various buttons and bells with ordinary indoor bell wire. outdoors, however, you should use weatherproof 2-wire or 3-wire telephone twist. show on your plan the distances that must be traversed by each type of wire, and show the number of conductors in each. don't overlook the vertical distances (one floor to another). [illustration: figure 3] materials you'll need because no two situations are just alike, it will be necessary for you to make your own list of materials. as a guide, however, here is a list of typical materials, with the quantities left blank, for you to fill in as your own requirements and measurements dictate. 10-volt transformer --door buzzers --doorbells --weatherproof outdoor type bells --ft. indoor bell wire --ft. 2-wire weatherproof telephone twist --ft. 3-wire weatherproof telephone twist --lbs. staples (insulated) --entrance insulators (for attaching weatherproof to buildings and poles) because your transformer must be wired into your regular house current, you should have some help on this from an electrician or other qualified person. also, you should get that person to review your plans and materials list before you place an order. install according to your plan with the aid of an electrician or other qualified person, install your transformer, and test it. you may then go ahead and complete your signal system, checking carefully with your plan, and making sure that your installations are both electrically and mechanically secure. test your system in all possible ways that it might be used. demonstrations you can give build a demonstration board incorporating a farm or home layout, with pushbuttons or other controls and bells and buzzers appropriately located. show and tell how the system would save time and energy. show and tell how some of these work, and their value: power-off alarm, freezer alarm, fire alarm, driveway alarm. for more information ask your power supplier or your nearest electrical supply house for catalogs or literature on various types of signal systems, or ask a dealer to show you equipment he has in stock. lesson no. b-11 credit points 2 first aid for electrical injuries what would you do if you saw someone who had been hurt by electricity? did you know that you could save his life, if you had taken the time to learn and practice a few simple rules of electrical first aid? first aid training equips you to know what to do and what not to do for the injured until medical help can be obtained. while the main benefits are for you and your family, no one can call himself a good citizen if he fails to help a stranger who has been hurt. the information given here is only for electrical injuries. perhaps what you learn will inspire you to take a complete course in first aid. what to do learn how to prevent electrical accidents, and what to do if an electrical accident occurs. 1. make an electrical hazard hunt in your home or on your farm. point out to your parents everything that should be repaired or replaced for safety's sake. 2. read the first aid suggestions that follow. learn them. 3. get to know the six steps that are outlined for mouth-to-mouth rescue breathing. practice them on your brother, sister, or parents. teach the entire family how to do it. electricity can kill in this day of hundreds of uses of electricity, you should know about electrical dangers. electrocution can occur from either low voltage (household type) or high voltage currents. sometimes household voltages are more hazardous because people underestimate the dangers involved. a fraction of an ampere passing through your heart muscles can be fatal. your body offers some resistance to the flow of electricity to ground. if you are standing on wet ground or in water, or if your skin is damp, this resistance is greatly reduced. wire cables within walls and cords on appliances are all insulated with a shock proof covering. continued use, age, or damage may expose a bare wire and create a hazard. the point of exposure need be only a fraction of an inch. cords are often used and abused. exposed wires and signs of wear are danger signals. always be wary of overhead wires. people have been injured or killed when kite strings, model plane control lines, irrigation pipe, and water well equipment have come in contact with the power supplier's or their own overhead wiring. prevent accidents underwriters' laboratories (ul) have taken steps to see that minimum safety standards are met in the manufacture of electrical equipment. look for the ul label when you buy cords or appliances. never place cords under carpets or furniture, or drape them over a nail. replace or repair worn cords without delay. be especially careful when operating electric devices in the bathroom. keep in mind the dangers of a wet floor, grounded metal pipes, and wet skin. turning on an ac radio while you are taking a bath is asking for real trouble. there may be shorts in electric devices. keep your hands dry when using them, and do not touch them along with grounded metal objects. if you ever get a slight shock, sound the danger signal and do something about it. think, then act your first thought in rescuing a victim from an electrical accident should be your own safety. speed is also important, because a few seconds or minutes may save a life. the first question you should ask yourself is "can i quickly turn off the power?" this would be easier to do in the home than outside. in the case of a victim trapped in a bathtub from a radio accidentally knocked into the water, it might mean simply removing the plug from the wall outlet. if a victim is found grasping shorted, permanently installed equipment and cannot let go, the main switch might be used for quick release of the current. outdoors, especially with high tension wires, your danger in rescue is much greater. to handle the victim, touch him only with a long dry stick, dry rope, or a long length of dry cloth. be sure your hands are dry and that you are standing on a dry board. a broom might be a good lever to pry a victim from a high tension wire but never use a green stick containing sap. first aid once the rescue has been made and the victim is free of further danger, check to see if breathing has stopped. if so, start artificial respiration _immediately_ and send someone for a doctor. artificial respiration must be started as soon as possible after normal breathing ceases. _most persons will die within 6 minutes or less if breathing stops completely unless they are given artificial respiration._ precious minutes may have passed before you get to the victim. since the victim may be within seconds of death by the time you are able to touch his body, you should seek to obtain an air flow to and from the lungs _immediately_. the victim may seem stiff as an effect of the current, so don't give up easily. continue the procedure for several hours. if transportation is necessary, remember that there may be internal injury, fractures, or severe burns. mouth-to-mouth rescue breathing there are various effective ways to give artificial respiration, each with its advantages and disadvantages. the mouth-to-mouth method is recommended as a good one to master. it can be used on victims of drowning, suffocation, and asphyxiation, too. people have been known to save lives with less exposure to the correct procedure than you are getting by reading this. so, pay attention and remember what you read. step 1. turn the victim on his back. wipe out victim's mouth quickly. turn his head to the side. use your fingers to get rid of mucus, food, sand, and other matter. [illustration: head position] step 2. straighten victim's head and tilt back so that chin points up. push or pull his jaw up into jutting out position to keep his tongue from blocking air passage. this position is essential for keeping the air passage open throughout the procedure. [illustration: push jaw up] [illustration: pinch nostrils] step 3. take a deep breath, place your mouth tightly over victim's mouth, and pinch nostrils closed to prevent air leakage. for a baby, cover both nose and mouth tightly with your mouth. (breathing through handkerchief or cloth placed over victim's mouth or nose will not greatly affect the exchange of air.) [illustration: breathe] step 4. breathe into victim's mouth or nose until you see his chest rise. (air may be blown through victim's teeth, even though they may be clenched.) step 5. remove your mouth and listen for the sound of returning air. if there is no air exchange, recheck jaw and head position. if you still do not get air exchange, turn victim on side and slap him on back between shoulder blades to dislodge matter that may be in throat. again, wipe his mouth to remove foreign matter. step 6. repeat breathing, removing mouth each time to allow air to escape. for an adult, breathe about 12 times per minute. for a child, take relatively shallow breaths, about 20 per minute. continue until victim breathes for himself. what did you learn? true or false 1. a broken arm should be splinted before artificial respiration is applied to a victim who is not breathing. 2. a person who has been severely shocked with an electric current should lie down. 3. a doctor should be called even though you successfully have revived a victim's breathing. 4. a fraction of an ampere through the human heart muscles can be fatal. 5. a copper wire would provide a better path than your body for stray currents, therefore all appliances should be grounded if possible. 6. outside wires are never a hazard because they are covered with insulation when they are installed. 7. cords need not be repaired until you can see bare wires. 8. tuning in an ac radio while you are bathing is always dangerous, even though your hands are dry. 9. in an emergency, a broom is an acceptable tool for prying a victim off a high tension wire. 10. in mouth-to-mouth breathing, an adult's lungs should be filled 12 times per minute and a child's 20. demonstrations you can give show how to deal with an electrical first aid "problem" given to you by your leader. for more information ask your leader to have a first aid expert put on a demonstration. (many industrial plants and power suppliers have such people.) lesson no. b-12 credit points 3 how electricity heats in ancient times, people thought that heat was a material just as air is. they called it "caloric". when something got warm, they said, caloric flowed into it. when something cooled off, caloric flowed out of it. it did not bother them that they could not see caloric. they could not see air either! now we know that heat is not a material. it does not take up space. it does not weigh anything. instead, it is a form of energy. and when we say that heat is a form of energy, we mean that it can be used to do work. what to do 1. make a simple resistance heater. 2. make some popcorn by: (a) conduction (b) convection (c) radiation "resistance" makes heat there are at least four ways that electricity can make heat. the one that we'll cover here is _resistance_ heating. (the others are: _dielectric_ heating, where the lines of force of an electrostatic field pass through a non-conductive material and heat it; the _heat pump_, which is a refrigerator in reverse; and _electronic_ heating, which uses high frequency waves similar to radio waves to create high speed movement of the molecules or tiny particles which rub together to make heat.) _resistance_ heating occurs because every conductor of electricity opposes the flow of current through it. some conductors resist more than others. when they do, a certain amount of warming takes place. the more resistance that is offered, the more heating there is. some materials, like silver, copper, and aluminum, offer little resistance. we say they are good conductors. other materials, like iron, offer more resistance. they are still conductors, but not as good as the others mentioned. the _size_ of the conductor, and its _length_ are the other two things that affect its resistance. the _smaller_ it is, the greater its resistance. also, the _longer_ it is, the greater its resistance. therefore, when we only want to _move_ electricity from place to place, we want relatively large, "good" conductors. here, we do not want to make heat. in fact, we want to avoid it, because too much heat in the wrong place can cause a fire. but when we want heat, we choose relatively small, "poor" conductors, and the more heat we want, the longer they must be. if you will think of the filament inside a lamp bulb; you may recall that it is a very fine wire, coiled so as to get a maximum length, and made of tungsten which has a high resistance. because of all these factors, this filament glows at a white heat, and is a source of both light and heat. make a simple resistance heater _materials you will need_: 1 dry cell battery 1 foot iron picture wire pliers use a short strand of iron picture wire and hook the ends to the terminals of a dry cell battery. use pliers so that you do not burn your fingers. disconnect the wires as soon as they become hot. tell why the wires heat. conduction is "touching" heat conduction occurs when you set a pan containing food right on a heating element. an egg cooking in a hot frying pan is a good example of conduction at work. this method is the most efficient single way of using electric heat for cooking. convection depends on air convection warms food in pans that are not actually touching the heating element. it uses the hot air around the element to carry heat to the pan. your oven in your range works by convection. most houses are warmed in winter in the same way. the heat produced in a furnace warms the air as it circulates through. this air in turn keeps your body warm. radiation is like the sun radiation heating is more difficult to explain. it results when heat or energy waves strike an object and are converted into heat. the energy we receive from the sun is a good example. when you are wearing dark clothes on a chilly day, you may become uncomfortably hot. the sunshine warms you even though the air around you has not been heated. radiant energy has a way of being absorbed by dark objects and reflected by light colored or shiny surfaces. did you ever notice how snow melts faster on a black top road than it does on a concrete road? the electric heat lamp is one of the most familiar sources of radiant heat. other examples are panels and cables that are built into the walls and ceilings of homes to provide heat. make popcorn 3 ways how do you make popcorn? did you know that you can do this kind of a heating job three different ways? _materials needed_ popcorn cooking oil or shortening salt and butter 4-qt. saucepan, with cover. (a glass cover is preferred.) potholder electric range 2 250-watt heatlamps 2 spring clamp type lampholders wire mesh corn popping basket or wire mesh kitchen strainer (improvise a screen wire cover) _first_, make popcorn the way you usually do. set a front surface unit control on the range at "medium high". pour enough oil to very lightly cover the bottom of the pan. when the pan is hot, pour in enough popcorn to cover the bottom with one layer of kernels. use the potholder in one hand to hold the cover on, and with the other move the pan back and forth across the unit. when the popping stops, remove from the heat. how did the heat get to the popcorn? _second_, make popcorn in the oven. add the oil to the pan, cover it and put it in the oven. turn the oven on, with the automatic control set at 400â°. when the oven indicator light goes off, this means that the proper temperature has been reached. with the potholder, remove the pan and add one layer of popcorn kernels. replace the pan in the oven. when the popping stops (listen for it) remove the pan. what kind of heating took place here? _third_, make popcorn with the heat lamps. clamp the lampholders to the back of a chair or other vertical support. they should be 6 to 8 inches apart and pointed directly at each other. put about 2 tablespoonfuls of popcorn in the wire basket or strainer. do not add oil. hold the basket midway between the two lamps. when the popping stops, turn off the lamps. what kind of heating was this? now, butter and salt the popcorn you have made and share it with others. what did you learn? 1. how is heat transferred from one body to another? 2. could chicks or pigs receive warmth from a heat lamp without the air in the pens becoming warm? explain. 3. how does a broiler unit in a range cook meat? 4. how does an oven bake food? 5. tell why iron picture wire was used instead of copper wire for your heating demonstration. lesson no. b-13 credit points 2 mysterious magnetism in ancient times, people found certain rocks that clung together in bunches. these rocks were very mysterious. people didn't understand them and many superstitions grew up about lodestones, as these rocks were called. lodestone (sometimes spelled loadstone) means leading stone. people even told columbus not to sail out of sight of land because a giant lodestone was just over the horizon waiting to pull all the nails out of his ships. the chinese were the first to use magnets. they found that if you hung a lodestone by a string, one end of the stone would always point in the direction of the north star. they had the first magnetic compasses. an artificial magnet can be made by stroking or gently rubbing a piece of steel with a lodestone. this piece of steel then can be used to magnetize another piece of steel. this can be continued on and on. lodestones are not always available but you can get the same results with an electric current. so, magnetism and electricity are very closely related. what to do learn about magnetism by doing the experiments that follow. seeing is believing! materials you will need 2 dry cell batteries (#905) a few feet of no. 18 bell wire 3 steel knitting needles or similar hard steel 2 ft. of light thread sheet of light cardboard or stiff paper permanent magnet (bar or horseshoe) compass 1 or more large nails or spikes red and black china-marking pencils or crayons iron filings wire cutters carpet tacks (iron filings usually can be found under the grinding wheel in a shop. if you can't find any, rub some steel wool pads together to produce bits of metal that will do.) "see" a magnetic field cover the permanent magnet with the cardboard or paper. sprinkle iron filings on the paper. tap the paper and note the pattern formed. strings or lines of filings pass from one pole of the magnet to the other. the area covered by the filings is the center of the magnetic field. to remember this, you might compare the magnetic lines of force that arrange the iron filings to the contour strips in a farmer's field. this magnetic field is one of the important things in our everyday life with electricity. if it were not for the magnetic field, we would not have electric motors. telephones, radios, television, and many other things we use every day also depend on this magnetic field. [illustration: figure 1] make an electro-magnet you can make magnetism work for you by winding several turns of insulated wire around one or more large nails or spikes (soft iron). connect one end of the wire to the battery. touch the other end of the wire to the other terminal for a few seconds and see how many tacks you can pick up. repeat the experiment using as many turns as possible. how many more tacks were you able to pick up? [illustration: figure 2] you have made what we call an electromagnet. when you disconnect the wire, the nails fall off. this is one of the advantages of an electromagnet. we can turn magnetism on and off as we wish. picture a crane operator throwing the switch and picking up scrap iron and steel. then he opens the switch to drop the scrap metals. soft iron can be magnetized easily as you have just seen, but loses its magnetism in a short time. steel is harder to magnetize but holds its magnetism almost indefinitely. make a permanent magnet wrap the insulated bell wire around the steel knitting needle. the wire should be wrapped the full length of the needle. one end of the wire is connected to the battery. the other end of the wire is then touched for just a few seconds to the other terminal. this should make the needle into a permanent bar magnet. if you did not get results, try two batteries in series, wind more turns of wire on the needle, and leave it connected a little longer. do the same thing with the second knitting needle. in the same way, you can magnetize a screwdriver, so that you can use it to pick up and hold steel screws. don't do it unless you want your screwdriver to be magnetized. [illustration: figure 3] see how they attract and repel take one of the magnetized needles and hang it with a thread. a thread stirrup (figure 4) will help keep it level. be sure it is not near other large pieces of steel. watch the needle. does it settle down, pointing in one direction? (check to see if this is the same direction as your compass). if it does, you have made a compass. the tip of the needle pointing north is called the north pole (north-seeking pole). the other end is called the south pole. mark the north pole with a stroke of the red marking pencil. mark the south pole black. do the same thing with the second needle. you can show this with a sewing needle, and a notched cork, and a bowl of water. rest the needle in the notched cork, and float it on the water. [illustration: figure 4] hold the compass near the north pole of the needle. what happens? does the south pole of the needle attract the north or south pole of the compass? try this with the second magnetized needle. see if you can prove the rule that like poles repel (drive away) and unlike poles attract. [illustration: figure 5] connect one end of a wire loop to the battery and run the wire directly over the compass. touch the other end of the wire to the battery. which way does the compass point now? if you get some motion out of the compass needle, this proves there is a magnetic field around the wire when current is flowing. this relation between electricity and magnetism is the thing that makes electric motors and generators work. [illustration: figure 6] make many from one lay the third needle (unmagnetized) on a table and stroke it with one of the magnetized needles. (see diagram) always stroke it in the same direction. raise the magnetized needle at least two inches on each return stroke. thus you can magnetize the needle by using the other needle. [illustration: figure 7] use the wire cutters to cut the first magnetized needle in short lengths. (cover the needle with a cloth to keep the pieces from flying.) can you show by using the compass that each piece is a complete magnet? hold one end, then the other, of each piece to a compass. does each piece have both a north pole and a south pole? magnetism and animals the things you have done show that electricity and magnetism are related in many ways. magnetism is mysterious, and there are still things to discover about it. it is thought that animals and birds are aided in their sense of direction by magnetism. it is commonly known that when a person gets lost in the woods, he tends to go around in circles. possibly this is caused by the earth's magnetic field. what did you learn? 1. where are natural magnets obtained? 2. how can artificial magnets be made? 3. what material is needed for a permanent magnet? for a temporary magnet? 4. how can you find out which is the north pole of an unmarked magnet? 5. how many poles does a magnet have? 6. which magnetic poles attract each other? 7. why couldn't you make a compass out of a strip of plastic? 8. what causes the compass to change direction when a wire carrying battery current is held over the needle? 9. list the materials you would need and tell how you would build a homemade compass. 10. tell what you enjoyed most about becoming acquainted with mysterious magnetism. lesson no. b-14 credit points 2 give your appliances and lights a square meal would you say that having enough to eat was pretty important in the home that you know? the "food" for your appliances and lights is electricity, and like you they must be "fed" enough. what to do 1. list the appliances and lights in your home. 2. see if any of them are "starving" for the electricity they need. 3. learn how the electricity gets to where it's used. 4. make a chart of the electrical circuits in your home. 5. make sure that each circuit is protected with the right fuse or circuit breaker. count your electrical blessings many people in much of the rest of the world wish that they could trade places with us, because we have so many electrical appliances in our homes. of course, we have not always had as many appliances as there are today. when electricity first came along, people used it only for lights. then, they began to add flatirons, washing machines, refrigerators, coffee percolators, and radios. then more and more electrical things were made for people to use and enjoy. now we have dozens and dozens of uses for electricity in our homes. how many different uses for electricity are there in your home today? ask your parents how many there were when your home was built or first wired. how many were _common_ when your parents began to keep house? some homes are behind times many older homes were built before electricity was available, and were wired later. and like them, some older homes that were wired as they were built had only enough wiring for lights and a few other appliances, because those were the only uses that were known at that time. but people kept on living in these homes, and kept adding to the uses they made of electricity without adding to their wiring. what has this meant? well, if electricity were like cars and trucks, you could say that some people are trying to put turnpike traffic through a back-country dirt road! watch for signs of starvation of course, as your state has done with its highways, some people have expanded and modernized their wiring. but many others have not yet seen this need, or if they have, they may have to do it again. here's why: your power supplier delivers current to you at the right voltage or electrical pressure. if the wires in your house are large enough, they will pass this full voltage on to the appliances. but if your wiring is too small, the electricity arrives at the appliances so weak that they can't work properly, and much of what you pay for is wasted. here are some things you can watch for in your own home. they will tell you whether your appliances are getting enough electrical "food" or not. 1. _a shrinking tv picture_--if it draws in from the sides of the screen, fades, loses contrast, or if the sound becomes distorted, you may have low voltage. 2. _too much fuse blowing or circuit breaker tripping._ 3. _heating appliances are slow to do their jobs._ 4. _lights dimming_, when motors or other appliances are turned on. there should be enough ways to get "appliance-food" around if appliances in your home show these starvation signs, then you may not have enough ways for the electricity to get to where it's used. there are three kinds of these electrical highways or circuits, and your home should have enough of each: 1. _general purpose circuits_--these serve lights all over the house, and convenience outlets everywhere except in the kitchen, laundry, and dining areas. a rule-of-thumb is: there should be at least one general purpose circuit for each 500 sq. ft. of floor space. 2. _small appliance circuits_--these are not used for lights, but instead they supply convenience outlets in the kitchen, laundry, and dining areas where portable appliances are most used. every home should have at least two small-appliance circuits. 3. _individual or special-purpose circuits_--one of these is needed for each: electric range, dishwasher, water heater, freezer, automatic washer, clothes dryer, air conditioner, pump, and house heating equipment. +----------+------+------+------+------+-------+ | | | | | | | | actual | | | | | | | size | | | | | | +----------+------+------+------+------+-------+ | gauge | | | | | | | size | 14 | 12 | 10 | 8 | 6 | +----------+------+------+------+------+-------+ | fuse or | | | | | | | breaker | 15 | 20 | 30 | 40 | 55 | +----------+------+------+------+------+-------+ |max. watts| | | | | | |at 115 v. | 1725 | 2300 | 3450 | 4600 | 6325 | +----------+------+------+------+------+-------+ |max. watts| | | | | | |at 230 v. | 3450 | 4600 | 6900 | 9200 | 12750 | +----------+------+------+------+------+-------+ [illustration: wire sizes commonly used in homes] each circuit big enough the capacity of each circuit is limited by the size of its wires. the chart above shows you the actual sizes of wires commonly used in permanent home wiring, and what each will carry. notice that each size is given a number, and the smaller the number, the bigger the wire. also notice that a given size of wire will carry twice as many watts at 230 volts as it will at 115 volts. (watts are figured by multiplying amps times volts.) general purpose circuits usually are either number 14 or number 12 wire, at 115 volts. what is the capacity of each, in watts? (number 12 wire is recommended for all new general purpose circuits.) small appliance circuits are required to be at least number 12 wire. individual circuits are always sized according to the appliance they serve. find the size wire that should be used for a 10, 000-watt, 230-volt range; a 1500-watt, 115-volt dishwasher; a 4500-watt, 230-volt clothes dryer. ________ ________ ________ only one fuse size right a fuse in an electrical circuit is like an alert traffic policeman--stopping everything if there's danger. a circuit breaker serves the same purpose, and the right size is installed when the wiring is done. a policeman uses his brain to tell him when to blow his whistle, but a fuse depends on the size of the little fusible (meltable) metal link that you see under the glass. if too great an electrical load is added to a circuit, this link will melt and prevent a dangerous overload. if you put in a fuse with too heavy a link, it will not melt in time, and the wiring and equipment may be damaged. therefore the right size of fuse is very important, and is something that you should check in your own home. see the chart above for the right fuse for each size wire. make a circuit chart at one or more places in your home there is a box or panel containing the fuses or breakers for the various circuits. attached to the inside of the door of each such panel should be a chart something like this: [illustration] +-----+---------------------+-----------+ | no. | description | fuse size | +-----+---------------------+-----------+ | 1 | range | 40 | +-----+---------------------+-----------+ | 2 | kitchen outlets | 20 | +-----+---------------------+-----------+ | 3 | dining room outlets | 20 | +-----+---------------------+-----------+ | 4 | living room outlets | 15 | +-----+---------------------+-----------+ | | | | +-----+---------------------+-----------+ | | | | +-----+---------------------+-----------+ notice that in our chart we have made columns for a description of what each circuit serves, its number or position in the panel, and the proper size fuse for it. because most such charts leave out this last very important bit of information, you should make a complete new chart, like the one shown. provide as many lines as there are fuse positions. paste or tape it to the inside of the panel door. then, ask permission of your parents to disconnect all the circuits by unscrewing the fuses or flipping the circuit breakers. _do not touch anything but the fuse rim._ then reconnect them, one at a time, to find out what each circuit serves. turn on as many lights as you can, to help you in your detective work. use a test lamp at those outlets that do not have a light connected to them. write two or three words describing each circuit on the proper line on your chart. on a separate sheet, keep track of the appliances and lights that are on each circuit, and add up the watts. (if the name-plate of any appliance gives "amperes", "amps", or "a" instead of watts, just remember that amps times volts equals watts.) this will tell you if any of them are overloaded. show this sheet to your parents. check the wire sizes _disconnect the main switch_, and determine the size of the wires in each circuit. don't include the insulation in your measurement. _be careful! even though you have disconnected the main switch, the wires coming into it are still "live". so, do not touch any wires. instead hold the wire size chart near them so that you can tell which gauge each one is._ write in the proper size fuse for each circuit on your chart. replace any wrong-size fuses do the fuse sizes you have written on your chart agree with the ones that are in place in the panel? get the right size fuses and replace any that are wrong. make sure that you have a reserve supply of the right sizes, and that they are handy for future use. talk it over with your parents do you think that your home has enough of the proper size circuits? if not, talk it over with your parents. they may want to ask an electrician to go over the wiring and make the necessary changes. what did you learn? (underline the right answer.) 1. a (television set, radio) is very sensitive to changes in voltage. 2. dimming lights mean (static in the wires, an electrical overload). 3. wires that become warm from overload make it (more expensive, cheaper) to operate the equipment. 4. a home of 2,000 sq. ft. should have at least (three, four) general purpose circuits. 5. one solution to low voltage symptoms is (heavier fuses, more circuits). 6. full capacity for a number 14 wire circuit at 115 volts is (1725 watts, 3000 watts). 7. a room air conditioner should be on (a general purpose, an individual) circuit. 8. the purpose of a fuse is to (let you disconnect the circuit, automatically prevent overloading the circuit). 9. the right size fuse is determined by (wire size, the store where you buy it). 10. a circuit chart should give (circuit description and fuse size, the maker's name). demonstrations you can give ask your leader to help you plan a demonstration. you can show how lights dim when too many other appliances are connected, how a fuse protects against overloading, and the danger of using too large a fuse. for more information ask your extension agent, power supplier, or electrician for additional help. lesson no. b-15 credit points 4 you can measure electricity instruments that can detect or measure the flow of electricity have helped to make possible the wonders of electricity as we know them today. scientists in laboratories must have measuring devices for experiments leading to new uses of electricity. power suppliers must have instruments that tell what the generating equipment is doing and to measure the amount of electricity being sold to users. factories need instruments that keep tab on electrical equipment to make sure electricity is being used efficiently. in fact, almost anywhere you find electric power at work you'll find electrical instruments--even in your home. the one you know best measures the amount of electricity used. another, in the family car, shows whether the generator is charging the battery or if the battery is discharging. what to do 1. make a simple kind of direct-current meter that will show you that there's a magnetic field around a wire carrying an electric current and that will detect a very tiny current. 2. make a more refined d.c. instrument (galvanoscope) and measure the voltage of different sizes of dry batteries, and show how an electric current can be induced. tools and materials you'll need: pair of pliers, knife, small hammer 30 feet of no. 24 bell or magnet wire compass two coins--a penny and a dime fine sandpaper blotting paper plastic or cellophane tape wooden blocks (see figure 4) glue 2 small nails one #905 dry cell, a penlight battery, and two regular flashlight batteries table salt drinking glass 2 paper clips two machine bolts how they work like many electrical things, most electrical instruments depend on the action of magnetism created by an electric current. there is a magnetic _field_ or lines of force around any wire carrying an electric current. if this field is controlled and made to react on a sensitive device, like an easily moved pointer, we have an electrical instrument. detect a magnetic field first, let's prove that there is a magnetic field around any wire carrying an electric current. take a piece of wire about two feet long and scrape off about an inch of insulation from each end. connect one end to a battery terminal. make a loop of wire that crosses the face of your compass, north to south. now touch the other end of the wire to the other battery terminal. (do not attempt to substitute alternating current, as from a model railroad transformer because its alternating current will cause the compass needle to swing rapidly from one side to the other.) [illustration: figure 1. put your right hand beneath the wire so that your fingers point the way the needle deflects, and your thumb will point in the direction that the current is flowing.] what happens? your compass needle should move to one side because it is very sensitive to magnetic influences. this proved that the wire created a magnetic field or lines of force when we passed electricity through it. (figure 1) detect a tiny current how sensitive is your simple electric meter? take about five feet of wire and wrap it around your compass as in figure 2, keeping the turns bunched together as much as you can. leave about six inches at both ends of the wire extended for leads. scrape the insulation off the last inch of both. rotate the coil and compass until the needle and coil are parallel, both pointing north and south. [illustration: figure 2] take a copper penny and a dime, and clean off any corrosion or film on the coin faces with a bit of fine sandpaper. now take a piece of blotting paper about the size of the penny and dip it into strong salt water. place the damp blotting paper between the penny and the dime. place one of your compass coil leads against the dime, and the other against the penny as shown in figure 3. be sure you have good metal-to-metal contact between the wires and the coins. [illustration: figure 3] at the instant that you squeeze the leads against the coins, watch what is happening to the compass needle. it should move for an instant from the north position each time you press the leads against the two coins. obviously, the little coin battery you have just made produces a very weak electrical current. even so, your instrument should be able to detect it. make a simple galvanoscope now let's make a meter that is a little more practical to use. broadly speaking, a galvanoscope is an instrument that detects the presence of electric currents. it sounds complicated but it is really quite simple. it is named in honor of an italian professor named galvani who made important early experiments with electricity. a refinement of the galvanoscope is today's galvanometer. other related instruments are the voltmeter and ammeter. these are very important instruments to the electrical engineer. using a glass or anything three to four inches in diameter, wind about 20 turns of wire in a "bunched" coil as in figure 4. wrap the coil at several points with cellophane or plastic tape to keep it from unwinding. [illustration: figure 4] make a wood base for your coil as shown in figure 4. the compass support blocks can be thin wood slats. do not attach them with steel nails or tacks. use glue instead. hold the coil in the slot between the blocks with glue or melted wax or use copper staples. place the compass on the supports and rotate the base so that the compass needle and coil are parallel, pointing north and south. measure the voltage of batteries do you know what difference the size of dry cell battery makes in the voltage it supplies? your meter can tell you. to test the voltage of batteries we must be able to control our galvanoscope. to do this, connect a glass of strong salt water in series with the battery as shown in figure 5. make sure the wire ends immersed in the salt water are scraped free of enamel. [illustration: figure 5] with one of the batteries connected, move the wires in the salt water first closer, then farther apart (keeping them parallel to each other) while watching your compass needle. when the needle stays 15 to 20 degrees off north, lock the wires in the salt solution in place with paper clips. now disconnect the battery you have been using and connect a smaller battery. if both batteries are fresh, the compass needle should return to almost the same spot. this proves that both batteries regardless of size put out the very same voltage. the larger ones, however, are designed to last longer. measure the difference between series and parallel using the salt solution as in the previous experiment, connect two flashlight batteries in series as shown in figure 6. the compass needle should move about twice as far as it did with one battery connected. this shows that when you connect batteries this way you double their voltage. [illustration: figure 6] now place your batteries side by side and connect the two top terminals and the two bases as shown in figure 7. the compass needle should move only as much as it did for one battery. this is called a parallel connection. you can see that this arrangement does not double the voltage, even though you used two batteries. [illustration: figure 7] while you have this hookup, try reversing the position of the leads connected to your batteries. notice that reversing the direction of current flow in the coil causes the compass needle to swing in the opposite direction. test for induced current make a simple coil by winding about 50 turns of wire around a machine bolt core. the bolt should be 1/4 to 1/2" in diameter and about two inches long. connect the coil to your galvanoscope as shown in figure 8. pass the coil back and forth close to the end of a permanent magnet. [illustration: figure 8] notice a slight deflection of the compass needle with each pass. you have shown that electricity can be induced in a wire coil by moving it through a magnetic field. currents generated in this way are called induced currents. [illustration: figure 9] now make another coil and core just like the first one and arrange them and a connection as shown in figure 9. if you make and break the current to the second coil, you will build up and collapse a magnetic field around the first coil and again induce a current in it. you will see the compass needle swing back and forth again. these last two experiments give you a crude idea of how an electric generator works, producing electric current by induction as a coil-wound rotor revolves within a magnetic field. what did you learn? what does every current-carrying wire have around it? how does this help us to measure electricity? how sensitive are electrical instruments? what is the difference in voltage between (a) a large and a small dry cell? (b) batteries connected in series and in parallel? (c) your original connection and the reverse of it? what similarity does the test for induced current show between movement through a magnetic field and the making and breaking of a direct current? demonstrations you can give show others how your galvanoscope can detect: whether a battery is producing current, which way the current is flowing, and whether a current is strong or weak. demonstrate how a current can be generated using magnetism. for more information ask your power supplier representative to show you some of the instruments used by his organization, and to give you a brief explanation of how they work. ask him or an electrician to give you a demonstration of a split-core ammeter. available by the digital library of the falvey memorial library, villanova university (http://digital.library.villanova.edu) note: project gutenberg also has an html version of this file which includes the original illustrations. see 44462-h.htm or 44462-h.zip: (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/44462/44462-h/44462-h.htm) or (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/44462/44462-h.zip) images of the original pages are available through the digital library of the falvey memorial library, villanova university. see http://digital.library.villanova.edu/item/vudl:269146 transcriber's note: text enclosed by underscores is in italics (_italics_). text enclosed by equal signs is in bold face (=bold=). how to make electrical machines. containing full directions for making electrical machines, induction coils, dynamos, and many novel toys to be worked by electricity. by r. a. r. bennett. fully illustrated. new york frank tousey, publisher 24 union square entered according to act of congress, in the year 1900, by frank tousey, in the office of the librarian of congress at washington, d. c. how to make electrical machines. how to make a simple electrical machine. i propose to describe a method of making an electrical machine of small dimensions, but capable of performing all the experiments that are likely to be required of it. [illustration: fig 1.--back of rubber, showing position of hole.] for the stand of the machine take a piece of wood (deal will do, but mahogany would be preferable) 14 inches in length, 8 inches in breadth, and 5/8 inch in thickness. to the bottom of this fasten two more pieces of the same wood, 1¼ inches broad, 8 inches long, and 5/8 inch in thickness at opposite ends, so that the edges are flush with the board. this forms our stand, on which we now proceed to erect the machine. take another piece of the same wood, 7 inches long by 2½ broad, and 7/8 inch thick and fasten it firmly by four screws at the ends to the base board at a distance of half an inch from one end of its length and in the center of its breadth. we now take two pieces of wood 14½ inches long by 2¼ inches broad and ½ inch thick, and fasten them upright to the opposite sides in the center of the piece just fixed to the board. they must be fixed very firmly to it with several screws, as they have to bear a severe strain while the machine is worked. [illustration: fig. 2. diagram showing position of plate and rubbers.] if the reader can _dovetail_ the ends into the cross board they will be held much more firmly. at the top of these pieces another piece of wood, 3¼ inches square by 3/8 inch thick, is fastened by screws into the upright pieces, so as to hold all firmly together. [illustration: fig. 3.--sectional diagram of conductor.] the framework of the machine is now complete, and we have to provide the glass plate from which the electricity is to be produced. as we cannot make this we must apply to an electrician for it. this is 10 inches in diameter. if the maker is good at, and has appliances for, working in brass on a small scale, he can make the axle himself by taking a piece of brass rod ¼ inch in diameter and 3 inches long and fastening the glass plate in the center. this can be done by providing two circular caps of brass one and one-half inches in diameter (the side of which next the glass must be covered with cloth to prevent cracking the glass), and fastening one by solder or otherwise, on one side of the plate, the other being arranged to screw up tightly on the other side, by having the brass turned into a screw, and the center hole of the cap made with a flange to fit it. if this is beyond the reader, he must be contented with a less elaborate axle of wood instead of brass, and two wooden caps which can be firmly fastened to the axle and glued to the opposite sides of the glass plate with prout's elastic glue, which can be bought from any harnessmaker. if this is used care must be taken in warming the glass not to render the glue too soft to hold it firmly when turned by the handle. to turn the axle it must be provided with a handle of wood, in the case of the wooden axle, or, in the case of the brass one, a handle is made by turning the projecting end of the axle into a screw and fitting to it a piece of flat brass three and one-half inches by one-half inch by one-eighth inch, this latter piece having another piece of brass rod three and one-half inches long fixed to the other end, on which a wooden handle is fixed (by a cap fastened at the end of the rod) so as to turn freely. [illustration: fig. 4.--shape of brass rod to collect the electricity.] the glass plate having been thus mounted, we must turn our attention to the rubbers which generate the electricity on the plate. to make these take four pieces of wood 3 inches by 2½ inches by 3/8 inch, and on one side of them fix pieces of thick flannel (which you can get nearly ¼ inch in thickness) of the same size, and cover these over with black silk, gluing it down lightly to the wood, so as to form a thick cushion on one side of it. these four cushions have now to be fixed so as to be firmly pressed against the glass plate while it turns. this can be done by fastening them at the backs by screws to the upright pieces supporting the plate, or by gluing four small pieces of wood about 1/8 inch thick, and square in shape, to the inside of the supports. the rubbers then have four holes cut in their backs to fit these pieces of wood, on which they slide when placed on the side of the glass, and are thus held firmly in position. fig. 1 shows the position of the holes on the backs of the rubbers. the latter plan is the best for fastening the rubbers, as it allows them to be removed at any time for warming (a very essential point) or spreading fresh amalgam on them. fig. 2 shows the position of the plate and rubbers when in their places. [illustration: fig. 5.--sectional diagram showing position of collectors and plate.] we now have the means for procuring electricity, but the method of collecting it has yet to be provided. to make this a conductor must be formed by cutting a piece of wood to the shape of fig. 3. it should be about 6 inches from end to end, and must be carefully rounded so that no projections are left on it. it must then be covered carefully with tinfoil (which can be obtained from a chemist), the tinfoil being glued down as smoothly as possible. from the end of this conductor a piece of brass rod should be fixed, shaped as shown in fig. 4. a piece about 12 inches long will be wanted. this must be bent at the ends, so that when the conductor is mounted on a stand consisting of a piece of glass rod 6½ inches high, fixed to the center of the stand (that is 5 inches from the opposite end to that at which the supports are), the glass plate revolves between two surfaces of the brass rod. fig. 5 explains the arrangement, which is somewhat complicated to describe. the glass rod should be about 7 inches long, to allow of half an inch being inserted into a hole in the center of the conductor, which is thus supported 6½ inches high from the stand. [illustration: fig. 6.--the machine when finished.] it now only remains to fasten several small pieces of brass wire about a quarter of an inch long, filed to a point, to the sides of the rod nearest the glass plate, as shown in fig. 6, so that the plate revolves between a double row of points, which can be done with solder, and the machine is complete. the conductor can further be improved by inserting at the opposite end a small piece of brass rod two and a half inches high, surmounted by a brass ball, which is useful in some experiments. care must be taken that the tinfoil of the conductor overlaps the brass rod at either end, and thus forms a metallic connection. if this is not done the conductor will not become charged sufficiently. if the conductor can be made of brass it will work better still, as a metallic connection is then insured. the conductor can be fastened to the glass rod on which it is supported by "prout's elastic glue," or other cement, a hole being made in the center of the bottom of the conductor, and another in the stand of the machine for opposite ends of the glass rod. the machine having been constructed, a few words will be useful in how to work it. warmth and dryness are, above all things, essential. if the air of the room is damp it will be nearly impossible to obtain any result. before working, the glass plate must be thoroughly warmed, taking care not to crack it, by being placed endwise before a good fire. a silk handkerchief is a useful adjunct to the machine. the glass plate should be wiped quite free from dirt, and the glass support of the conductor must also be wiped, the handkerchief being made very hot. the rubbers must be taken off (if constructed so as to be movable, as described), and placed before the fire till quite hot. their powers may be enormously increased by covering them with amalgam, as sold in the electrical shops, but a far better plan is to cover the cushions with tinfoil, which can be glued right round the rubbers and over the backs. this will need renewing at intervals, as the plate in turning wears it out. now, when the rubbers are quite hot and all the glass of the machine is dry and hot (this is necessary, because, if damp, the electricity would escape without producing any effect), the rubbers are put into their proper places on each side of the glass, and on turning the handle (which will be rendered easier if the machine is firmly clamped to the table) and approaching the knuckle to the conductor, a succession of brilliant sparks will be emitted from the conductor. if this does not happen either the glass or some part of the machine is damp, or the machine is not put together quite correctly, and must be examined to find out the fault. a machine of the size described should give a spark an inch long when working properly. a great number of experiments may be performed with this machine with apparatus capable of being made at home. i give a final illustration (fig. 6) to show how the machine looks when completed. how to make an induction coil. [illustration] to most boys electricity offers many attractions, and as i have recently constructed an induction coil out of materials which are cheap and easily obtained, i think i shall confer a benefit on many readers if i give them a short description of how this was accomplished, so that if like-minded they can proceed in the same way. induction coils may be used for medical and scientific purposes as well as for amusement, so that a good deal of work comes within their scope. an "induction coil" is composed principally of two portions--one is the "primary" coil, the other the "secondary." it is the secondary coil that gives the spark, and on the length of this depends the power of the coil; in some instruments for scientific purposes it is composed of a wire nearly 300 miles long--but we are not going to soar to such heights as that! to make the coil itself you want an ounce of "no. 24" cotton-covered wire, and two or three ounces of "no. 36." this can be bought from an electrical supply dealer. if you are very ambitious, silk-covered wire can be used; this gives better effect, the insulation being more complete. [illustration: fig. 1.--front disc.] [illustration: fig. 2.--back disc.] to form the groundwork of the apparatus take a piece of mahogany about half an inch in thickness and polish it up to look ornamental; it should be about 4 inches by 6 inches for the sized coil i am describing. we now take another piece of mahogany about ¼ inch thick, and from it cut two circular pieces about 1½ inch in circumference; these are to form the ends of the coil; they must each have a hole 3/8 inch in diameter drilled in the center for the ends of the core to pass through. in one of them, which is to form the coil, two much smaller holes are drilled with a small bradawl to allow the ends of the primary coil to pass through (fig. 1); in the other two similar holes are drilled further from the center for the ends of the secondary coil (fig. 2). this having been done, we proceed to form the _core_, and this being the most important part of the instrument, it must be made with great care. take a length of fine iron wire (annealed) and cut it into pieces 2½ inches long. now take a brass tube of the same size internally as the center holes in the ends of the coil were made (3/8 inch) and push as many pieces of wire into it as are required to pack it as full as it will hold. the next thing to do is to take another piece of wire and wind it as tightly as possible round the ends of the wires, pulling them gradually out of the tube as you wind, until they are entirely out, by which time a compact bundle of iron wire will have been formed. now file the ends of the core thus formed, quite smooth, with a fine file, and drop the whole of it, wire and all, into the hottest part of a fire. leave it there till it is bright red hot all through, and then rake it out and bury it completely in the ashes under the grate. if this can be done over night, and the coil left to get cold as the fire goes out, instead of being placed in the ashes, so much the better, as the object is to cool it as gradually, and thus make it as soft as possible. [illustration: fig. 3.--core and discs.] when it has become perfectly cold take some paraffin wax and melt it in a dish. when thoroughly melted, heat the core again gently, and put it into the melted wax. leave it there for a short time till it is thoroughly saturated with the melted wax, then take it out and hold it above the dish to let the melted paraffin run back into it. when cold you may remove the binding wire, and the wax will be found to hold all the pieces together in a solid lump. the two pieces of wood must now be fixed one at each end of the core (the holes being the same size as the bore of the brass tube, the core should fit into them quite tight), one of them (the front) being pushed a little distance over the core, so as to leave about ¼ of an inch of the core projecting from it, the other one only being pushed on sufficiently far to make the end of the coil flush with the wood (fig. 3). take a sheet of thin notepaper and cut a piece exactly the width of the coil, and long enough to pass twice round it. wind it tightly round, and fasten it, if necessary, with a little paraffin. now the wire has to be wound on over the paper, the thickest first, to form the primary coil. pass about three inches of one end of it through one of the holes in the disc forming the front of the coil, and then wind it evenly on the core, taking care that each coil is separate from its neighbor, and that no two coils fall one upon the other. when the wire has reached the other end of the core, wind it back again over the first layer till it reaches the end it came in at, then pass it through the other hole and cut it off about three inches from the hole; the wire cut off will be wanted for other purposes. the secondary coil has now to be wound over the primary, first of all saturating the cotton with which the latter is covered by pouring melted paraffin over it with a spoon. all the secondary wire will be wanted; it must be wound layer above layer exactly as the primary was, first passing about three inches of the end through one of the holes in the disc at the back of the core. a thickness of notepaper should be put on between the primary and secondary coils. everything depends on the complete insulation of one coil from another, and this is accomplished by means of the notepaper and cotton, saturated with melted wax in subsequent operations. when the whole of the secondary wire is wound on except about three inches, pass the end through the other hole in the disc. in order to make sure that the wire has not been broken in the winding, which would entirely destroy the action of the instrument, the two ends of the coils should be joined separately with a battery and galvanometer. if the needle is deflected on joining the circuit the wire is all right. this is rather important, as it is extremely vexatious, when all the different parts have been adjusted, to find that the coil will not work owing to a fracture of the wire, which necessitates the whole coil being unwound before it can be discovered. if the galvanometer is not at hand we must take our chance; the greatest possible care must be taken in winding the secondary wire, as this thin wire is extremely brittle. the insulation must now be improved by plunging the whole coil into a deep vessel large enough to contain it, which is full of melted paraffin. this must be placed near the fire, so as to keep the wax melted, and the coils must be left in it to soak for an hour or two. when the paraffin has thoroughly permeated through it it can be taken out and held above the vessel to drain. if all the wax does not run off the ends they can be scraped afterward, taking care not to cut the wires. the appearance of the coil is vastly improved by a strip of velvet cut the right width, which can be drawn tightly and sewn in position; or the coil may be covered with a varnish made by dissolving red sealing-wax in spirits of wine by the aid of a gentle heat. the coil part of the instrument is now complete, and ready to be affixed to the base-board by means of two small screws passing through it into the discs when placed in the proper position (see fig. 6.) we now approach a very important and rather intricate piece of workmanship. it is necessary, in order that shocks should be obtained from the coil, that the current in the primary wire should be stopped and started again at the rate of several hundred times per minute, and the more quickly the contact between the battery wire and the primary coil is made and unmade the more powerful the shock. in order to accomplish this a "contact-breaker" becomes necessary, the method of making which is as follows: [illustration: fig. 4.--hammer of contact-breaker.] a piece of sheet brass is taken 1½ inches long by about 3/8 of an inch at one end, gradually tapered up till it comes to a point about 1/8 of an inch broad at the other; it must be very thin, and must act as a spring when fastened tightly at one end. a small piece of soft iron is soldered to the small end of this to be attracted by the core when working. the next thing is to fasten a small piece of platinum foil about ¼ of an inch square on the opposite side of the brass to the soft iron, and a little below it (fig. 4). this is rather a difficult operation, as it is such a small object to solder, and the best way is to get it done by a tinsmith, unless you are skilled in the use of the soldering bit. [illustration: fig. 5.--screw of contact-breaker.] [illustration: fig. 6.--plan of coil complete.] a narrow strip of stout brass is now taken and bent at right angles near one end, so that when screwed down to the base-board by holes in the smallest leg the longest leg will stand upright. stand it up on the base in front of the coil and note a point on the strip exactly opposite the core. make a hole through this point large enough to admit a small screw used on paper fasteners. now take the flange part of the paper-fastener and solder it to the back of the brass strip, so that the screw will work through both (fig. 5). this is done to avoid the trouble of making a flange in the strip, but if you _can_ do this, so much the better. now, the coil having been fastened to the base by fine screws through it into the ends of the reel, nearly in the center of the base, we must find a place on the base in a straight line with the end of the core (as at c, fig. 6), and here we fasten another piece of bent brass similar to the last. the end of the contact breaker is now soldered to this brass strip in such a way that the piece of soft iron at the other end is exactly opposite the core and about 1/16 inch distant from it. the screw of the paper fastener must now be tipped with platinum by cutting off the end and drilling a fine hole in it, in which hole a small piece of platinum wire can be soldered. the amount of wire and foil required, although very minute, will cost you about twenty-five cents, platinum being a very expensive substance. it can be bought from a chemist or electrician. the screw having been prepared in this way, we must next fasten the brass strip to which the flange is soldered upright on the base, so that the platinum point of the screw, when inserted, will just come in contact with the square of foil on the spring. by turning the head of the screw the soft iron can thus be forced nearer the core, and the rapidity of its vibration is thus controlled. the coil is now complete, except the connections, which are made (preferably underneath the base by letting the wires through) by joining the ends of the thin wire to two "binding screws," which are made for this purpose and can be obtained from the dealer. one end of the thick wire of the coil is fastened to the strip of brass supporting the contact-breaker, the other end is fastened to a binding-screw on one side of the base--the strip of brass supporting the screw being connected by a wire with another binding-screw on the other side. this sounds rather intricate, but will easily be understood if we consider that the current from the battery when the wires are connected with the binding-screw must pass through the brass strip to the screw, thence through the contact-breaker to the coil, and, having passed round the coil, back to the battery through the binding-screw attached to the other end of the wire. (see fig. 6.) it is now evident that when the contact-breaker is in contact with the screw a current will pass through the primary coil, and will cause the soft iron core to become a magnet and thus attract the soft iron. when this moves towards the magnet, contact is broken and the core is instantly demagnetized, so that the spring flies back and contact is made again. the screw is adjusted so that the contact is broken just as the soft iron touches the core. when the battery is joined on, the contact-breaker will fly backwards and forwards with tremendous speed, making a loud, buzzing noise, while brilliant sparks will appear between the platinum wire and foil. in order to feel the effect of the shock, two handles will be required; these can be made by simply bending two pieces of tin about two inches by four inches round a ruler and neatly soldering the joins. a wire is now fastened to the end of each tube, the other ends being inserted in the binding screws connected with the thin wire of the secondary coil, which are at the opposite corners of the base to those which are joined to the ends of the primary coil. when the coil is buzzing, if these handles are tightly held, a powerful shock will be felt, in fact, a weak battery only should be used with the coil of the dimensions given, or it may be impossible to release the handles, and this is too strong to be pleasant. the current can be regulated by means of a "regulating tube," that is simply a brass tube which is made to slip over the core between it and the primary coil; the farther the tube is pushed over the core, the less powerful the shock. the dimensions of the coil being the same, a little ingenuity will enable any one to affix a regulating-tube. i will only say that instead of winding the coil direct on the core a tube of brown paper is formed a little larger than the core, and on this the wire is wound. between this tube and the core the brass tube is arranged to slip in and out, the hole in the end of the reel farthest from the contact-breaker being made larger for its accommodation. this concludes my description of the coil, but perhaps a few hints as to suitable batteries may be useful. if a strong battery which will only work the coil for a short time is required, the bottle bichromate is a good one. it can be bought from a dealer, or one can be made in a simple form by taking a jar and filling it with a strong solution of bichromate of potassium, to which a little sulphuric acid has been added. take two pieces of gas carbon and three pieces of sheet zinc, both cut to the right size to dip in the solution to the bottom of the jar. at the top of the zincs and carbons bore small holes, and below these place narrow strips of wood to keep them apart when in use; these must be long enough to reach across the top of the jar when the zincs and carbons are in the solution. arrange them thus: zinc, wood, carbon, wood, zinc, wood, carbon, wood, zinc; bind them lightly together by means of two more pieces of wood placed outside the outer zincs, and the whole tied together with string. connect the three zincs together with one piece of wire, and the two carbons with another, taking care that the wire connecting the zincs, does not come in contact with the wire connecting the carbons. to one zinc attach a piece of covered wire, and to one carbon attach another, these two wires are connected with the binding screws of the primary coil. this battery is extremely strong, double as strong as the bottle bichromates sold, as there are more zincs and carbons employed, but it only lasts a short time before needing to be replenished. daniell's battery is a weaker form, but lasts much longer, say for two or three hours in constant work. take a deep jar and inside it place a porous jar of earthenware, which the electrician will provide. now get a piece of sheet copper of the right size to go into the jar, and bend it round so that the porous jar will go inside it. a piece of sheet zinc will be wanted to go inside the porous jar. both zinc and copper must be high enough to reach the level of the solutions when the jars are full. the porous jar is filled with dilute sulphuric acid, or solution of common salt; the jar outside is filled with "_saturated_" solution of sulphate of copper--that is, as strong as it can be made. lumps of sulphate of copper are kept in the outer cell, which will keep the solution concentrated by slowly dissolving. attach one wire to the zinc and another to the copper, and when these are joined to the binding screws of the primary coil the contact-breaker will begin buzzing. how to make a small dynamo. part i. the dynamo is not the most simple piece of mechanism extant, and i am inclined to think that many boys would find it rather a poser to make one. at the same time it is perfectly evident that there are heaps of our readers who are very anxious indeed to _try_, at all events, and as we must aim at more elaborate apparatus as we advance in electrical knowledge, it is a pity not to endeavor to supply them with the help they need. well, then, if, like pears' soap baby, they "won't be happy till they get it," i will do my level best to bring down the subject into the range of their capability. it will not cost them much to try the experiment, and if they don't succeed they must not blame me, but their "vaulting ambition," which has "o'erleapt itself." there is no reason whatever why a boy who is accustomed to metal working should not succeed in making the small machine described if he first masters the principles of its construction. the advantage of a dynamo, i may here remark, is that by its means we are able to produce a current of voltaic electricity at any moment by turning a wheel without bothering with acids or carbons, or zincs, or any other of the various articles necessitated by the use of a battery. furthermore, the current goes on as long as you turn the wheel, and stops directly you stop, there being no loss between whiles. of course, both battery and dynamo have their advantages and disadvantages--nothing in this world being perfect all round--and for some purposes the dynamo is best, for others the battery. for example, it would be absurd to use a dynamo to ring an electric bell--not that it would not do it with tremendous energy, but in the case of a bell what one wants is merely to ring it for a few seconds at long intervals, and for this work a battery in which there is little current, but which is always ready to give that little without touching it, is _facile princeps_. but for experiments in which a strong continuous current is required, the dynamo comes to the front, as there is no "polarization" to detract from its value, as in the case of the battery. one does not always want to be messing with chemicals in setting up a battery, when one only requires the current for a short time, and the dynamo is always ready, and merely turning the handle produces the required current in a moment. besides this, viewed merely in the light of a magneto-electric machine, it will give a considerable shock to any one who holds two handles fixed to its terminals. having now enumerated the advantages of the machine, it behooves me to endeavor to describe its various parts and the method of making them. there are several methods of dynamo-making, but that which seems to be the most used and most easily followed in the case of a small machine, is that of the type known as the "siemens" dynamo, from the inventor of the armature, which is of peculiar construction. the action of the dynamo depends on the fact that if a piece of soft iron is surrounded by a coil of insulated wire, when the soft iron is approached to a magnet it becomes itself a magnet, and at the same time a current is generated in the coil of insulated wire which surrounds it. this current is, however, of only momentary duration, and ceases if the soft iron remains stationary; but on removing the soft iron from the magnet another current is generated in the coil of wire, but this is a current of the opposite kind of electricity, and travels in the opposite direction to that produced in the former case. now you have only to imagine that, by means of rotating in front of the poles of a magnet, a piece of soft iron is kept continually approaching and receding from the magnet, and that this soft iron is surrounded by wires in which circulate currents positive or negative according to the direction of the movement of the soft iron, and then, if we can arrange to carry off all the positive currents to one binding-screw, and all the negative currents to another binding-screw, we shall have a continuous current generated as long as the soft iron revolves. all this is practically carried out in the construction of the dynamo, and on the accuracy with which it is done the efficiency of the dynamo depends. to make the base of the machine, take a piece of deal 5½ inches long by 3½ inches broad by 7/8 inch thick. this can be stained afterwards to make it look nicer; it must be planed well and polished up quite smooth. [illustration: fig. 1.--sectional diagram of one side of magnet.] the greatest difficulty of the whole business has now already to be confronted--viz., the manufacture of the magnet. this is almost invariably cast in two pieces, and for those who cannot make the castings there is no help for it but to have recourse to the ironmonger, or, better still, a practical electrician. the following instructions will then assist you to put the castings together: supposing this difficulty to have been overcome, and two pieces of soft iron to have been cast in the form of fig. 1, both exactly the same size and shape; the next thing to do is to convert it into an electro-magnet by winding seven layers of no. 16 cotton covered wire over each leg, at the part shown by the dotted lines in the illustration. the size of the legs of the magnet is as follows:--total length from b to c, 4 1/8 inches; thickness of top piece from b to d, ½ inch; length of top piece from b to d (half total length of top of magnet), ¾ inch; breadth of side of magnet all the way down, 1¾ inch; height from e to c, 1½ inch; thickness of the part between d and e, round which the wire is wound, 3/8 inch. when i say "breadth" in this description, i mean what you can't see in the sectional drawing, because it recedes from you; when i say "thickness," i mean what is shown in the drawing. it is necessary to explain this, as the terms are rather confusing. the ends of the sides between d and e are rounded to admit of the wire being more evenly wound on them. [illustration: fig. 2.--magnet put together.] it is not essential to use a permanent magnet in this machine, as a certain amount of "residual" magnetism remains in the iron when once excited; and the coils of wire on the armature being acted on by the armature, which is slightly magnetized by this residual magnetism in the magnet, have a reactionary effect, and excite the armature, which excites the magnet afresh; and thus the magnet and _its_ coils, and the armature and _its_ coils, go on acting on each other, and mutually building up each other's current, until the maximum effect which the machine is capable of giving is produced. before winding on the wire, the legs of the magnet between d and e should be covered with a band of silk soaked in melted paraffin wax to increase the insulation. new and soft wire, of the highest conductivity, should be used. old, rinky, and hard wire will not do. [illustration: fig. 3.--armature of dynamo.] the wire is wound upon the legs of the magnet in such a way that when put together as shown in fig. 2 the coils are in opposite directions, so that if the magnet were straightened out, or the two portions placed end to end, one coil would be a prolongation of the other. this can be most easily done, in the case of this particular magnet, by winding each leg separately, and the end of the outer coil of wire of one can be joined to the end of the inner coil of wire of the other at d in the cut, the other ends of the coils being left loose as at e and f, these being long enough to go down under the base--say, about 3 inches long to allow for joining up. the electro-magnet having been wound, may now be placed upright on the base, its two limbs fastened together by a screw at a. the magnet is now to be fastened to the base in the middle of its breadth, and about an inch from one end, by means of two screws at b and c, passing through the base into the legs of the magnet. before it is fastened on, however, you had better drill two screw holes on each leg at h h h h in the figure, and four corresponding to them on the other side. we shall want eight screws to fit these holes presently. [illustration: fig. 4.--section of end armature.] the magnet having been fixed, we now have to construct the armature, which is the next most important part of the machine. this consists of a soft iron cylinder with an axle passing through its center, as at k l in the illustration (fig. 3), s s s s being the soft iron cylinder. this cylinder has a deep groove cut from end to end, or is cast in that shape, and round this groove the wire is wound. the wire is number 18, cotton or silk-covered. begin at the point marked h in the diagram, and wind over and over, from end to end, until that side is full; then cross over to the other side, going from h to r, and wind that side also in the same direction. the ends of the wire are shown at w w, and they must be left about an inch or two inches long, as we shall want to connect them with the commutator presently. the dimensions of the armature are as follows: length of axle, 5½ inches; circumference of cylinder, 1 inch; length of cylinder, 2 inches; width of groove, ¾ inch. the axle is composed of a piece of steel rod rather more than 1/8 inch in diameter. the axle must be very truly centered in the armature, and the armature must be accurately mounted, as it has to revolve at a high rate of speed in a very limited space, between the poles of the magnet. as it is rather difficult to explain the construction of the armature, i give another illustration (fig. 4) of a section of the armature, which will show how the wire is wound on the groove, and the shape of the grooves themselves. at one end of the axle is fixed the driving-pulley p, while at the other has to be fixed a small wooden roller f, over which two pieces of sheet brass have been fastened, each reaching nearly half round the surface of the roller, so that two gaps are left between them. this forms part of the commutator; but before we come to that we must consider how the armature is to be fixed between the poles of the magnet. part ii. [illustration: fig. 5.--support for pulley end of axle.] returning to fig. 1, we must see that the groove a, which forms half the channel in which the armature is to revolve, is 7/8 inch semi-circle. when the two sides are fixed together as in fig. 2, the hole between the poles should be about an inch in circumference, and the wire must be wound on the armature so that it easily slips into the cavity g, which must be made quite smooth for it to revolve in. it will be seen from the dimensions given that in diameter the armature is only a little less than the cylindrical space between the poles of the magnet, and in length it is about the same as the width of the magnet. it would be an unfortunate occurrence if the wire was to slip off the armature while revolving at a high speed, and therefore it is necessary to keep it firmly in its place. this is done by filing four small notches in the soft iron of the armature at the points marked a b c d in fig. 3. some strong wire or small string is now wound lightly round the armature to hold the coils of wire in their proper place, the notches holding this wire or string from slipping off at the ends of the cylinder. the armature is now to be fixed in its proper place between the poles of the magnet. [illustration: fig. 6.--support for commutator end of axle.] to do this we shall want two supports for the axle. these are made of brass, shaped as in figs. 5 and 6, 5 being the one at the pulley end of the axle, and 6 that at the other end. they are fastened by screws through the holes p p, into the holes h h h h in the bottom part of the side of the magnet, as previously shown in fig. 2. when the armature is fixed in its proper place it will appear as fig. 7, this being a sectional diagram from above, and the top pieces of the magnet being omitted for simplicity's sake. [illustration: fig. 7.--ground plan of magnet and armature when put together.] the brass of which the supports are made should be about 1/8 inch thick, and must, of course, be drilled in the center with a hole to admit the axle of the armature. to keep it exactly in the right place while revolving, a piece of circular brass tube, with a bore the size of the hole made to admit the armature, should be soldered to the brass supports in front of the hole; that for the pulley end of the axle should be ½ inch long. one at the other end is not necessary, but looks neater; this may be about ¼ inch long--_i. e._ as long as the end of the axle projecting beyond the brass support. this much having been accomplished, we have now to consider the "commutator," which is a piece of apparatus by which all the currents proceeding from magnet and armature are sent in one direction, and thus, instead of counteracting each other, are made available for experiments. [illustration: fig. 8.--pillar of commutator.] to make this necessary adjunct to the dynamo, take a circular bar of brass rod about 3/8 inch in diameter and an inch long. into the middle of this solder a brass screw by drilling a hole and inserting its upper end _minus_ the head. on this screw works a brass nut about 3/8 inch long. at the other end of the rod a hole is drilled for the insertion of another brass screw, long enough to go through the base. another pillar precisely like this has now to be made, only ½ inch high without the nut. now cut two pieces of sheet brass 2 inches long and ½ inch broad, sufficiently stout to act as springs and not too stout to be elastic. at one end of each cut a longitudinal hole about ¾ inch long and 1/8 inch broad; that is to say, this slit must be broad enough to slip over the top of the screws above the pillars. at the other ends of the brass springs slits of equal length, but very narrow--only about 1/24 inch wide--may be cut, to make the brass more "springy." on the under side of this end of one spring and the upper side of the other, two pieces of thin sheet copper are fixed, the same breadth as the springs, and about ½ inch long. these are soldered by one end to the side of the spring, so as to act as springs themselves, their other ends being free. all this being rather complicated, we must invoke the aid of the engraver once more. fig. 8 gives you the method of making the pillars--a being the brass rod, b the screw and c the nut, the hole to admit screw to fasten the pillar to the base is made at the end d. [illustration: fig. 9.--brass spring of commutator.] fig. 9 is the brass spring with slit, a, to slip over the screw of fig. 8, and the copper spring soldered to one side, at the end, at the point b. now we slip the brass spring over the screw, the screw coming through the slit, and screw down the nut c. we thus have two springs supported at the ends on pillars at a height of 1 inch and ½ inch from the base respectively. of course, both the pillars and springs are treated alike, but in the case of the tallest the copper is on the _under_ side, and in the other on the _upper_ side. now we go back to the armature, on the axle of which you will remember that i told you to fix a small roller of wood. this is only ¾ inch long and ½ inch in diameter, and is fixed firmly to the axle so as to revolve along with the armature. this roller is soaked in melted paraffin wax for an hour or two before fixing on, or boiled in it for some time, so that it may permeate the wood. the roller can easily be turned (of boxwood, preferably) if you are possessed of a lathe, but if you have none, go to the nearest photographer (or, preferably, a dealer in photographic apparatus), and from him you can buy for 3 cents a roller long enough to cut dozens for dynamos--they are what sensitized paper is sold rolled on. the roller having been provided, take a piece of brass tube exactly so large inside that the roller will fit tightly into it, and cut off a piece the same length as the roller, or, if anything a trifle shorter. you have now to cut, with a saw or otherwise, two diagonal lines in this tube lengthwise, so that the tube is thereby divided into two pieces. having done this the brass is replaced on the roller and fastened by minute screws, or "prout's elastic glue," to each side of it, so that the roller becomes practically one of brass, with two slits in it. the screws must not project above the brass, but must be well sunk into it, so as to leave the surface smooth: and care must be taken that the screws do not touch both pieces of brass by going right through the roller--they must be very short. the object of cutting the slits in a diagonal direction is that the springs when pressing above and below the roller (see fig. 10) shall not leave one half of the commutator before resting on the other part. if they do so the commutator will "spark" badly, which injures the fittings, and less current is obtained. both slits are to be equidistant, and both inclined in the same direction. the roller is fixed on the axle in such a position that the middles of the lines of division are exactly in a line with the middle of the groove of the armature. when all this has been accomplished you will obviously have two conducting surfaces, each reaching over half the cylinder, separated by a small distance at top and bottom, the paraffined wood, of course, being a non-conductor of electricity. the brass tube must be made to fit smoothly round the wood, the surface being free from any irregularities, so that the contact with the springs at the sides may be as perfect as possible. care must be taken that the brass is really separate all down on both sides. it is a good plan to fasten small splinters of paraffined wood in the slits to make sure. this having been done, the wire from one end of the coil of the armature must be soldered to one of the semi-circumferences (if i may coin a word) of brass on the wooden roller, and the wire from the other end of the coil to the other semi-circumference. this is done at the end or underneath, not at the top, or it will make the surface rough, and we want it to be as smooth as it can possibly be. the wire must be quite tight up to the end soldered on; there must be no loops, or it will catch in something and be torn off when it comes to revolve. [illustration: fig. 10.--section of commutator put together.] the brass pillars supporting the springs have now to be inserted in the base, at such a distance, one on each side of the roller covered with brass, that the copper springs at the end of the brass ones are exactly one over and one under the brass roller. of course, if they are put in a line with it, the springs can easily be shifted to the right position by slipping the slits over the screws of the pillars, and screwing down the nuts lightly when they come to the right place. this is very difficult to make intelligible, and i give another illustration of the relative positions of the parts of the commutator which i hope will make all clear. the pillars p p--which were put together as shown in figs. 8 and 9--are fixed at such distances on opposite sides of the roller r that the springs s s are continually in contact with the brass semi-circumferences, first one and then the other as the armature revolves. we are now within sight of the end of our task, and to guide off the current that we are going to produce we must screw in two binding-screws at opposite corners of the same end of the base (the end at which the commutator is). the ends of the wire from the magnet are to be brought down through the base and joined to the under part of these binding-screws. placing the base so that the commutator end of the armature, and not the pulley end, is next to you, the wire from the inner coil of the magnet goes to the binding-screw on your left hand, and that from the outer coil to that on your right hand. the magnet should be wound and placed in such a position that these ends are respectively on the left and right, and then they have only to be joined to the binding-screws in front of them. but before connecting these wires up, it is necessary to give an initial magnetism to the magnet, which at present has not been magnetized at all! to do this we must make use of another dynamo or a battery and connect the wires coming from the magnet-coil to the terminals of the battery. this having been done, the magnet will attract iron filings or needles, etc., and this shows that it has really become a magnet. two cells of the chloride battery will be enough to magnetize it as much as it can be magnetized, and enough will remain when the battery is disconnected to start the action when the armature is revolved. two or three minutes is long enough to connect with the battery. part iii. while the current is passing you can try the following experiment, to prove that the wire is wound on all right. if it is not wound as described there will be two north poles or two south poles, instead of one north and one south. suppose we decide to make the leg on which the wire comes from the outside of the magnet the north pole, the wire from this must be joined to the wire coming from the zinc end of the battery, and the other coming from the inside, between the poles, joined to the wire from the carbon end. now if, while the current is passing, a magnetized needle is approached to each pole consecutively, and one end of it is attracted and the other repelled in each case, the wire is all right; if both are attracted something is wrong. the needle must have been really magnetized beforehand, or it will deceive you; you can easily test if it is so with an ordinary permanent magnet. having magnetized the soft iron in the way described, we now join up the wires to the binding screws, under the base, and, the pulley being fixed on to the axle of the armature opposite to the commutator, the machine is now ready for use. to rotate the armature at a high speed it is necessary to connect the pulley by an endless band with a large, heavy wheel which can be rotated by hand. for continuous work, as we cannot always be turning the wheel, a small steam-engine or water-motor must be employed. worked in this way, the machine i have described can be made to light 2 5 candle-power lamps of 6 volts, and give about 12 volts of current. this is not much, of course, but by enlarging the proportions of the various parts, you can make as large a dynamo as you like; only the power required to work it naturally increases considerably. this machine will do a great deal of the work of a battery--for example it will run an induction coil or an electro motor at full power. by connecting two brass handles to the binding-screws by wires, you will get a powerful shock if you hold them while some one turns the wheel connected with the pulley; in fact, the shock is too powerful, and the person turning the wheel must be prepared to stop when the victim has had enough. if these handles are dipped into a glass of water slightly acidulated with sulphuric acid (to enable the current to pass more freely), and the dynamo briskly turned, you will soon see bubbles rising from the handles--which must, of course, be placed separate from each other--consisting of oxygen and hydrogen gas, into which the water is being decomposed by the force of the current. water being composed of two quantities of hydrogen gas to every one of oxygen, it follows that double as much hydrogen will come off the handle which evolves it as will come off the other of oxygen, and this you will soon see to be the case; the bubbles on the former being much more numerous than those on the latter. now take a 5 candle-power 6-volt electric lamp, and fasten it on to the wires coming from the binding-screws (removing the handles) by the platinum loops at the top. if the dynamo is now briskly turned, you will find that the lamp will light up well, and as long as the wheel is turned and the dynamo is buzzing, so long will the lamp continue to glow. by turning the dynamo by steam or water-motor we have, therefore, a means of producing a continuous light, which will not drop at the end of a few minutes as in the case of a battery. this is the method by which all public buildings, etc., are lighted. there is said to be always sufficient residual magnetism in the soft iron core (at any rate if constructed of ordinary soft iron, not specially annealed) to act on the armature when revolved, and this, acting on the magnet, increases its magnetism so that they react on each other until the maximum effect of the dynamo is reached. this is the case with the majority of dynamos used for lighting, etc.; but if you are of an experimental turn of mind, and are possessed of a battery as well as the dynamo, you can try the effect of magnetizing the soft iron cores by sending a current from the battery through the coil. to do this, disconnect the wires from the magnet-coil from the binding-screws, and connect them with the terminals of the battery. the whole current from the dynamo now comes from the armature, and you will find that this current is considerably increased, sparks flying about in all directions when the handles from the binding-screws are approached to each other or rubbed together. the water will now be decomposed much faster, and you will be able to light an additional lamp or two, according to the strength of the battery. fig. 11 gives an idea of the positions of the parts of the dynamo when complete; it is not an easy thing to draw, and i can only hope the rough sketch will be intelligible to my readers. the spring a is below the roller of contact breaker, and the spring b above it, the diagonal line on the roller representing the vacancy between the brass pieces covering the wood. the wires from the ends of the magnet-coil go through the base, round the bottoms of the pillars a and b, and join the other wire between the pillars and the binding-screws. the wire from the pole on which the wire comes from _outside_ the magnet is joined to the binding-screw a in the figure. the other wire comes from between the poles, and is joined to the other binding-screw. if you can find out, by means of a galvanometer, which binding-screw is conveying the _positive_ current, the wire from the _south_ pole of the magnet is to be joined to the wire from this, and that from the _north_ pole of the magnet to the wire conveying the _negative_ electricity. [illustration: fig. 11.--dynamo complete. ground plan.] whenever you join the wires, be sure to scrape off all the insulating material, and twist them firmly together; a little solder is an improvement. whenever the wires cross the iron work be sure the insulating material is quite sound at that point. it is a good plan to roll paraffined silk round the wires at these places. cut grooves under the base, in which the wires may lie, or the dynamo will not stand evenly. the dark line in the middle of the top of magnet in fig. 11 shows where the two parts join. they should be screwed up tightly together. [illustration: fig. 12.--hand-wheel arrangement for working dynamo.] as a concluding illustration, i give a diagram of my own method of turning my dynamo (fig. 12). on the leg of an ordinary table t is fixed the heavy iron wheel w, which has a groove cut in its circumference for the reception of an endless band b. these wheels may be obtained for a few shillings from any ironmonger, as they are made for various machines, such as laths, fret-saws, sewing-machines, etc. the wheel is held by an ordinary screw fixed into the leg of the table, and revolves on the screw. the endless band (tape will do) passes over the groove and over the pulley of the dynamo placed on the table above the wheel. it is better to let the pulley of the dynamo project beyond the end of the base, as shown in fig. 11, in order to be able to connect it with a wheel placed below it, if required. the best results are produced from the dynamo when the resistance of the interpolar (_i. e._ the lamp, or whatever it may have to work) is equal to the internal resistance of the machine. it is sometimes required to send a current through a greater resistance than this, and then it becomes necessary to employ what is familiarly termed a "shunt." if one lamp of high resistance is coupled to the dynamo, the resistance may be too great for the current to get round the magnet in sufficient quantity to give the required electromotive force. supposing that this is the case, we make a second pathway for it by joining on a piece of iron wire (about ten inches of no. 30) between the two binding-screws, the lamp being connected with the same binding-screws, only further off. the result of this is that the current goes round by the second pathway and excites the magnet more powerfully, and this, in its turn, excites the armature more strongly, and so on, until enough current is produced to light up the lamp. the resistance of the shunt required depends on the resistance of the lamp. if this is low no shunt will be required, if very high the resistance of the shunt must be lowered, or else enough current will not pass to magnetize the soft iron cores, and the dynamo will give no current. the lower the resistance of the shunt required, the less wire we use. some toys worked by electricity. part i. the electric trumpet. there are many toys which one meets with in the scientific stores, the making of which for themselves would give great satisfaction to enterprising devotees of the electrical art. they are for the most part easily constructed, and a great deal of amusement can be derived from them. i have my doubts whether the fathers and mothers of the amateur electrician will thank me for introducing the subject of the present article, but they must take comfort in the thought that if it works well it shows real constructive power on the part of the maker. for the benefit of those whose capability of working in metal is limited, i am first going to describe the making of this remarkable instrument in its simplest form--a form, in fact, so simple that any one can make it and achieve success in a few hours. first of all we want an old tooth-powder box. these are all made the same size, and consequently it is unnecessary to give dimensions. the top of the tooth-powder box is to be taken, and by means of a fretsaw (this invaluable tool should be in the hands of every boy who likes carpentering; there are many uses to which it can be put quite different for what it is intended for) a circular hole is to be cut out about 1/8 inch less than the inside--that is to say, a rim of about 1/8 inch is to project all around from the rim of the lid. we now want what is known in photography as a "ferrotype" plate--_i. e._, a piece of very thin sheet iron. most dealers in photographic goods will not sell less than four or five dozen of them, and this is too many for us. a photographic friend will let us have one gratis, or a professional photographer _may_ agree to part with one for five or ten cents if he is attacked when in a good temper. the ferrotype plate having been procured by some means or other, the next thing is to cut from it a circle just small enough to go inside the rim of the top of the tooth-powder box. you can mark out the circle before cutting it by painting the top of the rim of the bottom of the tooth-powder box with ink and pressing it down on the ferrotype plate, when enough ink will come off to guide the scissors, and of course the circle so cut will be the exact size required. we now have to make the motive power of the machine, for there is plenty of work done in it, though it only makes a noise--no one can "make a noise in the world" without doing plenty of work! and to make this we take a piece of soft iron rod about 1½ inch long and half an inch in diameter, and cut two circles out of cardboard 1¾ inch in diameter. the soft iron rod can be bought from any hardware store, and it ought to be quite soft enough to work at once without doing anything to it; if it is not, it must be heated red-hot in a good fire and left among the coals over-night to get cool very gradually. personally i have always found that the ordinary bars of soft iron bought from any hardware man are amply soft enough for any electrical work. you must get the hardware man to file the ends of your bar flat; if they are not filed you will have to do it yourself, and a fine job it is! now we go back to the circles of cardboard. a hole is to be cut in each in the center exactly the size to admit the core of soft iron, then by slipping the circles over the ends we get a reel. now a hole has to be made exactly in the center of the bottom of the tooth-powder box, and exactly so large that the core of soft iron will fit tightly into it; you can do this again with the fretsaw, the wood of which tooth-powder boxes are made is delightfully easy to cut. now comes the adjustment of the reel. you must put the circles on the core, and putting one end of the latter through the hole at the bottom of the box you must push the iron through until the top is exactly flush with the top of the rim of the side of the box. one of your circles will now be much further on the core than the other, and the one at the end that is not pushed through the hole must be adjusted close to the edge, leaving about 1/16 of the core projecting, so that we have now a reel formed at one end of the core, and held in position by the bottom of the box. the more stiffly the core fits the hole the better, and if it has to be hammered into its place, better still, only take care not to split the wood of the bottom of the box. the circles, being now in their right places, must not be moved again, but the roller has to be wound with wire, for which purpose the core will have to come out of the box temporarily. before beginning to wind the wire, get some thin paper (french note-paper is best), and wind a piece round and round the core between the circles, fastening it and the circles at its ends to the core by means of a small quantity of mucilage. we now have to wind the wire on to the roller. the more wire the stronger the magnet will be, but sufficient will be about two ounces. you can get the wire at most hardware stores for fifteen cents an ounce. it is generally cotton-covered, of light green color; medium thickness should be used, not too fine, as this offers too much resistance to the current, and not too coarse, or it will fill the reel too soon. we begin by making a hole near the core in the circle which is furthest on it, and push one end of the wire through a hole from the inside of the reel. about three inches should be pushed through to allow for future manipulation, and the wire is now to be wound tightly over the paper covering the core in even coils, layer on layer, till the reel is nearly full and we have arrived at within about three inches of the other end of the wire. this is now to be passed through another hole in the same circle as before, which hole will of course be further from the center than the first. the magnet will be much stronger if two or three folds of paper are wrapped round it between each layer of wire. the coil is now constructed, and can be replaced in the tooth-powder box, passing the ends of the wire through two holes in the side or bottom made to receive them. before leaving this part of the instrument i may remark that care must be taken that the covering of wire is quite continuous throughout, and has not got rubbed off at any points; if it has, you must wind fine silk over it to cover it up again. should there be a break anywhere in the wire you must carefully scrape the wire off the two ends and twist the wires firmly together, if possible soldering them together and then wind fine silk over the join. it is not necessary in this machine to soak the coil in melted paraffin, but might improve the insulation if the cover of the wire is thin. only if there is a join and you have twisted, not soldered the wires together, you must not soak the coil in wax, or the melted wax gets between the ends of the wires and stops the current (this of course applies to all electro-magnets and should be remembered as a possible cause of failure.) the core having been pushed through the hole again, up to the circle of cardboard, the ferrotype plate is placed in the top of the box, and the box is shut up. now the ferrotype plate must be exactly free of the end of the core and that is all. you can test this by tapping it. if it vibrates in and out, it is all right; if the end of the core is too tightly pressed against it, there will be no possibility of moving the center in and out, and the core must be driven further through the hole till it is just free of the ferrotype plate. [illustration: fig. 1.--shape of platinum foil, p, fastened to ferrotype plate, f.] now comes another part of the instrument, viz., the contact-breaker. the following is as good a way of arranging it as any: take a piece of sheet brass the exact length of the diameter of the top of the tooth-powder box and about half inch wide, and in the middle of it bore a hole which will admit a brass screw--with a milled head preferably. the screw should fit tightly into the hole, so as to screw easily up and down when turned. to the end of the screw, which is cut off flat, is soldered a short piece of platinum wire, inserted in a hole in the end of the screw made to receive it; it can be fastened by any other means, as long as it will screw up and down and is in contact with the brass screw. adjust the screw so that the platinum point is within a minute distance of the ferrotype plate when the brass support is screwed down at the ends to the side of the box lid, and screw it down with small screws firmly in its position. [illustration: fig 2.--section of simple electric trumpet showing details of various parts.] before this is done, however, a thin strip of platinum foil should be soldered to the upper surface of the ferrotype plate, or otherwise fastened to it--elastic glue will answer--this strip terminating in the center, and reaching to the edge of the plate, leaving a short piece over. a very thin strip will be enough, of the shape of p in fig. 1. now the ferrotype plate is to be placed in position again (the side of which the platinum foil is fastened being outwards, and the end of the foil going down between the edge of the ferrotype plate and the wood into the inside of the box), and the end of the wire from the coil which was left inside the box is to be securely fastened, either by soldering or otherwise, to the end of the platinum foil which was left loose, so as to be in metallic connection with it. a wire can now be twisted round or soldered to the screw with the platinum point, and the instrument is complete. it has taken some space to describe, but i made my own in about half an hour. fig. 2 gives a general view of the parts put together. the lid of the box should be tightly fastened down by four small screws, two of which may be those which fasten on the brass strip holding the screw. now to consider its action. the wire i in fig. 2 is connected to one wire of the battery, and the wire g to the other. the current then starts from the battery, round the coil b, converting the core into a magnet, and up the wire h to the platinum foil p, along the platinum foil, which was fastened to the upper side of the ferrotype plate f, to the platinum wire which tips the screw c. it then goes up the screw c, along the brass piece e, which is fastened to the box by screws, as shown in the figure, to the wire g, and so back to the battery by the other wire. the screw c must be therefore screwed down till the platinum wire at its tip is just in contact with the foil on the ferrotype plate. now of course when the current goes round the coil, and thus converts the soft iron into an electro-magnet, the latter instantly attracts the ferrotype plate which is immediately above it. but the latter moving its center near the core, the platinum foil which is attached to it is thereby moved out of contact with the wire on the screw c, and the current is instantly stopped. thereupon the attraction of the magnet ceases, and the ferrotype plate flies back to its former position and so joins the platinum wire and foil, and starts the current again, and the former process is repeated. the ferrotype plate therefore vibrates with tremendous rapidity between the core and the platinum screw. now the vibrating armature of an ordinary coil makes quite a hum when hard at work, but of course a large plate such as this makes a much louder noise, consequently you will hear a ferocious buzzing like an army of millions of bees let loose from a hive, and on screwing the screw c up or down till you get to the correct point you will get a shrill note very like a penny whistle. if screwed up the vibrations are slower, and a deeper note is produced; if screwed down the vibrations are more rapid and a higher note is sounded. therefore you can amuse yourself by screwing it rapidly up and down, or adjusting it by pressing the brass piece with your finger, and a little practice will enable you to bring out a sort of tune produced by electricity! when you have become tired of jingling out your tune you can fix the electric trumpet up in a permanent position, adjusting the wires from the battery so as to pass through an ordinary "press" which may be in another room. the trumpet will then begin buzzing or hooting whenever the button of the press is pushed in, and stop when the pressure is released. in this way of course the trumpet will act as a "call" instead of a bell, and as the double wire can be easily hidden under the carpet and in dark corners, and painted to match whatever wood-work it crosses, you can arrange it from an up-stairs room to a down-stairs one or _vice versa_ with very little trouble. i give an illustration of the method of connecting the battery and trumpet with one switch or "press," to show how to arrange the series. (see fig. 3.) [illustration: fig. 3.--method of connecting trumpet to battery and one press.] the trumpet made in the very simple way i have described will not produce a very loud noise, but quite loud enough, if properly put together, to attract a person's attention who was in the room when it went off. the sound can be rendered louder by fixing a cardboard funnel or "cornucopia" to the front of the tooth-powder box to make a kind of horn. part ii. the trumpets sold in the shops, as a rule, make a very loud noise indeed--in fact, a little of it goes a very long way with most people. the increased sound is probably due to the body of the trumpet being composed of brass, which, vibrating in unison with the ferrotype plate, increases the sound. wood will therefore not give so loud a sound, and if you can construct the case of metal you should certainly do so. the vibrations of the plate, and therefore the sound, may also be increased by using a horseshoe magnet, the two poles attracting the plate more strongly. in the bought trumpets the case is shaped like a horn, in which the magnet is placed, the platinum contact-breaker being behind (where it is in the one i have described, supposing there was no bottom to the box and the magnet was supported by a bar across from side to side, the cornucopia being placed on that side of the box, instead of the other, with the magnet inside it). i think it is unnecessary to describe their construction further, as the principle and details of construction of the simple one i have described will apply to any, and any method of structure may be adopted which suits the mind of the maker. the trumpet having been made i will now give you a plan of fitting it up which adds enormously to the effect. we want to hide the trumpet so that no one shall know where it is. my own plan of doing this is as follows: i have made a wooden erection, of which i give a drawing which will explain itself. it consists of a back with a shelf at the bottom and a kind of canopy at the top. it can be made almost any size, small or big, to suit the occupant of the shelf. my own measurements are about as follows: from the top a to the bottom b, the length of back piece, including bracket, 1 foot 3 inches. breadth of back 5¼ inches. side of canopy (d), breadth 4½ inches, height 3½ inches, breadth of front (c to d) 5¼ inches; height of course the same as sides. the top piece will then be about 5¼ inches by 4½ inches. the shelf at the bottom is about the same size as the top of the canopy, and is supported by a bracket of rather thick wood, which you can carve as elaborately as you like. now take the electric trumpet, whether made at home or purchased, and fasten it to the under side of the canopy (this is best done before the sides are put on), and fasten a double wire behind the back (cutting a groove for it to go in) up to the back of the canopy, where it goes through and divides, one wire being fastened to one terminal of the trumpet and the other wire to the other. the double wire goes right down the back and emerges at b. obviously if you now join your press and battery on to the double wire, when you squeeze the press the trumpet will squeak. but here we are going to practice a little innocent deception, and to that end we go to a toy shop and purchase a small and pretty doll of the male sex, and if you can get one (or dress one up) attired as a soldier or trumpeter, by all means do so. the doll is now to be fixed on to the bracket by means of a long wire--say a hairpin bent out straight, one end being pushed into the wood, the other passing up one trouser leg of the doll and into its body; the wire is thus completely hidden and is much better than glue, as it admits of the doll being placed in a natural attitude, and being removed if required. in one of his hands you must make him hold a small trumpet (this is a very expensive item; it will cost two cents) with the mouthpiece to his mouth, as represented in the picture. [illustration: fig. 4.--electric doll.] the whole thing is now fastened to the wall in a convenient place, by driving nails through the back, and the double wire is completely hidden by passing it behind furniture, books, etc., down to the floor. there is great scope for ingenuity on the part of the worker in hiding the wire, and no definite instructions can possibly be given. in my own case i have no back piece below the shelf the support being against the wall. the wire descends behind the support (to b in the picture), and below that i have hung a "date calendar" over it, it makes a turn to the right and goes down behind a chiffonier covered with books to the floor. under these circumstances no human being could possibly tell that there was a wire at all, and there being no back piece under the bracket (so that the paper of the room can be seen), nothing but the support touching the calendar, it does not look as if any wires could possibly be hidden anywhere. now, if you press the button, of course the trumpet squeaks, but the doll being just underneath it, and the trumpet being in the dark under the canopy, no one thinks it is a separate instrument, but of course every one jumps to the conclusion that it is the doll blowing! hide the battery in a corner in a black box, the wires coming through the side next the wall, and the press in a dark corner, or on the floor under a table so that you can put your foot on it while your hands are free, writing, etc. you can of course now tell the doll to blow, at the same moment putting your foot on the press, when the trumpet blows accordingly. of course this is mysterious to the last degree to the uninitiated friend to whom you are displaying the doll, as you may be any distance off from the doll with your hands free, speaking to him across the room. the wooden erection to hold the doll can be painted any color; preferable the back should be _black_, as it shows off the doll. in front of the canopy you can paint a monogram or heraldic device. if the doll is one of those extremely pretty little specimens which can be procured at any good toy shop for about twenty-five cents, dressed as base ball players, soldiers, etc, (what our grandmothers would have thought of them in their young days it is difficult to imagine) it will really be quite an ornament to the room, independently of its electrical qualities. this chapter has outgrown the space i meant to occupy, and i must wait for the next to tell you how to make the doll work from various parts of the room as you walk about and talk to him, and how to make the battery. the best battery to use is to _leclanche_. you can use three or four cells of no. 2 size according to length of wire through which the current has to pass. in my next chapter i will try and explain how to make an electric _drum_, so that you can have a kind of drum and fife band. part iii. the electric drum. in part two on the "electric trumpet," i promised to explain how to make an electric drum; and this promise i now propose to redeem. the system on which it works is precisely analogous to that of the electric trumpet, and almost identical with that of the ordinary electric bell, of which i hope to say more in another chapter. as before, we have a hammer vibrating backwards and forwards in response to pulls from a magnet, which is magnetized and demagnetized by stopping and starting an electric current. in the case of the induction coil, the hammer is only a means whereby the current is broken and started again with great rapidity, and in the case of the trumpet the vibrator is used to make the noise by its vibration, but in this instrument we must have a _bona fide_ hammer, which must be able to beat the drum, and thus cause a stirring and martial sound. first, then, we will devote our attention to the construction of the magnet. in former chapters (as in the case of the electro-motor for example), i have given you the method of making the magnets out of one solid piece of soft iron, in the form of a horseshoe. this time, however, we will make it of several pieces, for a change; it is far more convenient to make, and looks much neater when finished. take a piece of soft iron 1½ inches long by 5/8 inch broad and 1/8 inch thick, and in the middle drill a hole about 3/16 inch in diameter. on each side of this, on a line with it at a distance of about ¼ inch, drill two more holes of the same size. this is to form the back, or, as it is scientifically termed, the yoke of the magnet. to form the poles we require two exactly similar pieces of soft iron bar 1½ inch long and 3/8 inch in diameter. these are to be filed quite smooth at the ends after cutting, and in the middle of one end a hole is to be drilled to admit a screw which will just go through the holes on each side of the center one made in the flat piece of the soft iron. these holes are cut to receive the thread of the screw, but if you can't do this you can simply leave out the end holes for screws, and solder the round and flat pieces of iron together. these are to be soldered or screwed together, so as to form a magnet, the hole in the middle of the flat piece serving to introduce a screw, for the purpose of attaching the magnet to a support. the best plan, if you can do it, is to drill and "tap" this hole to receive a screw which is inserted in a brass support made of a piece of brass 1 1/8 inch, long ½ inch broad, and 1/8 inch thick, bent at right angles at about ½ inch from one end, this shortest end being drilled for two screws to fasten it to the base-board, while the longest end has a hole in the center about 1/8 inch from the end, to admit the screw which fits the hole in the center of the yoke. having done all this, you will have fig. 1, which represents the magnet before it is wound. [illustration: fig. 1.--magnet put together ready for winding. (sectional diagram.)] the soft iron cores have now to be converted into magnets as usual, and here comes in the especial advantages of having screws to fasten the magnet together, as you can take the whole thing to bits, wind the wire on the legs in comfort, and then fasten together again. but if you have soldered the magnet together, you can achieve the same end in a different way by making two small bobbins to hold the wire, the exact size to slip on over the soft iron cores when the wire is wound on them. it is generally considered proper to wind the wire on bobbins, which can be removed from the cores if required. i should think it can seldom be required, but the bobbins are convenient in this case. i may remark parenthetically that bobbins wound and unwound, soft iron cores, and yokes, separately or together, and supports fixed to the yokes or not, can be obtained from any large electrician who sells parts of electric bells, etc.; the magnet can also be got put together complete. we now have to make bobbins, supposing that we are not going to buy them. the elaborateness of their manufacture will depend entirely on the skill of the maker. some construct them by sawing off top and bottom of a reel of cotton, and forming a roller of cardboard to fit the magnets, finally joining the ends of the reel to this roller, to make an elongated reel of the right size. others construct their bobbins entirely of cardboard, the ends being merely two circles of card. others who are versed in the mysteries of wood-turning, and are lucky enough to possess a lathe with which to do it, make two bobbins of solid wood, drilled to fit the iron cores. for these no instructions are needed, as the dimensions will be as given presently. for those who only want to use the magnet for this special purpose, and do not care about the bobbins being removable, the following is the simplest way to set to work: [illustration: fig. 2.--magnet wound and put together.] cut two circles of thick cardboard, each 7/8 inch in diameter, and in the center cut a hole the exact size to slip over the soft iron core. now wrap several thicknesses of thin tissue paper--or preferably french note paper or tracing paper--over the magnet, between the circles of cardboard, cutting the strip about 1 1/8 inch broad or 3/8 inch less than the length of the cores. now you can fasten the two circles of cardboard at the ends of the tracing paper, and keep them in their proper places on the magnet by means of mucilage--beat the soft iron before applying, and it will then adhere firmly to it. in this way, of course, you form a roller, on which we now have to wind the wire. if you have soldered the magnet's parts together, you must have movable bobbins, as it would be simply impossible to wind the wire evenly on the cores when fixed in position, as the edges of the bobbins will be so close together that it is not possible to wind the wire on between them without the coils becoming displaced. the method of winding the wire is simple enough. no. 24 wire is a good size to use; it can be cotton-covered or, preferably, silk-covered, as in the latter case the insulation is better. begin by making a hole near the roller in the circle of cardboard that is next to the end where the hole for the screw has been made. pass about three inches of wire through the hole and then wind it evenly on over the tracing paper from end to end and back again. you ought to have five or six layers of it; an ounce, or an ounce and a half, of wire will probably be enough. when it is all on, make another hole in the disc and pass out the wire. this is only to hold it safe while you wind the other bobbin. when that is finished you can put the magnet together, and ends of the two wires have now to be joined together. the two ends that are joined together must be those which come from the wire that is wound from the right to the left over one core and left to right over the other, that is to say, taking the wire when joined as one, it must be so wound on both limbs of the magnet that if they were bent into one straight bar it would all be wound in the same direction. [illustration: fig. 3.--shape of spring for armature.] with a composite magnet, however, there is no earthly difficulty in getting it right, for you have only to connect the battery to two wires and join the other two, and if they don't make the magnet work, join up one to the battery instead of one of those joined, and connect the other two wires; whichever gives the best result stick to. you must get all the silk or cotton off the wire, where you join them, and twist them over and over tightly together; if you can solder them, so much the better. pull the wire tight and wind it on the reels until the place where it is joined is pulled tightly and not left in a loop, which would look untidy. fig. 2 gives an idea of the magnet completed, and i have endeavored by means of the arrows to show how the wire is wound, they are supposed to give the direction of the top layer of wire in each case; of course either may be wound from the inside, so you must also consider that in this picture the outside coils are joined. the magnet having been thus constructed, we must now turn our attention to the vibrating hammer which is to beat the drum. to make this we want another piece of soft iron of about the same size as that forming the yoke of the magnet, say, 1 3/8 inch × ½ inch × 1/8 inch. we shall then require a piece of brass spring about three inches long and half an inch broad. this is made of very thin springy brass, so as to make a spring which will move the armature quickly. one end of the spring should be tapered off as shown in fig. 3, and at the point p in the figure a small piece of platinum foil (the real thing, not tin-foil, which i am sure is often sold in cheap apparatus instead of it,) should be fastened, by solder if possible. [illustration: fig. 4.--drum hammer put together.] we now want a piece of rather stout brass wire bent into the shape shown in fig. 4. it must be about four inches long, but its length will be determined by the size of the drum and the length of the magnet when it is all put together. at the end of this wire you must have a wooden knob (not brass, which doesn't produce nearly so much noise). this you will have provided ready for you if you purchase the drum, as they will naturally supply drumsticks with it, and the head of one of these cut off and fastened to the end of the wire, by simply making a hole and sticking it in, will answer the purpose beautifully. this wire has to be fastened to the soft iron armature, a simple way of doing which is to drill a hole the exact size and insert the end; it can then be soldered in. or, if you cannot drill a hole, you can simply solder it on. the brass spring has the end bent outwards, as shown in fig. 4, and is fastened to the soft iron armature by screws, as shown in the figure at s s, or simply soldered on. the point c is the end that is tapered off, and the platinum wire is fixed at that point; the spring should extend about 1¼ inch beyond the armature at the other end. two holes are drilled in the spring at the points h h, through which screws are passed into the support. this support may be either a piece of iron ½ inch long, ¾ inch broad and ¾ inch thick, or a piece of wood will answer very well, and save drilling holes in the iron. if it is wood it had better be larger, say ¾ inch by ¾ inch by 1¼ inch. part iv. we can now proceed to fasten all the parts together. we must have a piece of hard wood for the base, about 3½ inches by 3 inches and 3/8 inch thick. on this the magnet has to be fastened by its support being screwed firmly down. in front of it the armature has to be fastened at such a height as to be exactly in front of the poles of the magnet. the relative positions of the parts are shown in fig. 5, so i do not think a detailed account of their exact positions on the base is at all necessary. there is, however, one piece of the mechanism in the figure to which i have introduced you, this is the contact-screw shown at c. to make this we take a piece of brass about 1½ inch long, ½ inch broad, and rather less than 1/8 inch thick, and bend it at right angles, so that one leg is one inch long and the other ½ inch. now in the part that is ½ inch have to be drilled three holes to fasten it with nails or screws to the base. the other part, one inch long, will then stand erect, but before fastening it in its place we put it to stand in front of the magnet and mark a point which is exactly on a level with the piece of platinum foil on the spring, when the spring and magnet are fixed in position. a hole has now to be drilled through that point and tapped to admit a brass screw with a milled head, and fix the piece in which the screw works to the front hole, so that the screw will work through it. [illustration: fig. 5.--interior mechanism of drum complete.] the point of the screw has now to be cut off and a very small piece of platinum wire fixed at the end. this wire will now come in contact with the platinum foil on the spring, when the brass support is fixed in a certain position on the base, and it is now to be fixed in that position with screws or nails. it should be so fixed that when the screw is turned till it is nearly out of its hole the wire is just out of contact with the platinum foil on the spring. it is now evident that by turning the screw one way you make the spring vibrate more rapidly, and by turning it the other way its efforts are relaxed. the contact-breaker screw having been fixed in its place, and the support of the spring also fixed as at t in the diagram (fig. 5)--by screws through the base into the iron, if it is made of iron, or by nails or screws through it into the base if of wood--all the parts are now together, and all that remains to be done is to make the necessary connections. one wire that comes from the magnet is to be joined (soldered, if possible,) to the spring at h in the picture; the other wire is left loose. to the brass support of the contact screw we solder another piece of wire. now this piece of wire is connected with the zinc of the battery and the other (coming from the coil of the magnet) with the carbon of the battery. what happens? the electricity passes along the wire x, we will say, and round the magnet coils, thus turning the cores into magnets. it then goes down the other wire to h, up the brass spring, along the screw, and down by the brass support to the other wire, by which it returns to the battery. that is to say, it _would_ do all this if the armature stood still, but, of course, when the cores become magnets they attract the armature, which instantly moves towards them; this breaks the circuit, the spring moving off the platinum point of the screw, and the armature springs back again, which makes the circuit complete and the magnet attracts it again, and so on. the object of the spring is to get a good deal of vibration, and it and the screw should be so adjusted that although the armature is close enough to the magnet to make it certain to "go off" directly it is meant to do so, yet there may be as much scope for the spring to work with elasticity as possible. we have now completed the electrical part of the business, but a slightly necessary part of the apparatus has yet to be obtained--viz., the drum. you can easily make a drum if you like, by taking a broad piece of tin, twisting it round to form a hoop, and covering the ends with parchment strained tightly over them. however, i should certainly not do so, for there can hardly be any spot, i should think, which boasts of a toy-shop at all, where drums cannot be procured! for twenty-five cents you can get a very superior drum, just about the right size; if you like to get a bigger one and make the mechanical part bigger, you will, of course, be rewarded by more noise. now, suppose you have got a 25-cent toy-drum, you must proceed to take off one end. if you look at the construction of the drum you will find (at least it is the case with my own, and i have not seen any that are differently made) that by cutting one of the double strings that fasten the wood hoops at the top and bottom together, and then loosening all the other strings with your fingers, the wooden hoop at one end will come right off, if the nails fastening the ends together are taken out, and that then the inner hoop on which the parchment is stretched will also come off and leave that side of the drum open. now, this is simply grand for our purpose, for when we have arranged our little dodges inside the drum, we can put on all the hoops again, replace the one double string, and no one will be an atom the wiser. if you could get off the side without breaking any strings it would save the trouble of replacing any, but i am afraid this is hardly possible. however, off comes the side of our drum, and what is to be done next? well, the "beater" must be put bodily inside the drum, just so close to the parchment side that was taken off that the wooden head of the drumstick touches it when attracted by the magnet. you can easily find the right place in actual practice by setting the beater going and finding the spot inside the drum where it kicks up the worst racket when working. it must not be too close or it will hinder the vibration, and we want the hammer to go off instanter when required. the beater is fixed to the side of the drum with its side marked z in the figure (5) downwards. it is easily fastened there by making two holes in the wood (in the thickness of it), and two corresponding holes in the metal side of the drum, and then screwing it down in its proper place. two holes are to be made in the side of the drum and two ornamental bits of silk-covered flexible copper conductor let through. they can be secured by simply tying knots inside the drum, and the copper ends are now to be fastened, one to the wire x and the other to the wire k from the contact screw support. having done all this and made sure that the beater works when the ends of the flexible cord outside the drum are connected with the battery, we seal up our drum again, and that is then concluded. now as to fixing it up, i think i may fairly assume that you know how to make it work by an ordinary battery and a "press." it is only necessary to run a double wire from battery to press and from press to drum, one wire of the double conductor being fastened to the carbon end of the battery and the other to the zinc end, and the other end of one wire to one of the wires coming from the drum. the other wire coming from the drum is then joined to the bottom conductor of the press, and the upper conductor of the press is joined to the other wire of the double conductor that goes to the battery. it is all very easy to understand if you follow the course of the current and consider that it has to pass through the drum and the press when the latter is pushed down, and be stopped when it is left to spring up again. but the more magical arrangement can be made with the drum, and i think it is well worth while to do it, if merely for the fun of mystifying people. the drum is going to be suspended by the flexible cords; therefore, let them be the same length, and cutting off all the coverings at the end of each, fasten a brass "eye" to the copper, twisting the wire well round the bottom of the eye. now wind silk of the same color as the rest all round the join, so that the connection of wire and eye is completely hidden, and the eye appears merely fastened to the flexible cord as a means of suspending the drum. now we want to construct a hook from which the drum can be hung. part v. take two small pieces of brass wire about an inch long, and turn up the ends of each into a hook. now get a minute piece of ebonite of the same length, and, putting one hook on one side and one on the other, bind the whole together with silk. if you cannot get ebonite easily you can use a small piece of sealing-wax in the same way; by heating the wires you can sink them into the wax and so make a neater join. now the wires must not touch each other anywhere, but must be completely separated by the ebonite or sealing-wax. the double wire from the battery and press is now fastened, one wire to the press hook on one side, and one wire to that on the other side of the sealing-wax or ebonite. wind silk over the whole to cover the joins, and a neat double hook is the result. the picture (fig. 6) gives the method of making the hook, and it also gives a great deal more, which i now proceed to explain. supposing we can rig up a small beam of wood from which to suspend the drum, we can make matters more mysterious still. let the double wire, being hidden by some means or other all along its course, be conducted on to the end of the beam. it can then be trained along the top of it until it comes to the point from which the drum is to hang. here there must be a hole drilled, large enough to admit the hook rather tightly. pull the double wire through and fasten the two wires to the hooks as before described. [illustration: fig. 6.--hook from which to suspend the magic drum.] now you can pull back the wire and fix the hook firmly in the hole, hiding the double wire at the top of the beam (of course if it is high up no one will be able to see over the top of the beam, so you will be quite safe); the hook being thus fixed will not attract any one's notice, and look quite unsuspicious. the chief glory of the double hook thus constructed is, of course, that you can remove the drum whenever you choose, for examination, and whenever you hang it up you have only to hitch one eye over one side of the hook and the other over the other side, and the drum will work. people who are not up in the matter cannot conceive how the electricity can get to the drum, when it is simply hung by an (apparently) ordinary cord and ordinary eyes to what looks like an ordinary hook attached to a beam in a plain and straightforward manner. you are now possessed of an electric trumpet and an electric drum, which you can put one at one end of the room and the other at the other. by running double wires from battery and press to the trumpet, and another double wire from battery and press to the drum, you can arrange matters so that when you put one press down the trumpet works, and when the other press is put down the drum works. if you want to work both together you must either have a very powerful battery (say 6 or 7 cells, no. 2 lechlanche) or two batteries, one for trumpet and one for drum. if you want to use one battery for both you can make either work (at different times) from the same battery and presses, wherever they may be, by having a two-way switch in a dark corner of the wire. [illustration: fig. 7.--method of joining switch drum and trumpet to press and battery.] it is very confusing business setting up the wires so as to produce the right effect, which is to change the current from drum to trumpet and _vice versa_ in a moment by merely altering the handle of the switch. readers who are not accustomed to the work will find it most intricate, and as i have done it myself several times, they may as well have the benefit of my trouble. i therefore give an illustration of how to connect up the wires (fig. 7), and hope it will make matters clear to them. an explanation of the picture is necessary. suppose first of all that the switch is at a c, then the current will travel from the right-hand end of the battery, b, up one wire of the double conductor to the press, p, as shown by the lower arrow, through the press and along the wire, as shown by the top arrow, to the middle of the switch, a, down the arm of the switch to c, up one wire of the double conductor to the drum, and down by the other wire to the other end of the battery. now let the handle of the switch be moved to the other terminal, as shown by the dotted lines. the current will now go from the right-hand end of the battery to press and center of switch as before, it then goes down the arm of the switch up to the trumpet by the wire on the left side, and down to the other end of the battery by the wire on the right side, as shown by the arrows. therefore when the arm of the switch is at a c the press will work the drum; when it is at a g the press will work the trumpet. suppose we have no press, but instead of it we have only one wire going straight from the right-hand end of the battery to the middle of the switch. now let two incandescent lamps be substituted for the trumpet and drum. when the arm of the switch is at a c the current goes straight up from the right-hand pole of the battery to the center of the switch, along the arm, up to the lamp on the left-hand side, and down to the other pole of the battery. now, suppose the arm of the switch is moved to a g, the current will go up as before to the center of the switch, down by the arm, up the wire to the lamp on the right-hand side, and back to the battery by the other wire. in the first case, therefore, the lamp at d lights up, in the second case the lamp at t lights up. the wires from c to d and g to t may be as long as you please, you can therefore control the lamps when they are far apart or in different parts of the house. when the arm of the switch is central neither lamp lights up, or, if you are fitting up the trumpet and drum, the press will not work either when the switch is in this position. this is an advantage, as when people get too inquisitive you can turn off the current, and then whatever they do they will not make the trumpet or drum work till you turn it on again, which you can do when you want them to work for you! the construction of the switch is so simple that it is hardly necessary to explain the method of joining the wires, but i may say that one is to be joined to the bottom of the brass pillar in the center which supports the brass arm. the others are joined to the right and left terminals, generally by brass screws under the base, but sometimes by screw terminals at the upper surface; this depends on the make of switch which is purchased. ingenious readers can easily make a switch for themselves; it only requires a brass arm attached at one end to a central figure, and long enough to touch two screws, or pieces of brass, fixed to the base on opposite sides of it, when turned in their direction. the end of the arm not supported by the brass pillar is provided with a small wooden handle to turn it by. the switch should be arranged to occupy some dark corner in which you can turn on drum or trumpet to work from the "presses" at will without any one seeing you alter it. i will only add one thing in conclusion, and that is, that you can have the double wire from the battery and center of switch to the press at the end as long as you like, and it can turn about behind furniture or under the carpet as much as you like, and it will still work instantly from the end press. now, by scraping the wire clean at any intermediate point, or as many points as you like, and arranging a simple spring contact fastened to the wires without breaking them so that they can be made to touch when required and spring apart directly the touch is removed (this is easily done with two springs consisting of two strips of sheet brass, one fastened to one wire and one to the other, separated by a piece of wood except at the end when pressed together), you can make the trumpet squeak or the drum roll at any part of the room you like. the springs can be hidden under the carpet so as to be absolutely undiscernible except to the initiated. the best places are under furniture with rather long legs; the foot of the operator can then be placed on the springs, and so make them meet and the trumpet or drum sound without the least chance of detection. the wires not being broken in fixing the springs as described, those springs which are closer to the battery, in no way interfere with those which are further off, as, when these are used, the current simply runs round those that intervene between them and the battery, without being in any way hindered in its course, and the press at the end of the double wire will, therefore, work just as if no intermediate springs existed. simple electrical experiments. frictional electricity is pre-eminently a winter amusement. not that it is not equally possible to produce the same result in summer, but then other occupations are forced upon us, while in the long winter evenings, with a good fire to dry the air of the sitting-room, the conditions are particularly favorable to electrical phenomena. if a hard frost sets in the conditions will be still more favorable, as this dries the air and the ground outside, while on a wet evening a large fire and warmer room will be needed to produce as good results. [illustration: fig. 1.--electric windmill or tourniquet.] the following experiments are given as a means of amusement to those who know little or nothing of electrical phenomena. some of them may be recognized by some readers as being standard experiments, others may possess the charm of novelty. to many, however, the whole series will be new, and it is hoped that these will find a new source of interest opened to them, and that they may possibly be impelled thereby to investigate further concerning the causes of what they see. frictional electrical machines can be purchased from any electrical instrument makers, at a small price, and with these experiments mentioned are more readily performed. in this article i only mention experiments that can be performed with materials to be found in every house, or the necessaries for which can be procured from a shop for a nominal sum. friction between two substances of any sort probably always produces electricity; but it can only be made visible under certain circumstances. for instance, if a stick of sealing-wax is warmed and rubbed with a piece of flannel also warm, they both become electrified. this may be proved by holding the wax near an electrometer, which is simply a bottle through the cork of which a wire is passed which has two pieces of gold leaf fastened to its extremity, when the leaves at once diverge owing to the repelling force of the electricity. the flannel is also electrified, but the electricity soon escapes, through the hand of the operator to the ground. we now proceed to make a simple experiment on the production of electricity on a larger scale. take a piece of stout brown paper and hold it in front of a hot fire till all the moisture inherent in it is expelled, and the paper is dry and quite hot. now take it away suddenly, and holding it against the side of the coat rub it briskly with the sleeve by holding the sleeve in the hand. take it away and hold it against the wall of the room, to which it will instantly adhere firmly, this adherence being caused by the development of electricity over the surface of the brown paper by the friction it has undergone. the paper can be removed from the wall, and on holding it at a short distance will fly towards it and adhere again. in a short time, however, the electricity departs, and the paper falls to the ground. if the hand is spread open upon the paper as it sticks, the electricity departs at once and the paper falls. a spark can be obtained from the paper, but it is hardly strong enough to be visible. in the next experiment, however, it is plainly to be seen. take an ordinary tea-tray and place it on the top of four glass tumblers, which must have previously been made quite hot and dry at the fire. they must also be scrupulously clean, as dirt is a good conductor of electricity. now take a sheet of foolscap paper, and heat it strongly at the fire until perfectly dry, as the brown paper was. place it while hot flat on the table and rub it from side to side, from the top to the bottom, with a piece of thick india-rubber. it will now adhere firmly to the table on account of the electricity developed. take hold of two corners, pull it up, and quickly place it on the tray. on approaching the knuckle of your closed hand to the edge of the tray you will now obtain a brilliant spark, which, if the room is dark, will appear vivid. on removing the paper from the tray, and again approaching the knuckle, another spark will pass, but not so bright as the former. the experiment can be repeated as often as wished by heating and rubbing the paper again. now take four more tumblers, heat them as before, and place them on the floor with a board on the top of them. let someone stand on this board, taking care that he is completely separated from all surrounding objects of furniture, etc., and that his clothes do not touch the table while the experiment is performed. let him place his hand on the tray while the paper is heated, rubbed, and placed thereon. he will then become charged with electricity, and if he approaches his hand to any one else's a spark will pass between them. (this should not be done with susceptible parts of the body, the eyes for example, as it would be rather painful.) let some one be provided with a spoon in which a little methylated spirit is heated; if the charged person holds his knuckle to this spirit it will instantly be ignited. small pieces of paper--comic paper figures, etc.--will dance up and down briskly if he holds his hand outspread over them while lying on the table. the same thing will happen if the pieces of paper are placed between the tray and the table when the former is charged by the hot paper, or if the brown paper in the first experiment is held above them when excited. now take a needle and place it on the tray, its point projecting over the edge. if the room is now darkened, on placing the excited paper on the tray, the point of the needle will be seen to glow brilliantly for some seconds. this is caused by the electricity escaping into the air from the point of the needle, and is known as the "brush discharge." the tray will consequently speedily lose its electricity. it will be found to be impossible to get a spark from the tray as long as the needle is on it, as the electricity vastly prefers to escape by the point. the escape of the electricity may be rendered still more evident by means of the following piece of apparatus. take two pieces of thin wire about two inches long, and bend each at right angles about an eighth of an inch from each end, both the bent portions being in the same direction. these two pieces of wire are now to be joined together at the middle at right angles by means of a piece of finer wire twisted around them. this finer wire can, with a little care, be caused to form a small cap, in which the point of a needle is inserted, the needle acting as a pivot, so that the bent wires turn freely on top of it (fig. 1). the needle is supported by thrusting it into a large cork to act as a stand. a fine wire is then twisted several times around the bottom of the needle, and the whole apparatus is then placed on the tray, the end of the wire attached to the needle being carefully arranged so as to touch the tray, a metallic connection with the tray being essential to success. if the needle can be soldered to a metal stand, or the cork covered with tinfoil, the wire is not needed. on rubbing the paper and placing it on the tray, the electricity passes up the wire into the needle, thence into the wire cross, and escapes by the bent portions of the wires, each of which should be filed to a point. in escaping it electrifies the surrounding air, and this, according to the law that "like electricities repel each other," has a reacting force on the wire arms. accordingly the windmill begins to turn, and may attain a tolerable rate of speed if the tray is strongly charged. another amusing experiment is that known as the "electrical head of hair." the head of a wooden doll is taken, and either provided with a real head of hair, which must be combed out straight, or a quantity of cotton is fastened to it to resemble hair. if the head is fastened to a metal stand, and placed on the tray when the excited paper is laid upon it, the hairs become charged, and consequently repel each other, causing the whole head of hair to stand erect, each hair separate from the rest, thus presenting a most remarkable appearance. for the same reason, if a heap of small pieces of paper, feathers, etc., is laid on the tray, on placing upon it the electrified paper they will jump off in all directions, each being repelled by the others, in the same way as the gold leaves of the electroscope were repelled in the first experiment. if two pieces of pith are suspended by silk threads to a support, so as to hang close to each other, on bringing near them the electrified wax or tray they will be charged and will repel each other for some time. if when charged by the wax a heated glass rod rubbed with silk is brought near to them, they will fly to it, instead of retreating. this seems to indicate a difference between the electricities of the wax and the glass, the former of which has therefore been called negative, and the latter positive. for giving stronger shocks than the tray is capable of, we may have recourse to the apparatus known as the leyden jar, which may be easily charged by means of the tray and excited paper. a leyden jar is thus easily and cheaply constructed: take an ordinary wide-mouthed pickle bottle and a cork to fit it. cover the outside with tinfoil, which can be fastened on with gum, and should be laid on as smoothly and as free from creases as possible. tinfoil can be procured from any chemist. the outside being finished, the inside has to be covered also, which is a work of greater difficulty. it can best be performed by cutting another piece not quite so large as that on the outside of the bottle but of the same shape, and passing into the bottle without creasing it more than can be helped, it can be arranged inside the bottle so as to fit smoothly all round. now a piece of brass wire is to be passed through the cork, at the end of which is a brass knob, or if simply bent round it will work, though the knob is neater. at the end of the wire which is inside the bottle a brass chain is fastened so as to touch the tinfoil inside the bottle when the cork is inserted. the tinfoil inside and outside the bottle must only reach to the bottom of the neck, leaving a space between it and the cork. the leyden jar is now complete, and must be thoroughly warmed before charging it. when quite hot it can be charged by bringing the knob (the jar being held by the outer coating of tinfoil) near the tray, when the excited paper is laid upon it. a spark will pass between the tray and the knob, and this must be repeated several times (say twenty for a first experiment), the jar being charged more fully the more sparks are put into it. any one now taking the jar in one hand by the outer coating and placing a finger of the other hand near the knob will receive a shock, the severity of which depends on the number of sparks put into the jar. several people can take the shock by joining hands, the outside one on one side holding the jar, and the outside one on the other side touching the knob. those in the middle will not feel the shock quite so strongly as those on the outside. [illustration: fig. 2.--bells chimed by a leyden jar.] this is an example of the "quick discharge" of a leyden jar. it can, however, also be discharged slowly, and the following experiment makes use of this faculty. take three small bells, which can be procured at any toy shop, and remove the clappers. now suspend two of them by wires at opposite ends of a piece of metal or stout wire about three inches long, and suspend this wire in the center by a bent wire (or wooden, if covered with tinfoil) support, which is fixed to a thick piece of board, covered with tinfoil, to act as a base. the tinfoil must be in communication with the supporting wire, and the height of the bells must be so adjusted that when the leyden jar is placed between them with the third bell supported on the knob (the support of the clapper will have to be removed from the bell for this purpose), all three bells will be of equal heights and about half an inch distant from each other. (the diagram fig. 2 will explain the arrangement.) now suspend two small brass buttons by silk threads so as to hang between the bells when the leyden jar is placed in the center. charge the jar with the tray and replace it in position (of course with the bell on the top); the buttons will then begin to move backwards and forwards between the bells, and the latter will keep up a vigorous chiming until the electricity of the jar is exhausted. in this experiment it is essential that the supports be of metal, or wood covered with tinfoil, as the electricity passes from the inside of the jar to the outside while it is standing upon the tinfoil, by means of the balls, and thus causes them to vibrate. a candle which has just been blown out, leaving the wick glowing, can easily be lighted by means of the charged leyden jar if a piece of bent wire is held touching the outer coating and the other end on one side of the wick while the knob is approached to the other, so that the spark passes through the glowing wick. in the same way spirits of wine can be lighted, and gunpowder, guncotton, etc., exploded. to do this, it is best to have two pieces of bent wire provided with handles of glass at the middle. these wires are held by the handles, one in contact with the outer coating, and the other with the inner coating, of the charged leyden jar. on approaching the other two ends of the wires a spark passes between them, and if a small quantity of gunpowder is placed on a table and the spark is made to pass through it by approaching the wire to either side it will be fired. there are many other experiments which can be performed by the help of the simple apparatus described, but it would take up too much space to describe them. 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do forty tricks with cards. 78 how to do the black art. 79 how to become an actor. all the above books are for sale by newsdealers throughout the united states and canada, or they will be sent, post-paid, to your address, on receipt of 10c. each. _send your name and address for our latest illustrated catalogue._ =frank tousey, publisher=, =24 union square=, =new york=. * * * * * * transcriber's note: every effort has been made to replicate this text as faithfully as possible. some changes have been made. they are listed at the end of the text. in the original book fractions >1 were printed in the form 1 3-8. this has been changed to the form 1-3/8. fourths and halves are represented as 1¼ etc. in the chapter "how to make an induction coil," a section heading "part i." was removed as there is no "part ii." the following is a list of changes made to the original. the first line is the original line, the second the corrected one. page 11: it this can be done over night, if this can be done over night, and the coil left to get cold as the the fire goes out, and the coil left to get cold as the fire goes out, page 12: so as to leave about ¼ of an inch of the core projectiug from it, so as to leave about ¼ of an inch of the core projecting from it, page 14: unless you are skilled in the use of the soldiering bit. unless you are skilled in the use of the soldering bit. page 15: twenty-five cents, plantinum being a very expensive substance. twenty-five cents, platinum being a very expensive substance. the strip of brass supporting the strew being connected by a wire the strip of brass supporting the screw being connected by a wire page 16: below these places narrow strips of wood to keep them apart below these place narrow strips of wood to keep them apart page 17: is filled with "_suturated_" solution of sulphate of copper is filled with "_saturated_" solution of sulphate of copper page 18: shock to any one who holds two handles fixed to his terminals. shock to any one who holds two handles fixed to its terminals. page 19: deal 5½ inches long ay 3½ inches broad by 7/8 inch thick. deal 5½ inches long by 3½ inches broad by 7/8 inch thick. page 23: by filling four small notches in the soft iron of the armuatre by filing four small notches in the soft iron of the armature page 24: to do this we shall wants two supports for the axle. these to do this we shall want two supports for the axle. these page 28: the base and loined to the under part of these binding-screws. the base and joined to the under part of these binding-screws. page 33: for the current to get round the magnet in sufficicent quantity for the current to get round the magnet in sufficient quantity page 34: these are all made she same size, and consequently it is unnecessary these are all made the same size, and consequently it is unnecessary page 36: the following is as good away of arranging it as any: the following is as good a way of arranging it as any: page 42: to the uninitated friend to whom you are displaying the doll, to the uninitiated friend to whom you are displaying the doll, in front of the conopy you can paint a monogram or heraldic device. in front of the canopy you can paint a monogram or heraldic device. what our grandmothers would have though of them in their young days what our grandmothers would have thought of them in their young days page 44: c, bras support for magnet. c, brass support for magnet. and here comes in the especal advantages of having screws and here comes in the especial advantages of having screws page 46: taking the wire when joined as one,-it must be so wound taking the wire when joined as one, it must be so wound page 47: is pulled tightly and left in a loop, which would look untidy. is pulled tightly and not left in a loop, which would look untidy. page 51: you will, of course, be rewerded by more noise. you will, of course, be rewarded by more noise. page 52: now we want to construct a hook ro which the drum can be hung. now we want to construct a hook from which the drum can be hung. page 55: suppose we have no press. but instead of it we have only one wire suppose we have no press, but instead of it we have only one wire when the arm of the switch is at a c the currrent goes straight up when the arm of the switch is at a c the current goes straight up page 58: this adherence peing caused by the development of electricity this adherence being caused by the development of electricity this should not be done with suspectible parts of the body, this should not be done with susceptible parts of the body, page 59: it will we found to be impossible to get a spark from the tray it will be found to be impossible to get a spark from the tray bend each at right angles about an eight of an inch from each end, bend each at right angles about an eighth of an inch from each end, page 62: will then begin to move backwards and forwards betweens the bells, will then begin to move backwards and forwards between the bells, the tinfoil, by means of the balls, and thus causes them to vibrate. the tinfoil, by means of the bells, and thus causes them to vibrate. transcriber's note: text enclosed by underscores is in italics (_italics_). in view of the difficulty of reliably distinguishing 18th-century variant spellings from typographical errors, the text has been reproduced entirely as printed. * * * * * experiments and observations on electricity, made at _philadelphia_ in _america_, by mr. benjamin franklin, and communicated in several letters to mr. p. collinson, of _london_, f. r. s. * * * * * * _london_: printed and sold by e. cave, at _st. john's gate_. 1751. (_price 2s. 6d._) the preface. _it may be necessary to acquaint the reader, that the following observations and experiments were not drawn up with a view to their being made publick, but were communicated at different times, and most of them in letters wrote on various topicks, as matters only of private amusement._ _but some persons to whom they were read, and who had themselves been conversant in electrical disquisitions, were of opinion, they contain'd so many curious and interesting particulars relative to this affair, that it would be doing a kind of injustice to the publick, to confine them solely to the limits of a private acquaintance._ _the editor was therefore prevailed upon to commit such extracts of letters, and other detach'd pieces as were in his hands to the press, without waiting for the ingenious author's permission so to do; and this was done with the less hesitation, as it was apprehended the author's engagements in other affairs, would scarce afford him leisure to give the publick his reflections and experiments on the subject, finish'd with that care and precision, of which the treatise before us shews he is alike studious and capable. he was only apprized of the step that had been thus taken, while the first sheets were in the press, and time enough for him to transmit some farther remarks, together with a few corrections and additions, which are placed at the end, and may be consulted in the perusal._ _the experiments which our author relates are most of them peculiar to himself; they are conducted with judgment, and the inferences from them plain and conclusive; though sometimes proposed under the terms of suppositions and conjectures._ _and indeed the scene he opens, strikes us with a pleasing astonishment, whilst he conducts us by a train of facts and judicious reflections, to a probable cause of those phænomena, which are at once the most awful, and, hitherto, accounted for with the least verisimilitude._ _he exhibits to our consideration, an invisible, subtile matter, disseminated through all nature in various proportions, equally unobserved, and, whilst all those bodies to which it peculiarly adheres are alike charged with it, inoffensive._ _he shews, however, that if an unequal distribution is by any means brought about; if there is a coacervation in one part of space, a less proportion, vacuity, or want, in another; by the near approach of a body capable of conducting the coacervated part to the emptier space, it becomes perhaps the most formidable and irresistible agent in the universe. animals are in an instant struck breathless, bodies almost impervious by any force yet known, are perforated, and metals fused by it, in a moment._ _from the similar effects of lightening and electricity our author has been led to make some propable conjectures on the cause of the former; and at the same time, to propose some rational experiments in order to secure ourselves, and those things on which its force is often directed, from its pernicious effects; a circumstance of no small importance to the publick, and therefore worthy of the utmost attention._ _it has, indeed, been of late the fashion to ascribe every grand or unusual operation of nature, such as lightening and earthquakes, to electricity; not, as one would imagine, from the manner of reasoning on these occasions, that the authors of these schemes have, discovered any connection betwixt the cause and effect, or saw in what manner they were related; but, as it would seem, merely because they were unacquainted with any other agent, of which it could not positively be said the connection was impossible._ _but of these, and many other interesting circumstances, the reader will be more satisfactorily informed in the following letters, to which he is therefore referred by_ _the_ editor. [illustration] letter i. from mr benj. franklin, in _philadelphia_. to mr peter collinson, f.r.s. _london_. _july 28, 1747_. _sir_, the necessary trouble of copying long letters, which perhaps when they come to your hands may contain nothing new, or worth your reading (so quick is the progress made with you in electricity) half discourages me from writing any more on that subject. yet i cannot forbear adding a few observations on m. _muschenbroek_'s wonderful bottle. 1. the non-electric contain'd in the bottle differs when electrised from a non-electric electrised out of the bottle, in this: that the electrical fire of the latter is accumulated _on its surface_, and forms an electrical atmosphere round it of considerable extent: but the electrical fire is crouded _into the substance_ of the former, the glass confining it. 2. at the same time that the wire and top of the bottle, &c. is electrised _positively_ or _plus_, the bottom of the bottle is electrised _negatively_ or _minus_, in exact proportion: _i. e._ whatever quantity of electrical fire is thrown in at top, an equal quantity goes out of the bottom. to understand this, suppose the common quantity of electricity in each part of the bottle, before the operation begins, is equal to 20; and at every stroke of the tube, suppose a quantity equal to 1 is thrown in; then, after the first stroke, the quantity contain'd in the wire and upper part of the bottle will be 21, in the bottom 19. after the second, the upper part will have 22, the lower 18, and so on 'till after 20 strokes, the upper part will have a quantity of electrical fire equal to 40, the lower part none: and then the operation ends: for no more can be thrown into the upper part, when no more can be driven out of the lower part. if you attempt to throw more in, it is spued back thro' the wire, or flies out in loud cracks thro' the sides of the bottle. 3. the equilibrium cannot be restored in the bottle by _inward_ communication or contact of the parts; but it must be done by a communication formed _without_ the bottle, between the top and bottom, by some non-electric, touching both at the same time; in which case it is restored with a violence and quickness inexpressible: or, touching each alternately, in which case the equilibrium is restored by degrees. 4. as no more electrical fire can be thrown into the top of the bottle, when all is driven out of the bottom, so in a bottle not yet electrised, none can be thrown into the top, when none _can_ get out at the bottom; which happens either when the bottom is too thick, or when the bottle is placed on an electric _per se_. again, when the bottle is electrised, but little of the electrical fire can be _drawn out_ from the top, by touching the wire, unless an equal quantity can at the same time _get in_ at the bottom. thus, place an electrised bottle on clean glass or dry wax, and you will not, by touching the wire, get out the fire from the top. place it on a non-electric, and touch the wire, you will get it out in a short time; but soonest when you form a direct communication as above. so wonderfully are these two states of electricity, the _plus_ and _minus_, combined and balanced in this miraculous bottle! situated and related to each other in a manner that i can by no means comprehend! if it were possible that a bottle should in one part contain a quantity of air strongly comprest, and in another part a perfect vacuum, we know the equilibrium would be instantly restored _within_. but here we have a bottle containing at the same time a _plenum_ of electrical fire, and a _vacuum_ of the same fire; and yet the equilibrium cannot be restored between them but by a communication _without_! though the _plenum_ presses violently to expand, and the hungry vacuum seems to attract as violently in order to be filled. 5. the shock to the nerves (or convulsion rather) is occasion'd by the sudden passing of the fire through the body in its way from the top to the bottom of the bottle. the fire takes the shortest course, as mr _watson_ justly observes: but it does not appear, from experiment, that, in order for a person to be shocked, a communication with the floor is necessary; for he that holds the bottle with one hand, and touches the wire with the other, will be shock'd as much, though his shoes be dry, or even standing on wax, as otherwise. and on the touch of the wire (or of the gun-barrel, which is the same thing) the fire does not proceed from the touching finger to the wire, as is supposed, but from the wire to the finger, and passes through the body to the other hand, and so into the bottom of the bottle. experiments _confirming the above_. experiment i. place an electrised phial on wax; a small cork-ball suspended by a dry silk-thread held in your hand, and brought near to the wire, will first be attracted, and then repelled: when in this state of repellency, sink your hand, that the ball may be brought towards the bottom of the bottle; it will there be instantly and strongly attracted, 'till it has parted with its fire. if the bottle had an electrical atmosphere, as well as the wire, an electrified cork would be repelled from one as well as from the other. experiment ii. fig. 1. from a bent wire (_a_) sticking in the table, let a small linen thread (_b_) hang down within half an inch of the electrised phial (_c_). touch the wire of the phial repeatedly with your finger, and at every touch you will see the thread instantly attracted by the bottle. (this is best done by a vinegar cruet, or some such belly'd bottle). as soon as you draw any fire out from the upper part by touching the wire, the lower part of the bottle draws an equal quantity in by the thread. experiment iii. fig. 2. fix a wire in the lead, with which the bottom of the bottle is armed, (_d_) so as that bending upwards, its ring-end may be level with the top or ring-end of the wire in the cork (_e_), and at three or four inches distance. then electricise the bottle, and place it on wax. if a cork suspended by a silk thread (_f_) hang between these two wires, it will play incessantly from one to the other, 'till the bottle is no longer electrised; that is, it fetches and carries fire from the top to the bottom of the bottle, 'till the equilibrium is restored. experiment iv. fig. 3. place an electricised phial on wax; take a wire (_g_) in form of a c, the ends at such a distance when bent, as that the upper may touch the wire of the bottle, when the lower touches the bottom: stick the outer part on a stick of sealing wax (_h_) which will serve as a handle. then apply the lower end to the bottom of the bottle, and gradually bring the upper-end near the wire in the cork. the consequence is, spark follows spark till the equilibrium is restored. touch the top first, and on approaching the bottom with the other end, you have a constant stream of fire, from the wire entering the bottle. touch the top and bottom together, and the equilibrium will soon be restored, but silently and imperceptibly; the crooked wire forming the communication. experiment v. fig. 4. let a ring of thin lead or paper surround a bottle (_i_), even at some distance from or above the bottom. from that ring let a wire proceed up, 'till it touch the wire of the cork (_k_). a bottle so fixt cannot by any means be electrised: the equilibrium is never destroyed: for while the communication between the upper and lower parts of the bottle is continued by the outside wire, the fire only circulates: what is driven out at bottom, is constantly supply'd from the top. hence a bottle cannot be electrised that is foul or moist on the outside. experiment vi. place a man on a cake of wax, and present him the wire of the electrified phial to touch, you standing on the floor, and holding it in your hand. as often as he touches it, he will be electrified _plus_; and any one standing on the floor may draw a spark from him. the fire in this experiment passes out of the wire into him; and at the same time out of your hand into the bottom of the bottle. experiment vii. give him the electrified phial to hold; and do you touch the wire; as often you touch it he will be electrified _minus_, and may draw a spark from any one standing on the floor. the fire now passes from the wire to you, and from him into the bottom of the bottle. experiment viii. lay two books on two glasses, back towards back, two or three inches distant. set the electrified phial on one, and then touch the wire; that book will be electrified _minus_; the electrical fire being drawn out of it by the bottom of the bottle. take off the bottle, and holding it in your hand, touch the other with the wire; that book will be electrised _plus_; the fire passing into it from the wire, and the bottle at the same time supply'd from your hand. a suspended small cork-ball will play between these books 'till the equilibrium is restored. experiment ix. when a body is electrised _plus_ it will repel an electrified feather or small cork-ball. when _minus_ (or when in the common state) it will attract them, but stronger when _minus_ than when in the common state, the difference being greater. experiment x. tho', as in exper. vi. a man standing on wax may be electrised a number of times, by repeatedly touching the wire of an electrised bottle (held in the hand of one standing on the floor) he receiving the fire from the wire each time: yet holding it in his own hand, and touching the wire, tho' he draws a strong spark, and is violently shock'd, no electricity remains in him; the fire only passing thro' him from the upper to the lower part of the bottle. observe, before the shock, to let some one on the floor touch him to restore the equilibrium in his body; for in taking hold of the bottom of the bottle, he sometimes becomes a little electrised _minus_, which will continue after the shock; as would also any _plus_ electricity, which he might have given him before the shock. for, restoring the equilibrium in the bottle does not at all affect the electricity in the man thro' whom the fire passes; that electricity is neither increased nor diminish'd. experiment xi. the passing of the electrical fire from the upper to the lower part of the bottle, to restore the equilibrium is render'd strongly visible by the following pretty experiment. take a book whose cover is filletted with gold; bend a wire of eight or ten inches long in the form of (_m_) fig. 5, slip it on the end of the cover of the book over the gold line, so as that the shoulder of it may press upon one end of the gold line, the ring up, but leaning towards the other end of the book. lay the book on a glass or wax; and on the other end of the gold lines, set the bottle electrised: then bend the springing wire, by pressing it with a stick of wax till its ring approaches the ring of the bottle wire; instantly there is a strong spark and stroke, and the whole line of gold, which completes the communication between the top and bottom of the bottle, will appear a vivid flame, like the sharpest lightning. the closer the contact between the shoulder of the wire, and the gold at one end of the line, and between the bottom of the bottle and the gold at the other end, the better the experiment succeeds. the room should be darkened. if you would have the whole filletting round the cover appear in fire at once, let the bottle and wire touch the gold in the diagonally opposite corners. _i am_, &c. b. franklin. letter ii. from mr benj. franklin, in _philadelphia_. to mr peter collinson, f.r.s. _london_. _sept. 1, 1747._ _sir_, in my last i informed you that, in pursuing our electrical enquiries, we had observed some particular phænomena, which we looked upon to be new, and of which i promised to give you some account, tho' i apprehended they might possibly not be new to you, as so many hands are daily employ'd in electrical experiments on your side the water, some or other of which would probably hit on the same observations. the first is the wonderful effect of pointed bodies, both in _drawing off_ and _throwing off_ the electrical fire. for example: place an iron shot of three or four inches diameter, on the mouth of a clean dry glass bottle. by a fine silken thread from the cieling, right over the mouth of the bottle, suspend a small cork-ball, about the bigness of a marble; the thread of such a length, as that the cork-ball may rest against the side of the shot. electrify the shot, and the ball will be repelled to the distance of four or five inches, more or less, according to the quantity of electricity.--when in this state, if you present to the shot the point of a long slender sharp bodkin, at six or eight inches distance, the repellency is instantly destroy'd, and the cork flies to the shot. a blunt body must be brought within an inch, and draw a spark, to produce the same effect. to prove that the electrical fire is _drawn off_ by the point, if you take the blade of the bodkin out of the wooden handle, and fix it in a stick of sealing wax, and then present it at the distance aforesaid, or if you bring it very near, no such effect follows; but sliding one finger along the wax till you touch the blade, and the ball flies to the shot immediately.--if you present the point in the dark, you will see, sometimes at a foot distance, and more, a light gather upon it like that of a fire-fly or glow-worm; the less sharp the point, the nearer you must bring it to observe the light; and at whatever distance you see the light, you may draw off the electrical fire, and destroy the repellency.--if a cork-ball so suspended be repelled by the tube, and a point be presented quick to it, tho' at a considerable distance, 'tis surprizing to see how suddenly it flies back to the tube. points of wood will do as well as those of iron, provided the wood is not dry; for perfectly dry wood will no more conduct electricity than sealing wax. to shew that points will _throw off_ as well as _draw off_ the electrical fire; lay a long sharp needle upon the shot, and you cannot electrise the shot, so as to make it repel the cork-ball.--or fix a needle to the end of a suspended gun-barrel, or iron rod, so as to point beyond it like a little bayonet; and while it remains there, the gun-barrel, or rod, cannot by applying the tube to the other end be electrised so as to give a spark, the fire continually running out silently at the point. in the dark you may see it make the same appearance as it does in the case beforementioned. the repellency between the cork-ball and the shot is likewise destroy'd; 1. by sifting fine sand on it; this does it gradually. 2. by breathing on it. 3. by making a smoke about it from burning wood.[1] 4. by candle light, even tho' the candle is at a foot distance: these do it suddenly.--the light of a bright coal from a wood fire; and the light of red-hot iron do it likewise; but not at so great a distance. smoke from dry rosin dropt on hot iron, does not destroy the repellency; but is attracted by both shot and cork-ball, forming proportionable atmospheres round them, making them look beautifully, somewhat like some of the figures in _burnet_'s or _whiston_'s theory of the earth. _n. b._ this experiment should be made in a closet where the air is very still. the light of the sun thrown strongly on both cork and shot by a looking-glass for a long time together, does not impair the repellency in the least. this difference between fire-light and sun-light, is another thing that seems new and extraordinary to us. we had for some time been of opinion, that the electrical fire was not created by friction, but collected, being really an element diffus'd among, and attracted by other matter, particularly by water and metals. we had even discovered and demonstrated its afflux to the electrical sphere, as well as its efflux, by means of little light windmill wheels made of stiff paper vanes, fixed obliquely and turning freely on fine wire axes. also by little wheels of the same matter, but formed like water wheels. of the disposition and application of which wheels, and the various phænomena resulting, i could, if i had time, fill you a sheet. the impossibility of electrising one's self (tho' standing on wax) by rubbing the tube and drawing the fire from it; and the manner of doing it by passing the tube near a person or thing standing on the floor, &c. had also occurred to us some months before mr _watson_'s ingenious _sequel_ came to hand, and these were some of the new things i intended to have communicated to you.--but now i need only mention some particulars not hinted in that piece, with our reasonings thereupon; though perhaps the latter might well enough be spared. 1. a person standing on wax, and rubbing the tube, and another person on wax drawing the fire; they will both of them, (provided they do not stand so as to touch one another) appear to be electrised, to a person standing on the floor; that is, he will perceive a spark on approaching each of them with his knuckle. 2. but if the persons on wax touch one another during the exciting of the tube, neither of them will appear to be electrised. 3. if they touch one another after exciting the tube, and drawing the fire as aforesaid, there will be a stronger spark between them, than was between either of them and the person on the floor. 4. after such strong spark, neither of them discover any electricity. these appearances we attempt to account for thus. we suppose as aforesaid, that electrical fire is a common element, of which every one of the three persons abovementioned has his equal share, before any operation is begun with the tube. _a_, who stands on wax and rubs the tube collects the electrical fire from himself into the glass; and his communication with the common stock being cut off by the wax, his body is not again immediately supply'd. _b_, (who stands on wax likewise) passing his knuckle along near the tube, receives the fire which was collected by the glass from _a_; and his communication with the common stock being likewise cut off, he retains the additional quantity received.--to _c_, standing on the floor, both appear to be electrised: for he having only the middle quantity of electrical fire, receives a spark upon approaching _b_, who has an over quantity; but gives one to _a_, who has an under quantity. if _a_ and _b_ approach to touch each other, the spark is stronger, because the difference between them is greater; after such touch there is no spark between either of them and _c_, because the electrical fire in all is reduced to the original equality. if they touch while electrising, the equality is never destroy'd, the fire only circulating. hence have arisen some new terms among us: we say, _b_, (and bodies like circumstanced) is electrised _positively_; _a_, _negatively_. or rather, _b_ is electrised _plus_; _a_, _minus_. and we daily in our experiments electrise bodies _plus_ or _minus_ as we think proper.--to electrise _plus_ or _minus_, no more needs to be known than this, that the parts of the tube or sphere that are rubbed, do, in the instant of the friction attract the electrical fire, and therefore take it from the thing rubbing: the same parts immediately, as the friction upon them ceases, are disposed to give the fire they have received, to any body that has less. thus you may circulate it, as mr _watson_ has shewn; you may also accumulate or substract it upon or from any body, as you connect that body with the rubber or with the receiver, the communication with the common stock being cut off. we think that ingenious gentleman was deceived, when he imagined (in his _sequel_) that the electrical fire came down the wire from the cieling to the gun-barrel, thence to the sphere, and so electrised the machine and the man turning the wheel, _&c._ we suppose it was _driven off_, and not brought on thro' that wire; and that the machine and man, _&c._ were electrised _minus_; _i. e._ had less electrical fire in them than things in common. as the vessel is just upon sailing, i cannot give you so large an account of american electricity as i intended: i shall only mention a few particulars more.--we find granulated lead better to fill the phial with, than water, being easily warmed, and keeping warm and dry in damp air.--we fire spirits with the wire of the phial.--we light candles, just blown out, by drawing a spark among the smoke between the wire and snuffers.--we represent lightning, by passing the wire in the dark over a china plate that has gilt flowers, or applying it to gilt frames of looking-glasses, _&c._--we electrise a person twenty or more times running, with a touch of the finger on the wire, thus: he stands on wax. give him the electrised bottle in his hand. touch the wire with your finger, and then touch his hand or face; there are sparks every time.--we encrease the force of the electrical kiss vastly, thus: let _a_ and _b_ stand on wax; give one of them the electrised phial in hand; let the other take hold of the wire; there will be a small spark; but when their lips approach, they will be struck and shock'd. the same if another gentleman and lady, _c_ and _d_, standing also on wax, and joining hands with _a_ and _b_, salute, or shake hands.--we suspend by fine silk thread a counterfeit spider, made of a small piece of burnt cork, with legs of linnen thread, and a grain or two of lead stuck in him to give him more weight. upon the table, over which he hangs, we stick a wire upright as high as the phial and wire, two or three inches from the spider; then we animate him by setting the electrified phial at the same distance on the other side of him; he will immediately fly to the wire of the phial, bend his legs in touching it, then spring off, and fly to the wire in the table; thence again to the wire of the phial, playing with his legs against both in a very entertaining manner, appearing perfectly alive to persons unacquainted. he will continue this motion an hour or more in dry weather.--we electrify, upon wax in the dark, a book that has a double line of gold round upon the covers, and then apply a knuckle to the gilding; the fire appears every where upon the gold like a flash of lightning: not upon the leather, nor, if you touch the leather instead of the gold. we rub our tubes with buckskin, and observe always to keep the same side to the tube, and never to sully the tube by handling; thus they work readily and easily, without the least fatigue; especially if kept in tight pastboard cases, lined with flannel, and fitting closeto the tube.[2]--this i mention because the _european_ papers, on electricity, frequently speak of rubbing the tube, as a fatiguing exercise. our spheres are fixed on iron axes, which pass through them. at one end of the axis there is a small handle, with which we turn the sphere like a common grindstone. this we find very commodious, as the machine takes up but little room, is portable, and may be enclosed in a tight box, when not in use. 'tis true, the sphere does not turn so swift, as when the great wheel is used: but swiftness we think of little importance, since a few turns will charge the phial, _&c._ sufficiently. _i am_, &c. b. franklin. [illustration] letter iii. from mr benj. franklin, in _philadelphia_. to mr peter collinson, f.r.s. _london_. _farther_ experiments _and_ observations _in_ electricity. _1748._ _sir_, § 1. there will be the same explosion and shock, if the electrified phial is held in one hand by the hook, and the coating touch'd with the other, as when held by the coating, and touch'd at the hook. 2. to take the charg'd phial safely by the hook, and not at the same time diminish its force, it must first be set down on an electric _per se_. 3. the phial will be electrified as strongly, if held by the hook, and the coating apply'd to the globe or tube; as when held by the coating, and the hook apply'd. 4. but the _direction_ of the electrical fire being different in the charging, will also be different in the explosion. the bottle charged thro' the hook, will be discharged thro' the hook; the bottle charged thro' the coating, will be discharged thro' the coating, and not other ways: for the fire must come out the same way it went in. 5. to prove this; take two bottles that were equally charged thro' the hooks, one in each hand; bring their hooks near each other, and no spark or shock will follow; because each hook is disposed to give fire, and neither to receive it. set one of the bottles down on glass, take it up by the hook, and apply its coating to the hook of the other; then there will be an explosion and shock, and both bottles will be discharged. 6. vary the experiment, by charging two phials equally, one thro' the hook, the other thro' the coating: hold that by the coating which was charged thro' the hook; and that by the hook which was charg'd thro' the coating: apply the hook of the first to the coating of the other, and there will be no shock or spark. set that down on glass which you held by the hook, take it up by the coating, and bring the two hooks together: a spark and shock will follow, and both phials be discharged. in this experiment the bottles are totally discharged, or the equilibrium within them restored. the _abounding_ of fire in one of the hooks (or rather in the internal surface of one bottle) being exactly equal to the _wanting_ of the other: and therefore, as each bottle has in itself the _abounding_ as well as the _wanting_, the wanting and abounding must be equal in each bottle. see §. 8, 9, 10, 11. but if a man holds in his hands two bottles, one fully electrify'd, the other not at all, and brings their hooks together, he has but half a shock, and the bottles will both remain half electrified, the one being half discharged, and the other half charged. 7. place two phials equally charged on a table at five or six inches distance. let a cork-ball, suspended by a silk thread, hang between them. if the phials were both charged through their hooks, the cork, when it has been attracted and repell'd by the one, will not be attracted, but equally repelled by the other. but if the phials were charged, the one through the hook, and the other[3] through the coating, the ball, when it is repelled from one hook, will be as strongly attracted by the other, and play vigorously between them, 'till both phials are nearly discharged. 8. when we use the terms of _charging_ and _discharging_ the phial, 'tis in compliance with custom, and for want of others more suitable. since we are of opinion, that there is really no more electrical fire in the phial after what is called its _charging_, than before, nor less after its _discharging_; excepting only the small spark that might be given to, and taken from, the non-electric matter, if separated from the bottle, which spark may not be equal to a five hundredth part of what is called the explosion. for if, on the explosion, the electrical fire came out of the bottle by one part, and did not enter in again by another; then, if a man standing on wax, and holding the bottle in one hand, takes the spark by touching the wire hook with the other, the bottle being thereby _discharged_, the man would be _charged_; or whatever fire was lost by one, would be found in the other, since there is no way for its escape: but the contrary is true. 9. besides the phial will not suffer what is called a _charging_, unless as much fire can go out of it one way, as is thrown in by another. a phial cannot be charged standing on wax or glass, or hanging on the prime conductor, unless a communication be form'd between its coating and the floor. 10. but suspend two or more phials on the prime conductor, one hanging to the tail of the other; and a wire from the last to the floor, an equal number of turns of the wheel shall charge them all equally, and every one as much as one alone would have been. what is driven out at the tail of the first, serving to charge the second; what is driven out of the second charging the third; and so on. by this means a great number of bottles might be charged with the same labour, and equally high, with one alone, were it not that every bottle receives new fire, and loses its old with some reluctance, or rather gives some small resistance to the charging, which in a number of bottles becomes more equal to the charging power, and so repels the fire back again on the globe, sooner than a single bottle would do. 11. when a bottle is charged in the common way, its _inside_ and _outside_ surfaces stand ready, the one to give fire by the hook, the other to receive it by the coating; the one is full, and ready to throw out, the other empty and extremely hungry; yet as the first will not _give out_, unless the other can at the same instant _receive in_; so neither will the latter receive in, unless the first can at the same instant give out. when both can be done at once, 'tis done with inconceivable quickness and violence. 12. so a strait spring (tho' the comparison does not agree in every particular) when forcibly bent, must, to restore itself, contract that side which in the bending was extended, and extend that which was contracted; if either of these two operations be hindered, the other cannot be done. but the spring is not said to be _charg'd_ with elasticity when bent, and discharg'd when unbent; its quantity of elasticity is always the same. 13. glass, in like manner, has, within its substance, always the same quantity of electrical fire, and that a very great quantity in proportion to the mass of glass, as shall be shewn hereafter. 14. this quantity, proportioned to the glass, it strongly and obstinately retains, and will have neither more nor less, though it will suffer a change to be made in its parts and situation; _i. e._ we may take away part of it from one of the sides, provided we throw an equal quantity into the other. 15. yet when the situation of the electrical fire is thus altered in the glass; when some has been taken from one side, and some added to the other, it will not be at rest or in its natural state, till 'tis restored to its original equality.--and this restitution cannot be made through the substance of the glass, but must be done by a non-electric communication formed without, from surface to surface. 16. thus, the whole force of the bottle, and power of giving a shock, is in the glass itself; the non-electrics in contact with the two surfaces, serving only to _give_ and _receive_ to and from the several parts of the glass; that is, to give on one side, and take away from the other. 17. this was discovered here in the following manner. purposing to analyse the electrified bottle, in order to find wherein its strength lay, we placed it on glass, and drew out the cork and wire which for that purpose had been loosely put in. then taking the bottle in one hand, and bringing a finger of the other near its mouth, a strong spark came from the water, and the shock was as violent as if the wire had remained in it, which shewed that the force did not lie in the wire. then to find if it resided in the water, being crouded into and condensed in it, as connfi'd by the glass, which had been our former opinion, we electrify'd the bottle again, and placing it on glass, drew out the wire and cork as before; then taking up the bottle we decanted all its water into an empty bottle, which likewise stood on glass; and taking up that other bottle, we expected if the force resided in the water, to find a shock from it; but there was none. we judged then, that it must either be lost in decanting, or remain in the first bottle. the latter we found to be true: for that bottle on trial gave the shock, though filled up as it stood with fresh unelectrified water from a tea-pot.--to find then, whether glass had this property merely as glass, or whether the form contributed any thing to it; we took a pane of sash-glass, and laying it on the stand, placed a plate of lead on its upper surface; then electrify'd that plate, and bringing a finger to it, there was a spark and shock. we then took two plates of lead of equal dimensions, but less than the glass by two inches every way, and electrified the glass between them, by electrifying the uppermost lead; then separated the glass from the lead, in doing which, what little fire might be in the lead was taken out and the glass being touched in the electrified parts with a finger, afforded only very small pricking sparks, but a great number of them might be taken from different places. then dexterously placing it again between the leaden plates, and compleating a circle between the two surfaces, a violent shock ensued.--which demonstrated the power to reside in glass as glass, and that the non-electrics in contact served only, like the armature of a loadstone, to unite the force of the several parts, and bring them at once to any point desired: it being a property of a non-electric, that the whole body instantly receives or gives what electrical fire is given to or taken from any one of its parts. 18. upon this, we made what we call'd an _electrical-battery_, consisting of eleven panes of large sash-glass, arm'd with thin leaden plates pasted on each side, placed vertically, and supported at two inches distance on silk cords, with thick hooks of leaden wire, one from each side, standing upright, distant from each other, and convenient communications of wire and chain, from the giving side of one pane, to the receiving side of the other; that so the whole might be charged together, and with the same labour as one single pane; and another contrivance to bring the giving sides, after charging, in contact with one long wire, and the receivers with another, which two long wires would give the force of all the plates of glass at once through the body of any animal forming the circle with them. the plates may also be discharged separately, or any number together that is required. but this machine is not much used, as not perfectly answering our intention with regard to the ease of charging, for the reason given § 10. we made also of large glass panes, magical pictures, and self-moving animated wheels, presently to be described. 19. i perceive by the ingenious mr _watson_'s last book, lately received, that dr _bevis_ had used, before we had, panes of glass to give a shock; though, till that book came to hand, i thought to have communicated it to you as a novelty. the excuse for mentioning it here, is, that we tried the experiment differently, drew different consequences from it, (for mr _watson_ still seems to think the fire _accumulated on the non-electric_ that is in contact with the glass, page 72) and, as far as we hitherto know, have carried it farther. 20. the magical picture is made thus. having a large metzotinto with a frame and glass, suppose of the king, (god preserve him) take out the print, and cut a pannel out of it, near two inches distant from the frame all round. if the cut is through the picture 'tis not the worse. with thin paste or gum-water, fix the border that is cut off on the inside of the glass, pressing it smooth and close; then fill up the vacancy by gilding the glass well with leaf gold or brass. gild likewise the inner edge of the back of the frame all round except the top part, and form a communication between that gilding and the gilding behind the glass: then put in the board, and that side is finished. turn up the glass, and gild the fore side exactly over the back gilding, and when it is dry, cover it by pasting on the pannel of the picture that had been cut out, observing to bring the corresponding parts of the border and picture together, by which the picture will appear of a piece as at first, only part is behind the glass, and part before.--hold the picture horizontally by the top, and place a little moveable gilt crown on the king's-head. if now the picture be moderately electrified, and another person take hold of the frame with one hand, so that his fingers touch its inside gilding, and with the other hand endeavour to take off the crown, he will receive a terrible blow, and fail in the attempt. if the picture were highly charged, the consequence might perhaps be as fatal as that of high-treason; for when the spark is taken through a quire of paper laid on the picture, by means of a wire communication, it makes a fair hole through every sheet, that is, through 48 leaves, (though a quire of paper is thought good armour against the push of a sword or even against a pistol bullet) and the crack is exceeding loud. the operator, who holds the picture by the upper-end, where the inside of the frame is not gilt, to prevent its falling, feels nothing of the shock, and may touch the face of the picture without danger, which he pretends is a test of his loyalty.--if a ring of persons take the shock among them, the experiment is called, _the conspirators_. 21. on the principle, in § 7, that hooks of bottles, differently charged, will attract and repel differently, is made, an electrical wheel, that turns with considerable strength. a small upright shaft of wood passes at right angles through a thin round board, of about twelve inches diameter, and turns on a sharp point of iron fixed in the lower end, while a strong wire in the upper-end passing thro' a small hole in a thin brass plate, keeps the shaft truly vertical. about thirty _radii_ of equal length, made of sash glass cut in narrow strips, issue horizontally from the circumference of the board, the ends most distant from the center being about four inches apart. on the end of every one, a brass thimble is fixed. if now the wire of a bottle electrified in the common way, be brought near the circumference of this wheel, it will attract the nearest thimble, and so put the wheel in motion; that thimble, in passing by, receives a spark, and thereby being electrified is repelled and so driven forwards; while a second being attracted, approaches the wire, receives a spark, and is driven after the first, and so on till the wheel has gone once round, when the thimbles before electrified approaching the wire, instead of being attracted as they were at first, are repelled, and the motion presently ceases.--but if another bottle which had been charged through the coating be placed near the same wheel, its wire will attract the thimble repelled by the first, and thereby double the force that carries the wheel round; and not only taking out the fire that had been communicated to the thimbles by the first bottle, but even robbing them of their natural quantity, instead of being repelled when they come again towards the first bottle, they are more strongly attracted, so that the wheel mends its pace, till it goes with great rapidity twelve or fifteen rounds in a minute, and with such strength, as that the weight of one hundred _spanish_ dollars with which we once loaded it, did not seem in the least to retard its motion.--this is called an electrical jack; and if a large fowl were spitted on the upright shaft, it would be carried round before a fire with a motion fit for roasting. 22. but this wheel, like those driven by wind, water, or weights, moves by a foreign force, to wit, that of the bottles. the self-moving wheel, though constructed on the same principles, appears more surprising. 'tis made of a thin round plate of window-glass, seventeen inches diameter, well gilt on both sides, all but two inches next the edge. two small hemispheres of wood are then fixed with cement to the middle of the upper and under sides, centrally opposite, and in each of them a thick strong wire eight or ten inches long, which together make the axis of the wheel. it turns horizontally on a point at the lower end of its axis, which rests on a bit of brass cemented within a glass salt-celler. the upper end of its axis passes thro' a hole in a thin brass plate cemented to a long strong piece of glass, which keeps it six or eight inches distant from any non-electric, and has a small ball of wax or metal on its top to keep in the fire. in a circle on the table which supports the wheel, are fixed twelve small pillars of glass, at about four inches distance, with a thimble on the top of each. on the edge of the wheel is a small leaden bullet communicating by a wire with the gilding of the _upper_ surface of the wheel; and about six inches from it is another bullet communicating in like manner with the _under_ surface. when the wheel is to be charged by the upper surface, a communication must be made from the under surface to the table. when it is well charg'd it begins to move; the bullet nearest to a pillar moves towards the thimble on that pillar, and passing by electrifies it and then pushes itself from it; the succeeding bullet, which communicates with the other surface of the glass, more strongly attracts that thimble on account of its being before electrified by the other bullet; and thus the wheel encreases its motion till it comes to such a height as that the resistance of the air regulates it. it will go half an hour, and make one minute with another twenty turns in a minute, which is six hundred turns in the whole; the bullet of the upper surface giving in each turn twelve sparks, to the thimbles, which make seven thousand two hundred sparks; and the bullet of the under surface receiving as many from the thimbles; those bullets moving in the time near two thousand five hundred feet.--the thimbles are well fixed, and in so exact a circle, that the bullets may pass within a very small distance of each of them.--if instead of two bullets you put eight, four communicating with the upper surface, and four with the under surface, placed alternately; which eight, at about six inches distance, compleats the circumference, the force and swiftness will be greatly increased, the wheel making fifty turns in a minute; but then it will not continue moving so long.--these wheels may be applied, perhaps, to the ringing of chimes, and moving of light-made orreries. 23. a small wire bent circularly with a loop at each end; let one end rest against the under surface of the wheel, and bring the other end near the upper surface, it will give a terrible crack, and the force will be discharged. 24. every spark in that manner drawn from the surface of the wheel, makes a round hole in the gilding, tearing off a part of it in coming out; which shews that the fire is not accumulated on the gilding, but is in the glass itself. 25. the gilding being varnish'd over with turpentine varnish, the varnish tho' dry and hard, is burnt by the spark drawn thro' it, and gives a strong smell and visible smoke. and when the spark is drawn through paper, all round the hole made by it, the paper will be blacked by the smoke, which sometimes penetrates several of the leaves. part of the gilding torn off, is also found forcibly driven into the hole made in the paper by the stroke. 26. 'tis amazing to observe in how small a portion of glass a great electrical force may lie. a thin glass bubble, about an inch diameter, weighing only six grains, being half-filled with water, partly gilt on the outside, and furnish'd with a wire hook, gives, when electrified, as great a shock as a man can well bear. as the glass is thickest near the orifice, i suppose the lower half, which being gilt was electrified, and gave the shock, did not exceed two grains; for it appeared, when broke, much thinner than the upper half.--if one of these thin bottles be electrified by the coating, and the spark taken out thro' the gilding, it will break the glass inwards at the same time that it breaks the gilding outwards. 27. and allowing (for the reasons before given, § 8, 9, 10,) that there is no more electrical fire in a bottle after charging, than before, how great must be the quantity in this small portion of glass! it seems as if it were of its very substance and essence. perhaps if that due quantity of electrical fire so obstinately retained by glass, could be separated from it, it would no longer be glass; it might lose its transparency, or its brittleness, or its elasticity.--experiments may possibly be invented hereafter, to discover this. 27. we are surprized at the account given in mr _watson_'s book, of a shock communicated through a great space of dry ground, and suspect there must be some metaline quality in the gravel of that ground; having found that simple dry earth, rammed in a glass tube, open at both ends, and a wire hook inserted in the earth at each end, the earth and wires making part of a circle, would not conduct the least perceptible shock, and indeed when one wire was electrify'd, the other hardly showed any signs of its being in connection with it.--even a thoroughly wet pack-thread sometimes fails of conducting a shock, tho' it otherwise conducts electricity very well. a dry cake of ice, or an icicle held between two in a circle, likewise prevents the shock; which one would not expect, as water conducts it so perfectly well.--gilding on a new book, though at first it conducts the shock extremely well, yet fails after ten or a dozen experiments, though it appears otherwise in all respects the same, which we cannot account for. 28. there is one experiment more which surprizes us, and is not hitherto satisfactorily accounted for; it is this. place an iron shot on a glass stand, and let a ball of damp cork, suspended by a silk thread, hang in contact with the shot. take a bottle in each hand, one that is electrify'd through the hook, the other through the coating: apply the giving wire to the shot, which will electrify it _positively_, and the cork shall be repelled: then apply the requiring wire, which will take out the spark given by the other; when the cork will return to the shot: apply the same again, and take out another spark, so will the shot be electrify'd _negatively_; and the cork in that case shall be repelled equally as before. then apply the giving wire to the shot, and give the spark it wanted, so will the cork return: give it another, which will be an addition to its natural quantity, so will the cork be repelled again: and so may the experiment be repeated as long as there is any charge in the bottles. which shews that bodies having less than the common quantity of electricity, repel each other, as well as those that have more. chagrined a little that we have hitherto been able to produce nothing in this way of use to mankind; and the hot weather coming on, when electrical experiments are not so agreeable, 'tis proposed to put an end to them for this season, somewhat humorously, in a party of pleasure, on the banks of _skuylkill_.[4] spirits, at the same time, are to be fired by a spark sent from side to side through the river, without any other conductor than the water; an experiment which we some time since performed, to the amazement of many. a turkey is to be killed for our dinner by the _electrical shock_, and roasted by the _electrical jack_, before a fire kindled by the _electrified bottle_; when the healths of all the famous electricians in _england_, _holland_, _france_, and _germany_, are to be drank in [5]_electrified bumpers_, under the discharge of guns from the _electrical battery_. _april 29, 1749._ [illustration] letter iv. containing observations _and_ suppositions, _towards forming a new_ hypothesis, _for explaining the several_ phænomena _of_ thunder-gusts.[6] _sir_, §. 1. non-electric bodies, that have electric fire thrown into them, will retain it 'till other non-electrics, that have less, approach; and then 'tis communicated by a snap, and becomes equally divided. 2. electrical fire loves water, is strongly attracted by it, and they can subsist together. 3. air is an electric _per se_, and when dry will not conduct the electrical fire; it will neither receive it, nor give it to other bodies; otherwise no body surrounded by air could be electrified positively and negatively: for should it be attempted positively, the air would immediately take away the overplus; or negatively, the air would supply what was wanting. 4. water being electrified, the vapours arising from it will be equally electrified; and floating in the air, in the form of clouds, or otherwise, will retain that quantity of electrical fire, till they meet with other clouds or bodies not so much electrified, and then will communicate as beforementioned. 5. every particle of matter electrified is repelled by every other particle equally electrified. thus the stream of a fountain, naturally dense and continual, when electrified, will separate and spread in the form of a brush, every drop endeavouring to recede from every other drop. but on taking out the electrical fire, they close again. 6. water being strongly electrified (as well as when heated by common fire) rises in vapours more copiously; the attraction of cohesion among its particles being greatly weakened, by the opposite power of repulsion introduced with the electrical fire; and when any particle is by any means disengaged, 'tis immediately repelled, and so flies into the air. 7. particles happening to be situated as _a_ and _b_, are more easily disengaged than _c_ and _d_, as each is held by contact with three only, whereas _c_ and _d_ are each in contact with nine. when the surface of water has the least motion, particles are continually pushed into the situation represented by fig. 6. 8. friction between a non-electric and an electric _per se_, will produce electrical fire; not by _creating_, but _collecting_ it: for it is equally diffused in our walls, floors, earth, and the whole mass of common matter. thus the whirling glass globe, during its friction against the cushion, draws fire from the cushion, the cushion is supplied from the frame of the machine, that from the floor on which it stands. cut off the communication by thick glass or wax placed under the cushion, and no fire can be _produced_, because it cannot be _collected_. 9. the ocean is a compound of water, a non-electric, and salt an electric _per se_. 10. when there is a friction among the parts near its surface, the electrical fire is collected from the parts below. it is then plainly visible in the night; it appears at the stern and in the wake of every sailing vessel; every dash of an oar shows it, and every surff and spray: in storms the whole sea seems on fire.--the detach'd particles of water then repelled from the electrified surface, continually carry off the fire as it is collected; they rise, and form clouds, and those clouds are highly electrified, and retain the fire 'till they have an opportunity of communicating it. 11. the particles of water rising in vapours, attach themselves to particles of air. 12. the particles of air are said to be hard, round, separate and distant from each other; every particle strongly repelling every other particle, whereby they recede from each other, as far as common gravity will permit. 13. the space between any three particles equally repelling each other, will be an equilateral triangle. 14. in air compressed, these triangles are smaller; in rarified air they are larger. 15. common fire joined with air, increases the repulsion, enlarges the triangles, and thereby makes the air specifically lighter. such air among denser air, will rise. 16. common fire, as well as electrical fire gives repulsion to the particles of water, and destroys their attraction of cohesion; hence common fire, as well as electrical fire, assists in raising vapours. 17. particles of water, having no fire in them, mutually attract each other. three particles of water then being attached to the three particles of a triangle of air, would by their mutual attraction operating against the air's repulsion, shorten the sides and lessen the triangle, whereby that portion of air being made denser, would sink to the earth with its water, and not rise to contribute to the formation of a cloud. 18. but if every particle of water attaching itself to air, brings with it a particle of common fire, the repulsion of the air being assisted and strengthened by the fire, more than obstructed by the mutual attraction of the particles of water, the triangle dilates, and that portion of air becoming rarer and specifically lighter rises. 19. if the particles of water bring electrical fire when they attach themselves to air, the repulsion between the particles of water electrified, joins with the natural repulsion of the air, to force its particles to a greater distance, whereby the triangles are dilated, and the air rises, carrying up with it the water. 20. if the particles of water bring with them portions of _both sorts_ of fire, the repulsions of the particles of air is still more strengthened and increased, and the triangles farther enlarged. 21. one particle of air may be surrounded by twelve particles of water of equal size with itself, all in contact with it; and by more added to those. 22. particles of air thus loaded would be drawn nearer together by the mutual attraction of the particles of water, did not the fire, common or electrical, assist their repulsion. 23. if air thus loaded be compressed by adverse winds, or by being driven against mountains, &c. or condensed by taking away the fire that assisted it in expanding; the triangles contract, the air with its water will descend as a dew; or, if the water surrounding one particle of air comes in contact with the water surrounding another, they coalesce and form a drop, and we have rain. 24. the sun supplies (or seems to supply) common fire to all vapours, whether raised from earth or sea. 25. those vapours which have both common and electrical fire in them, are better supported, than those which have only common fire in them. for when vapours rise into the coldest region above the earth, the cold will not diminish the electrical fire, if it doth the common. 26. hence clouds formed by vapours raised from fresh waters within land, from growing vegetables, moist earth, &c. more speedily and easily deposite their water, having but little electrical fire to repel and keep the particles separate. so that the greatest part of the water raised from the land is let fall on the land again; and winds blowing from the land to the sea are dry; there being little use for rain on the sea, and to rob the land of its moisture, in order to rain on the sea, would not appear reasonable. 27. but clouds formed by vapours raised from the sea, having both fires, and particularly a great quantity of the electrical, support their water strongly, raise it high, and being moved by winds may bring it over the middle of the broadest continent from the middle of the widest ocean. 28. how these ocean clouds, so strongly supporting their water, are made to deposite it on the land where 'tis wanted, is next to be considered. 29. if they are driven by winds against mountains, those mountains being less electrified attract them, and on contact take away their electrical fire (and being cold, the common fire also;) hence the particles close towards the mountains and towards each other. if the air was not much loaded, it only falls in dews on the mountain tops and sides, forms springs, and descends to the vales in rivulets, which united make larger streams and rivers. if much loaded, the electrical fire is at once taken from the whole cloud; and, in leaving it, flashes brightly and cracks loudly; the particles instantly coalescing for want of that fire, and falling in a heavy shower. 30. when a ridge of mountains thus dams the clouds, and draws the electrical fire from the cloud first approaching it; that which next follows, when it comes near the first cloud, now deprived of its fire, flashes into it, and begins to deposite its own water; the first cloud again flashing into the mountains; the third approaching cloud, and all the succeeding ones, acting in the same manner as far back as they extend, which may be over many hundred miles of country. 31. hence the continual storms of rain, thunder, and lightning on the east-side of the _andes_, which running north and south, and being vastly high, intercept all the clouds brought against them from the _atlantic_ ocean by the trade winds, and oblige them to deposite their waters, by which the vast rivers _amazons_, _la plata_, and _oroonoko_ are formed, which return the water into the same sea, after having fertilized a country of very great extent. 32. if a country be plain, having no mountains to intercept the electrified clouds, yet is it not without means to make them deposite their water. for if an electrified cloud coming from the sea, meets in the air a cloud raised from the land, and therefore not electrified; the first will flash its fire into the latter, and thereby both clouds shall be made suddenly to deposite water. 33. the electrified particles of the first cloud close when they lose their fire; the particles of the other cloud close in receiving it: in both, they have thereby an opportunity of coalescing into drops.--the concussion or jerk given to the air, contributes also to shake down the water, not only from those two clouds but from others near them. hence the sudden fall of rain immediately after flashes of lightning. 34. to shew this by an easy experiment. take two round pieces of pasteboard two inches diameter; from the center and circumference of each of them suspend by fine silk threads eighteen inches long, seven small balls of wood, or seven peas equal in bigness; so will the balls appending to each pasteboard, form equal equilateral triangles, one ball being in the center, and six at equal distances from that, and from each other; and thus they represent particles of air. dip both sets in water, and some cohering to each ball they will represent air loaded. dexterously electrify one set, and its balls will repel each other to a greater distance, enlarging the triangles. could the water supported by the seven balls come into contact, it would form a drop or drops so heavy as to break the cohesion it had with the balls, and so fall.--let the two sets then represent two clouds, the one a sea cloud electrified, the other a land cloud. bring them within the sphere of attraction, and they will draw towards each other, and you will see the separated balls close thus; the first electrified ball that comes near an unelectrified ball by attraction joins it, and gives it fire; instantly they separate, and each flies to another ball of its own party, one to give, the other to receive fire; and so it proceeds through both sets, but so quick as to be in a manner instantaneous. in the collision they shake off and drop their water, which represents rain. 35. thus when sea and land clouds would pass at too great a distance for the flash, they are attracted towards each other till within that distance; for the sphere of electrical attraction is far beyond the distance of flashing. 36. when a great number of clouds from the sea meet a number of clouds raised from the land, the electrical flashes appear to strike in different parts; and as the clouds are jostled and mixed by the winds, or brought near by the electrical attraction, they continue to give and receive flash after flash, till the electrical fire is equally diffused. 37. when the gun-barrel (in electrical experiments) has but little electrical fire in it, you must approach it very near with your knuckle, before you can draw a spark. give it more fire, and it will give a spark at a greater distance. two gun-barrels united, and as highly electrified, will give a spark at a still greater distance. but if two gun-barrels electrified will strike at two inches distance, and make a loud snap, to what a great distance may 10,000 acres of electrified cloud strike and give its fire, and how loud must be that crack! 38. it is a common thing to see clouds at different heights passing different ways, which shews different currents of air, one under the other. as the air between the tropics is rarified by the sun, it rises, the denser northern and southern air pressing into its place. the air so rarified and forced up, passes northward and southward, and must descend in the polar regions, if it has no opportunity before, that the circulation may be carried on. 39. as currents of air, with the clouds therein, pass different ways, 'tis easy to conceive how the clouds, passing over each other, may attract each other, and so come near enough for the electrical stroke. and also how electrical clouds may be carried within land very far from the sea, before they have an opportunity to strike. 40. when the air, with its vapours raised from the ocean between the tropics, comes to descend in the polar regions, and to be in contact with the vapours arising there, the electrical fire they brought begins to be communicated, and is seen in clear nights, being first visible where 'tis first in motion, that is, where the contact begins, or in the most northern part; from thence the streams of light seem to shoot southerly, even up to the zenith of northern countries. but tho' the light seems to shoot from the north southerly, the progress of the fire is really from the south northerly, its motion beginning in the north being the reason that 'tis there first seen. for the electrical fire is never visible but when in motion, and leaping from body to body, or from particle to particle thro' the air. when it passes thro' dense bodies 'tis unseen. when a wire makes part of the circle, in the explosion of the electrical phial, the fire, though in great quantity, passes in the wire invisibly: but in passing along a chain, it becomes visible as it leaps from link to link. in passing along leaf-gilding 'tis visible: for the leaf-gold is full of pores; hold a leaf to the light and it appears like a net; and the fire is seen in its leaping over the vacancies.--and as when a long canal filled with still water is opened at one end, in order to be discharged, the motion of the water begins first near the opened end, and proceeds towards the close end, tho' the water itself moves from the close towards the opened end: so the electrical fire discharged into the polar regions, perhaps from a thousand leagues length of vaporiz'd air, appears first where 'tis first in motion, _i. e._ in the most northern part, and the appearance proceeds southward, tho' the fire really moves northward. this is supposed to account for the _aurora borealis_. 41. when there is great heat on the land, in a particular region (the sun having shone on it perhaps several days, while the surrounding countries have been screen'd by clouds) the lower air is rarified and rises, the cooler denser air above descends; the clouds in that air meet from all sides, and join over the heated place; and if some are electrified, others not, lightning and thunder succeed, and showers fall. hence thunder-gusts after heats, and cool air after gusts; the water and the clouds that bring it, coming from a higher and therefore a cooler region. 42. an electrical spark, drawn from an irregular body at some distance is scarce ever strait, but shows crooked and waving in the air. so do the flashes of lightning; the clouds being very irregular bodies. 43. as electrified clouds pass over a country, high hills and high trees, lofty towers, spires, masts of ships, chimneys, _&c._ as so many prominencies and points, draw the electrical fire, and the whole cloud discharges there. 44. dangerous, therefore, is it to take shelter under a tree during a thunder-gust. it has been fatal to many, both men and beasts. 45. it is safer to be in the open field for another reason. when the clothes are wet, if a flash in its way to the ground should strike your head, it will run in the water over the surface of your body; whereas, if your clothes were dry, it would go thro' the body. hence a wet rat cannot be killed by the exploding electrical bottle, when a dry rat may. 46. common fire is in all bodies, more or less, as well as electrical fire. perhaps they may be different modifications of the same element; or they may be different elements. the latter is by some suspected. 47. if they are different things, yet they may and do subsist together in the same body. 48. when electrical fire strikes thro' a body, it acts upon the common fire contained in it, and puts that fire in motion; and if there be a sufficient quantity of each kind of fire, the body will be inflamed. 49. when the quantity of common fire in the body is small, the quantity of the electrical fire (or the electrical stroke) should be greater: if the quantity of common fire be great, less electrical fire suffices to produce the effect. 50. thus spirits must be heated before we can fire them by the electrical spark. if they are much heated a small spark will do; if not, the spark must be greater. 51. till lately we could only fire warm vapours; but now we can burn hard dry rosin. and when we can procure greater electrical sparks, we may be able to fire not only unwarm'd spirits, as lightning does, but even wood, by giving sufficient agitation to the common fire contained in it, as friction we know will do. 52. sulphureous and inflammable vapours arising from the earth, are easily kindled by lightning. besides what arise from the earth, such vapours are sent out by stacks of moist hay, corn, or other vegetables, which heat and reek. wood rotting in old trees or buildings does the same. such are therefore easily and often fired. 53. metals are often melted by lightning, tho' perhaps not from heat in the lightning, nor altogether from agitated fire in the metals.--for as whatever body can insinuate itself between the particles of metal, and overcome the attraction by which they cohere (as sundry menstrua can) will make the solid become a fluid, as well as fire, yet without heating it: so the electrical fire, or lightning, creating a violent repulsion between the particles of the metal it passes thro', the metal is fused. 54. if you would, by a violent fire, melt off the end of a nail, which is half driven into a door, the heat given the whole nail before a part would melt, must burn the board it sticks in. and the melted part would burn the floor it dropp'd on. but if a sword can be melted in the scabbard, and money in a man's pocket, by lightning, without burning either, it must be a cold fusion. 55. lightning rends some bodies. the electrical spark will strike a hole thro' a quire of strong paper. 56. if the source of lightning, assigned in this paper, be the true one, there should be little thunder heard at sea far from land. and accordingly some old sea-captains, of whom enquiry has been made, do affirm, that the fact agrees perfectly with the hypothesis; for that, in crossing the great ocean, they seldom meet with thunder till they come into soundings; and that the islands far from the continent have very little of it. and a curious observer, who lived 13 years at _bermudas_, says, there was less thunder there in that whole time than he has sometimes heard in a month at _carolina_. additional papers. to mr. peter collinson, f.r.s. _london_. philadelphia, _july 29, 1750_ _sir_, as you first put us on electrical experiments, by sending to our library company a tube, with directions how to use it; and as our honourable proprietary enabled us to carry those experiments to a greater height, by his generous present of a compleat electrical apparatus; 'tis fit that both should know from time to time what progress we make. it was in this view i wrote and sent you my former papers on this subject, desiring, that as i had not the honour of a direct correspondence with that bountiful benefactor to our library, they might be communicated to him through your hands. in the same view i write, and send you this additional paper. if it happens to bring you nothing new (which may well be, considering the number of ingenious men in _europe_, continually engaged in the same researches) at least it will show, that the instruments, put into our hands, are not neglected; and, that if no valuable discoveries are made by us, whatever the cause may be, it is not want of industry and application. _i am, sir, your much obliged humble servant_, b. franklin. opinions and conjectures, _concerning the properties and effects of the electrical matter, arising from experiments and observations, made in_ philadelphia, 1749. § 1. the electrical matter consists of particles extreamly subtile, since it can permeate common matter, even the densest metals, with such ease and freedom, as not to receive any perceptible resistance. 2. if any one should doubt, whether the electrical matter passes thro' the substance of bodies, or only over and along their surfaces, a shock from an electrified large glass jar, taken thro' his own body, will probably convince him. 3. electrical matter differs from common matter in this, that the parts of the latter mutually attract, those of the former mutually repel, each other. hence the appearing divergency in a stream of electrified effluvia. 4. but tho' the particles of electrical matter do repel each other, they are strongly attracted by all other matter.[7] 5. from these three things, the extreme subtilty of the electrical matter, the mutual repulsion of its parts, and the strong attraction between them and other matter, arise this effect, that when a quantity of electrical matter, is applied to a mass of common matter, of any bigness or length within our observation (which has not already got its quantity) it is immediately and equally diffused through the whole. 6. thus common matter is a kind of spunge to the electrical fluid. and as a spunge would receive no water, if the parts of water were not smaller than the pores of the spunge; and even then but slowly, if there were not a mutual attraction between those parts and the parts of the spunge; and would still imbibe it faster, if the mutual attraction among the parts of the water did not impede, some force being required to separate them; and fastest, if, instead of attraction, there were a mutual repulsion among those parts, which would act in conjunction with the attraction of the spunge. so is the case between the electrical and common matter. 7. but in common matter there is (generally) as much of the electrical, as it will contain within its substance. if more is added, it lies without upon the surface, and forms what we call an electrical atmosphere: and then the body is said to be electrified. 8. 'tis supposed, that all kinds of common matter do not attract and retain the electrical, with equal strength and force; for reasons to be given hereafter. and that those called electrics _per se_, as glass, &c. attract and retain it strongest, and contain the greatest quantity. 9. we know that the electrical fluid is _in_ common matter, because we can pump it _out_ by the globe or tube. we know that common matter has near as much as it can contain, because, when we add a little more to any protion of it, the additional quantity does not enter, but forms an electrical atmosphere. and we know that common matter has not (generally) more than it can contain, otherwise all loose portions of it would repel each other, as they constantly do when they have electric atmospheres. 10. the beneficial uses of this electrical fluid in the creation, we are not yet well acquainted with, though doubtless such there are, and those very considerable; but we may see some pernicious consequences, that would attend a much greater proportion of it. for had this globe we live on as much of it in proportion, as we can give to a globe of iron, wood, or the like, the particles of dust and other light matters that get loose from it, would, by virtue of their separate electrical atmospheres, not only repel each other, but be repelled from the earth, and not easily be brought to unite with it again; whence our air would continually be more and more clogged with foreign matter, and grow unfit for respiration. this affords another occasion of adoring that wisdom which has made all things by weight and measure! 11. if a piece of common matter be supposed intirely free from electrical matter, and a single particle of the latter be brought nigh, 'twill be attracted and enter the body, and take place in the center, or where the attraction is every way equal. if more particles enter, they take their places where the balance is equal between the attraction of the common matter and their own mutual repulsion. 'tis supposed they form triangles, whose sides shorten as their number increases; 'till the common matter has drawn in so many, that its whole power of compressing those triangles by attraction, is equal to their whole power of expanding themselves by repulsion; and then will such piece of matter receive no more. 12. when part of this natural proportion of electrical fluid, is taken out of a piece of common matter, the triangles formed by the remainder, are supposed to widen by the mutual repulsion of the parts, until they occupy the whole piece. 13. when the quantity of electrical fluid taken from a piece of common matter is restored again, it enters, the expanded triangles being again compressed till there is room for the whole. 14. to explain this: take two apples, or two balls of wood or other matter, each having its own natural quantity of the electrical fluid. suspend them by silk lines from the ceiling. apply the wire of a well-charged vial, held in your hand, to one of them (a) fig. 7. and it will receive from the wire a quantity of the electrical fluid; but will not imbibe it, being already full. the fluid therefore will flow round its surface, and form an electrical atmosphere. bring a into contact with b, and half the electrical fluid is communicated, so that each has now an electrical atmosphere, and therefore they repel each other. take away these atmospheres by touching the balls, and leave them in their natural state: then, having fixed a stick of sealing wax to the middle of the vial to hold it by, apply the wire to a, at the same time the coating touches b. thus will a quantity of the electrical fluid be drawn out of b, and thrown on a. so that a will have a redundance of this fluid, which forms an atmosphere round it, and b an exactly equal deficiency. now bring these balls again into contact, and the electrical atmosphere will not be divided between a and b, into two smaller atmospheres as before; for b will drink up the whole atmosphere of a, and both will be found again in their natural state. 15. the form of the electrical atmosphere is that of the body it surrounds. this shape may be rendered visible in a still air, by raising a smoke from dry rosin, dropt into a hot tea-spoon under the electrised body, which will be attracted and spread itself equaly on all sides, covering and concealing the body. and this form it takes, because it is attracted by all parts of the surface of the body, tho' it cannot enter the substance already replete. without this attraction it would not remain round the body, but dissipate in the air. 16. the atmosphere of electrical particles surrounding an electrified sphere, is not more disposed to leave it or more easily drawn off from any one part of the sphere than from another, because it is equally attracted by every part. but that is not the case with bodies of any other figure. from a cube it is more easily drawn at the corners than at the plane sides, and so from the angles of a body of any other form, and still most easily from the angle that is most acute. thus if a body shaped as a, b, c, d, e, in fig. 8, be electrified, or have an electrical atmosphere communicated to it, and we consider every side as a base on which the particles rest and by which they are attracted, one may see, by imagining a line from a to f, and another from e to g, that the portion of the atmosphere included in f, a, e, g, has the line a, e, for its basis. so the portion of atmosphere included in h, a, b, i, has the line a, b, for its basis. and likewise the portion included in k, b, c, l, has b, c, to rest on; and so on the other side of the figure. now if you would draw off this atmosphere with any blunt smooth body, and approach the middle of the side a, b, you must come very near before the force of your attracter exceeds the force or power with which that side holds its atmosphere. but there is a small portion between i, b, k, that has less of the surface to rest on, and to be attracted by, than the neighbouring portions, while at the same time there is a mutual repulsion between its particles and the particles of those portions, therefore here you can get it with more ease or at a greater distance. between f, a, h, there is a larger portion that has yet a less surface to rest on and to attract it; here therefore you can get it away still more easily. but easiest of all between l, c, m, where the quantity is largest, and the surface to attract and keep it back the least. when you have drawn away one of these angular portions of the fluid, another succeeds in its place, from the nature of fluidity and the mutual repulsion beforementioned; and so the atmosphere continues flowing off at such angle, like a stream, till no more is remaining. the extremities of the portions of atmosphere over these angular parts are likewise at a greater distance from the electrified body, as may be seen by the inspection of the above figure; the point of the atmosphere of the angle c, being much farther from c, than any other part of the atmosphere over the lines c, b, or b, a: and besides the distance arising from the nature of the figure, where the attraction is less, the particles will naturally expand to a greater distance by their mutual repulsion. on these accounts we suppose electrified bodies discharge their atmospheres upon unelectrified bodies more easily and at a greater distance from their angles and points than from their smooth sides.--those points will also discharge into the air, when the body has too great an electrical atmosphere, without bringing any non-electric near, to receive what is thrown off: for the air, though an electric _per se_, yet has always more or less water and other non-electric matters mixed with it; and these attract and receive what is so discharged. 17. but points have a property, by which they _draw on_ as well as _throw off_ the electrical fluid, at greater distances than blunt bodies can. that is, as the pointed part of an electrified body will discharge the atmosphere of that body, or communicate it farthest to another body, so the point of an unelectrified body, will draw off the electrical atmosphere from an electrified body, farther than a blunter part of the same unelectrified body will do. thus a pin held by the head, and the point presented to an electrified body, will draw off its atmosphere at a foot distance; where if the head were presented instead of the point, no such effect would follow. to understand this, we may consider, that if a person standing on the floor would draw off the electrical atmosphere from an electrified body, an iron crow and a blunt knitting kneedle held alternately in his hand and presented for that purpose, do not draw with different forces in proportion to their different masses. for the man, and what he holds in his hand, be it large or small, are connected with the common mass of unelectrified matter; and the force with which he draws is the same in both cases, it consisting in the different proportion of electricity in the electrified body and that common mass. but the force with which the electrified body retains its atmosphere by attracting it, is proportioned to the surface over which the particles are placed; i.e. four square inches of that surface retain their atmosphere with four times the force that one square inch retains its atmosphere. and as in plucking the hairs from the horse's tail, a degree of strength insufficient to pull away a handful at once, could yet easily strip it hair by hair; so a blunt body presented cannot draw off a number of particles at once, but a pointed one, with no greater force, takes them away easily, particle by particle. 18. these explanations of the power and operation of points, when they first occurr'd to me, and while they first floated in my mind, appeared perfectly satisfactory; but now i have wrote them, and consider'd them more closely in black and white, i must own i have some doubts about them: yet as i have at present nothing better to offer in their stead, i do not cross them out: for even a bad solution read, and its faults discover'd, has often given rise to a good one in the mind of an ingenious reader. 19. nor is it of much importance to us, to know the manner in which nature executes her laws; 'tis enough if we know the laws themselves. 'tis of real use to know, that china left in the air unsupported will fall and break; but _how_ it comes to fall, and _why_ it breaks, are matters of speculation. 'tis a pleasure indeed to know them, but we can preserve our china without it. 20. thus in the present case, to know this power of points, may possibly be of some use to mankind, though we should never be able to explain it. the following experiments, as well as those in my first paper, show this power. i have a large prime conductor made of several thin sheets of fuller's pasteboard form'd into a tube, near 10 feet long and a foot diameter. it is cover'd with _dutch_ emboss'd paper, almost totally gilt. this large metallic surface supports a much greater electrical atmosphere than a rod of iron of 50 times the weight would do. it is suspended by silk lines, and when charg'd will strike at near two inches distance, a pretty hard stroke so as to make one's knuckle ach. let a person standing on the floor present the point of a needle at 12 or more inches distance from it, and while the needle is so presented, the conductor cannot be charged, the point drawing off the fire as fast as it is thrown on by the electrical globe. let it be charged, and then present the point at the same distance, and it will suddenly be discharged. in the dark you may see a light on the point, when the experiment is made. and if the person holding the point stands upon wax, he will be electrified by receiving the fire at that distance. attempt to draw off the electricity with a blunt body, as a bolt of iron round at the end and smooth (a silversmith's iron punch, inch-thick, is what i use) and you must bring it within the distance of three inches before you can do it, and then it is done with a stroke and crack. as the pasteboard tube hangs loose on silk lines, when you approach it with the punch iron, it likewise will move towards the punch, being attracted while it is charged; but if at the same instant a point be presented as before, it retires again, for the point discharges it. take a pair of large brass scales, of two or more feet beam, the cords of the scales being silk. suspend the beam by a packthread from the cieling, so that the bottom of the scales may be about a foot from the floor: the scales will move round in a circle by the untwisting of the packthread. set the iron punch on the end upon the floor, in such a place as that the scales may pass over it in making their circle: then electrify one scale by applying the wire of a charged phial to it. as they move round, you see that scale draw nigher to the floor, and dip more when it comes over the punch; and if that be placed at a proper distance, the scale will snap and discharge its fire into it. but if a needle be stuck on the end of the punch, its point upwards, the scale, instead of drawing nigh to the punch and snapping, discharges its fire silently through the point, and rises higher from the punch. nay, even if the needle be placed upon the floor near the punch, its point upwards, the end of the punch, tho' so much higher than the needle, will not attract the scale and receive its fire, for the needle will get it and convey it away, before it comes nigh enough for the punch to act. and this is constantly observable in these experiments, that the greater quantity of electricity on the pasteboard tube, the farther it strikes or discharges its fire, and the point likewise will draw it off at a still greater distance. now if the fire of electricity and that of lightening be the same, as i have endeavour'd to show at large in a former paper, this pasteboard tube and these scales may represent electrified clouds. if a tube of only 10 feet long will strike and discharge its fire on the punch at two or three inches distance, an electrified cloud of perhaps 10,000 acres, may strike and discharge on the earth at a proportionably greater distance. the horizontal motion of the scales over the floor, may represent the motion of the clouds over the earth; and the erect iron punch, a hill or high building; and then we see how electrified clouds passing over hills or high buildings at too great a height to strike, may be attracted lower till within their striking distance. and lastly, if a needle fix'd on the punch with its point upright, or even on the floor below the punch, will draw the fire from the scale silently at a much greater than the striking distance, and so prevent its descending towards the punch; or if in its course it would have come nigh enough to strike, yet being first deprived of its fire it cannot, and the punch is thereby secured from the stroke. i say, if these things are so, may not the knowledge of this power of points be of use to mankind, in preserving houses, churches, ships, &c. from the stroke of lightning, by directing us to fix on the highest parts of those edifices, upright rods of iron made sharp as a needle, and gilt to prevent rusting, and from the foot of those rods a wire down the outside of the building into the ground, or down round one of the shrouds of a ship, and down her side till it reaches the water? would not these pointed rods probably draw the electrical fire silently out of a cloud before it came nigh enough to strike, and thereby secure us from that most sudden and terrible mischief? 21. to determine the question, whether the clouds that contain lightning are electrified or not, i would propose an experiment to be try'd where it may be done conveniently. on the top of some high tower or steeple, place a kind of sentry-box, (as in fig. 9.) big enough to contain a man and an electrical stand. from the middle of the stand, let an iron rod rise and pass bending out of the door, and then upright 20 or 30 feet, pointed very sharp at the end. if the electrical stand be kept clean and dry, a man standing on it when such clouds are passing low, might be electrified and afford sparks, the rod drawing fire to him from a cloud. if any danger to the man should be apprehended (though i think there would be none) let him stand on the floor of his box, and now and then bring near to the rod, the loop of a wire that has one end fastened to the leads, he holding it by a wax handle; so the sparks, if the rod is electrified, will strike from the rod to the wire, and not affect him. 22. before i leave this subject of lightning, i may mention some other similarities between the effects of that, and these of electricity. lightning has often been known to strike people blind. a pigeon that we struck dead to appearance by the electrical shock, recovering life, droop'd about the yard several days, eat nothing though crumbs were thrown to it, but declined and died. we did not think of its being deprived of sight; but afterwards a pullet struck dead in like manner, being recovered by repeatedly blowing into its lungs, when set down on the floor, ran headlong against the wall, and on examination appeared perfectly blind. hence we concluded that the pigeon also had been absolutely blinded by the shock. the biggest animal we have yet killed or try'd to kill with the electrical stroke, was a well-grown pullet. 23. reading in the ingenious dr. _hales_'s account of the thunder storm at _stretham_, the effect of the lightning in stripping off all the paint that had covered a gilt moulding of a pannel of wainscot, without hurting the rest of the paint, i had a mind to lay a coat of paint over the filleting of gold on the cover of a book, and try the effect of a strong electrical flash sent through that gold from a charged sheet of glass. but having no paint at hand, i pasted a narrow strip of paper over it; and when dry, sent the flash through the gilding; by which the paper was torn off from end to end, with such force, that it was broke in several places, and in others brought away part of the grain of the turky-leather in which it was bound; and convinced me, that had it been painted, the paint would have been stript off in the same manner with that on the wainscot at _stretham_. 24. lightning melts metals, and i hinted in my paper on that subject, that i suspected it to be a cold fusion; i do not mean a fusion by force of cold, but a fusion without heat. we have also melted gold, silver, and copper, in small quantities, by the electrical flash. the manner is this: take leaf gold, leaf silver, or leaf gilt copper, commonly called leaf brass or _dutch_ gold: cut off from the leaf long narrow strips the breadth of a straw. place one of these strips between two strips of smooth glass that are about the width of your finger. if one strip of gold, the length of the leaf, be not long enough for the glass, add another to the end of it, so that you may have a little part hanging out loose at each end of the glass. bind the pieces of glass together from end to end with strong silk thread; then place it so as to be part of an electrical circle, (the ends of gold hanging out being of use to join with the other parts of the circle) and send the flash through it, from a large electrified jar or sheet of glass. then if your strips of glass remain whole, you will see that the gold is missing in several places, and instead of it a metallic stain on both the glasses; the stains on the upper and under glass exactly similar in the minutest stroke, as may be seen by holding them to the light; the metal appeared to have been not only melted, but even vitrified, or otherwise so driven into the pores of the glass, as to be protected by it from the action of the strongest _aqua fortis_ and _ag: regia_. i send you enclosed two little pieces of glass with these metallic stains upon them, which cannot be removed without taking part of the glass with them. sometimes the stain spreads a little wider than the breadth of the leaf, and looks brighter at the edge, as by inspecting closely you may observe in these. sometimes the glass breaks to pieces: once the upper glass broke into a thousand pieces, looking like coarse salt. these pieces i send you, were stain'd with _dutch_ gold. true gold makes a darker stain, somewhat reddish; silver, a greenish stain. we once took two pieces of thick looking-glass, as broad as a gunter's scale, and 6 inches long; and placing leaf gold between them, put them betwixt two smoothly plain'd pieces of wood, and fix'd them tight in a book-binder's small press; yet though they were so closely confined, the force of the electrical shock shivered the glass into many pieces. the gold was melted and stain'd into the glass as usual. the circumstances of the breaking of the glass differ much in making the experiment, and sometimes it does not break at all: but this is constant, that the stains in the upper and under pieces are exact counterparts of each other. and though i have taken up the pieces of glass between my fingers immediately after this melting, i never could perceive the least warmth in them. 25. in one of my former papers, i mention'd, that gilding on a book, though at first it communicated the shock perfectly well, yet fail'd after a few experiments, which we could not account for. we have since found, that one strong shock breaks the continuity of the gold in the filleting, and makes it look rather like dust of gold, abundance of its parts being broken and driven off; and it will seldom conduct above one strong shock. perhaps this may be the reason; when there is not a perfect continuity in the circle, the fire must leap over the vacancies; there is a certain distance which it is able to leap over according to its strength; if a number of small vacancies, though each be very minute, taken together exceed that distance, it cannot leap over them, and so the shock is prevented. 26. from the before mentioned law of electricity, that points, as they are more or less acute, draw on and throw off the electrical fluid with more or less power, and at greater or less distances, and in larger or smaller quantities in the same time, we may see how to account for the situation of the leaf of gold suspended between two plates, the upper one continually electrified, the under one in a person's hand standing on the floor. when the upper plate is electrified, the leaf is attracted and raised towards it, and would fly to that plate were it not for its own points. the corner that happens to be uppermost when the leaf is rising, being a sharp point, from the extream thinness of the gold, draws and receives at a distance a sufficient quantity of the electrical fluid to give itself an electrical atmosphere, by which its progress to the upper plate is stopt, and it begins to be repelled from that plate, and would be driven back to the under plate, but that its lowest corner is likewise a point, and throws off or discharges the overplus of the leaf's atmosphere, as fast as the upper corner draws it on. were these two points perfectly equal in acuteness, the leaf would take place exactly in the middle space, for its weight is a trifle, compared to the power acting on it: but it is generally nearest the unelectrified plate, because, when the leaf is offered to the electrified plate at a distance, the sharpest point is commonly first affected and raised towards it; so that point, from its greater acuteness, receiving the fluid faster than its opposite can discharge it at equal distances, it retires from the electrified plate, and draws nearer to the unelectrified plate, till it comes to a distance where the discharge can be exactly equal to the receipt, the latter being lessened, and the former encreased; and there it remains as long as the globe continues to supply fresh electrical matter. this will appear plain, when the difference of acuteness in the corners is made very great. cut a piece of _dutch_ gold (which is fittest for these experiments on account of its greater strength) into the form of fig. 10 the upper corner a right angle, the two next obtuse angles, and the lowest a very acute one; and bring this on your plate under the electrified plate, in such a manner as that the right-angled part may be first raised (which is done by covering the acute part with the hollow of your hand) and you will see this leaf take place much nearer to the upper than to the under plate; because, without being nearer, it cannot receive so fast at its right-angled point, as it can discharge at its acute one. turn this leaf with the acute part uppermost, and then it takes place nearest the unelectrified plate, because otherwise it receives faster at its acute point than it can discharge at its right-angled one. thus the difference of distance is always proportioned to the difference of acuteness. take care in cutting your leaf to leave no little ragged particles on the edges, which sometimes form points where you would not have them. you may make this figure so acute below and blunt above, as to need no under plate, it discharging fast enough into the air. when it is made narrower, as the figure between the pricked lines, we call it the _golden fish_, from its manner of acting. for if you take it by the tail, and hold it at a foot or greater horizontal distance from the prime conductor, it will, when let go, fly to it with a brisk but wavering motion, like that of an eel through the water; it will then take place under the prime conductor, at perhaps a quarter or half an inch distance, and keep a continual shaking of its tail like a fish, so that it seems animated. turn its tail towards the prime conductor, and then it flies to your finger, and seems to nibble it. and if you hold a plate under it at six or eight inches distance, and cease turning the globe, when the electrical atmosphere of the conductor grows small, it will descend to the plate and swim back again several times with the same fish-like motion, greatly to the entertainment of spectators. by a little practice in blunting or sharpening the heads or tails of these figures, you may make them take place as desired, nearer, or farther from the electrified plate. 27. it is said in section 8, of this paper, that all kinds of common matter are supposed not to attract the electrical fluid with equal strength; and that those called electrics _per se_, as glass, &c. attract and retain it strongest, and contain the greatest quantity. this latter position may seem a paradox to some, being contrary to the hitherto received opinion; and therefore i shall now endeavour to explain it. 28. in order to this, let it first be considered, _that we cannot, by any means we are yet acquainted with, force the electrical fluid thro' glass_. i know it is commonly thought that it easily pervades glass, and the experiment of a feather suspended by a thread in a bottle hermetically sealed, yet moved by bringing a nibbed tube near the outside of the bottle, is alledged to prove it. but, if the electrical fluid so easily pervades glass, how does the vial become _charged_ (as we term it) when we hold it in our hands? would not the fire thrown in by the wire pass through to our hands, and so escape into the floor? would not the bottle in that case be left just as we found it, uncharged, as we know a metal bottle so attempted to be charged would be? indeed, if there be the least crack, the minutest solution of continuity in the glass, though it remains so tight that nothing else we know of will pass, yet the extremely subtile electrical fluid flies through such a crack with the greatest freedom, and such a bottle we know can never be charged: what then makes the difference between such a bottle and one that is sound, but this, that the fluid can pass through the one, and not through the other?[8] 29. it is true there is an experiment that at first sight would be apt to satisfy a slight observer, that the fire thrown into the bottle by the wire, does really pass thro' the glass. it is this: place the bottle on a glass stand, under the prime conductor; suspend a bullet by a chain from the prime conductor, till it comes within a quarter of an inch right over the wire of the bottle; place your knuckle on the glass stand, at just the same distance from the coating of the bottle, as the bullet is from its wire. now let the globe be turned, and you see a spark strike from the bullet to the wire of the bottle, and the same instant you see and feel an exactly equal spark striking from the coating on your knuckle, and so on spark for spark. this looks as if the whole received by the bottle was again discharged from it. and yet the bottle by this means is charged![9] and therefore the fire that thus leaves the bottle, though the same in quantity, cannot be the very same fire that entered at the wire; for if it were, the bottle would remain uncharged. 30. if the fire that so leaves the bottle be not the same that is thrown in through the wire, it must be fire that subsisted in the bottle, (that is, in the glass of the bottle) before the operation began. 31. if so, there must be a great quantity in glass, because a great quantity is thus discharged even from very thin glass. 32. that this electrical fluid or fire is strongly attracted by glass, we know from the quickness and violence with which it is resumed by the part that had been deprived of it, when there is an opportunity. and by this, that we cannot from a mass of glass draw a quantity of electrical fire, or electrify the whole mass _minus_, as we can a mass of metal. we cannot lessen or increase its whole quantity, for the quantity it has it holds; and it has as much as it can hold. its pores are filled with it as full as the mutual repellency of the particles will admit; and what is already in, refuses, or strongly repels, any additional quantity. nor have we any way of moving the electrical fluid in glass, but one; that is, by covering part of the two surfaces of thin glass with non-electrics, and then throwing an additional quantity of this fluid on one surface, which spreading in the non-electric, and being bound by it to that surface, acts by its repelling force on the particles of the electrical fluid contained in the other surface, and drives them out of the glass into the non-electric on that side, from whence they are discharged, and then those added on the charged side can enter. but when this is done, there is no more in the glass, nor less than before, just as much having left it on one side as it received on the other. [illustration] 33. i feel a want of terms here, and doubt much whether i shall be able to make this part intelligible. by the word _surface_, in this case, i do not mean mere length and breadth without thickness; but when i speak of the upper or under surface of a piece of glass, the outer or inner surface of the vial, i mean length, breadth, and half the thickness, and beg the favour of being so understood. now, i suppose, that glass in its first principles, and in the furnace, has no more of this electrical fluid than other common matter: that when it is blown, as it cools, and the particles of common fire leave it, its pores become a vacuum: that the component parts of glass are extremely small and fine, i guess from its never showing a rough face when it breaks, but always a polish; and from the smallness of its particles i suppose the pores between them must be exceeding small, which is the reason that aqua-fortis, nor any other menstruum we have, can enter to separate them and dissolve the substance; nor is any fluid we know of, fine enough to enter, except common fire, and the electrical fluid. now the departing fire leaving a vacuum, as aforesaid, between these pores, which air nor water are fine enough to enter and fill, the electrical fluid (which is every where ready in what we call the non-electrics, and in the non-electric mixtures that are in the air,) is attracted in: yet does not become fixed with the substance of the glass, but subsists there as water in a porous stone, retained only by the attraction of the fixed parts, itself still loose and a fluid. but i suppose farther, that in the cooling of the glass, its texture becomes closest in the middle, and forms a kind of partition, in which the pores are so narrow, that the particles of the electrical fluid, which enter both surfaces at the same time, cannot go through, or pass and repass from one surface to the other, and so mix together; yet, though the particles of electrical fluid, imbibed by each surface, cannot themselves pass through to those of the other, their repellency can, and by this means they act on one another. the particles of the electrical fluid have a mutual repellency, but by the power of attraction in the glass they are condensed or forced nearer to each other. when the glass has received and, by its attraction, forced closer together so much of this electrified fluid, as that the power of attracting and condensing in the one, is equal to the power of expansion in the other, it can imbibe no more, and that remains its constant whole quantity; but each surface would receive more, if the repellency of what is in the opposite surface did not resist its entrance. the quantities of this fluid in each surface being equal, their repelling action on each other is equal; and therefore those of one surface cannot drive out those of the other: but, if a greater quantity is forced into one surface than the glass would naturally draw in; this increases the repelling power on that side, and overpowering the attraction on the other, drives out part of the fluid that had been imbibed by that surface, if there be any non-electric ready to receive it: such there is in all cases where glass is electrified to give a shock. the surface that has been thus emptied by having its electrical fluid driven out, resumes again an equal quantity with violence, as soon as the glass has an opportunity to discharge that over-quantity more than it could retain by attraction in its other surface, by the additional repellency of which the vacuum had been occasioned. for experiments favouring (if i may not say confirming) this hypothesis, i must, to avoid repetition, beg leave to refer you back to what is said of the electrical phial in my former papers. 34. let us now see how it will account for several other appearances.--glass, a body extremely elastic (and perhaps its elasticity may be owing in some degree to the subsisting of so great a quantity of this repelling fluid in its pores) must, when rubbed, have its rubbed surface somewhat stretched, or its solid parts drawn a little farther asunder, so that the vacancies in which the electrical fluid resides, become larger, affording room for more of that fluid, which is immediately attracted into it from the cushion or hand rubbing, they being supply'd from the common stock. but the instant the parts of the glass so open'd and fill'd have pass'd the friction, they close again, and force the additional quantity out upon the surface, where it must rest till that part comes round to the cushion again, unless some non electric (as the prime conductor) first presents to receive it.[10] but if the inside of the globe be lined with a non-electric, the additional repellency of the electrical fluid, thus collected by friction on the rubb'd part of the globe's outer surface, drives an equal quantity out of the inner surface into that non-electric lining, which receiving it, and carrying it away from the rubb'd part into the common mass, through the axis of the globe and frame of the machine, the new collected electrical fluid can enter and remain in the outer surface, and none of it (or a very little) will be received by the prime conductor. as this charg'd part of the globe comes round to the cushion again, the outer surface delivers its overplus fire into the cushion, the opposite inner surface receiving at the same time an equal quantity from the floor. every electrician knows that a globe wet within will afford little or no fire, but the reason has not before been attempted to be given, that i know of. 34. so if a tube lined with a [11]non-electric, be rubb'd, little or no fire is obtained from it. what is collected from the hand in the downward rubbing stroke, entering the pores of the glass, and driving an equal quantity out of the inner surface into the non-electric lining: and the hand in passing up to take a second stroke, takes out again what had been thrown into the outer surface, and then the inner surface receives back again what it had given to the non-electric lining. thus the particles of electrical fluid belonging to the inside surface go in and out of their pores every stroke given to the tube. put a wire into the tube, the inward end in contact with the non-electric lining, so it will represent the _leyden_ bottle. let a second person touch the wire while you rub, and the fire driven out of the inward surface when you give the stroke, will pass through him into the common mass, and return through him when the inner surface resumes its quantity, and therefore this new kind of _leyden_ bottle cannot so be charged. but thus it may: after every stroke, before you pass your hand up to make another, let the second person apply his finger to the wire, take the spark, and then withdraw his finger; and so on till he has drawn a number of sparks; thus will the inner surface be exhausted, and the outer surface charged; then wrap a sheet of gilt paper close round the outer surface, and grasping it in your hand you may receive a shock by applying the finger of the other hand to the wire: for now the vacant pores in the inner surface resume their quantity, and the overcharg'd pores in the outer surface discharge that overplus; the equilibrium being restored through your body, which could not be restored through the glass.[12] if the tube be exhausted of air, a non electric lining in contact with the wire is not necessary; for _in vacuo_, the electrical fire will fly freely from the inner surface, without a non-electric conductor: but air resists its motion; for being itself an electric _per se_, it does not attract it, having already its quantity. so the air never draws off an electric atmosphere from any body, but in proportion to the non-electrics mix'd with it: it rather keeps such an atmosphere confin'd, which from the mutual repulsion of its particles, tends to dissipation, and would immediately dissipate _in vacuo_.--and thus the experiment of the feather inclosed in a glass vessel hermetically sealed, but moving on the approach of the rubbed tube, is explained: when an additional quantity of the electrical fluid is applied to the side of the vessel by the atmosphere of the tube, a quantity is repelled and driven out of the inner surface of that side into the vessel, and there affects the feather, returning again into its pores, when the tube with its atmosphere is withdrawn; not that the particles of that atmosphere did themselves pass through the glass to the feather.----and every other appearance i have yet seen, in which glass and electricity are concern'd, are, i think, explain'd with equal ease by the same hypothesis. yet, perhaps, it may not be a true one, and i shall be obliged to him that affords me a better. 35. thus i take the difference between non electrics and glass, an electric _per se_, to consist in these two particulars. 1st, that a non-electric easily suffers a change in the quantity of the electrical fluid it contains. you may lessen its whole quantity by drawing out a part, which the whole body will again resume; but of glass you can only lessen the quantity contain'd in one of its surfaces; and not that, but by supplying an equal quantity at the same time to the other surface; so that the whole glass may always have the same quantity in the two surfaces, their two different quantities being added together. and this can only be done in glass that is thin; beyond a certain thickness we have yet no power that can make this change. and, 2dly, that the electrical fire freely removes from place to place, in and through the substance of a non-electric, but not so through the substance of glass. if you offer a quantity to one end of a long rod of metal, it receives it, and when it enters, every particle that was before in the rod, pushes its neighbour quite to the further end, where the overplus is discharg'd; and this instantaneously where the rod is part of the circle in the experiment of the shock. but glass, from the smallness of its pores, or stronger attraction of what it contains, refuses to admit so free a motion; a glass rod will not conduct a shock, nor will the thinnest glass suffer any particle entring one of its surfaces to pass thro' to the other. 36. hence we see the impossibility of success, in the experiments propos'd, to draw out the effluvial virtues of a non-electric, as cinnamon for instance, and mixing them with the electrical fluid, to convey them with that into the body, by including it in the globe, and then applying friction, etc. for though the effluvia of cinnamon, and the electrical fluid should mix within the globe, they would never come out together through the pores of the glass, and so go to the prime conductor; for the electrical fluid itself cannot come through; and the prime conductor is always supply'd from the cushion, and that from the floor. and besides, when the globe is filled with cinnamon, or other non-electric, no electrical fluid can be obtain'd from its outer surface, for the reason before-mentioned. i have try'd another way, which i thought more likely to obtain a mixture of the electrical and other effluvia together, if such a mixture had been possible. i placed a glass plate under my cushion, to cut off the communication between the cushion and floor; then brought a small chain from the cushion into a glass of oil of turpentine, and carried another chain from the oil of turpentine to the floor, taking care that the chain from the cushion to the glass touch'd no part of the frame of the machine. another chain was fix'd to the prime conductor, and held in the hand of a person to be electrised. the ends of the two chains in the glass were near an inch distant from each other, the oil of turpentine between. now the globe being turn'd, could draw no fire from the floor through the machine, the communication that way being cut off by the thick glass plate under the cushion: it must then draw it through the chains whose ends were dipt in the oil of turpentine. and as the oil of turpentine being an electric _per se_, would not conduct what came up from the floor, was obliged to jump from the end of one chain, to the end of the other, through the substance of that oil, which we could see in large sparks; and so it had a fair opportunity of seizing some of the finest particles of the oil in its passage, and carrying them off with it: but no such effect followed, nor could i perceive the least difference in the smell of the electrical effluvia thus collected, from what it has when collected otherwise; nor does it otherwise affect the body of a person electrised. i likewise put into a phial, instead of water, a strong purgative liquid, and then charged the phial, and took repeated shocks from it, in which case every particle of the electrical fluid must, before it went through my body, have first gone through the liquid when the phial is charging, and returned through it when discharging, yet no other effect followed than if it had been charged with water. i have also smelt the electrical fire when drawn through gold, silver, copper, lead, iron, wood, and the human body, and could perceive no difference; the odour is always the same where the spark does not burn what it strikes; and therefore i imagine it does not take that smell from any quality of the bodies it passes through. and indeed, as that smell so readily leaves the electrical matter, and adheres to the knuckle receiving the sparks, and to other things; i suspect that it never was connected with it, but arises instantaneously from something in the air acted upon by it. for if it was fine enough to come with the electrical fluid through the body of one person, why should it stop on the skin of another? but i shall never have done, if i tell you all my conjectures, thoughts, and imaginations, on the nature and operations of this electrical fluid, and relate the variety of little experiments we have try'd. i have already made this paper too long, for which i must crave pardon, not having now time to make it shorter. i shall only add, that as it has been observed here that spirits will fire by the electrical spark in the summer time, without heating them, when _fahrenheit_'s thermometer is above 70; so, when colder, if the operator puts a small flat bottle of spirits in his bosom, or a close pocket, with the spoon, some little time before he uses them, the heat of his body will communicate warmth more than sufficient for the purpose. additional experiment, _proving that the_ leyden bottle _has no more electrical fire in it when charged, than before; nor less when discharged: that in discharging, the fire does not issue from the wire and the coating at the same time, as some have thought, but that the coating always receives what is discharged by the wire, or an equal quantity; the outer surface being always in a negative state of electricity, when the inner surface is in a positive state_. place a thick plate of glass under the rubbing cushion, to cut off the communication of electrical fire from the floor to the cushion; then, if there be no fine points or hairy threads sticking out from the cushion, or from the parts of the machine opposite to the cushion, (of which you must be careful) you can get but a few sparks from the prime conductor, which are all the cushion will part with. hang a phial then on the prime conductor, and it will not charge, tho' you hold it by the coating.----but form a communication by a chain from the coating to the cushion, and the phial will charge. for the globe then draws the electrical fire out of the outside surface of the phial, and forces it, through the prime conductor and wire of the phial, into the inside surface. thus the bottle is charged with its own fire, no other being to be had while the glass plate is under the cushion. hang two cork balls by flaxen threads to the prime conductor; then touch the coating of the bottle, and they will be electrified and recede from each other. for just as much fire as you give the coating, so much is discharged through the wire upon the prime conductor, whence the cork balls receive an electrical atmosphere. but take a wire bent in the form of a c, with a stick of wax fixed to the outside of the curve, to hold it by; and apply one end of this wire to the coating, and the other at the same time to the prime conductor, the phial will be discharged; and if the balls are not electrified before the discharge, neither will they appear to be so after the discharge, for they will not repel each other. now if the fire discharged from the inside surface of the bottle through its wire, remained on the prime conductor, the balls would be electrified and recede from each other. if the phial really exploded at both ends, and discharged fire from both coating and wire, the balls would be _more_ electrified and recede _farther_: for none of the fire can escape, the wax handle preventing. but if the fire, with which the inside surface is surcharged, be so much precisely as is wanted by the outside surface, it will pass round through the wire fixed to the wax handle, restore the equilibrium in the glass, and make no alteration in the state of the prime conductor. accordingly we find, that if the prime conductor be electrified, and the cork balls in a state of repellency before the bottle is charged, they continue so afterwards. if not, they are not electrified by that discharge. corrections _and_ additions _to the_ preceding papers. page 2, sect. 1. we since find, that the fire in the bottle is not contained in the non-electric, but _in the glass_. all that is after said of the _top_ and _bottom_ of the bottle, is true of the _inside_ and _outside_ surfaces, and should have been so expressed. _see sect._ 16, p. 16. page 6, line 13. the equilibrium will soon be restored _but silently_, etc. this must have been a mistake. when the bottle is full charged, the crooked wire cannot well be brought to touch the top and bottom so quick, but that there will be a loud spark; unless the points be sharp, without loops. ibid. line ult. _outside_: add, such moisture continuing up to the cork or wire. page 12, line 14. _by candle-light_ etc. from some observations since made, i am inclined to think, that it is not the light, but the smoke or non-electric effluvia from the candle, coal, and red-hot iron, that carry off the electrical fire, being first attracted and then repelled. page 13, line 15. _windmil wheels_, &c. we afterwards discovered, that the afflux or efflux of the electrical fire, was not the cause of the motions of those wheels, but various circumstances of attraction and repulsion. page 16, line 21. _let_ a _and_ b _stand on wax_, &c. we soon found that it was only necessary for one of them to stand on wax. page 19. in the title r. _on_. page 24, line 12. r. contact, line 24. confined. page 25, line 10. for _stand_ r. _hand_. page 28, line 2. _the consequence might perhaps be fatal_, &c. we have found it fatal to small animals, but 'tis not strong enough to kill large ones. the biggest we have killed is a hen. page 31, line 20. _ringing of chimes_, &c. this is since done. page 33, line 22. _fails after ten or twelve experiments._ this was by a small bottle. and since found to fail after with a large glass. page 40, sect. 50, 51. _spirits must be heated before we can fire them_, &c. we have since fired spirits without heating, when the weather is warm. _finis._ books printed and sold by edward cave, at st. _john's gate_. i. geography reform'd: or, a new system of general geography according to an accurate analysis of the science, augmented with several necessary branches omitted by former authors. in four parts. 1. of the nature and principles of geography; its ancient and present state in all nations, its usefulness to persons of all professions, and the method of studying it; with its analysis or division into species, according to former authors, and a new plan, shewing the errors and defects of those by varenius, sanson, la mattiniere, pere castel, etc. 2. of mathematical geography and its branches, astronomical and geometrical: shewing the several divisions of the earth by regions, hemispheres, zones, climates, meridians and parallels, etc. 3. historical geography and its species, natural; civil; ecclesiastical; national; periodical, ancient, middle, modern; parallel and critical. 4. of technical geography and its branches; representatory, by globes and maps; synoptical, by tables; and explanatory, by systems and dictionaries. under each branch is given an account of its object and use, an explanation of the terms, the history of its rise and progress, with rules for exhibiting it to the best advantage. the whole illustrated with notes and references to the principal geographers whose different sentiments are cited and examined. designed for the use of the curious in general, and students in particular. there is added a copious index of the terms contained in the work, answering the end of a dictionary of general geography. the second edition. price 3s. 6d. bound. ii. memoirs of the royal academy of surgery at paris. containing remarks, with practical observations, on tumours of the gall bladder, on the thigh, and the trachea arteria; on the use of the trepan; of wounds in the brain, exfoliation of the cranium, cases of pregnant women, faulty anus in new born children, abscesses in the fundament, stones encysted in the bladder, obstructions to the ejaculation of the semen, an inverted eyelid, extraneous bodies retained in the oesophagus, discharged through abscesses; of bronchotomy, gastrotomy, native hare-lips; of the cæsarean operation; a new method of extracting the stone from the bladder, on a cancer of the breast, an elastic truss for hernias, remarkable hernias of the stomach, and through the foramen ovale. of a pulmonary abscess, &c. translated from the original, dedicated to the french king. in two volumes, octavo. price 8s. iii. a treatise of comets, containing, 1. an explication of all the various appearances of the late comet, both in its own trajectory and the firmament of fixt stars, to its setting in the sun beams: illustrated with a plan of the earth's and comet's orbits. 2. the history of comets from the earliest account of those kinds of planets to the present time; wherein the sentiments of the ancient and modern philosophers are occasionally displayed. with remarks on the intentional end of comets, and the nature and design of saturn's ring. the distance, velocity, size, solidity, and other properties of those bodies considered; and the wonderful phænomena of their tails and atmospheres accounted for. illustrated also by a copper-plate. by g. smith. price 1s. iv. the natural history of mount vesuvius, with the explanation of the various phenomena that usually attend the eruptions of this celebrated volcano. translated from the original italian, composed by the royal academy of sciences at naples, by order of the king of the two sicilies. price 2s. stitch'd, or 2s. 6d. bound. footnotes. [1] we suppose every particle of sand, moisture, or smoke, being first attracted and then repelled, carries off with it a portion of the electrical fire; but that the same still subsists in those particles, till they communicate it to something else; and that it is never really destroyed.--so when water is thrown on common fire, we do not imagine the element is thereby destroyed or annihilated, but only dispersed, each particle of water carrying off in vapour its portion of the fire, which it had attracted and attached to itself. [2] our tubes are made here of green glass, 27 or 30 inches long, as big as can be grasped. electricity is so much in vogue, that above one hundred of them have been sold within these four months past. [3] to charge a bottle commodiously through the coating, place it on a glass stand; form a communication from the prime conductor to the coating, and another from the hook to the wall or floor. when it is charged, remove the latter communication before you take hold of the bottle, otherwise great part of the fire will escape by it. [4] the river that washes one side of _philadelphia_, as the _delaware_ does the other; both are ornamented with the summer habitations, of the citizens, and the agreeable mansions of the principal people of this colony. [5] an electrified bumper, is a small thin glass tumbler, near filled with wine, and electrified as the bottle. this when brought to the lips gives a shock, if the party be close shaved, and does not breathe on the liquor. [6] thunder-gusts are sudden storms of thunder and lightning, which are frequently of short duration, but sometimes produce mischievous effects. [7] see the ingenious essays on electricity in the transactions, by mr ellicot. [8] see the first sixteen sections of my former paper, called _farther experiments_, &c. [9] see § 10 of _farther experiments_, &c. [10] in the dark the electrical fluid may be seen on the cushion in two semi-circles or half-moons, one on the fore part, the other on the back part of the cushion, just where the globe and cushion separate. in the fore crescent the fire is passing out of the cushion into the glass; in the other it is leaving the glass, and returning into the back part of the cushion. when the prime conductor is apply'd to take it off the glass, the back crescent disappears. [11] gilt paper, with the gilt face next the glass, does well. [12] see farther experiments, § 15. http://www.archive.org/details/autobiographyofe00gibsrich the autobiography of an electron [illustration: a well-known phenomenon produced by electrons _photo_ _the fleet agency_ a sudden discharge of electrons from cloud to cloud, or from cloud to the earth, constitutes what we call "lightning."] the autobiography of an electron. wherein the scientific ideas of the present time are explained in an interesting and novel fashion by charles r. gibson, f.r.s.e. author of "scientific ideas of to-day," "electricity of to-day" "the romance of modern electricity," _&c. &c._ illustrated philadelphia j. b. lippincott company london: seeley & co. limited 1911 preface although text-books of science may appear to the general reader to be "very dry" material, there is no doubt that, when scientific facts and theories are put into everyday language, the general reader is genuinely interested. the reception accorded to the present author's _scientific ideas of to-day_ bears out this fact. while that volume explains, in non-technical language, the latest scientific theories, it aims at giving a fairly full account, which, of course, necessitates going into a great deal of detail. that the book has been appreciated by very varied classes of readers is evident from the large numbers of appreciative letters received from different quarters. but the author believes that if the story of modern science were told in a still more popular style, it would serve a further useful purpose. for there are readers who do not care to go into details, and yet would like to take an intelligent interest in the scientific progress of the present day. some of those readers do not wish to trouble about names and dates, while the mere mention of rates of vibration and such-like is a worry to them. they wish a book which they may read with the same ease as an interesting novel. hence the form of the present volume. * * * * * the author is indebted to professor james muir, m.a., d.sc., of the glasgow and west of scotland technical college, and to h. stanley allen, m.a., d.sc., senior lecturer in physics at king's college, university of london, for very kindly reading the proof-sheets. the author is indebted further to professor muir in connection with some of the illustrations, and for others to dixon and corbitt and r. s. newall, ltd., glasgow; siemens schuckert werke, berlin. contents page chapter i what the story is about the scribe introduces the electron to the reader. he has something to say also about the mysterious æther which pervades all space. he emphasises the fact that the electron is a real existing thing 21 chapter ii the electron's preface the electron explains the reason why it has written its autobiography 29 chapter iii the new arrival the electron points out who the new arrival is really. it relates an amusing experience. it tells how man disturbed electrons before he discovered their existence. an ancient experiment, and what the wise men of the east thought about it. how electrons are responsible for the electrification of any object. handled by a new experimenter, they surprise man. man becomes of special interest to the electrons 32 chapter iv some good sport the electron explains how man succeeded in crowding them together, with some rather exciting results from the overcrowding. one historical incident. man's fear of the consequences. how a party of electrons wrecked a church steeple. an unfortunate accident 42 chapter v my earliest recollections the electron's story begins at a very far distant period, before this world had taken shape. the electron was present when the atoms of matter were being formed. the birth of the moon. something still to be discovered. the moulding of the planet. boiling oceans. the electrons took an active part in making sea-water salt. the electron explains why it has been chosen to write the story of itself and its fellows 52 chapter vi man pays us some attention the electrons are encouraged by one of the experiments made by man. they hope it may lead to their discovery, so that their services may be recognised. the electron's experience in a vacuum tube. a disappointment and a revival of hope. a great declaration by one individual man. the electron misjudges man. mention of a great discovery. the christening of the electrons 60 chapter vii a steady march the electron explains how they produce the electric current. how man discovered means of making the electrons march. a simple explanation of how a complete electric circuit is always necessary. how an "earth circuit" works. how the marching electrons can do work 68 chapter viii a useful dance a perpetual dance. a responsible position. how the safety of the mariner depends upon the electrons' dance. how electrons produce a magnet. a convenient kind of magnet, which gains and loses its attractive power when desired. how a permanent magnet is made. the great service of electrons in modern life 76 chapter ix how we carry man's news the method of sending the news. the electron's personal experience. a series of forced marches. how man controls the electrons. how the electrons reproduce the signals 86 chapter x how we communicate with distant ships an entirely different means of communication. a surprise to man, but not to the electrons. how the electrons produce waves in the surrounding æther. how these waves disturb distant electrons. the electron's personal experience. its description of its actions in a wireless telegraph station 94 chapter xi how we reproduce speech why it is not correct to speak of the electrons as carriers of speech. the action of electrons in the working of telephones. the electron's own experience in wireless telephony 106 chapter xii our heaviest duties a roving commission. how electrons can move gigantic cars and trains. the action of electrons in dynamos and motors. how the electrons transmit the energy. what makes the motor go 116 chapter xiii a boon to man a simple explanation of how the electrons produce light. how the electron provides a connecting link between matter and the æther. how light reaches the earth from the sun. how the electrons produce that beautiful luminous effect which man calls an "aurora." how the earth has become a negatively charged body. how electrons produce radiant heat. the difference between light and heat 126 chapter xiv how we produce colour what colour is really. how the different colour sensations are stimulated by the electrons. the electron as a faithful satellite to the atom. how electrons can produce the different æther waves. how the electrons respond to the different waves. the production of artificial light. co-operation of the electrons. man's ridiculously wasteful processes. the electrons' secret 136 chapter xv we send messages from the stars the kind of messages referred to. how the electrons have informed man of what the stars are made. how man reads the electrons' wireless messages. how it is other electrons that enable man to read the messages. the real explanation of reflection of light. how light is absorbed by some objects. how some substances are transparent. why objects appear coloured. what makes the lines in the spectra of stars. the spectroscope 144 chapter xvi how man proved our existence how man reasoned out a plan for detecting the electron. how the electrons altered some lines in the spectrum. the curious manner in which the electron informed man that certain stars are approaching this planet, while others are receding from it 158 chapter xvii my x-ray experience x-rays are an old story to some electrons. the electron's personal experience. a very sudden stop. how electrons made a fluorescent screen send out light. the electrons assist the surgeon. a curious find. detecting imitation diamonds. the electron and the mummy 166 chapter xviii our relationship to the atoms how the atoms of matter attract one another. what constitutes the temperature of a body. what the atoms are made of. an important thing still to discover about the atom. the elements. how the electrons produce compound substances. the real explanation of chemical changes 178 chapter xix how we made the world talk it was nothing new on the part of the electrons. exaggerated rumours. the electrons and radium. fast-flying electrons. atomic explosions 186 chapter xx conclusion the electron is made to sum up a few of the wonders which it has related, in order to emphasise the great services which electrons render to man 194 appendix 200 index 211 list of illustrations page a well-known phenomenon produced by electrons _frontispiece_ damage done by a party of electrons 45 a tobacco tin defying gravitation 79 a motor-car with wireless telegraph 99 a train impelled by moving electrons 119 protection against a discharge of electrons 129 the spectroscope and the electrons' wireless messages 149 how electrons produce x-ray images 171 chapter i what the story is about the reason for writing this story is given in the preface, but the title is so strange that the reader will wish naturally to know what the story is about. what is an electron? is it an imaginary thing, or is it a reality? one of the reasons for writing this story in its present form is to help the reader to realise that electrons are not mythical, but real existing things, and by far the most interesting things we know anything about. the discovery of electrons has shed a new light upon the meaning of very many things which have been puzzles until now. they give us a reasonable explanation of the cause of light and colour. they provide a new idea of the constitution of matter. they enable us to picture an electric current, and they give us definite, though by no means final, answers to the why and wherefore of magnetism, chemical union, and radio-activity. the story is imaginary only in so far that one of the electrons itself is supposed to tell the tale. but in the endeavour to make the story interesting, there has been no sacrifice of accuracy in the statements of fact. while all names and dates, and many other details, have been kept out rigidly from the story, a note of the more important of these has been added in an appendix for the sake of those readers who may wish to refer to them. it will be well to introduce the electron to the reader before leaving it to speak for itself. we have definite experimental proof of the existence of electrons, and yet it is very difficult to realise their existence, for two reasons. in the first place, they are so infinitesimally small. we count a microbe a small thing; we can see it only with the aid of a very powerful microscope. yet that little speck of matter contains myriads of particles or _atoms_. an atom of matter is therefore an inconceivably little thing, but even that is a great giant compared to an electron. our second difficulty in realising the existence of an electron is that it is not any form of what we call _matter_; it is a particle of _electricity_, whatever that may be. from the earliest experiments it became evident that there were two distinct kinds of electricity. these were described by the pioneer workers as _positive_ and _negative_ electricities. to-day we have definite experimental proof that negative electricity is composed of separate particles or units. just as matter is composed of invisible atoms, so also is negative electricity of an atomic nature. these particles of negative electricity have been christened electrons, _electron_ being the greek word for _amber_, from which man first obtained electricity. of course no one can ever hope to see an electron, but physicists have been able to determine its size and _mass_, its electric charge, and the speeds at which it moves. while it has been known for more than a century that _light_ is merely waves in the all-pervading æther of space, set up by incandescent bodies, it has been a puzzle always how matter could cause waves in the æther, as it offers no resistance to the movement of matter through it. here we are on the back of a great planet, flying through space at the enormous rate of one thousand miles per minute, and yet our flimsy atmospheric blanket is in no way disturbed by the æther through which we are flying. in the following story we shall see that these electrons help us towards a solution of this and many other problems; they provide the missing link between matter and the æther. but what is this _æther_ of which one hears so much in these days? the truth is we know nothing of its nature. we cannot say whether it is lighter than the lightest gas or denser than the densest solid. the æther, whatever it may be, is as real as the air we breathe. it is the medium which brings us light and heat from the sun, and which carries our wireless telegraph and telephone messages. the whole universe is moving in this great æther ocean. in order to make the electron's story perfectly intelligible to every reader, i have added a short explanatory note at the beginning of each chapter. these notes merely state the facts about which the electron is speaking. to make the electron's story as realistic as possible, it has been necessary to give the imaginary electron perfect freedom of knowledge concerning itself and its surroundings. in our schooldays we had to write the autobiographies of steel pens, and such-like, but these inanimate things had to be endowed with powers of thought, feeling, and desire. it is very important, however, to remember that an electron is a particle of negative electricity--_a real existing thing_. chapter ii the electron's preface while many scientific men now understand our place in the universe, we electrons are anxious that every person should know the very important part which we play in the workaday world. it was for this reason that my fellow-electrons urged me to write my own biography. my difficulty has been to find a scribe who would put down my story in the way i desired. the first man with whom i opened negotiations wished me to give him dates and names of which i knew nothing. and he asked such stupid questions about where i was born and who my parents were, as if i were flesh and blood. i am pleased to say that my relationship with the scribe who has put down my story in the following pages has been of the most friendly description. apart from a little tiff which we had at the outset, there has been no difference of opinion. he complained that i related things in too abstract a form. however, we got over the difficulty by a compromise; i have allowed him to place what he calls "the scribe's note" at the beginning of each chapter, but it will be understood clearly that these are merely convenient embellishments, and that i am responsible for the story of my own experiences. chapter iii the new arrival _the scribe's note on chapter three_ it will be well to keep clearly in mind that an electron is a real particle of negative electricity. electrons have been discovered only within recent years. no matter from what substances we take them, they are always identical in every respect. some electrons are attached to the atoms of matter in such a way that they may be removed easily from one object to another. when a surplus of these detachable electrons is crowded on to any object, we say that it is charged with negative electricity. we speak of the other object, which has lost these same electrons, as being charged with positive electricity. in this chapter the electron refers to the old-world experiment in which a piece of amber when rubbed attracts any light object to it. for many ages man believed this to be a special property belonging to amber alone. one of queen elizabeth's physicians discovered that this property was common to all substances. chapter iii the new arrival it is most amusing to me and my fellow-electrons to hear intelligent people speak of us as though we were new arrivals on this planet. dear me! we were here for countless ages before man put in an appearance. i wonder if any man can realise that we have been on the move ever since the foundations of this world were laid. it is man himself who is the new arrival. it does seem strange to us that men should be so distinctly different from one another. we electrons are at a decided disadvantage, for we are all identical in every respect. i have no individual name--it would serve no purpose. even if you could see me, you could not distinguish me from any other electron. i wonder sometimes if men appreciate the great advantage they have in possessing individual names. i was impressed with this thought one fine summer morning. while i was riding on the back of a particle of gas in the atmosphere, i was carried through the open window of a nursery just as the under-nurse was putting the room in order. a little later there was some commotion in the nursery, for the young mother and her mother had come to see the twin daughters being bathed by the nurses. the grandmother happened to remark how very much alike the two little infants were. she said laughingly to the head nurse that she must be careful not to get the children mixed. but the big brother, aged five years, remarked that it would not matter really how much they were mixed until they got their names. sometimes i wish we electrons did differ from one another, so that we might each possess an individual name, but no doubt it is necessary for us all to be exactly alike. long before man had discovered us, he caused us deliberately to do certain things. he was mystified by the results of his experiments, for he was not aware of our presence. a few of my fellow-electrons have rather hazy recollections of being disturbed while clinging to a piece of amber. they had been disturbed often before in a similar way, by being rubbed against a piece of woollen cloth, and the result had been always that a number of electrons let go their hold upon the cloth and crowded on to the amber. the overcrowding was uncomfortable, but it happened usually that the surplus electrons found some means of escape to the earth, where there is no need of excessive crowding. on the occasion to which i refer, it so happened that the rubbing had been unusually vigorous and prolonged, so that the electrons were crowded on to the amber in great numbers. in their endeavour to escape they produced a strain or stress in the surrounding æther, and this caused a small piece of straw, which was lying within the disturbed area, to be forced towards the amber. what attracted the attention of the electrons was that the man who was holding the piece of amber removed the clinging straw and replaced it exactly where it had been lying. in the meantime he had been handling the amber, and many of the crowded electrons had managed to make a bolt for the earth by way of the man's body. they did this so very quietly that the man did not feel any sensation. however, as soon as the amber was rubbed again, a similar crowd provided the same attractive property. we electrons became impatient to hear what man would say of our work, for it was apparent that he had noticed the movements of the straw. you will hardly believe me when i tell you to what decision these wise men of the east came. they declared that, in rubbing the amber, it had received heat and life. as if life could be originated in any such simple manner! you can picture our disappointment when we found that man was going to ignore our presence. occasionally we were given opportunities of displaying our abilities in drawing light objects towards pieces of rubbed amber. but the funny thing was that man got hold of the stupid idea that this attractive property belonged to the amber instead of to us. if he had only tried pieces of sulphur, resin, or glass, he would have found that these substances would have acted just as well. you see it was not really the substance, but we electrons who were the active agents. we had given up all hope of being discovered, when news came along that a learned man was on the hunt for us. he was crowding us on to all sorts of substances. he rubbed a piece of glass with some silk, and at first he was surprised greatly to see light objects jump towards the excited glass. of course, we were not surprised in the very least. the only thing that amused us was to find that he was making out a list of the different substances which showed attractive properties when rubbed. he could not, evidently, get away from the idea that it was the substances themselves that became attractive. we were sorry that the poor experimenter wasted so much time and energy in trying to crowd us on to a piece of metal rod. he rubbed and he rubbed that metal, but it would attract nothing, and i shall tell you the reason. you know that we electrons hate overcrowding; indeed we always separate from one another as far as possible when there is no force pulling us together. we only crowded on to the amber because we could not help ourselves; we had no way of escape, for amber is a substance we cannot pass through. but we have no difficulty whatever in making our way along a piece of metal, and as soon as the rubbing began, some electrons moved off the metal by way of the man's arm and body to make room for those being crowded on to the metal from the rubber. and so there never was any overcrowding, and consequently no straining of the æther. but it was not long before we found that man had succeeded in cutting off our way of escape. he had attached a glass handle to the metal rod, and we were compelled to overcrowd upon the metal as we could not pass through the glass handle. neighbouring light objects were attracted by the excited or "electrified" metal. even this demonstration did not put man upon our track. perhaps i should explain in passing, that when a glass rod is rubbed with a silk handkerchief we crowd on to the silk, and not on to the glass. this leaves the glass rod short of electrons, and the æther is strained so that light objects are attracted. man did notice that there was some difference between a piece of amber and a piece of glass when these were excited. what the difference was he could not imagine, but to distinguish the two different conditions he said that the amber was charged with _negative_ electricity and the glass with _positive_ electricity. from that time forward man became of special interest to us. we felt sure that sooner or later he was bound to recognise that we were at work behind the scenes. it seemed to us, however, that man was desperately slow in turning his attention towards us, and we tried to waken him up in a rather alarming fashion, as i shall relate in the succeeding chapter. chapter iv some good sport _the scribe's note on chapter four_ men began to make glass plate machines for producing electrification on a larger scale. the electric spark is produced. the electron tells the story of the first attempt to store electricity in a glass jar. this is what we do now by means of a leyden jar. a sudden expulsion of electrons from one object to another is called a discharge of electricity. lightning is a discharge of electrons from a cloud to the earth or from cloud to cloud. in repeating franklin's experiment of drawing electricity from thunder-clouds, a russian professor received a fatal shock. chapter iv some good sport now i must tell you of a surprise in which i took an active part. some man thought he would separate a great crowd of us from our friends. of course, he did not think really of _us_, but whatever he may have supposed he was doing, he succeeded in accumulating greater crowds of us together than he had done previously. he managed this by making simple machines to do the rubbing for him on a larger scale. the result was really too much for us; we were kept crowding on to a sort of brass comb arrangement from which we could not escape, as the metal was attached to a glass support. talk about overcrowding! i had never experienced the like before, and i felt sure some catastrophe would happen. suddenly there was a stampede, during which a great crowd of electrons forced their way across to a neighbouring object and thence to the earth. i can assure you it was no joke getting through the air. we all tried to leap together, but some of the crowd were forced back upon us; then bang forward we went again, back once more, and so on till we settled down to our normal condition. of course all this surging to and fro occupied far less time than it takes to tell. indeed, i could not tell you what a very small fraction of a second it took. i wish you had seen the experimenter's surprise as we made this jump. we caused such a bombardment in the air that there was a bright spark accompanied by a regular explosion. some men ran away with the idea that electricity was a mysterious fire, which only showed itself when it mixed with the atmosphere. nothing delighted us more, after our own surprise was over, than to have a chance of repeating these explosions, to the alarm of the experimenters. but the best sport of all was to come, and when i heard of it i was so disappointed that i had not been one of the sporting party. it came about in the following way. [illustration: damage done by a party of electrons _by permission of dixon and corbitt and r. s. newall, ltd._ _glasgow_ when a myriad of electrons is discharged suddenly from a cloud to the earth, it happens sometimes that considerable damage is done. the above photograph is of a church steeple damaged by lightning in 1875. no lightning-conductor was provided, so the electrons had to get to earth by way of the steeple itself, with the disastrous result as shown.] one learned man thought he had hit upon a good idea. he tried to crowd a tremendous number of us into some water contained in a glass jar. without condescending to think of us, he crowded an enormous number of electrons from one of his rubbing machines along a piece of chain which led them into water. the overcrowding was appalling, for it was impossible to escape through the glass vessel. things had reached a terrible state, when the experimenter stopped the machine and put forward his hand to lift the chain out of the water. now was the chance of escape, so the whole excited crowd made one wild rush to earth by way of the experimenter's body. the rapid surging to and fro of the crowd racked the man's muscles. i wish i had been there to see him jump; they say it was something grand. you can imagine how the little sinners enjoyed the joke; they knew they were safe, as man had no idea of their existence at that time. another man was foolhardy enough to try a similar experiment, and they say that his alarm was even greater; indeed, he swore he would not take another shock even for the crown of france. we were all eager to get opportunities of alarming man, not that we wished him any harm, but we thought he might pay us a little more attention. i remember one occasion upon which some of us were boasting of what we had done in the way of alarming men, whereupon one fellow-electron rather belittled our doings. he maintained that he had jumped all the way from a cloud to the earth, along with a crowd of other electrons. in doing so they had scared the inhabitants of a whole village, for they alighted upon the steeple of a church, and in their wild rush they played such havoc among the atoms composing the steeple that they did considerable outward damage to the great structure. i may as well confess that we are not free agents in performing these gigantic jumps; we are compelled to go with the crowd when things are in such a state of stress. we simply cannot hold on to the atoms of matter upon which we happen to be located. it is only under very considerable pressure that we can perform this class of jump, and i beg to assure you that we are perfectly helpless in those cases where we have been dashed upon some poor creature with a message of death. alas! on one occasion i was one of a party who killed a very learned man. it was most distasteful to us; we could not possibly prevent it. he had erected a long rod which extended up into the air, and terminated at the lower end in his laboratory. some of us who were in the upper atmosphere were forced on to this iron rod, and from past experience we quite expected that we should be subjected to a sudden expulsion to earth. indeed we were waiting for the experimenter to provide us with a means of escape, when suddenly he brought his head too near to the end of the rod, and in a moment we were dashed to earth through his body. we learned with deep regret that the poor man had been robbed of his life. to turn to something of a happier nature, i shall proceed to tell you of some of my earliest recollections. remember i shall be speaking of a time long before man existed--even before this great planet was a solid ball. chapter v my earliest recollections _the scribe's note on chapter five_ this great globe upon which we live was once a glowing mass of flaming gas. it is possible that the whole solar system was once one great mass. in any case, we have no doubt that the moon is simply the result of a part of our glowing mass having become detached. in the hottest stars we find only the lightest atoms of matter, such as hydrogen gas, the atoms of heavier substances being found in stars which have begun to cool down. the electrons have been present from the very beginning, and it is they who go to make up the atoms of matter. we picture an atom of matter as a miniature solar system of revolving electrons. there is doubtless a corresponding amount of positive electricity, but so far we have no evidence of its nature. chapter v my earliest recollections before giving an account of the everyday duties which we perform, it may interest you to hear something of our early history. not only have we been on the move ever since the beginning of this world, but some of us have clear recollections of this planet long before it was a solid body. the whole world was a great ball of flaming gas. i have heard some fellow-electrons say that we were attached to a greater mass of incandescent gas before the beginning of this world, but i have no personal recollections of it. but one thing i do remember is a great upheaval which caused a large mass of gas to become detached from our habitation. without any warning a great myriad of our fellow-electrons were carried away on this smaller mass. at first this detached mass circled around our greater mass at very close quarters, but we soon found that our friends were being carried farther and farther away, until they are now circling around this solid planet at a comparatively great distance. man calls this detached mass _the moon_, and when i have heard children say in fun that they wish they could visit the man in the moon, i have longed to go and see how it fares with those fellow-electrons who seem to be separated from us in such a permanent manner. after this exciting event, which i have heard described as "the birth of the moon," our great ball of flaming gas began to cool gradually. but you will be interested in what happened before the moon's birth. i saw a crowd of electrons suddenly congregate together along with _something_ else which man has not discovered. never mind the other part, but picture a number of electrons forming a little world of their own. there they went whirling around in a giddy dance. i saw these little worlds or "atoms" being formed all around, and i feel truly thankful now that i was not caught in the mad whirl, for these fellow-electrons have been kept hard at it ever since, imprisoned within a single atom. i have met a very few electrons who have escaped from within an atom, but i shall tell you about them later on. the first thing i noticed was that each of the atoms had practically the same number of electrons in it. at that time i thought only in an abstract way, but since then i have learned that these were _hydrogen_ atoms; hydrogen being the lightest substance known to man. exactly what happened next i cannot recollect, but my attention was attracted later to larger congregations of electrons forming other little worlds of their own. these atoms were, of course, heavier than the hydrogen atoms. i saw quite a variety of different systems, of which i thought then in an abstract fashion, but which i know now to be atoms of _oxygen_, _nitrogen_, _carbon_, _iron_, _copper_, and so on. while man has given the atoms these distinguishing names, you will understand that the incidents which i am relating took place long before there was any appearance of solidity about our planet; these substances were all in a gaseous state. after this, i recollect that there was a great envelope of water-vapour condensed around the planet. some condensed into liquid water upon the surface of the globe, while part was suspended in the form of clouds. some of my fellow-electrons acted as _nuclei_ or foundations for the formation of the cloud particles. the water which condensed upon the earth settled down in the hollows, which had been produced previously by the immense pressure of the water-vapour envelope. we can hardly believe it is the same world. you cannot imagine how strange it was to see the great oceans boiling and steaming; of course, they were fresh water then. i need hardly tell you that they have become salt only because the rivers have brought down sodium into them, and when these sodium atoms unite with chlorine atoms they form particles of common salt. i know all about this because we electrons play a very important part in all such combinations. one very memorable recollection is that of life originating in the oceans. i wish i could let you into the secret of _the origin of life_, but, according to the creator's plan, man must find out for himself. your guesses are all wide of the mark. by the way, perhaps i should explain why i have been selected to write this biography. the first reason is that i am a free or detachable electron, and the second point in my favour is that i have had exceptional opportunities of seeing about me. i have heard men say that lookers-on see most of the game, and as i have witnessed the gradual evolution of things, you will understand that i have views of my own. a casual observer might think that things had deteriorated, for long ago there were immense monsters upon this planet, and these would put all modern creatures in the shade as far as size and strength are concerned. but one of the most interesting things to me has been to watch the evolution of man, and more especially the gradual development of his brain. indeed, sometimes i have wished that i had happened to be an electron in the brain of a man; but, on the other hand, my career would not have been of the varied kind which it has been. chapter vi man pays us some attention _the scribe's note on chapter six_ men found that by exhausting the air from glass globes or tubes it was possible to pass electric discharges through them, and in so doing some very beautiful luminous effects were produced within the vacuum tubes. it was when experimenting with one of these tubes that a scientist suggested that radiant particles were being shot across the tube. these particles were really electrons, but it was thought at that time that they were atoms of matter. another scientist declared, from certain mathematical calculations, that there existed extremely small particles of something around the atoms of matter, and that it was the motion of these in the æther which produced _light_. people were not willing to accept this theory. some time later another scientist was able to prove by experiment that these particles did exist. this was done by means of the spectroscope, as will be related by the electron in a later chapter. chapter vi man pays us some attention from the little i have told you already of our experiences, you will see that men had been making many experiments in which we electrons took a very active part. it was disappointing that even although we had surprised man in so many different ways, he had never become suspicious of our presence. one day, however, we did begin to hope for recognition. i was present, with a great crowd of electrons, imprisoned within a glass globe from which the air had been extracted. we were very pleased to find that the surrounding space had been cleared of air, for it was apparent that the experimenter was going to make us jump across from one end of the glass tube to the other. a crowd of us had collected on the extremity of a wire, or "electrode," at the one end of the tube, while another similar crowd was present on the other electrode at the opposite end of the tube. while i speak of a crowd, meaning that there were millions of us, i do not suggest that we were overcrowded, for we had plenty of elbow-room to move about on the atoms to which we were attached. all in a moment the scene was changed. we felt a crowd of electrons pressing us forward and forcing us right up to the very end of the electrode. we found that the crowd was approaching by a wire leading into the tube. soon the crowding had reached such a condition that we became alarmed; we could see no way of escape. we were imprisoned by the glass walls, but we soon discovered that many of the electrons who had been stationed on the other electrode had deserted their posts and fled along a wire leading out of the tube. if we could only follow them. it would be a tremendous jump to get over to the other wire, but the way was fairly clear of air. when the overcrowding reached a certain point we were literally shot across from the one electrode to the other. this was the first time i had ever experienced anything of the kind, but many fellow-electrons had gone through similar performances for years at the hands of other experimenters. however, it was somewhat alarming to be fired off like a rocket across the tube. what happened after that i cannot recollect, but some time later i was present in that or a similar tube when i heard the experimenter say to a friend that he believed there were particles flying across his tube. we sent news all along the line stating that at last we had been discovered, and i can assure you that we felt proud. but our joy was not long-lived, for it turned out that we were considered to be particles or atoms of matter; the experimenter spoke of us as "radiant matter." this was a real disappointment. it took us some time to recover from our disappointment at being mistaken for clumsy atoms of matter. we are of a higher order of things altogether. no atom of matter can travel at speeds such as we can. we cross these vacuum tubes with speeds equal to millions of miles per minute. a great many of us were kept busy within vacuum tubes by other experimenters, but nothing very exciting happened. indeed, we had lost all hope of attracting man's attention to ourselves as long as we were imprisoned within these tubes. in the meantime our hopes were revived by news which reached us from another quarter. we heard that a very learned man had declared boldly that there did exist little particles which revolved around the atoms of matter, and that it was the motion of these tiny particles in the æther which produced the well-known waves of _light_. there was considerable rejoicing among us, for we were anxious to have our services recognised by man. this great man was not guessing merely; he was willing to prove by mathematical calculations that we did exist in reality. of course, we ourselves required no proof of our existence, but we believed that man would be convinced. our high hopes were soon laid low; news reached us that people were shaking their heads and saying that figures could be made to prove anything. after we had settled down to our ordinary duties, we got word that at last man had really detected us in a flame of gas. this seemed quite reasonable, for, as i shall relate to you in another chapter, we have a very lively time of it in a flame of gas. however, when we were informed that man had discovered us by means of a sort of telescope arrangement, i, for one, began to doubt the truth of the discovery. some time before this i had heard that men were spying at gas flames in the hope of finding us, and this seemed most ridiculous, for if man could not see the large congregations of us called _atoms_, how could he expect to see individual electrons? my ignorance was dispelled when it was explained that man had not been looking for us directly, but for the æther waves which we produce. but i have not had an opportunity of explaining to you how some of us produce waves in the æther; i shall have to wait till a later chapter. in the meantime i may say that since this important discovery i have taken some part in an experiment similar to the historic one wherein we were detected, but of that too i shall have more to say again. the rejoicing at this discovery was not confined to us, for men of science were quick to grasp the importance which was attached to this new knowledge. we felt that man was bound to acknowledge our services from that day. the next event was our christening, and this was not all plain sailing. indeed, we have been rather annoyed with one name which some good friends persist in giving us. i refer to the name _corpuscle_, which we feel to be a sort of nickname, although it may have been suggested in all kindness. it may be difficult for you to appreciate our dislike to this name, but it seems to us to savour too much of material things. it is not dignified; you must remember we are not matter. we are delighted with what we prefer to call our real name--electron--for that speaks of electricity. as you know, we are units of particles of negative electricity, and so this seems a most sensible and suitable name. but i must hasten to tell of some of our everyday duties in which we serve man. chapter vii a steady march _the scribe's note on chapter seven_ the steady motion of electrons from atom to atom along a wire, or other conductor, constitutes the well-known "electric current." the moving electrons disturb the æther around the wire and produce what we know as a "magnetic field." the electron explains why it is necessary to have a complete circuit before any electric current can take place. also how one length of wire may be used to connect two distant places provided the two extremities of the wire are buried in the earth. chapter vii a steady march personally i knew nothing about marching until quite recently. indeed, none of my fellow-electrons seem to have had definite ideas of regular marches previous to last century. that century is prominent in our history as well as in man's. there is no doubt that before then we must have made more or less regular marches through the crust of the earth and elsewhere; but for myself i have no such recollection previous to the following occasion. the experience was not a very exciting one. i found myself passing along from atom to atom in a copper wire. but what was of special interest to us was that it became evident that these enforced marches were being deliberately controlled by man. of course you will understand that man knew nothing of our existence at that time. all he knew was that when he placed a piece of zinc and a piece of copper in a chemical solution, there were certain effects produced in some mysterious fashion. for instance, when he connected the top of the two metals in this chemical cell or "battery" by a piece of wire, he got what he described as an _electric current_. now all that happened really was this. the chemical action in this battery which man had devised caused a rearrangement among the atoms composing the metals and the solution, with the result that we poor electrons had to rearrange our domiciles. as an accumulation of electrons gathered on the zinc, some of us were forced along the connecting wire towards the copper. as long as the chemical action in the battery was kept up, so long were we kept on the march from the zinc to the copper by way of the wire. man tried increasing the length of this wire bridge across which we had to pass, but we had no difficulty in making our way along. but you must not run away with the idea that we rush along the wire with lightning speed. although we can fly through the æther at a prodigious speed, our progress from atom to atom in a wire is more like a snail-pace. as a matter of fact, our rate of march is much less than the walking pace of a man; indeed it may be stated conveniently as so many yards per hour. some people may find it difficult to believe that our rate of march is so very slow. their front door is a good many yards away from their electric bell, but it does not take us an hour, or any appreciable part of a minute, to summon the maid. the secret is that there is a whole regiment of us along the wire, and before one of us moves on to a neighbouring atom, another electron must move off that atom and on to its neighbour, and so on. in this way the electrons at the far end of the wire commence to move at practically the same moment as those near the battery. it has been a source of amusement to me to see people perfectly mystified by the fact that they can get no electric current unless they have a complete circuit. what else could they expect? how could man march if he had no road to march on? you see, the reason for our march is that we wish to escape from the overcrowding on the zinc, and we are forced towards the copper. the atoms composing the wire are our stepping-stones, and if there is not a complete chain of atoms we are helpless. you have already heard how we can jump an air-space under very great pressure, but that condition does not exist in the present case. when we are disturbed by the chemical action of the battery, we should prefer to have a short-cut from the zinc to the copper, but if the only path man gives us is by way of a long wire, then we must be content to travel that road, in order to reach the copper. it is a matter of little moment to us what arrangement man makes as long as he gives us a complete path. for instance, he may lead us out from the zinc to a distant telegraph instrument, and then, instead of providing a second wire to take us back to the battery, he may conduct us by a short wire to the earth. we are quite content to lose ourselves in this great reservoir, provided man places another short wire from the earth to the copper of the battery at the other end of the line. then as we slip off at the one end of the line, an equal number of electrons can climb up at the other end, and thus enable all our friends in the long wire to keep up a steady march. this march of ours is not merely a means of transporting ourselves from one place to another; it is to enable us to do work. it is only when we are in motion that we can do useful work, for we must move before we can disturb the æther, and it is by means of the æther that we transmit energy. if you place a magnetic needle or mariner's compass near a wire along which we are making a steady march, you will find that we can affect our fellow-electrons who are stationed within the magnetic needle. we cause the needle to swing round and take up a position at right angles to our line of march. we succeed in doing this because these electrons in the magnetic needle are on the move also. but this reminds me that i have never told you how we produce that æther disturbance which you call _magnetism_. when, as children, you played with toy magnets in the nursery, little did you think that there was a host of tiny electrons amusing you. and yet we electrons are responsible entirely for all magnetic effects, as i shall proceed to explain. chapter viii a useful dance _the scribe's note on chapter eight_ we believe magnetism to be due to electrons revolving around atoms of iron and other magnetic substances, as related by the electron in this chapter. we have seen that the steady motion of electrons along a wire produces a magnetic field around the wire. therefore if we have electrons revolving round and round the atoms in a piece of iron, there will be a miniature magnetic field around each atom. the electron explains why a piece of iron does not show the magnetic power locked up within it until it is "magnetised." the electron refers to electro-magnets; an electro-magnet is simply a piece of soft iron with a coil of insulated wire wound around it. the iron only shows its magnetic power as long as a current of electricity is kept passing through the surrounding coil of wire, for reasons which the electron explains. chapter viii a useful dance i may tell you quite frankly that i have never taken part in the perpetual dance of which i am about to tell you. i am of a free and roaming disposition, but i have often watched some of my fellow-electrons at this work. of course, it is pleasant work, as all our duties are, now that man acknowledges our services. we are responsible for the behaviour of the mariner's compass needle. it is we who cause it to point continually in one definite direction. if we ceased to dance around the iron atoms in the compass needle aboard a ship, the man at the helm could not tell in what direction he was going, and sooner or later he would be almost certain to wreck his vessel. for this service alone man ought to be grateful to us, but before i have finished my story, you will find that even this important duty is but a small affair when compared with many of our other tasks. there is one matter i should like to make quite clear to you. although we electrons are all identical, we have different stations to fill. you have doubtless become familiar with my roving disposition, and you probably think of me as a detachable electron. then there are our friends who are locked up within the atoms of matter--part and parcel of the atom. and now i am introducing you to those electrons who act as satellites to the atoms, revolving around them at a comparatively great distance, just as the moon revolves around the earth. these are the electrons which give rise to the magnetism in a piece of iron. there are other electrons which perform very rapid revolutions around all classes of atoms, but i shall introduce these friends later on. [illustration: a tobacco-tin defying gravitation that phenomenon known as "magnetism" is due to the steady locomotion of electrons, as explained in the text. here we see a large magnet attracting a tinned iron box which is tethered to the table by two cords. the result is that the box is supported in the air. the spiral wires are connected to the electro-magnet, an explanation of which is given in chapter viii.] i need hardly remark that a piece of ordinary iron does not behave like a magnet. indeed, it is fortunate that it does not. if it did, man could not get along with his work very well. the hammer would stick to the head of the nail it had struck, the fire-irons would stick to the fender, while the cook's pots and pans would hold on to the kitchen range. that would be a very stupid arrangement, but we electrons have really no say in the matter of arrangement. we are always on the move, performing a perpetual dance around the iron atoms, but the atoms arrange themselves in a higgledy-piggledy fashion, so that the electrons on one atom pull the æther in one direction while others pull the æther in an opposite direction. in this way the outward effect is not perceptible. when, however, man places a coil of wire around the iron, and makes a crowd of electrons march along the wire, these marching electrons affect the æther, which in turn influences the satellite electrons which are revolving around the atoms of iron. you may be somewhat surprised when i tell you that, owing to this æther disturbance, these satellite electrons are able to produce a rearrangement among the atoms. if you doubt my word, you may easily prove the truth of the statement. if you magnetise a long bar of iron you will find that its length is actually altered. this is due to our having disturbed the arrangement of the atoms. perhaps i should explain that when we force the atoms into their new condition, we can do so only under the æther stress set up by our fellow-electrons who are marching in the neighbouring wire. whenever their march ceases the æther stress is withdrawn, and the atoms are able to fall back into their old higgledy-piggledy condition. in this way man is able to make a piece of iron a magnet and to unmake it as often as he cares by simply switching on and off the electric current from the wire surrounding the iron. if a piece of hard steel is used in place of soft iron, then we find that the atoms are not so easily disturbed, but when they are once brought into line with one another, they will remain in their new condition after the æther disturbance has been withdrawn. it may seem strange to you that quite a small percentage of carbon atoms added to the pure soft iron should cause such a marked difference, but the matter seems plain enough to us. man was so impressed with the manner in which the atoms were evidently fixed in their new condition that he spoke of _permanent magnets_. it is especially fortunate for man that these pieces of steel do retain their magnetism, and give us a reliable mariner's compass. but i shall tell you how you may disturb even these sedate atoms. if you hammer the metal very vigorously, or if you heat it to redness, you will find that the atoms have been freed from what appeared to be their permanent position, and they are back to their old higgledy-piggledy condition, so that we electrons are all opposing one another. remember we are hard at work all the time although we may be giving no outward sign of our activity. while we render an important aid to man by providing this permanent magnet for his compass, you will find that a very great deal of our assistance to man in his everyday life depends upon our behaviour in soft iron electro-magnets. it is in these that man can control our behaviour at will. it is through this simple piece of apparatus--the electro-magnet--that man has been able to accomplish so much in signalling to his friends at a distance. it is also by means of these electro-magnets that man can get us to turn an electric motor, and so on. but i must tell you, first of all, how we enable man to signal to a distance, or, in other words, how we carry man's news. chapter ix how we carry man's news _the scribe's note on chapter nine_ the electron explains wherein its method differs from all other methods. it is well known that within recent years the old iron telegraph wires have been replaced by much lighter copper wires; the electron explains the reason for this change. it describes how the electrons manage to work the most widely used form of telegraph instrument, which is called the "morse," after its inventor. here we find one of the practical applications of the electro-magnet described in the preceding chapter. chapter ix how we carry man's news it is we electrons who have so very far outdistanced all material carriers of news. you must acknowledge that the best runner, the swiftest horse, the fastest express train, and the prize carrier pigeon, are all nowhere when compared with us electrons. but i do not wish to mislead you in any way, and i can speak from personal experience in this case. we do not race off with man's messages in the same sense as these other messengers do. our swiftness of communication depends upon the simple fact that man provides a whole connecting regiment of us between the two distant places. and when the order to march is given we all move off at practically the same moment. in this way the electrons at the far end of the connecting wire are able to cause signals there immediately. this is the secret of man's success in being able to hold immediate communication with his distant friends. his success is due entirely to the co-operation of us electrons. my personal experience has been in connection with a very simple telegraphic arrangement. indeed, the most of our duties in transmitting messages are performed with this particular kind of instrument, known as a "morse sounder." at the time of which i speak, i had become attached to an atom of iron in the end of a long telegraph wire. from this you will probably guess that my experience was gained some time ago, for man does not use iron wires nowadays in fitting up telegraph lines. he used iron at first, and some of these lines still exist, but when he discovered that a very much lighter copper wire would serve the same purpose, he discarded the heavy iron wires. man explained the matter by saying that the copper offered less resistance to the electric current, and the majority of people were quite satisfied with this kind of explanation. of course these are merely convenient phrases which give man no real reason for the difference. the real reason is that we electrons are able to move about from one copper atom to another with very much greater ease than we can among the iron atoms. that is the reason why man made the change from iron to copper wires, although he had no idea of the reason at the time. to return to my experience in connection with a telegraph instrument, i found that we were being subjected to a series of forced marches. the whole regiment of electrons along the line made a forward move. the line of march ended in a short length of fine wire wound around a piece of soft iron to form an electro-magnet. the end of the wire dipped into the earth, as i have explained in an earlier chapter. now all that we electrons had to do was to make a forward move, halt, forward again, another halt, and so on. sometimes the signal to halt was longer in being given than at other times, but we found that this was intentional, and that there were two definite lengths of march. i have explained already how we marching electrons cause an electro-magnet to attract a piece of iron and let it go again as soon as we cease marching. it only remains for me to give you a general statement of how we work the morse telegraph. man has arranged a little lever with an iron end-piece immediately above the electro-magnet, so that the magnet may attract it. of course you are aware that it is the electrons within the soft-iron core of the electro-magnet who produce the magnetic effect. every time we electrons in the surrounding wire make a forward move, the electro-magnet pulls down the end of the little lever referred to. as long as we keep marching, so long will the end of the lever remain down, but the moment we halt, the lever is free to be pulled up by a spring attached to it. the movements of the lever indicate the length of our long and short marches, and it is by means of these that man sends signals. all that he does is to control our march, by means of an electric push and a battery at one end of the wire, and it is we who produce the signals at the distant end of the wire. each time man presses the push we move the distant lever. when we pull the lever down it is so arranged that it makes a sound like "click," and when we let it spring up against a stop it makes another sound not unlike "clack." our long and short marches are therefore converted into long and short "click-clacks." man has made a simple code of signals representing his alphabet, and right merrily do we rap out the signals for which we receive orders at the distant end of the wire, while some one at the other end listens to the sounds we cause to be made. i have told you enough of our duties to let you see how we are able to carry man's news from one part of the earth to any other part. by far the greatest part of our signalling work is done with this simple morse sounder. it may interest you to note that we can produce those signals far faster than man can read them. when man found this out he took advantage of our powers. he made an automatic transmitter which could manipulate the make-and-break of the battery current far more rapidly than any human fingers could do. then as we rapped off the signals with lightning speed at the distant end, he attached a little ink-wheel to the end of the moving lever, so that it could mark short and long strokes on a ribbon of paper passing close to it. although man could not distinguish the signals by his ear he was able to read the record of those we caused to be left upon the paper ribbon. we have been made to work many other forms of telegraph instruments. in some of these we control type-letters, while in others we imitate handwriting, but all these are merely adaptations of our powers of marching. we are proud of our achievements in rapid signalling, which all right-thinking people have not been slow to acknowledge. chapter x how we communicate with distant ships _the scribe's note on chapter ten_ in this chapter the electron deals with that modern marvel--_wireless telegraphy_. here the æther of space plays a very prominent part. the author has given some particulars about the æther in the first chapter (_what the story is about_). in conjunction with that, the electron may be left to tell its own story. chapter x how we communicate with distant ships our duties in this case are totally different from those of which i have been telling you. while we electrons can do many wonderful things, we cannot march through space. we may be fired off like bullets from the sun to the earth, but that is quite another matter. i shall have something to say about that fact later on. you have seen already that man can make us jump only a very short distance, even when he has cleared our path of the obstructing air, as he does in a vacuum tube. if men were to provide us with a complete path of metal atoms from the shore to the ship, we could set to work upon the simple plan which i have described in the preceding chapter. but, needless to say, man has more sense than to attempt to keep up metallic connection with a ship going away out to sea. even the wisest men were surprised when they heard that we electrons could signal through space to great distances without any connecting wires. we ourselves were not surprised. had we not been doing this very thing from the foundation of the world? our fellow-electrons in the sun have never ceased to communicate with those of us upon the earth. of course i am referring at present to those æther waves which man calls _heat_ and _light_. but the waves which we make to carry man's messages through space are of the very same nature, the only difference being that they are much longer, or, in other words, much farther apart. they do not follow each other so closely, and they do not affect the eye or the sense of touch. however, these long waves are able to bestir some of us electrons who are situated at a great distance from the sending electrons. our method of producing such waves in the æther is by surging to and fro from atom to atom in an upright wire. when we make a rapid to-and-fro motion we send out great waves in the æther. the original plan adopted by man was to make us jump across a spark-gap, but in this case also it was our rapid oscillation to and fro that produced the waves. if we wish the waves to carry to a great distance, we must club together in considerable force to supply the necessary energy. the energy which we can get from a battery and induction coil is not sufficient for any very long distances. in such cases we require the aid of a _dynamo_, a machine about which i shall have some experience to relate in another chapter. in communicating through space, our position is very similar to that of two men shouting to one another over a distance. the one man disturbs the air, thus sending air-waves (sound) over to his friend, and these waves produce certain sensations which he can interpret. i should like you to understand that we electrons are upon a higher plane than atoms of matter. we cause waves in the all-pervading æther, not among clumsy particles of air. after these æther waves have travelled enormous distances they retain sufficient energy to disturb electrons situated at the distant place. i shall tell you of the first experience i had in this connection. i found myself attached to an atom of _nickel_, a kind of atom which looks to us electrons very much like an iron atom, because it has nearly the same number of electrons composing it, only they are arranged differently. but i was telling you that i found myself on this nickel atom sealed up in a small glass tube. of course there were myriads of similar atoms all around me, but i did not feel very happy. i was being urged forward, and yet i could not get across from some atoms to others, for the nickel was in the form of loose filings. from past experience i knew that there was a battery along the line somewhere; i could feel the strain. all of a sudden i was startled to find that i could move forward. exactly what happened, i am not at liberty to tell, but this much i may say, that it was the arrival of some æther waves which altered the condition of things among the filings in the tube. [illustration: a motor-car with wireless telegraph it has become quite a fashion in america to have motor-cars fitted up for wireless telegraphy. that the electrons play an important part in telegraphing through space is explained fully in chapter x.] we had just started out on our march forward when we received such a shaking that we found ourselves in the same isolated positions as at first; we could not get across from one particle to another. more æther waves arrived, we made a fresh start, then came another rude shaking, and so on we went starting and stopping. indeed, it was the regularity of these long and short marches that gave me the first idea that we were being controlled by some telegraph operator. we were amused to find that the rude shaking, of which i have been telling you, was caused by the action of some of our fellow-electrons. some of them in their march around an electro-magnet in the receiving instrument caused a little lever to knock against our tube and give us a sudden jolt. i should like you to notice that the energy with which we moved the telegraph instrument did not come from the distant station. it was a local battery which worked the receiving instrument, but this battery was controlled by the incoming æther waves affecting the tube of filings. there is really no mystery about the matter, but i am anxious not to take credit for anything more wonderful than we have actually accomplished. we electrons have rendered a very great service to man by enabling him to communicate with his friends who are far out on the ocean, and cut off from all possible chance of material communication. we are willing to serve man on land also, though we very much prefer the ordinary marching arrangement if he will provide a connecting wire. the fact is that we find it very much more difficult to send æther waves over land than we do over water. i have heard some men ask how many different telegraph instruments may be worked at one place simultaneously without confusion. that is a question for man himself to answer. we electrons are able to produce any variety of waves of different frequency or length; it remains only for man to construct apparatus that will respond only to a definite rate of waves. i hear that man has made considerable progress in tuning the wireless instruments. some men are eager to get us to carry messages through space across the great oceans from shore to shore. we shall not refuse, provided man supplies sufficient energy, but i must admit that we electrons prefer the submarine cable. of course man may put this down to our laziness; we certainly prefer as little severe straining as possible. i have been telling you of my earliest and only personal experience in connection with space telegraphy. i understand that greatly improved methods have been adopted since that time, but i have never happened to drift in their direction. chapter xi how we reproduce speech _the scribe's note on chapter eleven_ in the first part of this chapter the electron explains the part it plays in ordinary telephony. the reader will picture the transmitting instrument at the one end of the line influencing the receiving instrument at the distant end. towards the end of the chapter the electron turns its attention to the newer subject of _wireless telephony_, which has been accomplished now over a distance of several hundred miles. chapter xi how we reproduce speech my scribe suggested a rather clumsy title for this chapter--"electrons _versus_ atoms as carriers of speech." i expect he made this suggestion without much thought, for there are two serious objections to such a title. in the first place, we are not carriers of speech. we are controlled by speech at one end of the telephone line, and we make a reproduction of the speech at the distant end of the line. no sound passes between the two places; there is only a movement of electrons along the connecting line. my second objection to the hurriedly suggested title is that it is hardly fair to make any comparison between the achievements of atoms of matter and those of ourselves. we are not in the same category as atoms. besides, we electrons are dependent entirely upon the material atoms for making our work useful to man. for instance, we might keep on making waves in the æther for all time, and yet if the atoms of matter were to pay no heed to those imperceptible waves, man would never be aware of their presence. indeed we electrons act solely as go-betweens. on the other hand, it is only fair to ourselves to point out that a group of atoms in one town could never communicate with a group of atoms in a distant town unless we electrons came to their aid. it is true that over a very short distance the atoms may communicate directly. for instance, if a heavy blow is given to a large gong, the atoms of metal may vibrate so energetically that they succeed in disturbing the atoms of gas of the surrounding atmosphere for some considerable distance. but in the case of speech, the speaker cannot supply any great energy, so that he can disturb the atmosphere only to a very limited distance. we electrons, however, can do yeoman service in this respect. we have enabled men to speak to one another over immense distances. the whole affair is very simple. man speaks and causes the atmospheric atoms to vibrate and impinge upon a light disc or diaphragm in a simple instrument which man has named the _telephone_. this vibrating disc presses upon a myriad of carbon particles contained in a small case or box, the disc forming one side of the box. when these carbon particles are pressed together we electrons can get across more easily from atom to atom. there is a battery urging us forward, but our motion is dependent entirely upon the manner in which the vibrating disc presses upon the carbon particles. i cannot describe our movement in the line-wire as a march; it is in reality a surging to and fro. you will understand that this to-and-fro motion of the electrons in the line-wire varies according to the vibrations of the sending disc, which is controlled by the speaker's voice. at the distant end of the line we electrons bring our magnetic powers into action. we keep varying the attractive powers of an electro-magnet, according to the motion of the electrons in the wire. this ever-changing magnet produces vibrations in an iron disc which is fixed close to the magnet. this disc is set vibrating in exact sympathy with the sending disc. when the listener places this receiving disc close to his ear, the vibrations are carried by the atmospheric atoms to his hearing apparatus. all that we electrons have done is to cause one disc to vibrate in exact synchrony with another distant disc. but that is all that is required, for the receiving disc will reproduce similar air-vibrations to those set up by the man's voice at the distant place. i have pointed out already that we do not attempt to carry the sound. it is true that the atoms of matter do the hard work, but it is we electrons who enable a group of atoms in one town to communicate with a group of atoms in a distant town. it was natural that as soon as man found that he could work his telegraph instruments without the aid of connecting wires, he should try to do the same with his telephone instruments. we were sorry when we found men trying to use the original spark-telegraphy methods for telephones. while we had no difficulty in operating a telegraph instrument by means of æther waves and the tube of filings, it was quite impossible for us to produce telephone vibrations on the same principle. this spark method was a too rough-and-ready plan. the waves we produced were like sudden splashes in the æther ocean, whereas we knew that we must produce regular trains of continuous waves in order to reproduce telephone vibrations. however, you may be aware that we have succeeded by a different arrangement of apparatus. indeed it may interest you to know that one of my most recent experiences has been in connection with some wireless-telephone experiments. unfortunately i was not in a very favourable position to learn all that was going on, but it was quite exciting work. i happened to be attached to an atom of copper in a length of wire which had been run up into the air on a sort of flag-pole arrangement. i need hardly say that i was not alone, for by this time you will have become accustomed to picture myriads of electrons occupying a very small space. we were set vibrating to and fro with tremendous energy, but what bothered me most was the great variation in our movements. it was the nature of these variations which gave me the clue that we were being controlled by the vibrations of a telephone disc. i can tell you we did make a complex series of waves in the surrounding æther! these waves went out through space and influenced some electrons stationed at a great distance. when these electrons at the receiving station were set in motion they controlled the electric current from a local battery which set a second telephone disc vibrating in synchrony with the one at the sending station. on questioning some of my fellow-electrons who happened to have been nearer the transmitting part of the instrument than i had been, i got some interesting information. they tell me that there was a dynamo and an arc lamp in our circuit, while the telephone instrument was in a neighbouring circuit. the electrons surging to and fro in the telephone circuit influenced those energetic electrons in the arc-lamp circuit to which the ærial wire was attached. you see that my position in the ærial wire was not a very advantageous one for observing what was taking place. this was truly a great achievement--to enable one man to speak to another distant hundreds of miles, and without the aid of any connecting wire. i think you will agree with me that we have excelled all past records in the world of wonders. chapter xii our heaviest duties _the scribe's note on chapter twelve_ here the electron explains its behaviour in a dynamo at work. the principle of the dynamo was discovered by faraday in the thirties of last century. he found that when a coil of wire was moved through a magnetic field, there was a current of electricity induced in the moving coil. experimental machines were constructed, and after a while a practical dynamo was evolved. wires are attached to a dynamo and the electric current is led out. this current may be conducted to a distant tramway car, and, by sending the current through an electric motor, mechanical motion is produced and the car propelled along. an electric motor is practically the same as a dynamo, but instead of turning its coil round in order to produce an electric current, we pass a current into the coil and it moves round. it will be sufficient to leave the electron to tell its own story. chapter xii our heaviest duties this is another of those roving commissions in which i have been privileged to take part on more than one occasion. if you think of the giant size of an electric tramway car or a railway train, and try to compare one of these with an electron, such as your humble servant, it will seem quite ridiculous that i should suggest that it is we electrons who move those huge vehicles. yet such is the actual case. of course we require the application of very considerable power to urge us to so heavy a task. all the energy which we can get from a few electric batteries might enable us to drive a toy car, but when it comes to turning the wheels of a real car or train, we require a correspondingly greater amount of energy. i may as well tell you quite frankly that we electrons are only the intermediaries or go-betweens. indeed, you must have noticed that in every case we act merely as a connecting link between matter and the æther, and between the æther and matter. but what i want to tell you of, is the part we play in moving an electric car or railway train. it is really all very simple if you could only see it from our standpoint. picture a host of us attached to copper atoms in a coil of wire which is being moved through that disturbed æther called a _magnetic field_. we are set in motion immediately. it is true that when we are moved forward into the field we march off in one direction, only to be arrested and made to move off in the opposite direction as we leave the field, but it really makes no difference in our working capabilities as long as we are kept on the move. this is what is actually taking place in the armature of a dynamo as it revolves between the poles of the electro-magnet. there is no peace for us so long as the coil is kept revolving; we are kept in a constant state of rapid to-and-fro motion. [illustration: a train impelled by moving electrons _by permission of siemens schuckert werke_ _berlin_ it is remarkable that the motion of electrons in an electric conductor can result in the movement of heavy vehicles. how this comes about is explained in chapter xii.] this is all we electrons do in a dynamo, but when the ends of the outer circuit or mains are brought into contact with the ends of our revolving coil, we set the electrons in the mains surging to and fro in step with ourselves. man describes this motion of the electrons in the mains as an _alternating electric current_, but by a simple commutator on the dynamo he may arrange that we set the electrons marching in one direction in the mains. this he describes as a _direct electric current_. it is a matter of indifference to us whether man drives our coil round by means of a steam-engine, a water-wheel, or a wind-mill; all that we electrons want is to be kept surging or vibrating to and fro. now you will be able to appreciate how we electrons get up sufficient motion to enable us to perform what i have described as _our heaviest duties_. perhaps you will find it difficult to believe me when i tell you that as we march along the connecting wire to a distant tramway car we transmit the energy through the surrounding æther, and not through the wire. this is our mode of working in every case, whether it be an electric bell, a telegraph, or telephone. that is to say, while we electrons move from atom to atom in the connecting wire, it is the disturbed æther surrounding us which transmits the energy. you must have realised by this time how very intimate is the relationship between ourselves and the æther. to return to the tale of our tramway work, you will picture my fellow-electrons aboard the car being energised by the incoming current. those electrons present in the armature coil of the motor are set into motion, as also are those in the wire of the neighbouring electro-magnet. the result is that these two sets of electrons so disturb the æther and affect one another that the coil is moved round into a different position. you will remember the experiment of which i told you, in which a magnetic needle would insist always in taking up a position at right angles to a wire in which an electric current is passing. well, when the motor coil has turned into its new position, we electrons receive an impulse from our friends in the line-wire which causes us to retrace our steps in the coil. this action of ours causes the coil to make a further movement in the same direction as at first. again we change our direction of march, and again the coil changes its position towards the electro-magnet. the sole duty of these electrons in the armature coil is to keep surging to and fro, while those electrons in the electro-magnet keep up a steady march in one direction. this arrangement necessitates the armature coil to keep changing its position continually, and when we have the armature coil spinning round at a steady pace, it is easy for man to connect the armature to the axles of the tramway car and cause us to drive the wheels round. i need hardly say that it makes no difference to us whether we are asked to drive a tramway car, a railway train, or a host of machines in a factory or workshop. all that we electrons in the motor require is to have sufficient energy passed along to us from our fellows in the distant dynamo. again i admit frankly that the atoms of matter play a very important part in these our heaviest duties, but you will see that without our active assistance they could not transmit the necessary energy to a distant car or train. chapter xiii a boon to man _the scribe's note on chapter thirteen_ while it has been known for a long time that _light_ and _radiant heat_ are merely waves in the æther, it was not known until recently how these waves were produced. the discovery of electrons has given us a reasonable solution of our difficulty. the electron explains the actions of its fellows in this great work of producing light and heat. incidentally the electron explains how they produce an aurora in the heavens, and how it is that the earth has become a negatively electrified body. chapter xiii a boon to man every living thing is dependent upon our activities. it is we electrons who send out heat and light from the sun, and it is we who receive these on their arrival upon this planet. our action in the matter is really very simple, but until man discovered our existence, he was mystified considerably. we were amused to hear man say that the atoms of incandescent matter in the sun produced waves in the æther, and that when these æther waves fell upon other atoms on this planet, these were set into a state of vibration, thus producing heat and light. now if man had only stopped to think, he would have seen how ridiculous it was to speak of atoms of matter producing waves in the æther. he ought to have known that atoms of matter cannot affect the æther, for it offers no resistance to matter moving through it. man might have pictured himself riding on the back of this great planet, flying through space at a speed very similar to that of a rifle bullet, and yet even the flimsy blanket of air surrounding the planet is not disturbed by the æther through which it is rushing. it is true that the atoms of matter play an important part in the origin of heat, but the atoms in the sun could no more affect the atoms on the earth than could a man on the earth push the moon about. it is the very intimate connection between us electrons and the all-pervading æther which enables our fellows in the sun to communicate with those of us upon this planet. where would man be without us? [illustration: protection against a discharge of electrons _by permission of siemens schuckert werke_ _berlin_ when a man is encased completely in an over-all made of flexible metallic gauze he is proof against shock due to a discharge of high-tension electricity. the part played by electrons in the case of electric shock is explained in chapter iv.] i cannot understand wherein man should find any mystery in connection with this very simple action of ours. you will picture our distant fellow-electrons making very rapid revolutions around the atoms of matter to which they are attached as satellites. just as the moon circles around the earth, so do we circle around our atoms, but at an enormously greater speed. of course the whole length of our orbit is inconceivably small, and the speed of our revolutions is inconceivably great. it is our rapid motion through the æther which produces those waves known to man as radiant heat and light. some one may ask how it is that we electrons can disturb the æther while the giant atoms cannot. the obvious answer is that we are not matter, but electricity; we are not in the same category as atoms of matter. to complete the picture which i was drawing, you have only to think of the æther waves arriving upon this planet and disturbing sympathetic electrons, causing them to revolve around their atoms in similar fashion to our distant fellows who are producing the æther waves. it may be that some people get confused between this action and that of those electrons who are shot off bodily from the sun towards the earth. believe me, there is no connection between the two things. the stream of electrons shot off from the sun is deflected towards the magnetic poles of the earth, and as the electrons enter the upper layers of the atmosphere they produce that beautiful luminous effect which man describes as an _aurora_. i have never taken part in one of these great displays, for, as far as my recollection goes, i have never been in the sun, although some fellow-electrons declare that at one time we were all in the same great glowing mass of which the sun, and every member of the solar system, formed a part. however that may be, i certainly have no experience of auroræ, but i have assisted in producing the very same effect upon a small scale within a vacuum tube. the air remaining in these so-called vacuum tubes is just as rarified as the air in the upper layers of the atmosphere, and when we are shot across the tube we act in the same way as those electrons arriving upon this planet from the sun. you will observe that as a surplus of electrons arrives upon the earth from the sun, the earth is naturally a negatively electrified body, but i need hardly say that the earth does not keep all the electrons which arrive upon it. my scribe points out that i am wandering from the story which i set out to tell in this chapter, so i shall try and please him. the direct cause of light, whether it be natural or artificial, is the rapid motion of electrons around atoms of matter. if they revolve at a comparatively slow speed they produce those æther waves which man calls _radiant heat_. if these satellite electrons, however, desire to affect the eye of man, they have to move around at a very much greater speed. if we travel at too fast a speed, then we cease to cause the sensation of light. but, believe me, all the waves we make are of the same nature, no matter what names man has given them. the only difference we can make in the waves is the rate at which they follow one another. of course we can also make them larger or smaller in height, or, in other words, of greater or less amplitude, but that does not affect their properties. in the following chapter i shall tell you of some remarkable phenomena which our different æther waves produce in the brain of man. chapter xiv how we produce colour _the scribe's note on chapter fourteen_ colour is merely a sensation in the brain. what the electrons really produce are æther waves, and these give rise to the sensations of colour. however, the electrons may claim to produce colour in the same sense as we savages produce pain in fellow-men by firing rifle-bullets at them. the electron explains how some objects appear white, while others are red, and so forth. it explains also how electrons produce artificial light. the electron twits man upon his ridiculously wasteful processes of obtaining artificial light. chapter xiv how we produce colour in the preceding chapter i have been telling you how we electrons produce waves in the æther ocean. i pointed out that if we make the waves follow each other at too slow or too fast a rate they fail to affect man's eyes. it may seem strange to you that only a very small range of our æther waves should affect man's visionary apparatus. of course this limitation lies beyond our province; we can produce endless variety of æther waves--it is man's organs which fail to appreciate the bulk of these. however, there is plenty of variety in the sensations which we can produce in man. if we make the waves follow each other at a certain speed, man says he has the sensation of _red_. if we move faster, he speaks of _orange-colour_, and as we increase our speed he names his further sensations as _yellow_, _green_, _blue_, and _violet_. then if we combine all these waves--that is, if we produce them all at one time--he says he has the sensation of _white_. if we produce none of these waves, he calls the result _black_. while we electrons are very versatile, our actions are dependent in a great measure upon circumstances. for instance, if an electron is acting as a satellite to one particular kind of atom, its rate of revolution around that atom may be very different from that of an electron similarly attached to another kind of atom. we electrons are all identical, but the speed of revolution is determined by the kind of atom. the reason is very simple; electrons revolve around some atoms at a much greater distance than they would around other atoms. those making only the smaller orbits not only get around their atoms in less time, but they are also travelling at a greater pace. it is this fact which enables the electrons to produce the various wave-lengths which stimulate the different colour sensations in the brain of man. i think you will have no difficulty in seeing how it is that we come to produce such a variety of wave-lengths--in other words, how we are able to make the waves follow each other more or less rapidly. you will understand that we do not produce colours; we merely make various waves in the æther, and these waves excite the colour sensations in man. i mention this simple fact, because i hear many people speaking of our æther waves as "coloured rays," which, of course, is quite a ridiculous description. suppose some of those waves which give rise to the red sensation happen to fall upon a lump of matter which contains only electrons capable of producing waves that affect the green sensation. what will happen? there will be no response, and the object, although viewed by "red light," will appear black. if an object, such as the white paper upon which my scribe is recording my story, contains a variety of atoms with electrons capable of revolving at all the different rates which produce colour sensations, then when "white light" falls upon the object it appears white (all the colour sensations combined). if, on the other hand, a "red light" only falls upon it, then only the electrons capable of responding to that rate of wave will be set in motion, and the object will appear red, and so on with the other rates of æther waves. so far i have been telling you what happens when different waves of light fall upon us. now i shall endeavour to explain how man has caused us to produce artificial light. at present all man's methods in this direction are dependent upon making some substance so hot that it becomes incandescent. even his most modern methods seem to us to be ridiculously wasteful and most roundabout. i shall speak only of the electric glow lamp, as i have had some experience in connection with this. on one occasion i had been taking part in a regular forward march from copper atom to copper atom in a conducting wire. i had no idea of the purpose of our march till i suddenly found myself handed over to some carbon atoms, who were in a very lively state of vibration. we had much more difficulty in making our way through this substance, and it was the passive resistance offered to the advance of the electrons who had preceded me that had driven the carbon atoms into this state of great excitement. in our march through the copper conductor we had been offered very little resistance, so that we had left the copper atoms in peace--at least man could not detect easily any excitement (heat). but so long as our forced march was maintained among the carbon atoms, so long did the high temperature exist. you will understand i and the other marching electrons did not produce the waves of light sent out by the glow lamp. what we did was to set the atoms of carbon into a rapid vibratory state, and they in turn caused their satellite electrons to hasten their pace. some electrons produced one rate of waves, and some another rate, but by the time the carbon was incandescent there were electrons sending out all the variety of wave-lengths, the combination of which produces the sensation of white. i have accused man of adopting very wasteful processes, so i had better explain the matter. in the preceding description of what is occurring in an electric glow lamp, i have spoken only of those æther waves which constitute light. but there are myriads of electrons in the carbon of the glow lamp that never attain the requisite speed to produce those waves; they revolve around their atoms at too slow a rate. they certainly disturb the æther, but the crests of the waves are so far apart that they do not affect the eyes of man. the business of these waves is to set up heat in the bodies upon which they fall. you may be surprised to know that in this contrivance of man, called an electric glow lamp, and, indeed, in all his other artificial light-producers, he causes far more electrons to produce radiant heat than the desired light waves. a most wasteful process! man has a long way to travel yet before he succeeds in producing artificial light by a reasonable process. indeed i doubt if any of you can realise, as we do, how exceedingly stupid the existing methods are. think for a moment of the glow-worm, in which we electrons produce light without setting up any wasteful heat waves. there is a strong contrast between this peaceful plan and that of the excited carbon atoms. when will man succeed in discovering this secret of ours? chapter xv we send messages from the stars _the scribe's note on chapter fifteen_ it is remarkable that man has been able to discover what the distant stars are made of. our knowledge concerning the chemistry of the stars has been obtained by means of the spectroscope, in which a beam of light from the star is passed through a glass prism. the result is the well-known image of the coloured spectrum, in which certain well-defined lines appear, according to the distant elements originating the æther waves. the electron explains the whole subject from its own point of view. chapter xv we send messages from the stars it is only within recent times that man has observed that we send messages from the distant stars to this planet. but there is nothing new to us in this proceeding; we have been busy sending these messages ever since the solar system was formed. through all those ages we have kept on sending these messages, knowing that in time man must come to take notice of them. if the subject should happen to be new to you, you will be anxious to know to what kind of messages i refer. needless to say, they are wireless messages--waves in the great æther ocean. the waves, to which i refer specially, fall within that small range of which i told you something in the preceding chapter. in other words, they are those waves to which man has given the name _light_. but what special information do these waves, coming from the stars, convey to man? they tell him of what materials these distant stars are made. needless to say, it is we electrons who produce those informative waves. you are familiar with our method of producing waves. you know that we whirl around the atoms of matter at prodigious speeds, and that according to the number of revolutions we make per second, we produce waves of corresponding frequencies. in an earlier chapter i have hinted that the speed of the revolving electron is determined by the kind of atom to which it acts as a satellite. for instance, when electrons revolve around iron atoms they produce certain wave-lengths, while those moving around hydrogen atoms produce an entirely different series of waves. but how is man to recognise these? it is quite evident that man may gaze at a distant star and be little the wiser concerning the different lengths of the waves which impinge upon his eyes. he may observe that the sensation is inclined to red, from which he may infer that the waves are long ones--that they are farther apart than some of the waves produced by a white-hot body. but had man been content to try and decipher our wireless messages in this rough-and-ready manner, he would never have gained the interesting information which we have now placed in his hands. how, then, did we enable man to read our messages? our plan may seem to be somewhat mysterious, but i assure you that it is really very simple. when these æther waves of light fall upon a triangular prism of glass, the waves are bent out of their normally straight path. but the point that may seem strange to you, is that those waves which produce the sensation of red are not bent so much as the others. the more rapidly the waves follow one another, the greater is the bending of such a ray from its original direction. in this way the various wave-lengths are all spread out, so that they form an image like a coloured ribbon, red at one end, being followed by orange, yellow, green, blue, and violet. every man must be familiar with this coloured spectrum. when some of my fellows are enclosed in drops of water in the air they produce a great rainbow spectrum across the heavens. but i must tell you how we electrons succeed in bending these rays of light. i have told you already how we either absorb or reflect the æther waves which happen to fall upon us. in most substances it is only those electrons very near the surface that are disturbed. they succeed in stopping the waves. they may do this in either of two different ways. if the satellite electrons are attracted strongly by their atoms, the electrons will spin around the atoms keeping time to the movements of the incoming waves, and in this way the electrons take up the energy of the waves. in doing this, the electrons send out fresh waves in the æther. this is the real explanation of what man calls _reflection_ of light. [illustration: the spectroscope and the electrons' wireless messages the spectroscope is seen in the extreme left of no. 1 photograph. the instrument is explained at page 207. the operator is passing an electric current through a glass tube containing a rarefied gas, causing the gas to become luminous. when he examines its light through the spectroscope he sees bright lines as shown in photograph no. 2, and from the position of these lines he can tell what substance is producing the light. no. 2 is the spectrum of mercury vapour. no. 3 is part of the spectrum of the sun. note the dark lines, as explained in the text.] in the second case, the electrons are not so firmly attached to their atoms, so that the incoming waves dislodge them, and they are knocked about from atom to atom, and in this way the energy of the waves is frittered away. man speaks of the light having been _absorbed_ by the substance upon which it fell. in both cases the only electrons which take part in these actions are those electrons who can move in sympathy with the incoming waves. it will be clear to you that only those of us who are near the surface of a substance know anything about these incoming waves. the electrons attached to atoms in the interior of the substance are left in peace, owing to the defensive actions of our fellows on the outside. but this is not the case with all substances. there are some congregations of atoms through which the æther waves can make their way. man calls such materials _transparent_; for example, glass and water are transparent substances. the fact of the matter is that in such substances none of us are able to respond to the incoming waves, and so we cannot stop them. i should say almost none of us, for there are always a few electrons present who happen to be in sympathy with the incoming waves. that is why no substance is perfectly transparent. the point concerning which i wish to speak in particular is this. although we allow the æther waves to pass through such substances, we do offer some slight resistance to the passage of the waves; the faster the to-and-fro motion of the waves, the more resistance do we offer. that is why the waves of highest frequency are bent farthest from the straight line when passed through a glass prism. we actually force the æther waves to travel slower through a piece of glass than through the air. now there should be no mystery concerning our action in a triangular piece of glass. whatever combination of æther waves falls upon it, the different trains of waves are sorted out according to their frequencies. suppose, for instance, that æther waves emitted from some incandescent sodium are passed through a glass prism. the bulk of the electrons attached to the sodium atoms are capable of revolving at speeds which produce waves causing the sensation of yellow. hence there will appear a very distinct line of yellow light in the spectrum. but why should the light be in the form of a line? simply because our æther waves are passed through a narrow slit in a shutter. but i need not trouble you with further details of our actions, which, although very simple to us, may seem somewhat strange to you. you will understand, however, that we form bright lines in different parts of the spectrum, according to the kinds of atoms to which we are attached. it was this fact which attracted man's attention to our wireless messages. he soon discovered the meaning of these lines, for he commenced to take exact notes of the different positions in which we placed these lines. he saw that when we were attached to hydrogen atoms we always produced three prominent lines; a very distinct line in the red section, another in the blue part, and a third one somewhat fainter and farther along in the blue. on the other hand, when attached to sodium atoms, we produced two very distinct lines in the yellow. when attached to iron atoms we produced a great variety of lines in the spectrum. of course these substances have to be incandescent to enable us to produce the æther waves. now it will be clear to you how we send wireless messages from the distant stars. these stars are great masses of flaming gases, so that the satellite electrons are kept busy dancing attendance to excited atoms. the electrons are constantly sending out æther waves, which reach this planet. we sort out these waves when man passes them through a glass prism, mounted in a telescope arrangement which he calls a _spectroscope_. he then examines the positions of the lines we produce in the resulting spectrum, and from these he knows what kinds of atoms are present in the distant star. it is we who have informed man that there are forty different materials in the sun, the most common of which are hydrogen, sodium, iron, copper, nickel, and zinc. of course these all exist in a gaseous form. there is one point about which i need hardly trouble you, although it is worth mentioning in passing. while we produce bright lines in the spectrum of any incandescent substance on this planet, our messages from the stars appear as dark lines. the reason for this is that there are cooler masses of the gases surrounding the incandescent masses forming the stars, and these cooler gases completely absorb the waves we produce. so completely are these waves absorbed that blank spaces are left in the spectrum, and these are the dark lines to which i refer. as they are in the same positions that the bright lines would have occupied had the waves reached the earth, it makes no difference to the reading of our messages. curiously enough, some of our actions in forming lines in the spectrum led to our actual discovery by man; but i shall tell you of this in the following chapter. chapter xvi how man proved our existence _the scribe's note on chapter sixteen_ several men of note declared that "little particles" revolved around the atoms of matter, and that it was the motion of these particles which produced the well-known æther waves of light. this idea was suggested by the result of certain mathematical calculations. it was some time before real experimental proof was obtained. the electron tells its own tale of this great discovery. when the electron speaks of a spectrum line being shifted up or down the scale, it means towards the violet or the red end respectively. we may picture the spectrum as analogous to the keyboard of a piano. in the second part of this chapter, the electron explains how it has enabled man to discover that certain stars are approaching the earth, while others are receding from it. chapter xvi how man proved our existence we electrons had waited long ages for man to acknowledge our services, but we did not despise the acknowledgment which a few men accorded us upon the basis of their mathematical calculations. it was natural, however, that we should want something more definite than this. you can imagine our joy when real experimental proof of our existence was established. perhaps you think that we should have been satisfied with this. but even this did not bring acknowledgment from many outside scientific circles, and not even from all within those circles. as our services to man are universal, we feel that all men should become acquainted with our doings. indeed that was the chief argument used by my fellow-electrons, who urged me to write this autobiography. the story of our actual discovery by man is an interesting one. it all came about in a very simple manner, but in quite a different way from what most electrons expected. man reasoned within himself that if we electrons really did revolve around atoms and thus produce waves in the æther, as had been suggested, he ought to be able to affect our movements by disturbing the æther in which we were revolving. of course man cannot disturb the æther directly; he must employ some of us to do this for him. he caused us to produce a very powerful magnetic field, which, as you know, is a disturbance of the æther. man did not bother thinking about _us_ in this connection; he simply sent an electric current around an electro-magnet, but i have explained to you the very active part we play in electric and magnetic actions. from my story in the preceding chapter, you are aware that man had observed the meaning of the bright lines in the spectrum of any incandescent body. when he examined the æther waves we send out from sodium atoms, he found two very distinct lines in the yellow. because of the brightness of these lines, man selected a sodium flame to experiment with in the present case. you will picture a great host of my fellow-electrons revolving around the atoms in a sodium flame. the flame was placed between the poles of a very powerful electro-magnet, and a beam of æther waves (light) produced by us was directed into the spectroscope. the experimenter focussed all his attention upon one of the bright yellow lines. he noted very carefully the exact position in which we placed it. he then produced the magnetic field around the flame, in which my fellow-electrons were revolving at a steady pace, and, behold, the line which he was watching split up into two lines, one taking up a position a little higher up the spectrum scale, and the other going a little lower down towards the red end. what could this mean? man had no difficulty in knowing the cause of this alteration; indeed, it was exactly what he had hoped would take place. of the two new lines, one represented waves a little shorter, while the other line indicated waves a little longer or farther apart, than the original waves forming the single line. this could only come about by some of the electrons having had their rate of revolution increased, while that of others had been reduced. these alterations were due to the æther disturbance (the magnetic field). those electrons whose orbits happened to lie in one position had their rate of revolution increased, while those whose orbits lay in another position had their speed reduced. man was convinced at last that we "particles" were real existing things. whenever man withdrew the æther disturbance, the electrons fell back into their natural rate of revolution, and the original single line appeared in the spectrum. i took no part in the original experiment which gave absolute proof of our existence, but since then i have been present in a laboratory when the same experiment has been repeated. this is not the only case in which we alter the positions of definite lines in the spectrum. indeed, we have given man some interesting information about the motions of distant stars--information which he could not have obtained in any other way. we have sent wireless messages from distant stars, indicating that they were approaching the earth, while electrons aboard other stars have signalled that they are receding from the earth. all this may seem mysterious to you, and yet our actions in the matter are very simple. indeed, we do nothing but what i have told you of in the preceding chapters. we send out definite wave-lengths in the manner described already. but if we are on board a star which is travelling towards the earth, our waves will naturally follow a little closer at each other's heels. on the other hand, if the star is receding from the earth, the waves must be a little farther apart than they would be if the star were at rest. you will understand that the electrons are revolving at the same speeds in both cases, but the forward movement of the star crowds the waves together, while a receding star stretches them out a little farther apart. the result at the receiving end is that the crowded waves are just as though they had come from electrons revolving at a greater speed than is actually the case. hence the line appears farther along the spectrum, up the scale of frequencies, than would have been the case had the star not been moving forward in the line of sight. thus if the hydrogen lines, of which i have spoken elsewhere, should appear higher up the spectrum than usual, then man knows that the star from which these waves are coming is approaching the earth. it will be evident that when known lines in the spectrum are shifted down the scale (towards the red end of the spectrum), then the rate of the waves has been decreased, and man knows that the star carrying these stimulating electrons is receding from him. you will observe that we electrons perform no new duty in connection with this matter; it is entirely the motion of the body carrying us that alters the positions of the lines. but i must hasten on to tell you of some personal experiences. chapter xvii my x-ray experiences _the scribe's note on chapter seventeen_ the present generation were all very much interested in the discovery of x-rays. with the aid of a battery and an induction coil, man causes an energetic electrical discharge to pass through a vacuum tube. when the flying electrons strike upon a little metal target placed in their path, they produce the well-known roentgen rays. we have all become familiar with the great penetrating powers of these rays. the electron may be left to tell its own story. chapter xvii my x-ray experiences it was no surprise to us that we could produce what man calls x-rays, but we were very much surprised at the use to which man put these splashes which we made in the æther. a limited number of us had been producing x-rays on our own account for many ages, but i shall tell you of that in a later chapter, when you will hear how we made the world talk. i must tell you of my own experiences in connection with these x-rays, which i hear some men describe also as _roentgen rays_. i found myself once more within a large vacuum tube, and as soon as i felt a crowd of my fellows pushing me forward, i was quite prepared to be shot across the tube, as on previous occasions. personally, i was not prepared for what was to come. just as we reached the centre of the tube we collided with a metal plate or target. it was no joke to be pulled up so suddenly when travelling at a terrific speed. i noticed at the time that our very sudden stoppage had a peculiar effect upon the æther. of course we never bothered about a name for this disturbance; it is man who requires to have names for everything. he was quite right to call this æther disturbance "x-rays," for even now he does not know the real nature of these. i have heard him describe them as thin pulses in the æther, but there is something more. i may as well confess that although we observed this æther disturbance arising from our sudden stoppage, we paid little attention to it, until it became apparent that man was continuing to produce these rays for some special purpose. he had discovered that we could shoot these rays right through many solid substances which were not transparent to light. but i have not told you how man came to know that we could produce these penetrating rays. on one occasion we were sending out these rays, which, by the way, do not cause any sensation in man's visionary apparatus. the room was in darkness. some of the invisible rays fell upon a collection of small chemical crystals which were fixed on the surface of a screen. our fellow-electrons, who were attached to the atoms of the crystals, were bestirred into action. they could not reflect the x-rays, but they set up regular trains of waves in the æther, some of which came within the range that affects man's vision. man knew that this chemical screen could not produce light on its own account, and it became apparent that the vacuum tube must be sending some æther waves towards the chemical screen. as the electrons on the screen produced an æther disturbance different from that which fell upon it, man called this a _fluorescent screen_. at first we took merely a passing interest in the experiments which man made with these x-rays of ours, for it seemed to us as though man thought them only good enough for amusing his friends. indeed, we paid little heed to what he was doing, until we observed that the rays were being used by surgeons. we were interested at once, for here we could serve man. my first experience in this connection was quite interesting. a young girl had got a needle into her hand while she was playing about, and the surgeons were at a loss to know where the needle had lodged. we lost no time in producing x-rays which could penetrate the flesh of the hand, and reach the fluorescent screen on the other side. the bones of the hand blocked the way of our rays, but not so completely as the needle did. hence we produced upon the screen a faint shadow of the flesh of the hand, a much deeper image of the bones, and a black shadow of the needle. this enabled the surgeon to see where the needle was hiding. sometimes we were called upon to produce rays for detecting bullets in the flesh, or for showing the nature of a fractured bone. we were never surprised to find that our call was to detect a coin in the throat of a child, but in this connection a big surprise awaited some of us. i was not one of the party, but i have the information from some fellow-electrons. [illustration: how electrons produce x-ray images the upper photograph shows the x-ray apparatus in use. the operator is examining the bones of the lady's hand, which she places between the x-ray tube and the fluorescent screen. the rays pass through the flesh, but are obstructed by the bones, the rings, and the bangle, so that a shadowgraph or image is formed upon the screen, which becomes luminous where the rays succeed in reaching it. the actual examination is made in a dark room. owing to the way x-ray photos are taken (by contact) the image is reversed in a photograph, so that a left looks like a right hand.] a party of electrons were present within an x-ray tube at a large hospital, when they were called upon to produce rays for examining the throat of a little girl. they had become so used to this call that they did not doubt there would be a coin in the child's throat. however, they lost no time in producing the penetrating rays, and you can imagine their surprise when they produced the image of a toy bicycle upon the screen. it seemed ridiculous that such a toy could have entered a child's throat. when we had shown the surgeons exactly where the toy was, they set to work to remove it. the electrons heard later that the operation was successful in every way. every one was interested, and we were proud. i do not wish to appear boastful, but i wonder how many operations owe their success to these rays which we produce for man. it was natural that man should try if these searching rays could affect the chemicals upon a photographic plate, and we soon proved that they could. it made no difference to us whether man kept the plate sealed up in its light-proof envelope, or whether he placed the plate within a wooden box. these protecting covers offered no barrier to our rays. we produced shadowgraphs of any objects placed between our tube and the photographic plate. two of my early experiences may be of interest to you. the first of these seemed to me a rather tame affair. our x-ray tube appeared to be arranged for the amusement of fashionable folk. one grand lady placed her hand behind the fluorescent screen, whereupon we produced an image of the bones of her hand and very dark images of all the many rings upon her fingers. several of the rings had enormous diamonds, but it was after she had gone away that i overheard two gentlemen speaking about the rings. one asked the other if he had observed the beautiful diamonds, whereupon the other roared with laughter. it seems that we proved them to be imitation diamonds, for our rays could not penetrate them, whereas they have no difficulty in passing through real diamonds. we therefore produced black shadows of the imitation diamonds. little did the grand lady know how we had exposed her sham jewels. my second experience was a very curious one. i learned that our tube was being carried to some distance. after a while we were placed beside a peculiar-looking object, which the men referred to as the "mummy." one of the men suggested that they should photograph its feet, but before doing so they darkened the room and set us to work upon the fluorescent screen. the owner of the mummy got rather nervous as to what we might disclose, and as the force urging us into action was somewhat erratic at first, we produced only a very indistinct image. we were greatly amused at the nervous excitement of the owner; he seemed to think our verdict was that there were no bones. however, the man with the apparatus soon got things into better condition, and this enabled us to produce x-rays satisfactorily. the result was that they secured some excellent photographs of the hidden bones of the mummy. before telling you how we made the world talk, i should like to give you a clear idea of our relationship to the atoms of matter. chapter xviii our relationship to the atoms _the scribe's note on chapter eighteen_ we have no doubt that an atom of matter is a miniature solar system of revolving electrons. these electrons, being negative particles of electricity, would repel each other just as any two similarly electrified bodies do. there must therefore be some equivalent of positive electricity, but whether this exists in the form of a sphere or in separate particles we have no definite knowledge. one atom differs from another in the number of electrons which go to make up the atom. the electron explains how the atoms of matter are united to one another, how different compound substances are formed, and how chemical changes take place. chapter xviii our relationship to the atoms i am sorry that this part of my story must remain incomplete for the present. i am not free to tell you all i know; you must try and get behind the scenes on your own account. one thing i am at liberty to tell you is that my fellow-electrons who are locked up within the atoms are not without hope that they may gain their freedom once more at some future time. i know this first-hand, for i have met some fellow-electrons who have escaped from within an atom, but i shall delay telling you about these fellows till the succeeding chapter. my object in mentioning this fact now is to give you confidence in what i am about to say regarding the nature of the atom. on one occasion i overheard a conversation between two men who were discussing the construction of matter. one remarked that the atoms were the bricks of the universe, whereupon the other asked how the little bricks were cemented together. i wish that man could have seen a lump of matter as we see it. he would have been surprised to learn that the atoms never really touch each other. they are always surging to and fro, or _vibrating_, and it is this motion which constitutes the _temperature_ of the body which they compose. it must be clear, however, that in a solid body one atom attracts another atom across the intervening atomic spaces. this is another duty devolving upon us; what we do, really, is to upset the electric balance between the different atoms, and thus produce electrical attraction. first of all, perhaps, i should explain that the different kinds of atoms are simply congregations of different numbers of electrons. of course there is the other part, of which i am forbidden to speak--the part which man vaguely describes as _positive electricity_. however, you may take it from me that while it is true that the main difference between an atom of gold and an atom of iron, or of oxygen, is in the number of electrons it contains, there is a very important difference in the arrangement of the electrons. you know that they form rings outside one another, all of which revolve at enormous speeds. the number of electrons in the different rings varies according to the kind of atom. it is quite correct for man to speak of the atoms containing certain definite numbers of electrons, but i should like you to understand clearly that the exact number of electrons is not permanently fixed; one or more electrons can slip off one atom and become attached to a neighbouring atom which happens to be capable of accepting it or them. it is the interchange of these few detachable electrons that causes one atom to attract another. in other words, it is the differently charged atoms which attract each other, just as man crowds a surplus of electrons on to one object and finds it attracted bodily towards another object having a deficiency of electrons. it is this electrical attraction between the atoms which enables us to build up the particles, or _molecules_, of matter in such a variety of forms. first of all, we play the most important part within the atoms. we have formed only a limited number of such atoms. i am not free to tell you exactly how many, for man has discovered only about eighty of these different congregations of electrons, each kind of which he calls an _element_. the way in which we have coupled these different elementary atoms together must appear remarkable to all thinking men; there seems to be no end to the possible variety of combinations. in one case we unite an atom of _chlorine_ to an atom of _sodium_ and thereby produce a molecule of common salt. in another case we unite an atom of _oxygen_ to two atoms of _hydrogen_, and the resulting combination is an invisible molecule of ordinary water. it has always seemed to me very strange how some men have difficulty in regard to these combinations. i have heard a man ask how two different gases, hydrogen and oxygen, when united, should form a liquid, and not a gas. i wish you could see things as we see them. the atoms are neither gaseous, liquid, nor solid; they are little worlds of revolving electrons. i have spoken of the attraction between atoms, and again between molecules, in forming a solid body. it will be clear that there is less of this _cohesive force_ in the case of a liquid, whereas it is absent entirely in the case of a gas. in this case the molecules have become so far separated from one another that they cease to attract each other, and if left free they will soon part company, and spread themselves broadcast over the face of the earth. whether a substance passes into a solid, a liquid, or a gaseous state, the atoms remain constant, but their vibratory motion is altered very considerably. however, i was about to tell you that we electrons can make some very interesting combinations of atoms. those i have mentioned so far are of a very simple nature, but we have built up individual molecules containing hundreds of atoms. we link about a hundred atoms together and produce a molecule of what man calls _alum_, and we require to unite about a thousand atoms together to make one molecule of _albumen_ (the white of an egg). when man speaks of a chemical change having taken place in a substance, it is simply the electrons who have made a friendly interchange of detachable electrons, thereby causing a different assemblage of the same atoms. during these changes we never alter the nature of the atom. that little world of revolving electrons known as an atom of gold, remains always an atom of gold. but you must not run away with the idea that the atoms will never change. indeed, man has discovered that the atoms are not eternal, as i shall explain in the following chapter. chapter xix how we made the world talk _the scribe's note on chapter nineteen_ the discovery of radium is within the memory of all. many exaggerated statements went abroad at the outset, but the real facts are full of interest, and they have shed much new light on many subjects. three different kinds of radiation were found to be emitted by radium. at first man could not tell what these were, so he named them after the first three letters of the greek alphabet--alpha, beta, and gamma, rays. the electron tells the interesting story of these rays, and relates the experiences of some fellow-electrons who escaped from within a radium atom. chapter xix how we made the world talk we electrons were amused at the stir which we unconsciously caused throughout the civilised world. we had done nothing different from what we had been doing for ages, but a few men had been taking note of what we were about, and when the phenomena to which i refer became known to the world, many wild rumours were circulated. one of these rumours was to the effect that steam-engines and their expensive furnaces were to disappear very quickly. if the two last words had been omitted--i should not say that the prophecy is untrue, but man has a long way to travel yet before reaching that goal. my fellows within the atoms have sufficient energy to supply all mankind with power if he could but unlock even a small fraction of it. another statement was that this newly discovered substance, _radium_, could cure some diseases which man had believed to be incurable. all i shall say about this is that the statement was an exaggerated one. then it was said that radium disproved much of man's scientific knowledge, but instead of that being so, we electrons have greatly extended man's knowledge by our radio-active actions. if any man believed the atoms of matter to be eternal, we certainly disproved that. here, in radium, man could see atoms going to pieces. i have questioned a fellow-electron who escaped from a radium atom as to what upset their equilibrium, but i find that he does not know, or he pretends not to know. all he has told me is that he was flung off suddenly from within the atom with great energy, for he had been revolving at a tremendous speed. in his sudden flight he passed some newly formed _helium_ atoms, which contained many of those electrons who had been his co-partners in the former radium atom. being an electron, he was travelling at a far greater speed than these flying atoms of matter, but he assures me that these helium atoms were going faster than atoms can travel under any other circumstances. another thing that this escaped electron told me was that when he and his fellow-electrons made a sudden start on leaving the atom of radium they caused a proper splash in the surrounding æther, just such as we electrons produce when we are suddenly stopped in an x-ray tube. man observed these rays proceeding from radium, but, not knowing the cause of them, he called them _gamma rays_. we can, of course, produce radiographs when these rays fall upon photographic plates. indeed, some of my fellow-electrons, when escaping from radium, have produced rays sufficient to penetrate a six-inch boulder and affect a photographic plate lying beneath the boulder. in time man recognised these rays as x-rays. man did not find only these rays--he discovered that electrons were escaping, but before he had recognised what we were, he had named us _beta rays_. these fast-flying electrons have had experiences which never fall to electrons except when escaping from an atom. their velocity is so great that they can be shot right through a sheet of aluminium foil. if these escaped electrons are allowed to settle on any object, they will necessarily cause an overcrowding, or, in other words, the object will become negatively electrified. the one thing that puzzled man most was to find out what the helium atoms were. he had named them _alpha_ rays, but as he found he could not get them to penetrate even a thin sheet of paper, he was confident that they must be atoms of matter. it was only when he had gathered sufficient to examine the spectrum that he found these to be helium atoms. i think what really made the world talk was the fact that electrons were escaping from what had been supposed to be an eternal habitation. in other words, this material radium was actually going to pieces. that is to say, _gradually_, as far as man is concerned, for, looking at it from our point of view, the word _gradual_ seems out of place entirely. the breaking up of an atom is really of the nature of an explosion. it is a continual bombardment that is proceeding in radium. why man is apt to think of it as a gradual effect is that there is such an enormous number of atoms in a tiny speck of radium, that even the incessant series of explosions will take a very long time to break down the whole of the small particle. electrons differ in their opinions as to whether man will succeed in drawing upon this internal energy of the atom. my own difficulty is that, having been a roaming electron at all times, i have no idea regarding the cause of the atomic explosions. i have remarked already that the electrons locked up within the atoms possess more energy than man could ever use. if all these electrons were deprived of their energy, the atoms of matter would cease to exist, and man, where would he be? chapter xx conclusion _the scribe's note on chapter twenty_ not many of us have realised the true importance of electrons in the creator's plans. in the following short chapter the electron is made to sum up a few of the wonders which it has related, in order to focus our attention upon the grand place which the electrons occupy in the universe. chapter xx conclusion from what i have told you of myself and my fellow-electrons, it must be apparent that we are of tremendous importance to man. i have told you something of the part we played in building up this world--how we not only form the atoms of matter, but also hold these bricks of the universe together. i have given you a rough sketch of the composition of these bricks. you must have realised also that without us the whole universe would be in darkness. there would be no light, no heat, and consequently no life. indeed, there could be no material existence without us. where would man be if we failed to perform our mission? he could not exist if we even neglected a few of our duties. not only do we form the atoms of which his body is composed, also holding these together, but we produce all those chemical changes within his body which are absolutely necessary to maintain life. his very thoughts are dependent upon our activities. i have told you how we send man's messages across the earth, and how we transmit power from place to place. also how we have enabled man to gain knowledge of the distant stars, and to examine the bones of his living body. if man could cross-examine me or any of my fellows, i expect the first question would be--what are you electrons made of? but man must find this out for himself. the creator has placed man in a world full of activity, and it is of intense interest to man to discover the meaning of all that lies around him. that is why i have been bound over by my fellows to tell you only so much of our history as man has discovered. but i am disclosing no secret when i admit that our very existence as electrons is dependent upon the æther. if i can find another scribe to write a revised biography for me a few hundred years hence, i shall have a much more interesting tale to tell, for many of our doings, of which man knows nothing at present, will be secrets no longer by that time. appendix _the scribe's note on appendix_ as explained by the author in chapter i., this appendix has been added for the sake of those readers who may wish further details than have been given in the electron's story. it is only necessary to give a brief notice of the more important particulars, as the author has written recently upon this subject in a popular form.[1] [footnote 1: "scientific ideas of to-day." by chas. r. gibson, f.r.s.e. (london: seeley & co., ltd. five shillings net.)] appendix it was known two thousand years ago that when a piece of amber was rubbed with a woollen cloth, the amber would attract light objects towards it. amber was considered to be unique in this respect. about the year 1600, one of queen elizabeth's physicians, dr. william gilbert, inquired into this attractive property of amber. he found that many other substances possessed the same property. indeed it is common to all substances in some degree. we say the amber or other object is "electrified." it was observed by the early experimenters that there were two kinds of electrification. to one of these they gave the name _positive electricity_, and to the other _negative electricity_. every electrified object will attract an object which is not electrified, and two objects which are oppositely electrified will attract one another also. but two objects which are similarly electrified will repel each other. man got tired of rubbing objects by hand, so he fitted up simple machines in which glass cylinders or plates were rubbed against leather cushions. the electricity was then collected by little metal points supported on an insulated metal sphere. the experiment of attempting to store electricity in a glass vessel filled with water was made at the university of leyden (netherlands). the water was replaced later by a coating of tin-foil on the inner surface, while a similar metallic coating on the outside took the place of the experimenter's hand. these jars are called _leyden jars_, after the place in which the discovery was made. about 1790, professor galvani, of italy, observed that the legs of a freshly killed frog twitched at each discharge of an electrical machine. later he found that the same twitching occurred when he connected certain parts with a piece of copper and zinc. he believed this to be due to "animal electricity" secreted within the frog. professor volta, also of italy, proved that galvani's idea was wrong, and that the electricity resided in the metals rather than in the frog. he showed that when two pieces of dissimilar metal were put in contact with one another, there was a slight transference of electricity between them. he constructed a pile of copper and zinc discs, with a moist cloth between each pair or couple, and by connecting wires from the top copper disc to the lowest zinc disc he was able to show that an appreciable current of electricity was produced. later he placed a piece of copper and a piece of zinc in a vessel containing acidulated water, whereupon he found that a steady current of electricity was obtained. this was the invention of electric batteries. the phenomena of _magnetism_ were known to the ancients, but it was not until the nineteenth century that we found any real connection between electricity and magnetism. in 1819, a danish philosopher, hans christian oersted, discovered that an electric current passing in a wire affected a magnet in its neighbourhood. if the magnet was supported on a pivot, after the manner of a compass needle, it would turn round and take up a position at right angles to the wire carrying the electric current. the molecular theory of magnetism presumes that every molecule of iron is a tiny magnet, having a north and south pole. in a piece of unmagnetised iron, these tiny magnets are all lying so that they neutralise one another. when they are turned round so that their north poles are all lying in one direction, then the iron is said to be magnetised. the electron theory of magnetism does not do away with the older molecular theory just referred to. the electron theory goes a step farther, and tells us that these molecules are magnets because of a steady motion of electrons around the atoms of iron. it was discovered in 1825 that when an electric current was sent through an insulated wire wound around a piece of soft iron, the iron became a magnet; when the current was stopped the magnetism disappeared. such magnets are called _electro-magnets_. if a piece of hard steel is treated in the same way it becomes a _permanent magnet_. it was this intimate connection between electricity and magnetism, or, in other words, the invention of these electro-magnets, which brought us electric bells, telegraphs, telephones, dynamos, and electric motors. it should be noted that while iron is attracted by either pole of a magnet, there is such a thing as magnetic repulsion. this, however, takes place only between two magnets, and then only between like poles. * * * * * some german physicists made a number of electrical experiments with vacuum tubes. when sir william crookes (england) was experimenting with similar vacuum tubes he suggested that matter was in a "radiant" state during the electric discharge within the tubes. in 1880, h. a. lorentz, of amsterdam, declared that light was due to the motion of small particles revolving around the atoms of matter. professor zeeman, of holland, produced experimental proof of lorentz's theory. he showed that the revolving "particles" were influenced by a powerful magnetic field, in the manner explained in the electron's story. this discovery was made in 1896, or sixteen years after lorentz's declaration. it was dr. johnstone stoney, of dublin university (ireland), who christened these particles "electrons." the x-rays were observed for the first time by professor roentgen, of germany, in 1895. the screens used for viewing the luminous effects produced by the x-rays are coated with very fine crystals of _barium platinocyanide_. these screens were in use for another purpose previous to the discovery of x-rays. we know now that _chemical affinity_ is merely electrical attraction between the atoms of matter. the spectroscope consists of a glass prism, or series of prisms, mounted between two metal tubes. one tube is provided at one end with a vertical slit, through which the light that is to be examined is passed. at the other end of the tube is a lens, so that the beam of light from the slit emerges through the lens as a pencil of parallel rays. the pencil of light then falls upon the glass prism, striking it at an angle. in passing through the prism, the light is bent round so that it enters the second tube, which is simply a small telescope. the prism separates the æther waves according to their wave-lengths, and produces the well-known coloured spectrum, which is magnified by the telescope. the reason for the bending of the different waves is explained in the electron's story. index absorption of light, 148 æther, the, 24 æther waves, 96, 131, 133, 137, 146, 148, 163 alpha rays from radium, 190 alternating electric current, 121 amber electrified, 32, 34 to 37, 201 artificial light, 140, 142 atoms breaking up, 188, 190 atoms co-operating with electrons, 108, 123 atom's internal energy, 187, 191 atoms of matter, 52, 54, 78, 128, 180, 184 attraction between atoms, 180 attraction, electrical, 35, 202 attraction, magnetic, 78, 205 aurora, 132 automatic telegraph transmitter, 91 battery, electric, 70, 203 beginning of the world, 53 beta rays from radium, 189 birth of the moon, 52, 54 bricks of the universe, 180, 195 chemical affinity, 206 chemical combinations, 56, 182 chemistry of the stars, 52, 55, 144, 153 chlorine atoms, 56, 182 cloud formation, 56 circuit, earth, 72 coherer, tube, 98 cohesive force, 183 colour, 136 compass needle, 77 complete electric circuit, 71 conductors, 37, 68 connecting link between æther and matter, 118, 127 corpuscles, 66 crookes, sir william, 205 current of electricity, 68 dark lines in spectrum, 154 detachable electrons, 78, 181 detecting imitation diamonds, 174 direct electric current, 121 discharge of electricity, 42 discharge through a vacuum, 60 discovery of electrons, 160, 206 discovery of x-rays, 169 dynamo, 116, 118 earth circuit, 72 electrical discharge, 42 electricity, positive, 23, 32, 39, 52, 180 electricity, negative, 23, 32, 39 electric battery, 70 electric current, 68, 70 electric motor, 116, 122 electric shock, 47 electrified objects, 37, 38, 201 electro-magnets, 76, 81, 83, 118, 205 electrodes, 61 electrocution, 49 electron as a go-between, 118 electron, derivation of the word, 23 electron, discovery of, 160, 206 electrons, 25, 32, 66, 78, 138, 162, 195 energy transmission through the æther, 73, 121 energy within the atom, 187, 191 field, magnetic, 68, 76, 118 fluorescent screen, 169, 206 galvani's discovery, 202 gamma rays from radium, 189 gilbert's discovery, 201 glass, electrified, 37, 38 glass prism, 147, 152 glow-lamp, electric, 140, 141 glow-worm, 142 heat, radiant, 126, 131, 133, 142 helium atoms, 188, 190 hydrogen atoms, 55, 182 insulators (non-conductors), 37, 47 iron atoms, 77 iron wires discarded, 88 lamp, electric, 140 leyden jar, 42, 202 light, 23, 60, 64, 133 light absorbed, 148 light, artificial, 140, 142 light, reflected, 148 lightning, 42, 48 lines in the spectrum, 152, 154, 160, 162 lorentz's declaration, 206 magnetic attraction, 78, 205 magnetic field, 68, 76, 118 magnetic repulsion, 205 magnetism, 73, 76, 203, 204 magnetism and electricity, 73 magnets, electro-, 76, 81, 83, 205 magnets, permanent, 83 mariner's compass, 77 matter, 52, 54 metal electrified, 37, 38 molecules of matter, 181, 183 moon's birth, 52, 54 morse telegraph, 88 motion in line of sight, 162 motor, electric, 116, 122 negative electricity, 23, 32, 39 oersted's discovery, 204 oxygen atoms, 182 permanent magnets, 82 positive electricity, 23, 32, 39, 52, 180 prism of glass, 147, 152 radiant heat, 131, 133, 142 radiant matter, 63, 205 radium, 188 rainbow, 147 rays from radium, 189, 190 reflection of light, 148 repulsion, electrical, 202 repulsion, magnetic, 205 roentgen rays, 167 roentgen's discovery, 168, 206 sea, cause of saltness, 56 shock, electric, 47 silk, electrified, 38 sodium atoms, 56, 182 spark, electric, 44 spectroscope, 152, 154, 207 spectrum, 144, 147, 152, 154 speed of electrons in conductor, 70 stars approaching the earth, 162 stars, constituents of the, 52, 55, 146 stoney, dr. johnstone, 206 sun, constituents of the, 154 sun's heat, 128, 131 telegraph signals, 90 telegraphy, wireless, 95 telephone, 109 telephony, wireless, 110 temperature, 180 tramway, electric, 117, 118, 122 transparent substances, 149 vacuum tubes, 60, 61, 132, 205 velocity of electrons, 70 volta's discovery, 203 waves in the æther, 96, 133, 137, 146, 148, 163 wireless messages from the stars, 162 wireless telegraphy, 95 wireless telephony, 110 x-rays, 166, 206 x-rays from radium, 189 x-ray photography, 173 zeeman proves existence of electrons, 161, 206 printed by ballantyne, hanson & co. edinburgh & london * * * * * transcriber's note the following changes have been made to the original text: page xi: "always necessary, how" changed to "always necessary. how" page 205: "vacuum tubes, when" changed to "vacuum tubes. when" page 214: "negative electricity, 23, 32, 9" changed to "negative electricity, 23, 32, 39" the master key an electrical fairy tale founded upon the mysteries of electricity and the optimism of its devotees. it was written for boys, but others may read it by l. frank baum contents --who knows?- 1. rob's workshop 2. the demon of electricity 3. the three gifts 4. testing the instruments 5. the cannibal island 6. the buccaneers 7. the demon becomes angry 8. rob acquires new powers 9. the second journey 10. how rob served a mighty king 11. the man of science 12. how rob saved a republic 13. rob loses his treasures 14. turk and tatar 15. a battle with monsters 16. shipwrecked mariners 17. the coast of oregon 18. a narrow escape 19. rob makes a resolution 20. the unhappy fate of the demon who knows? these things are quite improbable, to be sure; but are they impossible? our big world rolls over as smoothly as it did centuries ago, without a squeak to show it needs oiling after all these years of revolution. but times change because men change, and because civilization, like john brown's soul, goes ever marching on. the impossibilities of yesterday become the accepted facts of to-day. here is a fairy tale founded upon the wonders of electricity and written for children of this generation. yet when my readers shall have become men and women my story may not seem to their children like a fairy tale at all. perhaps one, perhaps two--perhaps several of the demon's devices will be, by that time, in popular use. who knows? 1. rob's workshop when rob became interested in electricity his clear-headed father considered the boy's fancy to be instructive as well as amusing; so he heartily encouraged his son, and rob never lacked batteries, motors or supplies of any sort that his experiments might require. he fitted up the little back room in the attic as his workshop, and from thence a net-work of wires soon ran throughout the house. not only had every outside door its electric bell, but every window was fitted with a burglar alarm; moreover no one could cross the threshold of any interior room without registering the fact in rob's workshop. the gas was lighted by an electric fob; a chime, connected with an erratic clock in the boy's room, woke the servants at all hours of the night and caused the cook to give warning; a bell rang whenever the postman dropped a letter into the box; there were bells, bells, bells everywhere, ringing at the right time, the wrong time and all the time. and there were telephones in the different rooms, too, through which rob could call up the different members of the family just when they did not wish to be disturbed. his mother and sisters soon came to vote the boy's scientific craze a nuisance; but his father was delighted with these evidences of rob's skill as an electrician, and insisted that he be allowed perfect freedom in carrying out his ideas. "electricity," said the old gentleman, sagely, "is destined to become the motive power of the world. the future advance of civilization will be along electrical lines. our boy may become a great inventor and astonish the world with his wonderful creations." "and in the meantime," said the mother, despairingly, "we shall all be electrocuted, or the house burned down by crossed wires, or we shall be blown into eternity by an explosion of chemicals!" "nonsense!" ejaculated the proud father. "rob's storage batteries are not powerful enough to electrocute one or set the house on fire. do give the boy a chance, belinda." "and the pranks are so humiliating," continued the lady. "when the minister called yesterday and rang the bell a big card appeared on the front door on which was printed the words: 'busy; call again.' fortunately helen saw him and let him in, but when i reproved robert for the act he said he was just trying the sign to see if it would work." "exactly! the boy is an inventor already. i shall have one of those cards attached to the door of my private office at once. i tell you, belinda, our son will be a great man one of these days," said mr. joslyn, walking up and down with pompous strides and almost bursting with the pride he took in his young hopeful. mrs. joslyn sighed. she knew remonstrance was useless so long as her husband encouraged the boy, and that she would be wise to bear her cross with fortitude. rob also knew his mother's protests would be of no avail; so he continued to revel in electrical processes of all sorts, using the house as an experimental station to test the powers of his productions. it was in his own room, however,--his "workshop"--that he especially delighted. for not only was it the center of all his numerous "lines" throughout the house, but he had rigged up therein a wonderful array of devices for his own amusement. a trolley-car moved around a circular track and stopped regularly at all stations; an engine and train of cars moved jerkily up and down a steep grade and through a tunnel; a windmill was busily pumping water from the dishpan into the copper skillet; a sawmill was in full operation and a host of mechanical blacksmiths, scissors-grinders, carpenters, wood-choppers and millers were connected with a motor which kept them working away at their trades in awkward but persevering fashion. the room was crossed and recrossed with wires. they crept up the walls, lined the floor, made a grille of the ceiling and would catch an unwary visitor under the chin or above the ankle just when he least expected it. yet visitors were forbidden in so crowded a room, and even his father declined to go farther than the doorway. as for rob, he thought he knew all about the wires, and what each one was for; but they puzzled even him, at times, and he was often perplexed to know how to utilize them all. one day when he had locked himself in to avoid interruption while he planned the electrical illumination of a gorgeous pasteboard palace, he really became confused over the network of wires. he had a "switchboard," to be sure, where he could make and break connections as he chose; but the wires had somehow become mixed, and he could not tell what combinations to use to throw the power on to his miniature electric lights. so he experimented in a rather haphazard fashion, connecting this and that wire blindly and by guesswork, in the hope that he would strike the right combination. then he thought the combination might be right and there was a lack of power; so he added other lines of wire to his connections, and still others, until he had employed almost every wire in the room. yet it would not work; and after pausing a moment to try to think what was wrong he went at it again, putting this and that line into connection, adding another here and another there, until suddenly, as he made a last change, a quick flash of light almost blinded him, and the switch-board crackled ominously, as if struggling to carry a powerful current. rob covered his face at the flash, but finding himself unhurt he took away his hands and with blinking eyes attempted to look at a wonderful radiance which seemed to fill the room, making it many times brighter than the brightest day. although at first completely dazzled, he peered before him until he discovered that the light was concentrated near one spot, from which all the glorious rays seemed to scintillate. he closed his eyes a moment to rest them; then re-opening them and shading them somewhat with his hands, he made out the form of a curious being standing with majesty and composure in the center of the magnificent radiance and looking down upon him! 2. the demon of electricity rob was a courageous boy, but a thrill of fear passed over him in spite of his bravest endeavor as he gazed upon the wondrous apparition that confronted him. for several moments he sat as if turned to stone, so motionless was he; but his eyes were nevertheless fastened upon the being and devouring every detail of his appearance. and how strange an appearance he presented! his jacket was a wavering mass of white light, edged with braid of red flames that shot little tongues in all directions. the buttons blazed in golden fire. his trousers had a bluish, incandescent color, with glowing stripes of crimson braid. his vest was gorgeous with all the colors of the rainbow blended into a flashing, resplendent mass. in feature he was most majestic, and his eyes held the soft but penetrating brilliance of electric lights. it was hard to meet the gaze of those searching eyes, but rob did it, and at once the splendid apparition bowed and said in a low, clear voice: "i am here." "i know that," answered the boy, trembling, "but why are you here?" "because you have touched the master key of electricity, and i must obey the laws of nature that compel me to respond to your summons." "i--i didn't know i touched the master key," faltered the boy. "i understand that. you did it unconsciously. no one in the world has ever done it before, for nature has hitherto kept the secret safe locked within her bosom." rob took time to wonder at this statement. "then who are you?" he inquired, at length. "the demon of electricity," was the solemn answer. "good gracious!" exclaimed rob, "a demon!" "certainly. i am, in truth, the slave of the master key, and am forced to obey the commands of any one who is wise and brave enough--or, as in your own case, fortunate and fool-hardy enough--to touch it." "i--i've never guessed there was such a thing as a master key, or--or a demon of electricity, and--and i'm awfully sorry i--i called you up!" stammered the boy, abashed by the imposing appearance of his companion. the demon actually smiled at this speech,--a smile that was almost reassuring. "i am not sorry," he said, in kindlier tone, "for it is not much pleasure waiting century after century for some one to command my services. i have often thought my existence uncalled for, since you earth people are so stupid and ignorant that you seem unlikely ever to master the secret of electrical power." "oh, we have some great masters among us!" cried rob, rather nettled at this statement. "now, there's edison--" "edison!" exclaimed the demon, with a faint sneer; "what does he know?" "lots of things," declared the boy. "he's invented no end of wonderful electrical things." "you are wrong to call them wonderful," replied the demon, lightly. "he really knows little more than yourself about the laws that control electricity. his inventions are trifling things in comparison with the really wonderful results to be obtained by one who would actually know how to direct the electric powers instead of groping blindly after insignificant effects. why, i've stood for months by edison's elbow, hoping and longing for him to touch the master key; but i can see plainly he will never accomplish it." "then there's tesla," said the boy. the demon laughed. "there is tesla, to be sure," he said. "but what of him?" "why, he's discovered a powerful light," the demon gave an amused chuckle, "and he's in communication with the people in mars." "what people?" "why, the people who live there." "there are none." this great statement almost took rob's breath away, and caused him to stare hard at his visitor. "it's generally thought," he resumed, in an annoyed tone, "that mars has inhabitants who are far in advance of ourselves in civilization. many scientific men think the people of mars have been trying to signal us for years, only we don't understand their signals. and great novelists have written about the martians and their wonderful civilization, and--" "and they all know as much about that little planet as you do yourself," interrupted the demon, impatiently. "the trouble with you earth people is that you delight in guessing about what you can not know. now i happen to know all about mars, because i can traverse all space and have had ample leisure to investigate the different planets. mars is not peopled at all, nor is any other of the planets you recognize in the heavens. some contain low orders of beasts, to be sure, but earth alone has an intelligent, thinking, reasoning population, and your scientists and novelists would do better trying to comprehend their own planet than in groping through space to unravel the mysteries of barren and unimportant worlds." rob listened to this with surprise and disappointment; but he reflected that the demon ought to know what he was talking about, so he did not venture to contradict him. "it is really astonishing," continued the apparition, "how little you people have learned about electricity. it is an earth element that has existed since the earth itself was formed, and if you but understood its proper use humanity would be marvelously benefited in many ways." "we are, already," protested rob; "our discoveries in electricity have enabled us to live much more conveniently." "then imagine your condition were you able fully to control this great element," replied the other, gravely. "the weaknesses and privations of mankind would be converted into power and luxury." "that's true, mr.--mr.--demon," said the boy. "excuse me if i don't get your name right, but i understood you to say you are a demon." "certainly. the demon of electricity." "but electricity is a good thing, you know, and--and--" "well?" "i've always understood that demons were bad things," added rob, boldly. "not necessarily," returned his visitor. "if you will take the trouble to consult your dictionary, you will find that demons may be either good or bad, like any other class of beings. originally all demons were good, yet of late years people have come to consider all demons evil. i do not know why. should you read hesiod you will find he says: 'soon was a world of holy demons made, aerial spirits, by great jove designed to be on earth the guardians of mankind.'" "but jove was himself a myth," objected rob, who had been studying mythology. the demon shrugged his shoulders. "then take the words of mr. shakespeare, to whom you all defer," he replied. "do you not remember that he says: 'thy demon (that's thy spirit which keeps thee) is noble, courageous, high, unmatchable.'" "oh, if shakespeare says it, that's all right," answered the boy. "but it seems you're more like a genius, for you answer the summons of the master key of electricity in the same way aladdin's genius answered the rubbing of the lamp." "to be sure. a demon is also a genius; and a genius is a demon," said the being. "what matters a name? i am here to do your bidding." 3. the three gifts familiarity with any great thing removes our awe of it. the great general is only terrible to the enemy; the great poet is frequently scolded by his wife; the children of the great statesman clamber about his knees with perfect trust and impunity; the great actor who is called before the curtain by admiring audiences is often waylaid at the stage door by his creditors. so rob, having conversed for a time with the glorious demon of electricity, began to regard him with more composure and less awe, as his eyes grew more and more accustomed to the splendor that at first had well-nigh blinded them. when the demon announced himself ready to do the boy's bidding, he frankly replied: "i am no skilled electrician, as you very well know. my calling you here was an accident. so i don't know how to command you, nor what to ask you to do." "but i must not take advantage of your ignorance," answered the demon. "also, i am quite anxious to utilize this opportunity to show the world what a powerful element electricity really is. so permit me to inform you that, having struck the master key, you are at liberty to demand from me three gifts each week for three successive weeks. these gifts, provided they are within the scope of electricity, i will grant." rob shook his head regretfully. "if i were a great electrician i should know what to ask," he said. "but i am too ignorant to take advantage of your kind offer." "then," replied the demon, "i will myself suggest the gifts, and they will be of such a character that the earth people will learn the possibilities that lie before them and be encouraged to work more intelligently and to persevere in mastering those natural and simple laws which control electricity. for one of the greatest errors they now labor under is that electricity is complicated and hard to understand. it is really the simplest earth element, lying within easy reach of any one who stretches out his hand to grasp and control its powers." rob yawned, for he thought the demon's speeches were growing rather tiresome. perhaps the genius noticed this rudeness, for he continued: "i regret, of course, that you are a boy instead of a grown man, for it will appear singular to your friends that so thoughtless a youth should seemingly have mastered the secrets that have baffled your most learned scientists. but that can not be helped, and presently you will become, through my aid, the most powerful and wonderful personage in all the world." "thank you," said rob, meekly. "it'll be no end of fun." "fun!" echoed the demon, scornfully. "but never mind; i must use the material fate has provided for me, and make the best of it." "what will you give me first?" asked the boy, eagerly. "that requires some thought," returned the demon, and paused for several moments, while rob feasted his eyes upon the gorgeous rays of color that flashed and vibrated in every direction and surrounded the figure of his visitor with an intense glow that resembled a halo. then the demon raised his head and said: "the thing most necessary to man is food to nourish his body. he passes a considerable part of his life in the struggle to procure food, to prepare it properly, and in the act of eating. this is not right. your body can not be very valuable to you if all your time is required to feed it. i shall, therefore, present you, as my first gift, this box of tablets. within each tablet are stored certain elements of electricity which are capable of nourishing a human body for a full day. all you need do is to toss one into your mouth each day and swallow it. it will nourish you, satisfy your hunger and build up your health and strength. the ordinary food of mankind is more or less injurious; this is entirely beneficial. moreover, you may carry enough tablets in your pocket to last for months." here he presented rob the silver box of tablets, and the boy, somewhat nervously, thanked him for the gift. "the next requirement of man," continued the demon, "is defense from his enemies. i notice with sorrow that men frequently have wars and kill one another. also, even in civilized communities, man is in constant danger from highwaymen, cranks and policemen. to defend himself he uses heavy and dangerous guns, with which to destroy his enemies. this is wrong. he has no right to take away what he can not bestow; to destroy what he can not create. to kill a fellow-creature is a horrid crime, even if done in self-defense. therefore, my second gift to you is this little tube. you may carry it within your pocket. whenever an enemy threatens you, be it man or beast, simply point the tube and press this button in the handle. an electric current will instantly be directed upon your foe, rendering him wholly unconscious for the period of one hour. during that time you will have opportunity to escape. as for your enemy, after regaining consciousness he will suffer no inconvenience from the encounter beyond a slight headache." "that's fine!" said rob, as he took the tube. it was scarcely six inches long, and hollow at one end. "the busy lives of men," proceeded the demon, "require them to move about and travel in all directions. yet to assist them there are only such crude and awkward machines as electric trolleys, cable cars, steam railways and automobiles. these crawl slowly over the uneven surface of the earth and frequently get out of order. it has grieved me that men have not yet discovered what even birds know: that the atmosphere offers them swift and easy means of traveling from one part of the earth's surface to another." "some people have tried to build airships," remarked rob. "so they have; great, unwieldy machines which offer so much resistance to the air that they are quite useless. a big machine is not needed to carry one through the air. there are forces in nature which may be readily used for such purpose. tell me, what holds you to the earth, and makes a stone fall to the ground?" "attraction of gravitation," said rob, promptly. "exactly. that is one force i refer to," said the demon. "the force of repulsion, which is little known, but just as powerful, is another that mankind may direct. then there are the polar electric forces, attracting objects toward the north or south poles. you have guessed something of this by the use of the compass, or electric needle. opposed to these is centrifugal electric force, drawing objects from east to west, or in the opposite direction. this force is created by the whirl of the earth upon its axis, and is easily utilized, although your scientific men have as yet paid little attention to it. "these forces, operating in all directions, absolute and immutable, are at the disposal of mankind. they will carry you through the atmosphere wherever and whenever you choose. that is, if you know how to control them. now, here is a machine i have myself perfected." the demon drew from his pocket something that resembled an open-faced watch, having a narrow, flexible band attached to it. "when you wish to travel," said he, "attach this little machine to your left wrist by means of the band. it is very light and will not be in your way. on this dial are points marked 'up' and 'down' as well as a perfect compass. when you desire to rise into the air set the indicator to the word 'up,' using a finger of your right hand to turn it. when you have risen as high as you wish, set the indicator to the point of the compass you want to follow and you will be carried by the proper electric force in that direction. to descend, set the indicator to the word 'down.' do you understand?" "perfectly!" cried rob, taking the machine from the demon with unfeigned delight. "this is really wonderful, and i'm awfully obliged to you!" "don't mention it," returned the demon, dryly. "these three gifts you may amuse yourself with for the next week. it seems hard to entrust such great scientific discoveries to the discretion of a mere boy; but they are quite harmless, so if you exercise proper care you can not get into trouble through their possession. and who knows what benefits to humanity may result? one week from to-day, at this hour, i will again appear to you, at which time you shall receive the second series of electrical gifts." "i'm not sure," said rob, "that i shall be able again to make the connections that will strike the master key." "probably not," answered the demon. "could you accomplish that, you might command my services forever. but, having once succeeded, you are entitled to the nine gifts--three each week for three weeks--so you have no need to call me to do my duty. i shall appear of my own accord." "thank you," murmured the boy. the demon bowed and spread his hands in the form of a semi-circle. an instant later there was a blinding flash, and when rob recovered from it and opened his eyes the demon of electricity had disappeared. 4. testing the instruments there is little doubt that this strange experience befallen a grown man he would have been stricken with a fit of trembling or a sense of apprehension, or even fear, at the thought of having faced the terrible demon of electricity, of having struck the master key of the world's greatest natural forces, and finding himself possessed of three such wonderful and useful gifts. but a boy takes everything as a matter of course. as the tree of knowledge sprouts and expands within him, shooting out leaf after leaf of practical experience, the succession of surprises dulls his faculty of wonderment. it takes a great deal to startle a boy. rob was full of delight at his unexpected good fortune; but he did not stop to consider that there was anything remarkably queer or uncanny in the manner in which it had come to him. his chief sensation was one of pride. he would now be able to surprise those who had made fun of his electrical craze and force them to respect his marvelous powers. he decided to say nothing about the demon or the accidental striking of the master key. in exhibiting to his friends the electrical devices he had acquired it would be "no end of fun" to mark their amazement and leave them to guess how he performed his feats. so he put his treasures into his pocket, locked his workshop and went downstairs to his room to prepare for dinner. while brushing his hair he remembered it was no longer necessary for him to eat ordinary food. he was feeling quite hungry at that moment, for he had a boy's ravenous appetite; but, taking the silver box from his pocket, he swallowed a tablet and at once felt his hunger as fully satisfied as if he had partaken of a hearty meal, while at the same time he experienced an exhilarating glow throughout his body and a clearness of brain and gaiety of spirits which filled him with intense gratification. still, he entered the dining-room when the bell rang and found his father and mother and sisters already assembled there. "where have you been all day, robert?" inquired his mother. "no need to ask," said mr. joslyn, with a laugh. "fussing over electricity, i'll bet a cookie!" "i do wish," said the mother, fretfully, "that he would get over that mania. it unfits him for anything else." "precisely," returned her husband, dishing the soup; "but it fits him for a great career when he becomes a man. why shouldn't he spend his summer vacation in pursuit of useful knowledge instead of romping around like ordinary boys?" "no soup, thank you," said rob. "what!" exclaimed his father, looking at him in surprise, "it's your favorite soup." "i know," said rob, quietly, "but i don't want any." "are you ill, robert?" asked his mother. "never felt better in my life," answered rob, truthfully. yet mrs. joslyn looked worried, and when rob refused the roast, she was really shocked. "let me feel your pulse, my poor boy!" she commanded, and wondered to find it so regular. in fact, rob's action surprised them all. he sat calmly throughout the meal, eating nothing, but apparently in good health and spirits, while even his sisters regarded him with troubled countenances. "he's worked too hard, i guess," said mr. joslyn, shaking his head sadly. "oh, no; i haven't," protested rob; "but i've decided not to eat anything, hereafter. it's a bad habit, and does more harm than good." "wait till breakfast," said sister helen, with a laugh; "you'll be hungry enough by that time." however, the boy had no desire for food at breakfast time, either, as the tablet sufficed for an entire day. so he renewed the anxiety of the family by refusing to join them at the table. "if this goes on," mr joslyn said to his son, when breakfast was finished, "i shall be obliged to send you away for your health." "i think of making a trip this morning," said rob, carelessly. "where to?" "oh, i may go to boston, or take a run over to cuba or jamaica," replied the boy. "but you can not go so far by yourself," declared his father; "and there is no one to go with you, just now. nor can i spare the money at present for so expensive a trip." "oh, it won't cost anything," replied rob, with a smile. mr. joslyn looked upon him gravely and sighed. mrs. joslyn bent over her son with tears in her eyes and said: "this electrical nonsense has affected your mind, dear. you must promise me to keep away from that horrid workshop for a time." "i won't enter it for a week," he answered. "but you needn't worry about me. i haven't been experimenting with electricity all this time for nothing, i can tell you. as for my health, i'm as well and strong as any boy need be, and there's nothing wrong with my head, either. common folks always think great men are crazy, but edison and tesla and i don't pay any attention to that. we've got our discoveries to look after. now, as i said, i'm going for a little trip in the interests of science. i may be back to-night, or i may be gone several days. anyhow, i'll be back in a week, and you mustn't worry about me a single minute." "how are you going?" inquired his father, in the gentle, soothing tone persons use in addressing maniacs. "through the air," said rob. his father groaned. "where's your balloon?" inquired sister mabel, sarcastically. "i don't need a balloon," returned the boy. "that's a clumsy way of traveling, at best. i shall go by electric propulsion." "good gracious!" cried mr. joslyn, and the mother murmured: "my poor boy! my poor boy!" "as you are my nearest relatives," continued rob, not noticing these exclamations, "i will allow you to come into the back yard and see me start. you will then understand something of my electrical powers." they followed him at once, although with unbelieving faces, and on the way rob clasped the little machine to his left wrist, so that his coat sleeve nearly hid it. when they reached the lawn at the back of the house rob kissed them all good-by, much to his sisters' amusement, and turned the indicator of the little instrument to the word "up." immediately he began to rise into the air. "don't worry about me!" he called down to them. "good-by!" mrs. joslyn, with a scream of terror, hid her face in her hands. "he'll break his neck!" cried the astounded father, tipping back his head to look after his departing son. "come back! come back!" shouted the girls to the soaring adventurer. "i will--some day!" was the far-away answer. having risen high enough to pass over the tallest tree or steeple, rob put the indicator to the east of the compass-dial and at once began moving rapidly in that direction. the sensation was delightful. he rode as gently as a feather floats, without any exertion at all on his own part; yet he moved so swiftly that he easily distanced a railway train that was speeding in the same direction. "this is great!" reflected the youth. "here i am, traveling in fine style, without a penny to pay any one! and i've enough food to last me a month in my coat pocket. this electricity is the proper stuff, after all! and the demon's a trump, and no mistake. whee-ee! how small everything looks down below there. the people are bugs, and the houses are soap-boxes, and the trees are like clumps of grass. i seem to be passing over a town. guess i'll drop down a bit, and take in the sights." he pointed the indicator to the word "down," and at once began dropping through the air. he experienced the sensation one feels while descending in an elevator. when he reached a point just above the town he put the indicator to the zero mark and remained stationary, while he examined the place. but there was nothing to interest him, particularly; so after a brief survey he once more ascended and continued his journey toward the east. at about two o'clock in the afternoon he reached the city of boston, and alighting unobserved in a quiet street he walked around for several hours enjoying the sights and wondering what people would think of him if they but knew his remarkable powers. but as he looked just like any other boy no one noticed him in any way. it was nearly evening, and rob had wandered down by the wharves to look at the shipping, when his attention was called to an ugly looking bull dog, which ran toward him and began barking ferociously. "get out!" said the boy, carelessly, and made a kick at the brute. the dog uttered a fierce growl and sprang upon him with bared teeth and flashing red eyes. instantly rob drew the electric tube from his pocket, pointed it at the dog and pressed the button. almost at the same moment the dog gave a yelp, rolled over once or twice and lay still. "i guess that'll settle him," laughed the boy; but just then he heard an angry shout, and looking around saw a policeman running toward him. "kill me dog, will ye--eh?" yelled the officer; "well, i'll just run ye in for that same, an' ye'll spend the night in the lockup!" and on he came, with drawn club in one hand and a big revolver in the other. "you'll have to catch me first," said rob, still laughing, and to the amazement of the policeman he began rising straight into the air. "come down here! come down, or i'll shoot!" shouted the fellow, flourishing his revolver. rob was afraid he would; so, to avoid accidents, he pointed the tube at him and pressed the button. the red-whiskered policeman keeled over quite gracefully and fell across the body of the dog, while rob continued to mount upward until he was out of sight of those in the streets. "that was a narrow escape," he thought, breathing more freely. "i hated to paralyze that policeman, but he might have sent a bullet after me. anyhow, he'll be all right again in an hour, so i needn't worry." it was beginning to grow dark, and he wondered what he should do next. had he possessed any money he would have descended to the town and taken a bed at a hotel, but he had left home without a single penny. fortunately the nights were warm at this season, so he determined to travel all night, that he might reach by morning some place he had never before visited. cuba had always interested him, and he judged it ought to lie in a southeasterly direction from boston. so he set the indicator to that point and began gliding swiftly toward the southeast. he now remembered that it was twenty-four hours since he had eaten the first electrical tablet. as he rode through the air he consumed another. all hunger at once left him, while he felt the same invigorating sensations as before. after a time the moon came out, and rob amused himself gazing at the countless stars in the sky and wondering if the demon was right when he said the world was the most important of all the planets. but presently he grew sleepy, and before he realized what was happening he had fallen into a sound and peaceful slumber, while the indicator still pointed to the southeast and he continued to move rapidly through the cool night air. 5. the cannibal island doubtless the adventures of the day had tired rob, for he slept throughout the night as comfortably as if he had been within his own room, lying upon his own bed. when, at last, he opened his eyes and gazed sleepily about him, he found himself over a great body of water, moving along with considerable speed. "it's the ocean, of course," he said to himself. "i haven't reached cuba yet." it is to be regretted that rob's knowledge of geography was so superficial; for, as he had intended to reach cuba, he should have taken a course almost southwest from boston, instead of southeast. the sad result of his ignorance you will presently learn, for during the entire day he continued to travel over a boundless waste of ocean, without the sight of even an island to cheer him. the sun shone so hot that he regretted he had not brought an umbrella. but he wore a wide-brimmed straw hat, which protected him somewhat, and he finally discovered that by rising to a considerable distance above the ocean he avoided the reflection of the sun upon the water and also came with the current of good breeze. of course he dared no stop, for there was no place to land; so he calmly continued his journey. "it may be i've missed cuba," he thought; "but i can not change my course now, for if i did i might get lost, and never be able to find land again. if i keep on as i am i shall be sure to reach land of some sort, in time, and when i wish to return home i can set the indicator to the northwest and that will take me directly back to boston." this was good reasoning, but the rash youth had no idea he was speeding over the ocean, or that he was destined to arrive shortly at the barbarous island of brava, off the coast of africa. yet such was the case; just as the sun sank over the edge of the waves he saw, to his great relief, a large island directly in his path. he dropped to a lower position in the air, and when he judged himself to be over the center of the island he turned the indicator to zero and stopped short. the country was beautifully wooded, while pretty brooks sparkled through the rich green foliage of the trees. the island sloped upwards from the sea-coast in all directions, rising to a hill that was almost a mountain in the center. there were two open spaces, one on each side of the island, and rob saw that these spaces were occupied by queer-looking huts built from brushwood and branches of trees. this showed that the island was inhabited, but as rob had no idea what island it was he wisely determined not to meet the natives until he had discovered what they were like and whether they were disposed to be friendly. so he moved over the hill, the top of which proved to be a flat, grass-covered plateau about fifty feet in diameter. finding it could not be easily reached from below, on account of its steep sides, and contained neither men nor animals, he alighted on the hill-top and touched his feet to the earth for the first time in twenty-four hours. the ride through the air had not tired him in the least; in fact, he felt as fresh and vigorous as if he had been resting throughout the journey. as he walked upon the soft grass of the plateau he felt elated, and compared himself to the explorers of ancient days; for it was evident that civilization had not yet reached this delightful spot. there was scarcely any twilight in this tropical climate and it grew dark quickly. within a few minutes the entire island, save where he stood, became dim and indistinct. he ate his daily tablet, and after watching the red glow fade in the western sky and the gray shadows of night settle around him he stretched himself comfortably upon the grass and went to sleep. the events of the day must have deepened his slumber, for when he awoke the sun was shining almost directly over him, showing that the day was well advanced. he stood up, rubbed the sleep from his eyes and decided he would like a drink of water. from where he stood he could see several little brooks following winding paths through the forest, so he settled upon one that seemed farthest from the brushwood villages, and turning his indicator in that direction soon floated through the air to a sheltered spot upon the bank. kneeling down, he enjoyed a long, refreshing drink of the clear water, but as he started to regain his feet a coil of rope was suddenly thrown about him, pinning his arms to his sides and rendering him absolutely helpless. at the same time his ears were saluted with a wild chattering in an unknown tongue, and he found himself surrounded by a group of natives of hideous appearance. they were nearly naked, and bore spears and heavy clubs as their only weapons. their hair was long, curly, and thick as bushes, and through their noses and ears were stuck the teeth of sharks and curious metal ornaments. these creatures had stolen upon rob so quietly that he had not heard a sound, but now they jabbered loudly, as if much excited. finally one fat and somewhat aged native, who seemed to be a chief, came close to rob and said, in broken english: "how get here?" "i flew," said the boy, with a grin. the chief shook his head, saying: "no boat come. how white man come?" "through the air," replied rob, who was rather flattered at being called a "man." the chief looked into the air with a puzzled expression and shook his head again. "white man lie," he said calmly. then he held further conversation with his fellows, after which he turned to rob and announced: "me see white man many times. come in big boats. white man all bad. make kill with bang-sticks. we kill white man with club. then we eat white man. dead white man good. live white man bad!" this did not please rob at all. the idea of being eaten by savages had never occurred to him as a sequel to his adventures. so he said rather anxiously to the chief. "look here, old fellow; do you want to die?" "me no die. you die," was the reply. "you'll die, too, if you eat me," said rob. "i'm full of poison." "poison? don't know poison," returned the chief, much perplexed to understand him. "well, poison will make you sick--awful sick. then you'll die. i'm full of it; eat it every day for breakfast. it don't hurt white men, you see, but it kills black men quicker than the bang-stick." the chief listened to this statement carefully, but only understood it in part. after a moment's reflection he declared: "white man lie. lie all time. me eat plenty white man. never get sick; never die." then he added, with renewed cheerfulness: "me eat you, too!" before rob could think of a further protest, his captors caught up the end of the rope and led him away through the forest. he was tightly bound, and one strand of rope ran across the machine on his wrist and pressed it into his flesh until the pain was severe. but he resolved to be brave, whatever happened, so he stumbled along after the savages without a word. after a brief journey they came to a village, where rob was thrust into a brushwood hut and thrown upon the ground, still tightly bound. "we light fire," said the chief. "then kill little white man. then eat him." with this comforting promise he went away and left rob alone to think the matter over. "this is tough," reflected the boy, with a groan. "i never expected to feed cannibals. wish i was at home with mother and dad and the girls. wish i'd never seen the demon of electricity and his wonderful inventions. i was happy enough before i struck that awful master key. and now i'll be eaten--with salt and pepper, probably. wonder if there'll be any gravy. perhaps they'll boil me, with biscuits, as mother does chickens. oh-h-h-h-h! it's just awful!" in the midst of these depressing thoughts he became aware that something was hurting his back. after rolling over he found that he had been lying upon a sharp stone that stuck out of the earth. this gave him an idea. he rolled upon the stone again and began rubbing the rope that bound him against the sharp edge. outside he could hear the crackling of fagots and the roar of a newly-kindled fire, so he knew he had no time to spare. he wriggled and pushed his body right and left, right and left, sawing away at the rope, until the strain and exertion started the perspiration from every pore. at length the rope parted, and hastily uncoiling it from his body rob stood up and rubbed his benumbed muscles and tried to regain his lost breath. he had not freed himself a moment too soon, he found, for hearing a grunt of surprise behind him he turned around and saw a native standing in the door of the hut. rob laughed, for he was not a bit afraid of the blacks now. as the native made a rush toward him the boy drew the electric tube from his pocket, pointed it at the foe, and pressed the button. the fellow sank to the earth without even a groan, and lay still. then another black entered, followed by the fat chief. when they saw rob at liberty, and their comrade lying apparently dead, the chief cried out in surprise, using some expressive words in his own language. "if it's just the same to you, old chap," said rob, coolly, "i won't be eaten to-day. you can make a pie of that fellow on the ground." "no! we eat you," cried the chief, angrily. "you cut rope, but no get away; no boat!" "i don't need a boat, thank you," said the boy; and then, as the other native sprang forward, he pointed the tube and laid him out beside his first victim. at this act the chief stood an instant in amazed uncertainty. then he turned and rushed from the hut. laughing with amusement at the waddling, fat figure, rob followed the chief and found himself standing almost in the center of the native village. a big fire was blazing merrily and the blacks were busy making preparations for a grand feast. rob was quickly surrounded by a crowd of the villagers, who chattered fiercely and made threatening motions in his direction; but as the chief cried out to them a warning in the native tongue they kept a respectful distance and contented themselves with brandishing their spears and clubs. "if any of your fellows come nearer," rob said to the fat chief, "i'll knock 'em over." "what you make do?" asked the chief, nervously. "watch sharp, and you'll see," answered rob. then he made a mocking bow to the circle and continued: "i'm pleased to have met you fellows, and proud to think you like me well enough to want to eat me; but i'm in a bit of a hurry to-day, so i can't stop to be digested." after which, as the crowd broke into a hum of surprise, he added: "good-day, black folks!" and quickly turned the indicator of his traveling machine to the word "up." slowly he rose into the air, until his heels were just above the gaping blacks; but there he stopped short. with a thrill of fear he glanced at the indicator. it was pointed properly, and he knew at once that something was wrong with the delicate mechanism that controlled it. probably the pressure of the rope across its face, when he was bound, had put it out of order. there he was, seven feet in the air, but without the power to rise an inch farther. this short flight, however, had greatly astonished the blacks, who, seeing his body suspended in mid-air, immediately hailed him as a god, and prostrated themselves upon the ground before him. the fat chief had seen something of white men in his youth, and had learned to mistrust them. so, while he remained as prostrate as the rest, he peeped at rob with one of his little black eyes and saw that the boy was ill at ease, and seemed both annoyed and frightened. so he muttered some orders to the man next him, who wriggled along the ground until he had reached a position behind rob, when he rose and pricked the suspended "god" with the point of his spear. "ouch!" yelled the boy; "stop that!" he twisted his head around, and seeing the black again make a movement with the spear, rob turned his electric tube upon him and keeled him over like a ten-pin. the natives, who had looked up at his cry of pain, again prostrated themselves, kicking their toes against the ground in a terrified tattoo at this new evidence of the god's powers. the situation was growing somewhat strained by this time, and rob did not know what the savages would decide to do next; so he thought it best to move away from them, since he was unable to rise to a greater height. he turned the indicator towards the south, where a level space appeared between the trees; but instead of taking that direction he moved towards the northeast, a proof that his machine had now become absolutely unreliable. moreover, he was slowly approaching the fire, which, although it had ceased blazing, was a mass of glowing red embers. in his excitement he turned the indicator this way and that, trying to change the direction of his flight, but the only result of his endeavor was to carry him directly over the fire, where he came to a full stop. "murder! help! fire and blazes!" he cried, as he felt the glow of the coals beneath him. "i'll be roasted, after all! here; help, fatty, help!" the fat chief sprang to his feet and came to the rescue. he reached up, caught rob by the heels, and pulled him down to the ground, away from the fire. but the next moment, as he clung to the boy's feet, they both soared into the air again, and, although now far enough from the fire to escape its heat, the savage, finding himself lifted from the earth, uttered a scream of horror and let go of rob, to fall head over heels upon the ground. the other blacks had by this time regained their feet, and now they crowded around their chief and set him upright again. rob continued to float in the air, just above their heads, and now abandoned all thoughts of escaping by means of his wrecked traveling machine. but he resolved to regain a foothold upon the earth and take his chances of escape by running rather than flying. so he turned the indicator to the word "down," and very slowly it obeyed, allowing him, to his great relief, to sink gently to the ground. 6. the buccaneers once more the blacks formed a circle around our adventurer, who coolly drew his tube and said to the chief: "tell your people i'm going to walk away through those trees, and if any one dares to interfere with me i'll paralyze him." the chief understood enough english to catch his meaning, and repeated the message to his men. having seen the terrible effect of the electric tube they wisely fell back and allowed the boy to pass. he marched through their lines with a fine air of dignity, although he was fearful lest some of the blacks should stick a spear into him or bump his head with a war-club. but they were awed by the wonders they had seen and were still inclined to believe him a god, so he was not molested. when he found himself outside the village he made for the high plateau in the center of the island, where he could be safe from the cannibals while he collected his thoughts. but when he reached the place he found the sides so steep he could not climb them, so he adjusted the indicator to the word "up" and found it had still had enough power to support his body while he clambered up the rocks to the level, grass-covered space at the top. then, reclining upon his back, he gave himself up to thoughts of how he might escape from his unpleasant predicament. "here i am, on a cannibal island, hundreds of miles from civilization, with no way to get back," he reflected. "the family will look for me every day, and finally decide i've broken my neck. the demon will call upon me when the week is up and won't find me at home; so i'll miss the next three gifts. i don't mind that so much, for they might bring me into worst scrapes than this. but how am i to get away from this beastly island? i'll be eaten, after all, if i don't look out!" these and similar thoughts occupied him for some time, yet in spite of much planning and thinking he could find no practical means of escape. at the end of an hour he looked over the edge of the plateau and found it surrounded by a ring of the black cannibals, who had calmly seated themselves to watch his movements. "perhaps they intend to starve me into surrender," he thought; "but they won't succeed so long as my tablets hold out. and if, in time, they should starve me, i'll be too thin and tough to make good eating; so i'll get the best of them, anyhow." then he again lay down and began to examine his electrical traveling machine. he did not dare take it apart, fearing he might not be able to get it together again, for he knew nothing at all about its construction. but he discovered two little dents on the edge, one on each side, which had evidently been caused by the pressure of the rope. "if i could get those dents out," he thought, "the machine might work." he first tried to pry out the edges with his pocket knife, but the attempt resulted in failure, then, as the sides seemed a little bulged outward by the dents, he placed the machine between two flat stones and pressed them together until the little instrument was nearly round again. the dents remained, to be sure, but he hoped he had removed the pressure upon the works. there was just one way to discover how well he had succeeded, so he fastened the machine to his wrist and turned the indicator to the word "up." slowly he ascended, this time to a height of nearly twenty feet. then his progress became slower and finally ceased altogether. "that's a little better," he thought. "now let's see if it will go sidewise." he put the indicator to "north-west,"--the direction of home--and very slowly the machine obeyed and carried him away from the plateau and across the island. the natives saw him go, and springing to their feet began uttering excited shouts and throwing their spears at him. but he was already so high and so far away that they failed to reach him, and the boy continued his journey unharmed. once the branches of a tall tree caught him and nearly tipped him over; but he managed to escape others by drawing up his feet. at last he was free of the island and traveling over the ocean again. he was not at all sorry to bid good-by to the cannibal island, but he was worried about the machine, which clearly was not in good working order. the vast ocean was beneath him, and he moved no faster than an ordinary walk. "at this rate i'll get home some time next year," he grumbled. "however, i suppose i ought to be glad the machine works at all." and he really was glad. all the afternoon and all the long summer night he moved slowly over the water. it was annoying to go at "a reg'lar jog-trot," as rob called it, after his former swift flight; but there was no help for it. just as dawn was breaking he saw in the distance a small vessel, sailing in the direction he was following, yet scarcely moving for lack of wind. he soon caught up with it, but saw no one on deck, and the craft had a dingy and uncared-for appearance that was not reassuring. but after hovering over it for some time rob decided to board the ship and rest for a while. he alighted near the bow, where the deck was highest, and was about to explore the place when a man came out of the low cabin and espied him. this person had a most villainous countenance, and was dark-skinned, black-bearded and dressed in an outlandish, piratical costume. on seeing the boy he gave a loud shout and was immediately joined by four companions, each as disagreeable in appearance as the first. rob knew there would be trouble the moment he looked at this evil crew, and when they drew their daggers and pistols and began fiercely shouting in an unknown tongue, the boy sighed and took the electric tube from his coat pocket. the buccaneers did not notice the movement, but rushed upon him so quickly that he had to press the button at a lively rate. the tube made no noise at all, so it was a strange and remarkable sight to see the pirates suddenly drop to the deck and lie motionless. indeed, one was so nearly upon him when the electric current struck him that his head, in falling, bumped into rob's stomach and sent him reeling against the side of the vessel. he quickly recovered himself, and seeing his enemies were rendered harmless, the boy entered the cabin and examined it curiously. it was dirty and ill-smelling enough, but the corners and spare berths were heaped with merchandise of all kinds which had been taken from those so unlucky as to have met these cruel and desperate men. after a short inspection of the place he returned to the deck and again seated himself in the bow. the crippled condition of his traveling machine was now his chief trouble, and although a good breeze had sprung up to fill the sails and the little bark was making fair headway, rob knew he could never expect to reach home unless he could discover a better mode of conveyance than this. he unstrapped the machine from his wrist to examine it better, and while holding it carelessly in his hand it slipped and fell with a bang to the deck, striking upon its round edge and rolling quickly past the cabin and out of sight. with a cry of alarm he ran after it, and after much search found it lying against the bulwark near the edge of a scupper hole, where the least jar of the ship would have sent it to the bottom of the ocean. rob hastily seized his treasure and upon examining it found the fall had bulged the rim so that the old dents scarcely showed at all. but its original shape was more distorted than ever, and rob feared he had utterly ruined its delicate mechanism. should this prove to be true, he might now consider himself a prisoner of this piratical band, the members of which, although temporarily disabled, would soon regain consciousness. he sat in the bow, sadly thinking of his misfortunes, until he noticed that one of the men began to stir. the effect of the electric shock conveyed by the tube was beginning to wear away, and now the buccaneer sat up, rubbed his head in a bewildered fashion and looked around him. when he saw rob he gave a shout of rage and drew his knife, but one motion of the electric tube made him cringe and slip away to the cabin, where he remained out of danger. and now the other four sat up, groaning and muttering in their outlandish speech; but they had no notion of facing rob's tube a second time, so one by one they joined their leader in the cabin, leaving the boy undisturbed. by this time the ship had begun to pitch and toss in an uncomfortable fashion, and rob noticed that the breeze had increased to a gale. there being no one to look after the sails, the vessel was in grave danger of capsizing or breaking her masts. the waves were now running high, too, and rob began to be worried. presently the captain of the pirates stuck his head out of the cabin door, jabbered some unintelligible words and pointed to the sails. the boy nodded, for he understood they wanted to attend to the rigging. so the crew trooped forth, rather fearfully, and began to reef the sails and put the ship into condition to weather the storm. rob paid no further attention to them. he looked at his traveling machine rather doubtfully and wondered if he dared risk its power to carry him through the air. whether he remained in the ship or trusted to the machine, he stood a good chance of dropping into the sea at any moment. so, while he hesitated, he attached the machine to his wrist and leaned over the bulwarks to watch the progress of the storm. he might stay in the ship until it foundered, he thought, and then take his chances with the machine. he decided to wait until a climax arrived. the climax came the next moment, for while he leaned over the bulwarks the buccaneers stole up behind him and suddenly seized him in their grasp. while two of them held his arms the others searched his pockets, taking from him the electric tube and the silver box containing his tablets. these they carried to the cabin and threw upon the heap of other valuables they had stolen. they did not notice his traveling machine, however, but seeing him now unarmed they began jeering and laughing at him, while the brutal captain relieved his anger by giving the prisoner several malicious kicks. rob bore his misfortune meekly, although he was almost ready to cry with grief and disappointment. but when one of the pirates, to inflict further punishment on the boy, came towards him with a heavy strap, he resolved not to await the blow. turning the indicator to the word "up" he found, to his joy and relief, that it would yet obey the influence of the power of repulsion. seeing him rise into the air the fellow made a grab for his foot and held it firmly, while his companions ran to help him. weight seemed to make no difference in the machine; it lifted the pirate as well as rob; it lifted another who clung to the first man's leg, and another who clung to him. the other two also caught hold, hoping their united strength would pull him down, and the next minute rob was soaring through the air with the entire string of five buccaneers dangling from his left leg. at first the villains were too astounded to speak, but as they realized that they were being carried through the air and away from their ship they broke into loud shouts of dismay, and finally the one who grasped rob's leg lost his hold and the five plunged downward and splashed into the sea. finding the machine disposed to work accurately, rob left the buccaneers to swim to the ship in the best way they could, while he dropped down to the deck again and recovered from the cabin his box of tablets and the electric tube. the fellows were just scrambling on board when he again escaped, shooting into the air with considerable speed. indeed, the instrument now worked better than at any time since he had reached the cannibal island, and the boy was greatly delighted. the wind at first sent him spinning away to the south, but he continued to rise until he was above the air currents, and the storm raged far beneath him. then he set the indicator to the northwest and breathlessly waited to see if it would obey. hurrah! away he sped at a fair rate of speed, while all his anxiety changed to a feeling of sweet contentment. his success had greatly surprised him, but he concluded that the jar caused by dropping the instrument had relieved the pressure upon the works, and so helped rather than harmed the free action of the electric currents. while he moved through the air with an easy, gliding motion he watched with much interest the storm raging below. above his head the sun was peacefully shining and the contrast was strange and impressive. after an hour or so the storm abated, or else he passed away from it, for the deep blue of the ocean again greeted his eyes. he dropped downward until he was about a hundred feet above the water, when he continued his northwesterly course. but now he regretted having interfered for a moment with the action of the machine, for his progress, instead of being swift as a bird's flight, became slow and jerky, nor was he sure that the damaged machine might not break down altogether at any moment. yet so far his progress was in the right direction, and he resolved to experiment no further with the instrument, but to let it go as it would, so long as it supported him above the water. however irregular the motion might be, it was sure, if continued, to bring him to land in time, and that was all he cared about just then. when night fell his slumber was broken and uneasy, for he wakened more than once with a start of fear that the machine had broken and he was falling into the sea. sometimes he was carried along at a swift pace, and again the machine scarcely worked at all; so his anxiety was excusable. the following day was one of continued uneasiness for the boy, who began to be harrassed by doubts as to whether, after all, he was moving in the right direction. the machine had failed at one time in this respect and it might again. he had lost all confidence in its accuracy. in spite of these perplexities rob passed the second night of his uneven flight in profound slumber, being exhausted by the strain and excitement he had undergone. when he awoke at daybreak, he saw, to his profound delight, that he was approaching land. the rising sun found him passing over a big city, which he knew to be boston. he did not stop. the machine was so little to be depended upon that he dared make no halt. but he was obliged to alter the direction from northwest to west, and the result of this slight change was so great a reduction in speed that it was mid-day before he saw beneath him the familiar village in which he lived. carefully marking the location of his father's house, he came to a stop directly over it, and a few moments later he managed to land upon the exact spot in the back yard whence he had taken his first successful flight. 7. the demon becomes angry when rob had been hugged and kissed by his mother and sisters, and even mr. joslyn had embraced him warmly, he gave them a brief account of his adventures. the story was received with many doubtful looks and much grave shaking of heads, as was quite natural under the circumstances. "i hope, my dear son," said the father, "that you have now passed through enough dangers to last you a lifetime, so that hereafter you will be contented to remain at home." "oh, robert!" cried his mother, with tears in her loving eyes, "you don't know how we've all worried about you for the past week!" "a week?" asked rob, with surprise. "yes; it's a week to-morrow morning since you flew into the air and disappeared." "then," said the boy, thoughtfully, "i've reached home just in time." "in time for what?" she asked. but he did not answer that question. he was thinking of the demon, and that on the afternoon of this very day he might expect the wise and splendid genius to visit him a second time. at luncheon, although he did not feel hungry, he joined the family at the table and pleased his mother by eating as heartily as of old. he was surprised to find how good the food tasted, and to realize what a pleasure it is to gratify one's sense of taste. the tablets were all right for a journey, he thought, but if he always ate them he would be sure to miss a great deal of enjoyment, since there was no taste to them at all. at four o'clock he went to his workshop and unlocked the door. everything was exactly as he had left it, and he looked at his simple electrical devices with some amusement. they seemed tame beside the wonders now in his possession; yet he recollected that his numerous wires had enabled him to strike the master key, and therefore should not be despised. before long he noticed a quickening in the air, as if it were suddenly surcharged with electric fluid, and the next instant, in a dazzling flash of light, appeared the demon. "i am here!" he announced. "so am i," answered rob. "but at one time i really thought i should never see you again. i've been--" "spare me your history," said the demon, coldly. "i am aware of your adventures." "oh, you are!" said rob, amazed. "then you know--" "i know all about your foolish experiences," interrupted the demon, "for i have been with you constantly, although i remained invisible." "then you know what a jolly time i've had," returned the boy. "but why do you call them foolish experiences?" "because they were, abominably foolish!" retorted the demon, bitterly. "i entrusted to you gifts of rare scientific interest--electrical devices of such utility that their general adoption by mankind would create a new era in earth life. i hoped your use of these devices would convey such hints to electrical engineers that they would quickly comprehend their mechanism and be able to reproduce them in sufficient quantities to supply the world. and how do you treat these marvelous gifts? why, you carry them to a cannibal island, where even your crude civilization has not yet penetrated!" "i wanted to astonish the natives," said rob, grinning. the demon uttered an exclamation of anger, and stamped his foot so fiercely that thousands of electric sparks filled the air, to disappear quickly with a hissing, crinkling sound. "you might have astonished those ignorant natives as easily by showing them an ordinary electric light," he cried, mockingly. "the power of your gifts would have startled the most advanced electricians of the world. why did you waste them upon barbarians?" "really," faltered rob, who was frightened and awed by the demon's vehement anger, "i never intended to visit a cannibal island. i meant to go to cuba." "cuba! is that a center of advanced scientific thought? why did you not take your marvels to new york or chicago; or, if you wished to cross the ocean, to paris or vienna?" "i never thought of those places," acknowledged rob, meekly. "then you were foolish, as i said," declared the demon, in a calmer tone. "can you not realize that it is better to be considered great by the intelligent thinkers of the earth, than to be taken for a god by stupid cannibals?" "oh, yes, of course," said rob. "i wish now that i had gone to europe. but you're not the only one who has a kick coming," he continued. "your flimsy traveling machine was nearly the death of me." "ah, it is true," acknowledged the demon, frankly. "the case was made of too light material. when the rim was bent it pressed against the works and impeded the proper action of the currents. had you gone to a civilized country such an accident could not have happened; but to avoid possible trouble in the future i have prepared a new instrument, having a stronger case, which i will exchange for the one you now have." "that's very kind of you," said rob, eagerly handing his battered machine to the demon and receiving the new one in return. "are you sure this will work?" "it is impossible for you to injure it," answered the other. "and how about the next three gifts?" inquired the boy, anxiously. "before i grant them," replied the demon, "you must give me a promise to keep away from uncivilized places and to exhibit your acquirements only among people of intelligence." "all right," agreed the boy; "i'm not anxious to visit that island again, or any other uncivilized country." "then i will add to your possessions three gifts, each more precious and important than the three you have already received." at this announcement rob began to quiver with excitement, and sat staring eagerly at the demon, while the latter increased in stature and sparkled and glowed more brilliantly than ever. 8. rob acquires new powers "i have seen the folly of sending you into the world with an offensive instrument, yet with no method of defense," resumed the demon, presently. "you have knocked over a good many people with that tube during the past week." "i know," said rob; "but i couldn't help it. it was the only way i had to protect myself." "therefore my next gift shall be this garment of protection. you must wear it underneath your clothing. it has power to accumulate and exercise electrical repellent force. perhaps you do not know what that means, so i will explain more fully. when any missile, such as a bullet, sword or lance, approaches your person, its rush through the air will arouse the repellent force of which i speak, and this force, being more powerful than the projective force, will arrest the flight of the missile and throw it back again. therefore nothing can touch your person that comes with any degree of force or swiftness, and you will be safe from all ordinary weapons. when wearing this garment you will find it unnecessary to use the electric tube except on rare occasions. never allow revenge or animosity to influence your conduct. men may threaten, but they can not injure you, so you must remember that they do not possess your mighty advantages, and that, because of your strength, you should bear with them patiently." rob examined the garment with much curiosity. it glittered like silver, yet was soft and pliable as lamb's wool. evidently the demon had prepared it especially for his use, for it was just rob's size. "now," continued the demon, more gravely, "we approach the subject of an electrical device so truly marvelous that even i am awed when i contemplate the accuracy and perfection of the natural laws which guide it and permit it to exercise its functions. mankind has as yet conceived nothing like it, for it requires full knowledge of electrical power to understand even its possibilities." the being paused, and drew from an inner pocket something resembling a flat metal box. in size it was about four inches by six, and nearly an inch in thickness. "what is it?" asked rob, wonderingly. "it is an automatic record of events," answered the demon. "i don't understand," said rob, with hesitation. "i will explain to you its use," returned the demon, "although the electrical forces which operate it and the vibratory currents which are the true records must remain unknown to you until your brain has mastered the higher knowledge of electricity. at present the practical side of this invention will be more interesting to you than a review of its scientific construction. "suppose you wish to know the principal events that are occurring in germany at the present moment. you first turn this little wheel at the side until the word 'germany' appears in the slot at the small end. then open the top cover, which is hinged, and those passing events in which you are interested will appear before your eyes." the demon, as he spoke, opened the cover, and, looking within, the boy saw, as in a mirror, a moving picture before him. a regiment of soldiers was marching through the streets of berlin, and at its head rode a body of horsemen, in the midst of which was the emperor himself. the people who thronged the sidewalks cheered and waved their hats and handkerchiefs with enthusiasm, while a band of musicians played a german air, which rob could distinctly hear. while he gazed, spell-bound, the scene changed, and he looked upon a great warship entering a harbor with flying pennants. the rails were lined with officers and men straining their eyes for the first sight of their beloved "vaterland" after a long foreign cruise, and a ringing cheer, as from a thousand throats, came faintly to rob's ear. again the scene changed, and within a dingy, underground room, hemmed in by walls of stone, and dimly lighted by a flickering lamp, a body of wild-eyed, desperate men were plighting an oath to murder the emperor and overthrow his government. "anarchists?" asked rob, trembling with excitement. "anarchists!" answered the demon, with a faint sneer, and he shut the cover of the record with a sudden snap. "it's wonderful!" cried the boy, with a sigh that was followed by a slight shiver. "the record is, indeed, proof within itself of the marvelous possibilities of electricity. men are now obliged to depend upon newspapers for information; but these can only relate events long after they have occurred. and newspaper statements are often unreliable and sometimes wholly false, while many events of real importance are never printed in their columns. you may guess what an improvement is this automatic record of events, which is as reliable as truth itself. nothing can be altered or falsified, for the vibratory currents convey the actual events to your vision, even as they happen." "but suppose," said rob, "that something important should happen while i'm asleep, or not looking at the box?" "i have called this a record," replied the demon, "and such it really is, although i have shown you only such events as are in process of being recorded. by pressing this spring you may open the opposite cover of the box, where all events of importance that have occurred throughout the world during the previous twenty-four hours will appear before you in succession. you may thus study them at your leisure. the various scenes constitute a register of the world's history, and may be recalled to view as often as you desire." "it's--it's like knowing everything," murmured rob, deeply impressed for perhaps the first time in his life. "it is knowing everything," returning the demon; "and this mighty gift i have decided to entrust to your care. be very careful as to whom you permit to gaze upon these pictures of passing events, for knowledge may often cause great misery to the human race." "i'll be careful," promised the boy, as he took the box reverently within his own hands. "the third and last gift of the present series," resumed the demon, "is one no less curious than the record of events, although it has an entirely different value. it is a character marker." "what's that?" inquired rob. "i will explain. perhaps you know that your fellow-creatures are more or less hypocritical. that is, they try to appear good when they are not, and wise when in reality they are foolish. they tell you they are friendly when they positively hate you, and try to make you believe they are kind when their natures are cruel. this hypocrisy seems to be a human failing. one of your writers has said, with truth, that among civilized people things are seldom what they seem." "i've heard that," remarked rob. "on the other hand," continued the demon, "some people with fierce countenances are kindly by nature, and many who appear to be evil are in reality honorable and trustworthy. therefore, that you may judge all your fellow-creatures truly, and know upon whom to depend, i give you the character marker. it consists of this pair of spectacles. while you wear them every one you meet will be marked upon the forehead with a letter indicating his or her character. the good will bear the letter 'g,' the evil the letter 'e.' the wise will be marked with a 'w' and the foolish with an 'f.' the kind will show a 'k' upon their foreheads and the cruel a letter 'c.' thus you may determine by a single look the true natures of all those you encounter." "and are these, also, electrical in their construction?" asked the boy, as he took the spectacles. "certainly. goodness, wisdom and kindness are natural forces, creating character. for this reason men are not always to blame for bad character, as they acquire it unconsciously. all character sends out certain electrical vibrations, which these spectacles concentrate in their lenses and exhibit to the gaze of their wearer, as i have explained." "it's a fine idea," said the boy; "who discovered it?" "it is a fact that has always existed, but is now utilized for the first time." "oh!" said rob. "with these gifts, and the ones you acquired a week ago, you are now equipped to astound the world and awaken mankind to a realization of the wonders that may be accomplished by natural forces. see that you employ these powers wisely, in the interests of science, and do not forget your promise to exhibit your electrical marvels only to those who are most capable of comprehending them." "i'll remember," said rob. "then adieu until a week from to-day, when i will meet you here at this hour and bestow upon you the last three gifts which you are entitled to receive. good-by!" "good-by!" repeated rob, and in a gorgeous flash of color the demon disappeared, leaving the boy alone in the room with his new and wonderful possessions. 9. the second journey by this time you will have gained a fair idea of rob's character. he is, in truth, a typical american boy, possessing an average intelligence not yet regulated by the balance-wheel of experience. the mysteries of electricity were so attractive to his eager nature that he had devoted considerable time and some study to electrical experiment; but his study was the superficial kind that seeks to master only such details as may be required at the moment. moreover, he was full of boyish recklessness and irresponsibility and therefore difficult to impress with the dignity of science and the gravity of human existence. life, to him, was a great theater wherein he saw himself the most interesting if not the most important actor, and so enjoyed the play with unbounded enthusiasm. aside from the extraordinary accident which had forced the electrical demon into this life, rob may be considered one of those youngsters who might possibly develop into a brilliant manhood or enter upon an ordinary, humdrum existence, as fate should determine. just at present he had no thought beyond the passing hour, nor would he bother himself by attempting to look ahead or plan for the future. yet the importance of his electrical possessions and the stern injunction of the demon to use them wisely had rendered the boy more thoughtful than at any previous time during his brief life, and he became so preoccupied at the dinner table that his father and mother cast many anxious looks in his direction. of course rob was anxious to test his newly-acquired powers, and decided to lose no time in starting upon another journey. but he said nothing to any of the family about it, fearing to meet with opposition. he passed the evening in the sitting-room, in company with his father and mother and sisters, and even controlled his impatience to the extent of playing a game of carom with nell; but he grew so nervous and impatient at last that his sister gave up the game in disgust and left him to his own amusement. at one time he thought of putting on the electric spectacles and seeing what the real character of each member of his family might be; but a sudden fear took possession of him that he might regret the act forever afterward. they were his nearest and dearest friends on earth, and in his boyish heart he loved them all and believed in their goodness and sincerity. the possibility of finding a bad character mark on any of their familiar faces made him shudder, and he determined then and there never to use the spectacles to view the face of a friend or relative. had any one, at that moment, been gazing at rob through the lenses of the wonderful character marker, i am sure a big "w" would have been found upon the boy's forehead. when the family circle broke up, and all retired for the night, rob kissed his parents and sisters with real affection before going to his own room. but, on reaching his cozy little chamber, instead of preparing for bed rob clothed himself in the garment of repulsion. then he covered the glittering garment with his best summer suit of clothes, which effectually concealed it. he now looked around to see what else he should take, and thought of an umbrella, a rain-coat, a book or two to read during the journey, and several things besides; but he ended by leaving them all behind. "i can't be loaded down with so much truck," he decided; "and i'm going into civilized countries, this time, where i can get anything i need." however, to prevent a recurrence of the mistake he had previously made, he tore a map of the world and a map of europe from his geography, and, folding them up, placed them in his pocket. he also took a small compass that had once been a watch-charm, and, finally, the contents of a small iron bank that opened with a combination lock. this represented all his savings, amounting to two dollars and seventeen cents in dimes, nickles and pennies. "it isn't a fortune," he thought, as he counted it up, "but i didn't need any money the last trip, so perhaps i'll get along somehow. i don't like to tackle dad for more, for he might ask questions and try to keep me at home." by the time he had finished his preparations and stowed all his electrical belongings in his various pockets, it was nearly midnight and the house was quiet. so rob stole down stairs in his stocking feet and noiselessly opened the back door. it was a beautiful july night and, in addition to the light of the full moon, the sky was filled with the radiance of countless thousands of brilliant stars. after rob had put on his shoes he unfolded the map, which was plainly visible by the starlight, and marked the direction he must take to cross the atlantic and reach london, his first stopping place. then he consulted his compass, put the indicator of his traveling machine to the word "up," and shot swiftly into the air. when he had reached a sufficient height he placed the indicator to a point north of east and, with a steady and remarkably swift flight, began his journey. "here goes," he remarked, with a sense of exaltation, "for another week of adventure! i wonder what'll happen between now and next saturday." 10. how rob served a mighty king the new traveling machine was a distinct improvement over the old one, for it carried rob with wonderful speed across the broad atlantic. he fell asleep soon after starting, and only wakened when the sun was high in the heavens. but he found himself whirling along at a good rate, with the greenish shimmer of the peaceful ocean waves spread beneath him far beyond his range of vision. being in the track of the ocean steamers it was not long before he found himself overtaking a magnificent vessel whose decks were crowded with passengers. he dropped down some distance, to enable him to see these people more plainly, and while he hovered near he could hear the excited exclamations of the passengers, who focused dozens of marine glasses upon his floating form. this inspection somewhat embarrassed him, and having no mind to be stared at he put on additional speed and soon left the steamer far behind him. about noon the sky clouded over, and rob feared a rainstorm was approaching. so he rose to a point considerably beyond the clouds, where the air was thin but remarkably pleasant to inhale and the rays of the sun were not so hot as when reflected by the surface of the water. he could see the dark clouds rolling beneath him like volumes of smoke from a factory chimney, and knew the earth was catching a severe shower of rain; yet he congratulated himself on his foresight in not being burdened with umbrella or raincoat, since his elevated position rendered him secure from rain-clouds. but, having cut himself off from the earth, there remained nothing to see except the clear sky overhead and the tumbling clouds beneath; so he took from his pocket the automatic record of events, and watched with breathless interest the incidents occurring in different parts of the world. a big battle was being fought in the philippines, and so fiercely was it contested that rob watched its progress for hours, with rapt attention. finally a brave rally by the americans sent their foes to the cover of the woods, where they scattered in every direction, only to form again in a deep valley hidden by high hills. "if only i was there," thought rob, "i could show that captain where to find the rebels and capture them. but i guess the philippines are rather out of my way, so our soldiers will never know how near they are to a complete victory." the boy also found considerable amusement in watching the course of an insurrection in venezuela, where opposing armies of well-armed men preferred to bluster and threaten rather than come to blows. during the evening he found that an "important event" was madame bernhardt's production of a new play, and rob followed it from beginning to end with great enjoyment, although he felt a bit guilty at not having purchased a ticket. "but it's a crowded house, anyway," he reflected, "and i'm not taking up a reserved seat or keeping any one else from seeing the show. so where's the harm? yet it seems to me if these records get to be common, as the demon wishes, people will all stay at home and see the shows, and the poor actors 'll starve to death." the thought made him uneasy, and he began, for the first time, to entertain a doubt of the demon's wisdom in forcing such devices upon humanity. the clouds had now passed away and the moon sent her rays to turn the edges of the waves into glistening showers of jewels. rob closed the lid of the wonderful record of events and soon fell into a deep sleep that held him unconscious for many hours. when he awoke he gave a start of surprise, for beneath him was land. how long it was since he had left the ocean behind him he could not guess, but his first thought was to set the indicator of the traveling machine to zero and to hover over the country until he could determine where he was. this was no easy matter. he saw green fields, lakes, groves and villages; but these might exist in any country. being still at a great elevation he descended gradually until he was about twenty feet from the surface of the earth, where he paused near the edge of a small village. at once a crowd of excited people assembled, shouting to one another and pointing towards him in wonder. in order to be prepared for emergencies rob had taken the electric tube from his pocket, and now, as he examined the dress and features of the people below, the tube suddenly slipped from his grasp and fell to the ground, where one end stuck slantingly into the soft earth. a man rushed eagerly towards it, but the next moment he threw up his hands and fell upon his back, unconscious. others who ran to assist their fallen comrade quickly tumbled into a heap beside him. it was evident to rob that the tube had fallen in such a position that the button was being pressed continually and a current of electric fluid issued to shock whoever came near. not wishing to injure these people he dropped to the ground and drew the tube from the earth, thus releasing the pressure upon the button. but the villagers had now decided that the boy was their enemy, and no sooner had he touched the ground than a shower of stones and sticks rained about him. not one reached his body, however, for the garment of repulsion stopped their flight and returned them to rattle with more or less force against those who had thrown them--"like regular boomerangs," thought rob. to receive their own blows in this fashion seemed so like magic to the simple folk that with roars of fear and pain they ran away in all directions. "it's no use stopping here," remarked rob, regretfully, "for i've spoiled my welcome by this accident. i think these people are irish, by their looks and speech, so i must be somewhere in the emerald isle." he consulted his map and decided upon the general direction he should take to reach england, after which he again rose into the air and before long was passing over the channel towards the shores of england. either his map or compass or his calculations proved wrong, for it was high noon before, having changed his direction a half dozen times, he came to the great city of london. he saw at a glance that it would never do to drop into the crowded streets, unless he wanted to become an object of public curiosity; so he looked around for a suitable place to alight. near by was a monstrous church that sent a sharp steeple far into the air. rob examined this spire and saw a narrow opening in the masonry that led to a small room where a chime of bells hung. he crept through the opening and, finding a ladder that connected the belfry with a platform below, began to descend. there were three ladders, and then a winding flight of narrow, rickety stairs to be passed before rob finally reached a small room in the body of the church. this room proved to have two doors, one connecting with the auditorium and the other letting into a side street. both were locked, but rob pointed the electric tube at the outside door and broke the lock in an instant. then he walked into the street as composedly as if he had lived all his life in london. there were plenty of sights to see, you may be sure, and rob walked around until he was so tired that he was glad to rest upon one of the benches in a beautiful park. here, half hidden by the trees, he amused himself by looking at the record of events. "london's a great town, and no mistake," he said to himself; "but let's see what the british are doing in south africa to-day." he turned the cylinder to "south africa," and, opening the lid, at once became interested. an english column, commanded by a brave but stubborn officer, was surrounded by the boer forces and fighting desperately to avoid capture or annihilation. "this would be interesting to king edward," thought the boy. "guess i'll hunt him up and tell him about it." a few steps away stood a policeman. rob approached him and asked: "where's the king to-day?" the officer looked at him with mingled surprise and suspicion. "'is majesty is sojournin' at marlb'ro 'ouse, just now," was the reply. "per'aps you wants to make 'im a wissit," he continued, with lofty sarcasm. "that's it, exactly," said rob. "i'm an american, and thought while i was in london i'd drop in on his royal highness and say 'hello' to him." the officer chuckled, as if much amused. "hamericans is bloomin' green," he remarked, "so youse can stand for hamerican, right enough. no other wissitors is such blarsted fools. but yon's the palace, an' i s'pose 'is majesty'll give ye a 'ot reception." "thanks; i'll look him up," said the boy, and left the officer convulsed with laughter. he soon knew why. the palace was surrounded by a cordon of the king's own life guards, who admitted no one save those who presented proper credentials. "there's only one thing to do;" thought rob, "and that's to walk straight in, as i haven't any friends to give me a regular introduction." so he boldly advanced to the gate, where he found himself stopped by crossed carbines and a cry of "halt!" "excuse me," said rob; "i'm in a hurry." he pushed the carbines aside and marched on. the soldiers made thrusts at him with their weapons, and an officer jabbed at his breast with a glittering sword, but the garment of repulsion protected him from these dangers as well as from a hail of bullets that followed his advancing figure. he reached the entrance of the palace only to face another group of guardsmen and a second order to halt, and as these soldiers were over six feet tall and stood shoulder to shoulder rob saw that he could not hope to pass them without using his electric tube. "stand aside, you fellows!" he ordered. there was no response. he extended the tube and, as he pressed the button, described a semi-circle with the instrument. immediately the tall guardsmen toppled over like so many tenpins, and rob stepped across their bodies and penetrated to the reception room, where a brilliant assemblage awaited, in hushed and anxious groups, for opportunity to obtain audience with the king. "i hope his majesty isn't busy," said rob to a solemn-visaged official who confronted him. "i want to have a little talk with him." "i--i--ah--beg pardon!" exclaimed the astounded master of ceremonies. "what name, please?" "oh, never mind my name," replied rob, and pushing the gentleman aside he entered the audience chamber of the great king. king edward was engaged in earnest consultation with one of his ministers, and after a look of surprise in rob's direction and a grave bow he bestowed no further attention upon the intruder. but rob was not to be baffled now. "your majesty," he interrupted, "i've important news for you. a big fight is taking place in south africa and your soldiers will probably be cut into mince meat." the minister strode towards the boy angrily. "explain this intrusion!" he cried. "i have explained. the boers are having a regular killing-bee. here! take a look at it yourselves." he drew the record from his pocket, and at the movement the minister shrank back as if he suspected it was an infernal machine and might blow his head off; but the king stepped quietly to the boy's side and looked into the box when rob threw open the lid. as he comprehended the full wonder of the phenomenon he was observing edward uttered a low cry of amazement, but thereafter he silently gazed upon the fierce battle that still raged far away upon the african veld. before long his keen eye recognized the troops engaged and realized their imminent danger. "they'll be utterly annihilated!" he gasped. "what shall we do?" "oh, we can't do anything just now," answered rob. "but it's curious to watch how bravely the poor fellows fight for their lives." the minister, who by this time was also peering into the box, groaned aloud, and then all three forgot their surroundings in the tragedy they were beholding. hemmed in by vastly superior numbers, the english were calmly and stubbornly resisting every inch of advance and selling their lives as dearly as possible. their leader fell pierced by a hundred bullets, and the king, who had known him from boyhood, passed his hand across his eyes as if to shut out the awful sight. but the fascination of the battle forced him to look again, and the next moment he cried aloud: "look there! look there!" over the edge of a line of hills appeared the helmets of a file of english soldiers. they reached the summit, followed by rank after rank, until the hillside was alive with them. and then, with a ringing cheer that came like a faint echo to the ears of the three watchers, they broke into a run and dashed forward to the rescue of their brave comrades. the boers faltered, gave back, and the next moment fled precipitately, while the exhausted survivors of the courageous band fell sobbing into the arms of their rescuers. rob closed the lid of the record with a sudden snap that betrayed his deep feeling, and the king pretended to cough behind his handkerchief and stealthily wiped his eyes. "'twasn't so bad, after all," remarked the boy, with assumed cheerfulness; "but it looked mighty ticklish for your men at one time." king edward regarded the boy curiously, remembering his abrupt entrance and the marvelous device he had exhibited. "what do you call that?" he asked, pointing at the record with a finger that trembled slightly from excitement. "it is a new electrical invention," replied rob, replacing it in his pocket, "and so constructed that events are reproduced at the exact moment they occur." "where can i purchase one?" demanded the king, eagerly. "they're not for sale," said rob. "this one of mine is the first that ever happened." "oh!" "i really think," continued the boy, nodding sagely, "that it wouldn't be well to have these records scattered around. their use would give some folks unfair advantage over others, you know." "certainly." "i only showed you this battle because i happened to be in london at the time and thought you'd be interested." "it was very kind of you," said edward; "but how did you gain admittance?" "well, to tell the truth, i was obliged to knock over a few of your tall life-guards. they seem to think you're a good thing and need looking after, like jam in a cupboard." the king smiled. "i hope you haven't killed my guards," said he. "oh, no; they'll come around all right." "it is necessary," continued edward, "that public men be protected from intrusion, no matter how democratic they may be personally. you would probably find it as difficult to approach the president of the united states as the king of england." "oh, i'm not complaining," said rob. "it wasn't much trouble to break through." "you seem quite young to have mastered such wonderful secrets of nature," continued the king. "so i am," replied rob, modestly; "but these natural forces have really existed since the beginning of the world, and some one was sure to discover them in time." he was quoting the demon, although unconsciously. "you are an american, i suppose," said the minister, coming close to rob and staring him in the face. "guessed right the first time," answered the boy, and drawing his character marking spectacles from his pocket, he put them on and stared at the minister in turn. upon the man's forehead appeared the letter "e." "your majesty," said rob, "i have here another queer invention. will you please wear these spectacles for a few moments?" the king at once put them on. "they are called character markers," continued the boy, "because the lenses catch and concentrate the character vibrations radiating from every human individual and reflect the true character of the person upon his forehead. if a letter 'g' appears, you may be sure his disposition is good; if his forehead is marked with an 'e' his character is evil, and you must beware of treachery." the king saw the "e" plainly marked upon his minister's forehead, but he said nothing except "thank you," and returned the spectacles to rob. but the minister, who from the first had been ill at ease, now became positively angry. "do not believe him, your majesty!" he cried. "it is a trick, and meant to deceive you." "i did not accuse you," answered the king, sternly. then he added: "i wish to be alone with this young gentleman." the minister left the room with an anxious face and hanging head. "now," said rob, "let's look over the record of the past day and see if that fellow has been up to any mischief." he turned the cylinder of the record to "england," and slowly the events of the last twenty-four hours were reproduced, one after the other, upon the polished plate. before long the king uttered an exclamation. the record pictured a small room in which were seated three gentlemen engaged in earnest conversation. one of them was the accused minister. "those men," said the king in a low voice, while he pointed out the other two, "are my avowed enemies. this is proof that your wonderful spectacles indicated my minister's character with perfect truth. i am grateful to you for thus putting me upon my guard, for i have trusted the man fully." "oh, don't mention it," replied the boy, lightly; "i'm glad to have been of service to you. but it's time for me to go." "i hope you will favor me with another interview," said the king, "for i am much interested in your electrical inventions. i will instruct my guards to admit you at any time, so you will not be obliged to fight your way in." "all right. but it really doesn't matter," answered rob. "it's no trouble at all to knock 'em over." then he remembered his manners and bowed low before the king, who seemed to him "a fine fellow and not a bit stuck up." and then he walked calmly from the palace. the people in the outer room stared at him wonderingly and the officer of the guard saluted the boy respectfully. but rob only smiled in an amused way as he marched past them with his hands thrust deep into his trousers' pockets and his straw hat tipped jauntily upon the back of his head. 11. the man of science rob passed the remainder of the day wandering about london and amusing himself by watching the peculiar ways of the people. when it became so dark that there was no danger of his being observed, he rose through the air to the narrow slit in the church tower and lay upon the floor of the little room, with the bells hanging all around him, to pass the night. he was just falling asleep when a tremendous din and clatter nearly deafened him, and set the whole tower trembling. it was the midnight chime. rob clutched his ears tightly, and when the vibrations had died away descended by the ladder to a lower platform. but even here the next hourly chime made his ears ring, and he kept descending from platform to platform until the last half of a restless night was passed in the little room at the bottom of the tower. when, at daylight, the boy sat up and rubbed his eyes, he said, wearily: "churches are all right as churches; but as hotels they are rank failures. i ought to have bunked in with my friend, king edward." he climbed up the stairs and the ladders again and looked out the little window in the belfry. then he examined his map of europe. "i believe i'll take a run over to paris," he thought. "i must be home again by saturday, to meet the demon, so i'll have to make every day count." without waiting for breakfast, since he had eaten a tablet the evening before, he crept through the window and mounted into the fresh morning air until the great city with its broad waterway lay spread out beneath him. then he sped away to the southeast and, crossing the channel, passed between amiens and rouen and reached paris before ten o'clock. near the outskirts of the city appeared a high tower, upon the flat roof of which a man was engaged in adjusting a telescope. upon seeing rob, who was passing at no great distance from this tower, the man cried out: "approchez!--venez ici!" then he waved his hands frantically in the air, and fairly danced with excitement. so the boy laughed and dropped down to the roof where, standing beside the frenchman, whose eyes were actually protruding from their sockets, he asked, coolly: "well, what do you want?" the other was for a moment speechless. he was a tall, lean man, having a bald head but a thick, iron-gray beard, and his black eyes sparkled brightly from behind a pair of gold-rimmed spectacles. after attentively regarding the boy for a time he said, in broken english: "but, m'sieur, how can you fly wizout ze--ze machine? i have experiment myself wiz some air-ship; but you--zere is nossing to make go!" rob guessed that here was his opportunity to do the demon a favor by explaining his electrical devices to this new acquaintance, who was evidently a man of science. "here is the secret, professor," he said, and holding out his wrist displayed the traveling machine and explained, as well as he could, the forces that operated it. the frenchman, as you may suppose, was greatly astonished, and to show how perfectly the machine worked rob turned the indicator and rose a short distance above the tower, circling around it before he rejoined the professor on the roof. then he showed his food tablets, explaining how each was stored with sufficient nourishment for an entire day. the scientist positively gasped for breath, so powerful was the excitement he experienced at witnessing these marvels. "eet is wonderful--grand--magnifique!" he exclaimed. "but here is something of still greater interest," continued rob, and taking the automatic record of events from his pocket he allowed the professor to view the remarkable scenes that were being enacted throughout the civilized world. the frenchman was now trembling violently, and he implored rob to tell him where he might obtain similar electrical machines. "i can't do that," replied the boy, decidedly; "but, having seen these, you may be able to discover their construction for yourself. now that you know such things to be possible and practical, the hint should be sufficient to enable a shrewd electrician to prepare duplicates of them." the scientist glared at him with evident disappointment, and rob continued: "these are not all the wonders i can exhibit. here is another electrical device that is, perhaps, the most remarkable of any i possess." he took the character marking spectacles from his pocket and fitted them to his eyes. then he gave a whistle of surprise and turned his back upon his new friend. he had seen upon the frenchman's forehead the letters "e" and "c." "guess i've struck the wrong sort of scientist, after all!" he muttered, in a disgusted tone. his companion was quick to prove the accuracy of the character marker. seeing the boy's back turned, he seized a long iron bar that was used to operate the telescope, and struck at rob so fiercely that had he not worn the garment of protection his skull would have been crushed by the blow. at it was, the bar rebounded with a force that sent the murderous frenchman sprawling upon the roof, and rob turned around and laughed at him. "it won't work, professor," he said. "i'm proof against assassins. perhaps you had an idea that when you had killed me you could rob me of my valuable possessions; but they wouldn't be a particle of use to a scoundrel like you, i assure you! good morning." before the surprised and baffled scientist could collect himself sufficiently to reply, the boy was soaring far above his head and searching for a convenient place to alight, that he might investigate the charms of this famed city of paris. it was indeed a beautiful place, with many stately buildings lining the shady boulevards. so thronged were the streets that rob well knew he would soon be the center of a curious crowd should he alight upon them. already a few sky-gazers had noted the boy moving high in the air, above their heads, and one or two groups stood pointing their fingers at him. pausing at length above the imposing structure of the hotel anglais, rob noticed at one of the upper floors an open window, before which was a small iron balcony. alighting upon this he proceeded to enter, without hesitation, the open window. he heard a shriek and a cry of "au voleur!" and caught sight of a woman's figure as she dashed into an adjoining room, slamming and locking the door behind her. "i don't know as i blame her," observed rob, with a smile at the panic he had created. "i s'pose she takes me for a burglar, and thinks i've climbed up the lightning rod." he soon found the door leading into the hallway and walked down several flights of stairs until he reached the office of the hotel. "how much do you charge a day?" he inquired, addressing a fat and pompous-looking gentlemen behind the desk. the man looked at him in a surprised way, for he had not heard the boy enter the room. but he said something in french to a waiter who was passing, and the latter came to rob and made a low bow. "i speak ze eengliss ver' fine," he said. "what desire have you?" "what are your rates by the day?" asked the boy. "ten francs, m'sieur." "how many dollars is that?" "dollar americaine?" "yes; united states money." "ah, oui! eet is ze two dollar, m'sieur." "all right; i can stay about a day before i go bankrupt. give me a room." "certainement, m'sieur. have you ze luggage?" "no; but i'll pay in advance," said rob, and began counting out his dimes and nickles and pennies, to the unbounded amazement of the waiter, who looked as if he had never seen such coins before. he carried the money to the fat gentleman, who examined the pieces curiously, and there was a long conference between them before it was decided to accept them in payment for a room for a day. but at this season the hotel was almost empty, and when rob protested that he had no other money the fat gentleman put the coins into his cash box with a resigned sigh and the waiter showed the boy to a little room at the very top of the building. rob washed and brushed the dust from his clothes, after which he sat down and amused himself by viewing the pictures that constantly formed upon the polished plate of the record of events. 12. how rob saved a republic while following the shifting scenes of the fascinating record rob noted an occurrence that caused him to give a low whistle of astonishment and devote several moments to serious thought. "i believe it's about time i interfered with the politics of this republic," he said, at last, as he closed the lid of the metal box and restored it to his pocket. "if i don't take a hand there probably won't be a republic of france very long and, as a good american, i prefer a republic to a monarchy." then he walked down-stairs and found his english-speaking waiter. "where's president loubet?" he asked. "ze president! ah, he is wiz his mansion. to be at his residence, m'sieur." "where is his residence?" the waiter began a series of voluble and explicit directions which so confused the boy that he exclaimed: "oh, much obliged!" and walked away in disgust. gaining the street he approached a gendarme and repeated his question, with no better result than before, for the fellow waved his arms wildly in all directions and roared a volley of incomprehensible french phrases that conveyed no meaning whatever. "if ever i travel in foreign countries again," said rob, "i'll learn their lingo in advance. why doesn't the demon get up a conversation machine that will speak all languages?" by dint of much inquiry, however, and after walking several miles following ambiguous directions, he managed to reach the residence of president loubet. but there he was politely informed that the president was busily engaged in his garden, and would see no one. "that's all right," said the boy, calmly. "if he's in the garden i'll have no trouble finding him." then, to the amazement of the frenchmen, rob shot into the air fifty feet or so, from which elevation he overlooked a pretty garden in the rear of the president's mansion. the place was protected from ordinary intrusion by high walls, but rob descended within the enclosure and walked up to a man who was writing at a small table placed under the spreading branches of a large tree. "is this president loubet?" he inquired, with a bow. the gentleman looked up. "my servants were instructed to allow no one to disturb me," he said, speaking in excellent english. "it isn't their fault; i flew over the wall," returned rob. "the fact is," he added, hastily, as he noted the president's frown, "i have come to save the republic; and i haven't much time to waste over a bundle of frenchmen, either." the president seemed surprised. "your name!" he demanded, sharply. "robert billings joslyn, united states of america!" "your business, monsieur joslyn!" rob drew the record from his pocket and placed it upon the table. "this, sir," said he, "is an electrical device that records all important events. i wish to call your attention to a scene enacted in paris last evening which may have an effect upon the future history of your country." he opened the lid, placed the record so that the president could see clearly, and then watched the changing expressions upon the great man's face; first indifference, then interest, the next moment eagerness and amazement. "mon dieu!" he gasped; "the orleanists!" rob nodded. "yes; they've worked up a rather pretty plot, haven't they?" the president did not reply. he was anxiously watching the record and scribbling notes on a paper beside him. his face was pale and his lips tightly compressed. finally he leaned back in his chair and asked: "can you reproduce this scene again?" "certainly, sir," answered the boy; "as often as you like." "will you remain here while i send for my minister of police? it will require but a short time." "call him up, then. i'm in something of a hurry myself, but now i've mixed up with this thing i'll see it through." the president touched a bell and gave an order to his servant. then he turned to rob and said, wonderingly: "you are a boy!" "that's true, mr. president," was the answer; "but an american boy, you must remember. that makes a big difference, i assure you." the president bowed gravely. "this is your invention?" he asked. "no; i'm hardly equal to that. but the inventor has made me a present of the record, and it's the only one in the world." "it is a marvel," remarked the president, thoughtfully. "more! it is a real miracle. we are living in an age of wonders, my young friend." "no one knows that better than myself, sir," replied rob. "but, tell me, can you trust your chief of police?" "i think so," said the president, slowly; "yet since your invention has shown me that many men i have considered honest are criminally implicated in this royalist plot, i hardly know whom to depend upon." "then please wear these spectacles during your interview with the minister of police," said the boy. "you must say nothing, while he is with us, about certain marks that will appear upon his forehead; but when he has gone i will explain those marks so you will understand them." the president covered his eyes with the spectacles. "why," he exclaimed, "i see upon your own brow the letters--" "stop, sir!" interrupted rob, with a blush; "i don't care to know what the letters are, if it's just the same to you." the president seemed puzzled by this speech, but fortunately the minister of police arrived just then and, under rob's guidance, the pictured record of the orleanist plot was reproduced before the startled eyes of the official. "and now," said the boy, "let us see if any of this foolishness is going on just at present." he turned to the opposite side of the record and allowed the president and his minister of police to witness the quick succession of events even as they occurred. suddenly the minister cried, "ha!" and, pointing to the figure of a man disembarking from an english boat at calais, he said, excitedly: "that, your excellency, is the duke of orleans, in disguise! i must leave you for a time, that i may issue some necessary orders to my men; but this evening i shall call to confer with you regarding the best mode of suppressing this terrible plot." when the official had departed, the president removed the spectacles from his eyes and handed them to rob. "what did you see?" asked the boy. "the letters 'g' and 'w'." "then you may trust him fully," declared rob, and explained the construction of the character marker to the interested and amazed statesman. "and now i must go," he continued, "for my stay in your city will be a short one and i want to see all i can." the president scrawled something on a sheet of paper and signed his name to it, afterward presenting it, with a courteous bow, to his visitor. "this will enable you to go wherever you please, while in paris," he said. "i regret my inability to reward you properly for the great service you have rendered my country; but you have my sincerest gratitude, and may command me in any way." "oh, that's all right," answered rob. "i thought it was my duty to warn you, and if you look sharp you'll be able to break up this conspiracy. but i don't want any reward. good day, sir." he turned the indicator of his traveling machine and immediately rose into the air, followed by a startled exclamation from the president of france. moving leisurely over the city, he selected a deserted thoroughfare to alight in, from whence he wandered unobserved into the beautiful boulevards. these were now brilliantly lighted, and crowds of pleasure seekers thronged them everywhere. rob experienced a decided sense of relief as he mixed with the gay populace and enjoyed the sights of the splendid city, for it enabled him to forget, for a time, the responsibilities thrust upon him by the possession of the demon's marvelous electrical devices. 13. rob loses his treasures our young adventurer had intended to pass the night in the little bed at his hotel, but the atmosphere of paris proved so hot and disagreeable that he decided it would be more enjoyable to sleep while journeying through the cooler air that lay far above the earth's surface. so just as the clocks were striking the midnight hour rob mounted skyward and turned the indicator of the traveling machine to the east, intending to make the city of vienna his next stop. he had risen to a considerable distance, where the air was remarkably fresh and exhilarating, and the relief he experienced from the close and muggy streets of paris was of such a soothing nature that he presently fell fast asleep. his day in the metropolis had been a busy one, for, like all boys, he had forgotten himself in the delight of sight-seeing and had tired his muscles and exhausted his strength to an unusual degree. it was about three o'clock in the morning when rob, moving restlessly in his sleep, accidently touched with his right hand the indicator of the machine which was fastened to his left wrist, setting it a couple of points to the south of east. he was, of course, unaware of the slight alteration in his course, which was destined to prove of serious importance in the near future. for the boy's fatigue induced him to sleep far beyond daybreak, and during this period of unconsciousness he was passing over the face of european countries and approaching the lawless and dangerous dominions of the orient. when, at last, he opened his eyes, he was puzzled to determine where he was. beneath him stretched a vast, sandy plain, and speeding across this he came to a land abounding in luxuriant vegetation. the centrifugal force which propelled him was evidently, for some reason, greatly accelerated, for the scenery of the country he was crossing glided by him at so rapid a rate of speed that it nearly took his breath away. "i wonder if i've passed vienna in the night," he thought. "it ought not to have taken me more than a few hours to reach there from paris." vienna was at that moment fifteen hundred miles behind him; but rob's geography had always been his stumbling block at school, and he had not learned to gage the speed of the traveling machine; so he was completely mystified as to his whereabouts. presently a village having many queer spires and minarets whisked by him like a flash. rob became worried, and resolved to slow up at the next sign of habitation. this was a good resolution, but turkestan is so thinly settled that before the boy could plan out a course of action he had passed the barren mountain range of thian-shan as nimbly as an acrobat leaps a jumping-bar. "this won't do at all!" he exclaimed, earnestly. "the traveling machine seems to be running away with me, and i'm missing no end of sights by scooting along up here in the clouds." he turned the indicator to zero, and was relieved to find it obey with customary quickness. in a few moments he had slowed up and stopped, when he found himself suspended above another stretch of sandy plain. being too high to see the surface of the plain distinctly he dropped down a few hundred feet to a lower level, where he discovered he was surrounded by billows of sand as far as his eye could reach. "it's a desert, all right," was his comment; "perhaps old sahara herself." he started the machine again towards the east, and at a more moderate rate of speed skimmed over the surface of the desert. before long he noticed a dark spot ahead of him which proved to be a large body of fierce looking men, riding upon dromedaries and slender, spirited horses and armed with long rifles and crookedly shaped simitars. "those fellows seem to be looking for trouble," remarked the boy, as he glided over them, "and it wouldn't be exactly healthy for an enemy to get in their way. but i haven't time to stop, so i'm not likely to get mixed up in any rumpus with them." however, the armed caravan was scarcely out of sight before rob discovered he was approaching a rich, wooded oasis of the desert, in the midst of which was built the walled city of yarkand. not that he had ever heard of the place, or knew its name; for few europeans and only one american traveler had ever visited it. but he guessed it was a city of some importance from its size and beauty, and resolved to make a stop there. above the high walls projected many slender, white minarets, indicating that the inhabitants were either turks or some race of mohammedans; so rob decided to make investigations before trusting himself to their company. a cluster of tall trees with leafy tops stood a short distance outside the walls, and here the boy landed and sat down to rest in the refreshing shade. the city seemed as hushed and still as if it were deserted, and before him stretched the vast plain of white, heated sands. he strained his eyes to catch a glimpse of the band of warriors he had passed, but they were moving slowly and had not yet appeared. the trees that sheltered rob were the only ones without the city, although many low bushes or shrubs grew scattering over the space between him and the walls. an arched gateway broke the enclosure at his left, but the gates were tightly shut. something in the stillness and the intense heat of the mid-day sun made the boy drowsy. he stretched himself upon the ground beneath the dense foliage of the biggest tree and abandoned himself to the languor that was creeping over him. "i'll wait until that army of the desert arrives," he thought, sleepily. "they either belong in this city or have come to capture it, so i can tell better what to dance when i find out what the band plays." the next moment he was sound asleep, sprawling upon his back in the shade and slumbering as peacefully as an infant. and while he lay motionless three men dropped in quick succession from the top of the city wall and hid among the low bushes, crawling noiselessly from one to another and so approaching, by degrees, the little group of trees. they were turks, and had been sent by those in authority within the city to climb the tallest tree of the group and discover if the enemy was near. for rob's conjecture had been correct, and the city of yarkand awaited, with more or less anxiety, a threatened assault from its hereditary enemies, the tatars. the three spies were not less forbidding in appearance than the horde of warriors rob had passed upon the desert. their features were coarse and swarthy, and their eyes had a most villainous glare. old fashioned pistols and double-edged daggers were stuck in their belts and their clothing, though of gorgeous colors, was soiled and neglected. with all the caution of the american savage these turks approached the tree, where, to their unbounded amazement, they saw the boy lying asleep. his dress and fairness of skin at once proclaimed him, in their shrewd eyes, a european, and their first thought was to glance around in search of his horse or dromedary. seeing nothing of the kind near they were much puzzled to account for his presence, and stood looking down at him with evident curiosity. the sun struck the polished surface of the traveling machine which was attached to rob's wrist and made the metal glitter like silver. this attracted the eyes of the tallest turk, who stooped down and stealthily unclasped the band of the machine from the boy's outstretched arm. then, after a hurried but puzzled examination of the little instrument, he slipped it into the pocket of his jacket. rob stirred uneasily in his sleep, and one of the turks drew a slight but stout rope from his breast and with gentle but deft movement passed it around the boy's wrists and drew them together behind him. the action was not swift enough to arouse the power of repulsion in the garment of protection, but it awakened rob effectually, so that he sat up and stared hard at his captors. "what are you trying to do, anyhow?" he demanded. the turks laughed and said something in their own language. they had no knowledge of english. "you're only making fools of yourselves," continued the boy, wrathfully. "it's impossible for you to injure me." the three paid no attention to his words. one of them thrust his hand into rob's pocket and drew out the electric tube. his ignorance of modern appliances was so great that he did not know enough to push the button. rob saw him looking down the hollow end of the tube and murmured: "i wish it would blow your ugly head off!" but the fellow, thinking the shining metal might be of some value to him, put the tube in his own pocket and then took from the prisoner the silver box of tablets. rob writhed and groaned at losing his possessions in this way, and while his hands were fastened behind him tried to feel for and touch the indicator of the traveling machine. when he found that the machine also had been taken, his anger gave way to fear, for he realized he was in a dangerously helpless condition. the third turk now drew the record of events from the boy's inner pocket. he knew nothing of the springs that opened the lids, so, after a curious glance at it, he secreted the box in the folds of his sash and continued the search of the captive. the character marking spectacles were next abstracted, but the turk, seeing in them nothing but spectacles, scornfully thrust them back into rob's pocket, while his comrades laughed at him. the boy was now rifled of seventeen cents in pennies, a broken pocket knife and a lead-pencil, the last article seeming to be highly prized. after they had secured all the booty they could find, the tall turk, who seemed the leader of the three, violently kicked at the prisoner with his heavy boot. his surprise was great when the garment of repulsion arrested the blow and nearly overthrew the aggressor in turn. snatching a dagger from his sash, he bounded upon the boy so fiercely that the next instant the enraged turk found himself lying upon his back three yards away, while his dagger flew through the air and landed deep in the desert sands. "keep it up!" cried rob, bitterly. "i hope you'll enjoy yourself." the other turks raised their comrade to his feet, and the three stared at one another in surprise, being unable to understand how a bound prisoner could so effectually defend himself. but at a whispered word from the leader, they drew their long pistols and fired point blank into rob's face. the volley echoed sharply from the city walls, but as the smoke drifted slowly away the turks were horrified to see their intended victim laughing at them. uttering cries of terror and dismay, the three took to their heels and bounded towards the wall, where a gate quickly opened to receive them, the populace feeling sure the tatar horde was upon them. nor was this guess so very far wrong; for as rob, sitting disconsolate upon the sand, raised his eyes, he saw across the desert a dark line that marked the approach of the invaders. nearer and nearer they came, while rob watched them and bemoaned the foolish impulse that had led him to fall asleep in an unknown land where he could so easily be overpowered and robbed of his treasures. "i always suspected these electrical inventions would be my ruin some day," he reflected, sadly; "and now i'm side-tracked and left helpless in this outlandish country, without a single hope of ever getting home again. they probably won't be able to kill me, unless they find my garment of repulsion and strip that off; but i never could cross this terrible desert on foot and, having lost my food tablets, i'd soon starve if i attempted it." fortunately, he had eaten one of the tablets just before going to sleep, so there was no danger of immediate starvation. but he was miserable and unhappy, and remained brooding over his cruel fate until a sudden shout caused him to look up. 14. turk and tatar the tatars had arrived, swiftly and noiselessly, and a dozen of the warriors, still mounted, were surrounding him. his helpless condition aroused their curiosity, and while some of them hastily cut away his bonds and raised him to his feet, other plied him with questions in their own language. rob shook his head to indicate that he could not understand; so they led him to the chief--an immense, bearded representative of the tribe of kara-khitai, the terrible and relentless black tatars of thibet. the huge frame of this fellow was clothed in flowing robes of cloth-of-gold, braided with jewels, and he sat majestically upon the back of a jet-black camel. under ordinary circumstances the stern features and flashing black eyes of this redoubtable warrior would have struck a chill of fear to the boy's heart; but now under the influence of the crushing misfortunes he had experienced, he was able to gaze with indifference upon the terrible visage of the desert chief. the tatar seemed not to consider rob an enemy. instead, he looked upon him as an ally, since the turks had bound and robbed him. finding it impossible to converse with the chief, rob took refuge in the sign language. he turned his pockets wrong side out, showed the red welts left upon his wrists by the tight cord, and then shook his fists angrily in the direction of the town. in return the tatar nodded gravely and issued an order to his men. by this time the warriors were busily pitching tents before the walls of yarkand and making preparations for a formal siege. in obedience to the chieftain's orders, rob was given a place within one of the tents nearest the wall and supplied with a brace of brass-mounted pistols and a dagger with a sharp, zigzag edge. these were evidently to assist the boy in fighting the turks, and he was well pleased to have them. his spirits rose considerably when he found he had fallen among friends, although most of his new comrades had such evil faces that it was unnecessary to put on the character markers to judge their natures with a fair degree of accuracy. "i can't be very particular about the company i keep," he thought, "and this gang hasn't tried to murder me, as the rascally turks did. so for the present i'll stand in with the scowling chief and try to get a shot at the thieves who robbed me. if our side wins i may get a chance to recover some of my property. it's a slim chance, of course, but it's the only hope i have left." that very evening an opportunity occurred for rob to win glory in the eyes of his new friends. just before sundown the gates of the city flew open and a swarm of turks, mounted upon fleet horses and camels, issued forth and fell upon their enemies. the tatars, who did not expect the sally, were scarcely able to form an opposing rank when they found themselves engaged in a hand-to-hand conflict, fighting desperately for their lives. in such a battle, however, the turks were at a disadvantage, for the active tatars slipped beneath their horses and disabled them, bringing both the animals and their riders to the earth. at the first onslaught rob shot his pistol at a turk and wounded him so severely that he fell from his horse. instantly the boy seized the bridle and sprang upon the steed's back, and the next moment he had dashed into the thickest part of the fray. bullets and blows rained upon him from all sides, but the garment of repulsion saved him from a single scratch. when his pistols had been discharged he caught up the broken handle of a spear, and used it as a club, galloping into the ranks of the turks and belaboring them as hard as he could. the tatars cheered and followed him, and the turks were so amazed at his miraculous escape from their bullets that they became terrified, thinking he bore a charmed life and was protected by unseen powers. this terror helped turn the tide of battle, and before long the enemy was pressed back to the walls and retreated through the gates, which were hastily fastened behind them. in order to prevent a repetition of this sally the tatars at once invested the gates, so that if the turks should open them they were as likely to let their foes in as to oppose them. while the tents were being moved up rob had an opportunity to search the battlefield for the bodies of the three turks who had robbed him, but they were not among the fallen. "those fellows were too cowardly to take part in a fair fight," declared the boy; but he was much disappointed, nevertheless, as he felt very helpless without the electric tube or the traveling machine. the tatar chief now called rob to his tent and presented him with a beautiful ring set with a glowing pigeon's-blood ruby, in acknowledgment of his services. this gift made the boy feel very proud, and he said to the chief: "you're all right, old man, even if you do look like a pirate. if you can manage to capture that city, so i can get my electrical devices back, i'll consider you a trump as long as i live." the chief thought this speech was intended to express rob's gratitude, so he bowed solemnly in return. during the night that followed upon the first engagement of the turks and tatars, the boy lay awake trying to devise some plan to capture the city. the walls seemed too high and thick to be either scaled or broken by the tatars, who had no artillery whatever; and within the walls lay all the fertile part of the oasis, giving the besieged a good supply of water and provisions, while the besiegers were obliged to subsist on what water and food they had brought with them. just before dawn rob left his tent and went out to look at the great wall. the stars gave plenty of light, but the boy was worried to find that, according to eastern custom, no sentries or guards whatever had been posted and all the tatars were slumbering soundly. the city was likewise wrapped in profound silence, but just as rob was turning away he saw a head project stealthily over the edge of the wall before him, and recognized in the features one of the turks who had robbed him. finding no one awake except the boy the fellow sat upon the edge of the wall, with his feet dangling downward, and grinned wickedly at his former victim. rob watched him with almost breathless eagerness. after making many motions that conveyed no meaning whatever, the turk drew the electric tube from his pocket and pointed his finger first at the boy and then at the instrument, as if inquiring what it was used for. rob shook his head. the turk turned the tube over several times and examined it carefully, after which he also shook his head, seeming greatly puzzled. by this time the boy was fairly trembling with excitement. he longed to recover this valuable weapon, and feared that at any moment the curious turk would discover its use. he held out his hand toward the tube, and tried to say, by motions, that he would show the fellow how to use it. the man seemed to understand, by he would not let the glittering instrument out of his possession. rob was almost in despair, when he happened to notice upon his hand the ruby ring given him by the chief. drawing the jewel from his finger he made offer, by signs, that he would exchange it for the tube. the turk was much pleased with the idea, and nodded his head repeatedly, holding out his hand for the ring. rob had little confidence in the man's honor, but he was so eager to regain the tube that he decided to trust him. so he threw the ring to the top of the wall, where the turk caught it skilfully; but when rob held out his hand for the tube the scoundrel only laughed at him and began to scramble to his feet in order to beat a retreat. chance, however, foiled this disgraceful treachery, for in his hurry the turk allowed the tube to slip from his grasp, and it rolled off the wall and fell upon the sand at rob's very feet. the robber turned to watch its fall and, filled with sudden anger, the boy grabbed the weapon, pointed it at his enemy, and pressed the button. down tumbled the turk, without a cry, and lay motionless at the foot of the wall. rob's first thought was to search the pockets of his captive, and to his delight he found and recovered his box of food tablets. the record of events and the traveling machine were doubtless in the possession of the other robbers, but rob did not despair of recovering them, now that he had the tube to aid him. day was now breaking, and several of the tatars appeared and examined the body of the turk with grunts of surprise, for there was no mark upon him to show how he had been slain. supposing him to be dead, they tossed him aside and forgot all about him. rob had secured his ruby ring again, and going to the chief's tent he showed the jewel to the guard and was at once admitted. the black-bearded chieftain was still reclining upon his pillows, but rob bowed before him, and by means of signs managed to ask for a band of warriors to assist him in assaulting the town. the chieftain appeared to doubt the wisdom of the enterprise, not being able to understand how the boy could expect to succeed; but he graciously issued the required order, and by the time rob reached the city gate he found a large group of tatars gathered to support him, while the entire camp, roused to interest in the proceedings, stood looking on. rob cared little for the quarrel between the turks and tatars, and under ordinary circumstances would have refused to side with one or the other; but he knew he could not hope to recover his electrical machines unless the city was taken by the band of warriors who had befriended him, so he determined to force an entrance for them. without hesitation he walked close to the great gate and shattered its fastenings with the force of the electric current directed upon them from the tube. then, shouting to his friends the tatars for assistance, they rushed in a body upon the gate and dashed it open. the turks had expected trouble when they heard the fastenings of the huge gate splinter and fall apart, so they had assembled in force before the opening. as the tatars poured through the gateway in a compact mass they were met by a hail of bullets, spears and arrows, which did fearful execution among them. many were killed outright, while others fell wounded to be trampled upon by those who pressed on from the rear. rob maintained his position in the front rank, but escaped all injury through the possession of the garment of repulsion. but he took an active part in the fight and pressed the button of the electric tube again and again, tumbling the enemy into heaps on every side, even the horses and camels falling helplessly before the resistless current of electricity. the tatars shouted joyfully as they witnessed this marvelous feat and rushed forward to assist in the slaughter; but the boy motioned them all back. he did not wish any more bloodshed than was necessary, and knew that the heaps of unconscious turks around him would soon recover. so he stood alone and faced the enemy, calmly knocking them over as fast as they came near. two of the turks managed to creep up behind the boy, and one of them, who wielded an immense simitar with a two-edged blade as sharp as a razor, swung the weapon fiercely to cut off rob's head. but the repulsive force aroused in the garment was so terrific that it sent the weapon flying backwards with redoubled swiftness, so that it caught the second turk at the waist and cut him fairly in two. thereafter they all avoided coming near the boy, and in a surprisingly short time the turkish forces were entirely conquered, all having been reduced to unconsciousness except a few cowards who had run away and hidden in the cellars or garrets of the houses. the tatars entered the city with shouts of triumph, and the chief was so delighted that he threw his arms around rob's neck and embraced him warmly. then began the sack of yarkand, the fierce tatars plundering the bazaars and houses, stripping them of everything of value they could find. rob searched anxiously among the bodies of the unconscious turks for the two men who had robbed him, but neither could be found. he was more successful later, for in running through the streets he came upon a band of tatars leading a man with a rope around his neck, whom rob quickly recognized as one of the thieves he was hunting for. the tatars willingly allowed him to search the fellow, and in one of his pockets rob found the record of events. he had now recovered all his property, except the traveling machine, the one thing that was absolutely necessary to enable him to escape from this barbarous country. he continued his search persistently, and an hour later found the dead body of the third robber lying in the square in the center of the city. but the traveling machine was not on his person, and for the first time the boy began to give way to despair. in the distance he heard loud shouts and sound of renewed strife, warning him that the turks were recovering consciousness and engaging the tatars with great fierceness. the latter had scattered throughout the town, thinking themselves perfectly secure, so that not only were they unprepared to fight, but they became panic-stricken at seeing their foes return, as it seemed, from death to life. their usual courage forsook them, and they ran, terrified, in every direction, only to be cut down by the revengeful turkish simitars. rob was sitting upon the edge of a marble fountain in the center of the square when a crowd of victorious turks appeared and quickly surrounded him. the boy paid no attention to their gestures and the turks feared to approach him nearly, so they stood a short distance away and fired volleys at him from their rifles and pistols. rob glared at them scornfully, and seeing they could not injure him the turks desisted; but they still surrounded him, and the crowd grew thicker every moment. women now came creeping from their hiding places and mingled with the ranks of the men, and rob guessed, from their joyous chattering, that the turks had regained the city and driven out or killed the tatar warriors. he reflected, gloomily, that this did not affect his own position in any way, since he could not escape from the oasis. suddenly, on glancing at the crowd, rob saw something that arrested his attention. a young girl was fastening some article to the wrist of a burly, villainous-looking turk. the boy saw a glitter that reminded him of the traveling machine, but immediately afterward the man and the girl bent their heads over the fellow's wrist in such a way that rob could see nothing more. while the couple were apparently examining the strange device, rob started to his feet and walked toward them. the crowd fell back at his approach, but the man and the girl were so interested that they did not notice him. he was still several paces away when the girl put out her finger and touched the indicator on the dial. to rob's horror and consternation the big turk began to rise slowly into the air, while a howl of fear burst from the crowd. but the boy made a mighty spring and caught the turk by his foot, clinging to it with desperate tenacity, while they both mounted steadily upward until they were far above the city of the desert. the big turk screamed pitifully at first, and then actually fainted away from fright. rob was much frightened, on his part, for he knew if his hands slipped from their hold he would fall to his death. indeed, one hand was slipping already, so he made a frantic clutch and caught firmly hold of the turk's baggy trousers. then, slowly and carefully, he drew himself up and seized the leather belt that encircled the man's waist. this firm grip gave him new confidence, and he began to breathe more freely. he now clung to the body of the turk with both legs entwined, in the way he was accustomed to cling to a tree-trunk when he climbed after cherries at home. he had conquered his fear of falling, and took time to recover his wits and his strength. they had now reached such a tremendous height that the city looked like a speck on the desert beneath them. knowing he must act quickly, rob seized the dangling left arm of the unconscious turk and raised it until he could reach the dial of the traveling machine. he feared to unclasp the machine just then, for two reasons: if it slipped from his grasp they would both plunge downward to their death; and he was not sure the machine would work at all if in any other position than fastened to the left wrist. rob determined to take no chances, so he left the machine attached to the turk and turned the indicator to zero and then to "east," for he did not wish to rejoin either his enemies the turks or his equally undesirable friends the tatars. after traveling eastward a few minutes he lost sight of the city altogether; so, still clinging to the body of the turk, he again turned the indicator and began to descend. when, at last, they landed gently upon a rocky eminence of the kuen-lun mountains, the boy's strength was almost exhausted, and his limbs ached with the strain of clinging to the turk's body. his first act was to transfer the traveling machine to his own wrist and to see that his other electrical devices were safely bestowed in his pockets. then he sat upon the rock to rest until the turk recovered consciousness. presently the fellow moved uneasily, rolled over, and then sat up and stared at his surroundings. perhaps he thought he had been dreaming, for he rubbed his eyes and looked again with mingled surprise and alarm. then, seeing rob, he uttered a savage shout and drew his dagger. rob smiled and pointed the electric tube at the man, who doubtless recognized its power, for he fell back scowling and trembling. "this place seems like a good jog from civilization," remarked the boy, as coolly as if his companion could understand what he said; "but as your legs are long and strong you may be able to find your way. it's true you're liable to starve to death, but if you do it will be your own misfortune and not my fault." the turk glared at him sullenly, but did not attempt to reply. rob took out his box of tablets, ate one of them and offered another to his enemy. the fellow accepted it ungraciously enough, but seeing rob eat one he decided to follow his example, and consumed the tablet with a queer expression of distrust upon his face. "brave man!" cried rob, laughingly; "you've avoided the pangs of starvation for a time, anyhow, so i can leave you with a clear conscience." without more ado, he turned the indicator of the traveling machine and mounted into the air, leaving the turk sitting upon the rocks and staring after him in comical bewilderment. 15. a battle with monsters our young adventurer never experienced a more grateful feeling of relief and security than when he found himself once more high in the air, alone, and in undisputed possession of the electrical devices bestowed upon him by the demon. the dangers he had passed through since landing at the city of the desert and the desperate chance that alone had permitted him to regain the traveling machine made him shudder at the bare recollection and rendered him more sober and thoughtful than usual. we who stick closely to the earth's surface can scarcely realize how rob could travel through the air at such dizzy heights without any fear or concern whatsoever. but he had come to consider the air a veritable refuge. experience had given him implicit confidence in the powers of the electrical instrument whose unseen forces carried him so swiftly and surely, and while the tiny, watch-like machine was clasped to his wrist he felt himself to be absolutely safe. having slipped away from the turk and attained a fair altitude, he set the indicator at zero and paused long enough to consult his map and decide what direction it was best for him to take. the mischance that had swept him unwittingly over the countries of europe had also carried him more than half way around the world from his home. therefore the nearest way to reach america would be to continue traveling to the eastward. so much time had been consumed at the desert oasis that he felt he must now hasten if he wished to reach home by saturday afternoon; so, having quickly come to a decision, he turned the indicator and began a swift flight into the east. for several hours he traveled above the great desert of gobi, but by noon signs of a more fertile country began to appear, and, dropping to a point nearer the earth, he was able to observe closely the country of the chinese, with its crowded population and ancient but crude civilization. then he came to the great wall of china and to mighty peking, above which he hovered some time, examining it curiously. he really longed to make a stop there, but with his late experiences fresh in his mind he thought it much safer to view the wonderful city from a distance. resuming his flight he presently came to the gulf of laou tong, whose fair face was freckled with many ships of many nations, and so on to korea, which seemed to him a land fully a century behind the times. night overtook him while speeding across the sea of japan, and having a great desire to view the mikado's famous islands, he put the indicator at zero, and, coming to a full stop, composed himself to sleep until morning, that he might run no chances of being carried beyond his knowledge during the night. you might suppose it no easy task to sleep suspended in mid-air, yet the magnetic currents controlled by the traveling machine were so evenly balanced that rob was fully as comfortable as if reposing upon a bed of down. he had become somewhat accustomed to passing the night in the air and now slept remarkably well, having no fear of burglars or fire or other interruptions that dwellers in cities are subject to. one thing, however, he should have remembered: that he was in an ancient and little known part of the world and reposing above a sea famous in fable as the home of many fierce and terrible creatures; while not far away lay the land of the dragon, the simurg and other ferocious monsters. rob may have read of these things in fairy tales and books of travel, but if so they had entirely slipped his mind; so he slumbered peacefully and actually snored a little, i believe, towards morning. but even as the red sun peeped curiously over the horizon he was awakened by a most unusual disturbance--a succession of hoarse screams and a pounding of the air as from the quickly revolving blades of some huge windmill. he rubbed his eyes and looked around. coming towards him at his right hand was an immense bird, whose body seemed almost as big as that of a horse. its wide-open, curving beak was set with rows of pointed teeth, and the talons held against its breast and turned threateningly outward were more powerful and dreadful than a tiger's claws. while, fascinated and horrified, he watched the approach of this feathered monster, a scream sounded just behind him and the next instant the stroke of a mighty wing sent him whirling over and over through the air. he soon came to a stop, however, and saw that another of the monsters had come upon him from the rear and was now, with its mate, circling closely around him, while both uttered continuously their hoarse, savage cries. rob wondered why the garment of repulsion had not protected him from the blow of the bird's wing; but, as a matter of fact, it had protected him. for it was not the wing itself but the force of the eddying currents of air that had sent him whirling away from the monster. with the indicator at zero the magnetic currents and the opposing powers of attraction and repulsion were so evenly balanced that any violent atmospheric disturbance affected him in the same way that thistledown is affected by a summer breeze. he had noticed something of this before, but whenever a strong wind was blowing he was accustomed to rise to a position above the air currents. this was the first time he had slept with the indicator at zero. the huge birds at once renewed their attack, but rob had now recovered his wits sufficiently to draw the electric tube from his pocket. the first one to dart towards him received the powerful electric current direct from the tube, and fell stunned and fluttering to the surface of the sea, where it floated motionless. its mate, perhaps warned by this sudden disaster, renewed its circling flight, moving so swiftly that rob could scarcely follow it, and drawing nearer and nearer every moment to its intended victim. the boy could not turn in the air very quickly, and he feared an attack in the back, mistrusting the saving power of the garment of repulsion under such circumstances; so in desperation he pressed his finger upon the button of the tube and whirled the instrument around his head in the opposite direction to that in which the monster was circling. presently the current and the bird met, and with one last scream the creature tumbled downwards to join its fellow upon the waves, where they lay like two floating islands. their presence had left a rank, sickening stench in the surrounding atmosphere, so rob made haste to resume his journey and was soon moving rapidly eastward. he could not control a shudder at the recollection of his recent combat, and realized the horror of a meeting with such creatures by one who had no protection from their sharp beaks and talons. "it's no wonder the japs draw ugly pictures of those monsters," he thought. "people who live in these parts must pass most of their lives in a tremble." the sun was now shining brilliantly, and when the beautiful islands of japan came in sight rob found that he had recovered his wonted cheerfulness. he moved along slowly, hovering with curious interest over the quaint and picturesque villages and watching the industrious japanese patiently toiling at their tasks. just before he reached tokio he came to a military fort, and for nearly an hour watched the skilful maneuvers of a regiment of soldiers at their morning drill. they were not very big people, compared with other nations, but they seemed alert and well trained, and the boy decided it would require a brave enemy to face them on a field of battle. having at length satisfied his curiosity as to japanese life and customs rob prepared for his long flight across the pacific ocean. by consulting his map he discovered that should he maintain his course due east, as before, he would arrive at a point in america very near to san francisco, which suited his plans excellently. having found that he moved more swiftly when farthest from the earth's surface, because the air was more rarefied and offered less resistance, rob mounted upwards until the islands of japan were mere specks visible through the clear, sunny atmosphere. then he began his eastward flight, the broad surface of the pacific seeming like a blue cloud far beneath him. 16. shipwrecked mariners ample proof of rob's careless and restless nature having been frankly placed before the reader in these pages, you will doubtless be surprised when i relate that during the next few hours our young gentleman suffered from a severe attack of homesickness, becoming as gloomy and unhappy in its duration as ever a homesick boy could be. it may have been because he was just then cut off from all his fellow-creatures and even from the world itself; it may have been because he was satiated with marvels and with the almost absolute control over the powers which the demon had conferred upon him; or it may have been because he was born and reared a hearty, healthy american boy, with a disposition to battle openly with the world and take his chances equally with his fellows, rather than be placed in such an exclusive position that no one could hope successfully to oppose him. perhaps he himself did not know what gave him this horrible attack of "the blues," but the truth is he took out his handkerchief and cried like a baby from very loneliness and misery. there was no one to see him, thank goodness! and the tears gave him considerable relief. he dried his eyes, made an honest struggle to regain his cheerfulness, and then muttered to himself: "if i stay up here, like an air-bubble in the sky, i shall certainly go crazy. i suppose there's nothing but water to look at down below, but if i could only sight a ship, or even see a fish jump, it would do me no end of good." thereupon he descended until, as the ocean's surface same nearer and nearer, he discovered a tiny island lying almost directly underneath him. it was hardly big enough to make a dot on the biggest map, but a clump of trees grew in the central portion, while around the edges were jagged rocks protecting a sandy beach and a stretch of flower-strewn upland leading to the trees. it looked beautiful from rob's elevated position, and his spirits brightened at once. "i'll drop down and pick a bouquet," he exclaimed, and a few moments later his feet touched the firm earth of the island. but before he could gather a dozen of the brilliant flowers a glad shout reached his ears, and, looking up, he saw two men running towards him from the trees. they were dressed in sailor fashion, but their clothing was reduced to rags and scarcely clung to their brown, skinny bodies. as they advanced they waved their arms wildly in the air and cried in joyful tones: "a boat! a boat!" rob stared at them wonderingly, and had much ado to prevent the poor fellows from hugging him outright, so great was their joy at his appearance. one of them rolled upon the ground, laughing and crying by turns, while the other danced and cut capers until he became so exhausted that he sank down breathless beside his comrade. "how came you here?" then inquired the boy, in pitying tones. "we're shipwrecked american sailors from the bark 'cynthia jane,' which went down near here over a month ago," answered the smallest and thinnest of the two. "we escaped by clinging to a bit of wreckage and floated to this island, where we have nearly starved to death. indeed, we now have eaten everything on the island that was eatable, and had your boat arrived a few days later you'd have found us lying dead upon the beach!" rob listened to this sad tale with real sympathy. "but i didn't come here in a boat," said he. the men sprang to their feet with white, scared faces. "no boat!" they cried; "are you, too, shipwrecked?" "no;" he answered. "i flew here through the air." and then he explained to them the wonderful electric traveling machine. but the sailors had no interest whatever in the relation. their disappointment was something awful to witness, and one of them laid his head upon his comrade's shoulder and wept with unrestrained grief, so weak and discouraged had they become through suffering. suddenly rob remembered that he could assist them, and took the box of concentrated food tablets from his pocket. "eat these," he said, offering one of each to the sailors. at first they could not understand that these small tablets would be able to allay the pangs of hunger; but when rob explained their virtues the men ate them greedily. within a few moments they were so greatly restored to strength and courage that their eyes brightened, their sunken cheeks flushed, and they were able to converse with their benefactor with calmness and intelligence. then the boy sat beside them upon the grass and told them the story of his acquaintance with the demon and of all his adventures since he had come into possession of the wonderful electric contrivances. in his present mood he felt it would be a relief to confide in some one, and so these poor, lonely men were the first to hear his story. when he related the manner in which he had clung to the turk while both ascended into the air, the elder of the two sailors listened with rapt attention, and then, after some thought, asked: "why couldn't you carry one or both of us to america?" rob took time seriously to consider this idea, while the sailors eyed him with eager interest. finally he said: "i'm afraid i couldn't support your weight long enough to reach any other land. it's a long journey, and you'd pull my arms out of joint before we'd been up an hour." their faces fell at this, but one of them said: "why couldn't we swing ourselves over your shoulders with a rope? our two bodies would balance each other and we are so thin and emaciated that we do not weigh very much." while considering this suggestion rob remembered how at one time five pirates had clung to his left leg and been carried some distance through the air. "have you a rope?" he asked. "no," was the answer; "but there are plenty of long, tough vines growing on the island that are just as strong and pliable as ropes." "then, if you are willing to run the chances," decided the boy, "i will make the attempt to save you. but i must warn you that in case i find i can not support the weight of your bodies i shall drop one or both of you into the sea." they looked grave at this prospect, but the biggest one said: "we would soon meet death from starvation if you left us here on the island; so, as there is at least a chance of our being able to escape in your company i, for one, am willing to risk being drowned. it is easier and quicker than being starved. and, as i'm the heavier, i suppose you'll drop me first." "certainly," declared rob, promptly. this announcement seemed to be an encouragement to the little sailor, but he said, nervously: "i hope you'll keep near the water, for i haven't a good head for heights--they always make me dizzy." "oh, if you don't want to go," began rob, "i can easily--" "but i do! i do! i do!" cried the little man, interrupting him. "i shall die if you leave me behind!" "well, then, get your ropes, and we'll do the best we can," said the boy. they ran to the trees, around the trunks of which were clinging many tendrils of greenish-brown vine which possessed remarkable strength. with their knives they cut a long section of this vine, the ends of which were then tied into loops large enough to permit the sailors to sit in them comfortably. the connecting piece rob padded with seaweed gathered from the shore, to prevent its cutting into his shoulders. "now, then," he said, when all was ready, "take your places." the sailors squatted in the loops, and rob swung the vine over his shoulders and turned the indicator of the traveling machine to "up." as they slowly mounted into the sky the little sailor gave a squeal of terror and clung to the boy's arm; but the other, although seemingly anxious, sat quietly in his place and made no trouble. "d--d--don't g--g--go so high!" stammered the little one, tremblingly; "suppose we should f--f--fall!" "well, s'pose we should?" answered rob, gruffly. "you couldn't drown until you struck the water, so the higher we are the longer you'll live in case of accident." this phase of the question seemed to comfort the frightened fellow somewhat; but, as he said, he had not a good head for heights, and so continued to tremble in spite of his resolve to be brave. the weight on rob's shoulders was not so great as he had feared, the traveling machine seeming to give a certain lightness and buoyancy to everything that came into contact with its wearer. as soon as he had reached a sufficient elevation to admit of good speed he turned the indicator once more to the east and began moving rapidly through the air, the shipwrecked sailors dangling at either side. "this is aw--aw--awful!" gasped the little one. "say, you shut up!" commanded the boy, angrily. "if your friend was as big a coward as you are i'd drop you both this minute. let go my arm and keep quiet, if you want to reach land alive." the fellow whimpered a little, but managed to remain silent for several minutes. then he gave a sudden twitch and grabbed rob's arm again. "s'pose--s'pose the vine should break!" he moaned, a horrified look upon his face. "i've had about enough of this," said rob, savagely. "if you haven't any sense you don't deserve to live." he turned the indicator on the dial of the machine and they began to descend rapidly. the little fellow screamed with fear, but rob paid no attention to him until the feet of the two suspended sailors were actually dipping into the waves, when he brought their progress to an abrupt halt. "wh--wh--what are you g--g--going to do?" gurgled the cowardly sailor. "i'm going to feed you to the sharks--unless you promise to keep your mouth shut," retorted the boy. "now, then; decide at once! which will it be--sharks or silence?" "i won't say a word--'pon my honor, i won't!" said the sailor shudderingly. "all right; remember your promise and we'll have no further trouble," remarked rob, who had hard work to keep from laughing at the man's abject terror. once more he ascended and continued the journey, and for several hours they rode along swiftly and silently. rob's shoulders were beginning to ache with the continued tugging of the vine upon them, but the thought that he was saving the lives of two unfortunate fellow-creatures gave him strength and courage to persevere. night was falling when they first sighted land; a wild and seemingly uninhabited stretch of the american coast. rob made no effort to select a landing place, for he was nearly worn out with a strain and anxiety of the journey. he dropped his burden upon the brow of a high bluff overlooking the sea and, casting the vine from his shoulders, fell to the earth exhausted and half fainting. 17. the coast of oregon when he had somewhat recovered, rob sat up and looked around him. the elder sailor was kneeling in earnest prayer, offering grateful thanks for his escape from suffering and death. the younger one lay upon the ground sobbing and still violently agitated by recollections of the frightful experiences he had undergone. although he did not show his feelings as plainly as the men, the boy was none the less gratified at having been instrumental in saving the lives of two fellow-beings. the darkness was by this time rapidly enveloping them, so rob asked his companions to gather some brushwood and light a fire, which they quickly did. the evening was cool for the time of year, and the heat from the fire was cheering and grateful; so they all lay near the glowing embers and fell fast asleep. the sound of voices aroused rob next morning, and on opening his eyes and gazing around he saw several rudely dressed men approaching. the two shipwrecked sailors were still sound asleep. rob stood up and waited for the strangers to draw near. they seemed to be fishermen, and were much surprised at finding three people asleep upon the bluff. "whar 'n thunder 'd ye come from?" asked the foremost fisherman, in a surprised voice. "from the sea," replied the boy. "my friends here are shipwrecked sailors from the 'cynthia jane.'" "but how'd ye make out to climb the bluff?" inquired a second fisherman; "no one ever did it afore, as we knows on." "oh, that is a long story," replied the boy, evasively. the two sailors had awakened and now saluted the new-comers. soon they were exchanging a running fire of questions and answers. "where are we?" rob heard the little sailor ask. "coast of oregon," was the reply. "we're about seven miles from port orford by land an' about ten miles by sea." "do you live at port orford?" inquired the sailor. "that's what we do, friend; an' if your party wants to join us we'll do our best to make you comf'table, bein' as you're shipwrecked an' need help." just then a loud laugh came from another group, where the elder sailor had been trying to explain rob's method of flying through the air. "laugh all you want to," said the sailor, sullenly; "it's true--ev'ry word of it!" "mebbe you think it, friend," answered a big, good-natured fisherman; "but it's well known that shipwrecked folks go crazy sometimes, an' imagine strange things. your mind seems clear enough in other ways, so i advise you to try and forget your dreams about flyin'." rob now stepped forward and shook hands with the sailors. "i see you have found friends," he said to them, "so i will leave you and continue my journey, as i'm in something of a hurry." both sailors began to thank him profusely for their rescue, but he cut them short. "that's all right. of course i couldn't leave you on that island to starve to death, and i'm glad i was able to bring you away with me." "but you threatened to drop me into the sea," remarked the little sailor, in a grieved voice. "so i did," said rob, laughing; "but i wouldn't have done it for the world--not even to have saved my own life. good-by!" he turned the indicator and mounted skyward, to the unbounded amazement of the fishermen, who stared after him with round eyes and wide open mouths. "this sight will prove to them that the sailors are not crazy," he thought, as he turned to the south and sped away from the bluff. "i suppose those simple fishermen will never forget this wonderful occurrence, and they'll probably make reg'lar heroes of the two men who have crossed the pacific through the air." he followed the coast line, keeping but a short distance above the earth, and after an hour's swift flight reached the city of san francisco. his shoulders were sore and stiff from the heavy strain upon them of the previous day, and he wished more than once that he had some of his mother's household liniment to rub them with. yet so great was his delight at reaching once more his native land that all discomforts were speedily forgotten. much as he would have enjoyed a day in the great metropolis of the pacific slope, rob dared not delay longer than to take a general view of the place, to note its handsome edifices and to wonder at the throng of chinese inhabiting one section of the town. these things were much more plainly and quickly viewed by rob from above than by threading a way through the streets on foot; for he looked down upon the city as a bird does, and covered miles with a single glance. having satisfied his curiosity without attempting to alight, he turned to the southeast and followed the peninsula as far as palo alto, where he viewed the magnificent buildings of the university. changing his course to the east, he soon reached mount hamilton, and, being attracted by the great tower of the lick observatory, he hovered over it until he found he had attracted the excited gaze of the inhabitants, who doubtless observed him very plainly through the big telescope. but so unreal and seemingly impossible was the sight witnessed by the learned astronomers that they have never ventured to make the incident public, although long after the boy had darted away into the east they argued together concerning the marvelous and incomprehensible vision. afterward they secretly engrossed the circumstance upon their records, but resolved never to mention it in public, lest their wisdom and veracity should be assailed by the skeptical. meantime rob rose to a higher altitude, and sped swiftly across the great continent. by noon he sighted chicago, and after a brief inspection of the place from the air determined to devote at least an hour to forming the acquaintance of this most wonderful and cosmopolitan city. 18. a narrow escape the auditorium tower, where "the weather man" sits to flash his reports throughout the country, offered an inviting place for the boy to alight. he dropped quietly upon the roof of the great building and walked down the staircase until he reached the elevators, by means of which he descended to the ground floor without exciting special attention. the eager rush and hurry of the people crowding the sidewalks impressed rob with the idea that they were all behind time and were trying hard to catch up. he found it impossible to walk along comfortably without being elbowed and pushed from side to side; so a half hour's sight-seeing under such difficulties tired him greatly. it was a beautiful afternoon, and finding himself upon the lake front, rob hunted up a vacant bench and sat down to rest. presently an elderly gentleman with a reserved and dignified appearance and dressed in black took a seat next to the boy and drew a magazine from his pocket. rob saw that he opened it to an article on "the progress of modern science," in which he seemed greatly interested. after a time the boy remembered that he was hungry, not having eaten a tablet in more than twenty-four hours. so he took out the silver box and ate one of the small, round disks it contained. "what are those?" inquired the old gentleman in a soft voice. "you are too young to be taking patent medicines." "there are not medicines, exactly," answered the boy, with a smile. "they are concentrated food tablets, sorted with nourishment by means of electricity. one of them furnishes a person with food for an entire day." the old gentleman stared at rob a moment and then laid down his magazine and took the box in his hands, examining the tablets curiously. "are these patented?" he asked. "no," said rob; "they are unknown to any one but myself." "i will give you a half million dollars for the recipe to make them," said the gentleman. "i fear i must refuse your offer," returned rob, with a laugh. "i'll make it a million," said the gentleman, coolly. rob shook his head. "money can't buy the recipe," he said; "for i don't know it myself." "couldn't the tablets be chemically analyzed, and the secret discovered?" inquired the other. "i don't know; but i'm not going to give any one the chance to try," declared the boy, firmly. the old gentleman picked up his magazine without another word, and resumed his reading. for amusement rob took the record of events from his pocket and began looking at the scenes reflected from its polished plate. presently he became aware that the old gentleman was peering over his shoulder with intense interest. general funston was just then engaged in capturing the rebel chief, aguinaldo, and for a few moments both man and boy observed the occurrence with rapt attention. as the scene was replaced by one showing a secret tunnel of the russian nihilists, with the conspirators carrying dynamite to a recess underneath the palace of the czar, the gentleman uttered a long sigh and asked: "will you sell that box?" "no," answered rob, shortly, and put it back into his pocket. "i'll give you a million dollars to control the sale in chicago alone," continued the gentleman, with an eager inflection in his smooth voice. "you seem quite anxious to get rid of money," remarked rob, carelessly. "how much are you worth?" "personally?" "yes." "nothing at all, young man. i am not offering you my own money. but with such inventions as you have exhibited i could easily secure millions of capital. suppose we form a trust, and place them upon the market. we'll capitalize it for a hundred millions, and you can have a quarter of the stock--twenty-five millions. that would keep you from worrying about grocery bills." "but i wouldn't need groceries if i had the tablets," said rob, laughing. "true enough! but you could take life easily and read your newspaper in comfort, without being in any hurry to get down town to business. twenty-five millions would bring you a cozy little income, if properly invested." "i don't see why one should read newspapers when the record of events shows all that is going on in the world," objected rob. "true, true! but what do you say to the proposition?" "i must decline, with thanks. these inventions are not for sale." the gentleman sighed and resumed his magazine, in which he became much absorbed. rob put on the character marking spectacles and looked at him. the letters "e," "w" and "c" were plainly visible upon the composed, respectable looking brow of his companion. "evil, wise and cruel," reflected rob, as he restored the spectacles to his pocket. "how easily such a man could impose upon people. to look at him one would think that butter wouldn't melt in his mouth!" he decided to part company with this chance acquaintance and, rising from his seat, strolled leisurely up the walk. a moment later, on looking back, he discovered that the old gentleman had disappeared. he walked down state street to the river and back again, amused by the activity displayed in this busy section of the city. but the time he had allowed himself in chicago had now expired, so he began looking around for some high building from the roof of which he could depart unnoticed. this was not at all difficult, and selecting one of many stores he ascended by an elevator to the top floor and from there mounted an iron stairway leading to the flat roof. as he climbed this stairway he found himself followed by a pleasant looking young man, who also seemed desirous of viewing the city from the roof. annoyed at the inopportune intrusion, rob's first thought was to go back to the street and try another building; but, upon reflecting that the young man was not likely to remain long and he would soon be alone, he decided to wait. so he walked to the edge of the roof and appeared to be interested in the scenery spread out below him. "fine view from here, ain't it?" said the young man, coming up to him and placing his hand carelessly upon the boy's shoulder. "it is, indeed," replied rob, leaning over the edge to look into the street. as he spoke he felt himself gently but firmly pushed from behind and, losing his balance, he plunged headforemost from the roof and whirled through the intervening space toward the sidewalk far below. terrified though he was by the sudden disaster, the boy had still wit enough remaining to reach out his right hand and move the indicator of the machine upon his left wrist to the zero mark. immediately he paused in his fearful flight and presently came to a stop at a distance of less than fifteen feet from the flagstones which had threatened to crush out his life. as he stared downward, trying to recover his self-possession, he saw the old gentleman he had met on the lake front standing just below and looking at him with a half frightened, half curious expression in his eyes. at once rob saw through the whole plot to kill him and thus secure possession of his electrical devices. the young man upon the roof who had attempted to push him to his death was a confederate of the innocent appearing old gentleman, it seemed, and the latter had calmly awaited his fall to the pavement to seize the coveted treasures from his dead body. it was an awful idea, and rob was more frightened than he had ever been before in his life--or ever has been since. but now the shouts of a vast concourse of amazed spectators reached the boy's ears. he remembered that he was suspended in mid-air over the crowded street of a great city, while thousands of wondering eyes were fixed upon him. so he quickly set the indicator to the word "up," and mounted sky-ward until the watchers below could scarcely see him. then he fled away into the east, even yet shuddering with the horror of his recent escape from death and filled with disgust at the knowledge that there were people who held human life so lightly that they were willing to destroy it to further their own selfish ends. "and the demon wants such people as these to possess his electrical devices, which are as powerful to accomplish evil when in wrong hands as they are good!" thought the boy, resentfully. "this would be a fine world if electric tubes and records of events and traveling machines could be acquired by selfish and unprincipled persons!" so unnerved was rob by his recent experiences that he determined to make no more stops. however, he alighted at nightfall in the country, and slept upon the sweet hay in a farmer's barn. but, early the next morning, before any one else was astir, he resumed his journey, and at precisely ten o'clock of this day, which was saturday, he completed his flying trip around the world by alighting unobserved upon the well-trimmed lawn of his own home. 19. rob makes a resolution when rob opened the front door he came face to face with nell, who gave an exclamation of joy and threw herself into his arms. "oh, rob!" she cried, "i'm so glad you've come. we have all been dreadfully worried about you, and mother--" "well, what about mother?" inquired the boy, anxiously, as she paused. "she's been very ill, rob; and the doctor said to-day that unless we heard from you soon he would not be able to save her life. the uncertainty about you is killing her." rob stood stock still, all the eager joy of his return frozen into horror at the thought that he had caused his dear mother so much suffering. "where is she, nell?" he asked, brokenly. "in her room. come; i'll take you to her." rob followed with beating heart, and soon was clasped close to his mother's breast. "oh, my boy--my dear boy!" she murmured, and then for very joy and love she was unable to say more, but held him tight and stroked his hair gently and kissed him again and again. rob said little, except to promise that he would never again leave home without her full consent and knowledge. but in his mind he contrasted the love and comfort that now surrounded him with the lonely and unnatural life he had been leading and, boy though he was in years, a mighty resolution that would have been creditable to an experienced man took firm root in his heart. he was obliged to recount all his adventures to his mother and, although he made light of the dangers he had passed through, the story drew many sighs and shudders from her. when luncheon time arrived he met his father, and mr. joslyn took occasion to reprove his son in strong language for running away from home and leaving them filled with anxiety as to his fate. however, when he saw how happy and improved in health his dear wife was at her boy's return, and when he had listened to rob's manly confession of error and expressions of repentance, he speedily forgave the culprit and treated him as genially as ever. of course the whole story had to be repeated, his sisters listening this time with open eyes and ears and admiring their adventurous brother immensely. even mr. joslyn could not help becoming profoundly interested, but he took care not to show any pride he might feel in his son's achievements. when his father returned to his office rob went to his own bed-chamber and sat for a long time by the window in deep thought. when at last he aroused himself, he found it was nearly four o'clock. "the demon will be here presently," he said, with a thrill of aversion, "and i must be in the workshop to receive him." silently he stole to the foot of the attic stairs and then paused to listen. the house seemed very quiet, but he could hear his mother's voice softly humming a cradle-song that she had sung to him when he was a baby. he had been nervous and unsettled and a little fearful until then, but perhaps the sound of his mother's voice gave him courage, for he boldly ascended the stairs and entered the workshop, closing and locking the door behind him. 20. the unhappy fate of the demon again the atmosphere quickened and pulsed with accumulating vibrations. again the boy found himself aroused to eager expectancy. there was a whirl in the air; a crackling like distant musketry; a flash of dazzling light--and the demon stood before him for the third time. "i give you greetings!" said he, in a voice not unkindly. "good afternoon, mr. demon," answered the boy, bowing gravely. "i see you have returned safely from your trip," continued the apparition, cheerfully, "although at one time i thought you would be unable to escape. indeed, unless i had knocked that tube from the rascally turk's hand as he clambered to the top of the wall, i believe you would have been at the yarkand oasis yet--either dead or alive, as chance might determine." "were you there?" asked rob. "to be sure. and i recovered the tube for you, without which you would have been helpless. but that is the only time i saw fit to interfere in any way." "i'm afraid i did not get a chance to give many hints to inventors or scientists," said rob. "true, and i have deeply regretted it," replied the demon. "but your unusual powers caused more astonishment and consternation than you, perhaps, imagined; for many saw you whom you were too busy to notice. as a result several able electricians are now thinking new thoughts along new lines, and some of them may soon give these or similar inventions to the world." "you are satisfied, then?" asked rob. "as to that," returned the demon, composedly, "i am not. but i have hopes that with the addition of the three marvelous devices i shall present you with to-day you will succeed in arousing so much popular interest in electrical inventions as to render me wholly satisfied with the result of this experiment." rob regarded the brilliant apparition with a solemn face, but made no answer. "no living person," continued the demon, "has ever before been favored with such comforting devices for the preservation and extension of human life as yourself. you seem quite unappreciative, it is true; but since our connection i have come to realize that you are but an ordinary boy, with many boyish limitations; so i do not condemn your foolish actions too harshly." "that is kind of you," said rob. "to prove my friendliness," pursued the demon, "i have brought, as the first of to-day's offerings this electro-magnetic restorer. you see it is shaped like a thin metal band, and is to be worn upon the brow, clasping at the back of the head. its virtues surpass those of either the fabulous 'fountain of youth,' or the 'elixir of life,' so vainly sought for in past ages. for its wearer will instantly become free from any bodily disease or pain and will enjoy perfect health and vigor. in truth, so great are its powers that even the dead may be restored to life, provided the blood has not yet chilled. in presenting you with this appliance, i feel i am bestowing upon you the greatest blessing and most longed-for boon ever bequeathed of suffering humanity." here he held the slender, dull-colored metallic band toward the boy. "keep it," said rob. the demon started, and gave him an odd look. "what did you say?" he asked. "i told you to keep it," answered rob. "i don't want it." the demon staggered back as if he had been struck. "don't want it!" he gasped. "no; i've had enough of your infernal inventions!" cried the boy, with sudden anger. he unclasped the traveling machine from his wrist and laid it on the table beside the demon. "there's the thing that's responsible for most of my troubles," said he, bitterly. "what right has one person to fly through the air while all his fellow-creatures crawl over the earth's surface? and why should i be cut off from all the rest of the world because you have given me this confounded traveling machine? i didn't ask for it, and i won't keep it a moment longer. give it to some one you hate more than you do me!" the demon stared aghast and turned his glittering eyes wonderingly from rob to the traveling machine and back again, as if to be sure he had heard and seen aright. "and here are your food tablets," continued the boy, placing the box upon the table. "i've only enjoyed one square meal since you gave them to me. they're all right to preserve life, of course, and answer the purpose for which they were made; but i don't believe nature ever intended us to exist upon such things, or we wouldn't have the sense of taste, which enables us to enjoy natural food. as long as i'm a human being i'm going to eat like a human being, so i've consumed my last electrical concentrated food tablet--and don't you forget it!" the demon sank into a chair, nerveless and limp, but still staring fearfully at the boy. "and there's another of your unnatural devices," said rob, putting the automatic record of events upon the table beside the other things. "what right have you to capture vibrations that radiate from private and secret actions and discover them to others who have no business to know them? this would be a fine world if every body could peep into every one else's affairs, wouldn't it? and here is your character marker. nice thing for a decent person to own, isn't it? any one who would take advantage of such a sneaking invention as that would be worse than a thief! oh, i've used them, of course, and i ought to be spanked for having been so mean and underhanded; but i'll never be guilty of looking through them again." the demon's face was frowning and indignant. he made a motion to rise, but thought better of it and sank back in his chair. "as for the garment of protection," resumed the boy, after a pause, "i've worn it for the last time, and here it is, at your service. i'll put the electric tube with it. not that these are such very bad things in themselves, but i'll have none of your magical contrivances. i'll say this, however: if all armies were equipped with electrical tubes instead of guns and swords the world would be spared a lot of misery and unnecessary bloodshed. perhaps in time; but that time hasn't arrived yet." "you might have hastened it," said the demon, sternly, "if you had been wise enough to use your powers properly." "that's just it," answered rob. "i'm not wise enough. nor is the majority of mankind wise enough to use such inventions as yours unselfishly and for the good of the world. if people were better, and every one had an equal show, it would be different." for some moments the demon sat quietly thinking. finally the frown left his face and he said, with animation: "i have other inventions, which you may use without any such qualms of conscience. the electro-magnetic restorer i offered you would be a great boon to your race, and could not possibly do harm. and, besides this, i have brought you what i call the illimitable communicator. it is a simple electric device which will enable you, wherever you may be, to converse with people in any part of the world, without the use of such crude connections as wires. in fact, you may--" "stop!" cried rob. "it is useless for you to describe it, because i'll have nothing more to do with you or your inventions. i have given them a fair trial, and they've got me into all sorts of trouble and made all my friends miserable. if i was some high-up scientist it would be different; but i'm just a common boy, and i don't want to be anything else." "but, your duty--" began the demon. "my duty i owe to myself and to my family," interrupted rob. "i have never cultivated science, more than to fool with some simple electrical experiments, so i owe nothing to either science or the demon of electricity, so far as i can see." "but consider," remonstrated the demon, rising to his feet and speaking in a pleading voice, "consider the years that must elapse before any one else is likely to strike the master key! and, in the meanwhile, consider my helpless position, cut off from all interest in the world while i have such wonderful inventions on my hands for the benefit of mankind. if you have no love for science or for the advancement of civilization, do have some consideration for your fellow-creatures, and for me!" "if my fellow-creatures would have as much trouble with your electrical inventions as i had, i am doing them a service by depriving them of your devices," said the boy. "as for yourself, i've no fault to find with you, personally. you're a very decent sort of demon, and i've no doubt you mean well; but there's something wrong about our present combination, i'm sure. it isn't natural." the demon made a gesture of despair. "why, oh why did not some intelligent person strike the master key!" he moaned. "that's it!" exclaimed rob. "i believe that's the root of the whole evil." "what is?" inquired the demon, stupidly. "the fact that an intelligent person did not strike the master key. you don't seem to understand. well, i'll explain. you're the demon of electricity, aren't you?" "i am," said the other, drawing himself up proudly. "your mission is to obey the commands of whoever is able to strike the master key of electricity." "that is true." "i once read in a book that all things are regulated by exact laws of nature. if that is so you probably owe your existence to those laws." the demon nodded. "doubtless it was intended that when mankind became intelligent enough and advanced enough to strike the master key, you and all your devices would not only be necessary and acceptable to them, but the world would be prepared for their general use. that seems reasonable, doesn't it?" "perhaps so. yes; it seems reasonable," answered the demon, thoughtfully. "accidents are always liable to happen," continued the boy. "by accident the master key was struck long before the world of science was ready for it--or for you. instead of considering it an accident and paying no attention to it you immediately appeared to me--a mere boy--and offered your services." "i was very anxious to do something," returned the demon, evasively. "you've no idea how stupid it is for me to live invisible and unknown, while all the time i have in my possession secrets of untold benefit to the world." "well, you'll have to keep cool and bide your time," said rob. "the world wasn't made in a minute, and while civilization is going on at a pretty good pace, we're not up to the demon of electricity yet." "what shall i do!" groaned the apparition, wringing his hands miserably; "oh, what shall i do!" "go home and lie down," replied rob, sympathetically. "take it easy and don't get rattled. nothing was every created without a use, they say; so your turn will come some day, sure! i'm sorry for you, old fellow, but it's all your own fault." "you are right!" exclaimed the demon, striding up and down the room, and causing thereby such a crackling of electricity in the air that rob's hair became rigid enough to stand on end. "you are right, and i must wait--wait--wait--patiently and silently--until my bonds are loosed by intelligence rather than chance! it is a dreary fate. but i must wait--i must wait--i must wait!" "i'm glad you've come to your senses," remarked rob, drily. "so, if you've nothing more to say--" "no! i have nothing more to say. there is nothing more to say. you and i are two. we should never had met!" retorted the demon, showing great excitement. "oh, i didn't seek your acquaintance," said rob. "but i've tried to treat you decently, and i've no fault to find with you except that you forgot you were a slave and tried to be a master." the demon did not reply. he was busily forcing the various electrical devices that rob had relinquished into the pockets of his fiery jacket. finally he turned with an abrupt movement. "good-by!" he cried. "when mortal eyes next behold me they will be those of one fit to command my services! as for you, your days will be passed in obscurity and your name be unknown to fame. good-by,--forever!" the room filled with a flash of white light so like a sheet of lightning that the boy went reeling backwards, half stunned and blinded by its dazzling intensity. when he recovered himself the demon of electricity had disappeared. rob's heart was very light as he left the workshop and made his way down the attic stairs. "some people might think i was a fool to give up those electrical inventions," he reflected; "but i'm one of those persons who know when they've had enough. it strikes me the fool is the fellow who can't learn a lesson. i've learned mine, all right. it's no fun being a century ahead of the times!" the master key [illustration: rob was surrounded by a group of natives] the master key _an electrical fairy tale_ founded upon the mysteries of electricity and the optimism of its devotees. it was written for boys, but others may read it by l. frank baum illustrations by f. y. cory _the_ bowen-merrill company publishers · indianapolis copyright 1901 the bowen-merrill company press of braunworth & co. bookbinders and printers brooklyn, n. y. to my son robert stanton baum [illustration] contents _chapter_ _page_ i rob's workshop 1 ii the demon of electricity 9 iii the three gifts 18 iv testing the instruments 29 v the cannibal island 43 vi the buccaneers 60 vii the demon becomes angry 78 viii rob acquires new powers 86 ix the second journey 97 x how rob served a mighty king 104 xi the man of science 126 xii how rob saved a republic 136 xiii rob loses his treasures 146 xiv turk and tatar 160 xv a battle with monsters 182 xvi shipwrecked mariners 192 xvii the coast of oregon 206 xviii a narrow escape 214 xix rob makes a resolution 225 xx the unhappy fate of the demon 230 [illustration] [illustration] illustrations _page_ rob was surrounded by a group of natives of hideous appearance--_frontispiece_ from his workshop ran a network of wires throughout the house--_headpiece_ 1 a quick flash of light almost blinded rob 6 a curious being looked upon him from a magnificent radiance--_tailpiece_ 8 scientific men think the people of mars have been trying to signal us--_headpiece_ 9 i am here to do your bidding, said the demon--_tailpiece_ 17 men have not yet discovered what the birds know--_headpiece_ 18 these three gifts may amuse you for the next week--_tailpiece_ 28 rob's action surprised them all--_headpiece_ 29 "he'll break his neck!" cried the astounded father 36 the red-whiskered policeman keeled over--_tailpiece_ 42 rob's captors caught up the end of the rope and led him away--_headpiece_ 43 "if it's just the same to you, old chap, i won't be eaten to-day"--_tailpiece_ 59 rob soared through the air with five buccaneers dangling from his leg--_headpiece_ 60 it was a strange sight to see the pirates drop to the deck and lie motionless 66 when night fell his slumber was broken and uneasy--_tailpiece_ 77 when rob had been kissed by his mother, he gave an account of his adventures--_headpiece_ 78 rob sat staring eagerly at the demon--_tailpiece_ 85 the being drew from an inner pocket something resembling a box--_headpiece_ 86 these spectacles will indicate the character of every one you meet--_tailpiece_ 96 rob is in truth a typical american boy--_headpiece_ 97 rob placed the indicator to a point north of east and began his journey--_tailpiece_ 103 a crowd assembled, all shouting and pointing toward him in wonder--_headpiece_ 104 a man rushed toward it, but the next moment he threw up his hands and fell unconscious 108 rob reached the entrance of the palace, only to face another group of guardsmen 114 rob only smiled in an amused way as he marched past them--_tailpiece_ 125 a tremendous din and clatter nearly deafened him--_headpiece_ 126 the eyes of the frenchman were actually protruding from their sockets 128 from an elevation of fifty feet or more rob overlooked a pretty garden--_headpiece_ 136 placing the record so that the president could see clearly, rob watched the changing expressions upon the great man's face 140 rob experienced a decided sense of relief as he mixed with the gay populace--_tailpiece_ 145 beneath him stretched a vast sandy plain, and speeding across this he came to a land abounding in vegetation--_headpiece_ 146 "those fellows seem to be looking for trouble" 150 uttering cries of terror and dismay, the three turks took to their heels 158 rob was miserable and unhappy, and remained brooding over his cruel fate--_tailpiece_ 159 the tatars arrived swiftly and noiselessly--_headpiece_ 160 the turk rose slowly into the air, with rob clinging to him with desperate tenacity 176 without more ado rob mounted into the air, leaving the turk staring after him--_tailpiece_ 181 coming toward him was an immense bird--_headpiece_ 186 with one last scream the creature tumbled downward to join its fellow--_tailpiece_ 191 during the next few hours rob suffered from a severe attack of homesickness--_headpiece_ 192 the disappointment of the sailors was something awful to witness 196 as they slowly mounted into the sky the sailor gave a squeal of terror--_tailpiece_ 205 rob mounted skyward, to the unbounded amazement of the fishermen, who stared after him--_headpiece_ 206 rob hovered over the great tower of the lick observatory until he attracted the excited gaze of its inhabitants--_tailpiece_ 213 finding himself upon the lake front, rob hunted up a vacant bench and sat down to rest--_headpiece_ 214 as he started downward he saw the old gentleman looking at him with a half-frightened, half-curious expression--_tailpiece_ 224 at precisely ten o'clock rob reached the front door of his own house--_headpiece_ 225 rob boldly ascended the stairs, entered the workshop and closed and locked the door--_tailpiece_ 229 the demon sank into a chair nerveless and limp, but still staring fearfully at the boy--_headpiece_ 230 a flash of white light half-stunned and blinded rob. when he recovered himself the demon had disappeared--_tailpiece_ 245 [illustration] who knows? these things are quite improbable, to be sure; but are they impossible? our big world rolls over as smoothly as it did centuries ago, without a squeak to show it needs oiling after all these years of revolution. but times change because men change, and because civilization, like john brown's soul, goes ever marching on. the impossibilities of yesterday become the accepted facts of to-day. here is a fairy tale founded upon the wonders of electricity and written for children of this generation. yet when my readers shall have become men and women my story may not seem to their children like a fairy tale at all. perhaps one, perhaps two--perhaps several of the demon's devices will be, by that time, in popular use. who knows? "_in wonder all philosophy began; in wonder it all ends; and admiration fills up the interspace. but the first wonder is the offspring of ignorance: the last is the parent of adoration._" --coleridge. [illustration] the master key _chapter one_ rob's workshop when rob became interested in electricity his clear-headed father considered the boy's fancy to be instructive as well as amusing; so he heartily encouraged his son, and rob never lacked batteries, motors or supplies of any sort that his experiments might require. he fitted up the little back room in the attic as his workshop, and from thence a net-work of wires soon ran throughout the house. not only had every outside door its electric bell, but every window was fitted with a burglar alarm; moreover no one could cross the threshold of any interior room without registering the fact in rob's workshop. the gas was lighted by an electric fob; a chime, connected with an erratic clock in the boy's room, woke the servants at all hours of the night and caused the cook to give warning; a bell rang whenever the postman dropped a letter into the box; there were bells, bells, bells everywhere, ringing at the right time, the wrong time and all the time. and there were telephones in the different rooms, too, through which rob could call up the different members of the family just when they did not wish to be disturbed. his mother and sisters soon came to vote the boy's scientific craze a nuisance; but his father was delighted with these evidences of rob's skill as an electrician, and insisted that he be allowed perfect freedom in carrying out his ideas. "electricity," said the old gentleman, sagely, "is destined to become the motive power of the world. the future advance of civilization will be along electrical lines. our boy may become a great inventor and astonish the world with his wonderful creations." "and in the meantime," said the mother, despairingly, "we shall all be electrocuted, or the house burned down by crossed wires, or we shall be blown into eternity by an explosion of chemicals!" "nonsense!" ejaculated the proud father. "rob's storage batteries are not powerful enough to electrocute one or set the house on fire. do give the boy a chance, belinda." "and his pranks are so humiliating," continued the lady. "when the minister called yesterday and rang the bell a big card appeared on the front door on which was printed the words: 'busy; call again.' fortunately helen saw him and let him in, but when i reproved robert for the act he said he was just trying the sign to see if it would work." "exactly! the boy is an inventor already. i shall have one of those cards attached to the door of my private office at once. i tell you, belinda, our son will be a great man one of these days," said mr. joslyn, walking up and down with pompous strides and almost bursting with the pride he took in his young hopeful. mrs. joslyn sighed. she knew remonstrance was useless so long as her husband encouraged the boy, and that she would be wise to bear her cross with fortitude. rob also knew his mother's protests would be of no avail; so he continued to revel in electrical processes of all sorts, using the house as an experimental station to test the powers of his productions. it was in his own room, however,--his "workshop"--that he especially delighted. for not only was it the center of all his numerous "lines" throughout the house, but he had rigged up therein a wonderful array of devices for his own amusement. a trolley-car moved around a circular track and stopped regularly at all stations; an engine and train of cars moved jerkily up and down a steep grade and through a tunnel; a windmill was busily pumping water from the dishpan into the copper skillet; a sawmill was in full operation and a host of mechanical blacksmiths, scissors-grinders, carpenters, wood-choppers and millers were connected with a motor which kept them working away at their trades in awkward but persevering fashion. the room was crossed and recrossed with wires. they crept up the walls, lined the floor, made a grille of the ceiling and would catch an unwary visitor under the chin or above the ankle just when he least expected it. yet visitors were forbidden in so crowded a room, and even his father declined to go farther than the doorway. as for rob, he thought he knew all about the wires, and what each one was for; but they puzzled even him, at times, and he was often perplexed to know how to utilize them all. one day when he had locked himself in to avoid interruption while he planned the electrical illumination of a gorgeous pasteboard palace, he really became confused over the network of wires. he had a "switch-board," to be sure, where he could make and break connections as he chose; but the wires had somehow become mixed, and he could not tell what combinations to use to throw the power on to his miniature electric lights. so he experimented in a rather haphazard fashion, connecting this and that wire blindly and by guesswork, in the hope that he would strike the right combination. then he thought the combination might be right and there was a lack of power; so he added other lines of wire to his connections, and still others, until he had employed almost every wire in the room. [illustration: a quick flash of light almost blinded rob] yet it would not work; and after pausing a moment to try to think what was wrong he went at it again, putting this and that line into connection, adding another here and another there, until suddenly, as he made a last change, a quick flash of light almost blinded him, and the switch-board crackled ominously, as if struggling to carry a powerful current. rob covered his face at the flash, but finding himself unhurt he took away his hands and with blinking eyes attempted to look at a wonderful radiance which seemed to fill the room, making it many times brighter than the brightest day. although at first completely dazzled, he peered before him until he discovered that the light was concentrated near one spot, from which all the glorious rays seemed to scintillate. he closed his eyes a moment to rest them; then re-opening them and shading them somewhat with his hands, he made out the form of a curious being standing with majesty and composure in the center of the magnificent radiance and looking down upon him! [illustration] [illustration] _chapter two_ the demon of electricity rob was a courageous boy, but a thrill of fear passed over him in spite of his bravest endeavor as he gazed upon the wondrous apparition that confronted him. for several moments he sat as if turned to stone, so motionless was he; but his eyes were nevertheless fastened upon the being and devouring every detail of his appearance. and how strange an appearance he presented! his jacket was a wavering mass of white light, edged with braid of red flames that shot little tongues in all directions. the buttons blazed in golden fire. his trousers had a bluish, incandescent color, with glowing stripes of crimson braid. his vest was gorgeous with all the colors of the rainbow blended into a flashing, resplendent mass. in feature he was most majestic, and his eyes held the soft but penetrating brilliance of electric lights. it was hard to meet the gaze of those searching eyes, but rob did it, and at once the splendid apparition bowed and said in a low, clear voice: "i am here." "i know that," answered the boy, trembling, "but _why_ are you here?" "because you have touched the master key of electricity, and i must obey the laws of nature that compel me to respond to your summons." "i--i didn't know i touched the master key," faltered the boy. "i understand that. you did it unconsciously. no one in the world has ever done it before, for nature has hitherto kept the secret safe locked within her bosom." rob took time to wonder at this statement. "then who are you?" he inquired, at length. "the demon of electricity," was the solemn answer. "good gracious!" exclaimed rob, "a demon!" "certainly. i am, in truth, the slave of the master key, and am forced to obey the commands of any one who is wise and brave enough--or, as in your own case, fortunate and fool-hardy enough--to touch it." "i--i've never guessed there was such a thing as a master key, or--or a demon of electricity, and--and i'm awfully sorry i--i called you up!" stammered the boy, abashed by the imposing appearance of his companion. the demon actually smiled at this speech,--a smile that was almost reassuring. "i am not sorry," he said, in kindlier tone, "for it is not much pleasure waiting century after century for some one to command my services. i have often thought my existence uncalled for, since you earth people are so stupid and ignorant that you seem unlikely ever to master the secret of electrical power." "oh, we have some great masters among us!" cried rob, rather nettled at this statement. "now, there's edison--" "edison!" exclaimed the demon, with a faint sneer; "what does he know?" "lots of things," declared the boy. "he's invented no end of wonderful electrical things." "you are wrong to call them wonderful," replied the demon, lightly. "he really knows little more than yourself about the laws that control electricity. his inventions are trifling things in comparison with the really wonderful results to be obtained by one who would actually know how to direct the electric powers instead of groping blindly after insignificant effects. why, i've stood for months by edison's elbow, hoping and longing for him to touch the master key; but i can see plainly he will never accomplish it." "then there's tesla," said the boy. the demon laughed. "there is tesla, to be sure," he said. "but what of him?" "why, he's discovered a powerful light," the demon gave an amused chuckle, "and he's in communication with the people in mars." "what people?" "why, the people who live there." "there are none." this quiet statement almost took rob's breath away, and caused him to stare hard at his visitor. "it's generally thought," he resumed, in an annoyed tone, "that mars has inhabitants who are far in advance of ourselves in civilization. many scientific men think the people of mars have been trying to signal us for years, only we don't understand their signals. and great novelists have written about the martians and their wonderful civilization, and--" "and they all know as much about that little planet as you do yourself," interrupted the demon, impatiently. "the trouble with you earth people is that you delight in guessing about what you can not know. now i happen to know all about mars, because i can traverse all space and have had ample leisure to investigate the different planets. mars is not peopled at all, nor is any other of the planets you recognize in the heavens. some contain low orders of beasts, to be sure, but earth alone has an intelligent, thinking, reasoning population, and your scientists and novelists would do better trying to comprehend their own planet than in groping through space to unravel the mysteries of barren and unimportant worlds." rob listened to this with surprise and disappointment; but he reflected that the demon ought to know what he was talking about, so he did not venture to contradict him. "it is really astonishing," continued the apparition, "how little you people have learned about electricity. it is an earth element that has existed since the earth itself was formed, and if you but understood its proper use humanity would be marvelously benefited in many ways." "we are, already," protested rob; "our discoveries in electricity have enabled us to live much more conveniently." "then imagine your condition were you able fully to control this great element," replied the other, gravely. "the weaknesses and privations of mankind would be converted into power and luxury." "that's true, mr.--mr.--demon," said the boy. "excuse me if i don't get your name right, but i understood you to say you are a demon." "certainly. the demon of electricity." "but electricity is a good thing, you know, and--and--" "well?" "i've always understood that demons were bad things," added rob, boldly. "not necessarily," returned his visitor. "if you will take the trouble to consult your dictionary, you will find that demons may be either good or bad, like any other class of beings. originally all demons were good, yet of late years people have come to consider all demons evil. i do not know why. should you read hesiod you will find he says: 'soon was a world of holy demons made, aerial spirits, by great jove designed to be on earth the guardians of mankind.'" "but jove was himself a myth," objected rob, who had been studying mythology. the demon shrugged his shoulders. "then take the words of mr. shakespeare, to whom you all defer," he replied. "do you not remember that he says: 'thy demon (that's thy spirit which keeps thee) is noble, courageous, high, unmatchable.'" "oh, if shakespeare says it, that's all right," answered the boy. "but it seems you're more like a genius, for you answer the summons of the master key of electricity in the same way aladdin's genius answered the rubbing of the lamp." "to be sure. a demon is also a genius; and a genius is a demon," said the being. "what matters a name? i am here to do your bidding." [illustration] [illustration] _chapter three_ the three gifts familiarity with any great thing removes our awe of it. the great general is only terrible to the enemy; the great poet is frequently scolded by his wife; the children of the great statesman clamber about his knees with perfect trust and impunity; the great actor who is called before the curtain by admiring audiences is often waylaid at the stage door by his creditors. so rob, having conversed for a time with the glorious demon of electricity, began to regard him with more composure and less awe, as his eyes grew more and more accustomed to the splendor that at first had well-nigh blinded them. when the demon announced himself ready to do the boy's bidding, he frankly replied: "i am no skilled electrician, as you very well know. my calling you here was an accident. so i don't know how to command you, nor what to ask you to do." "but i must not take advantage of your ignorance," answered the demon. "also, i am quite anxious to utilize this opportunity to show the world what a powerful element electricity really is. so permit me to inform you that, having struck the master key, you are at liberty to demand from me three gifts each week for three successive weeks. these gifts, provided they are within the scope of electricity, i will grant." rob shook his head regretfully. "if i were a great electrician i should know what to ask," he said. "but i am too ignorant to take advantage of your kind offer." "then," replied the demon, "i will myself suggest the gifts, and they will be of such a character that the earth people will learn the possibilities that lie before them and be encouraged to work more intelligently and to persevere in mastering those natural and simple laws which control electricity. for one of the greatest errors they now labor under is that electricity is complicated and hard to understand. it is really the simplest earth element, lying within easy reach of any one who stretches out his hand to grasp and control its powers." rob yawned, for he thought the demon's speeches were growing rather tiresome. perhaps the genius noticed this rudeness, for he continued: "i regret, of course, that you are a boy instead of a grown man, for it will appear singular to your friends that so thoughtless a youth should seemingly have mastered the secrets that have baffled your most learned scientists. but that can not be helped, and presently you will become, through my aid, the most powerful and wonderful personage in all the world." "thank you," said rob, meekly. "it'll be no end of fun." "fun!" echoed the demon, scornfully. "but never mind; i must use the material fate has provided for me, and make the best of it." "what will you give me first?" asked the boy, eagerly. "that requires some thought," returned the demon, and paused for several moments, while rob feasted his eyes upon the gorgeous rays of color that flashed and vibrated in every direction and surrounded the figure of his visitor with an intense glow that resembled a halo. then the demon raised his head and said: "the thing most necessary to man is food to nourish his body. he passes a considerable part of his life in the struggle to procure food, to prepare it properly, and in the act of eating. this is not right. your body can not be very valuable to you if all your time is required to feed it. i shall, therefore, present you, as my first gift, this box of tablets. within each tablet are stored certain elements of electricity which are capable of nourishing a human body for a full day. all you need do is to toss one into your mouth each day and swallow it. it will nourish you, satisfy your hunger and build up your health and strength. the ordinary food of mankind is more or less injurious; this is entirely beneficial. moreover, you may carry enough tablets in your pocket to last for months." here he presented rob the silver box of tablets, and the boy, somewhat nervously, thanked him for the gift. "the next requirement of man," continued the demon, "is defense from his enemies. i notice with sorrow that men frequently have wars and kill one another. also, even in civilized communities, man is in constant danger from highwaymen, cranks and policemen. to defend himself he uses heavy and dangerous guns, with which to destroy his enemies. this is wrong. he has no right to take away what he can not bestow; to destroy what he can not create. to kill a fellow-creature is a horrid crime, even if done in self-defense. therefore, my second gift to you is this little tube. you may carry it within your pocket. whenever an enemy threatens you, be it man or beast, simply point the tube and press this button in the handle. an electric current will instantly be directed upon your foe, rendering him wholly unconscious for the period of one hour. during that time you will have opportunity to escape. as for your enemy, after regaining consciousness he will suffer no inconvenience from the encounter beyond a slight headache." "that's fine!" said rob, as he took the tube. it was scarcely six inches long, and hollow at one end. "the busy lives of men," proceeded the demon, "require them to move about and travel in all directions. yet to assist them there are only such crude and awkward machines as electric trolleys, cable cars, steam railways and automobiles. these crawl slowly over the uneven surface of the earth and frequently get out of order. it has grieved me that men have not yet discovered what even the birds know: that the atmosphere offers them swift and easy means of traveling from one part of the earth's surface to another." "some people have tried to build air-ships," remarked rob. "so they have; great, unwieldy machines which offer so much resistance to the air that they are quite useless. a big machine is not needed to carry one through the air. there are forces in nature which may be readily used for such purpose. tell me, what holds you to the earth, and makes a stone fall to the ground?" "attraction of gravitation," said rob, promptly. "exactly. that is one force i refer to," said the demon. "the force of repulsion, which is little known, but just as powerful, is another that mankind may direct. then there are the polar electric forces, attracting objects toward the north or south poles. you have guessed something of this by the use of the compass, or electric needle. opposed to these is centrifugal electric force, drawing objects from east to west, or in the opposite direction. this force is created by the whirl of the earth upon its axis, and is easily utilized, although your scientific men have as yet paid little attention to it. "these forces, operating in all directions, absolute and immutable, are at the disposal of mankind. they will carry you through the atmosphere wherever and whenever you choose. that is, if you know how to control them. now, here is a machine i have myself perfected." the demon drew from his pocket something that resembled an open-faced watch, having a narrow, flexible band attached to it. "when you wish to travel," said he, "attach this little machine to your left wrist by means of the band. it is very light and will not be in your way. on this dial are points marked 'up' and 'down' as well as a perfect compass. when you desire to rise into the air set the indicator to the word 'up,' using a finger of your right hand to turn it. when you have risen as high as you wish, set the indicator to the point of the compass you want to follow and you will be carried by the proper electric force in that direction. to descend, set the indicator to the word 'down.' do you understand?" "perfectly!" cried rob, taking the machine from the demon with unfeigned delight. "this is really wonderful, and i'm awfully obliged to you!" "don't mention it," returned the demon, dryly. "these three gifts you may amuse yourself with for the next week. it seems hard to entrust such great scientific discoveries to the discretion of a mere boy; but they are quite harmless, so if you exercise proper care you can not get into trouble through their possession. and who knows what benefits to humanity may result? one week from to-day, at this hour, i will again appear to you, at which time you shall receive the second series of electrical gifts." "i'm not sure," said rob, "that i shall be able again to make the connections that will strike the master key." "probably not," answered the demon. "could you accomplish that, you might command my services forever. but, having once succeeded, you are entitled to the nine gifts--three each week for three weeks--so you have no need to call me to do my duty. i shall appear of my own accord." "thank you," murmured the boy. the demon bowed and spread his hands in the form of a semi-circle. an instant later there was a blinding flash, and when rob recovered from it and opened his eyes the demon of electricity had disappeared. [illustration] [illustration] _chapter four_ testing the instruments there is little doubt that had this strange experience befallen a grown man he would have been stricken with a fit of trembling or a sense of apprehension, or even fear, at the thought of having faced the terrible demon of electricity, of having struck the master key of the world's greatest natural forces, and finding himself possessed of three such wonderful and useful gifts. but a boy takes everything as a matter of course. as the tree of knowledge sprouts and expands within him, shooting out leaf after leaf of practical experience, the succession of surprises dulls his faculty of wonderment. it takes a great deal to startle a boy. rob was full of delight at his unexpected good fortune; but he did not stop to consider that there was anything remarkably queer or uncanny in the manner in which it had come to him. his chief sensation was one of pride. he would now be able to surprise those who had made fun of his electrical craze and force them to respect his marvelous powers. he decided to say nothing about the demon or the accidental striking of the master key. in exhibiting to his friends the electrical devices he had acquired it would be "no end of fun" to mark their amazement and leave them to guess how he performed his feats. so he put his treasures into his pocket, locked his workshop and went downstairs to his room to prepare for dinner. while brushing his hair he remembered it was no longer necessary for him to eat ordinary food. he was feeling quite hungry at that moment, for he had a boy's ravenous appetite; but, taking the silver box from his pocket, he swallowed a tablet and at once felt his hunger as fully satisfied as if he had partaken of a hearty meal, while at the same time he experienced an exhilarating glow throughout his body and a clearness of brain and gaiety of spirits which filled him with intense gratification. still, he entered the dining-room when the bell rang and found his father and mother and sisters already assembled there. "where have you been all day, robert?" inquired his mother. "no need to ask," said mr. joslyn, with a laugh. "fussing over electricity, i'll bet a cookie!" "i do wish," said the mother, fretfully, "that he would get over that mania. it unfits him for anything else." "precisely," returned her husband, dishing the soup; "but it fits him for a great career when he becomes a man. why shouldn't he spend his summer vacation in pursuit of useful knowledge instead of romping around like ordinary boys?" "no soup, thank you," said rob. "what!" exclaimed his father, looking at him in surprise, "it's your favorite soup." "i know," said rob, quietly, "but i don't want any." "are you ill, robert?" asked his mother. "never felt better in my life," answered rob, truthfully. yet mrs. joslyn looked worried, and when rob refused the roast, she was really shocked. "let me feel your pulse, my poor boy!" she commanded, and wondered to find it so regular. in fact, rob's action surprised them all. he sat calmly throughout the meal, eating nothing, but apparently in good health and spirits, while even his sisters regarded him with troubled countenances. "he's worked too hard, i guess," said mr. joslyn, shaking his head sadly. "oh, no; i haven't," protested rob; "but i've decided not to eat anything, hereafter. it's a bad habit, and does more harm than good." "wait till breakfast," said sister helen, with a laugh; "you'll be hungry enough by that time." however, the boy had no desire for food at breakfast time, either, as the tablet sufficed for an entire day. so he renewed the anxiety of the family by refusing to join them at the table. "if this goes on," mr. joslyn said to his son, when breakfast was finished, "i shall be obliged to send you away for your health." "i think of making a trip this morning," said rob, carelessly. "where to?" "oh, i may go to boston, or take a run over to cuba or jamaica," replied the boy. "but you can not go so far by yourself," declared his father; "and there is no one to go with you, just now. nor can i spare the money at present for so expensive a trip." "oh, it won't cost anything," replied rob, with a smile. mr. joslyn looked upon him gravely and sighed. mrs. joslyn bent over her son with tears in her eyes and said: "this electrical nonsense has affected your mind, dear. you must promise me to keep away from that horrid workshop for a time." "i won't enter it for a week," he answered. "but you needn't worry about me. i haven't been experimenting with electricity all this time for nothing, i can tell you. as for my health, i'm as well and strong as any boy need be, and there's nothing wrong with my head, either. common folks always think great men are crazy, but edison and tesla and i don't pay any attention to that. we've got our discoveries to look after. now, as i said, i'm going for a little trip in the interests of science. i maybe back to-night, or i may be gone several days. anyhow, i'll be back in a week, and you mustn't worry about me a single minute." "how are you going?" inquired his father, in the gentle, soothing tone persons use in addressing maniacs. "through the air," said rob. his father groaned. "where's your balloon?" inquired sister mabel, sarcastically. "i don't need a balloon," returned the boy. "that's a clumsy way of traveling, at best. i shall go by electric propulsion." "good gracious!" cried mr. joslyn, and the mother murmured: "my poor boy! my poor boy!" "as you are my nearest relatives," continued rob, not noticing these exclamations, "i will allow you to come into the back yard and see me start. you will then understand something of my electrical powers." they followed him at once, although with unbelieving faces, and on the way rob clasped the little machine to his left wrist, so that his coat sleeve nearly hid it. when they reached the lawn at the back of the house rob kissed them all good-by, much to his sisters' amusement, and turned the indicator of the little instrument to the word "up." immediately he began to rise into the air. "don't worry about me!" he called down to them. "good-by!" mrs. joslyn, with a scream of terror, hid her face in her hands. "he'll break his neck!" cried the astounded father, tipping back his head to look after his departing son. [illustration: "he'll break his neck!" cried the astounded father] "come back! come back!" shouted the girls to the soaring adventurer. "i will--some day!" was the far-away answer. having risen high enough to pass over the tallest tree or steeple, rob put the indicator to the east of the compass-dial and at once began moving rapidly in that direction. the sensation was delightful. he rode as gently as a feather floats, without any exertion at all on his own part; yet he moved so swiftly that he easily distanced a railway train that was speeding in the same direction. "this is great!" reflected the youth. "here i am, traveling in fine style, without a penny to pay any one! and i've enough food to last me a month in my coat pocket. this electricity is the proper stuff, after all! and the demon's a trump, and no mistake. whee-ee! how small everything looks down below there. the people are bugs, and the houses are soap-boxes, and the trees are like clumps of grass. i seem to be passing over a town. guess i'll drop down a bit, and take in the sights." he pointed the indicator to the word "down," and at once began dropping through the air. he experienced the sensation one feels while descending in an elevator. when he reached a point just above the town he put the indicator to the zero mark and remained stationary, while he examined the place. but there was nothing to interest him, particularly; so after a brief survey he once more ascended and continued his journey toward the east. at about two o'clock in the afternoon he reached the city of boston, and alighting unobserved in a quiet street he walked around for several hours enjoying the sights and wondering what people would think of him if they but knew his remarkable powers. but as he looked just like any other boy no one noticed him in any way. it was nearly evening, and rob had wandered down by the wharves to look at the shipping, when his attention was called to an ugly looking bull dog, which ran toward him and began barking ferociously. "get out!" said the boy, carelessly, and made a kick at the brute. the dog uttered a fierce growl and sprang upon him with bared teeth and flashing red eyes. instantly rob drew the electric tube from his pocket, pointed it at the dog and pressed the button. almost at the same moment the dog gave a yelp, rolled over once or twice and lay still. "i guess that'll settle him," laughed the boy; but just then he heard an angry shout, and looking around saw a policeman running toward him. "kill me dog, will ye--eh?" yelled the officer; "well, i'll just run ye in for that same, an' ye'll spend the night in the lock-up!" and on he came, with drawn club in one hand and a big revolver in the other. "you'll have to catch me first," said rob, still laughing, and to the amazement of the policeman he began rising straight into the air. "come down here! come down, or i'll shoot!" shouted the fellow, flourishing his revolver. rob was afraid he would; so, to avoid accidents, he pointed the tube at him and pressed the button. the red-whiskered policeman keeled over quite gracefully and fell across the body of the dog, while rob continued to mount upward until he was out of sight of those in the streets. "that was a narrow escape," he thought, breathing more freely. "i hated to paralyze that policeman, but he might have sent a bullet after me. anyhow, he'll be all right again in an hour, so i needn't worry." it was beginning to grow dark, and he wondered what he should do next. had he possessed any money he would have descended to the town and taken a bed at a hotel, but he had left home without a single penny. fortunately the nights were warm at this season, so he determined to travel all night, that he might reach by morning some place he had never before visited. cuba had always interested him, and he judged it ought to lie in a southeasterly direction from boston. so he set the indicator to that point and began gliding swiftly toward the southeast. he now remembered that it was twenty-four hours since he had eaten the first electrical tablet. as he rode through the air he consumed another. all hunger at once left him, while he felt the same invigorating sensations as before. after a time the moon came out, and rob amused himself gazing at the countless stars in the sky and wondering if the demon was right when he said the world was the most important of all the planets. but presently he grew sleepy, and before he realized what was happening he had fallen into a sound and peaceful slumber, while the indicator still pointed to the southeast and he continued to move rapidly through the cool night air. [illustration] [illustration] _chapter five_ the cannibal island doubtless the adventures of the day had tired rob, for he slept throughout the night as comfortably as if he had been within his own room, lying upon his own bed. when, at last, he opened his eyes and gazed sleepily about him, he found himself over a great body of water, moving along with considerable speed. "it's the ocean, of course," he said to himself. "i haven't reached cuba yet." it is to be regretted that rob's knowledge of geography was so superficial; for, as he had intended to reach cuba, he should have taken a course almost southwest from boston, instead of southeast. the sad result of his ignorance you will presently learn, for during the entire day he continued to travel over a boundless waste of ocean, without the sight of even an island to cheer him. the sun shone so hot that he regretted he had not brought an umbrella. but he wore a wide-brimmed straw hat, which protected him somewhat, and he finally discovered that by rising to a considerable distance above the ocean he avoided the reflection of the sun upon the water and also came within the current of good breeze. of course he dared not stop, for there was no place to land; so he calmly continued his journey. "it may be i've missed cuba," he thought; "but i can not change my course now, for if i did i might get lost, and never be able to find land again. if i keep on as i am i shall be sure to reach land of some sort, in time, and when i wish to return home i can set the indicator to the northwest and that will take me directly back to boston." this was good reasoning, but the rash youth had no idea he was speeding over the ocean, or that he was destined to arrive shortly at the barbarous island of brava, off the coast of africa. yet such was the case; just as the sun sank over the edge of the waves he saw, to his great relief, a large island directly in his path. he dropped to a lower position in the air, and when he judged himself to be over the center of the island he turned the indicator to zero and stopped short. the country was beautifully wooded, while pretty brooks sparkled through the rich green foliage of the trees. the island sloped upwards from the sea-coast in all directions, rising to a hill that was almost a mountain in the center. there were two open spaces, one on each side of the island, and rob saw that these spaces were occupied by queer-looking huts built from brushwood and branches of trees. this showed that the island was inhabited, but as rob had no idea what island it was he wisely determined not to meet the natives until he had discovered what they were like and whether they were disposed to be friendly. so he moved over the hill, the top of which proved to be a flat, grass-covered plateau about fifty feet in diameter. finding it could not be easily reached from below, on account of its steep sides, and contained neither men nor animals, he alighted on the hill-top and touched his feet to the earth for the first time in twenty-four hours. the ride through the air had not tired him in the least; in fact, he felt as fresh and vigorous as if he had been resting throughout the journey. as he walked upon the soft grass of the plateau he felt elated, and compared himself to the explorers of ancient days; for it was evident that civilization had not yet reached this delightful spot. there was scarcely any twilight in this tropical climate and it grew dark quickly. within a few minutes the entire island, save where he stood, became dim and indistinct. he ate his daily tablet, and after watching the red glow fade in the western sky and the gray shadows of night settle around him he stretched himself comfortably upon the grass and went to sleep. the events of the day must have deepened his slumber, for when he awoke the sun was shining almost directly over him, showing that the day was well advanced. he stood up, rubbed the sleep from his eyes and decided he would like a drink of water. from where he stood he could see several little brooks following winding paths through the forest, so he settled upon one that seemed farthest from the brushwood villages, and turning his indicator in that direction soon floated through the air to a sheltered spot upon the bank. kneeling down, he enjoyed a long, refreshing drink of the clear water, but as he started to regain his feet a coil of rope was suddenly thrown about him, pinning his arms to his sides and rendering him absolutely helpless. at the same time his ears were saluted with a wild chattering in an unknown tongue, and he found himself surrounded by a group of natives of hideous appearance. they were nearly naked, and bore spears and heavy clubs as their only weapons. their hair was long, curly, and thick as bushes, and through their noses and ears were stuck the teeth of sharks and curious metal ornaments. these creatures had stolen upon rob so quietly that he had not heard a sound, but now they jabbered loudly, as if much excited. finally one fat and somewhat aged native, who seemed to be a chief, came close to rob and said, in broken english: "how get here?" "i flew," said the boy, with a grin. the chief shook his head, saying: "no boat come. how white man come?" "through the air," replied rob, who was rather flattered at being called a "man." the chief looked into the air with a puzzled expression and shook his head again. "white man lie," he said calmly. then he held further conversation with his fellows, after which he turned to rob and announced: "me see white man many times. come in big boats. white men all bad. make kill with bang-sticks. we kill white man with club. then we eat white man. dead white man good. live white man bad!" this did not please rob at all. the idea of being eaten by savages had never occurred to him as a sequel to his adventures. so he said rather anxiously to the chief: "look here, old fellow; do you want to die?" "me no die. you die," was the reply. "you'll die, too, if you eat me," said rob. "i'm full of poison." "poison? don't know poison," returned the chief, much perplexed to understand him. "well, poison will make you sick--awful sick. then you'll die. i'm full of it; eat it every day for breakfast. it don't hurt white men, you see, but it kills black men quicker than the bang-stick." the chief listened to this statement carefully, but only understood it in part. after a moment's reflection he declared: "white man lie. lie all time. me eat plenty white man. never get sick; never die." then he added, with renewed cheerfulness: "me eat you, too!" before rob could think of a further protest, his captors caught up the end of the rope and led him away through the forest. he was tightly bound, and one strand of rope ran across the machine on his wrist and pressed it into his flesh until the pain was severe. but he resolved to be brave, whatever happened, so he stumbled along after the savages without a word. after a brief journey they came to a village, where rob was thrust into a brushwood hut and thrown upon the ground, still tightly bound. "we light fire," said the chief. "then kill little white man. then eat him." with this comforting promise he went away and left rob alone to think the matter over. "this is tough," reflected the boy, with a groan. "i never expected to feed cannibals. wish i was at home with mother and dad and the girls. wish i'd never seen the demon of electricity and his wonderful inventions. i was happy enough before i struck that awful master key. and now i'll be eaten--with salt and pepper, probably. wonder if there'll be any gravy. perhaps they'll boil me, with biscuits, as mother does chickens. oh-h-h-h-h! it's just awful!" in the midst of these depressing thoughts he became aware that something was hurting his back. after rolling over he found that he had been lying upon a sharp stone that stuck out of the earth. this gave him an idea. he rolled upon the stone again and began rubbing the rope that bound him against the sharp edge. outside he could hear the crackling of fagots and the roar of a newly-kindled fire, so he knew he had no time to spare. he wriggled and pushed his body right and left, right and left, sawing away at the rope, until the strain and exertion started the perspiration from every pore. at length the rope parted, and hastily uncoiling it from his body rob stood up and rubbed his benumbed muscles and tried to regain his lost breath. he had not freed himself a moment too soon, he found, for hearing a grunt of surprise behind him he turned around and saw a native standing in the door of the hut. rob laughed, for he was not a bit afraid of the blacks now. as the native made a rush toward him the boy drew the electric tube from his pocket, pointed it at the foe, and pressed the button. the fellow sank to the earth without even a groan, and lay still. then another black entered, followed by the fat chief. when they saw rob at liberty, and their comrade lying apparently dead, the chief cried out in surprise, using some expressive words in his own language. "if it's just the same to you, old chap," said rob, coolly, "i won't be eaten to-day. you can make a pie of that fellow on the ground." "no! we eat you," cried the chief, angrily. "you cut rope, but no get away; no boat!" "i don't need a boat, thank you," said the boy; and then, as the other native sprang forward, he pointed the tube and laid him out beside his first victim. at this act the chief stood an instant in amazed uncertainty. then he turned and rushed from the hut. laughing with amusement at the waddling, fat figure, rob followed the chief and found himself standing almost in the center of the native village. a big fire was blazing merrily and the blacks were busy making preparations for a grand feast. rob was quickly surrounded by a crowd of the villagers, who chattered fiercely and made threatening motions in his direction; but as the chief cried out to them a warning in the native tongue they kept a respectful distance and contented themselves with brandishing their spears and clubs. "if any of your fellows come nearer," rob said to the fat chief, "i'll knock 'em over." "what you make do?" asked the chief, nervously. "watch sharp, and you'll see," answered rob. then he made a mocking bow to the circle and continued: "i'm pleased to have met you fellows, and proud to think you like me well enough to want to eat me; but i'm in a bit of a hurry to-day, so i can't stop to be digested." after which, as the crowd broke into a hum of surprise, he added: "good-day, black folks!" and quickly turned the indicator of his traveling machine to the word "up." slowly he rose into the air, until his heels were just above the gaping blacks; but there he stopped short. with a thrill of fear he glanced at the indicator. it was pointed properly, and he knew at once that something was wrong with the delicate mechanism that controlled it. probably the pressure of the rope across its face, when he was bound, had put it out of order. there he was, seven feet in the air, but without the power to rise an inch farther. this short flight, however, had greatly astonished the blacks, who, seeing his body suspended in mid-air, immediately hailed him as a god, and prostrated themselves upon the ground before him. the fat chief had seen something of white men in his youth, and had learned to mistrust them. so, while he remained as prostrate as the rest, he peeped at rob with one of his little black eyes and saw that the boy was ill at ease, and seemed both annoyed and frightened. so he muttered some orders to the man next him, who wriggled along the ground until he had reached a position behind rob, when he rose and pricked the suspended "god" with the point of his spear. "ouch!" yelled the boy; "stop that!" he twisted his head around, and seeing the black again make a movement with the spear, rob turned his electric tube upon him and keeled him over like a ten-pin. the natives, who had looked up at his cry of pain, again prostrated themselves, kicking their toes against the ground in a terrified tattoo at this new evidence of the god's powers. the situation was growing somewhat strained by this time, and rob did not know what the savages would decide to do next; so he thought it best to move away from them, since he was unable to rise to a greater height. he turned the indicator towards the south, where a level space appeared between the trees; but instead of taking that direction he moved towards the northeast, a proof that his machine had now become absolutely unreliable. moreover, he was slowly approaching the fire, which, although it had ceased blazing, was a mass of glowing red embers. in his excitement he turned the indicator this way and that, trying to change the direction of his flight, but the only result of his endeavor was to carry him directly over the fire, where he came to a full stop. "murder! help! fire and blazes!" he cried, as he felt the glow of the coals beneath him. "i'll be roasted, after all! here; help, fatty, help!" the fat chief sprang to his feet and came to the rescue. he reached up, caught rob by the heels, and pulled him down to the ground, away from the fire. but the next moment, as he clung to the boy's feet, they both soared into the air again, and, although now far enough from the fire to escape its heat, the savage, finding himself lifted from the earth, uttered a scream of horror and let go of rob, to fall head over heels upon the ground. the other blacks had by this time regained their feet, and now they crowded around their chief and set him upright again. rob continued to float in the air, just above their heads, and now abandoned all thoughts of escaping by means of his wrecked traveling machine. but he resolved to regain a foothold upon the earth and take his chances of escape by running rather than flying. so he turned the indicator to the word "down," and very slowly it obeyed, allowing him, to his great relief, to sink gently to the ground. [illustration] [illustration] _chapter six_ the buccaneers once more the blacks formed a circle around our adventurer, who coolly drew his tube and said to the chief: "tell your people i'm going to walk away through those trees, and if any one dares to interfere with me i'll paralyze him." the chief understood enough english to catch his meaning, and repeated the message to his men. having seen the terrible effect of the electric tube they wisely fell back and allowed the boy to pass. he marched through their lines with a fine air of dignity, although he was fearful lest some of the blacks should stick a spear into him or bump his head with a war-club. but they were awed by the wonders they had seen and were still inclined to believe him a god, so he was not molested. when he found himself outside the village he made for the high plateau in the center of the island, where he could be safe from the cannibals while he collected his thoughts. but when he reached the place he found the sides so steep he could not climb them, so he adjusted the indicator to the word "up" and found it had still enough power to support his body while he clambered up the rocks to the level, grass-covered space at the top. then, reclining upon his back, he gave himself up to thoughts of how he might escape from his unpleasant predicament. "here i am, on a cannibal island, hundreds of miles from civilization, with no way to get back," he reflected. "the family will look for me every day, and finally decide i've broken my neck. the demon will call upon me when the week is up and won't find me at home; so i'll miss the next three gifts. i don't mind that so much, for they might bring me into worse scrapes than this. but how am i to get away from this beastly island? i'll be eaten, after all, if i don't look out!" these and similar thoughts occupied him for some time, yet in spite of much planning and thinking he could find no practical means of escape. at the end of an hour he looked over the edge of the plateau and found it surrounded by a ring of the black cannibals, who had calmly seated themselves to watch his movements. "perhaps they intend to starve me into surrender," he thought; "but they won't succeed so long as my tablets hold out. and if, in time, they should starve me, i'll be too thin and tough to make good eating; so i'll get the best of them, anyhow." then he again lay down and began to examine his electrical traveling machine. he did not dare take it apart, fearing he might not be able to get it together again, for he knew nothing at all about its construction. but he discovered two little dents on the edge, one on each side, which had evidently been caused by the pressure of the rope. "if i could get those dents out," he thought, "the machine might work." he first tried to pry out the edges with his pocket knife, but the attempt resulted in failure. then, as the sides seemed a little bulged outward by the dents, he placed the machine between two flat stones and pressed them together until the little instrument was nearly round again. the dents remained, to be sure, but he hoped he had removed the pressure upon the works. there was just one way to discover how well he had succeeded, so he fastened the machine to his wrist and turned the indicator to the word "up." slowly he ascended, this time to a height of nearly twenty feet. then his progress became slower and finally ceased altogether. "that's a little better," he thought. "now let's see if it will go sidewise." he put the indicator to "north-west,"--the direction of home--and very slowly the machine obeyed and carried him away from the plateau and across the island. the natives saw him go, and springing to their feet began uttering excited shouts and throwing their spears at him. but he was already so high and so far away that they failed to reach him, and the boy continued his journey unharmed. once the branches of a tall tree caught him and nearly tipped him over; but he managed to escape others by drawing up his feet. at last he was free of the island and traveling over the ocean again. he was not at all sorry to bid good-by to the cannibal island, but he was worried about the machine, which clearly was not in good working order. the vast ocean was beneath him, and he moved no faster than an ordinary walk. "at this rate i'll get home some time next year," he grumbled. "however, i suppose i ought to be glad the machine works at all." and he really was glad. all the afternoon and all the long summer night he moved slowly over the water. it was annoying to go at "a reg'lar jog-trot," as rob called it, after his former swift flight; but there was no help for it. just as dawn was breaking he saw in the distance a small vessel, sailing in the direction he was following, yet scarcely moving for lack of wind. he soon caught up with it, but saw no one on deck, and the craft had a dingy and uncared-for appearance that was not reassuring. but after hovering over it for some time rob decided to board the ship and rest for a while. he alighted near the bow, where the deck was highest, and was about to explore the place when a man came out of the low cabin and espied him. this person had a most villainous countenance, and was dark-skinned, black-bearded and dressed in an outlandish, piratical costume. on seeing the boy he gave a loud shout and was immediately joined by four companions, each as disagreeable in appearance as the first. rob knew there would be trouble the moment he looked at this evil crew, and when they drew their daggers and pistols and began fiercely shouting in an unknown tongue, the boy sighed and took the electric tube from his coat pocket. the buccaneers did not notice the movement, but rushed upon him so quickly that he had to press the button at a lively rate. the tube made no noise at all, so it was a strange and remarkable sight to see the pirates suddenly drop to the deck and lie motionless. indeed, one was so nearly upon him when the electric current struck him that his head, in falling, bumped into rob's stomach and sent him reeling against the side of the vessel. [illustration: it was a strange sight to see the pirates drop to the deck and lie motionless] he quickly recovered himself, and seeing his enemies were rendered harmless, the boy entered the cabin and examined it curiously. it was dirty and ill-smelling enough, but the corners and spare berths were heaped with merchandise of all kinds which had been taken from those so unlucky as to have met these cruel and desperate men. after a short inspection of the place he returned to the deck and again seated himself in the bow. the crippled condition of his traveling machine was now his chief trouble, and although a good breeze had sprung up to fill the sails and the little bark was making fair headway, rob knew he could never expect to reach home unless he could discover a better mode of conveyance than this. he unstrapped the machine from his wrist to examine it better, and while holding it carelessly in his hand it slipped and fell with a bang to the deck, striking upon its round edge and rolling quickly past the cabin and out of sight. with a cry of alarm he ran after it, and after much search found it lying against the bulwark near the edge of a scupper hole, where the least jar of the ship would have sent it to the bottom of the ocean. rob hastily seized his treasure, and upon examining it found the fall had bulged the rim so that the old dents scarcely showed at all. but its original shape was more distorted than ever, and rob feared he had utterly ruined its delicate mechanism. should this prove to be true, he might now consider himself a prisoner of this piratical band, the members of which, although temporarily disabled, would soon regain consciousness. he sat in the bow, sadly thinking of his misfortunes, until he noticed that one of the men began to stir. the effect of the electric shock conveyed by the tube was beginning to wear away, and now the buccaneer sat up, rubbed his head in a bewildered fashion and looked around him. when he saw rob he gave a shout of rage and drew his knife, but one motion of the electric tube made him cringe and slip away to the cabin, where he remained out of danger. and now the other four sat up, groaning and muttering in their outlandish speech; but they had no notion of facing rob's tube a second time, so one by one they joined their leader in the cabin, leaving the boy undisturbed. by this time the ship had begun to pitch and toss in an uncomfortable fashion, and rob noticed that the breeze had increased to a gale. there being no one to look after the sails, the vessel was in grave danger of capsizing or breaking her masts. the waves were now running high, too, and rob began to be worried. presently the captain of the pirates stuck his head out of the cabin door, jabbered some unintelligible words and pointed to the sails. the boy nodded, for he understood they wanted to attend to the rigging. so the crew trooped forth, rather fearfully, and began to reef the sails and put the ship into condition to weather the storm. rob paid no further attention to them. he looked at his traveling machine rather doubtfully and wondered if he dared risk its power to carry him through the air. whether he remained in the ship or trusted to the machine, he stood a good chance of dropping into the sea at any moment. so, while he hesitated, he attached the machine to his wrist and leaned over the bulwarks to watch the progress of the storm. he might stay in the ship until it foundered, he thought, and then take his chances with the machine. he decided to wait until a climax arrived. the climax came the next moment, for while he leaned over the bulwarks the buccaneers stole up behind him and suddenly seized him in their grasp. while two of them held his arms the others searched his pockets, taking from him the electric tube and the silver box containing his tablets. these they carried to the cabin and threw upon the heap of other valuables they had stolen. they did not notice his traveling machine, however, but seeing him now unarmed they began jeering and laughing at him, while the brutal captain relieved his anger by giving the prisoner several malicious kicks. rob bore his misfortune meekly, although he was almost ready to cry with grief and disappointment. but when one of the pirates, to inflict further punishment on the boy, came towards him with a heavy strap, he resolved not to await the blow. turning the indicator to the word "up" he found, to his joy and relief, that it would yet obey the influence of the power of repulsion. seeing him rise into the air the fellow made a grab for his foot and held it firmly, while his companions ran to help him. weight seemed to make no difference in the machine; it lifted the pirate as well as rob; it lifted another who clung to the first man's leg, and another who clung to him. the other two also caught hold, hoping their united strength would pull him down, and the next minute rob was soaring through the air with the entire string of five buccaneers dangling from his left leg. at first the villains were too astounded to speak, but as they realized that they were being carried through the air and away from their ship they broke into loud shouts of dismay, and finally the one who grasped rob's leg lost his hold and the five plunged downward and splashed into the sea. finding the machine disposed to work accurately, rob left the buccaneers to swim to the ship in the best way they could, while he dropped down to the deck again and recovered from the cabin his box of tablets and the electric tube. the fellows were just scrambling on board when he again escaped, shooting into the air with considerable speed. indeed, the instrument now worked better than at any time since he had reached the cannibal island, and the boy was greatly delighted. the wind at first sent him spinning away to the south, but he continued to rise until he was above the air currents, and the storm raged far beneath him. then he set the indicator to the northwest and breathlessly waited to see if it would obey. hurrah! away he sped at a fair rate of speed, while all his anxiety changed to a feeling of sweet contentment. his success had greatly surprised him, but he concluded that the jar caused by dropping the instrument had relieved the pressure upon the works, and so helped rather than harmed the free action of the electric currents. while he moved through the air with an easy, gliding motion he watched with much interest the storm raging below. above his head the sun was peacefully shining and the contrast was strange and impressive. after an hour or so the storm abated, or else he passed away from it, for the deep blue of the ocean again greeted his eyes. he dropped downward until he was about a hundred feet above the water, when he continued his northwesterly course. but now he regretted having interfered for a moment with the action of the machine, for his progress, instead of being swift as a bird's flight, became slow and jerky, nor was he sure that the damaged machine might not break down altogether at any moment. yet so far his progress was in the right direction, and he resolved to experiment no further with the instrument, but to let it go as it would, so long as it supported him above the water. however irregular the motion might be, it was sure, if continued, to bring him to land in time, and that was all he cared about just then. when night fell his slumber was broken and uneasy, for he wakened more than once with a start of fear that the machine had broken and he was falling into the sea. sometimes he was carried along at a swift pace, and again the machine scarcely worked at all; so his anxiety was excusable. the following day was one of continued uneasiness for the boy, who began to be harrassed by doubts as to whether, after all, he was moving in the right direction. the machine had failed at one time in this respect and it might again. he had lost all confidence in its accuracy. in spite of these perplexities rob passed the second night of his uneven flight in profound slumber, being exhausted by the strain and excitement he had undergone. when he awoke at daybreak, he saw, to his profound delight, that he was approaching land. the rising sun found him passing over a big city, which he knew to be boston. he did not stop. the machine was so little to be depended upon that he dared make no halt. but he was obliged to alter the direction from northwest to west, and the result of this slight change was so great a reduction in speed that it was mid-day before he saw beneath him the familiar village in which he lived. carefully marking the location of his father's house, he came to a stop directly over it, and a few moments later he managed to land upon the exact spot in the back yard whence he had taken his first successful flight. [illustration] [illustration] _chapter seven_ the demon becomes angry when rob had been hugged and kissed by his mother and sisters, and even mr. joslyn had embraced him warmly, he gave them a brief account of his adventures. the story was received with many doubtful looks and much grave shaking of heads, as was quite natural under the circumstances. "i hope, my dear son," said his father, "that you have now passed through enough dangers to last you a lifetime, so that hereafter you will be contented to remain at home." "oh, robert!" cried his mother, with tears in her loving eyes, "you don't know how we've all worried about you for the past week!" "a week?" asked rob, with surprise. "yes; it's a week to-morrow morning since you flew into the air and disappeared." "then," said the boy, thoughtfully, "i've reached home just in time." "in time for what?" she asked. but he did not answer that question. he was thinking of the demon, and that on the afternoon of this very day he might expect the wise and splendid genius to visit him a second time. at luncheon, although he did not feel hungry, he joined the family at table and pleased his mother by eating as heartily as of old. he was surprised to find how good the food tasted, and to realize what a pleasure it is to gratify one's sense of taste. the tablets were all right for a journey, he thought, but if he always ate them he would be sure to miss a great deal of enjoyment, since there was no taste to them at all. at four o'clock he went to his workshop and unlocked the door. everything was exactly as he had left it, and he looked at his simple electrical devices with some amusement. they seemed tame beside the wonders now in his possession; yet he recollected that his numerous wires had enabled him to strike the master key, and therefore should not be despised. before long he noticed a quickening in the air, as if it were suddenly surcharged with electric fluid, and the next instant, in a dazzling flash of light, appeared the demon. "i am here!" he announced. "so am i," answered rob. "but at one time i really thought i should never see you again. i've been--" "spare me your history," said the demon, coldly. "i am aware of your adventures." "oh, you are!" said rob, amazed. "then you know--" "i know all about your foolish experiences," interrupted the demon, "for i have been with you constantly, although i remained invisible." "then you know what a jolly time i've had," returned the boy. "but why do you call them foolish experiences?" "because they were, abominably foolish!" retorted the demon, bitterly. "i entrusted to you gifts of rare scientific interest--electrical devices of such utility that their general adoption by mankind would create a new era in earth life. i hoped your use of these devices would convey such hints to electrical engineers that they would quickly comprehend their mechanism and be able to reproduce them in sufficient quantities to supply the world. and how do you treat these marvelous gifts? why, you carry them to a cannibal island, where even your crude civilization has not yet penetrated!" "i wanted to astonish the natives," said rob, grinning. the demon uttered an exclamation of anger, and stamped his foot so fiercely that thousands of electric sparks filled the air, to disappear quickly with a hissing, crinkling sound. "you might have astonished those ignorant natives as easily by showing them an ordinary electric light," he cried, mockingly. "the power of your gifts would have startled the most advanced electricians of the world. why did you waste them upon barbarians?" "really," faltered rob, who was frightened and awed by the demon's vehement anger, "i never intended to visit a cannibal island. i meant to go to cuba." "cuba! is that a center of advanced scientific thought? why did you not take your marvels to new york or chicago; or, if you wished to cross the ocean, to paris or vienna?" "i never thought of those places," acknowledged rob, meekly. "then you were foolish, as i said," declared the demon, in a calmer tone. "can you not realize that it is better to be considered great by the intelligent thinkers of the earth, than to be taken for a god by stupid cannibals?" "oh, yes, of course," said rob. "i wish now that i had gone to europe. but you're not the only one who has a kick coming," he continued. "your flimsy traveling machine was nearly the death of me." "ah, it is true," acknowledged the demon, frankly. "the case was made of too light material. when the rim was bent it pressed against the works and impeded the proper action of the currents. had you gone to a civilized country such an accident could not have happened; but to avoid possible trouble in the future i have prepared a new instrument, having a stronger case, which i will exchange for the one you now have." "that's very kind of you," said rob, eagerly handing his battered machine to the demon and receiving the new one in return. "are you sure this will work?" "it is impossible for you to injure it," answered the other. "and how about the next three gifts?" inquired the boy, anxiously. "before i grant them," replied the demon, "you must give me a promise to keep away from uncivilized places and to exhibit your acquirements only among people of intelligence." "all right," agreed the boy; "i'm not anxious to visit that island again, or any other uncivilized country." "then i will add to your possessions three gifts, each more precious and important than the three you have already received." at this announcement rob began to quiver with excitement, and sat staring eagerly at the demon, while the latter increased in stature and sparkled and glowed more brilliantly than ever. [illustration] [illustration] _chapter eight_ rob acquires new powers "i have seen the folly of sending you into the world with an offensive instrument, yet with no method of defense," resumed the demon, presently. "you have knocked over a good many people with that tube during the past week." "i know," said rob; "but i couldn't help it. it was the only way i had to protect myself." "therefore my next gift shall be this garment of protection. you must wear it underneath your clothing. it has power to accumulate and exercise electrical repellent force. perhaps you do not know what that means, so i will explain more fully. when any missile, such as a bullet, sword or lance, approaches your person, its rush through the air will arouse the repellent force of which i speak, and this force, being more powerful than the projective force, will arrest the flight of the missile and throw it back again. therefore nothing can touch your person that comes with any degree of force or swiftness, and you will be safe from all ordinary weapons. when wearing this garment you will find it unnecessary to use the electric tube except on rare occasions. never allow revenge or animosity to influence your conduct. men may threaten, but they can not injure you, so you must remember that they do not possess your mighty advantages, and that, because of your strength, you should bear with them patiently." rob examined the garment with much curiosity. it glittered like silver, yet was soft and pliable as lamb's wool. evidently the demon had prepared it especially for his use, for it was just rob's size. "now," continued the demon, more gravely, "we approach the subject of an electrical device so truly marvelous that even i am awed when i contemplate the accuracy and perfection of the natural laws which guide it and permit it to exercise its functions. mankind has as yet conceived nothing like it, for it requires full knowledge of electrical power to understand even its possibilities." the being paused, and drew from an inner pocket something resembling a flat metal box. in size it was about four inches by six, and nearly an inch in thickness. "what is it?" asked rob, wonderingly. "it is an automatic record of events," answered the demon. "i don't understand," said rob, with hesitation. "i will explain to you its use," returned the demon, "although the electrical forces which operate it and the vibratory currents which are the true records must remain unknown to you until your brain has mastered the higher knowledge of electricity. at present the practical side of this invention will be more interesting to you than a review of its scientific construction. "suppose you wish to know the principal events that are occurring in germany at the present moment. you first turn this little wheel at the side until the word 'germany' appears in the slot at the small end. then open the top cover, which is hinged, and those passing events in which you are interested will appear before your eyes." the demon, as he spoke, opened the cover, and, looking within, the boy saw, as in a mirror, a moving picture before him. a regiment of soldiers was marching through the streets of berlin, and at its head rode a body of horsemen, in the midst of which was the emperor himself. the people who thronged the sidewalks cheered and waved their hats and handkerchiefs with enthusiasm, while a band of musicians played a german air, which rob could distinctly hear. while he gazed, spell-bound, the scene changed, and he looked upon a great warship entering a harbor with flying pennants. the rails were lined with officers and men straining their eyes for the first sight of their beloved "_vaterland_" after a long foreign cruise, and a ringing cheer, as from a thousand throats, came faintly to rob's ear. again the scene changed, and within a dingy, underground room, hemmed in by walls of stone, and dimly lighted by a flickering lamp, a body of wild-eyed, desperate men were plighting an oath to murder the emperor and overthrow his government. "anarchists?" asked rob, trembling with excitement. "anarchists!" answered the demon, with a faint sneer, and he shut the cover of the record with a sudden snap. "it's wonderful!" cried the boy, with a sigh that was followed by a slight shiver. "the record is, indeed, proof within itself of the marvelous possibilities of electricity. men are now obliged to depend upon newspapers for information; but these can only relate events long after they have occurred. and newspaper statements are often unreliable and sometimes wholly false, while many events of real importance are never printed in their columns. you may guess what an improvement is this automatic record of events, which is as reliable as truth itself. nothing can be altered or falsified, for the vibratory currents convey the actual events to your vision, even as they happen." "but suppose," said rob, "that something important should happen while i'm asleep, or not looking at the box?" "i have called this a record," replied the demon, "and such it really is, although i have shown you only such events as are in process of being recorded. by pressing this spring you may open the opposite cover of the box, where all events of importance that have occurred throughout the world during the previous twenty-four hours will appear before you in succession. you may thus study them at your leisure. the various scenes constitute a register of the world's history, and may be recalled to view as often as you desire." "it's--it's like knowing everything," murmured rob, deeply impressed for perhaps the first time in his life. "it _is_ knowing everything," returned the demon; "and this mighty gift i have decided to entrust to your care. be very careful as to whom you permit to gaze upon these pictures of passing events, for knowledge may often cause great misery to the human race." "i'll be careful," promised the boy, as he took the box reverently within his own hands. "the third and last gift of the present series," resumed the demon, "is one no less curious than the record of events, although it has an entirely different value. it is a character marker." "what's that?" inquired rob. "i will explain. perhaps you know that your fellow-creatures are more or less hypocritical. that is, they try to appear good when they are not, and wise when in reality they are foolish. they tell you they are friendly when they positively hate you, and try to make you believe they are kind when their natures are cruel. this hypocrisy seems to be a human failing. one of your writers has said, with truth, that among civilized people things are seldom what they seem." "i've heard that," remarked rob. "on the other hand," continued the demon, "some people with fierce countenances are kindly by nature, and many who appear to be evil are in reality honorable and trustworthy. therefore, that you may judge all your fellow-creatures truly, and know upon whom to depend, i give you the character marker. it consists of this pair of spectacles. while you wear them every one you meet will be marked upon the forehead with a letter indicating his or her character. the good will bear the letter 'g', the evil the letter 'e'. the wise will be marked with a 'w' and the foolish with an 'f'. the kind will show a 'k' upon their foreheads and the cruel a letter 'c'. thus you may determine by a single look the true natures of all those you encounter." "and are these, also, electrical in their construction?" asked the boy, as he took the spectacles. "certainly. goodness, wisdom and kindness are natural forces, creating character. for this reason men are not always to blame for bad character, as they acquire it unconsciously. all character sends out certain electrical vibrations, which these spectacles concentrate in their lenses and exhibit to the gaze of their wearer, as i have explained." "it's a fine idea," said the boy; "who discovered it?" "it is a fact that has always existed, but is now utilized for the first time." "oh!" said rob. "with these gifts, and the ones you acquired a week ago, you are now equipped to astound the world and awaken mankind to a realization of the wonders that may be accomplished by natural forces. see that you employ these powers wisely, in the interests of science, and do not forget your promise to exhibit your electrical marvels only to those who are most capable of comprehending them." "i'll remember," said rob. "then adieu until a week from to-day, when i will meet you here at this hour and bestow upon you the last three gifts which you are entitled to receive. good-by!" "good-by!" repeated rob, and in a gorgeous flash of color the demon disappeared, leaving the boy alone in the room with his new and wonderful possessions. [illustration] [illustration] _chapter nine_ the second journey by this time you will have gained a fair idea of rob's character. he is, in truth, a typical american boy, possessing an average intelligence not yet regulated by the balance-wheel of experience. the mysteries of electricity were so attractive to his eager nature that he had devoted considerable time and some study to electrical experiment; but his study was the superficial kind that seeks to master only such details as may be required at the moment. moreover, he was full of boyish recklessness and irresponsibility and therefore difficult to impress with the dignity of science and the gravity of human existence. life, to him, was a great theater wherein he saw himself the most interesting if not the most important actor, and so enjoyed the play with unbounded enthusiasm. aside from the extraordinary accident which had forced the electrical demon into his life, rob may be considered one of those youngsters who might possibly develop into a brilliant manhood or enter upon an ordinary, humdrum existence, as fate should determine. just at present he had no thought beyond the passing hour, nor would he bother himself by attempting to look ahead or plan for the future. yet the importance of his electrical possessions and the stern injunction of the demon to use them wisely had rendered the boy more thoughtful than at any previous time during his brief life, and he became so preoccupied at the dinner table that his father and mother cast many anxious looks in his direction. of course rob was anxious to test his newly-acquired powers, and decided to lose no time in starting upon another journey. but he said nothing to any of the family about it, fearing to meet with opposition. he passed the evening in the sitting-room, in company with his father and mother and sisters, and even controlled his impatience to the extent of playing a game of carom with nell; but he grew so nervous and impatient at last that his sister gave up the game in disgust and left him to his own amusement. at one time he thought of putting on the electric spectacles and seeing what the real character of each member of his family might be; but a sudden fear took possession of him that he might regret the act forever afterward. they were his nearest and dearest friends on earth, and in his boyish heart he loved them all and believed in their goodness and sincerity. the possibility of finding a bad character mark on any of their familiar faces made him shudder, and he determined then and there never to use the spectacles to view the face of a friend or relative. had any one, at that moment, been gazing at rob through the lenses of the wonderful character marker, i am sure a big "w" would have been found upon the boy's forehead. when the family circle broke up, and all retired for the night, rob kissed his parents and sisters with real affection before going to his own room. but, on reaching his cozy little chamber, instead of preparing for bed rob clothed himself in the garment of repulsion. then he covered the glittering garment with his best summer suit of clothes, which effectually concealed it. he now looked around to see what else he should take, and thought of an umbrella, a rain-coat, a book or two to read during the journey, and several things besides; but he ended by leaving them all behind. "i can't be loaded down with so much truck," he decided; "and i'm going into civilized countries, this time, where i can get anything i need." however, to prevent a recurrence of the mistake he had previously made, he tore a map of the world and a map of europe from his geography, and, folding them up, placed them in his pocket. he also took a small compass that had once been a watch-charm, and, finally, the contents of a small iron bank that opened with a combination lock. this represented all his savings, amounting to two dollars and seventeen cents in dimes, nickles and pennies. "it isn't a fortune," he thought, as he counted it up, "but i didn't need any money the last trip, so perhaps i'll get along somehow. i don't like to tackle dad for more, for he might ask questions and try to keep me at home." by the time he had finished his preparations and stowed all his electrical belongings in his various pockets, it was nearly midnight and the house was quiet. so rob stole down stairs in his stocking feet and noiselessly opened the back door. it was a beautiful july night and, in addition to the light of the full moon, the sky was filled with the radiance of countless thousands of brilliant stars. after rob had put on his shoes he unfolded the map, which was plainly visible by the starlight, and marked the direction he must take to cross the atlantic and reach london, his first stopping place. then he consulted his compass, put the indicator of his traveling machine to the word "up," and shot swiftly into the air. when he had reached a sufficient height he placed the indicator to a point north of east and, with a steady and remarkably swift flight, began his journey. "here goes," he remarked, with a sense of exaltation, "for another week of adventure! i wonder what'll happen between now and next saturday." [illustration] [illustration] _chapter ten_ how rob served a mighty king the new traveling machine was a distinct improvement over the old one, for it carried rob with wonderful speed across the broad atlantic. he fell asleep soon after starting, and only wakened when the sun was high in the heavens. but he found himself whirling along at a good rate, with the greenish shimmer of the peaceful ocean waves spread beneath him far beyond his range of vision. being in the track of the ocean steamers it was not long before he found himself overtaking a magnificent vessel whose decks were crowded with passengers. he dropped down some distance, to enable him to see these people more plainly, and while he hovered near he could hear the excited exclamations of the passengers, who focused dozens of marine glasses upon his floating form. this inspection somewhat embarrassed him, and having no mind to be stared at he put on additional speed and soon left the steamer far behind him. about noon the sky clouded over, and rob feared a rainstorm was approaching. so he rose to a point considerably beyond the clouds, where the air was thin but remarkably pleasant to inhale and the rays of the sun were not so hot as when reflected by the surface of the water. he could see the dark clouds rolling beneath him like volumes of smoke from a factory chimney, and knew the earth was catching a severe shower of rain; yet he congratulated himself on his foresight in not being burdened with umbrella or rain-coat, since his elevated position rendered him secure from rain-clouds. but, having cut himself off from the earth, there remained nothing to see except the clear sky overhead and the tumbling clouds beneath; so he took from his pocket the automatic record of events, and watched with breathless interest the incidents occurring in different parts of the world. a big battle was being fought in the philippines, and so fiercely was it contested that rob watched its progress for hours, with rapt attention. finally a brave rally by the americans sent their foes to the cover of the woods, where they scattered in every direction, only to form again in a deep valley hidden by high hills. "if only i was there," thought rob, "i could show that captain where to find the rebels and capture them. but i guess the philippines are rather out of my way, so our soldiers will never know how near they are to a complete victory." the boy also found considerable amusement in watching the course of an insurrection in venezuela, where opposing armies of well-armed men preferred to bluster and threaten rather than come to blows. during the evening he found that an "important event" was madame bernhardt's production of a new play, and rob followed it from beginning to end with great enjoyment, although he felt a bit guilty at not having purchased a ticket. "but it's a crowded house, anyway," he reflected, "and i'm not taking up a reserved seat or keeping any one else from seeing the show. so where's the harm? yet it seems to me if these records get to be common, as the demon wishes, people will all stay at home and see the shows, and the poor actors 'll starve to death." the thought made him uneasy, and he began, for the first time, to entertain a doubt of the demon's wisdom in forcing such devices upon humanity. the clouds had now passed away and the moon sent her rays to turn the edges of the waves into glistening showers of jewels. rob closed the lid of the wonderful record of events and soon fell into a deep sleep that held him unconscious for many hours. when he awoke he gave a start of surprise, for beneath him was land. how long it was since he had left the ocean behind him he could not guess, but his first thought was to set the indicator of the traveling machine to zero and to hover over the country until he could determine where he was. this was no easy matter. he saw green fields, lakes, groves and villages; but these might exist in any country. being still at a great elevation he descended gradually until he was about twenty feet from the surface of the earth, where he paused near the edge of a small village. at once a crowd of excited people assembled, shouting to one another and pointing towards him in wonder. in order to be prepared for emergencies rob had taken the electric tube from his pocket, and now, as he examined the dress and features of the people below, the tube suddenly slipped from his grasp and fell to the ground, where one end stuck slantingly into the soft earth. a man rushed eagerly towards it, but the next moment he threw up his hands and fell upon his back, unconscious. others who ran to assist their fallen comrade quickly tumbled into a heap beside him. [illustration: a man rushed toward it, but the next moment he threw up his hands and fell unconscious] it was evident to rob that the tube had fallen in such a position that the button was being pressed continually and a current of electric fluid issued to shock whoever came near. not wishing to injure these people he dropped to the ground and drew the tube from the earth, thus releasing the pressure upon the button. but the villagers had now decided that the boy was their enemy, and no sooner had he touched the ground than a shower of stones and sticks rained about him. not one reached his body, however, for the garment of repulsion stopped their flight and returned them to rattle with more or less force against those who had thrown them--"like regular boomerangs," thought rob. to receive their own blows in this fashion seemed so like magic to the simple folk that with roars of fear and pain they ran away in all directions. "it's no use stopping here," remarked rob, regretfully, "for i've spoiled my welcome by this accident. i think these people are irish, by their looks and speech, so i must be somewhere in the emerald isle." he consulted his map and decided upon the general direction he should take to reach england, after which he again rose into the air and before long was passing over the channel towards the shores of england. either his map or compass or his calculations proved wrong, for it was high noon before, having changed his direction a half dozen times, he came to the great city of london. he saw at a glance that it would never do to drop into the crowded streets, unless he wanted to become an object of public curiosity; so he looked around for a suitable place to alight. near by was a monstrous church that sent a sharp steeple far into the air. rob examined this spire and saw a narrow opening in the masonry that led to a small room where a chime of bells hung. he crept through the opening and, finding a ladder that connected the belfry with a platform below, began to descend. there were three ladders, and then a winding flight of narrow, rickety stairs to be passed before rob finally reached a small room in the body of the church. this room proved to have two doors, one connecting with the auditorium and the other letting into a side street. both were locked, but rob pointed the electric tube at the outside door and broke the lock in an instant. then he walked into the street as composedly as if he had lived all his life in london. there were plenty of sights to see, you may be sure, and rob walked around until he was so tired that he was glad to rest upon one of the benches in a beautiful park. here, half hidden by the trees, he amused himself by looking at the record of events. "london's a great town, and no mistake," he said to himself; "but let's see what the british are doing in south africa to-day." he turned the cylinder to "south africa," and, opening the lid, at once became interested. an english column, commanded by a brave but stubborn officer, was surrounded by the boer forces and fighting desperately to avoid capture or annihilation. "this would be interesting to king edward," thought the boy. "guess i'll hunt him up and tell him about it." a few steps away stood a policeman. rob approached him and asked: "where's the king to-day?" the officer looked at him with mingled surprise and suspicion. "'is majesty is sojournin' at marlb'ro 'ouse, just now," was the reply. "per'aps you wants to make 'im a wissit," he continued, with lofty sarcasm. "that's it, exactly," said rob. "i'm an american, and thought while i was in london i'd drop in on his royal highness and say 'hello' to him." the officer chuckled, as if much amused. "hamericans is bloomin' green," he remarked, "so youse can stand for hamerican, right enough. no other wissitors is such blarsted fools. but yon's the palace, an' i s'pose 'is majesty'll give ye a 'ot reception." "thanks; i'll look him up," said the boy, and left the officer convulsed with laughter. he soon knew why. the palace was surrounded by a cordon of the king's own life guards, who admitted no one save those who presented proper credentials. "there's only one thing to do;" thought rob, "and that's to walk straight in, as i haven't any friends to give me a regular introduction." so he boldly advanced to the gate, where he found himself stopped by crossed carbines and a cry of "halt!" "excuse me," said rob; "i'm in a hurry." he pushed the carbines aside and marched on. the soldiers made thrusts at him with their weapons, and an officer jabbed at his breast with a glittering sword, but the garment of repulsion protected him from these dangers as well as from a hail of bullets that followed his advancing figure. he reached the entrance of the palace only to face another group of guardsmen and a second order to halt, and as these soldiers were over six feet tall and stood shoulder to shoulder rob saw that he could not hope to pass them without using his electric tube. [illustration: rob reached the entrance of the palace, only to face another group of guardsmen] "stand aside, you fellows!" he ordered. there was no response. he extended the tube and, as he pressed the button, described a semi-circle with the instrument. immediately the tall guardsmen toppled over like so many tenpins, and rob stepped across their bodies and penetrated to the reception room, where a brilliant assemblage awaited, in hushed and anxious groups, for opportunity to obtain audience with the king. "i hope his majesty isn't busy," said rob to a solemn-visaged official who confronted him. "i want to have a little talk with him." "i--i--ah--beg pardon!" exclaimed the astounded master of ceremonies. "what name, please?" "oh, never mind my name," replied rob, and pushing the gentleman aside he entered the audience chamber of the great king. king edward was engaged in earnest consultation with one of his ministers, and after a look of surprise in rob's direction and a grave bow he bestowed no further attention upon the intruder. but rob was not to be baffled now. "your majesty," he interrupted, "i've important news for you. a big fight is taking place in south africa and your soldiers will probably be cut into mince meat." the minister strode towards the boy angrily. "explain this intrusion!" he cried. "i have explained. the boers are having a regular killing-bee. here! take a look at it yourselves." he drew the record from his pocket, and at the movement the minister shrank back as if he suspected it was an infernal machine and might blow his head off; but the king stepped quietly to the boy's side and looked into the box when rob threw open the lid. as he comprehended the full wonder of the phenomenon he was observing edward uttered a low cry of amazement, but thereafter he silently gazed upon the fierce battle that still raged far away upon the african _veld_. before long his keen eye recognized the troops engaged and realized their imminent danger. "they'll be utterly annihilated!" he gasped. "what shall we do?" "oh, we can't do anything just now," answered rob. "but it's curious to watch how bravely the poor fellows fight for their lives." the minister, who by this time was also peering into the box, groaned aloud, and then all three forgot their surroundings in the tragedy they were beholding. hemmed in by vastly superior numbers, the english were calmly and stubbornly resisting every inch of advance and selling their lives as dearly as possible. their leader fell pierced by a hundred bullets, and the king, who had known him from boyhood, passed his hand across his eyes as if to shut out the awful sight. but the fascination of the battle forced him to look again, and the next moment he cried aloud: "look there! look there!" over the edge of a line of hills appeared the helmets of a file of english soldiers. they reached the summit, followed by rank after rank, until the hillside was alive with them. and then, with a ringing cheer that came like a faint echo to the ears of the three watchers, they broke into a run and dashed forward to the rescue of their brave comrades. the boers faltered, gave back, and the next moment fled precipitately, while the exhausted survivors of the courageous band fell sobbing into the arms of their rescuers. rob closed the lid of the record with a sudden snap that betrayed his deep feeling, and the king pretended to cough behind his handkerchief and stealthily wiped his eyes. "'twasn't so bad, after all," remarked the boy, with assumed cheerfulness; "but it looked mighty ticklish for your men at one time." king edward regarded the boy curiously, remembering his abrupt entrance and the marvelous device he had exhibited. "what do you call that?" he asked, pointing at the record with a finger that trembled slightly from excitement. "it is a new electrical invention," replied rob, replacing it in his pocket, "and so constructed that events are reproduced at the exact moment they occur." "where can i purchase one?" demanded the king, eagerly. "they're not for sale," said rob. "this one of mine is the first that ever happened." "oh!" "i really think," continued the boy, nodding sagely, "that it wouldn't be well to have these records scattered around. their use would give some folks unfair advantage over others, you know." "certainly." "i only showed you this battle because i happened to be in london at the time and thought you'd be interested." "it was very kind of you," said edward; "but how did you gain admittance?" "well, to tell the truth, i was obliged to knock over a few of your tall life-guards. they seem to think you're a good thing and need looking after, like jam in a cupboard." the king smiled. "i hope you haven't killed my guards," said he. "oh, no; they'll come around all right." "it is necessary," continued edward, "that public men be protected from intrusion, no matter how democratic they may be personally. you would probably find it as difficult to approach the president of the united states as the king of england." "oh, i'm not complaining," said rob. "it wasn't much trouble to break through." "you seem quite young to have mastered such wonderful secrets of nature," continued the king. "so i am," replied rob, modestly; "but these natural forces have really existed since the beginning of the world, and some one was sure to discover them in time." he was quoting the demon, although unconsciously. "you are an american, i suppose," said the minister, coming close to rob and staring him in the face. "guessed right the first time," answered the boy, and drawing his character marking spectacles from his pocket, he put them on and stared at the minister in turn. upon the man's forehead appeared the letter "e". "your majesty," said rob, "i have here another queer invention. will you please wear these spectacles for a few moments?" the king at once put them on. "they are called character markers," continued the boy, "because the lenses catch and concentrate the character vibrations radiating from every human individual and reflect the true character of the person upon his forehead. if a letter 'g' appears, you may be sure his disposition is good; if his forehead is marked with an 'e' his character is evil, and you must beware of treachery." the king saw the "e" plainly marked upon his minister's forehead, but he said nothing except "thank you," and returned the spectacles to rob. but the minister, who from the first had been ill at ease, now became positively angry. "do not believe him, your majesty!" he cried. "it is a trick, and meant to deceive you." "i did not accuse you," answered the king, sternly. then he added: "i wish to be alone with this young gentleman." the minister left the room with an anxious face and hanging head. "now," said rob, "let's look over the record of the past day and see if that fellow has been up to any mischief." he turned the cylinder of the record to "england," and slowly the events of the last twenty-four hours were reproduced, one after the other, upon the polished plate. before long the king uttered an exclamation. the record pictured a small room in which were seated three gentlemen engaged in earnest conversation. one of them was the accused minister. "those men," said the king in a low voice, while he pointed out the other two, "are my avowed enemies. this is proof that your wonderful spectacles indicated my minister's character with perfect truth. i am grateful to you for thus putting me upon my guard, for i have trusted the man fully." "oh, don't mention it," replied the boy, lightly; "i'm glad to have been of service to you. but it's time for me to go." "i hope you will favor me with another interview," said the king, "for i am much interested in your electrical inventions. i will instruct my guards to admit you at any time, so you will not be obliged to fight your way in." "all right. but it really doesn't matter," answered rob. "it's no trouble at all to knock 'em over." then he remembered his manners and bowed low before the king, who seemed to him "a fine fellow and not a bit stuck up." and then he walked calmly from the palace. the people in the outer room stared at him wonderingly and the officer of the guard saluted the boy respectfully. but rob only smiled in an amused way as he marched past them with his hands thrust deep into his trousers' pockets and his straw hat tipped jauntily upon the back of his head. [illustration] [illustration] _chapter eleven_ the man of science rob passed the remainder of the day wandering about london and amusing himself by watching the peculiar ways of the people. when it became so dark that there was no danger of his being observed, he rose through the air to the narrow slit in the church tower and lay upon the floor of the little room, with the bells hanging all around him, to pass the night. he was just falling asleep when a tremendous din and clatter nearly deafened him, and set the whole tower trembling. it was the midnight chime. rob clutched his ears tightly, and when the vibrations had died away descended by the ladder to a lower platform. but even here the next hourly chime made his ears ring, and he kept descending from platform to platform until the last half of a restless night was passed in the little room at the bottom of the tower. when, at daylight, the boy sat up and rubbed his eyes, he said, wearily: "churches are all right as churches; but as hotels they are rank failures. i ought to have bunked in with my friend, king edward." he climbed up the stairs and the ladders again and looked out the little window in the belfry. then he examined his map of europe. "i believe i'll take a run over to paris," he thought. "i must be home again by saturday, to meet the demon, so i'll have to make every day count." without waiting for breakfast, since he had eaten a tablet the evening before, he crept through the window and mounted into the fresh morning air until the great city with its broad waterway lay spread out beneath him. then he sped away to the southeast and, crossing the channel, passed between amiens and rouen and reached paris before ten o'clock. near the outskirts of the city appeared a high tower, upon the flat roof of which a man was engaged in adjusting a telescope. upon seeing rob, who was passing at no great distance from this tower, the man cried out: "_approchez!--venez ici!_" then he waved his hands frantically in the air, and fairly danced with excitement. so the boy laughed and dropped down to the roof where, standing beside the frenchman, whose eyes were actually protruding from their sockets, he asked, coolly: "well, what do you want?" the other was for a moment speechless. he was a tall, lean man, having a bald head but a thick, iron-gray beard, and his black eyes sparkled brightly from behind a pair of gold-rimmed spectacles. after attentively regarding the boy for a time he said, in broken english: "but, m'sieur, how can you fly wizout ze--ze machine? i have experiment myself wiz some air-ship; but you--zere is nossing to make go!" [illustration: the eyes of the frenchman were actually protruding from their sockets] rob guessed that here was his opportunity to do the demon a favor by explaining his electrical devices to this new acquaintance, who was evidently a man of science. "here is the secret, professor," he said, and holding out his wrist displayed the traveling machine and explained, as well as he could, the forces that operated it. the frenchman, as you may suppose, was greatly astonished, and to show how perfectly the machine worked rob turned the indicator and rose a short distance above the tower, circling around it before he rejoined the professor on the roof. then he showed his food tablets, explaining how each was stored with sufficient nourishment for an entire day. the scientist positively gasped for breath, so powerful was the excitement he experienced at witnessing these marvels. "eet is wonderful--grand--magnifique!" he exclaimed. "but here is something of still greater interest," continued rob, and taking the automatic record of events from his pocket he allowed the professor to view the remarkable scenes that were being enacted throughout the civilized world. the frenchman was now trembling violently, and he implored rob to tell him where he might obtain similar electrical machines. "i can't do that," replied the boy, decidedly; "but, having seen these, you may be able to discover their construction for yourself. now that you know such things to be possible and practical, the hint should be sufficient to enable a shrewd electrician to prepare duplicates of them." the scientist glared at him with evident disappointment, and rob continued: "these are not all the wonders i can exhibit. here is another electrical device that is, perhaps, the most remarkable of any i possess." he took the character marking spectacles from his pocket and fitted them to his eyes. then he gave a whistle of surprise and turned his back upon his new friend. he had seen upon the frenchman's forehead the letters "e" and "c." "guess i've struck the wrong sort of scientist, after all!" he muttered, in a disgusted tone. his companion was quick to prove the accuracy of the character marker. seeing the boy's back turned, he seized a long iron bar that was used to operate the telescope, and struck at rob so fiercely that had he not worn the garment of protection his skull would have been crushed by the blow. as it was, the bar rebounded with a force that sent the murderous frenchman sprawling upon the roof, and rob turned around and laughed at him. "it won't work, professor," he said. "i'm proof against assassins. perhaps you had an idea that when you had killed me you could rob me of my valuable possessions; but they wouldn't be a particle of use to a scoundrel like you, i assure you! good morning." before the surprised and baffled scientist could collect himself sufficiently to reply, the boy was soaring far above his head and searching for a convenient place to alight, that he might investigate the charms of this famed city of paris. it was indeed a beautiful place, with many stately buildings lining the shady boulevards. so thronged were the streets that rob well knew he would soon be the center of a curious crowd should he alight upon them. already a few sky-gazers had noted the boy moving high in the air, above their heads, and one or two groups stood pointing their fingers at him. pausing at length above the imposing structure of the hotel anglais, rob noticed at one of the upper floors an open window, before which was a small iron balcony. alighting upon this he proceeded to enter, without hesitation, the open window. he heard a shriek and a cry of "_au voleur!_" and caught sight of a woman's figure as she dashed into an adjoining room, slamming and locking the door behind her. "i don't know as i blame her," observed rob, with a smile at the panic he had created. "i s'pose she takes me for a burglar, and thinks i've climbed up the lightning rod." he soon found the door leading into the hallway and walked down several flights of stairs until he reached the office of the hotel. "how much do you charge a day?" he inquired, addressing a fat and pompous-looking gentleman behind the desk. the man looked at him in a surprised way, for he had not heard the boy enter the room. but he said something in french to a waiter who was passing, and the latter came to rob and made a low bow. "i speak ze eengliss ver' fine," he said. "what desire have you?" "what are your rates by the day?" asked the boy. "ten francs, m'sieur." "how many dollars is that?" "dollar americaine?" "yes; united states money." "ah, _oui_! eet is ze two dollar, m'sieur." "all right; i can stay about a day before i go bankrupt. give me a room." "_certainement_, m'sieur. have you ze luggage?" "no; but i'll pay in advance," said rob, and began counting out his dimes and nickles and pennies, to the unbounded amazement of the waiter, who looked as if he had never seen such coins before. he carried the money to the fat gentleman, who examined the pieces curiously, and there was a long conference between them before it was decided to accept them in payment for a room for a day. but at this season the hotel was almost empty, and when rob protested that he had no other money the fat gentleman put the coins into his cash box with a resigned sigh and the waiter showed the boy to a little room at the very top of the building. rob washed and brushed the dust from his clothes, after which he sat down and amused himself by viewing the pictures that constantly formed upon the polished plate of the record of events. [illustration] _chapter twelve_ how rob saved a republic while following the shifting scenes of the fascinating record rob noted an occurrence that caused him to give a low whistle of astonishment and devote several moments to serious thought. "i believe it's about time i interfered with the politics of this republic," he said, at last, as he closed the lid of the metal box and restored it to his pocket. "if i don't take a hand there probably won't be a republic of france very long and, as a good american, i prefer a republic to a monarchy." then he walked down-stairs and found his english-speaking waiter. "where's president loubet?" he asked. "ze president! ah, he is wiz his mansion. to be at his residence, m'sieur." "where is his residence?" the waiter began a series of voluble and explicit directions which so confused the boy that he exclaimed: "oh, much obliged!" and walked away in disgust. gaining the street he approached a gendarme and repeated his question, with no better result than before, for the fellow waved his arms wildly in all directions and roared a volley of incomprehensible french phrases that conveyed no meaning whatever. "if ever i travel in foreign countries again," said rob, "i'll learn their lingo in advance. why doesn't the demon get up a conversation machine that will speak all languages?" by dint of much inquiry, however, and after walking several miles following ambiguous directions, he managed to reach the residence of president loubet. but there he was politely informed that the president was busily engaged in his garden, and would see no one. "that's all right," said the boy, calmly. "if he's in the garden i'll have no trouble finding him." then, to the amazement of the frenchmen, rob shot into the air fifty feet or so, from which elevation he overlooked a pretty garden in the rear of the president's mansion. the place was protected from ordinary intrusion by high walls, but rob descended within the enclosure and walked up to a man who was writing at a small table placed under the spreading branches of a large tree. "is this president loubet?" he inquired, with a bow. the gentleman looked up. "my servants were instructed to allow no one to disturb me," he said, speaking in excellent english. "it isn't their fault; i flew over the wall," returned rob. "the fact is," he added, hastily, as he noted the president's frown, "i have come to save the republic; and i haven't much time to waste over a bundle of frenchmen, either." the president seemed surprised. "your name!" he demanded, sharply. "robert billings joslyn, united states of america!" "your business, monsieur joslyn!" rob drew the record from his pocket and placed it upon the table. "this, sir," said he, "is an electrical device that records all important events. i wish to call your attention to a scene enacted in paris last evening which may have an effect upon the future history of your country." he opened the lid, placed the record so that the president could see clearly, and then watched the changing expressions upon the great man's face; first indifference, then interest, the next moment eagerness and amazement. "_mon dieu!_" he gasped; "the orleanists!" rob nodded. "yes; they've worked up a rather pretty plot, haven't they?" the president did not reply. he was anxiously watching the record and scribbling notes on a paper beside him. his face was pale and his lips tightly compressed. finally he leaned back in his chair and asked: "can you reproduce this scene again?" "certainly, sir," answered the boy; "as often as you like." "will you remain here while i send for my minister of police? it will require but a short time." "call him up, then. i'm in something of a hurry myself, but now i've mixed up with this thing i'll see it through." [illustration: rob watched the changing expressions upon the great man's face] the president touched a bell and gave an order to his servant. then he turned to rob and said, wonderingly: "you are a boy!" "that's true, mr. president," was the answer; "but an american boy, you must remember. that makes a big difference, i assure you." the president bowed gravely. "this is your invention?" he asked. "no; i'm hardly equal to that. but the inventor has made me a present of the record, and it's the only one in the world." "it is a marvel," remarked the president, thoughtfully. "more! it is a real miracle. we are living in an age of wonders, my young friend." "no one knows that better than myself, sir," replied rob. "but, tell me, can you trust your chief of police?" "i think so," said the president, slowly; "yet since your invention has shown me that many men i have considered honest are criminally implicated in this royalist plot, i hardly know whom to depend upon." "then please wear these spectacles during your interview with the minister of police," said the boy. "you must say nothing, while he is with us, about certain marks that will appear upon his forehead; but when he has gone i will explain those marks so you will understand them." the president covered his eyes with the spectacles. "why," he exclaimed, "i see upon your own brow the letters--" "stop, sir!" interrupted rob, with a blush; "i don't care to know what the letters are, if it's just the same to you." the president seemed puzzled by this speech, but fortunately the minister of police arrived just then and, under rob's guidance, the pictured record of the orleanist plot was reproduced before the startled eyes of the official. "and now," said the boy, "let us see if any of this foolishness is going on just at present." he turned to the opposite side of the record and allowed the president and his minister of police to witness the quick succession of events even as they occurred. suddenly the minister cried, "ha!" and, pointing to the figure of a man disembarking from an english boat at calais, he said, excitedly: "that, your excellency, is the duke of orleans, in disguise! i must leave you for a time, that i may issue some necessary orders to my men; but this evening i shall call to confer with you regarding the best mode of suppressing this terrible plot." when the official had departed, the president removed the spectacles from his eyes and handed them to rob. "what did you see?" asked the boy. "the letters 'g' and 'w'." "then you may trust him fully," declared rob, and explained the construction of the character marker to the interested and amazed statesman. "and now i must go," he continued, "for my stay in your city will be a short one and i want to see all i can." the president scrawled something on a sheet of paper and signed his name to it, afterward presenting it, with a courteous bow, to his visitor. "this will enable you to go wherever you please, while in paris," he said. "i regret my inability to reward you properly for the great service you have rendered my country; but you have my sincerest gratitude, and may command me in any way." "oh, that's all right," answered rob. "i thought it was my duty to warn you, and if you look sharp you'll be able to break up this conspiracy. but i don't want any reward. good day, sir." he turned the indicator of his traveling machine and immediately rose into the air, followed by a startled exclamation from the president of france. moving leisurely over the city, he selected a deserted thoroughfare to alight in, from whence he wandered unobserved into the beautiful boulevards. these were now brilliantly lighted, and crowds of pleasure seekers thronged them everywhere. rob experienced a decided sense of relief as he mixed with the gay populace and enjoyed the sights of the splendid city, for it enabled him to forget, for a time, the responsibilities thrust upon him by the possession of the demon's marvelous electrical devices. [illustration] [illustration] _chapter thirteen_ rob loses his treasures our young adventurer had intended to pass the night in the little bed at his hotel, but the atmosphere of paris proved so hot and disagreeable that he decided it would be more enjoyable to sleep while journeying through the cooler air that lay far above the earth's surface. so just as the clocks were striking the midnight hour rob mounted skyward and turned the indicator of the traveling machine to the east, intending to make the city of vienna his next stop. he had risen to a considerable distance, where the air was remarkably fresh and exhilarating, and the relief he experienced from the close and muggy streets of paris was of such a soothing nature that he presently fell fast asleep. his day in the metropolis had been a busy one, for, like all boys, he had forgotten himself in the delight of sight-seeing and had tired his muscles and exhausted his strength to an unusual degree. it was about three o'clock in the morning when rob, moving restlessly in his sleep, accidently touched with his right hand the indicator of the machine which was fastened to his left wrist, setting it a couple of points to the south of east. he was, of course, unaware of the slight alteration in his course, which was destined to prove of serious importance in the near future. for the boy's fatigue induced him to sleep far beyond daybreak, and during this period of unconsciousness he was passing over the face of european countries and approaching the lawless and dangerous dominions of the orient. when, at last, he opened his eyes, he was puzzled to determine where he was. beneath him stretched a vast, sandy plain, and speeding across this he came to a land abounding in luxuriant vegetation. the centrifugal force which propelled him was evidently, for some reason, greatly accelerated, for the scenery of the country he was crossing glided by him at so rapid a rate of speed that it nearly took his breath away. "i wonder if i've passed vienna in the night," he thought. "it ought not to have taken me more than a few hours to reach there from paris." vienna was at that moment fifteen hundred miles behind him; but rob's geography had always been his stumbling block at school, and he had not learned to gage the speed of the traveling machine; so he was completely mystified as to his whereabouts. presently a village having many queer spires and minarets whisked by him like a flash. rob became worried, and resolved to slow up at the next sign of habitation. this was a good resolution, but turkestan is so thinly settled that before the boy could plan out a course of action he had passed the barren mountain range of thian-shan as nimbly as an acrobat leaps a jumping-bar. "this won't do at all!" he exclaimed, earnestly. "the traveling machine seems to be running away with me, and i'm missing no end of sights by scooting along up here in the clouds." he turned the indicator to zero, and was relieved to find it obey with customary quickness. in a few moments he had slowed up and stopped, when he found himself suspended above another stretch of sandy plain. being too high to see the surface of the plain distinctly he dropped down a few hundred feet to a lower level, where he discovered he was surrounded by billows of sand as far as his eye could reach. "it's a desert, all right," was his comment; "perhaps old sahara herself." he started the machine again towards the east, and at a more moderate rate of speed skimmed over the surface of the desert. before long he noticed a dark spot ahead of him which proved to be a large body of fierce looking men, riding upon dromedaries and slender, spirited horses and armed with long rifles and crookedly shaped simitars. "those fellows seem to be looking for trouble," remarked the boy, as he glided over them, "and it wouldn't be exactly healthy for an enemy to get in their way. but i haven't time to stop, so i'm not likely to get mixed up in any rumpus with them." [illustration: "those fellows seem to be looking for trouble"] however, the armed caravan was scarcely out of sight before rob discovered he was approaching a rich, wooded oasis of the desert, in the midst of which was built the walled city of yarkand. not that he had ever heard of the place, or knew its name; for few europeans and only one american traveler had ever visited it. but he guessed it was a city of some importance from its size and beauty, and resolved to make a stop there. above the high walls projected many slender, white minarets, indicating that the inhabitants were either turks or some race of mohammedans; so rob decided to make investigations before trusting himself to their company. a cluster of tall trees with leafy tops stood a short distance outside the walls, and here the boy landed and sat down to rest in the refreshing shade. the city seemed as hushed and still as if it were deserted, and before him stretched the vast plain of white, heated sands. he strained his eyes to catch a glimpse of the band of warriors he had passed, but they were moving slowly and had not yet appeared. the trees that sheltered rob were the only ones without the city, although many low bushes or shrubs grew scattering over the space between him and the walls. an arched gateway broke the enclosure at his left, but the gates were tightly shut. something in the stillness and the intense heat of the mid-day sun made the boy drowsy. he stretched himself upon the ground beneath the dense foliage of the biggest tree and abandoned himself to the languor that was creeping over him. "i'll wait until that army of the desert arrives," he thought, sleepily. "they either belong in this city or have come to capture it, so i can tell better what to dance when i find out what the band plays." the next moment he was sound asleep, sprawling upon his back in the shade and slumbering as peacefully as an infant. and while he lay motionless three men dropped in quick succession from the top of the city wall and hid among the low bushes, crawling noiselessly from one to another and so approaching, by degrees, the little group of trees. they were turks, and had been sent by those in authority within the city to climb the tallest tree of the group and discover if the enemy was near. for rob's conjecture had been correct, and the city of yarkand awaited, with more or less anxiety, a threatened assault from its hereditary enemies, the tatars. the three spies were not less forbidding in appearance than the horde of warriors rob had passed upon the desert. their features were coarse and swarthy, and their eyes had a most villainous glare. old fashioned pistols and double-edged daggers were stuck in their belts and their clothing, though of gorgeous colors, was soiled and neglected. with all the caution of the american savage these turks approached the tree, where, to their unbounded amazement, they saw the boy lying asleep. his dress and fairness of skin at once proclaimed him, in their shrewd eyes, a european, and their first thought was to glance around in search of his horse or dromedary. seeing nothing of the kind near they were much puzzled to account for his presence, and stood looking down at him with evident curiosity. the sun struck the polished surface of the traveling machine which was attached to rob's wrist and made the metal glitter like silver. this attracted the eyes of the tallest turk, who stooped down and stealthily unclasped the band of the machine from the boy's outstretched arm. then, after a hurried but puzzled examination of the little instrument, he slipped it into the pocket of his jacket. rob stirred uneasily in his sleep, and one of the turks drew a slight but stout rope from his breast and with gentle but deft movement passed it around the boy's wrists and drew them together behind him. the action was not swift enough to arouse the power of repulsion in the garment of protection, but it awakened rob effectually, so that he sat up and stared hard at his captors. "what are you trying to do, anyhow?" he demanded. the turks laughed and said something in their own language. they had no knowledge of english. "you're only making fools of yourselves," continued the boy, wrathfully. "it's impossible for you to injure me." the three paid no attention to his words. one of them thrust his hand into rob's pocket and drew out the electric tube. his ignorance of modern appliances was so great that he did not know enough to push the button. rob saw him looking down the hollow end of the tube and murmured: "i wish it would blow your ugly head off!" but the fellow, thinking the shining metal might be of some value to him, put the tube in his own pocket and then took from the prisoner the silver box of tablets. rob writhed and groaned at losing his possessions in this way, and while his hands were fastened behind him tried to feel for and touch the indicator of the traveling machine. when he found that the machine also had been taken, his anger gave way to fear, for he realized he was in a dangerously helpless condition. the third turk now drew the record of events from the boy's inner pocket. he knew nothing of the springs that opened the lids, so, after a curious glance at it, he secreted the box in the folds of his sash and continued the search of the captive. the character marking spectacles were next abstracted, but the turk, seeing in them nothing but spectacles, scornfully thrust them back into rob's pocket, while his comrades laughed at him. the boy was now rifled of seventeen cents in pennies, a broken pocket knife and a lead-pencil, the last article seeming to be highly prized. after they had secured all the booty they could find, the tall turk, who seemed the leader of the three, violently kicked at the prisoner with his heavy boot. his surprise was great when the garment of repulsion arrested the blow and nearly overthrew the aggressor in turn. snatching a dagger from his sash, he bounded upon the boy so fiercely that the next instant the enraged turk found himself lying upon his back three yards away, while his dagger flew through the air and landed deep in the desert sands. "keep it up!" cried rob, bitterly. "i hope you'll enjoy yourself." the other turks raised their comrade to his feet, and the three stared at one another in surprise, being unable to understand how a bound prisoner could so effectually defend himself. but at a whispered word from the leader, they drew their long pistols and fired point blank into rob's face. the volley echoed sharply from the city walls, but as the smoke drifted slowly away the turks were horrified to see their intended victim laughing at them. uttering cries of terror and dismay, the three took to their heels and bounded towards the wall, where a gate quickly opened to receive them, the populace feeling sure the tatar horde was upon them. [illustration: uttering cries of terror and dismay, the three turks took to their heels] nor was this guess so very far wrong; for as rob, sitting disconsolate upon the sand, raised his eyes, he saw across the desert a dark line that marked the approach of the invaders. nearer and nearer they came, while rob watched them and bemoaned the foolish impulse that had led him to fall asleep in an unknown land where he could so easily be overpowered and robbed of his treasures. "i always suspected these electrical inventions would be my ruin some day," he reflected, sadly; "and now i'm side-tracked and left helpless in this outlandish country, without a single hope of ever getting home again. they probably won't be able to kill me, unless they find my garment of repulsion and strip that off; but i never could cross this terrible desert on foot and, having lost my food tablets, i'd soon starve if i attempted it." fortunately, he had eaten one of the tablets just before going to sleep, so there was no danger of immediate starvation. but he was miserable and unhappy, and remained brooding over his cruel fate until a sudden shout caused him to look up. [illustration] [illustration] _chapter fourteen_ turk and tatar the tatars had arrived, swiftly and noiselessly, and a dozen of the warriors, still mounted, were surrounding him. his helpless condition aroused their curiosity, and while some of them hastily cut away his bonds and raised him to his feet, others plied him with questions in their own language. rob shook his head to indicate that he could not understand; so they led him to the chief--an immense, bearded representative of the tribe of kara-khitai, the terrible and relentless black tatars of thibet. the huge frame of this fellow was clothed in flowing robes of cloth-of-gold, braided with jewels, and he sat majestically upon the back of a jet-black camel. under ordinary circumstances the stern features and flashing black eyes of this redoubtable warrior would have struck a chill of fear to the boy's heart; but now under the influence of the crushing misfortunes he had experienced, he was able to gaze with indifference upon the terrible visage of the desert chief. the tatar seemed not to consider rob an enemy. instead, he looked upon him as an ally, since the turks had bound and robbed him. finding it impossible to converse with the chief, rob took refuge in the sign language. he turned his pockets wrong side out, showed the red welts left upon his wrists by the tight cord, and then shook his fists angrily in the direction of the town. in return the tatar nodded gravely and issued an order to his men. by this time the warriors were busily pitching tents before the walls of yarkand and making preparations for a formal siege. in obedience to the chieftain's orders, rob was given a place within one of the tents nearest the wall and supplied with a brace of brass-mounted pistols and a dagger with a sharp, zigzag edge. these were evidently to assist the boy in fighting the turks, and he was well pleased to have them. his spirits rose considerably when he found he had fallen among friends, although most of his new comrades had such evil faces that it was unnecessary to put on the character markers to judge their natures with a fair degree of accuracy. "i can't be very particular about the company i keep," he thought, "and this gang hasn't tried to murder me, as the rascally turks did. so for the present i'll stand in with the scowling chief and try to get a shot at the thieves who robbed me. if our side wins i may get a chance to recover some of my property. it's a slim chance, of course, but it's the only hope i have left." that very evening an opportunity occurred for rob to win glory in the eyes of his new friends. just before sundown the gates of the city flew open and a swarm of turks, mounted upon fleet horses and camels, issued forth and fell upon their enemies. the tatars, who did not expect the sally, were scarcely able to form an opposing rank when they found themselves engaged in a hand-to-hand conflict, fighting desperately for their lives. in such a battle, however, the turks were at a disadvantage, for the active tatars slipped beneath their horses and disabled them, bringing both the animals and their riders to the earth. at the first onslaught rob shot his pistol at a turk and wounded him so severely that he fell from his horse. instantly the boy seized the bridle and sprang upon the steed's back, and the next moment he had dashed into the thickest part of the fray. bullets and blows rained upon him from all sides, but the garment of repulsion saved him from a single scratch. when his pistols had been discharged he caught up the broken handle of a spear, and used it as a club, galloping into the ranks of the turks and belaboring them as hard as he could. the tatars cheered and followed him, and the turks were so amazed at his miraculous escape from their bullets that they became terrified, thinking he bore a charmed life and was protected by unseen powers. this terror helped turn the tide of battle, and before long the enemy was pressed back to the walls and retreated through the gates, which were hastily fastened behind them. in order to prevent a repetition of this sally the tatars at once invested the gates, so that if the turks should open them they were as likely to let their foes in as to oppose them. while the tents were being moved up rob had an opportunity to search the battlefield for the bodies of the three turks who had robbed him, but they were not among the fallen. "those fellows were too cowardly to take part in a fair fight," declared the boy; but he was much disappointed, nevertheless, as he felt very helpless without the electric tube or the traveling machine. the tatar chief now called rob to his tent and presented him with a beautiful ring set with a glowing pigeon's-blood ruby, in acknowledgment of his services. this gift made the boy feel very proud, and he said to the chief: "you're all right, old man, even if you do look like a pirate. if you can manage to capture that city, so i can get my electrical devices back, i'll consider you a trump as long as i live." the chief thought this speech was intended to express rob's gratitude, so he bowed solemnly in return. during the night that followed upon the first engagement of the turks and tatars, the boy lay awake trying to devise some plan to capture the city. the walls seemed too high and thick to be either scaled or broken by the tatars, who had no artillery whatever; and within the walls lay all the fertile part of the oasis, giving the besieged a good supply of water and provisions, while the besiegers were obliged to subsist on what water and food they had brought with them. just before dawn rob left his tent and went out to look at the great wall. the stars gave plenty of light, but the boy was worried to find that, according to eastern custom, no sentries or guards whatever had been posted and all the tatars were slumbering soundly. the city was likewise wrapped in profound silence, but just as rob was turning away he saw a head project stealthily over the edge of the wall before him, and recognized in the features one of the turks who had robbed him. finding no one awake except the boy the fellow sat upon the edge of the wall, with his feet dangling downward, and grinned wickedly at his former victim. rob watched him with almost breathless eagerness. after making many motions that conveyed no meaning whatever, the turk drew the electric tube from his pocket and pointed his finger first at the boy and then at the instrument, as if inquiring what it was used for. rob shook his head. the turk turned the tube over several times and examined it carefully, after which he also shook his head, seeming greatly puzzled. by this time the boy was fairly trembling with excitement. he longed to recover this valuable weapon, and feared that at any moment the curious turk would discover its use. he held out his hand toward the tube, and tried to say, by motions, that he would show the fellow how to use it. the man seemed to understand, but he would not let the glittering instrument out of his possession. rob was almost in despair, when he happened to notice upon his hand the ruby ring given him by the chief. drawing the jewel from his finger he made offer, by signs, that he would exchange it for the tube. the turk was much pleased with the idea, and nodded his head repeatedly, holding out his hand for the ring. rob had little confidence in the man's honor, but he was so eager to regain the tube that he decided to trust him. so he threw the ring to the top of the wall, where the turk caught it skilfully; but when rob held out his hand for the tube the scoundrel only laughed at him and began to scramble to his feet in order to beat a retreat. chance, however, foiled this disgraceful treachery, for in his hurry the turk allowed the tube to slip from his grasp, and it rolled off the wall and fell upon the sand at rob's very feet. the robber turned to watch its fall and, filled with sudden anger, the boy grabbed the weapon, pointed it at his enemy, and pressed the button. down tumbled the turk, without a cry, and lay motionless at the foot of the wall. rob's first thought was to search the pockets of his captive, and to his delight he found and recovered his box of food tablets. the record of events and the traveling machine were doubtless in the possession of the other robbers, but rob did not despair of recovering them, now that he had the tube to aid him. day was now breaking, and several of the tatars appeared and examined the body of the turk with grunts of surprise, for there was no mark upon him to show how he had been slain. supposing him to be dead, they tossed him aside and forgot all about him. rob had secured his ruby ring again, and going to the chief's tent he showed the jewel to the guard and was at once admitted. the black-bearded chieftain was still reclining upon his pillows, but rob bowed before him, and by means of signs managed to ask for a band of warriors to assist him in assaulting the town. the chieftain appeared to doubt the wisdom of the enterprise, not being able to understand how the boy could expect to succeed; but he graciously issued the required order, and by the time rob reached the city gate he found a large group of tatars gathered to support him, while the entire camp, roused to interest in the proceedings, stood looking on. rob cared little for the quarrel between the turks and tatars, and under ordinary circumstances would have refused to side with one or the other; but he knew he could not hope to recover his electrical machines unless the city was taken by the band of warriors who had befriended him, so he determined to force an entrance for them. without hesitation he walked close to the great gate and shattered its fastenings with the force of the electric current directed upon them from the tube. then, shouting to his friends the tatars for assistance, they rushed in a body upon the gate and dashed it open. the turks had expected trouble when they heard the fastenings of the huge gate splinter and fall apart, so they had assembled in force before the opening. as the tatars poured through the gateway in a compact mass they were met by a hail of bullets, spears and arrows, which did fearful execution among them. many were killed outright, while others fell wounded to be trampled upon by those who pressed on from the rear. rob maintained his position in the front rank, but escaped all injury through the possession of the garment of repulsion. but he took an active part in the fight and pressed the button of the electric tube again and again, tumbling the enemy into heaps on every side, even the horses and camels falling helplessly before the resistless current of electricity. the tatars shouted joyfully as they witnessed this marvelous feat and rushed forward to assist in the slaughter; but the boy motioned them all back. he did not wish any more bloodshed than was necessary, and knew that the heaps of unconscious turks around him would soon recover. so he stood alone and faced the enemy, calmly knocking them over as fast as they came near. two of the turks managed to creep up behind the boy, and one of them, who wielded an immense simitar with a two-edged blade as sharp as a razor, swung the weapon fiercely to cut off rob's head. but the repulsive force aroused in the garment was so terrific that it sent the weapon flying backwards with redoubled swiftness, so that it caught the second turk at the waist and cut him fairly in two. thereafter they all avoided coming near the boy, and in a surprisingly short time the turkish forces were entirely conquered, all having been reduced to unconsciousness except a few cowards who had run away and hidden in the cellars or garrets of the houses. the tatars entered the city with shouts of triumph, and the chief was so delighted that he threw his arms around rob's neck and embraced him warmly. then began the sack of yarkand, the fierce tatars plundering the bazaars and houses, stripping them of everything of value they could find. rob searched anxiously among the bodies of the unconscious turks for the two men who had robbed him, but neither could be found. he was more successful later, for in running through the streets he came upon a band of tatars leading a man with a rope around his neck, whom rob quickly recognized as one of the thieves he was hunting for. the tatars willingly allowed him to search the fellow, and in one of his pockets rob found the record of events. he had now recovered all his property, except the traveling machine, the one thing that was absolutely necessary to enable him to escape from this barbarous country. he continued his search persistently, and an hour later found the dead body of the third robber lying in the square in the center of the city. but the traveling machine was not on his person, and for the first time the boy began to give way to despair. in the distance he heard loud shouts and sound of renewed strife, warning him that the turks were recovering consciousness and engaging the tatars with great fierceness. the latter had scattered throughout the town, thinking themselves perfectly secure, so that not only were they unprepared to fight, but they became panic-stricken at seeing their foes return, as it seemed, from death to life. their usual courage forsook them, and they ran, terrified, in every direction, only to be cut down by the revengeful turkish simitars. rob was sitting upon the edge of a marble fountain in the center of the square when a crowd of victorious turks appeared and quickly surrounded him. the boy paid no attention to their gestures and the turks feared to approach him nearly, so they stood a short distance away and fired volleys at him from their rifles and pistols. rob glared at them scornfully, and seeing they could not injure him the turks desisted; but they still surrounded him, and the crowd grew thicker every moment. women now came creeping from their hiding places and mingled with the ranks of the men, and rob guessed, from their joyous chattering, that the turks had regained the city and driven out or killed the tatar warriors. he reflected, gloomily, that this did not affect his own position in any way, since he could not escape from the oasis. suddenly, on glancing at the crowd, rob saw something that arrested his attention. a young girl was fastening some article to the wrist of a burly, villainous-looking turk. the boy saw a glitter that reminded him of the traveling machine, but immediately afterward the man and the girl bent their heads over the fellow's wrist in such a way that rob could see nothing more. while the couple were apparently examining the strange device, rob started to his feet and walked toward them. the crowd fell back at his approach, but the man and the girl were so interested that they did not notice him. he was still several paces away when the girl put out her finger and touched the indicator on the dial. to rob's horror and consternation the big turk began to rise slowly into the air, while a howl of fear burst from the crowd. but the boy made a mighty spring and caught the turk by his foot, clinging to it with desperate tenacity, while they both mounted steadily upward until they were far above the city of the desert. [illustration: the turk rose slowly into the air, with rob clinging to him with desperate tenacity] the big turk screamed pitifully at first, and then actually fainted away from fright. rob was much frightened, on his part, for he knew if his hands slipped from their hold he would fall to his death. indeed, one hand was slipping already, so he made a frantic clutch and caught firmly hold of the turk's baggy trousers. then, slowly and carefully, he drew himself up and seized the leather belt that encircled the man's waist. this firm grip gave him new confidence, and he began to breathe more freely. he now clung to the body of the turk with both legs entwined, in the way he was accustomed to cling to a tree-trunk when he climbed after cherries at home. he had conquered his fear of falling, and took time to recover his wits and his strength. they had now reached such a tremendous height that the city looked like a speck on the desert beneath them. knowing he must act quickly, rob seized the dangling left arm of the unconscious turk and raised it until he could reach the dial of the traveling machine. he feared to unclasp the machine just then, for two reasons: if it slipped from his grasp they would both plunge downward to their death; and he was not sure the machine would work at all if in any other position than fastened to the left wrist. rob determined to take no chances, so he left the machine attached to the turk and turned the indicator to zero and then to "east," for he did not wish to rejoin either his enemies the turks or his equally undesirable friends the tatars. after traveling eastward a few minutes he lost sight of the city altogether; so, still clinging to the body of the turk, he again turned the indicator and began to descend. when, at last, they landed gently upon a rocky eminence of the kuen-lun mountains, the boy's strength was almost exhausted, and his limbs ached with the strain of clinging to the turk's body. his first act was to transfer the traveling machine to his own wrist and to see that his other electrical devices were safely bestowed in his pockets. then he sat upon the rock to rest until the turk recovered consciousness. presently the fellow moved uneasily, rolled over, and then sat up and stared at his surroundings. perhaps he thought he had been dreaming, for he rubbed his eyes and looked again with mingled surprise and alarm. then, seeing rob, he uttered a savage shout and drew his dagger. rob smiled and pointed the electric tube at the man, who doubtless recognized its power, for he fell back scowling and trembling. "this place seems like a good jog from civilization," remarked the boy, as coolly as if his companion could understand what he said; "but as your legs are long and strong you may be able to find your way. it's true you're liable to starve to death, but if you do it will be your own misfortune and not my fault." the turk glared at him sullenly, but did not attempt to reply. rob took out his box of tablets, ate one of them and offered another to his enemy. the fellow accepted it ungraciously enough, but seeing rob eat one he decided to follow his example, and consumed the tablet with a queer expression of distrust upon his face. "brave man!" cried rob, laughingly; "you've avoided the pangs of starvation for a time, anyhow, so i can leave you with a clear conscience." without more ado he turned the indicator of the traveling machine and mounted into the air, leaving the turk sitting upon the rocks and staring after him in comical bewilderment. [illustration] [illustration] _chapter fifteen_ a battle with monsters our young adventurer never experienced a more grateful feeling of relief and security than when he found himself once more high in the air, alone, and in undisputed possession of the electrical devices bestowed upon him by the demon. the dangers he had passed through since landing at the city of the desert and the desperate chance that alone had permitted him to regain the traveling machine made him shudder at the bare recollection and rendered him more sober and thoughtful than usual. we who stick closely to the earth's surface can scarcely realize how rob could travel through the air at such dizzy heights without any fear or concern whatsoever. but he had come to consider the air a veritable refuge. experience had given him implicit confidence in the powers of the electrical instrument whose unseen forces carried him so swiftly and surely, and while the tiny, watch-like machine was clasped to his wrist he felt himself to be absolutely safe. having slipped away from the turk and attained a fair altitude, he set the indicator at zero and paused long enough to consult his map and decide what direction it was best for him to take. the mischance that had swept him unwittingly over the countries of europe had also carried him more than half way around the world from his home. therefore the nearest way to reach america would be to continue traveling to the eastward. so much time had been consumed at the desert oasis that he felt he must now hasten if he wished to reach home by saturday afternoon; so, having quickly come to a decision, he turned the indicator and began a swift flight into the east. for several hours he traveled above the great desert of gobi, but by noon signs of a more fertile country began to appear, and, dropping to a point nearer the earth, he was able to observe closely the country of the chinese, with its crowded population and ancient but crude civilization. then he came to the great wall of china and to mighty peking, above which he hovered some time, examining it curiously. he really longed to make a stop there, but with his late experiences fresh in his mind he thought it much safer to view the wonderful city from a distance. resuming his flight he presently came to the gulf of laou tong, whose fair face was freckled with many ships of many nations, and so on to korea, which seemed to him a land fully a century behind the times. night overtook him while speeding across the sea of japan, and having a great desire to view the mikado's famous islands, he put the indicator at zero, and, coming to a full stop, composed himself to sleep until morning, that he might run no chances of being carried beyond his knowledge during the night. you might suppose it no easy task to sleep suspended in mid-air, yet the magnetic currents controlled by the traveling machine were so evenly balanced that rob was fully as comfortable as if reposing upon a bed of down. he had become somewhat accustomed to passing the night in the air and now slept remarkably well, having no fear of burglars or fire or other interruptions that dwellers in cities are subject to. one thing, however, he should have remembered: that he was in an ancient and little known part of the world and reposing above a sea famous in fable as the home of many fierce and terrible creatures; while not far away lay the land of the dragon, the simurg and other ferocious monsters. rob may have read of these things in fairy tales and books of travel, but if so they had entirely slipped his mind; so he slumbered peacefully and actually snored a little, i believe, towards morning. but even as the red sun peeped curiously over the horizon he was awakened by a most unusual disturbance--a succession of hoarse screams and a pounding of the air as from the quickly revolving blades of some huge windmill. he rubbed his eyes and looked around. coming towards him at his right hand was an immense bird, whose body seemed almost as big as that of a horse. its wide-open, curving beak was set with rows of pointed teeth, and the talons held against its breast and turned threateningly outward were more powerful and dreadful than a tiger's claws. while, fascinated and horrified, he watched the approach of this feathered monster, a scream sounded just behind him and the next instant the stroke of a mighty wing sent him whirling over and over through the air. he soon came to a stop, however, and saw that another of the monsters had come upon him from the rear and was now, with its mate, circling closely around him, while both uttered continuously their hoarse, savage cries. rob wondered why the garment of repulsion had not protected him from the blow of the bird's wing; but, as a matter of fact, it had protected him. for it was not the wing itself but the force of the eddying currents of air that had sent him whirling away from the monster. with the indicator at zero the magnetic currents and the opposing powers of attraction and repulsion were so evenly balanced that any violent atmospheric disturbance affected him in the same way that thistledown is affected by a summer breeze. he had noticed something of this before, but whenever a strong wind was blowing he was accustomed to rise to a position above the air currents. this was the first time he had slept with the indicator at zero. the huge birds at once renewed their attack, but rob had now recovered his wits sufficiently to draw the electric tube from his pocket. the first one to dart towards him received the powerful electric current direct from the tube, and fell stunned and fluttering to the surface of the sea, where it floated motionless. its mate, perhaps warned by this sudden disaster, renewed its circling flight, moving so swiftly that rob could scarcely follow it, and drawing nearer and nearer every moment to its intended victim. the boy could not turn in the air very quickly, and he feared an attack in the back, mistrusting the saving power of the garment of repulsion under such circumstances; so in desperation he pressed his finger upon the button of the tube and whirled the instrument around his head in the opposite direction to that in which the monster was circling. presently the current and the bird met, and with one last scream the creature tumbled downwards to join its fellow upon the waves, where they lay like two floating islands. their presence had left a rank, sickening stench in the surrounding atmosphere, so rob made haste to resume his journey and was soon moving rapidly eastward. he could not control a shudder at the recollection of his recent combat, and realized the horror of a meeting with such creatures by one who had no protection from their sharp beaks and talons. "it's no wonder the japs draw ugly pictures of those monsters," he thought. "people who live in these parts must pass most of their lives in a tremble." the sun was now shining brilliantly, and when the beautiful islands of japan came in sight rob found that he had recovered his wonted cheerfulness. he moved along slowly, hovering with curious interest over the quaint and picturesque villages and watching the industrious japanese patiently toiling at their tasks. just before he reached tokio he came to a military fort, and for nearly an hour watched the skilful maneuvers of a regiment of soldiers at their morning drill. they were not very big people, compared with other nations, but they seemed alert and well trained, and the boy decided it would require a brave enemy to face them on a field of battle. having at length satisfied his curiosity as to japanese life and customs rob prepared for his long flight across the pacific ocean. by consulting his map he discovered that should he maintain his course due east, as before, he would arrive at a point in america very near to san francisco, which suited his plans excellently. having found that he moved more swiftly when farthest from the earth's surface, because the air was more rarefied and offered less resistance, rob mounted upwards until the islands of japan were mere specks visible through the clear, sunny atmosphere. then he began his eastward flight, the broad surface of the pacific seeming like a blue cloud far beneath him. [illustration] [illustration] _chapter sixteen_ shipwrecked mariners ample proof of rob's careless and restless nature having been frankly placed before the reader in these pages, you will doubtless be surprised when i relate that during the next few hours our young gentleman suffered from a severe attack of homesickness, becoming as gloomy and unhappy in its duration as ever a homesick boy could be. it may have been because he was just then cut off from all his fellow-creatures and even from the world itself; it may have been because he was satiated with marvels and with the almost absolute control over the powers which the demon had conferred upon him; or it may have been because he was born and reared a hearty, healthy american boy, with a disposition to battle openly with the world and take his chances equally with his fellows, rather than be placed in such an exclusive position that no one could hope successfully to oppose him. perhaps he himself did not know what gave him this horrible attack of "the blues," but the truth is he took out his handkerchief and cried like a baby from very loneliness and misery. there was no one to see him, thank goodness! and the tears gave him considerable relief. he dried his eyes, made an honest struggle to regain his cheerfulness, and then muttered to himself: "if i stay up here, like an air-bubble in the sky, i shall certainly go crazy. i suppose there's nothing but water to look at down below, but if i could only sight a ship, or even see a fish jump, it would do me no end of good." thereupon he descended until, as the ocean's surface came nearer and nearer, he discovered a tiny island lying almost directly underneath him. it was hardly big enough to make a dot on the biggest map, but a clump of trees grew in the central portion, while around the edges were jagged rocks protecting a sandy beach and a stretch of flower-strewn upland leading to the trees. it looked very beautiful from rob's elevated position, and his spirits brightened at once. "i'll drop down and pick a bouquet," he exclaimed, and a few moments later his feet touched the firm earth of the island. but before he could gather a dozen of the brilliant flowers a glad shout reached his ears, and, looking up, he saw two men running towards him from the trees. they were dressed in sailor fashion, but their clothing was reduced to rags and scarcely clung to their brown, skinny bodies. as they advanced they waved their arms wildly in the air and cried in joyful tones: "a boat! a boat!" rob stared at them wonderingly, and had much ado to prevent the poor fellows from hugging him outright, so great was their joy at his appearance. one of them rolled upon the ground, laughing and crying by turns, while the other danced and cut capers until he became so exhausted that he sank down breathless beside his comrade. "how came you here?" then inquired the boy, in pitying tones. "we're shipwrecked american sailors from the bark 'cynthia jane,' which went down near here over a month ago," answered the smallest and thinnest of the two. "we escaped by clinging to a bit of wreckage and floated to this island, where we have nearly starved to death. indeed, we now have eaten everything on the island that was eatable, and had your boat arrived a few days later you'd have found us lying dead upon the beach!" rob listened to this sad tale with real sympathy. "but i didn't come here in a boat," said he. the men sprang to their feet with white, scared faces. "no boat!" they cried; "are you, too, shipwrecked?" "no;" he answered. "i flew here through the air." and then he explained to them the wonderful electric traveling machine. but the sailors had no interest whatever in the relation. their disappointment was something awful to witness, and one of them laid his head upon his comrade's shoulder and wept with unrestrained grief, so weak and discouraged had they become through suffering. [illustration: the disappointment of the sailors was something awful to witness] suddenly rob remembered that he could assist them, and took the box of concentrated food tablets from his pocket. "eat these," he said, offering one to each of the sailors. at first they could not understand that these small tablets would be able to allay the pangs of hunger; but when rob explained their virtues the men ate them greedily. within a few moments they were so greatly restored to strength and courage that their eyes brightened, their sunken cheeks flushed, and they were able to converse with their benefactor with calmness and intelligence. then the boy sat beside them upon the grass and told them the story of his acquaintance with the demon and of all his adventures since he had come into possession of the wonderful electric contrivances. in his present mood he felt it would be a relief to confide in some one, and so these poor, lonely men were the first to hear his story. when he related the manner in which he had clung to the turk while both ascended into the air, the elder of the two sailors listened with rapt attention, and then, after some thought, asked: "why couldn't you carry one or both of us to america?" rob took time seriously to consider this idea, while the sailors eyed him with eager interest. finally he said: "i'm afraid i couldn't support your weight long enough to reach any other land. it's a long journey, and you'd pull my arms out of joint before we'd been up an hour." their faces fell at this, but one of them said: "why couldn't we swing ourselves over your shoulders with a rope? our two bodies would balance each other and we are so thin and emaciated that we do not weigh very much." while considering this suggestion rob remembered how at one time five pirates had clung to his left leg and been carried some distance through the air. "have you a rope?" he asked. "no," was the answer; "but there are plenty of long, tough vines growing on the island that are just as strong and pliable as ropes." "then, if you are willing to run the chances," decided the boy, "i will make the attempt to save you. but i must warn you that in case i find i can not support the weight of your bodies i shall drop one or both of you into the sea." they looked grave at this prospect, but the biggest one said: "we would soon meet death from starvation if you left us here on the island; so, as there is at least a chance of our being able to escape in your company i, for one, am willing to risk being drowned. it is easier and quicker than being starved. and, as i'm the heavier, i suppose you'll drop me first." "certainly," declared rob, promptly. this announcement seemed to be an encouragement to the little sailor, but he said, nervously: "i hope you'll keep near the water, for i haven't a good head for heights--they always make me dizzy." "oh, if you don't want to go," began rob, "i can easily----" "but i do! i do! i do!" cried the little man, interrupting him. "i shall die if you leave me behind!" "well, then, get your ropes, and we'll do the best we can," said the boy. they ran to the trees, around the trunks of which were clinging many tendrils of greenish-brown vine which possessed remarkable strength. with their knives they cut a long section of this vine, the ends of which were then tied into loops large enough to permit the sailors to sit in them comfortably. the connecting piece rob padded with seaweed gathered from the shore, to prevent its cutting into his shoulders. "now, then," he said, when all was ready, "take your places." the sailors squatted in the loops, and rob swung the vine over his shoulders and turned the indicator of the traveling machine to "up." as they slowly mounted into the sky the little sailor gave a squeal of terror and clung to the boy's arm; but the other, although seemingly anxious, sat quietly in his place and made no trouble. "d--d--don't g--g--go so high!" stammered the little one, tremblingly; "suppose we should f--f--fall!" "well, s'pose we should?" answered rob, gruffly. "you couldn't drown until you struck the water, so the higher we are the longer you'll live in case of accident." this phase of the question seemed to comfort the frightened fellow somewhat; but, as he said, he had not a good head for heights, and so continued to tremble in spite of his resolve to be brave. the weight on rob's shoulders was not so great as he had feared, the traveling machine seeming to give a certain lightness and buoyancy to everything that came into contact with its wearer. as soon as he had reached a sufficient elevation to admit of good speed he turned the indicator once more to the east and began moving rapidly through the air, the shipwrecked sailors dangling at either side. "this is aw--aw--awful!" gasped the little one. "say, you shut up!" commanded the boy, angrily. "if your friend was as big a coward as you are i'd drop you both this minute. let go my arm and keep quiet, if you want to reach land alive." the fellow whimpered a little, but managed to remain silent for several minutes. then he gave a sudden twitch and grabbed rob's arm again. "s'pose--s'pose the vine should break!" he moaned, a horrified look upon his face. "i've had about enough of this," said rob, savagely. "if you haven't any sense you don't deserve to live." he turned the indicator on the dial of the machine and they began to descend rapidly. the little fellow screamed with fear, but rob paid no attention to him until the feet of the two suspended sailors were actually dipping into the waves, when he brought their progress to an abrupt halt. "wh--wh--what are you g--g--going to do?" gurgled the cowardly sailor. "i'm going to feed you to the sharks--unless you promise to keep your mouth shut," retorted the boy. "now, then; decide at once! which will it be--sharks or silence?" "i won't say a word--'pon my honor, i won't!" said the sailor, shudderingly. "all right; remember your promise and we'll have no further trouble," remarked rob, who had hard work to keep from laughing at the man's abject terror. once more he ascended and continued the journey, and for several hours they rode along swiftly and silently. rob's shoulders were beginning to ache with the continued tugging of the vine upon them, but the thought that he was saving the lives of two unfortunate fellow-creatures gave him strength and courage to persevere. night was falling when they first sighted land; a wild and seemingly uninhabited stretch of the american coast. rob made no effort to select a landing place, for he was nearly worn out with the strain and anxiety of the journey. he dropped his burden upon the brow of a high bluff overlooking the sea and, casting the vine from his shoulders, fell to the earth exhausted and half fainting. [illustration] [illustration] _chapter seventeen_ the coast of oregon when he had somewhat recovered, rob sat up and looked around him. the elder sailor was kneeling in earnest prayer, offering grateful thanks for his escape from suffering and death. the younger one lay upon the ground sobbing and still violently agitated by recollections of the frightful experiences he had undergone. although he did not show his feelings as plainly as the men, the boy was none the less gratified at having been instrumental in saving the lives of two fellow-beings. the darkness was by this time rapidly enveloping them, so rob asked his companions to gather some brushwood and light a fire, which they quickly did. the evening was cool for the time of year, and the heat from the fire was cheering and grateful; so they all lay near the glowing embers and fell fast asleep. the sound of voices aroused rob next morning, and on opening his eyes and gazing around he saw several rudely dressed men approaching. the two shipwrecked sailors were still sound asleep. rob stood up and waited for the strangers to draw near. they seemed to be fishermen, and were much surprised at finding three people asleep upon the bluff. "whar 'n thunder'd ye come from?" asked the foremost fisherman, in a surprised voice. "from the sea," replied the boy. "my friends here are shipwrecked sailors from the 'cynthia jane.'" "but how'd ye make out to climb the bluff?" inquired a second fisherman; "no one ever did it afore, as we knows on." "oh, that is a long story," replied the boy, evasively. the two sailors had awakened and now saluted the new-comers. soon they were exchanging a running fire of questions and answers. "where are we?" rob heard the little sailor ask. "coast of oregon," was the reply. "we're about seven miles from port orford by land an' about ten miles by sea." "do you live at port orford?" inquired the sailor. "that's what we do, friend; an' if your party wants to join us we'll do our best to make you comf'table, bein' as you're shipwrecked an' need help." just then a loud laugh came from another group, where the elder sailor had been trying to explain rob's method of flying through the air. "laugh all you want to," said the sailor, sullenly; "it's true--ev'ry word of it!" "mebbe you think it, friend," answered a big, good-natured fisherman; "but it's well known that shipwrecked folks go crazy sometimes, an' imagine strange things. your mind seems clear enough in other ways, so i advise you to try and forget your dreams about flyin'." rob now stepped forward and shook hands with the sailors. "i see you have found friends," he said to them, "so i will leave you and continue my journey, as i'm in something of a hurry." both sailors began to thank him profusely for their rescue, but he cut them short. "that's all right. of course i couldn't leave you on that island to starve to death, and i'm glad i was able to bring you away with me." "but you threatened to drop me into the sea," remarked the little sailor, in a grieved voice. "so i did," said rob, laughing; "but i wouldn't have done it for the world--not even to have saved my own life. good-by!" he turned the indicator and mounted skyward, to the unbounded amazement of the fishermen, who stared after him with round eyes and wide open mouths. "this sight will prove to them that the sailors are not crazy," he thought, as he turned to the south and sped away from the bluff. "i suppose those simple fishermen will never forget this wonderful occurrence, and they'll probably make reg'lar heroes of the two men who have crossed the pacific through the air." he followed the coast line, keeping but a short distance above the earth, and after an hour's swift flight reached the city of san francisco. his shoulders were sore and stiff from the heavy strain upon them of the previous day, and he wished more than once that he had some of his mother's household liniment to rub them with. yet so great was his delight at reaching once more his native land that all discomforts were speedily forgotten. much as he would have enjoyed a day in the great metropolis of the pacific slope, rob dared not delay longer than to take a general view of the place, to note its handsome edifices and to wonder at the throng of chinese inhabiting one section of the town. these things were much more plainly and quickly viewed by rob from above than by threading a way through the streets on foot; for he looked down upon the city as a bird does, and covered miles with a single glance. having satisfied his curiosity without attempting to alight, he turned to the southeast and followed the peninsula as far as palo alto, where he viewed the magnificent buildings of the university. changing his course to the east, he soon reached mount hamilton, and, being attracted by the great tower of the lick observatory, he hovered over it until he found he had attracted the excited gaze of its inhabitants, who doubtless observed him very plainly through the big telescope. but so unreal and seemingly impossible was the sight witnessed by the learned astronomers that they have never ventured to make the incident public, although long after the boy had darted away into the east they argued together concerning the marvelous and incomprehensible vision. afterward they secretly engrossed the circumstance upon their records, but resolved never to mention it in public, lest their wisdom and veracity should be assailed by the skeptical. meantime rob rose to a higher altitude, and sped swiftly across the great continent. by noon he sighted chicago, and after a brief inspection of the place from the air determined to devote at least an hour to forming the acquaintance of this most wonderful and cosmopolitan city. [illustration] [illustration] _chapter eighteen_ a narrow escape the auditorium tower, where "the weather man" sits to flash his reports throughout the country, offered an inviting place for the boy to alight. he dropped quietly upon the roof of the great building and walked down the staircase until he reached the elevators, by means of which he descended to the ground floor without exciting special attention. the eager rush and hurry of the people crowding the sidewalks impressed rob with the idea that they were all behind time and were trying hard to catch up. he found it impossible to walk along comfortably without being elbowed and pushed from side to side; so a half hour's sight-seeing under such difficulties tired him greatly. it was a beautiful afternoon, and finding himself upon the lake front, rob hunted up a vacant bench and sat down to rest. presently an elderly gentleman with a reserved and dignified appearance and dressed in black took a seat next to the boy and drew a magazine from his pocket. rob saw that he opened it to an article on "the progress of modern science," in which he seemed greatly interested. after a time the boy remembered that he was hungry, not having eaten a tablet in more than twenty-four hours. so he took out the silver box and ate one of the small, round disks it contained. "what are those?" inquired the old gentleman in a soft voice. "you are too young to be taking patent medicines." "these are not medicines, exactly," answered the boy, with a smile. "they are concentrated food tablets, stored with nourishment by means of electricity. one of them furnishes a person with food for an entire day." the old gentleman stared at rob a moment and then laid down his magazine and took the box in his hands, examining the tablets curiously. "are these patented?" he asked. "no," said rob; "they are unknown to any one but myself." "i will give you a half million dollars for the recipe to make them," said the gentleman. "i fear i must refuse your offer," returned rob, with a laugh. "i'll make it a million," said the gentleman, coolly. rob shook his head. "money can't buy the recipe," he said; "for i don't know it myself." "couldn't the tablets be chemically analyzed, and the secret discovered?" inquired the other. "i don't know; but i'm not going to give any one the chance to try," declared the boy, firmly. the old gentleman picked up his magazine without another word, and resumed his reading. for amusement rob took the record of events from his pocket and began looking at the scenes reflected from its polished plate. presently he became aware that the old gentleman was peering over his shoulder with intense interest. general funston was just then engaged in capturing the rebel chief, aguinaldo, and for a few moments both man and boy observed the occurrence with rapt attention. as the scene was replaced by one showing a secret tunnel of the russian nihilists, with the conspirators carrying dynamite to a recess underneath the palace of the czar, the gentleman uttered a long sigh and asked: "will you sell that box?" "no," answered rob, shortly, and put it back into his pocket. "i'll give you a million dollars to control the sale in chicago alone," continued the gentleman, with an eager inflection in his smooth voice. "you seem quite anxious to get rid of money," remarked rob, carelessly. "how much are you worth?" "personally?" "yes." "nothing at all, young man. i am not offering you my own money. but with such inventions as you have exhibited i could easily secure millions of capital. suppose we form a trust, and place them upon the market. we'll capitalize it for a hundred millions, and you can have a quarter of the stock--twenty-five millions. that would keep you from worrying about grocery bills." "but i wouldn't need groceries if i had the tablets," said rob, laughing. "true enough! but you could take life easily and read your newspaper in comfort, without being in any hurry to get down town to business. twenty-five millions would bring you a cozy little income, if properly invested." "i don't see why one should read newspapers when the record of events shows all that is going on in the world," objected rob. "true, true! but what do you say to the proposition?" "i must decline, with thanks. these inventions are not for sale." the gentleman sighed and resumed his magazine, in which he became much absorbed. rob put on the character marking spectacles and looked at him. the letters "e", "w" and "c" were plainly visible upon the composed, respectable looking brow of his companion. "evil, wise and cruel," reflected rob, as he restored the spectacles to his pocket. "how easily such a man could impose upon people. to look at him one would think that butter wouldn't melt in his mouth!" he decided to part company with this chance acquaintance and, rising from his seat, strolled leisurely up the walk. a moment later, on looking back, he discovered that the old gentleman had disappeared. he walked down state street to the river and back again, amused by the activity displayed in this busy section of the city. but the time he had allowed himself in chicago had now expired, so he began looking around for some high building from the roof of which he could depart unnoticed. this was not at all difficult, and selecting one of many stores he ascended by an elevator to the top floor and from there mounted an iron stairway leading to the flat roof. as he climbed this stairway he found himself followed by a pleasant looking young man, who also seemed desirous of viewing the city from the roof. annoyed at the inopportune intrusion, rob's first thought was to go back to the street and try another building; but, upon reflecting that the young man was not likely to remain long and he would soon be alone, he decided to wait. so he walked to the edge of the roof and appeared to be interested in the scenery spread out below him. "fine view from here, ain't it?" said the young man, coming up to him and placing his hand carelessly upon the boy's shoulder. "it is, indeed," replied rob, leaning over the edge to look into the street. as he spoke he felt himself gently but firmly pushed from behind and, losing his balance, he plunged headforemost from the roof and whirled through the intervening space toward the sidewalk far below. terrified though he was by the sudden disaster, the boy had still wit enough remaining to reach out his right hand and move the indicator of the machine upon his left wrist to the zero mark. immediately he paused in his fearful flight and presently came to a stop at a distance of less than fifteen feet from the flagstones which had threatened to crush out his life. as he stared downward, trying to recover his self-possession, he saw the old gentleman he had met on the lake front standing just below and looking at him with a half frightened, half curious expression in his eyes. at once rob saw through the whole plot to kill him and thus secure possession of his electrical devices. the young man upon the roof who had attempted to push him to his death was a confederate of the innocent appearing old gentleman, it seemed, and the latter had calmly awaited his fall to the pavement to seize the coveted treasures from his dead body. it was an awful idea, and rob was more frightened than he had ever been before in his life--or ever has been since. but now the shouts of a vast concourse of amazed spectators reached the boy's ears. he remembered that he was suspended in mid-air over the crowded street of a great city, while thousands of wondering eyes were fixed upon him. so he quickly set the indicator to the word "up," and mounted sky-ward until the watchers below could scarcely see him. then he fled away into the east, even yet shuddering with the horror of his recent escape from death and filled with disgust at the knowledge that there were people who held human life so lightly that they were willing to destroy it to further their own selfish ends. "and the demon wants such people as these to possess his electrical devices, which are as powerful to accomplish evil when in wrong hands as they are good!" thought the boy, resentfully. "this would be a fine world if electric tubes and records of events and traveling machines could be acquired by selfish and unprincipled persons!" so unnerved was rob by his recent experiences that he determined to make no more stops. however, he alighted at nightfall in the country, and slept upon the sweet hay in a farmer's barn. but, early the next morning, before any one else was astir, he resumed his journey, and at precisely ten o'clock of this day, which was saturday, he completed his flying trip around the world by alighting unobserved upon the well-trimmed lawn of his own home. [illustration] [illustration] _chapter nineteen_ rob makes a resolution when rob opened the front door he came face to face with nell, who gave an exclamation of joy and threw herself into his arms. "oh, rob!" she cried, "i'm so glad you've come. we have all been dreadfully worried about you, and mother--" "well, what about mother?" inquired the boy, anxiously, as she paused. "she's been very ill, rob; and the doctor said to-day that unless we heard from you soon he would not be able to save her life. the uncertainty about you is killing her." rob stood stock still, all the eager joy of his return frozen into horror at the thought that he had caused his dear mother so much suffering. "where is she, nell?" he asked, brokenly. "in her room. come; i'll take you to her." rob followed with beating heart, and soon was clasped close to his mother's breast. "oh, my boy--my dear boy!" she murmured, and then for very joy and love she was unable to say more, but held him tight and stroked his hair gently and kissed him again and again. rob said little, except to promise that he would never again leave home without her full consent and knowledge. but in his mind he contrasted the love and comfort that now surrounded him with the lonely and unnatural life he had been leading and, boy though he was in years, a mighty resolution that would have been creditable to an experienced man took firm root in his heart. he was obliged to recount all his adventures to his mother and, although he made light of the dangers he had passed through, the story drew many sighs and shudders from her. when luncheon time arrived he met his father, and mr. joslyn took occasion to reprove his son in strong language for running away from home and leaving them filled with anxiety as to his fate. however, when he saw how happy and improved in health his dear wife was at her boy's return, and when he had listened to rob's manly confession of error and expressions of repentance, he speedily forgave the culprit and treated him as genially as ever. of course the whole story had to be repeated, his sisters listening this time with open eyes and ears and admiring their adventurous brother immensely. even mr. joslyn could not help becoming profoundly interested, but he took care not to show any pride he might feel in his son's achievements. when his father returned to his office rob went to his own bed-chamber and sat for a long time by the window in deep thought. when at last he aroused himself, he found it was nearly four o'clock. "the demon will be here presently," he said, with a thrill of aversion, "and i must be in the workshop to receive him." silently he stole to the foot of the attic stairs and then paused to listen. the house seemed very quiet, but he could hear his mother's voice softly humming a cradle-song that she had sung to him when he was a baby. he had been nervous and unsettled and a little fearful until then, but perhaps the sound of his mother's voice gave him courage, for he boldly ascended the stairs and entered the workshop, closing and locking the door behind him. [illustration] [illustration] _chapter twenty_ the unhappy fate of the demon again the atmosphere quickened and pulsed with accumulating vibrations. again the boy found himself aroused to eager expectancy. there was a whirl in the air; a crackling like distant musketry; a flash of dazzling light--and the demon stood before him for the third time. "i give you greetings!" said he, in a voice not unkindly. "good afternoon, mr. demon," answered the boy, bowing gravely. "i see you have returned safely from your trip," continued the apparition, cheerfully, "although at one time i thought you would be unable to escape. indeed, unless i had knocked that tube from the rascally turk's hand as he clambered to the top of the wall, i believe you would have been at the yarkand oasis yet--either dead or alive, as chance might determine." "were you there?" asked rob. "to be sure. and i recovered the tube for you, without which you would have been helpless. but that is the only time i saw fit to interfere in any way." "i'm afraid i did not get a chance to give many hints to inventors or scientists," said rob. "true, and i have deeply regretted it," replied the demon. "but your unusual powers caused more astonishment and consternation than you, perhaps, imagined; for many saw you whom you were too busy to notice. as a result several able electricians are now thinking new thoughts along new lines, and some of them may soon give these or similar inventions to the world." "you are satisfied, then?" asked rob. "as to that," returned the demon, composedly, "i am not. but i have hopes that with the addition of the three marvelous devices i shall present you with to-day you will succeed in arousing so much popular interest in electrical inventions as to render me wholly satisfied with the result of this experiment." rob regarded the brilliant apparition with a solemn face, but made no answer. "no living person," continued the demon, "has ever before been favored with such comforting devices for the preservation and extension of human life as yourself. you seem quite unappreciative, it is true; but since our connection i have come to realize that you are but an ordinary boy, with many boyish limitations; so i do not condemn your foolish actions too harshly." "that is kind of you," said rob. "to prove my friendliness," pursued the demon, "i have brought, as the first of to-day's offerings, this electro-magnetic restorer. you see it is shaped like a thin metal band, and is to be worn upon the brow, clasping at the back of the head. its virtues surpass those of either the fabulous 'fountain of youth,' or the 'elixir of life,' so vainly sought for in past ages. for its wearer will instantly become free from any bodily disease or pain and will enjoy perfect health and vigor. in truth, so great are its powers that even the dead may be restored to life, provided the blood has not yet chilled. in presenting you with this appliance, i feel i am bestowing upon you the greatest blessing and most longed-for boon ever bequeathed to suffering humanity." here he held the slender, dull-colored metallic band toward the boy. "keep it," said rob. the demon started, and gave him an odd look. "what did you say?" he asked. "i told you to keep it," answered rob. "i don't want it." the demon staggered back as if he had been struck. "don't want it!" he gasped. "no; i've had enough of your infernal inventions!" cried the boy, with sudden anger. he unclasped the traveling machine from his wrist and laid it on the table beside the demon. "there's the thing that's responsible for most of my troubles," said he, bitterly. "what right has one person to fly through the air while all his fellow-creatures crawl over the earth's surface? and why should i be cut off from all the rest of the world because you have given me this confounded traveling machine? i didn't ask for it, and i won't keep it a moment longer. give it to some one you hate more than you do me!" the demon stared aghast and turned his glittering eyes wonderingly from rob to the traveling machine and back again, as if to be sure he had heard and seen aright. "and here are your food tablets," continued the boy, placing the box upon the table. "i've only enjoyed one square meal since you gave them to me. they're all right to preserve life, of course, and answer the purpose for which they were made; but i don't believe nature ever intended us to exist upon such things, or we wouldn't have the sense of taste, which enables us to enjoy natural food. as long as i'm a human being i'm going to eat like a human being, so i've consumed my last electrical concentrated food tablet--and don't you forget it!" the demon sank into a chair, nerveless and limp, but still staring fearfully at the boy. "and there's another of your unnatural devices," said rob, putting the automatic record of events upon the table beside the other things. "what right have you to capture vibrations that radiate from private and secret actions and discover them to others who have no business to know them? this would be a fine world if every body could peep into every one else's affairs, wouldn't it? and here is your character marker. nice thing for a decent person to own, isn't it? any one who would take advantage of such a sneaking invention as that would be worse than a thief! oh, i've used them, of course, and i ought to be spanked for having been so mean and underhanded; but i'll never be guilty of looking through them again." the demon's face was frowning and indignant. he made a motion to rise, but thought better of it and sank back in his chair. "as for the garment of protection," resumed the boy, after a pause, "i've worn it for the last time, and here it is, at your service. i'll put the electric tube with it. not that these are such very bad things in themselves, but i'll have none of your magical contrivances. i'll say this, however: if all armies were equipped with electrical tubes instead of guns and swords the world would be spared a lot of misery and unnecessary bloodshed. perhaps they will be, in time; but that time hasn't arrived yet." "you might have hastened it," said the demon, sternly, "if you had been wise enough to use your powers properly." "that's just it," answered rob. "i'm _not_ wise enough. nor is the majority of mankind wise enough to use such inventions as yours unselfishly and for the good of the world. if people were better, and every one had an equal show, it would be different." for some moments the demon sat quietly thinking. finally the frown left his face and he said, with animation: "i have other inventions, which you may use without any such qualms of conscience. the electro-magnetic restorer i offered you would be a great boon to your race, and could not possibly do harm. and, besides this, i have brought you what i call the illimitable communicator. it is a simple electric device which will enable you, wherever you may be, to converse with people in any part of the world, without the use of such crude connections as wires. in fact, you may"---"stop!" cried rob. "it is useless for you to describe it, because i'll have nothing more to do with you or your inventions. i have given them a fair trial, and they've got me into all sorts of trouble and made all my friends miserable. if i was some high-up scientist it would be different; but i'm just a common boy, and i don't want to be anything else." "but, your duty--" began the demon. "my duty i owe to myself and to my family," interrupted rob. "i have never cultivated science, more than to fool with some simple electrical experiments, so i owe nothing to either science or the demon of electricity, so far as i can see." "but consider," remonstrated the demon, rising to his feet and speaking in a pleading voice, "consider the years that must elapse before any one else is likely to strike the master key! and, in the meanwhile, consider my helpless position, cut off from all interest in the world while i have such wonderful inventions on my hands for the benefit of mankind. if you have no love for science or for the advancement of civilization, _do_ have some consideration for your fellow-creatures, and for me!" "if my fellow-creatures would have as much trouble with your electrical inventions as i had, i am doing them a service by depriving them of your devices," said the boy. "as for yourself, i've no fault to find with you, personally. you're a very decent sort of demon, and i've no doubt you mean well; but there's something wrong about our present combination, i'm sure. it isn't natural." the demon made a gesture of despair. "why, oh why did not some intelligent person strike the master key!" he moaned. "that's it!" exclaimed rob. "i believe that's the root of the whole evil." "what is?" inquired the demon, stupidly. "the fact that an intelligent person did not strike the master key. you don't seem to understand. well, i'll explain. you're the demon of electricity, aren't you?" "i am," said the other, drawing himself up proudly. "your mission is to obey the commands of whoever is able to strike the master key of electricity." "that is true." "i once read in a book that all things are regulated by exact laws of nature. if that is so you probably owe your existence to those laws." the demon nodded. "doubtless it was intended that when mankind became intelligent enough and advanced enough to strike the master key, you and all your devices would not only be necessary and acceptable to them, but the world would be prepared for their general use. that seems reasonable, doesn't it?" "perhaps so. yes; it seems reasonable," answered the demon, thoughtfully. "accidents are always liable to happen," continued the boy. "by accident the master key was struck long before the world of science was ready for it--or for you. instead of considering it an accident and paying no attention to it you immediately appeared to me--a mere boy--and offered your services." "i was very anxious to do something," returned the demon, evasively. "you've no idea how stupid it is for me to live invisible and unknown, while all the time i have in my possession secrets of untold benefit to the world." "well, you'll have to keep cool and bide your time," said rob. "the world wasn't made in a minute, and while civilization is going on at a pretty good pace, we're not up to the demon of electricity yet." "what shall i do!" groaned the apparition, wringing his hands miserably; "oh, what shall i do!" "go home and lie down," replied rob, sympathetically. "take it easy and don't get rattled. nothing was ever created without a use, they say; so your turn will come some day, sure! i'm sorry for you, old fellow, but it's all your own fault." "you are right!" exclaimed the demon, striding up and down the room, and causing thereby such a crackling of electricity in the air that rob's hair became rigid enough to stand on end. "you are right, and i must wait--wait--wait--patiently and silently--until my bonds are loosed by intelligence rather than chance! it is a dreary fate. but i must wait--i must wait--i must wait!" "i'm glad you've come to your senses," remarked rob, drily. "so, if you've nothing more to say--" "no! i have nothing more to say. there _is_ nothing more to say. you and i are two. we should never have met!" retorted the demon, showing great excitement. "oh, i didn't seek your acquaintance," said rob. "but i've tried to treat you decently, and i've no fault to find with you except that you forgot you were a slave and tried to be a master." the demon did not reply. he was busily forcing the various electrical devices that rob had relinquished into the pockets of his fiery jacket. finally he turned with an abrupt movement. "good-by!" he cried. "when mortal eyes next behold me they will be those of one fit to command my services! as for you, your days will be passed in obscurity and your name be unknown to fame. good-by,--forever!" the room filled with a flash of white light so like a sheet of lightning that the boy went reeling backwards, half stunned and blinded by its dazzling intensity. when he recovered himself the demon of electricity had disappeared. * * * * * rob's heart was very light as he left the workshop and made his way down the attic stairs. "some people might think i was a fool to give up those electrical inventions," he reflected; "but i'm one of those persons who know when they've had enough. it strikes me the fool is the fellow who can't learn a lesson. i've learned mine, all right. it's no fun being a century ahead of the times!" [illustration] transcriber's note: obvious printer errors have been corrected. otherwise, the author's original spelling, punctuation and hyphenation have been left intact. _nature's miracles, vol. iii._ electricity and magnetism by elisha gray, ph.d., ll.d. william briggs 29-33 richmond st. west, toronto c. w. coates, montreal, que. s. f. huestis, halifax, n.s. contents. chapter page introduction v i. the author's design 1 ii. history of electrical science 6 iii. history of magnetism 20 iv. theory and nature of magnetism 25 v. theory of electricity 39 vi. electrical currents 49 vii. electric generators 62 viii. atmospheric electricity 77 ix. electrical measurement 83 x. the electric telegraph 88 xi. receiving messages 103 xii. miscellaneous methods 108 xiii. multiple transmission 114 xiv. way duplex system 129 xv. the telephone 134 xvi. how the telephone talks 145 xvii. submarine telegraphy 154 xviii. short-line telegraphs 159 xix. the telautograph 165 xx. some curiosities 171 xxi. wireless telegraphy 176 xxii. niagara falls power--introduction 186 xxiii. niagara falls power--appliances 190 xxiv. niagara falls power--appliances 199 xxv. electrical products--carborundum 209 xxvi. electrical products--bleaching-powder 218 xxvii. electrical products--aluminum 223 xxviii. electrical products--calcium carbide 228 xxix. the new era 234 introduction. for the benefit of the readers of vol. iii, who have not read the general introduction found in vol. i, a word as to the scope and object of this volume will not be amiss. it will be plain to any one on seeing the size of the little book that it cannot be an exhaustive treatise on a subject so large as that of electricity. this volume, like the others, is intended for popular reading, and technical terms are avoided as far as possible, or when used clearly explained. the subject is treated historically, theoretically, and practically. as the author has lived through the period during which the science of electricity has had most of its growth, he naturally and necessarily deals somewhat in reminiscence. all he hopes to do is to plant a few seed-thoughts in the minds of his readers that will awaken an interest in the study of natural science; and especially in its most fascinating branch--electricity. if vol. i is at hand, please read the introduction. it will bring you into closer sympathy with the author and his mode of treatment. again, if the reader is especially interested in the theory of electricity it will help him very much if he first reads vols. i and ii, as a preparation for a better understanding of vol. iii. all the natural sciences are so closely related that it is difficult to get a clear insight into any one of them without at least a general idea of all the others. nature's miracles. electricity and magnetism. chapter i. the author's design. the writer has spent much of his time for thirty-five years in the study of electricity and in inventing appliances for purposes of transmitting intelligence electrically between distant points, and is perhaps more familiar with the phenomena of electricity than with those of any other branch of physics; yet he finds it still the most difficult of all the natural sciences to explain. to give any satisfactory theory as to its place with and relation to other forms of energy is a perplexing problem. it is said that lord kelvin lately made the statement that no advance had been made in explaining the real nature of electricity for fifty years. while this statement--if he really made it--is rather broad, it must be acknowledged that all the theories so far advanced are little better than guesses. but there is value in guessing, for one man's guess may lead to another that is better, and, as it is rarely the case that each one does not give us a little different view of the matter, it may be that out of the multiplicity of guesses there may some time be a suggestion given to some investigator that will solve the problem, or at least carry the theme farther back and establish its true relationship to the other forms of energy. i cannot but think that there is yet a simple statement to be made of energy in its relation to matter that will establish a closer relationship between the different branches of physical science. and this, most likely, will be brought about by a better understanding of the nature of the interstellar substance called ether, and its relation to all forms and conditions of sensible matter and energy. in the talks that will follow it will be the endeavor of the writer to give such a simple and popular exposition of the phenomena and applications of electricity, in a general way only, that the popular reader may get, at least, an elementary understanding of the subject so far as it is known. as we have said, the descriptions will have to be elementary, for nothing else can be done without such elaborate technical drawings and specifications as would be impossible in our limited space, and would not be clear to the ordinary reader who knows nothing of the science. thousands who are employed in various ways with enterprises, the foundations of which are electrical, know nothing of electricity as a science. a friend of mine, who is a professor of physics in one of our colleges, was traveling a few years ago, and in his wanderings he came across some sort of a factory where an electric motor was employed. being on the alert for information, he stepped in and introduced himself to the engineer, and began asking him questions about the electric motor of which he had charge. the professor could talk ohm, ampères, and volts smoothly, and he "fired" some of these electrotechnical names at the engineer. the engineer looked at him blankly and said: "you can't prove it by me. i don't know what you're talking about. all i know is to turn on the juice and let her buzz." how much "juice" is wasted in this cut-and-dry world of ours and how much could be saved if only all were even fairly intelligent regarding the laws of nature! a great deal of the business of this world is run on the "let her buzz" theory, and the public pays for the waste. it will continue to be so until a higher order of intelligence is more generally diffused among the people. a fountain can rise no higher than its source. a business will never exceed the intelligence that is put into it, nor will a government ever be greater than its people. let us begin the subject of electricity by going somewhat into its past history. it is always well to know the history of any subject we are studying, for we often profit as much by the mistakes of others as by their successes. i shall also give the theories advanced by different investigators, and if i should have any thoughts of my own on the subject i shall be free to give them, for i have just as good a right to make a guess as any one. it must be confessed, however, that the older i grow the less i feel that i know about the subject of electricity, or anything else, in comparison with what i see there is yet to be known. i once met a young man who had just graduated from college, and in his conversation he stated that he had taken a course in electricity. i asked him how long he had studied the subject. he said "three months." i asked him if he understood it--and he said that he did. i told him that he was the man that the world was looking for; that i had studied it for thirty years and did not understand it yet. "a little learning is a dangerous thing"--for it puffs us up, and we feel that we know it all and have the world in our grasp; but after we have tried our "little learning" on the world for a while and have received the many hard knocks that are sure to come, we are sooner or later brought up in front of the mirror of experience, and we "see ourselves as others see us," and are not satisfied with the view. whatever the theories may be regarding electricity, and however unsatisfactory they may be, there are certain well-defined facts and phenomena that are of the greatest importance to the world. these we may understand: and to this end let us especially direct our efforts. chapter ii. history of electrical science. electricity as a well-developed science is not old. those of us who have lived fifty years have seen nearly all its development so far as it has been applied to useful purposes, and those who have lived over twenty-five years have seen the major portion of its development. thales of miletus, 600 b.c., discovered, or at least described, the properties of amber when rubbed, showing that it had the power to attract and repel light substances, such as straws, dry leaves, etc. and from the greek word for amber--elektron--came the name electricity, denoting this peculiar property. theophrastus and pliny made the same observations; the former about 321 b.c., and the latter about 70 a.d. it is also said that the ancients had observed the effects of animal electricity, such as that of the fish called the torpedo. pliny and aristotle both speak of its power to paralyze the feet of men and animals, and to first benumb the fish which it then preyed upon. it is also recorded that a freed-man of tiberius was cured of the gout by the shocks of the torpedo. it is further recorded that wolimer, the king of the goths, was able to emit sparks from his body. coming down to more modern times--a.d. 1600--we find dr. gilbert, an englishman, taking up the investigation of the electrical properties of various substances when submitted to friction, and formulating them in the order of their importance. in these experiments we have the beginnings of what has since developed into a great science. he made the discovery that when the air was dry he could soon electrify the substances rubbed, but when it was damp it took much longer and sometimes he failed altogether. in 1705 francis hawksbee, an experimental philosopher, discovered that mercury could be rendered luminous by agitating it in an exhausted receiver. (it is a question whether this phenomenon should not be classed with that of phosphorescence rather than electricity.) the number of investigators was so great that all of them cannot be mentioned. it often happens that those who do really most for a science are never known to fame. a number of people will make small contributions till the structure has by degrees assumed large proportions, when finally some one comes along and puts a gilded dome on it and the whole structure takes his name. this is eminently true of many of the more important developments in the science and applications of electricity during the last twenty-five or thirty years. following hawksbee may be mentioned stephen gray, sir isaac newton, dr. wall, m. dupay and others. dupay discovered the two conditions of electrical excitation known now as positive and negative conditions. in 1745 the leyden jar was invented. it takes its name from the city of leyden, where its use was first discovered. it is a glass jar, coated inside and out with tin-foil. the inside coating is connected with a brass knob at the top, through which it can be charged with electricity. the inner and outer coatings must not be continuous but insulated from each other. the author's name is not known, but it is said that three different persons invented it independently, to wit, a monk by the name of kleist, a man by the name of cuneus, and professor muschenbroeck of leyden. this was an important invention, as it was the forerunner of our own franklin's discoveries and a necessary part of his outfit with which he established the identity of lightning and electricity. every american schoolboy has heard, from fourth of july orations, how "franklin caught the forked lightning from the clouds and tamed it and made it subservient to the will of man." how my boyish soul used to be stirred to its depths by this oratorical display of electrical fireworks! franklin had long entertained the idea that the lightning of the clouds was identical with what is called frictional electricity, and he waited long for a church spire to be erected in his adopted home, the quaker city, in order that he might make the test and settle the question. but the quakers did not believe in spires, and franklin's patience had a limit. franklin had the theory that most investigators had at that time, that electricity was a fluid and that certain substances had the power to hold it. there were two theories prevalent in those days--both fluid theories. one theory was that there were two fluids, a positive and a negative. franklin held to the theory of a single fluid, and that the phenomenon of electricity was present only when the balance or natural amount of electricity was disturbed. according to this theory, a body charged with positive electricity had an excessive amount, and, of course, some other body somewhere else had less than nature had allotted to it; hence it was charged with negative electricity. a leyden jar, for instance, having one of its coatings (say the inside) charged with positive or + electricity, the other coating will be charged with negative or electricity. the former was only a name for an amount above normal and the latter a name for a shortage or lack of the normal amount. as we have said, franklin believed in the identity of lightning and electricity, and he waited long for an opportunity to demonstrate his theory. he had the leyden jar, and now all he needed was to establish some suitable connection between a thunder-cloud and the earth. previous to 1750 franklin had written a paper in which he showed the likeness between the lightning spark and that of frictional electricity. he showed that both sparks move in crooked lines--as we see it in a storm-cloud, that both strike the highest or nearest points, that both inflame combustibles, fuse metals, render needles magnetic and destroy animal life. all this did not definitely establish their identity in the mind of franklin, and he waited long for an opportunity, and finally, finding that no one presented itself, he did what many men have had to do in other matters; he made one. in the month of june, 1752, tired of waiting for a steeple to be erected, franklin devised a plan that was much better and probably saved the experiment from failure; for the steeple would probably not have been high enough. he constructed a kite by making a cross of light cedar rods, fastening the four ends to the four corners of a large silk handkerchief. he fixed a loop to tie the kite string to and balanced it with a tail, as boys do nowadays. he fixed a pointed wire to the upper end of one of the cross sticks for a lightning-rod, and then waited for a thunder-storm. when it came, with the help of his boy, he sent up the kite. he tied a loop of silk ribbon on the end of the string next his hand--as silk was known to be an insulator or non-conductor--and having tied a key to the string he waited the result, standing within a door to prevent the silk loop from getting wet and thus destroying its insulating qualities. the cloud had nearly passed and he feared his long waited for experiment had failed, when he noticed the loose fibers of the string standing out in every direction, and saw that they were attracted by the approach of his finger. the rain now wet the string and made a better conductor of it. soon he could draw sparks with his knuckle from the key. he charged a leyden jar with this electrical current from the thunder-cloud, and performed all the experiments with it that he had done with ordinary electricity, thus establishing the identity of the two and confirming beyond a doubt what he had long before believed was true. in after experiments franklin found that sometimes the electricity of the clouds was positive and at other times negative. from this experiment franklin conceived the idea of erecting lightning-rods to protect buildings, which are used to this day. the news spread all over europe, not through the medium of electricity, however, but as soon as sailing vessels and stage-coaches could carry it. many philosophers repeated the experiments and at least one man sacrificed his life through his interest in the new discovery. in 1753 professor richman of st. petersburg erected on his house a metal rod which terminated in a leyden jar in one of the rooms. on the 31st of may he was attending a meeting of the academy of sciences. he heard a roll of thunder and hurried home to watch his apparatus. he and one of the assistants were watching the apparatus when a stroke of lightning came down the rod and leaped to the professor's head. he was standing too near it and was instantly killed. passing over many names of men who followed in the wake of franklin we come to the next era-making discovery, namely, that of galvanic electricity. in the year 1790 an incident occurred in the household of one luigi galvani, an italian physician and anatomist, that led to a new and important branch of electrical science. galvani's wife was preparing some frogs for soup, and having skinned them placed them on a table near a newly charged electric machine. a scalpel was on the table and had been in contact with the machine. she accidentally touched one of the frogs to the point of the scalpel, when, lo! the frog kicked, and the kick of that dead frog changed the whole face of electrical science. she called her husband and he repeated the experiment, and also appropriated the discovery as well, and he has had the credit of it ever since, when really his wife made the discovery. galvani supposed it to be animal electricity and clung to that theory the rest of his life, making many experiments and publishing their results; but the discovery led others to solve the problem. alessandro volta, a professor of natural philosophy at pavia, italy, was, it must be said, the founder of the science of galvanic or voltaic electricity. stimulated by the discovery of galvani he attributed the action of the frog's muscles, not to animal electricity, but to some chemical action between the metals that touched it. to prove his theory, he constructed a pile made of alternate layers of zinc, copper, and a cloth or pasteboard saturated in some saline solution. by repeating these trios--copper, zinc, and the saturated cloth--he attained a pile that would give a powerful shock. it is called the voltaic pile. i have a clear idea of the construction of this form of pile, founded on experience. it was my habit when a boy to make everything that i found described, if it were possible. the bottom of my mother's wash-boiler was copper, and just the thing to make the square plates of copper to match the zinc ones, made from another piece of domestic furniture used under the stove. i shocked my mother twice--first with the voltaic pile that i had constructed, and again when she found out where the metal plates came from. the sequel to all this was--but why dwell upon a painful subject! galvanism and voltaic electricity are the same. volta was the first to construct what is termed the galvanic battery. the unit of electrical pressure or electromotive force is called the volt, and takes its name from volta, the great founder of the science of galvanic or voltaic electricity. from this pile constructed by volta innumerable forms of batteries have been devised. the evolution of the galvanic battery in all its forms, from volta to the present day, would fill a large volume if all were described. the discoveries of michael faraday (1791-1867), the distinguished english chemist and physicist, led to another phase of the science that has revolutionized modern life. faraday made an experiment that contains the germ of all forms of the modern dynamo, which is a machine of comparatively recent development. he found that by winding a piece of insulated wire around a piece of soft iron and bringing the two ends (of the wire) very close together, and then placing the iron across the poles of a permanent magnet and suddenly jerking it away, a spark would pass between the two ends of the wire that was wound around the piece of soft iron. here was an incipient dynamo-electric machine--the germ of that which plays such an important part in our modern civilization. having brought our history down to the present day, it would seem scarcely necessary to recite that which everybody knows. it is well, however, to call a halt once in a while and compare our present conditions of civilization with those of the past. our world is filled with croakers who are always sighing for the good old days. but we can easily imagine that if they could go back to those days their croaking would be still louder than it is. before the advent of electricity many things were impossible that are easy now. in the old days the world was very, very large; now, thanks to electricity, it is knocking at the door of every man's house. the lumbering stage-coach that was formerly our limited express--limited to thirty or forty miles a day--has been supplanted by one that covers 1000 miles in the same time, and this high rate of speed is made possible only by the use of the electric telegraph. in the old days all europe could be involved in a great war and the news of it would be weeks in reaching our shores, but now the firing of the first gun is heard at every fireside the world over, almost before the smoke has cleared away. our planet is threaded with iron nerves that run over mountains and under seas, whose trembling atoms, thrilled with the electric fire, speak to us daily and hourly of the great throbbing life of the whole civilized world. electricity has given us a voice that can be heard a thousand miles, and not only heard, but recognized. it has given us a pen that will write our autograph in new york, although we are still in chicago. it has given us the best light, both from an optical and a sanitary standpoint, that the world has ever seen. the old-fashioned, jogging horse-car has been supplanted by the electric "trolley," and we no longer have our feelings harrowed with pity for the poor old steeds that pulled those lumbering coaches through the streets, with men and women crowded in and hanging on to straps, while everybody trod on every other body's toes. "in olden times we took a car drawn by a horse, if going far, and felt that we were blest; now the conductor takes the fare and puts a broomstick in the air- and lightning does the rest. "in other days, along the street, a glimmering lantern led the feet, when on a midnight stroll; but now we catch, when night is nigh, a piece of lightning from the sky and stick it on a pole. "time was when one must hold his ear close to a whispering voice to hear, like deaf men--nigh and nigher; but now from town to town he talks and puts his nose into a box and whispers through a wire." so jogs the old world along. we sometimes think it is slow, but when we look back a few years and see what has been accomplished it seems to have had a marvelously rapid development. something like fifty years ago a professor of physics in one of our colleges was giving his class a course in electricity. the electric telegraph was too little known at that time to cut much of a figure in the classroom, so the stock experiments were those made with the frictional electric machine and the leyden jar. one day the professor had, in one hour's time, taken his class through a course of electricity, and at the end he said: "gentlemen, you were born too late to witness the development of this great science." i often wonder if the good professor is ever allowed to part the veil that separates us from the great beyond and to look down upon this busy world of ours in which electricity plays such an important part in our every-day life; and if so, what he thinks of that little speech he made to the boys fifty years or more ago. if we make an analysis of the history of the science of electricity we shall see that it has progressed in successive eras, shortening as they approach our time. for a period of 2300 years, from thales to franklin, but little or no progress was made beyond the further development of the phenomena of frictional electricity--the most important invention being that of the leyden jar. from franklin to volta was forty-eight years, and from volta to faraday about thirty-two years. from this time on the development was very rapid as compared with the old days. soon after faraday, morse, henry, wheatstone, and others began experiments that have grown, during fifty or sixty years, into a most colossal system of electric telegraphs, telephones, electric lights and electric railroads. in the latter days marvel has succeeded marvel with such rapid strides that the ink is scarcely dry from the description of one before another crowds itself upon our attention. where it will all end no one knows, but that it has ended no one believes. the human mind has become so accustomed to these periodic revelations of the marvelous that it must have the stimulus once in a while or it suffers as the toper does when deprived of his cups. the commercial instinct of the news-vender is not slow to see the situation, and if the development is too slow to suit the public demand his fertile brain supplies the lack. so that every few days we hear of some great discovery made by some one it may be unknown to fame. it has served its purpose. the public mind has had its mental toddy and has been saved from a fit of intellectual delirium tremens that it was in danger of from lack of its accustomed stimulus. having given you a very limited outline of the history of electricity, from ancient times down to the present, we will endeavor now to give you an elementary notion of the science as it stands to-day. to the common mind the science is a blank page. so little is known of it by the ordinary reader, who is fairly intelligent in other matters, that to account for anything that we do not understand it is only necessary to say that it is an electrical phenomenon and he accepts it. electricity is a synonym for all that we cannot understand. inasmuch as magnetism is so closely related to electricity in its uses as related to every-day life, we will carry the two subjects along together, as the one will to a large extent help to explain the other. in our next chapter we will look at the history of magnetism. chapter iii. history of magnetism. it is said that the word magnetism is derived from the name of a greek shepherd, called magnes, who once observed on mount ida the attractive properties of loadstone when applied to his iron shepherd's crook. it is more likely that the name came from magnesia, a country in lydia, where it was first discovered. it was also called lapis heracleus. heraclea was the capital of magnesia. loadstone is a magnetic ore or oxide of iron found in the natural state, and has at some time by natural processes been rendered magnetic--that is, given the power of attracting iron, and, when suspended, of pointing to the north and south poles. the power of the natural magnet was known at a very early age in the history of man. it was referred to by homer, pythagoras, and aristotle. pliny also speaks of it, and refers to one dinocares, who recommended to ptolemy philadelphus to build a temple at alexandria and suspend in its vault a statue of the queen by the attractive power of "loadstones." there is also mention of a statue being suspended in like manner in the temple of serapis, alexandria. it is claimed that the chinese knew of and used the magnetic needle in the earliest times and that travelers by land employed this needle suspended by a string to guide them in their journeys across the country a thousand years before christ. notwithstanding the claims of the chinese and arabians to the discovery of the use of the magnetic needle, modern authors question whether the ancients were familiar with any artificial construction of a magnetic needle, however much they may have studied and used the loadstones. no doubt the loadstone in its natural state was used by mariners to steer their ships by, long before its artificial counterpart was invented. in a history of the discovery of iceland, by are frode, who was born in 1068, it is stated that a mariner by name of folke gadenhalen sailed from norway in search of iceland in the year 868, and that he carried with him three ravens as guides, for he says, "in those times seamen had no loadstones in the northern countries." the magnetic needle as applied to the mariner's compass was known in the eleventh century, as proved by various authors. in an old french poem, the manuscript of which still exists, the mariner's compass is clearly mentioned. the author was guyot, of provence, who was alive in 1181. like electricity, magnetism has had a long history, but little use was made of it till modern times beyond that of the mariner's compass. it can readily be seen what an important factor it was in the science of navigation. long after the discovery of the compass needle there were many perplexing problems arising, and all sorts of theories were advanced to account for the various phenomena. the variation of the needle was one of these problems. it is said that columbus was the first to discover the variation of the needle, as well as america. this is disputed, however, as every man's pretensions usually are. however this may be, columbus had to invent some plausible theory to account for this variation to prevent a mutiny among his crew. they were very superstitious and thought that they were sailing into a new world where the laws of nature were different from those of spain. one phenomenon that disturbed columbus was the dip of the needle. as we move in a northerly direction a magnetic needle dips, and it was the observation of this phenomenon in different latitudes that finally resulted in the invention of the dipping needle. it is well known that one pole of a magnetic needle points to the north and the other to the south. in other words, what is called the north pole of a needle points to one of the magnetic poles of the earth which is in the direction of the north pole, though not the same as the geographical pole. a dipping needle revolves on an axis so that it can point to any declination. if we should construct one that is perfectly balanced, so as to lie in a perfectly horizontal direction before it is magnetized, it will dip--in this latitude--downward toward the north after magnetization. if we keep moving northward it will continue to dip downward till we come to the true magnetic pole, when what is called the north pole of the needle will point directly downward. if we go back to the equator the needle will lie horizontally again. we call the end of the needle that points to the north the north pole. it is really the south pole, because unlike poles attract each other. if the magnetic poles of the earth are at the north and south geographical poles, the south pole of the needle will point north. but it is less confusing to call the end of the needle that points north the north pole. the nomenclature is purely arbitrary. it was not until it was learned that magnets could be made by electricity that they became commercially important outside of their use in navigation. the advent of electricity has brought magnetism to the front as one of the great factors in our modern civilization. and we might say with equal force that the discovery of magnetism has brought electricity to the front. the truth is that they depend upon each other. electricity would be robbed of a large part of its importance as a factor in modern life if it were not for its relation to magnetism. even electric lighting would be impossible, commercially, if it were not for the part magnetism plays in the production of electricity for this purpose. it could not be successfully carried on with any battery but the storage-battery, and the storage-battery is dependent upon the dynamo, and the dynamo is a magneto-electric machine. when we come to analyze the relation between magnetism and electricity we cannot separate them without robbing each of a large part of its usefulness. they are interdependent forces. as in the case of electricity there have been many theories regarding magnetism. one philosopher in the old days accounts for the variation of the compass-needle on the theory that there are two globes, one revolving within the other, and that any derangement of their normal movements in relation to each other affects the needle. evidently there were cranks in those days as well as now. another theory of magnetism was that there were two fluids--a boreal and an austral--one developing north polarity and the other south polarity. in the next chapter the nature of magnetism in the light of modern investigation will be discussed. chapter iv. theory and nature of magnetism. iron and steel have a peculiar property called magnetism. it is an attraction in many ways unlike the attraction of cohesion or the attraction of gravitation. it is very certain that magnetism is an inherent property of the molecules of iron and steel, and, to a small degree, other forms of matter. that is to say, the molecules are little natural magnets of themselves. it is as unnecessary to inquire why they are magnets as it is to inquire why the molecules of all ordinary substances possess the attraction of cohesion. the one is as easy to explain as the other. people of all ages have insisted upon making a greater mystery of all electrical and magnetic phenomena than they do of other natural forces. ampère's theory is that electric currents are flowing around the molecules which render them magnetic; but it is just as easy to suppose that magnetism is an inherent quality of the molecule. (the word molecule is here used as referring to the smallest particle of iron.) these little molecular magnets, so small that 100,000 million million million of them can be put into a cubic inch of space, have their attractions satisfied by forming into little molecular rings, with their unlike poles together, so that when the iron is in a natural or unmagnetized condition it does not attract other iron. if i should take a ring of hardened steel and cut it into two or more pieces and magnetize them, each one of the pieces would be an independent magnet. if now i put them together in the form of a ring they will cling together by their mutual attraction for each other. before i put them together into a ring each piece would attract and adhere to other pieces of iron or steel. but as soon as they are put together in the ring they are satisfied with their own mutual attraction, and the ring as a whole will not attract other pieces of iron. suppose the pieces forming the ring--it may be only two, if you choose--are as small as the molecules we have described, the same thing would be true of them. each molecular ring would have its magnetic attractions satisfied and would not attract other molecules outside of its own little circle. when the iron is in the neutral state it will not as a mass attract another piece of iron, because the millions of little natural magnets of which it is made up have their attractive force all turned in upon themselves. now, if we make a helix, or coil, of insulated wire and put a piece of iron into it, and pass a current of electricity through the helix, the iron becomes a magnet. why? because the electric current has the power to break up these molecular magnetic rings and turn all their like poles in one direction, so that their attractions are no longer satisfied among themselves, and with a combined effort they reach outside and attract any piece of iron that is within reach. in this state we say it is magnetized. most people think that we have put something into the iron, but we have not; we have only developed and made active its inherent power. it must be kept in mind that it takes power to develop this magnetic power from its state of neutrality and that something is never made from nothing. when this power is developed it will do work in falling back to its natural state. the power is natural to the molecules of the metal. it is only being exerted in a new direction. the millions of little natural magnets have been forced to combine their attractions into one whole and exert it on something outside of themselves. they are under a strain in this condition, like a bent bow, and there is a tendency to fly back to the natural position, and if it is soft iron and not steel, they will fly back as soon as the power that wrenched them apart and is holding them apart is taken away. this power is the electric current. now break the current, and the little natural magnets, that have been so ruthlessly torn from their home circle attachments, fly back to them again with the speed of lightning, and the iron rod as a whole is no longer a magnet. the power to become so under the electrical strain is in it still--only latent. the kind of magnet that we have been describing is called an electromagnet. it is a magnet only so long as the electric current is passing around it. there is another kind of magnet called a permanent magnet that will remain a magnet after the current is taken away. the permanent magnet is made of steel and hardened; then its poles are placed, to the poles of a powerful magnet, either electro or permanent, when its molecular rings are wrenched apart and arranged in a polarized position as heretofore described. now take it away from the magnet and it will be found to retain its magnetism. the molecules tend to fly back the same as those of the soft iron, but they cannot because hardened steel is so much finer grained than soft iron, and the molecules are so close together that they are held in position by a friction that is called its coercive force. the soft iron is comparatively free from this coercive force, because its molecules are free to move on each other, so that when they are wrenched out of their natural position they fly back by their own attractions as soon as the force holding them apart is taken away. the molecules of hardened steel are unable to fly back, although they tend to do it just as much as in the iron, and so it is called a permanent magnet. its molecules also are under a strain, like a bent bow. (the form of such a magnet is usually that of a horse-shoe, or u.) let us use a homely illustration that may help us to understand. let ten boys represent the molecules in a piece of iron. let them pair off into five pairs and each one clasp his mate in his arms; each one, say, is exerting a force of ten pounds, and it would require a force of twenty pounds to pull any one of the pairs apart. the five pairs are exerting a force of one hundred pounds, but this force is not felt outside of themselves. now let them unclasp themselves and take hold of a rope that is tied to a post, and all pull with the same force that they were using, to wit, ten pounds each, and all pull in the same direction, and they would put a strain of one hundred pounds upon the post, the same power that they were exerting upon themselves before they combined their efforts on something outside of themselves. so with the magnet. so long as the force of each molecule is wholly spent upon its neighbor there is nothing left for exterior use. but as soon as they all line up and pull conjointly in the same direction their combined force is felt outside. the analogy may not be perfect, but it will help you to get a mental picture of what takes place in iron when it is magnetized. we have now described the magnet and the inherent power residing in the molecular structure of iron. it is this magic power slumbering in its molecules and the ability of the electric current to arouse them to action at will and to hold them in action and at will let them fly back to their normal position, that gives to electricity and magnetism--twin sisters in nature's household--their great value as the servants of man. there would be no virtue in winding up a weight if it could not run down and do work in its fall. simply bending a bow would never send the arrow flying over its course; it must be released as well. the magnet could not accomplish the great work it does if we could only charge it and not have the ability to discharge it. without this ability the electric motor would not revolve, the electric light would not burn, the click of the telegraph would not be heard, the telephone would not talk, nor would the telautograph write. i have said that the permanent magnet would hold its charge after once having been magnetized. this is true only in a sense and under favorable conditions. if made of the best of steel for the purpose and hardened and tempered in just the right way, it will hold its charge if it is given something to do. if a piece of iron is placed across its poles it also becomes a magnet and its molecules turn and work in harmony with those of the mother magnet. these magnetic lines of force reach around in a circuit. even before the iron, or "keeper," as it is called, is put across its poles there are lines of force reaching around through the air or ether from one pole to another. (for a description of ether see chap. v.) this is called the "field" of the magnet, and when the iron is placed in this field the lines of force pass through it in a closed circuit, and if the "keeper" is large enough to take care of all the lines of force in the field the magnet will not attract other bodies, because its attraction is satisfied, like its prototype in the molecular ring described above. we speak of lines of force, not that force is necessarily exerted in a bundle of lines but as a convenient way of telling the strength of a magnetic field. the practical limit of the magnetization of soft iron (called saturation) is 18,000 lines to the square centimeter. as long as we give our magnet something to do, up to the measure of its capacity, it will keep up its power. we may make other magnets with it, thousands, yea, millions of them, and it not only does not lose its power but may be even stronger for having done this work. if, however, we hang it up without its "keeper," and give it nothing to do, it gradually returns to its natural condition in the home circle of molecular rings. little by little the coercive force is overcome by the constant tendency of the molecule to go back to its natural position among its fellows. the magnet furnishes many beautiful lessons, as indeed do all the natural phenomena. every man has within him a latent power that needs only to be aroused and directed in the right way to make his influence felt upon his fellows. like the magnet, the man who uses his power to help his fellows up to the measure of his limitations not only has been a benefactor to his race, but is himself a stronger and better man for having done so. but, again, like the magnet, if he allows these god-given powers to lie still and rust for want of legitimate use he gradually loses the power he had and becomes simply a moving thing without influence or use in a world in which he vegetates. but let us leave philosophy and go back to science. one of the striking exhibitions of magnetism is found in the earth. the earth itself is a great magnet; and there is good reason for believing that it is an electromagnet of great power. the magnetic poles of the earth are not exactly coincident with the geographical poles, and they are not constant. there is a gradual deviation going on, but as it follows a certain law mariners are able to tell just what the deviation should be at a certain time. the magnetic pole revolves around the polar axis of the earth once in about 320 years. a thermal current (one produced by heat) of electricity seems to flow around the earth caused by the irregularities of temperature at the earth's surface, as the sun makes his daily round. these earth currents vary at times, and other phenomena are the occasion. this will be discussed when we come to electric storms. the value of the earth's magnetism is seen most in the science of navigation. a magnetic needle is only a slender permanent magnet suspended very delicately, and when not under local influence it points north and south on the magnetic axis. the law of its action may be explained as follows: take a straight bar magnet of fairly good power and suspend a magnetic needle over it. the needle will arrange itself parallel to the bar magnet. the north pole of the needle will point toward the south pole of the bar magnet. in the presence of the magnet the needle is not affected by the earth, but yields to a superior force. if, however, the bar magnet is taken out of the way of the needle it will immediately arrange itself north and south. of course if the earth's magnetic axis changes the needle will vary with it. this variation is uniform and in navigation is reduced to a science, so that the mariner knows how much to allow for the variation. columbus, as heretofore mentioned, was supposed to have first noticed this variation and it made him trouble. he did not know how to account for it, and as his crew thought the laws of nature were changing because they were so far from home he saw the necessity for some sort of explanation. so, like the brave man that he was, he hatched up a theory that satisfied the crew, and although in the light of the closing years of the nineteenth century it was a questionable one, it worked well enough in practice to serve his purpose. we have already stated that the earth was a great magnet, and that probably it was an electromagnet, caused by earth currents circulating around the globe. you want to know how the earth can be a magnet unless it has an iron core like an electromagnet. magnetism or magnetic lines of force may be developed without the presence of iron. when we pass a current of electricity through a wire, magnetic lines of force are thrown out at right angles with the direction of the current. this will be fully explained further on. if we wind the wire into a coil, or helix, these magnetic lines are concentrated. if now we suspend this helix, or, better, float it on water so that it can move freely, and pass a current of electricity through it, the helix will arrange itself north and south the same as a magnetic needle. its attractive properties are feeble in comparison with that of the iron, but it obeys the laws of a magnet. the earth is probably a magnet of this kind, consisting mostly of lines of force. however, the iron in the earth is affected magnetically, as we have evidence in the loadstone. the earth has the power also to magnetize iron through the medium of its magnetic field, that reaches out in lines of force from pole to pole like those of the artificial magnet. if we hold a bar of iron in line with the magnetic axis of the earth and dip it in line with the dipping needle and then strike it a few blows on the end, it will be found to be feebly magnetic. the blows have partly loosened the molecules and during the moment that they unclasped themselves the earth's magnetism has through its lines of force caught them for a time and held them a little out of their natural position--as they are in a state of rest. the peculiar changing light that we sometimes see in the northern sky, that is called the aurora borealis (northern light), is indirectly due to intense magnetic lines of force that radiate from the north magnetic pole of the earth. those lines of force are able to cause the rarified air molecules to become feebly incandescent, giving them the appearance that we see in a tube that is a partial vacuum when electricity is passed through it. while these auroral displays may be seen almost any night in the far north, they vary greatly in their intensity, so it is only once in a while that they are visible in the temperate latitudes. what are called magnetic storms occur occasionally, and at such times the telegraph service will sometimes be paralyzed on all the east and west lines for many hours. strong earth-currents will flow east and west, and be so powerful and so erratic that it is sometimes impossible to use the telegraph. it sometimes happens that the operators can throw off their batteries and work on the earth-current alone. sometimes it is necessary to make a complete metallic circuit to get away from the influence of the earth in order to use the telegraph. currents equal to the force of 2,000 cells of ordinary battery have been developed sometimes in telegraph wires. this of course is a mere fraction of what is passing through the earth under the wire through which the current flowed. on the 17th and 18th of november, 1882, a magnetic storm occurred that extended around the globe, as it was felt wherever there were telegraph wires. these magnetic storms are attended by brilliant displays of the aurora, and this fact strengthens the theory that the earth is a great electromagnet; for the stronger the electrical current the more powerful we should expect the magnetism to be, and this is shown by the action of the magnetic needle at such times. the stronger the magnet the more intense will be the lines of force, and naturally the more intense the light, if indeed these lines of force are the cause of the light. there is evidently some close relation between the two. another coincidence is that at the times of these storms there is an unusual display of sun-spots. these sun-spots seem to be great holes that have been blown through the photosphere of the sun. the photosphere is a great luminous body of gaseous matter that is believed to envelop the sun, so that we do not see the core of the sun unless it is when we look into one of these spots. in some way, evidently, the sun affects the earth by radiating magnetic lines of force which are cut by the earth's revolution, and so creating currents of electricity. the sun is the field-magnet, and the earth is the revolving armature of nature's great dynamo-electric machine. it would seem that the radiant energy that comes out through these spots or these holes in the sun's envelope, are more potent to develop earth-currents than the ordinary rays; and so, when for a brief while in the revolution of the earth about the sun, these extra potent rays strike the earth, an unusual energy is developed, and these unusual phenomena are the consequence. these phenomena seem to occur periodically; some years (about eleven) intervening. all the forces and phenomena of nature are thus seen to be in a state of unrest. and it is to this unrest, which does not stop with visible things, but pervades even the atoms of matter throughout the universe, that we are indebted for the ability to carry on all the activities of life, and for life itself. for universal quiet would mean universal death. the cyclone and tornado that devastate and strike terror to a whole region are only eccentricities of nature when she is setting her house to rights. the play of natural forces has disturbed her equilibrium, and she is but making an effort to restore it. chapter v. theory of electricity. in the series of chapters on heat (vol. ii) and in the chapter on magnetism the word molecule was frequently used synonymously with atom. in chemistry a distinction is made, and as we can better explain the theory, at least, of electricity by keeping this distinction in mind we will refer to it here. it has been stated that there are between sixty and seventy elementary substances. an elementary substance cannot be destroyed as such. it can be united with other elements and form chemical compounds of almost endless variety. the smallest particle of an elementary substance is called in chemistry an atom. the smallest particle of a compound substance is called a molecule. the atom is the unit of the element, and the molecule is the unit of the compound as such. it follows, then, that there are as many different kinds of atoms as there are elements, and as many different kinds of molecules as there are compounds. if the elements have a molecular structure then two or more atoms of the same kind must combine to make a molecule of an elementary substance. two atoms of hydrogen combine with one of oxygen to form one molecule of water. it cannot exist as water in any smaller quantity. if we subdivide it, it no longer exists as water, but as the original gases from which it was compounded. we have shown in the series on sound, heat and light that they are all modes of motion. sound is transmitted in longitudinal waves through air and other material substance as vibration. heat is a motion of the ultimate particles or atoms of matter, and light is a motion of the luminiferous ether transmitted in waves that are transverse. electricity is also undoubtedly a mode of motion related in a peculiar way to the atoms of the conductor. notice that there is a difference between conduction and radiation. the former transmits energy by a transference of motion from atom to atom or molecule to molecule within the body, while the latter does it by a vibration of the ether outside--as light, radiant heat, and electromagnetic lines of force. for the benefit of those persons who have not read vol. ii, where the nature of ether is discussed somewhat, let us refer to it here, as it plays an important part in the explanation of electrical phenomena. ether is a tenuous and highly elastic substance that fills all interstellar and interatomic space. it has few of the qualities of ordinary matter. it is continuous and has no molecular structure. it offers no perceptible resistance, and the closest-grained substances of ordinary matter are more open to the ether than a coarse sieve is to the finest flour. it fills all space, and, like eternity, it has no limits. some physicists suppose--and there is much plausibility in the supposition--that the ether is the one substance out of which all forms of matter come. that the atoms of matter are vortices or little whirlpools in the ether; and that rigidity and other qualities of matter all arise in the ether from different degrees or kinds of motion. electricity is not a fluid, or any form of material substance, but a form of energy. energy is expressed in different ways, and, while as energy it is one and the same, we call it by different names--as heat energy, chemical energy, electrical energy, and so on. they will all do work, and in that respect are alike. one difficulty in explaining electrical phenomena is the nomenclature that the science is loaded down with. all the old names were adopted when electricity was regarded as a fluid, hence the word "current." it is spoken of as "flowing" when it does not flow any more than light flows. if a man wants to write a treatise on electricity--outside of the mere phenomena and applications--and wants to make a large book of it, he would better tell what he does not know about it, for in that way he can make a volume of almost any size. but if he wants to tell what it really is, and what he really knows it is, a primer will be large enough. this much we know--that it is one of many expressions of energy. chemistry teaches that heat is directly related to the atoms of matter. atoms of different substances differ greatly in weight. for instance, the hydrogen atom is the unit of atomic weight, because it is the lightest of all of them. taking the hydrogen atom as the unit, in round numbers the iron atom weighs as much as 56 atoms of hydrogen, copper a little over 63, silver 108, gold 197. heat acts upon matter according to the number of atoms in a given space, and not as its weight. knowing the relative weights of the atoms of the different metals named, it would be possible to determine by weight the dimensions of different pieces of metal so that they will contain an equal number of atoms. if we take pieces of iron, copper, silver and gold, each of such weight as that all the pieces will contain the same number of atoms, and subject them to heat till all are raised to the same temperature, it will be found that they have all absorbed practically the same quantity of heat without regard to the different weights of matter. it will be observed that the piece of silver, for instance, will have to weigh nearly twice as much as the iron in order to contain the same number of atoms, but it will absorb the same amount of heat as the piece of iron containing the same number of atoms, if both are raised to the same temperature. in view of the above fact it seems that heat acts especially upon the atoms of matter and is a peculiar form of atomic motion. heat is one kind of motion of the atoms, while electricity may be another form of motion of the same. the two motions may be carried on together. the earth has a compound motion. it revolves upon its axis once in twenty-four hours, and it also revolves around the sun once each year. so you see that there are different kinds of motion that may be communicated to the same body--all producing different results. the motion of the individual atom as heat may be, and is, as rapid as light itself when the temperature is sufficiently high, but it does not travel along a conductor rapidly as the electro-atomic motion will. if we apply heat to the end of a metal rod it will travel slowly along the rod. but if we make the rod a conductor of electricity it travels from atom to atom with a speed nearer that of the light ray through the ether. some modern writers have attempted to explain all the phenomena of electricity as having their origin in a certain play of forces upon the ether, and there is no doubt but that the ether plays an important part in all electrical phenomena as a medium through which energy is transferred; but ether-waves that are set in motion by the electrical excitation of ordinary matter are no more electricity than the ether-waves set up by the sun in the cold regions of space are heat. they become heat only when they strike matter. heat, _as such_, begins and ends in matter;--so (i believe) does electricity. do not be discouraged with these feeble attempts to explain the theory of electricity. all i even hope to do is to establish in your minds this fundamental thought, to wit, that there is really but one energy, and that it is always expressed by some form of motion or the ability to create motion. motions differ, and hence are called by different names. if i should set an emery-wheel to revolving and hold a piece of steel against it the piece of steel would become heated and incandescent particles would fly off, making a brilliant display of fireworks. the heat that has been developed is the measure of the mechanical energy that i have used against the emery-wheel. now, let us substitute for the emery-wheel another wheel of the same size made of vulcanized rubber, glass or resin. i set it to revolving at the same speed, and instead of the piece of steel, i now hold a silk handkerchief or a catskin against the wheel with the same force that i did the steel. if now i provide a leyden jar and some points to gather up the electricity that will be produced (instead of the heat generated in the other case), it would be found that the energy developed in the one case would exactly balance that of the other, if it were all gathered up and put into work. the electricity stored in the jar is in a state of strain, like a bent bow, and will recoil, when it has a chance, with a power commensurate with the time it has been storing and the amount of energy used in pressing against the wheel. if now i connect my two hands, one with the inside and the other with the outside of the jar, this stored energy will strike me with a force equal to all the energy i have previously expended in pressing against the wheel, minus the loss in heat. if i did it for a long enough time this electrical spring would be wound up to such a tension that the recoil would destroy life if one put himself in the path of its discharge. if all the heat in the first case were gathered up and made to bend a stiff spring, and one should put himself in its way when released, this mechanical spring would strike with the same power that the electrical spring did when the leyden jar was discharged. this statement assumes that all the energy in the second experiment was stored as electricity in the jar. you will be able to see from the above illustration that heat, electrical energy, and mechanical energy are really the same. then you ask, how do they differ? simply in their phenomena--their outward manifestations. while there is much that we cannot know about any of the phenomena of nature, it is a great step in advance if we can establish a close relationship between them. it helps to free electricity from many vagaries that exist in the minds of most people regarding it; vagaries that in ignorant minds amount to superstition. while it possesses wonderful powers, they give it attributes that it does not possess. not long ago a favorite headline of the medical electrician's advertisement was "electricity is life," and it was a common thing to see street-venders dealing out this "life" in shocking quantities to the innocent multitudes--ten cents' worth in as many seconds. science divides electricity into two kinds--static and dynamic. static comes from a greek word, meaning to stand, and refers to electricity as a stationary charge. dynamic is from the greek word meaning power, and refers to electricity in motion. when franklin made his celebrated kite experiment, the electricity came down the string, and from the key on the end of the string he stored it in a leyden jar. while the electricity was moving down the string it was dynamic, but as soon as it was stored in the leyden jar it became static. current electricity is dynamic. a closed telegraphic circuit is charged dynamically, while the prime conductor of a frictional electric machine is charged statically. the distinction is arbitrary and in a sense a misnomer. when we rub a piece of hard rubber with a catskin it is statically charged because the substances are what are called non-conductors, and the charge cannot be conducted readily away. all substances are divided into two classes, to wit, conductors or non-electrics, and non-conductors or electrics, more commonly called dielectrics. these, however, are relative terms, as no substance is either a perfect conductor or a perfect non-conductor. the metals, beginning with silver as the best, are conductors. ebonite, paraffine, shellac, etc., are insulators, or very poor conductors. the best conductors offer some resistance to the passage of the current and the best insulators conduct to some extent. if we make a comparison of electric conductors we find that the metals that conduct heat best also conduct electricity best. this, it seems to me, is a confirmation of the atomic theory of electricity so far as it means anything. if a good conductor, as silver, is subjected to intense cold by putting it into liquid air, its conductivity is greatly increased. it is well known that heating a conductor ordinarily diminishes its power to conduct electricity. this shows that, in order that electrical motion of the atom may have free play, the heat motion must be suppressed. chapter vi. electric currents. the simplest form of an electric machine is one in which the operator is a prominent part of the operation. electricity, like magnetism, operates in a closed circuit, even when it is static--so-called. take a stick of sealing-wax, say, in your left hand, and rub it with a piece of fur or silk with your right hand, and you have the simplest form of electric machine--the one that was known to the ancients, and the one from which the science, great as it is to-day, had its beginnings. the stick of sealing-wax is one element of the battery, and the piece of fur or silk is the other, while your hands, arm and body form the conductor that connects the two poles, and the friction is the exciting agent and may be said to take the place of the fluid of a battery. the electrical conditions are not wholly static, as a slow current is passing around through your arms and body from one pole to the other. even if the conditions were wholly static there would be polarized lines of force, in a state of strain, reaching around in a closed circuit. if we rub the wax with the fur and then take it away the wax has a charge of electricity and will attract light objects. if we had rubbed a piece of metal or some good conductor it would have been warmed instead of electrified. in both cases the particles of the substances have been affected, and if the atomic theory is correct--and it seems plausible--in the former case the atoms are partly put into electrical motion and partly into a state of electrical strain that we call static (standing) electricity; while in the latter case the atoms are put into the peculiar motion that belongs to heat. the former we call electricity, and the latter we call heat. the electro-atomic motion under some circumstances readily turns to heat, which seems to be the tendency of all forms of energy. the electric light is a result of this tendency. all non-conductors, or electrics, have a complex molecular structure, and, while their atoms when subjected to friction are put into a state of electrostatic strain, they are not able readily to respond as a conductor of dynamic electricity. the electric-light filament in the incandescent lamp is a much poorer conductor than the copper wire that leads up to it. the copper wire is readily responsive to the electrical influence, but the carbon filament is not. so electrical action that freely passes along the wire, is resisted and becomes heat action in the filament, and light is the attendant of intense heat. but, to go back to the sources of electricity. frictional electric machines have been constructed in great variety. all, however, embrace the essentials set forth in the sealing-wax experiment, and would be difficult to describe without cuts. let us, therefore, consider another source of electricity, which was the outgrowth of the discovery of galvani (or rather his wife), and reduced to concrete form by volta. we refer to the galvanic or voltaic battery. if we put a bar of zinc into a glass vessel and pour sulphuric acid and water into it, there will be a boiling, and an evolution of hydrogen gas, and energy is released in the form of heat, so that the fluid and the glass vessel become heated. now let us put a bar of copper or a stick of carbon into the glass, but not in contact with the zinc; connect the ends (that are not immersed) of the two elements--copper and zinc--with a metal wire or any conductor, and a new condition is set up. heat is no longer evolved to the same extent, but most of the energy becomes electrical in character, and an electrical chain of action takes place in the circuit that has now been formed. taking the zinc as the starting point, the so-called current flows from the zinc through the fluid to the copper and from the copper through the wire to the zinc. a chain of polarized atomic activity is established in the circuit, similar to the closed circuit of magnetic lines of force, only the latter is static, while the former is dynamic. you ask what is the difference? well, it is much easier to ask a question than it is to answer it. you will remember that in the chapter on magnetism it was stated that the molecules of a magnet were little natural magnets, and that their attractions were satisfied within themselves; that when their local attachments were broken up and all their like poles turned in one direction they could act upon other pieces of iron outside of the magnet. outside and between the poles there are magnetic lines of force reaching out from one pole to the other. if we put a piece of iron across the poles these lines of force are gathered up and pass through the iron. this is purely a static condition. let us go back to the cell of battery. when the elements are in position (the copper, the acidulated water and the zinc), and the two wires attached to the two metals which are the two poles of the battery not yet connected, there is a condition induced in these two wires that did not exist before the acidulated water was poured in, although the circuit is not yet established. if we test the two wires we find a difference of potential--a state of strain, so to speak--that did not exist before the acid acted on the zinc and liberated what was stored energy. it is in a static condition, like the magnet, and electrical lines of force are reaching out from both wires so that the ether is in a state of strain between the two poles. the air molecules may partake of it, but we have to bring in the ether as a substance, because the same conditions would practically exist if the two wires were in a vacuum. if now we connect the two wires, we have established a metallic circuit between the two poles of the battery, the static conditions are relieved, the lines of force are gathered up into the wire, and the phenomenon that we call a current is established and we have dynamic or moving electricity. having established the so-called electric current we will now try to show you that there really is no current. the idea of a current involves the idea of a fluid substance flowing from one point to another. when you were a boy did you never set up a row of bricks on their ends, just far enough apart so that if you pushed one over they all fell one after another? now, imagine rows of molecules or atoms, and in your imagination they may be arranged like the bricks, so that they are affected one by the other successively with a rapidity that is akin to that of light-waves, and you can conceive how a motion may be communicated from end to end of a wire hundreds of miles in length in a small fraction of a second, and no material substance has been carried through the wire--only energy. we do not mean to say that the row of bricks illustrates the exact mode of molecular or atomic motion that takes place in a conductor. what we mean is, that in some way motion is passed along from atom to atom. to give you a better conception of an electric current, let us go back of the galvanic cell to the electric machine. if both poles of the machine are attached to rods terminating in round knobs we can set the machine in action and keep up a steady stream of disruptive discharges that will, if their frequency is great enough, perform the function of a current, and we have dynamic electricity from a statical machine; when the acid of the galvanic battery breaks down a molecule of zinc, energy is set free, and in the battery we have what corresponds to a disruptive discharge of infinitesimal proportions. this discharge would have been immediately converted into heat energy if the copper element had been left out of the battery, but as it is, it impresses itself on the atomic "brick" next to it, which establishes a chain of atomic movement throughout the circuit. this may constitute, if you please, a line of electrical force. but as thousands of these disruptive discharges are taking place simultaneously as many different lines of force are established. you must not conceive of these chains of atoms as simply thrown down like the bricks and left lying there, but that the atom is active; that it has the power to pick itself up again in an infinitesimally short time and is again knocked down (following the illustration of the bricks) by the next discharge along its line or chain of atoms. if you could get a mental picture of this action you would see that the whole conductor is in a most violent state of atomic motion of a peculiar kind. at the same time a part of this electrical motion is being converted into a heat motion of the atoms, and finally it all returns to heat unless some of it is stored up somewhere as potential energy. if the current has driven a motor that has wound up a weight, a part is stored up in the weight, which has the ability to do work if it is allowed to run down. if it drives machinery as it runs down, the mechanical motion is the expression of the stored energy. when the weight has run down the energy will be represented by the heat created by friction of the journals of the wheels and pulleys and the heating of the air. if the weight is allowed to fall suddenly it will heat the air to some extent, but mostly the earth and the weight itself will be heated. if the source of energy (the battery) is great and the pressure high and the conductor is too small to carry the energy developed in the battery as electricity, heat is developed, and if the heat is sufficiently intense, light also. we have seen (vol. ii) that heat motion when it reaches a sufficiently high rate throws the ether into a vibratory motion that we call light. however, this vibratory motion of the ether is set up long before it reaches the luminous stage; in other words, there are dark rays of the ether. we find that the electro-atomic motions of a conductor have the power to impress themselves upon the ether. [illustration: fig. 1. a is the primary line; _a_, the battery: _b_, the key. b is the secondary line in which is placed the galvanometer _c_.] let us try another experiment to show that this is the case, not only, but that the impressed ether can transfer these impressions to still another conductor. suppose we stretch two parallel wires for, say, half a mile, or any distance, only a few feet apart, and make of each a complete circuit by rounding the end of the course and returning the wire to the starting point (as shown in fig. 1). put in one of these circuits a battery, and a circuit-breaker (a common telegraph-key), and in the other circuit a galvanometer (an instrument for detecting the presence and measuring the intensity of a galvanic current, by means of a dial and a deflecting needle or pointer). now if we touch the key and close the circuit in a, the needle of the galvanometer in b will swing in one direction from zero on the dial; and if we release the key, breaking the circuit in a, the needle will swing back in the opposite direction. in neither case will the needle stay deflected, but will at once return to zero. this shows that when the battery current was allowed to complete its circuit through wire a by closing its key, an electrical action was instantly felt in wire b, although there was no material connection between them other than the air, which is a non-conductor. the current in the second circuit is called an induced current. why this current? according to one theory, when we close the primary circuit the surrounding ether is thrown into a peculiar state of strain that we will call magnetic or electrical lines of force. when the ether wave strikes the second wire there is a molecular movement from a state of rest to a state of static strain. during the time that the molecules are moving from the normal to the strained position in sympathy with the ether we have the condition of a dynamic current, which lasts only a moment. this state of strain continues till the circuit is opened (breaking the wire-line), when all the electrical lines of force vanish and the molecular strain of the second wire is relieved, and we again have the conditions, momentarily, for a current of the opposite polarity, and the needle will swing in the opposite direction because the molecules or atoms have, in their recoil to the natural state, moved in an opposite direction. going back to fig. 1, let us further study the phenomena under other conditions. in our first circuit (a) there is a battery and a circuit-breaker, which is a common telegraph-key. now close the key so that a current will be established. (remember that "current" is only a name for a condition of dynamic charge.) place a piece of soft iron across the wire at right angles with the direction of the wire, when of course it will be at right angles with the direction of the current, and you will find now that the iron is more or less magnetic, depending upon the amount of current passing through the wire. if we wind a number of turns of insulated wire through which the current is passing around the iron the magnetism will be increased. in practice there are a certain number of turns and a certain sized wire that will give the best results with a given number of cells of battery (or a given voltage or pressure), operating in a closed circuit of a given resistance. all these questions are worked out mathematically in many standard books on the subject. it is not the intention in these talks to develop the science mathematically but to set out the fundamental physical facts and applications of electricity. under the conditions above named magnetism is developed in the soft iron bar. if we open the key the current will cease and the magnetism will vanish--that is to say, the molecules will turn back to their neutral position by their own attractions, as has been described in a previous chapter. magnetism developed in this way is called electromagnetism. (see chap. iv.) if we use a piece of hardened steel instead of the soft iron it will become magnetic and remain so when the circuit is opened, because the natural tendency of the molecules to turn back to the neutral position is not great enough to overcome the coercive force, or molecular friction, of hardened steel, as has been also described in a previous chapter. to make the best electromagnet we need qualities of iron just the opposite from those of the permanent magnet. for the former we need the purest of soft iron, well annealed (heated to redness and slowly cooled, making it less brittle), so that its molecules are free to turn; while for the latter we need hardened steel, so that when the molecules are once wrenched into the magnetic condition they cannot, of themselves, turn back to the neutral state. the great value of the electromagnet lies in its ability to readily discharge, or go back to the neutral state, when the current is broken. let us now go back to the beginning of our experiment. when we closed the key and established the current through the wire we found that a piece of iron held at right angles to the wire, although not touching it, became magnetic. we have already said that when the circuit was open, the battery being in circuit, there were electrical lines of force established in the ether, between the two poles of the battery, and that they were gathered up into the conducting wire when the circuit was closed. we now find that there are other lines of force of a different nature established in the ether when the circuit is closed. these we call magnetic lines of force, or the magnetic field of the charged wire, and they are established at right angles to the direction of the current. these magnetic lines of force acting through the ether from an electrically charged conductor are able to break up the natural molecular magnetic rings, referred to in chapter iv, and turn all their like poles in the same direction--thus making one compound magnet of the iron which in the neutral state consisted of millions of little natural magnets whose attractions were satisfied by a joining of their unlike poles. most writers account for all of the phenomena of induced currents in a second wire as coming directly from these magnetic lines of force developed upon closing the circuit. so much for theory based upon a set of facts that make the theory seem probable. if you don't like it give us a better one. if it is correct the writer claims no credit; it is merely a compilation of suggestions from many sources, including his own experience. we are simply seeking after truth. the man who is an earnest seeker after scientific truth cannot afford to pursue his investigations with any prejudice in favor of one theory more than another, unless the facts sustain him, and then he is not acting from prejudice, but is led by the facts. many people make pets of their theories; and they become attached to them as they do their children; and they look upon a man who destroys them by a presentation of the facts as an enemy. i once knew a lady who became so attached to her family doctor that, she said, she would rather die under his treatment, if necessary, than to be cured by any other doctor. there are many people who are imbued with this kind of spirit not only in matters scientific, but in matters religious as well. such people are not the kind who contribute to the world's progress, but are the hindrances that have to be overcome. chapter vii. electric generators. of the sources of electricity we have mentioned two: friction, and galvanism or chemical action. there are hundreds of forms of the latter species of apparatus for generating electrical energy, so we will mention only a few of the more prominent ones. it is not our intention to go into the chemistry of batteries. there are too many exhaustive works on this subject lying on the shelves of libraries that are accessible to all. all galvanic batteries act on one general principle--the generation of electricity by the chemical action of acid on metal plates; but the chemistry of their action is very different. in all batteries the potential energy of one element is greater than the other. the acid of the battery dissolves the element of greater potentiality, and its energy is freed and under right conditions takes on the form of electricity. the potential of zinc, for instance, is greater than that of copper, and the measure of the difference is called the "electromotive force," the unit of which is the "volt." electromotive force is another name for pressure; the symbol for which is _e.m.f._ if we were to put two zinc plates in the battery fluid and connect them in the ordinary way there would be no electricity evolved (assuming that they were perfectly homogeneous), because they are both of the same potential, or have the same possible amount of stored electrical energy measured by its working power. if one of the zinc plates were softer than the other, a feeble current would be developed, for one would be more readily acted upon by the acids than the other. the battery that has been most used in america for telegraphic purposes is called the gravity-battery. it is constructed by putting a copper plate in some form at the bottom of a jar, usually of glass, and filling it partly full of the crystals of sulphate of copper, commonly called "bluestone." zinc, usually cast in some open form, so as to expose a large surface to the solution, is suspended in the upper part of the jar, which is then filled with water till it covers the zinc. the zinc is the positive metal, but it is called the negative pole. the energy developed by the zinc passes from zinc to copper and out on the circuit from the copper pole. hence the copper came to be called the positive pole, although in relation to zinc it is negative. copper would, however, be positive to some other metal whose potential was less. so you see that metals are relative, not absolute, in their character as positive and negative elements. the galvanic battery has been almost entirely superseded in this country for telegraphic purposes by the dynamo, a machine developing electrical currents by mechanical power. another form of battery that is extensively used for some kinds of heavy current work is called the storage-battery. the man who did the most, perhaps, to bring the storage-battery to its present state of perfection was planté, a frenchman, who died only a short time ago. although very many types of battery have been developed, it is found that, after all, the lines on which he developed it make the most efficient battery. there is a common notion that electricity is stored in the storage-battery. energy is stored, that will produce electricity when it is set free, just the same as energy is stored in zinc. the storage-battery, when ready for action, is one form of acid or primary battery. it has been made by passing a current of electricity through it until the chemical relations of the two lead plates have been changed so that the potential of one is greater than that of the other. a simple storage-battery element is made up of two plates of lead held out of contact with each other by some insulating substance the same as the elements of an ordinary battery. the cell is filled with dilute sulphuric acid, and there will be no electrical action till the cell has been charged by running a current of electricity through it and forming a lead oxide on one plate. now, take off the charging battery and connect the two poles, and electricity will flow until the oxide has partly changed back into spongy metallic lead, when it must be renewed by recharging. i remember perfectly well the first galvanic battery i ever saw, for it was of my own construction. it is now nearly fifty years ago, and yet it seems but yesterday--such is the flight of time. i related to you in another chapter how i made a voltaic battery--or pile, as it was called--by cutting up my mother's boiler and her stove-zinc, and the domestic incident that followed. well, a little later i made a real galvanic battery as follows: i lived in the country and far from town or city, and my facilities were extremely limited, so that i pursued my scientific investigations under great difficulties. my only text-book was an old comstock's philosophy. in the book was a crude cut of a morse register and a short description of its construction, including the battery. i determined to make a register, and i did. it was all constructed of wood except the magnet and its armature and the embossing-point, which latter was made of the end of a nail. the thing that seemed out of reach was the electromagnet. i had no money; and there was no one that believed i could do it, and if i could "what good would come of it?" i made friends with a blacksmith by keeping flies off a horse while he nailed the shoes on, and "blowing the bellows" and occasionally using the "sledge" for him. when i thought the obligation had accumulated a sufficient "voltage" (to express it electrically) i communicated to the blacksmith the situation and what i wanted. the good-natured old fellow was not long in bending up a u magnet of soft iron and forging out an armature. the next step was to wind the u with insulated wire. the only thing that i had ever seen of the kind was an iron wire called "bonnet" wire that was wrapped with cotton thread. this, however, was not available, so i captured a piece of brass bell-wire and wound strips of cotton cloth around it for insulation--and in that way completed the magnet. now everything was ready but the battery. i went at its construction with a feeling almost akin to awe, for i could not believe that it would do as described in the book. i procured a candy-jar from the grocer and found some pieces of sheet zinc and copper. these i rolled together into loose spirals and placed one inside the other so that they would not touch, when i was ready for the solution. the druggist trusted me for a half pound of "blue vitriol," and i put it into my battery and filled it with water. i waited awhile for it to dissolve, and then connected my magnet in circuit, when--to my astonishment and delight--it would lift a pound or more. it was a great triumph. i never have had one since that gave me the same satisfaction. but i had my triumph all to myself. i was still the same "tinker" (a name i had long carried), and a nuisance to be endured but not encouraged. the dynamo is the form of generator now in general use where heavy currents of electricity are needed. it is aptly described by a writer in modern machinery, mr. john a. grier, as a thing that when "at rest is a lifeless piece of mechanism; in action it has a living spirit as full of mystery as the soul of man." this is a poetic way of describing it that conveys to the mind a sense of the power and beauty of natural law in action, that would not come from a mere recital of the cold scientific facts. the facts, however, are necessary: but let us draw from them all the poetry and all the practical lessons that we can as we go along; for it is this blending of the poetic with the practical that lends a charm to our every-day "grind," and lightens the load of many a weary hour. the dynamo is a machine that converts mechanical into electrical energy, and the great practical value of energy in this form is that it can be distributed through a conductor economically for many miles. we can transmit mechanical power by means of a rope or cable for a limited distance, but at tremendous loss through friction. we can transmit power through pipes by compressed air or steam, but there is a great loss, especially in the case of steam, by condensation from cold. none of these methods are available for long distances. another advantage electricity has over other forms of energy is the speed with which it can be transmitted from one place to another. in this respect it has no rival except light. but we have not been able to harness light and make it available to carry either freight or news, except in the latter case for a short distance by flashing it in agreed signals. the heliostat can be used when the sun shines to transmit news by flashes of sunlight chopped up into the morse code and thrown from point to point by a moving mirror. but this is limited as to distance; besides, the sun does not always shine. it has the disadvantage in that respect that the old semaphore-telegraph did that was in use in wellington's day. these semaphores were constructed in various ways, but a common form was that of moving arms that could be seen from hill to hill or point to point. by a code of moving signals news was repeated from point to point and it can be easily imagined that many mistakes occurred, to say nothing of the time it required for repetition. when the battle of waterloo was fought--so the story goes--news was sent to england by means of the semaphore-telegraph. the dispatch read, "wellington defeated--" at that point in the message a thick fog came up and lasted for three days, so that no further news could be sent or received. in the telegraphic parlance of to-day the line was "busted." for three long days all london was in deep mourning, when finally the fog lifted, which repaired the telegraphic line, and the balance of the dispatch was received--"the french at waterloo." mourning changed to rejoicing and the english have rejoiced ever since when they think of either wellington or waterloo. but to return to the dynamo. the name dynamo is an abbreviation for dynamo-electric machine. a machine for producing dynamic electricity. there are many forms of the dynamo, just as there are in the evolution of every important machine, and there will be many more. but the fundamental, underlying principle of them all is contained in an experiment made by faraday. faraday took the soft iron "keeper" of a permanent magnet and wound insulated wire around it and brought the two ends of the wire close together. he now placed the keeper, with the wire wound around it, across the poles of the permanent magnet, and wrenched it away suddenly, when he observed a spark pass between the ends of the wires. this would occur when he approached the poles as well as when he took it away. he discovered that the currents were momentary and occurred at the moment of approach or recession, and that the currents developed by the approach were of opposite polarity to those occurring at the recession. when the "keeper" was put on the poles of the magnet it was magnetized by having its molecular rings broken up and the poles of the little natural magnets all turned in one direction. during the time that the molecules of the keeper are changing they are in a dynamic or moving condition. by some mysterious action of the ether between the iron and the wire wrapped around it there is a corresponding molecular action in the wire that is dynamic for a moment only, and during that moment we have the phenomenon of an electric current. when the magnet and soft iron are separated this molecular state of strain is relieved and the molecules of both the iron and the wire wound about it return to normal, and in the act of returning we have a dynamic or moving condition, resulting in a current, only in the opposite direction. (see chap. vi.) now mount the permanent magnet in a frame and mount the soft iron with the wire on it (which in this shape is an electromagnet) on a revolving arm and so set it on the arm that its ends will come close to, but not touch, the poles of the permanent magnet. now revolve the arm, and every time the electromagnet or keeper approaches the permanent magnet a current of one polarity will be momentarily developed in the wire of the electromagnet, which is moving. when it is opposite the poles, it has reached the maximum charge and, now, as it passes on it discharges and a current of the opposite polarity is developed in the wire. the more rapidly we revolve the arm the more voltage (electrical pressure) the current it develops will have. it will be plain to all that we might make the electromagnet stationary and revolve the permanent magnet and get the same result. if the permanent magnet were strong enough and the electromagnet the right size as to iron, windings, etc., and we revolve the arm with sufficient rapidity, we could get an alternating current of electricity that would produce an electric light. i have not and cannot here give you the construction of a modern alternating-current dynamo. i have simply described the simplest form of dynamo, and all of them operate upon the fundamental principle of a permanent magnetic field and an electromagnet, moving in a certain relation to each other. the field may revolve or the electromagnet may revolve, whichever is the most convenient to construct. the field-magnet may be a permanent magnet or an electromagnet, made permanent during the operation of the dynamo by a part of the current generated by the machine being directed through a coil surrounding soft iron; or the field-current may come from an outside source. this is the kind of field-magnet universally used for dynamo work, as a much stronger magnetism is developed in this way than it is possible to obtain from any system of permanent steel magnets. the usual construction is to have a stationary field-magnet and then a series of electromagnets mounted and revolving upon a shaft in the center of the magnetic field. the rotating part is called the armature, and is so wound with insulated wire that successive induced currents are created in the armature windings and discharged through brushes which rest on revolving segments that connect with the armature windings. these induced currents succeed each other with such rapidity as to amount in practice to a steady current. however, the separate pulsations are easily heard in any telephone when the circuit is near to that of a dynamo circuit. the dynamo current is not nearly so steady as the battery current, although both are probably made up of separate discharges. in the dynamo there is a discharge every time the electromagnet of the armature cuts through the lines of force of the magnetic field, and in the galvanic battery every time a molecule is broken up and its little measure of energy is set free. in the dynamo the pulsations are so far apart as to make a musical tone of not very high pitch, but in the galvanic battery the pitch of the tone, if there is one, would require a special ear to hear it--one tuned, it may be, up near the rate of light vibration. there are two types of dynamo, one generating a direct and the other an alternating current. (by alternating we mean first a positive and then a negative current impulse.) we cannot enter into a technical description of the dynamo in a popular treatise such as this. the dynamo has evolved from the germ discovered by faraday, till to-day it is a machine, the construction of which requires the highest class of engineering skill. when in action it seems like a great living presence, scattering its energy in every direction in a way that is at once a marvel and a blessing to mankind. but we must not give all the credit to the dynamo. as the moon shines with a reflected light, so the dynamo gives off energy by a power delegated to it by the steam-engine that rotates it, and the steam-engine owes its life to the burning coal, and the burning coal is only giving up an energy that was stored ages ago by the magic of the sunbeam; and the sun--? well, we are getting close on to the borders of theology, and being only scientists we had better stop with the sun. there is still another way of generating electricity besides those that we have named; which are friction, chemical action, and the magneto-electric mode of generating a current. electricity may be generated by heat. if we connect antimony and bismuth bars together and apply heat at the junction of the metals and then connect the free ends of the two bars to a galvanometer, it will indicate a current. these pairs can be multiplied, and in this way increase the voltage or pressure, and, of course, increase the current, if we assume that there is resistance in the circuit to be overcome. if there were absolutely no resistance in the circuit--a condition we never find--there would be no advantage in adding on elements in series. substances differ in their resistance to the passage of electricity--the less the resistance the better the conductor. the german electrician, g. s. ohm (1789-1854), investigated this and propounded a law upon which the unit for resistances is based, and this unit takes his name and is called the "ohm." any two metals having a difference of potential will give the phenomena of thermo-electricity. antimony and bismuth having a great difference of potential are commonly used. the use made of thermal currents is chiefly for determining slight differences of temperature. an apparatus called the thermo-electric pile has been constructed out of a great number of pairs of antimony and bismuth bars. this instrument in connection with a galvanometer makes a most delicate means of determining slight changes of temperature. if one face of a thermopile is exposed to a temperature greater than its own, the needle will move in one direction; if to a temperature lower than its own, the needle will be deflected in the opposite direction. if both faces of the pile are exposed to the same changes of temperature simultaneously, of course no electrical manifestations will occur. the earth is undoubtedly a great thermal battery that is kept in action by the constant changes of temperature going on at the earth's surface, caused by its rotation every twenty-four hours on its axis. the sun, of course, is at some point heating the earth, which at other points is cooling, making a constant change of potential between different points. if we heat a metal ring at one point a current of electricity will flow around it--especially if it is made of two dissimilar metals--until the heat is equally distributed throughout the ring. some years ago, when the postal telegraph company first began operations between new york and chicago, the writer made observations twice a day for some time of the temperature and direction of the earth-current. the first two wires constructed gave only two ohms resistance to the mile, which facilitated the experiments. i found that in almost every instance the current flowed from the point of higher temperature to the lower. if the temperature in new york were higher at the time of observations than in chicago the current would flow westward, and if the conditions were reversed the current would be reversed also. chapter viii. atmospheric electricity. nature has another mode of generating electricity, called atmospheric. the normal conditions of potential between the earth and the upper atmosphere seem to be that the atmosphere is positively electrified and the earth negatively. these conditions change, apparently from local causes, for short periods during storms. in some way the sun's rays have the power directly or indirectly to give the globules of moisture in the air a potential different from that of the earth. in clear weather we find the air near to the earth in a neutral condition, but gradually assuming the condition of a positive charge as we ascend; so that the upper air and the earth are oppositely charged like the two sides of a leyden jar or two leaves of a condenser. this condition is intensified and localized when a thunder-cloud passes over the earth. the moisture globules have been charged with potential energy by the power of the sun's rays when evaporation took place; but in this state the energy is neither heat nor electricity, but a state of strain like a bent bow or a wound-up spring. when these moisture globules condense into drops of water the potential energy is set free and becomes active either as heat or electricity. the cloud gathers up the energy into a condensed form, and when the tension gets too great a discharge takes place between the cloud and the earth or from one cloud to another, which to an extent equalizes the energy. in most cases of thunder and lightning it is only a discharge from cloud to cloud unequally charged. this does not relieve the tension between the earth and the cloud, but distributes it over a larger area. the reason for this constant electrical difference between the earth and the upper regions of atmosphere is not well understood, except that primarily it is an effect of the sun's rays. evaporation may and probably does play a part, and the same causes that give rise to the auroral display may contribute in some way to the same result. evaporation does not always take place at the earth's surface. cloud formations may be evaporated in the upper air into invisible moisture spherules, and charged at the time with potential energy. if we go up into a high mountain when the conditions are right, we can witness the effect of this condition of electrical charge or strain between the upper regions of the atmosphere and the earth, and the tendency to equalize the potentials between the clouds and the earth. often one's hair will stand on end, not from fright, but from electricity passing down from the upper regions to the earth. when the tension is very great a loud hissing sound as of many musical tones of not very good quality may be heard, and a brush or fine-pointed radiation of electricity may be seen from every point, even from your finger-ends. the thunder is not usually so loud on high mountains for two reasons--one because the air is rare, but the chief reason is that the mountain acts as a great lightning-rod and gradually discharges the cloud or atmosphere, for often the phenomena may occur when the sky is clear. i remember being on top of what is called the mosquito range, between alma and leadville in colorado, during the passage of a thunder shower. there was no heavy thunder, but a constant fusillade of snapping sounds, accompanied by flashes not very intense. i could feel the shocks, but not painfully. a part of the time i was in the cloud and became for the time being a veritable lightning-rod. after the cloud passed it crawled down the mountainside as if clinging to it, all the time bombarding it with little electric missiles. after the cloud left the mountain and passed over the valley i could hear loud thunder, because the charge would have to accumulate quite a quantity, so to speak, before it could discharge. these heavy discharges when the cloud is some distance from the earth would be dangerous to life, while the light ones, when the cloud is in contact with the earth, are not. many wonderful and destructive effects come from these lightning discharges and many lives are lost every year from this cause. i do not suppose it is possible to be on one's guard continually, but many lives are needlessly lost either from ignorance or carelessness. although there is a just prejudice against lightning-rods as ordinarily constructed, it is still just as possible to protect your house and its inmates from the destroying effects of lightning as from rain. if, for instance, we lived in metal houses that had perfect contact all round them with moist earth, or better, with a water-pipe that has a large surface contact with the earth, the lightning would never hurt the house or the inmates. in such a case you simply carry the surface of the earth to the top of your house, electrically speaking, and neutralization takes place there in case the lightning strikes the house. a house that is heated with hot water can easily be made lightning-proof by a little work at the top and bottom of the heating system. all the heavy metal of the house should be a part of the lightning-rod. points should be erected at the chimneys, and if there is a metal roof they should be connected with it. then connect the roof with rods from several points with the ground. here is where most rods fail. the ground connection is not sufficient. the earth is a poor conductor, and we have to make up by having a large metal surface in contact with it. it is best to have the rod connected with the water pipe, if there is one, and have it connected with metal running all around the house as low down as the bottom of the cellar, for sometimes there is an upward stroke, and you never can tell where it is coming up. if you have a heating system it should be thoroughly grounded and the top pipe connected with the rods at the chimneys. these rods need not be insulated as is the usual practice. if you are outdoors during a thunder-storm never get under a tree, but if you are twenty or thirty feet away it may save your life, because, if it comes near enough to strike you, it will probably take the tree in preference. it seeks the earth by the easiest passage. an oil-tank and a barn are dangerous places, if the one has oil in it and the other is filled with hay and grain. a column of gas is rising that acts as a conductor for lightning. of course if the barn is properly protected with rods it will be safe. sometimes a cloud is so heavily charged that the lightning comes down like an avalanche, and in such a case the rods must have great capacity and be close together to fully protect a building. there is a popular notion that rods draw the lightning and increase the damage rather than otherwise. this is a mistake. points will draw off electricity from a charged body silently. it would be possible to so protect a district of any size in such a way that thunder would never be heard within its boundaries if we should erect rods enough and run them high enough into the upper air. the points--if they were close enough together--would silently draw off the electricity from a cloud as fast as it formed, and thus effectually prevent any disruptive discharge from taking place. chapter ix. electrical measurement. having given a short account of some of the sources of electricity, let us now proceed to describe some of the practical uses to which it is put, and at the same time describe the operation of the appliances used. before proceeding further, however, we ought to tell how electricity is measured. we have pounds for weight, feet and inches for lineal measure, and pints, quarts, gallons, pecks and bushels for liquid and dry measure, and we also have ohms, volts, ampères and ampère-hours for electricity. when a current of electricity flows through a conductor the conductor resists its flow more or less according to the quality and size of the conductor. silver and copper are good conductors. silver is better than copper. calling silver 100, copper will be only 73. if we have a mile of silver wire and a mile of iron wire and want the iron wire to carry as much electricity as the silver and have the same battery for both, we will have to make the iron wire over seven times as large. that is, the area of a cross-section of the iron wire must be over seven times that of the silver wire. but if we want to keep both wires the same size and still force the same amount of current through each we must increase the pressure of the battery connected with the iron wire. we measure this pressure by a unit called the "volt," named for volta, the inventor or discoverer of the voltaic battery. the volt is the unit of pressure or electromotive force. (in all these cases a "unit" is a certain amount or quantity--as of resistance, electromotive force, etc.--fixed upon as a standard for measuring other amounts of the same kind.) the iron wire offers a resistance that is about seven times greater than silver to the passage of the current. to illustrate by water pressure: if we should have two columns of water, and a hole at the bottom of each column, one of them seven times larger than the other, the water would run out much faster from the larger hole if the columns were the same height. now, if we keep the column with the larger hole at a fixed height a certain amount of water will flow through per second. if we raise the height of the column having the small hole we shall reach a point after a time when there will be as much water flow through the small hole per second as there is flowing through the large hole. this result has been accomplished by increasing the pressure. so, we can accomplish a similar result in passing electricity through an iron wire at the same rate it flows through a silver wire of the same size, by increasing the pressure, or electromotive power; and this is called increasing the voltage. the quality of the iron wire that prevents the same amount of current from flowing through it as the silver is called its resistance. the unit of resistance, as mentioned in the last chapter, is called the ohm, and the more ohms there are in a wire as compared with another, the more volts we have to put into the battery to get the same current. the unit for measuring the current is called the "ampère," named after the french electrician, a. m. ampère (1789-1836). now, to make practical application of these units. the volt is the potential or pressure of one cell of battery called a standard cell, made in a certain way. the electromotive force of one cell of a daniell battery is about one volt. one ohm is the resistance offered to the passage of a current having one volt pressure by a column of mercury one millimeter in cross-section and 106.3 centimeters in length. ordinary iron telegraph-wire measures about thirteen ohms to the mile. now connect our standard cell--one volt--through one ohm resistance and we have a current of one ampère. unit electromotive force (volt) through unit resistance (ohm) gives unit of current (ampère). it is not the intention to treat the subject mathematically, but i will give you a simple formula for finding the amount of current if you know the resistance and the voltage. the electromotive force divided by the resistance gives the current. c = e/r or current (ampères) equals electromotive force (volts) divided by the resistance (ohms). but still further: one ampère of current having one volt pressure will develop one watt of power, which is equal to 1/746 of a horse-power. (the watt is named in honor of james watt, the scottish inventor of the steam-engine--1786-1813). in other words, 746 watts equal one horse-power. by multiplying volts and ampères together we get watts. if we want to carry only a small current for a long distance we do not need to use large cells, but many of them. we increase the pressure or voltage by increasing the number of cells set up in series. if we have a wire of given length and resistance and find we need 100 volts to force the right amount or strength of current through it, and the electromotive force of the cells we are using is one volt each, it will require 100 cells. if we have a battery that has an e. m. f. of two volts to the cell, as the storage-battery has, fifty cells would answer. if we want a very strong current of great volume, so to speak, for electric light or power, and use a galvanic battery, we should have to have cells of large surface and lower resistance both inside and outside the cells. when dynamos are used they are so constructed that a given number of revolutions per minute will give the right voltage. in fact, the dynamo has to be built for the amount of current that must be delivered through a given resistance. the same holds good for a dynamo as for a galvanic battery. if any one factor is fixed, we must adapt the others to that one in order to get the result we want. there are many other units, but to introduce them here would only confuse the reader. the advanced student is referred to the text-books. with this much as a preliminary we are prepared to take up the applications of electricity, which to most people will be more interesting than what has gone before. chapter x. the electric telegraph. in the year 1617 strada, an italian jesuit, proposed to telegraph news without wires by means of two sympathetic needles made of loadstone so balanced that when one was turned the other would turn with it. each needle was to have a dial with the letters on it. this would have been very nice if it had only worked, but it was not based on any known law of nature. many attempts at telegraphing with electricity were made by different people during the eighteenth century. about 1748 franklin succeeded in firing spirits by means of a wire across the schuylkill river, using, as all the other experimenters had done, frictional electricity. in 1753 an anonymous letter was written to scott's magazine describing a method by which it was possible to communicate at a distance by electricity. the writer proposed the use of a wire for each letter of the alphabet, that should terminate in pith balls at the receiving end, and under the balls were to be strips of paper corresponding to the letters of the alphabet. the message was to be sent by discharging static electricity through the wire corresponding to the first letter of a word when the paper would be attracted to the pith ball and read by the observer. then the wire corresponding to the second letter of the word was to be charged in like manner, and so on till the whole message was spelled out. this was the first practical (i.e., possible) suggestion for a telegraph. the writer also proposed to have the wires strung on insulators, which was a great advance over the other attempts. the communication was anonymous, as no doubt, like many others, the author feared the ridicule of his neighbors. it requires a vast amount of moral courage to stand up before the world and openly advocate some new theory that has never come within the experience of any one before. it requires much now, but it required more then; for a man in those days would have been roasted for what in these days he would be toasted. the rank and file of humanity have been opposed to innovations in all ages, but no progress could have been made without innovations. there always has to be a first time. galileo is said to have been forced to retract, on his knees, some theory he advanced about the motion of the earth, and its relation to the sun and other heavenly bodies. notwithstanding this retraction the seed-thought sown by galileo took root in other minds, which led to the triumph of scientific truth over religious fanaticism. the writer in scott's magazine did not have the opportunity to put his ideas into practice, so the glory of the invention fell to others. such men as this unknown writer are made of finer stuff, and they stand alone on the frontier of progress. they do not fear the bullets of an enemy half so much as the gibes of a friend. much of their work is done quietly and without notice, and when something of real importance is worked out theoretically and experimentally, some one seizes upon it and proclaims it from the housetops and attaches to it his name; but perhaps years after the real inventor (the man who taught the so-called inventor how to do it) is dead, some one writes a book that reveals the truth, and then the hero-loving people erect a monument to his memory. such a man was our own professor joseph henry, so long the presiding genius at the smithsonian institution at washington. he worked out all the problems of the present american telegraphic system and demonstrated it practically. everything that made the so-called morse telegraph a success had long before been described and demonstrated by henry. yet with the modest grace that was ingrained in the man he yielded all to the one who was instrumental in constructing the first telegraph line between baltimore and washington. great credit is due to such men as morse and cyrus w. field--neither of them inventors, but promoters of great systems of communication that are of unspeakable benefit to mankind. henry pointed out the way, and morse carried it into effect. morse has had no more credit than was due him, but has henry had as much as is due him? no great invention was ever yet the work, wholly, of one man. we americans are too apt to forget this. i shall always remember henry as a most unassuming, kindly, genial man, and i shall never forget his kindness to me. in 1874 i began my researches in telephony, having applied for a patent for an apparatus for transmitting musical tones telegraphically. this consisted of a means of transmitting musical tones through a wire and reproducing them on a metal plate (stretched on the body of a violin to give it resonance) by rubbing the plate with the hand--the latter being a part of the circuit. the examiner refused the application at first on the ground that the inventor or operator could not be a part of his machine. i took my apparatus and went to washington, first calling upon professor henry, never having met him before. he received me most kindly, and allowed me to string wires from room to room in the institute, and when he had witnessed the experiments he seemed as delighted as a child. i now brought the patent office official over to the smithsonian and soon convinced him that the inventor could be a part of his own machine. the same year i went abroad, and henry gave me a letter to tyndall. it was very fortunate for me that he did, for tyndall was very shy at first, and it was only henry's letter that gave me a hearing for a moment. the history of the few days that followed this first interview with tyndall at the royal institution would make very interesting reading, if i felt at liberty to publish it. suffice it to say that he was convinced in a few minutes after he had reached the experimental stage that not all my work had been anticipated by wheatstone, as he asserted before seeing the experiments. wheatstone had transmitted the tones of a piano, mechanically, from one room to another by a wooden rod placed upon the sound-board and terminating in another room in contact with another sound-board. but this was very different from transmitting musical tones and melodies from one city to another through a wire, as i could do with my electrotelephonic apparatus. it is a curious fact that the world is divided into two great classes, leaders and followers. or we might say, originators and copyists; the former division being very small, while the latter is very large. as late as 1820 the european philosophers were trying to construct a telegraphic system based upon two ideas, announced a long time before, to wit, the use of static or frictional electricity, and a wire for every letter. it does not seem to have occurred to any one to devise a code consisting of motions differently related as to time, and to use simply one wire. in 1819 oersted discovered the effect of a galvanic current on a magnetic needle, and published a pamphlet concerning his discovery. this stimulated others, and ampère applied it to the galvanometer the same year. arago applied it to soft iron, and here was the germ of the electromagnet. we see that as far back as 1820 we had the galvanic battery and the electromagnet, the two great essentials of the modern telegraph. however, there remained another great discovery to be made before these elements could be utilized for telegraphic purposes. one cell of battery was used, and the magnet was made by winding one layer of wire spirally around the iron, so that each spiral was out of touch with its neighbor. barlow of england, a fellow of the royal society, tried the effect of a current through a wire 200 feet long, and found that the power was so diminished that he was discouraged, and in a paper gave it as his opinion that galvanism was of no use for telegraphing at a distance. this paper stimulated others, and it was reserved for our own joseph henry, already referred to, to show not only how to construct a magnet for long-distance telegraphy, but also how to adapt the battery to the distance. he showed us that by insulating the wire and using several layers of whirls, instead of one, and by using enough cells of battery coupled up in series to get more voltage, as we now express it, it was possible to transmit signals to a distance. he not only set forth the theory, but he constructed a line of bell-wire 1060 feet long and worked his magnet by making the armature strike a bell for the signals, which is the basis of the modern "sounder." nothing was needed but to construct a line and devise a code to be read by sound, to have practically our modern morse telegraph. this line was constructed in 1831. in 1835 henry, who was then at princeton, constructed a line and worked it as it is to-day worked, with a relay and local circuit, so that at that period all the problems had been worked out. but, like the speaking-telephone in its early inception, no one appreciated its real importance. henry himself did not think it worth while to take out a patent. two years later the secretary of the treasury sent out a circular letter of inquiry to know if some system of telegraphic communication could not be devised. the learned heads of the franklin institute of philadelphia, the oldest scientific society in america, advised that a semaphore system be established between new york and washington, consisting of forty towers with swinging arms, the same as used in the days of wellington. among other replies to the circular letter of the secretary was one from samuel f. b. morse. morse was not a scientist or even an inventor, at least not at that time. he was an artist of some note. in 1832, while crossing the ocean, morse, in connection with one dr. jackson of boston, devised a code of telegraphic signs intended to be used in a chemical telegraph system. some years later morse adapted henry's signal-instrument to a recorder, called the morse register, and this was the instrument used in the early days of the morse telegraph. what morse seems to have really invented was the register, which made embossed marks on a strip of paper, and the code of dots and dashes representing letters, now known as the morse alphabet, although this latter is questioned. morse took his apparatus to washington and exhibited it to the members of congress in the year 1838, but it was four years before a bill was passed that enabled him to try the experiment between baltimore and washington. we will let him describe in his own words the closing day of congress. he says: "my bill had indeed passed the house of representatives and it was on the calendar of the senate, but the evening of the last day had commenced with more than 100 bills to be considered and passed upon before mine could be reached. wearied out with the anxiety of suspense, i consulted one of my senatorial friends. he thought the chance of reaching it to be so small that he advised me to consider it as lost. in a state of mind which i must leave you to imagine, i returned to my lodgings to make preparations for returning home the next day. my funds were reduced to the fraction of a dollar. in the morning, as i was about to sit down to breakfast, the servant announced that a young lady desired to see me in the parlor. it was the daughter of my excellent friend and college classmate, the commissioner of patents, henry l. ellsworth. she had called, she said, by her father's permission, and in the exuberance of her own joy, to announce to me the passage of my telegraph bill at midnight, but a moment before the senate adjourned. this was the turning-point of the telegraph invention in america. as an appropriate acknowledgment of the young lady's sympathy and kindness--a sympathy which only a woman can feel and express--i promised that the first dispatch by the first line of telegraph from washington to baltimore should be indited by her; to which she replied: 'remember, now, i shall hold you to your word.' about a year from that time the line was completed, and, everything being prepared, i apprised my young friend of the fact. a note from her inclosed this dispatch: 'what hath god wrought?' these were the first words that passed on the first completed line in america." the first telegraph-line in america was put into operation in the spring of 1844 at the beginning of polk's administration. i remember as a boy having the two cities, baltimore and washington, pointed out to me on the map, and how the story of the telegraph impressed me. congress appropriated $30,000 for the construction of the line, and $8000 to keep it running the first year. it was placed under the control of the postmaster-general, and the line was thrown open to the public. the tariff was fixed at one cent for every four words. it was open for business on april 1, 1844, and for the first few days the revenue was exceedingly small. on the morning of the first day a gentleman came in and wanted to "see it work." the operator told him that he would be glad to show it at the regular tariff of one cent for four words. the gentleman grew angry and said that he was influential with the administration, and that if he did not show him the working free of charge he would see to it that he lost his job. his bluff did not succeed. the operator referred him to the postmaster-general, and thus the stormy interview ended. no patrons came in for the next three days, but a great number stood around hoping to see the instrument start up, but no one was willing to invest a cent--probably from fear of being laughed at. on the fourth day the same gentleman who had threatened the young man with dismissal came back and invested a cent, and this was the first and only revenue for four days. the message that was sent only came to one-half cent, but as the operator could not make change the stranger laid down the cent and departed. his name ought to be known to fame as the first man patron of the telegraph. [illustration: fig. 2. a gives a diagram view of a morse telegraph-line with three stations. b is the battery; c c c, the transmitting keys in the three offices; d d d, the relay magnets; e e e, the armatures that are actuated by the magnets.] the operation of the morse telegraph is very simple if we grant all that has gone before. all that is needed is the wire, the battery, and the key, as shown in fig. 2 (page 99), and a relay--an extra electromagnet which receives the electric current and by its means puts into or out of action a small local battery on a short circuit in which is placed the receiving or recording apparatus. thus we have a wire starting from the earth in new york and passing through a battery, a key and a relay, and thence to boston on poles, with insulators on which the wire is strung, and through another instrument, key and battery in boston, the same as at the new york end, and into the ground, leaving the earth to complete one-half of the circuit. when the keys at both ends are closed the batteries are active and the armatures or "keepers" are attracted so that the armature levers rest on the forward stops. (see diagram fig. 2.) if either one of the keys is opened the current stops flowing and the magnetism vanishes from all the electromagnets on the line, and a spring or retractile of some kind pulls the armatures away from the magnets and the levers rest on their back stops. in this way all the levers of all the magnets are made to follow the motions of any key. if there are more than two magnets in circuit (and there may be twenty or more) they all respond in unison to the working of one key, so that when any one station is sending a dispatch all the other stations get it. but there is a "call" for each office, so that the operator only heeds the instrument when he hears his own call. operators become so expert in reading by sound that they may lie down and sleep in the room, and, although the instrument is rattling away all the time, he does not hear it till his own call is made, when he immediately awakes. in the old days messages were received on slips of paper by the morse register by means of dots and dashes. gradually the operator learned to read by sound, till now this mode of receiving is almost universal the world over. reading by sound was of american origin. it is a spoken language, and when one becomes accustomed to it it is like any other language. this code language has some advantages over articulate speech, as well as many disadvantages. a gentleman who was connected with a louisville telegraph office told me that one of the best operators he ever knew was as deaf as a post. he would receive the message by holding his knee against the leg of the table upon which the sounder was mounted, and through the sense of feeling receive the long and short vibrations of the table, and by this means read as well or better than through the ear, because he was not distracted by other sounds. a story is told of the late general stager that at one time he was on a train that was wrecked at some distance from any station. he climbed a telegraph pole, cut the wire and by alternately joining and separating the ends sent a message, detailing the story of the wreck, to headquarters, and asked for assistance. he then held the two ends of the wire on each side of his tongue and tasted out the reply--that help was coming. any one who has ever tasted a current knows that it is very pronounced. a story similar to this is told of the early days when the bain chemical system was used between washington city and some other point. this system made marks on chemically-prepared paper; as the current passed through it left marks on the paper from the decomposition of the chemicals. some of the preparations emitted an odor during the time that the current passed. the occurrence to which we refer took place at presidential election time. at some station out of washington an operator was employed who had a blind sister, and this sister knew the morse alphabet well before she became blind. one evening a signal came to get ready for a message containing the returns from the election. in the hurry, and just as the message had started, the lamp was upset and they were in total darkness--at least, the brother was. the sister, poor girl, had been in darkness a long time. the blind sister leaned over the stylus through which the current flowed to the paper and smelled out as well as spelled out the message, and repeated it to her astonished brother. by the old semaphore system the motions were sensed through the eye as well as the early method of cable signaling. it will be seen from the above that the morse code may be communicated through any one of the five senses. chapter xi. receiving messages. with but few exceptions the morse code is the one almost universally used the world over. as it is used in europe, it is slightly changed from our american code, but they all depend upon dots, dashes, and spaces, related in different combinations, for the different letters. notwithstanding its universal use it is not free from serious difficulties in transmission unless it is repeated back to the sender for correction; and then in some cases it is impossible to be sure, owing to difficulties of punctuation and capitalizing, and the further difficulty of running the signals together, caused, it may be, by faulty transmission, induced currents from other wires, "swinging crosses" or atmospheric electricity. sometimes it is a psychological difficulty in the mind of the receiving-operator. the telegraph companies have to suffer damages from all these and many other unforeseen causes. prescott tells some curious things that happened in the early days, growing out of the peculiarities of the receiving-operator. at one time he was reporting by telegraph one of webster's speeches made at albany in 1852 in which there were many pithy interrogative sentences, and he was desirous of having the interrogation-points appear. so to make sure, whenever he wished an interrogation-point he said "question" at the end of almost every sentence. next day he was horrified on reading the speech to see the ends of the sentences bristling with the word "question." some time back in the fifties a gentleman in boston telegraphed to a house in new york to "forward sample forks by express." the message when received by the new york merchant read: "forward sample for k. s. by express." the new york merchant did not know who k. s. was, nor did he gather from the dispatch what kind of sample he wanted. so he went to the telegraph office to have the matter cleared up. the boston operator repeated the message, saying "sample forks." "that's the way i received it and so delivered it--sample for k. s.," said new york. "but," says boston, "i did not say for k. s.; i said f-o-r-k-s." new york had read it wrong in the start and could not get it any other way. "what a fool that boston fellow is. he says he did not say for k. s., but for k. s." boston had to resort to the united states mail before the mystery was solved. curiously enough, the old method of recording the dots and dashes on the paper strip was not so reliable as the present mode of reading by sound. a man can put his individuality to some extent into a sounder, and when one becomes used to his style it is much easier to read him accurately by sound than by the paper impressions. some people never could learn to read either by paper or sound. an instance of this kind is given of a middle-aged man who was employed by a railroad company as depot master and telegraph operator, in the old days of the paper strip. one day he rushed out and hailed the conductor of a train that had just pulled into the station, and told him that ---train had broken both driving-wheels and was badly smashed up. the conductor could read the mystic symbols, so he took the tape and deciphered the dispatch as follows: "ask the conductor of the boston train to examine carefully the connecting-rods of both driving-wheels, and if not in good condition to await orders." it is further related of this same operator that when he got into real difficulty with his "tape" he used to run over to the regular commercial office to have his messages translated. one day he rushed into his neighbor's office trailing the tape behind him and saying: "i am sure an awful accident has happened by the way the message was rattled off." a playful dog had torn off a large part of the strip as it trailed along, so only a part was left. it read, "good morning, uncle ben. when are you----" the dog had swallowed the balance of the dispatch. sometimes the morse code is not only funny but disastrous. a gentleman wanted to borrow money of some capitalists who, not knowing his financial standing, telegraphed to a banker who they knew could post them. they received an answer, "note good for large amount." the gentleman borrowed a "large amount," but afterward when it came to be investigated it was found that the dispatch was originally written "not," instead of "note," which made "all the difference in the world." it has been stated that any one of the five senses may be called into service to interpret the morse code into words and ideas. a story is told by mr. prescott that he says is true, as he knew the party. a friend of his, by name langenzunge, who knew the morse code, had served under general taylor (who at this time was president) at palo alto, in mexico. the general had just promised him an office; soon after he left washington for the west over the baltimore and ohio on a freight train; the president was taken seriously ill, and his friend hearing of it was troubled not only because he loved the old general, but on account of the change in his own prospects. the train stopped somewhere on the potomac at midnight and remained there for four hours. uneasy and sad, he wandered down the track and climbed a pole, cut the wire and placed the ends each side of his tongue and tasted out the fatal message--"died at half-past ten." the shock (not the electric) was so great that he almost fell from the pole. what a situation! a man climbs a pole at midnight miles from the sick friend he loves, puts his tongue to inanimate wire, and is told in concrete language--through the sense of taste--that his friend is dead. this is only one of the many, many wonderful episodes of the telegraph. chapter xii. miscellaneous methods. "it never rains but it pours." almost simultaneously with the demonstration of the morse telegraph other types were devised. there were the needle systems of cooke and wheatstone, the chemical telegraph of alexander bain, and soon the printing telegraph of house, and later that of hughes. the latter is in use on the continent of europe, and a modification of it has a very limited use on some american lines. the bain telegraph used a key and battery the same as the morse system, but it did not depend upon electromagnetism as the morse system does. when in operation a strip of paper was made to move under an iron stylus at the receiving-end of the line. the paper was saturated with some chemical that would discolor by the electrolytic action of the current. when a message was sent the paper was set to moving by a clock mechanism or otherwise, under the stylus that was pressing on the paper as it passed over a metal roller or bed-plate. the transmitting-operator worked his key precisely as in sending an ordinary message by the morse system. the effect was to send currents through the receiving-stylus chopped into long or short marks, or the dots and dashes of the morse code, and recorded on the tape in marks that were blue or brown, according to the chemical used. a few lines were established in this country on the bain system, but it never came into general use. a number of systems, called "automatic," grew out of the bain system. bain himself devised, perhaps, the first automatic telegraph. the fundamental principle of all automatic telegraphs depends upon the preparation of the message before sending, and is usually punched in a strip of paper and then run through between rollers that allow the stylus to ride on the paper and drop through the holes that represent the dots and lines of the morse alphabet. every time the stylus drops through a hole in the paper it makes electrical contact and sends a current, long or short, according to the length of the hole. the object of the automatic system was to send a large amount of business through a single wire in a short time. it does not save operators, as the messages have to be prepared for transmission, and then translated at the receiving-end and put into ordinary writing for delivery. the automatic system is not used except for special purposes, and the one that seems to be the most favored is that of wheatstone. the system is in use in england and in america to a limited degree. early in the history of the telegraph a printing system was devised. wheatstone and others had proposed systems of printing telegraphs in europe, but these never passed the experimental stage. the first printing telegraph introduced in america was invented by royal e. house of vermont, and first introduced in 1847 on a line between cincinnati and jeffersonville, a distance of 150 miles. in 1849 a line for commercial use was established between new york and philadelphia, and for some years following many lines were equipped with the house printing telegraph instrument. the late general anson stager was a house operator at one time. all printing telegraph instruments, while differing greatly in detail, have certain things in common, to wit: a means for bringing the type into position, an inking device, a printing mechanism, a paper feed, and a means for bringing the type-wheels into unison. there are two general types of printing instruments, the step-by-step, and the synchronously moving type-wheels. the house printer was a step-by-step instrument and consisted of two parts, a transmitter and a receiver. the transmitter consists of a keyboard like a piano, with twenty-eight keys. these keys are held in position by springs. under the keys is a cylinder having twenty-eight pins on it corresponding to the twenty-six letters of the alphabet and a dot and a space. this cylinder was driven by some power. in those days it was by man-power. it was carried by a friction, so that it could be easily stopped by the depression of any one of the keys that interfered with one of the pins. one revolution of the cylinder would break and close the current twenty-eight times, making twenty-eight steps. the receiving-instrument consisted of a type-wheel and means for driving it. it was somewhat complicated, and can only be described in a general way. if the cylinder of the transmitter was set to rotating it would break and close twenty-eight times each revolution. (there were fourteen closes and fourteen breaks, each break and each close of the current representing a step.) the type-wheel of the receiver was divided into twenty-eight parts, having twenty-six letters and a dot and space, each break moved it one step and each close a step; so that if the cylinder, with its twenty-eight pins, started in unison with the type-wheel, with its twenty-eight letters and spaces, they would revolve in unison. the keys were lettered, and if any one was depressed the pin corresponding to it on the cylinder would strike it and stop the rotation of the cylinder, which stopped the breaking and closing of the circuit, which in turn stopped the rotation of the type-wheel--and not only stopped it, but also put it in a position so that the letter on the type-wheel corresponding to the letter on the key that was depressed was opposite the printing mechanism. the printing was done on a strip of paper, which was carried forward one space each time it printed. the printing mechanism was so arranged that so long as the wheel continued to rotate it was held from printing, but the moment the type-wheel stopped it printed automatically. the messages were delivered on strips of paper as they came from the machine. in 1855 david e. hughes of kentucky patented a type-printing telegraph that employed a different principle for rotating the type-wheel. the electric current was used for printing the letters and unifying the type-wheels with the transmitting-apparatus. the transmitter, cylinder, and the type-wheel revolved synchronously, or as nearly so as possible, and the printing was done without stopping the type-wheel. whenever a letter was printed the type-wheel was corrected if there was any lack of unison. this type of machine in a greatly improved form is still used on some of the western union lines, especially between new york, boston, philadelphia, and washington. it is also in use in one of its forms in most of the european countries. chapter xiii. multiple transmission. although the printing and automatic systems of telegraphing are used in america to some extent, the larger part is done by the morse system of sound-reading and copying from it, either by pen or the typewriter. in the early days only one message could be sent over one wire at the same time, but now from four to six or even more messages may be sent over the same wire simultaneously without one message interfering with the other. like most other inventions, many inventors have contributed to the development of multiple transmission, till finally some one did the last thing needed to make it a success. the first attempts were in the line of double transmission, and many inventors abroad have worked on this problem. moses g. farmer of salem, mass., proposed it as early as 1852, and patented it in 1858. gintl, preece, siemens and halske and others abroad had from time to time proposed different methods of double transmission, but no one of them was a perfect success. when the line was very long there was a difficulty that seemed insurmountable. in the common parlance of telegraphy, there was a "kick" in the instrument that came in and mutilated the signals. about 1872 joseph b. stearns of boston made a certain application of what is called a "condenser" to duplex telegraphy that cured the "kick," and from that time to this it has been a success. farther along i will tell you what occasioned this "kick" and how it was cured. if this or some other method could be applied as successfully to cure the many chronic "kickers" in the world it would be a great blessing to mankind. it has always been a mystery to the uninitiated how two messages could go in opposite directions and not run into one another and get wrecked by the way. if you will follow me closely for a few minutes i will try to tell you. we have already stated that an electromagnet is made by winding an insulated wire around a soft iron core. if we pass a current of electricity through this wire the core becomes magnetic, and remains so as long as the current passes around it. in duplex telegraphy we use what is called a differential magnet. a differential electromagnet is wound with two insulated wires and so connected to the battery that the current divides and passes around the iron core in opposite directions. now if an equal current is simultaneously passed through each of the wires of the coil in opposite directions the effect on the iron will be nothing, because one current is trying to develop a certain kind of polarity at each pole of the magnet, while the current in the other wire is trying to develop an opposite kind in each pole. there is an equal struggle between the two opposing forces, and the result is no magnetism. this assumes that the two currents are exactly the same strength. if we break the current in one of the coils we immediately have magnetism in the iron; or if we destroy the balance of the two currents by making one stronger than the other we shall have magnetism of a strength that measures the difference between the two. without specifically describing here the entire mechanism--since this is not a text-book or a treatise--we may say that a duplex telegraph-line is fitted with these differentially wound electromagnets at every station. when station a (fig. 3) is connected to the line by the positive pole of its battery, station b will have its negative pole to line and its positive to earth. when a depresses his key to send a message, half the current passes by one set of coils around his differential magnet through a short resistance-coil to the earth, and the other half by the contrary coil around the magnet to the line, and so to station b. the divided current does not affect a's own station, being neutralized by the differential magnet, but it does affect b, whose instrument responds and gives him the message. now b may at the same time send a message to a by half of his own divided current from his own end of the line. [illustration: fig. 3. represents a duplex 500-mile telegraph-line. a and b are the two terminal stations; b b´, the batteries; k k´, the keys; d d´, the small resistance-coils, equal to the battery-resistance when the latter is not in circuit; r r´, resistances each equal to the 500-mile line; and c c´, condensers giving the artificial lines r r´ the same capacity as the 500-mile line.] the puzzle to most people is: how can the signals pass each other in different directions on the same wire? but the signals do not have to pass each other. in effect, they pass; but in fact, it is like going round a circle--the earth forming half. a sends his message over the line to b. b sends his message to a through the earth and up a's ground-wire. the operative who is sending with positive pole to line _pushes_ his current through--so to speak--while the operative who is sending with the negative pole to line _pulls_ more current in the same direction through the line whenever he closes his key. this may not be a strictly scientific statement; but, as long as we speak of a "current" flowing from positive to negative poles (which is the invariable course electricity takes), it is the way to look at the matter understandingly. the short "resistance-coil" at each end, fortified by a "condenser" made of many leaves of isolated tin-foil, to give it capacity, offers precisely the same resistance to the current as the 500 miles of wire line; so that the twin currents that run around the differential magnet exactly neutralize each other and make no effect in the office the message starts from; while one of them takes to the earth, and the other to the line to carry the message. this condenser is necessary, because the short resistance-coil affects the current immediately, while the long line with its greater amount of metal does not give the same amount of resistance till it is filled from end to end, which requires a fraction of a second. during this time, however, more current is passing through the differential coil connected with the line than through the short resistance-coil; and the unequal flow causes the relay armature to jump, or "kick." the condenser, with the many leaves of tin-foil, supplies the greater metal surface to be traversed by the short line current, causes the flow to be equal in both circuits at all times, and thus cures the "kick." it is this quality of a condenser that enables us to give to an artificial line of any resistance all the qualities, including capacity, and exhibit all the phenomena of a real line of any length, and it was this quality that enabled mr. stearns to take the "kick" out of duplex transmission and thus change the whole system, which created a new era in telegraphy. we have just spoken of the "capacity" of a circuit, and stated that it was determined by the mass of metal used. this capacity is measured by a standard of capacity that is arbitrary and consists of a condenser, constructed so that a given amount of surface of tin-foil may be plugged in or out. the practical unit of capacity is called the micro-farad, the real unit is the farad, and takes its name from faraday. but let us go back to multiple systems of transmission. there are many other systems of simultaneous transmission aside from the duplex, and all of them are classed under the general head of multiple telegraphy. first there is the quadruplex, that sends two messages each way simultaneously, making one wire do the work of four single wires--as they were used at first. the quadruplex is very extensively used by the western union telegraph company and others. it would be difficult to explain it in a popular article, so we will not attempt it. there is another form of multiple telegraph that was used on the postal telegraph line when it first started--which was invented and perfected by the writer--that can be more easily explained. in 1874 i discovered a method of transmitting musical tones telegraphically, and the thing that set my mind in that direction was a domestic incident. it is a curious fact that most inventions have their beginnings in some incident or observation that comes within the experience of some one who is able to see and interpret the meaning of such incidents or observations. i do not mean to say that inventions are usually the result of a happy thought, or accident; the germ may be, but the germ has to have the right kind of soil to take root in and the right kind of culture afterward. it is a rare thing that an invention, either of commercial or scientific importance, ever comes to perfection without hard work--midnight oil and daylight toil; and it is rarely, if ever, that a discovery or an invention based upon a discovery does not have, sooner or later, a practical use, although we sometimes have to wait centuries to find it put. we had to wait forty-four years after the galvanic battery was discovered before it became a useful servant of man. it was fifty years or more after the discovery by faraday of magneto-electricity before it found a useful application beyond that of a mere toy, but now it is one of the most useful servants we have, as shown in its wonderful development in electric lighting and electric railroads, to say nothing of its heating qualities and the useful purpose it serves in driving machinery. the interesting discoveries of professor crookes in passing a current of electricity through tubes of high vacua waited many years before they found a practical use in the x-ray, that promises to be of great service in medicine and surgery. the transmission of musical harmonies telegraphically, while in itself of great scientific interest, was of no practical use, but it led to other inventions, of which it is the base, that are transcendently useful in every-day life. the transmission of harmonic sounds by electricity underlies the principle of the telephone. there is a vast difference, in principle, between the transmission of simple melody, which is a combination of musical tones transmitted successively--one tone following another--and the transmission of harmony, which involves the transmission of two or more tones simultaneously. the former can be transmitted by a make-and-break current. in the latter case one tone has to be superposed upon another and must be transmitted with a varying but a continuously closed current. i make a distinction between a closed circuit and a closed current. in the case of the arc-light the circuit is open (that is, broken), technically speaking, but the current is still flowing. the reason why the reiss and other metallic contact telephone transmitters cannot successfully be used for telephone purposes is that metal points will not allow of sufficient separation of the transmitting points without breaking the current as well as the circuit. carbon contacts admit of a much wider separation without actually stopping the flow of the current, which latter is a necessity for perfect telephonic transmission, and it was the use of carbon that made that form of transmitter a success. there are other forms, or at least one other form that does not depend upon the length of the voltaic arc formed when the electrodes are separated. of this we will speak another time. now let us go back to the domestic incident referred to above. one evening in the winter of 1873-4 i came home from my laboratory work and went into the bathroom to make my toilet for dinner. i found my nephew, mr. charles s. sheppard, together with some of his playmates, taking electrical "shocks" from a little medical induction-coil that i heard humming in the closet. he had one terminal of the coil connected to the zinc lining of the bathtub--which was dry at that time--while he held the other in his left hand, and with his right was taking shocks from the lining of the tub by rubbing his hand against the zinc. i noticed that each time he made contact with the tub, as he rubbed it for a short distance, a peculiar sound was emitted from under his hand, not unlike the sound made by the electrotome that was vibrating in the closet. my interest was immediately aroused, and i took the electrode out of his hand and for some time experimented with it, going to the cupboard from time to time to change the rate of vibration of the electrotome, and thus change the quality of the sound. i noticed that the sound or tone under my hand, if it could be so called, changed with each change of the rate of vibration. the thing that most interested me was that the peculiar characteristics of the noise were reproduced. in those few minutes i laid out work enough for years of experiment, and as a result i was late to dinner. this discovery opened up to my mind the possibility of three things--the transmission of music and of speech or articulate words through a telegraph-wire, and the transmission of a number of messages over a single wire. i constructed a keyboard consisting of one octave and made a set of reeds tuned to the notes of the scale, and then when some one would play a melody i could reproduce it in two ways: one by placing my body in the circuit and rubbing a metal plate--it might be the bottom of a tin pan, a joint of stovepipe or otherwise--anything that was metal and would vibrate would give the effect. another way was to connect an electromagnet (having a diaphragm or reed across its poles) in the circuit at the receiving-end and mount it on some kind of a soundboard. i made a great number of different kinds of receivers that were capable of receiving either musical or articulate sounds, as has many times been proven by experiment. i carried two sets of experiments along together; the one looking toward a system of multiple telegraphy and the other the transmission of articulate speech. let us first look into the multiple telegraph and take the other up under the head of the telephone. when the electrical keyboard was completed i found that i could transmit not only a melody but a harmony; that more than one tone could be transmitted simultaneously. this discovery opened up a long series of experiments with the view of sending a number of messages simultaneously by means of musical tones differing in pitch. i had already demonstrated that several tones could be transmitted at once, but they would speak all alike (with the same loudness) on the receiving-instrument. i now went to work on an instrument that responded for one note only and succeeded beyond my expectations. i made three different kinds of receiving-instruments. the first was a steel strap about eight inches long by three-eighths wide. this strap was mounted in an iron frame in front of an electromagnet. a thumbscrew enabled me to stretch the strap till it would vibrate at the required pitch. if, for instance, the sending-reed vibrated at the rate of 100 times per second and the strap of the receiver was stretched to a tension that would give 100 vibrations per second when plucked, it would then respond to the vibrations of the sending-reed but not to those of another reed of a different rate of vibration. if we take mounted tuning-forks tuned in pairs of different pitches, say four pairs, so that each fork has a mate that is in exact accord with it, and place them all in the same room, and sound one of them for a few seconds and then stop it, upon examining the other forks you will find all of them quiet except the mate of the one that was sounded. this one will be sounding. if we now sound four of the forks and then stop them the other four will be sounding from sympathy because the mate of each one of them has been sounded. if only two forks differing in pitch are sounded only two of the others will sound in sympathy. in the first case only one set of sound-waves were set up in the air, and the fork that found itself in accord with this set responded. when four forks differing in pitch were sounded there were four sets of tone-waves superposed upon each other existing in the air, so that each of the remaining forks found a set of waves in sympathy with its own natural rate of vibration and so responded. now apply this principle to the harmonic telegraph and you can understand its operation. at the transmitting-end of a line of wire there are a certain number of forks or reeds kept vibrating continuously. these reeds each have a fixed rate of vibration and bear a harmonic relation to each other so as not to have sound-interference or "beats." at the receiving-end of the line there are as many electromagnets as there are transmitting-reeds, and each magnet has a reed or strap in front of it tuned to some one of the transmitting-reeds, so that each transmitting-reed has a mate in exact harmony with it at the receiving-end of the line. keys are so arranged at the transmitting-end as to throw the tones corresponding to them to line when depressed. in other words, when the key belonging to battery b and vibrator 1 is depressed (see fig. 4) the effect is to send electrical pulsations through the line corresponding in rate per second to that of the vibrator. the same is true of battery b´ and vibrator 2. during the time any key is depressed--we will say of tone no. 1--this tone will be transmitted through the line and be reproduced by its mate--the one tuned in accord with it--at the receiving-station. by a succession of long and short tones representing the morse code a message can be sent. numbers two, three and four might be sending at the same time, but they would not interfere with number one or with each other. in 1876-7 the writer succeeded in sending eight simultaneous messages between new york and philadelphia by the harmonic method. [illustration: fig. 4. in this diagram, 1 and 2 are tuned reeds; 1a 2a are receivers tuned to the reeds 1 and 2 respectively; 1 and 1a are in unison, also 2 and 2a, but the two groups (the 1s and the 2s) differ from each other in pitch.] there were two ways of reading by the harmonic method. one was by the long and short tone-sounds and the other by the ordinary sounder. the vibration of the receiving-reed was made to open and close a local circuit like a common morse relay and thus operate the sounder. it is useless to try to send a message if the sender and receiver are out of tune with each other in this system. what is true in science is true in life. if we are out of tune with our surroundings we only beat the air, and our efforts are in vain. we get no sympathetic response. chapter xiv. way duplex system. a novel form of double transmission was invented by the writer soon after the completion of the harmonic system, and was an outgrowth of it. it is still in use on some of the railroad-lines. an ordinary railroad telegraph-line has an instrument in circuit in every office along the road, chiefly for purposes of train-dispatching. as we have heretofore explained, whenever any one office is sending, the dispatch is heard in all of the offices. the "way duplex" system permits of the use of the line for through business simultaneously with the operation of the local offices. that is to say, any station along the line may be telegraphing with any other station by the ordinary morse method, and at the same time messages may be passing back and forth between the two end offices. this is accomplished by the following method: at each end of the line there is a tuned reed, such as we have described in our last chapter, that is kept constantly in vibration by a local battery during working hours. this vibrator is so arranged in relation to the battery that whenever the key belonging to it is depressed the current all through the line is rendered vibratory. there is also in circuit at each end of the line a harmonic relay, that is tuned in accord with the vibrating reed of the sender. if either key belonging to this part of the system is opened, as in the act of sending a message, these harmonic relays, being tuned in sympathy with the sending-vibrator, will respond, thus sending morse characters made up of a tone broken into dots and dashes. this tone can be read directly from the relay, or, as is usually the case, it causes the sounder to operate in the common way. you will at once inquire why the ordinary morse instruments in the local offices are not affected by these vibratory signals, and also why the harmonic instruments at the end office are not affected by the working of the local offices. the local office does not open the circuit entirely, but simply cuts out a resistance by the operation of the special harmonic key. when a resistance is thrown into an electric circuit it weakens the current in proportion to the amount of resistance interposed. you will see that there is some current still left in the line when the key is open, but the spring of the relay at the local office is so adjusted as to pull the armatures away from the magnets whenever the current is weakened by throwing in the resistance, so that by this means an ordinary morse telegraphic relay may be worked without ever entirely opening the circuit. in the way duplex system there is a resistance at each station that is cut in and out by the operation of its key, which causes all the instruments in the line to work simultaneously except the two harmonic relays located one at each end of the line. these will not respond to anything but the vibratory signal. in order to prevent the morse relays at the local offices from responding to the vibratory current a condenser is connected around them. this condenser serves two purposes: it enables the short impulses of the vibrating current to pass around the relays without having to be resisted by the coils of the magnets, and between the pulsations each condenser will discharge through the relay at the local offices, and thus fill in the gap between the pulsations, producing the effect on the relay of a steady current. when a line is thus equipped it may be treated in every respect as two separate wires, one of them doing way business and the other through business. it is a curious blending of science and mechanism. another interesting application was made of the system of transmission by musical tones--by edison, some years ago. we refer to the transmission of messages to and from a moving railroad-train with the head office at the end of the line. in this case the message was transmitted a part of the distance through the air;--another instance of wireless telegraphy. the operation was as follows: one of the wires strung on the poles nearest to the track was fitted up with a vibrator and key at the end of the line similar to that of the way duplex just described. in one of the cars was another battery, key and vibrator, and as only one tone was used, no tone-selecting device or harmonic relay was needed, but instead an ordinary receiving-telephone was used to read the long and short sounds sent over the lines. one end of the battery in the car was connected through the wheels to the earth, while the other end was connected to the metal roof of the car. being thus equipped, we will suppose our train to be out on the road forty or fifty miles from either end of the line, moving at the rate of forty miles an hour. the operator at chicago, say, wishes to send a message to the moving train; he operates his key in the ordinary manner, which makes the current on the line vibratory during the time the key is depressed. these electrical vibrations cause magnetic vibrations, or ether-waves, to radiate in every direction from the wire, at right angles to the direction of the current, like rays of light. when they strike the roof of the car they create electrical impulses in the metal by induction (described in chap. vi). these impulses pass through a telephone located in the car to the ground. a morse operator listening, with the telephone to his ear, will hear the message through the medium of a musical tone chopped up into the morse code. in like manner the operator in the car may transmit a message to the roof of the car and thence through the air to the wire, which will be heard, by any one listening, in a telephone which is connected in that circuit,--and, as a matter of fact, it will be heard from any wire that may be strung on any of the poles on either side of the road. some years ago an experiment of this kind was made on one of the roads between milwaukee and chicago. what wonderful things can be done with electricity! as a servant of man it is reliable and accurate--seeming almost to have the qualities of docility--when under intelligent direction, that is in accord with the laws of nature; but under other conditions it changes from the willing servant to a hard master, hesitating not to destroy life or property without regard to persons or things. chapter xv. telephony. in the foregoing chapters i have described the method of transmitting musical tones telegraphically and its applications to multiple telegraphy, as well as to a mode of communicating with a moving railroad-train. as i stated in a former chapter, after discovering a method of transmitting harmony as well as melody, i had in mind two lines of development, one in the direction of multiple telegraphy, and the other that of the transmission of articulate speech. i will not attempt to give the names of all the people who have contributed to the development of the telephone (as this alone would fill a volume) but only describe my own share in the work--leaving history to give each one due credit for his part. while i do not intend, here, to enter into any controversy regarding the priority of the invention of the telephone, i wish to say that from the time i began my researches, in the winter of 1873-4, until some time after i had filed my specification for a speaking or articulating telephone, in the winter of 1875-76, i had no idea that any one else had done or was doing anything in this direction. i wish to say further that if i had filed my description of a telephone as an application for a patent instead of as a caveat, and had prosecuted it to a patent, without changing a word in the specification as it stands to-day, i should have been awarded the priority of invention by the courts. i am borne out in this assertion by the highest legal authority. in law, a _caveat_ (latin word, meaning "let him beware") is a warning to other inventors, to protect an incomplete invention; whereas in fact the invention to be protected may be complete. an _application_ for a patent is presumed by the law to be for a completed invention; but it may be, and very often is, incomplete. it would often make a very great difference if decisions were rendered according to the facts in the case rather than according to rules of law and practice, that sometimes work great injustice to individuals. as has been said in another chapter, in the summer of 1874 i went to europe in the interest of the telephone, taking my apparatus, as then developed, with me. i came home early in the fall and resumed my experimental work. many interesting as well as amusing things occurred during these experiments. i remember that in the fall or early winter of 1874 i was in milwaukee with my apparatus carrying on some experiments on a wire between milwaukee and chicago. i had my musical transmitter along, and one evening, for the entertainment of some friends at the newhall house, a wire was stretched across the street from the telegraph office into one of the rooms of the hotel. a great number of tunes were played at the telegraph-office by mr. goodridge, who was my assistant at that time, which were transmitted across the street, as before stated. in those days it was a common practice in telegraphy to use one battery for a great number of lines. for instance, starting with one ground-wire which connected with, say, the negative pole of the battery, from the positive pole two, three or a half-dozen lines might be connected, running in various directions, connecting with the ground at the further end, thus completing their circuits. for use in transmitting tones across the street that evening we connected our line-wire on to the telegraph company's battery, which consisted of 100 or more cells, and which had four or five more lines radiating from the end of the battery to different parts of wisconsin. our line was tapped on to the battery (without changing any of its connections) twenty cells from the ground-wire. in transmitting, each vibration would momentarily shut off these twenty cells from the lines that were connected with the whole battery. the effect of this (an effect that we did not anticipate at the time) was to send a vibratory current out on all the lines that were connected with that single battery as well as across the street. a great many familiar tunes were played during the course of an hour or two which, unconsciously for us, were creating great consternation throughout the state of wisconsin, in many of the offices through which these various lines passed. next morning reports and inquiries began to come in from various towns and cities west, northwest and north, giving details of the phenomena that were noticed on the instruments located in the various offices along the lines. they reported their relays as singing tunes; one party said he thought the instruments were holding a prayer-meeting from the fact that they seemed to be singing hymn-tunes for quite a while, but this notion was finally dissipated, because they grew hilarious and sang "yankee doodle." one operator, up in the pine woods of northern wisconsin, did not seem to take the cheerful view of it that some of the others did. he was sitting alone in the telegraph-office that evening when he thought he heard the notes of a bugle in the distance; he got up and went to the door to listen, but could hear nothing; but on coming back into the room he heard the same bugle notes very faintly. he was inclined to be somewhat superstitious and grew very nervous; finally, on looking around, he located the sound in his relay, but this did not help matters with him. with superstitious awe he listened to the instrument for a few moments, while it gave out the solemn tones of "old hundred," then it suddenly jumped into a hilarious rendering of "yankee doodle." this was too much for our nervous friend, and hastily putting on his overcoat, he left the office for the night. on another occasion, when i was giving a lecture in one of the cities outside of chicago, where exhibitions of music transmitted from chicago were given, one of the operators along the line was very much astonished by his switchboard suddenly becoming musical. orders had been given for the instruments in all the local offices to be cut out of the particular line that i was using. hence the instrument in this particular office was not in the circuit through which the tunes were being transmitted. the wire, however, ran through his switchboard, and owing probably to a loose connection, or an induced effect, there was a spark that leaped across a short space at each electrical pulsation that passed through the line, thus reproducing the notes of the various tunes played. you will remember in one of the chapters on sound (volume ii.), it is stated that a musical tone is made up of a succession of sounds repeated at equal intervals, and that the pitch of the tone is determined by the number of sound-impulses per second. applying this law to the sparks, you will be able to see how the switchboard played tunes for the operator. in the foregoing experiments in transmitting musical tones telegraphically, i used a great many different varieties of receivers. some of them were designed with metal diaphragms mounted over single electromagnets, not unlike the receiver of an ordinary telephone. these instruments would both transmit and receive articulate speech when placed in circuit with the right amount of battery to furnish the necessary magnetism. however, they were not used in that way at the time they were first made--in 1874. these i called common receivers, as they were designed to reproduce all tones equally well. i designed and constructed another form of receiver, based somewhat upon the theory of the harmonic telegraph. this consisted of an electromagnet of considerable size, mounted upon a wooden rod about ten feet long. mounted upon this rod were also resonating boxes or tubes made of wood of the right size to have their air-cavities correspond with the various pitches of the transmitting-reeds, so that each tone would be re-enforced by some one of these air-cavities, thus giving a louder and more resonant effect to the musical notes. here were two types of receiver, one that would receive one sound as well as another, but none of them so loud, while the other was constructed on the principle of selection and re-enforcement, so that a particular note would be sounded by the box having a cavity corresponding to the pitch of the tone, and was much louder and of much better quality than i could get from the diaphragm receiver. one of these receivers pointed to the harmonic telegraph and the other to the speaking telephone. i knew that i had a receiver that would reproduce articulate speech or anything else that could be transmitted. my first conceptions of an articulate speech-transmitter were somewhat complicated. i conceived of a funnel made of thin metal having a great number of little riders, insulated from the funnel at one end and resting lightly in contact with the funnel at the other end. these riders were to be made of all sizes and weights so as to be responsive to all rates of vibration. in the light of the present day we know that such an arrangement would have transmitted articulate speech, but perhaps not so well as a single point would do when properly adjusted. my mind clung to this idea till in the fall of 1875, when an observation i made upon the street changed the whole course of my thinking and solved the problem. the incident i refer to took place in milwaukee, where i was then experimenting. one day while out on an errand i noticed two boys with fruit-cans in their hands having a thread attached to the center of the bottom of each can and stretched across the street, perhaps 100 feet apart. they were talking to each other, the one holding his mouth to his can and the other his ear. at that time i had not heard of this "lovers' telegraph," although it was old. it is said to have been used in china 2000 years ago. the two boys seemed to be conversing in a low tone with each other and my interest was immediately aroused. i took the can out of one of the boy's hands (rather rudely as i remember it now), and putting my ear to the mouth of it i could hear the voice of the boy across the street. i conversed with him a moment, then noticed how the cord was connected at the bottom of the two cans, when, suddenly, the problem of electrical speech-transmission was solved in my mind. i did not have an opportunity immediately to construct an instrument, as i had a partner who was furnishing money for the development of the harmonic telegraph and would not listen to any collateral experiments. i remember sitting down by this partner one day and telling him what i could do in the way of transmitting speech through a wire. i told him i thought it would be very valuable if worked out. he gave me a look that i shall never forget, but he did not say a word. the look conveyed more meaning than all the words he could have said, and i did not dare broach the subject again. however, as soon as i found opportunity, without saying a word to anybody except my patent lawyer, i filed a description, accompanied by drawings, of a speaking telephone which stands in history to-day as the first complete description on record of the operation of the speaking telephone. it described an apparatus which, when constructed, worked as described, and it is a matter of history that the first articulate speech electrically transmitted in this country was by a transmitter constructed on the principle described, and almost identically after the drawings in my caveat. while the transmitter described in this caveat was not the best form, it would transmit speech, and it contained the foundation principle of all the telephone transmitters in use to-day. there are two methods of transmitting speech. one is known as the magneto method and the other that of varying the resistance of the circuit. my first transmitter was devised on the latter principle. i append to this extracts from my specification filed feb. 14, 1876: _to all whom it may concern:_--be it known that i, elisha gray of chicago, in the county of cook and state of illinois, have invented a new art of transmitting vocal sounds telegraphically, of which the following is a specification: it is the object of my invention to transmit the tones of the human voice through a telegraphic circuit, and reproduce them at the receiving-end of the line, so that actual conversations can be carried on by persons at long distances apart. i have invented and patented methods of transmitting musical impressions or sounds telegraphically, and my present invention is based upon a modification of the principle of said invention, which is set forth and described in letters patent of the united states, granted to me july 27, 1875, respectively numbered 166,095 and 166,096, and also in an application for letters patent of the united states, filed by me, feb. 23, 1875. * * * my present belief is that the most effective method of providing an apparatus capable of responding to the various tones of the human voice is a tympanum, drum, or diaphragm, stretched across one end of the chamber, carrying an apparatus for producing fluctuations in the potential of the electric circuit and consequently varying in its power. * * * the vibrations thus imparted are transmitted through an electric circuit to the receiving-station, in which circuit is included an electromagnet of ordinary construction, acting upon a diaphragm to which is attached a piece of soft iron, and which diaphragm is stretched across a receiving vocalizing chamber _c_, somewhat similar to the corresponding vocalizing chamber _a_. the diaphragm at the receiving-end of the line is thus thrown into vibrations corresponding with those at the transmitting-end, and audible sounds or words are produced. the obvious practical application of my improvement will be to enable persons at a distance to converse with each other through a telegraphic circuit, just as they now do in each other's presence, or through a speaking-tube. i claim as my invention the art of transmitting vocal sounds or conversations telegraphically through an electric circuit. this specification was accompanied by cuts of the transmitter and receiver connected by a line-wire and showing one person talking to the transmitter and another listening at the receiver. these cuts may be seen in various books on the subject of telephony. chapter xvi. how the telephone talks. everybody knows what the telephone is because it is in almost every man's house. but while everybody knows what it is, there are very few (comparatively speaking) that know how it works. if you remember what has been said about sound and electromagnetism it will not be hard to understand. when any one utters a spoken word the air is thrown into shivers or vibrations of a peculiar form, and every different sound has a different form. therefore, every articulate word differs from every other word, not only as a shape in the air, but as a sensation in the brain, where the air-vibrations have been conducted through the organ of hearing; otherwise we could not distinguish between one word and another. every different word produces a different sensation because there is a physical difference, as a shape or motion, in the air where it is uttered. if one word contains 1000 simultaneous air-motions and another 1500 you can see that there is a physical or mechanical difference in the air. the construction of the simplest form of telephone is as follows: take a piece of iron rod one-half or three-quarters of an inch long and one-quarter inch thick, and after putting a spool-head on each end to hold the wire in place wind it full of fine insulated copper wire; fasten the end of this spool to the end of a straight-bar permanent magnet. then put the whole into a suitable frame, and mount a thin circular diaphragm (membrane or plate) of iron or steel, held by its edges, so that the free end of the spool will come near to but not touch the center of the diaphragm. this diaphragm must be held rigidly at the edges. now if the two ends of the insulated copper wires are brought out to suitable binding-screws the instrument is done. the permanent steel magnet serves a double purpose. when the telephone was first used commercially, the instrument now used as a receiver was also used as a transmitter. as a transmitter it is a dynamo-electric machine. every time the iron diaphragm is moved in the magnetic field of the pole of the permanent magnet, which in this case is the free end of the spool (the iron of the spool being magnetic by contact with the permanent magnet), there is a current set up in the wire wound on the spool; a short impulse, lasting only as long as the movement lasts. the intensity of the impulse will depend upon the amplitude and quickness of the movement of the diaphragm. if there is a long movement there will be a strong current and vice versa. if a sound is uttered, and even if the multitude of sounds that are required to form a word, be spoken to the diaphragm, the latter partakes in kind of the air-motions that strike it. it swings or vibrates in the air, and if it is a perfect diaphragm it moves exactly as the air does, both as to amplitude and complexity of movement. you will remember that in the chapter on sound-quality (vol. ii) it was said that there were hundreds and sometimes thousands of superposed motions in the tones of some voices that gave them the element we call quality. all these complex motions are communicated by the air to the diaphragm, and the diaphragm sets up electric currents in the wire wound on the spool, corresponding exactly in number and form, so that the current is molded exactly as the air-waves are. now, if we connect another telephone in the circuit, and talk to one of them, the diaphragm of the other will be vibrated by the electric current sent, and caused to move in sympathy with it and make exactly the same motions relatively, both as to number and amplitude. it will be plain that if the receiving diaphragm is making the same motions as the transmitting diaphragm, it will put the air in the same kind of motion that the air is in at the transmitting end, and will produce the same sensation when sensed by the brain through the ear. if the air-motion is that of any spoken word it will be the same at both ends of the line, except that it will not be so intense at the receiving-end; it is the same relatively. and this is how the telephone talks. i have said that the permanent magnet had two functions. in the case of the transmitter it is the medium through which mechanical is converted into electrical energy. it corresponds to the field-magnet of the dynamo, while the diaphragm corresponds to the revolving armature, and the voice is the steam-engine that drives it. in the second place, it puts a tension on the diaphragm and also puts the molecules of the iron core of the magnet in a state of tension or magnetic strain, and in that condition both the molecules and the diaphragm are much more sensitive to the electric impulses sent over the wire from the transmitter. this fact was experimented upon by the writer as far back as 1879 and published in the journal of the american electrical society. at the present day this form of telephone is used only as a receiver. transmitters have been made in a variety of forms, but there are only two generic methods of transmission. one is the magneto method--the one we have described--and the other is effected by varying the resistance of a battery current. the former will work without a battery, as the voice acting on the wire around the magnet through the diaphragm creates the current; in the latter the current is created by the battery but molded by the voice. in the latter method the current passes through carbon contacts that are moved by the diaphragm. carbon is the best substance, because it will bear a wider separation of contact without actually breaking the current. when carbon points are separated that have an electric current passing through them, there is an arc formed on the same principle as the electric arc-light. great improvements in details have been made in the telephone since its first use, but no new principles have been discovered as applied to transmission. we have spoken in another place regarding the various claimants to the invention of the telephone, but here is one that has been overlooked. a young man from the country was in a telegraph-office at one time and was left alone while the operator went to dinner. suddenly the sounder started up and rattled away at such a rate that the countryman thought something should be done. he leaned down close to the instrument and shouted as loudly as possible these words: "the operator has gone to dinner." from what we know now of the operation of the telephone i have no doubt but that he transmitted his voice to some extent over the wire. this young man's claims have never been put forward before, and we are doing him tardy justice. but his claim is quite as good as many others set forth by people who think they invent, whenever it occurs to them that something new might possibly be done, if only somebody would do it. and when that somebody does do it they lay claim to it. in the early days of the telephone it was not supposed that a vocal message could be transmitted to a very great distance. however, as time went on and experiments were multiplied the distance to which one could converse with another through a wire kept on increasing. in these days, as every one knows, it is a daily occurrence that business men converse with each other, telephonically, for a distance of 1000 miles or more; in fact, it is possible to transmit the voice through a single circuit about as great a distance as it is possible to practically telegraph. this leads us to speak of another telegraphic apparatus which we have not heretofore mentioned, and that is the telegraphic repeater. it is a common notion that messages are sent through a single circuit across the continent, but this is not the case, although the circuits are very much longer than they were some years ago. the repeater is an instrument that repeats a message automatically from one circuit to another. for instance, if chicago is sending a message to new york through two circuits, the division being in buffalo, the repeater will be located at buffalo and under the control of both the operator at chicago and the operator in new york. when chicago is sending, one part of the repeater works in unison with the chicago key and is the key to the new york circuit, which begins at buffalo. when new york is sending the other part of the repeater operates, which becomes a key which repeats the message to the chicago line. in this way the practical result is the same as though the circuit were complete from new york to chicago. at the present day some of the copper wires and perhaps some of the larger iron wires are used direct from chicago to new york without repetition, but all messages between new york and san francisco are automatically repeated at least twice and under certain conditions of weather oftener. i can remember that in wet weather in the old days, with such wires as they had then (being no. 9 iron with bad joints, which gave the circuit a high resistance) that these repeaters would be inserted at toledo, cleveland, buffalo and albany in order to work from chicago to new york. under such conditions the transmission would necessarily be slow, because an armature time will be lost at each repeater. regarding each repeater as a key, when chicago depresses his key the armature of the next repeater must act, and then the next successively, and all of this takes time, although only a small fraction of a second. the repeater was a very delicate instrument and had to be handled by a skilled operator. every wire must be in its place or the instrument would fail to operate. i remember on one occasion in cleveland that along in the middle of the night the repeater failed to work. the operator knew nothing of the principle of its operation, so that when it failed he had to appeal to some of his superiors. at this time there was no one in the office who knew how to adjust it, so they had to send up to the house of the superintendent and arouse him from his sleep and bring him down to the office. he looked under the table and found that one of the wires had loosened from its binding-post and was hanging down. he said immediately, "here's the trouble; i should think you could have seen it yourself." the operator replied, "i did see that, but i didn't think one wire would make any difference." he learned the lesson that all electricians have had to learn--that even one wire makes all the difference in the world. but this operator was no worse in that respect than some of his superiors. one of the heads of the cleveland office at one time in the early days wanted to give some directions to the office at buffalo. he told the operator at the key to tell buffalo so and so, when the operator replied: "i can't do it; buffalo has his key open." the official immediately said with severity: "tell him to close it." he forgot that it would be as difficult for him to tell him to close it, as it would have been to have sent the original message. but let us go back to the telephone. while it is possible to send a message from new york to san francisco by telegraph, it is not possible to telephone that distance, because as yet no one has been able to devise a repeater that will transfer spoken words from one line to another satisfactorily. but unless the printer and publisher bestir themselves some one may accomplish the feat before this little book reaches the reader. if this proves to be true, let the writer be the first to congratulate the successful inventor. chapter xvii. submarine cables. the first attempts at transmitting messages through wires laid in water were made about 1839. these early experiments were not very successful, because the art of wire-insulation had not attained any degree of perfection at that time. it was not until gutta-percha began to be used as an insulator for submarine lines that any substantial progress was made. the first line, so history states, that was successfully laid and operated was across the hudson river in 1848. this line was constructed for the use of the magnetic telegraph company. in the following year experiments with gutta-percha insulation were successfully made, and about 1850 a cable was laid across the english channel between dover and calais (twenty-seven miles), consisting of a single strand of wire having a covering of gutta-percha. the insulation was destroyed in a day or two, which demonstrated the fact that all submarine cables must be protected by some kind of armor. in 1851 another cable was laid between these two points, containing four conductors insulated with gutta-percha, and over all was an armor of iron wire. twenty-one years later this cable was still working, and for all we know is working now. after this successful demonstration other cables were laid for longer distances. these short-line cables served to demonstrate the relative value of different material for insulating purposes under water, and it has been found that gutta-percha possesses qualities superior to almost every other material as an insulator for submarine cables, although there are many better materials for air-line insulation. gutta-percha when exposed to air becomes hardened and will crack, but under water it seems to be practically indestructible. ocean telegraphy really dates from the laying of the first successful atlantic cable. there were many problems that had to be solved, which could be done only by the very expensive experiment of laying a cable across the atlantic ocean. in the first place a survey had to be made of the bottom of the ocean between the shores of america and great britain. the most available route was discovered by lieutenant maury of the united states navy, who made a series of deep-sea soundings, and discovered that, from newfoundland to the west coast of ireland the bottom of the ocean was comparatively even, but gradually deepening toward the coast of ireland until it reached a depth of 2000 fathoms. it was not so deep but that the cable could be laid on the bottom, nor so shallow as to be in danger of the waves, icebergs or large sea-animals. the water below a certain depth is always still and not affected by winds or ocean currents. at many other points in crossing the ocean, high mountains and deep valleys are encountered, possessing all the topographical features of dry land--as the ocean bed is only a great submerged continent. the beginning of the laying of the first atlantic cable was on aug. 7, 1857. on the morning of aug. 7, 1858, a year later, after a series of mishaps and adverse circumstances that would have discouraged most men, the country was electrified by a dispatch from cyrus w. field of new york (to whom the final success of the atlantic cable is mainly due), that the cable had been successfully laid and worked. but this cable worked only from the 10th of august to the 1st of september, having sent in that time 271 messages. the insulation became impaired at some point, when an attempt to force the current through by means of a large battery only increased the difficulty. the failure of this first cable served to teach manufacturers and engineers how to construct cables with reference to the conditions under which they are to be used. it was found that in the deep sea a much smaller and less expensive cable could be used than would answer at the shore ends, where the water is shallow. the shore ends of an ocean cable are made very large, as compared to the deep-sea portions, so as to resist the effect of the waves and other interfering obstacles. it was further learned that the most successful mode of transmitting signals through the cable was with a small battery of low voltage, and by the use of very delicate instruments for receiving the messages. it is not possible to employ such instruments on cables as are used on land-lines, while it would not be a difficult feat to transmit even twice the distance over land-lines strung on poles, using the ordinary morse telegraph. the water of the ocean is a conductor, as well as the heavy armor that surrounds the insulation of the cable. when a current is transmitted through the conducting wires, in the center of the cable, they set up a countercharge in the armor and the water above it, somewhat as an electrified cloud will induce a charge in the earth under it, of an opposite nature. this countercharge, being so close to the conducting wire, has a retarding effect upon the current transmitted through it. an ordinary land-line that is strung on poles that are high up from the ground has this effect reduced to a minimum, but the greater the number of wires clustered together on the same poles the more difficult it becomes to send rapid signals through any one of them. the instrument used for receiving cable messages was devised by sir william thompson, now lord kelvin. one form consists of a very short and delicate galvanometer-needle carrying a tiny mirror. this mirror is so related to a beam of light thrown upon it that it reflects it upon a graduated screen at some distance away, so that its motions are magnified many hundred times as it appears upon the screen. an operator sits in a dark room with his eye on the screen and his hand upon the key of an ordinary morse instrument. he reads the signal at sight, and with his key transmits it to a sounder, which may be in another room, where it is read and copied by another operator. another form of receiving-instrument carries, instead of the mirror, a delicate capillary glass tube that feeds ink from a reservoir, and by this means the movements of the needle are recorded on a moving strip of paper. the symbols (representing letters) are formed by combinations of zigzag lines. this instrument is the syphon-recorder. chapter xviii. short-line telegraphs. early in the history of the telegraph short lines began to be used for private purposes, and as the morse code was familiar only to those who had studied it and were expert operators on commercial lines, some system had to be devised that any one with an ordinary english education could use; as the expense of employing two morse operators would be too great for all ordinary business enterprises. these short lines are called private lines, and the instruments used upon them were called private-line telegraph-instruments. of course they are now nearly all superseded by the telephone, but they are a part of history. one of the earliest forms of short-line instruments was called the dial-telegraph. one of the first inventors, if not the first, of this form of instrument was professor wheatstone of england, who perfected a dial-telegraph-instrument about the year 1839. the receiving-end of this instrument consisted of a lettered dial-face, under which was clockwork mechanism and an escape-wheel controlled by an electromagnet. each time the circuit was opened or closed the wheel would move forward one step, and each step represented one of the letters of the alphabet, so that the wheel, like the type-wheel of a printing telegraph, had fourteen teeth, each tooth representing two steps. as the reciprocating movement of the escapement had a pallet or check-piece on each side of the wheel, its movement was arrested twenty-eight times in each revolution. these twenty-eight steps correspond to the twenty-six letters of the alphabet, a dot and a space. on the shaft of the escape-wheel is fastened a hand or pointer, which revolves over a dial-face having the twenty-six letters of the alphabet, also a dot and space. the pointer was so adjusted that when the escape-wheel was arrested by one of the pallets it would stop over a letter, showing thus, letter by letter, the message which the sender was spelling out. the transmitter consisted of a crank with a knob and a pointer on it, which was mounted over a dial that was lettered in the same way as the face of the receiving-instrument. a revolution of this crank would break and close the circuit twenty-eight times; that is to say, there were fourteen breaks and fourteen closes of the circuit. if now the transmitting-pointer and the receiving-pointer are unified so that they both start from the same point on the dial, and the transmitting-crank is rotated from left to right, the receiving-pointer will follow it up to the limit of its speed. in transmitting a message the sender would turn his crank, or pointer, to the first letter of the word he wished to transmit, making a short pause, and then move on to the next letter, and so on to the end of the message, making a short pause on each letter. the end of a word was indicated by turning the pointer to the space-mark on the dial. the receiving-operator would read by the pauses of the needle on the various letters. this was a system of reading by sight. there have been many forms of this dial-telegraph worked out by different inventors at different times, and quite a number of them were used in the old days. it was a slow process of telegraphing, but it was suited to the age in which it flourished. one of the difficulties of a dial-telegraph consisted in the readiness with which the transmitter and receiver would get out of unison with each other; and when this happened of course a message is unintelligible, and you have to stop and unify again. about 1869 the writer invented a dial-telegraph to obviate this difficulty. in this system a transmitter and receiver were combined in one instrument, and instead of a crank there were buttons arranged around the dial in a circle, one opposite each letter. when not in operation the pointers of both instruments at both stations stood at zero. in the act of transmitting the operator would depress the button opposite the letter he wished to indicate, when immediately the pointers of both instruments would start up and move automatically, step by step, until the pointer came in contact with the stem of the depressed button, when it would be arrested, and at the same time cut out the automatic transmitting-mechanism and cause both needles to remain stationary during the time the button was depressed. upon releasing the button the pointers both fall back to zero at one leap. the first private line equipped by this instrument was for rockefeller, andrews & flagler, which was the firm name of the parties who afterward organized the standard oil company. this line was built between their office on the public square in cleveland and their works over on the cuyahoga flats. it seemed, however, to be the fate of the writer to make new inventions that would supersede the old ones before they were fairly brought into use. very soon after the dial-telegraph began to be used, printing telegraph instruments for private-line purposes superseded them. about 1867 a printing instrument was devised for stock reporting, which in one of its forms is still in use. soon after the invention of this form of printer a company was organized to operate not only these stock-reporting lines, but short lines for all sorts of private purposes. following the invention of the stock-reporting instrument there were several adaptations made of the printing telegraph for private-line purposes. among others the writer invented one known as "gray's automatic printer," a cut and a description of which may be found on page 684 in "electricity and electric telegraph," by george b. prescott, published in 1877. this instrument was adopted by the gold and stock telegraph company as their standard private-line printer. it was first introduced in the year 1871, and at the time the telephone began to be used there were large numbers of these printers in operation in all of the leading cities and towns in the united states. while this has been superseded to a large extent by the telephone, there are still a few isolated cases where it is used. short lines have multiplied for all sorts of purposes, until to-day the money invested in them largely exceeds the amount invested in the regular commercial telegraphic enterprises. the invention of the telephone created such a demand for short-line service that some scheme had to be devised not only to make room for the necessary wires, but to so cheapen the instruments as to bring them within reach of the ability of the ordinary man of business. this problem has been solved (but not without many difficulties) by the inauguration of what is known as the "central station." by this system one party simply controls a single wire from his office or residence to the central station; here he can have his line connected with any other wire running into this same station, by calling the central operator and asking for the required number. it is useless to tell the public that very often this number is "busy," and here is the great drawback to the central-station system. this is especially true in large cities, where there are a great number of lines. the switchboards in large cities are necessarily very complicated affairs, and it requires a number of operators to answer the many calls that are constantly coming in. each central-station operator presides over a certain section of the board, and as this section has to be related in a certain way to every other section, it is easy to see wherein arises the complication. in large cities the central stations themselves have to be divided and located in different districts, being connected by a system of trunk lines. chapter xix. the telautograph. so far we have described several methods of electrical communication at a distance, including the reading of letters and symbols at sight (as by the dial-telegraph and the morse code embossed on a strip of paper); printed messages and messages received by means of arbitrary sounds, and culminating in the most wonderful of all, the electrical transmission of articulate speech. none of these systems, however, are able to transmit a message that completely identifies the sender without confirmation in the form of an autograph letter by mail. in 1893 there was exhibited in the electrical building at the world's fair an instrument invented by the writer called the telautograph. as the word implies, it is a system by which a man's own handwriting may be transmitted to a distance through a wire and reproduced in facsimile at the receiving-end. this instrument has been so often described in the public prints that we will not attempt to do it here, for the reason that it would be impossible without elaborate drawings and specifications. it is unnecessary to state that it differs in a fundamental way from other facsimile systems of telegraphy. suffice it to say that as one writes his message in one city another pen in another city follows the transmitting-pen with perfect synchronism; it is as though a man were writing with a pen with two points widely separated, both moving at the same time and both making exactly the same motions. by this system a man may transact business with the same accuracy as by the united states mail, and with the same celerity as by the electric telegraph. a broker may buy or sell with his own signature attached to the order, and do it as quickly as he could by any other method of telegraphing, and with absolute accuracy, secrecy and perfect identification. in 1893, when this apparatus was first publicly exhibited, it operated by means of four wires between stations, and while the work it did was faultless, the use of four wires made it too expensive and too cumbersome for commercial purposes; so during all the years since then the endeavor has been to reduce the number of wires to two, when it would stand on an equality with the telephone in this respect. it is only lately that this improvement has been satisfactorily accomplished, and, for reasons above stated, no serious attempt has been made to introduce it as yet; but it has been used for a long enough time to demonstrate its practicability and commercial value. companies have been organized both in europe and america for the purpose of putting the telautograph into commercial use. by means of a switch located in each subscriber's office the wires may be switched from a telephone to a telautograph, or vice versa, in a moment of time. by this arrangement a man may do all the preliminary work of a business transaction through the telephone, and when he is ready to put it into black and white switch in the telautograph and write it down. for ordinary exchange work this is undoubtedly the true way to use the telautograph, because one system of wires and one central-station system will answer for both modes of communication, and in this way an enormous saving can be made to the public. there is no question in the mind of any one who is familiar with the operation of both the telephone and telautograph but that some day they will both be used, either in the same or separate systems, as they each have distinctly separate fields of usefulness,--the telephone for desultory conversation, the telautograph for accurate business transactions. the question may arise in the minds of experts how the two systems can be worked in the same set of cables, and this leads us to discuss the phenomena of induction. every one who has listened at a telephone has heard a jumble of noises more or less pronounced, which is the effect of the working of other wires in proximity to those of the telephone. if, when a morse telegraph instrument is in operation on one of a number of wires strung on the same poles, we should insert a telephone in any one of the wires that were strung on the same poles or on another set of poles even across the street, we could hear the working of this morse wire in the telephone, more or less pronounced, according to the distance the wire is from the morse circuit. this phenomenon is the result of induction, caused by magnetic ether-waves that are set up whenever a circuit is broken and closed, as explained in chapter vi. the telephone is perhaps the most sensitive of all instruments, and will detect electrical disturbances that are too feeble to be felt on almost any other instrument, hence the telephone is preyed upon by every other system of electrical transmission, and for this reason has to adopt means of self-protection. it has been found that the surest way to prevent interference in the telephone from neighboring wires is to use what is called a metallic circuit--that is to say, instead of running a single wire from point to point and grounding at each end, as in ordinary telegraph systems, the telephone circuit is completed by using a second wire instead of the earth. as a complete defense against the effects of induced currents the wires should be exactly alike as to cross-section (or size) and resistance. they should be insulated and laid together with a slight twist. this latter is to cause the two wires so twisted to average always the same distance from any contiguous wire. one factor in determining the intensity of an induced current is the distance the wire in which it flows is from the source of induction. a telephone put in circuit at the end of the two wires that are thus laid together will be practically free from the effects of induced currents that are set up by the working of contiguous wires--for this reason: whenever a current is induced in one of the slack-twisted wires it is induced in both alike; the two impulses being of the same polarity meet in the telephone, where they kill each other. in order to have a perfect result we must have perfect conditions, which are never attained absolutely, but nearly enough for all practical purposes. in the early days of telephony great difficulty was experienced in using a single wire grounded at each end in the ordinary way, if it ran near other wires that were in active use. as time passed on and the electric light and electric railroad came into operation these difficulties were immensely increased, till now in large cities the telephone companies are fast being driven to the double-wire system, which will soon become universal for telephonic purposes the world over, except perhaps in a few country places where there is freedom from other systems of electrical transmission. to successfully work the telephone and telautograph through the same cables, these protective devices against induction must be very carefully provided and maintained. chapter xx. some curiosities. until within recent years it was never supposed that a sunbeam would ever laugh except in poetry. but the modern scientist has taken it out of the realm of poetry and put it into the prosy play of every-day life. the radiophone, invented by a. g. bell, is an instrument by which articulate or other sounds are transmitted through the medium of a ray of light. it has as yet no practical application and has never gone beyond the experimental stage, but as a bit of scientific information it is very interesting. if we introduce into an electric circuit a piece of selenium, prepared in a certain way, its resistance as an electric conductor undergoes a radical change when a beam of sunlight is thrown upon it. for instance, a selenium cell, so called, that in the dark would measure 300 ohms resistance, would have only about 150 ohms when exposed to sunlight. this amount of variation in a short circuit of low resistance would produce a considerable change in the strength of a current passing through it from a battery of a given voltage. if now we connect a selenium cell to one pole of a battery, and thence through a telephone and back to the other pole, we have completed an electric circuit, of which the selenium cell is a part, and any variation of resistance in this cell, if made suddenly, will be heard in the telephone. let the diaphragm of a telephone transmitter have a very light, thin mirror on one side of it, and a beam of sunlight be thrown upon it and reflected from that on to the selenium cell, which may be some distance away. then, if the diaphragm is thrown into vibration by an articulate word or other sound, the light-ray is also thrown into vibration, which causes a vibratory change of resistance in the selenium cell in sympathy with the light-vibrations; and this in turn throws the electric current into a sympathetic vibratory state which is heard in the telephone. so that if a person laughs or talks or sings to the diaphragm, the sunbeam laughs, talks and sings and tells its story to the electric current, which impresses itself upon the telephone as audible sounds--articulate or otherwise. instead of the telephone, battery and selenium cell, a block of vulcanite or certain other substances may be used as a receiver; as a light-ray thrown into vibration has the power to produce sound or sympathetic vibration in certain substances. another curious application of the selenium cell has been attempted, but has scarcely gone beyond the domain of theory. this apparatus, if perfected, might be called a telephote. it is an apparatus by which an illuminated picture at one end of a line of many wires is reproduced upon a screen at the other end. the light is not actually transmitted, but only its effects. suppose a picture is laid off into small squares and there is a selenium cell corresponding to each square and for each selenium cell there is a wire that runs to a distant station in which circuit there is a battery. at the distant station there are little shutters, one for each wire, that are controlled by the electric current and so adjusted that when the cell at the transmitting-end is in the dark the shutter will be closed. now if a strong light be thrown upon the picture at the transmitting-end, and each square of the picture reflects the light upon its corresponding selenium cell, the high lights of the picture will reflect stronger light than the shadows, and therefore the wires corresponding to the high-light squares will have a stronger current of electricity flowing through them, because the resistance of the circuit is less than the ones connected with the darker shadows. so that the degree of current-strength in the various wires will correspond to the intensity of light reflected by the different sections of the picture. the shutters are so adjusted that the amount of opening depends upon the strength of current. the shutters corresponding to the high lights of the picture will open the widest and throw the strongest light upon the screen, from a source of light that is placed behind the shutters. the shutters that open the least will be those that are operated upon by the shadows of the picture. inasmuch as a picture thrown on a screen from a source of light is wholly made up of lights and shadows, the theory is that this apparatus perfectly constructed would transmit any picture to a distance, through telegraph-wires. it must not be understood that the rays of light are transmitted through the wires as sound-vibrations are. light, per se, can be transmitted only through the luminiferous ether, as we have seen in the chapter on light in volume ii. while we are talking about these curious methods of telegraphic transmission, i wish to refer to an apparatus constructed by the writer in 1874-5, for the purpose of receiving musical tones or compositions transmitted from a distance through a wire by electricity. (a cut of this apparatus is shown on page 875 of "electricity and electric telegraph," by prescott, issued in 1877.) it consists of a disk of metal rotated by a crank mounted on a suitable stand. the electric circuit passes through the disk to the hand of the operator in contact with it, thence running through the line-wire to the distant station. now, if a tune is played at that station, upon an electrical key-board, as described in a previous chapter, and the disk rotated with the fingers in contact with it, the tune or other sounds will be reproduced at the ends of the fingers. after the telephone was invented and put into use i used this revolving disk as a receiver for speech as well as music, and by this means persons may carry on an oral conversation through the ends of their fingers. this apparatus has been confounded in the minds of some people with edison's electromotograph. the phenomena of the electromotograph were produced by chemical effects, while that of the apparatus just described is electrostatic in its action. the electrostatic disk was made in the winter of 1873-4, while edison's electrochemical discovery was made some time later. chapter xxi. wireless telegraphy. broadly speaking, "wireless telegraphy" is any method of transmitting intelligible signals to a distance without wires; and this includes the old semaphore systems of visual signals, such as flags and long arms of wood by day, and lights by night; also the heliograph (an apparatus for flashing sunlight), and sound signals, made either through the air or water. electrical conduction, either through rarefied air or the earth, also comes under this heading. the name "wireless telegraphy," however, is specifically applied to a system of signaling by means of ether-waves induced by electrical discharges of very high voltage. ether-waves of a greater or less degree are always set up whenever there are sudden electrical disturbances, however slight. ether-waves, electrically induced, are probably as old as the universe. when "there were thunders and lightnings" from the cloud that hovered over mount sinai in the time of moses, ether-waves of great power were sent out through the camp of israel. but the people of those days had no "coherer" or telephone or any other means of converting these waves into visual or audible signals. thousands of years had to elapse before the intellect of man could grasp the meaning of these natural phenomena sufficiently to harness them and make them subservient to his will. many people have been powerfully "shocked"--some even killed--by the impact of ether-waves set up by powerful discharges of lightning between the clouds and the earth--when they were not in the direct path of the lightning-stroke. the history of electro-wireless telegraphy, like that of all inventions, is one of successive stages, and all the work was not done by one man. the one who gets the most credit is usually the one who puts on the finishing touches and brings it out before the public. he may have done much toward its development or he may have done but little. in the year 1842 morse transmitted a battery current through the water of a canal eighty feet wide so as to affect a galvanometer on the opposite side from the battery. this was wireless telegraphy by _conduction_ through water. in 1835 joseph henry produced an effect on a galvanometer by ether-waves through a distance of twenty feet by an arrangement of batteries and circuits like that shown in fig. 1, chapter vi. this was called _induction_, and is still so called when electrical effects are produced from one wire to another through the ether for short distances. all induction-coils and transformers (see chapter xxiv) are operated by effects produced through the ether from the primary to the secondary coil--but through very short distances. in 1880 professor trowbridge transmitted an electrical current through the earth for one mile so as to produce signals in a telephone. in 1881-2 professor dolbear used for a short distance (fifty feet) substantially the same arrangement as marconi now uses, except that the former used a telephone as a receiver. he used an induction-coil having one end of the secondary wire connected with the earth, while the other was attached to a wire running up into the air. at the receiving-end a wire starting from the earth extended into the air, passing through a telephone, which acted as a receiver. in 1886 he used a kite to elevate the wire, through which electrical discharges of high voltage were made into the air to produce ether-waves--the receiver being 2000 feet away. dolbear's experiments were public fourteen years ago, but at that time there was no interest in such matters, so that his work received little or no attention. in 1887 dr. hertz of germany made some experiments in producing and detecting ether-waves, and he did a great deal to awaken an interest in the subject, so that others began investigations that have led to its present use as a means of telegraphing to a distance of many miles. in 1891 professor branly of paris invented the coherer. in 1894 it was improved by lodge and by him used as a detector of ether-waves. in 1896, ten years after dolbear had used it with the kite at the transmitting-end and telephone at the receiving-end, marconi, an italian, substituted the coherer of branly for the telephone of dolbear. this coherer is constructed and operated as follows: it consists of a glass tube, of comparatively small diameter, loosely filled with metal filings of a certain grade. this body of metal-dust is made a part of a local battery circuit in which is placed an ordinary electric bell or telegraphic sounder. the resistance of this body of filings is so great that current enough will not pass through it to ring the bell or actuate the sounder until an ether-wave strikes it and the wire attached to it, when the metal particles are made to cohere to such an extent that the conductivity of the mass is greatly increased; so that a current of sufficient volume will now pass through the bell-magnet to ring it. before the next signal comes the filings must be made to de-cohere; and to accomplish this a little "tapper," that works automatically between the signals, strikes the glass tube with a succession of light blows. briefly stated, the wireless system of marconi, in its essentials, consists of a powerful induction-coil with one end of the secondary wire connected with the earth, while the other extends into the air a greater or less distance according to the distance it is desired to send signals. the greater the distance the higher the wire should extend into the air. at the receiving-end a wire of corresponding height is erected, also connected with the earth. in this wire--as a part of its circuit--is placed the coherer. in a local circuit that is connected to the upright wire in parallel with the coherer is placed a battery, a sounder, or a bell, that is rung when the filings cohere. when an ether-wave is set up by a discharge of electricity into the air it strikes the perpendicular wire of the receiver, and that portion of the wave that strikes is converted into electricity, which is called an induced current. it is this current, as it discharges through the coherer to the earth, that causes the filings to unite so as to close the local circuit and operate the sounder. to send a message it is only necessary to make the discharges into the air, at the sending-end, correspond to the morse alphabet. while marconi has done more than any other man to improve and popularize wireless telegraphy, history shows that he invented none of the essential elements so far as the system has been made public. what he seems to have really done was to substitute the coherer of branly and lodge, with its adjuncts, for the telephone of dolbear. there is no doubt but that marconi has done much to improve and enlarge the capacity of the apparatus and to demonstrate to the world some of its possibilities. he has been an indefatigable worker and deserves great credit; but without the work of those who preceded him he could not have succeeded: the honors should be divided. this system has been used at various times for reporting yacht-races, and between ships. it is said also to have been used to some extent in the south african war. there is much to be done yet, however, before it can be made entirely reliable for defensive work in time of war. as it is now, all an enemy would have to do to destroy its usefulness would be to set an ether-wave-producer to work automatically anywhere within the "sphere of influence" of the system--to speak diplomatically--when it would render unintelligible any message that should be sent. to make the system of the greatest value some sort of selective receiver must be invented that will select signals sent from a transmitter that is designed to work with it. there is no doubt but that wireless telegraphy will some time play an important part in many spheres of usefulness. there is another mode (already referred to) for transmitting signals electrically without wires through the earth instead of through the air, but in this case it is not through the medium of induction, but conduction. it has been explained in former chapters that earth-currents are constantly flowing from one point to another where the potentials are unequal. sometimes these inequalities of potential are caused by heat and sometimes by electricity, as in the case of a thunder-storm. if a cloud is heavily charged with positive electricity, say, the earth underneath will have an equal charge of negative electricity. let us illustrate it by the tides. as the moon passes over the ocean it attracts the water toward it and tends to pile up, as it were, at the nearest point between the earth and the moon. suppose that (while the water is thus piled up at a point under the moon) we could suddenly suspend the attraction between the earth and the moon--the water would begin immediately to flow off by the force of gravitation until it had found a common level. suppose in the place of the moon we have a cloud containing a static charge of positive electricity--it attracts a negative charge to a point on the earth nearest the cloud. if now a discharge takes place between the earth and cloud the potential between the two will suddenly become equalized and the static charge that was accumulated in the earth is released and it dissipates in every direction, seeking an equilibrium, following the analogy of the water; the difference being that in one case the movement is very slow, while in the other it is as "quick as lightning." about eighteen years ago i had a short telephone-line between my house and that of one of my neighbors. this line was equipped with what was known in those days as magneto-transmitters, such as we have described in a previous chapter on the subject of telephony. when a line is equipped in this way no batteries are needed, as the voice generates the current, on the principle employed in the dynamo-electric machine. often on summer evenings, when the sky appears to be cloudless, we can see faint flashes of lightning on the horizon, an appearance which is commonly called "heat-lightning." as a matter of fact, i do not suppose there is any such thing as heat-lightning, but what we see is the effect of very distant storm-clouds. often at such times i have held the telephone receiver to my ear and could hear simultaneously with each flash a slight sound in the telephone. this effect could be produced in the earth by a simple discharge between two or more clouds, which would distribute the electrical discharge over a greater area. and because my line had connection with the earth it could have been disturbed electrically by conduction instead of induction; or it may have been the effect of ether-waves set up by the lightning discharges. there is no doubt in my mind but that both of these effects (ether-waves and conduction through earth) may be felt when a discharge takes place between a cloud and the earth. if we could, by operating an ordinary telegraphic key, cause the lightning to discharge from cloud to earth, and some one was listening at a telephone in a circuit that was grounded at both ends 100 miles or more distant from the cloud, the man who controlled the discharges by the key could transmit the morse code through the earth to the man who was listening at the telephone. thousands of people might be listening at telephones in every direction from the transmitting-station, and they would all get the same message. if the receiving-station is near to the point where there is a heavy discharge from the clouds to the earth the earth-current is very strong--flowing out in every direction. for some years i had an underground line between my house and laboratory, and no part of the line between the two stations was above ground. many and many times during the prevalence of a thunder-storm have the telephone-bells been made to ring at both ends of the line by a discharge from the cloud to the earth, and in some cases the discharge was several miles away. the wires could not have been affected so powerfully in any other way than through the earth. it will be seen by the foregoing statements that it is possible to transmit messages through the earth for long distances, but the difficulty in the way of its becoming a general system is twofold. first, we cannot always have a thunder-cloud at hand from which to transmit our signals, and, secondly, the signals would be received alike at every station simultaneously. chapter xxii. niagara falls power--introduction. as our readers know, niagara falls is situated upon the niagara river, which is the connecting-link between lake erie and lake ontario. the surface of lake erie lies 330 feet above that of lake ontario. the high level upon which lake erie is situated abruptly terminates at queenstown, which is near the point where the niagara river empties into lake ontario. from lake erie to the falls the level of the river is gradually lowered a little less than 100 feet, and most of this (making "the rapids") occurs in the last mile above the point where it takes a perpendicular plunge of 165 feet into a narrow gorge extending for seven miles, through which the river runs, gradually falling also 100 feet in that distance. the river above the falls is broad, varying from one to three miles in width, but below that point it is suddenly narrowed up to a distance of from 200 to 400 yards. it is supposed that at one time the fall was situated at the bluff overlooking queenstown, near lake ontario, and at that time was very much higher than it is at present. through long ages of time the water has gradually eaten away the rock, thus forming the gorge. it is estimated by different geologists that the time required to wear away the rock back to the present position of the fall has required from 15,000 to 35,000 years. some authorities place the rate of wear at three feet per annum and others not more than one. it is well known, however, that this erosion is constantly going on, and if nothing is done to check it the time will come when the gorge will extend up to lake erie and drain it, practically, to the bottom. this is a matter, however, that the people of this and those of several succeeding generations need not worry about. in the early days, before the country was settled and the banks of the river were lined with trees, and no houses, hotels or horse-cars were to be seen; when the puffing of the locomotive was not heard echoing from shore to shore; when no bridges spanned the river to mar its beauty, and when nature was the only architect and beautifier, niagara falls must have been one of the most attractive spots on the earth; at least it is the place of all places where the mighty energies of nature are gathered together in one grand exhibition of sublime power. here for ages this same grand exhibition had been going on, and although there was no human eye to see it, those of us who believe that nature is not a thing of chance, but that it was planned by an intelligence infinitely superior to that of any man, can easily imagine that the great architect and beautifier of this same nature, not only plans but enjoys the work of his own hand. why not? for ages the same sun, in his daily round, has reflected that beautifully colored rainbow, here the product of sunshine and mist. the same water, through these successive ages, has been lifted to the clouds by the power of the sun's rays, and has been carried back to the fountain-heads on the wings of the wind, and there has been condensed into raindrops, that have fallen on land, lake and river, and in turn has been carried over this same waterfall in its onward course toward the sea, only again to be caught up into the clouds; and thus through an eternal round it has been kept moving by that mighty engine of nature, the sun. it is said that "the mill will never grind with the water that has passed." this is true only in poetry. as a matter of fact, "the water that has passed" may often return to help the mill to grind again. water-powers have been utilized in a small way for many years for the purpose of generating electricity through the medium of the dynamo, but nowhere in the world has the application of the force been made for this purpose on such a grand scale as at niagara falls. when one stands on the bank of the river and sees the great waterfall as it plunges over the precipice, exerting a force of from five to ten million horse-power, one is overwhelmed in contemplation of its possibilities as a source of energy that may be converted into work, mechanical and chemical, through the medium of electricity. the genius of man has devised a way by which some of this constantly wasting energy may be converted into electricity and distributed to different points to perform various kinds of work. but the amount utilized as yet is scarcely a drop when compared with that which might be if the whole torrent could be set to work in the same manner as a very small portion of it now is. chapter xxiii. niagara falls power--appliances. some years ago a company was formed for the purpose of utilizing, to some extent, this greatest of all water-powers. a tunnel of large capacity was run from a point a short distance below the falls on a level a little above the river at that point. the general direction of this tunnel is up the river; it is about a mile and one-half in length, terminating at a point near the bank of the river a mile or more above the falls. above the end of this tunnel an upright pit comes to the surface, where a power-house of large dimensions has been constructed of solid masonry. it is long enough at present to contain ten dynamos of mammoth size. along the side of this power-house a deep broad canal is cut, which communicates with the river at that point, and through which flows the water that is to furnish the power. of course the water level of this canal is the same as that of the river. the foundations of the power-house extend to the bottom of the tunnel, which at that point is 180 feet below the surface of the ground. to put it in other words, the cellar or pit under the power-house is 180 feet deep and communicates with the great tunnel, which has its outlet below the falls. each of the ten dynamos is driven by a turbine water-wheel situated near the bottom of the pit heretofore described. the turbine-wheel is on the lower end of a continuous shaft, which reaches from a point near the bottom of the tunnel to a point ten or fifteen feet above the floor of the power-house (which is about on a level with the surface of the ground). this shaft is incased in a water-tight cylinder of such diameter as will admit a sufficient amount of water, and connects with the turbine wheel at the bottom in the ordinary way. the water is admitted into the top of this cylinder from the canal, so that the wheel is under the pressure of a falling column of water over 140 feet high. the water, forcing its way out at the bottom through the turbine, revolves it and its long, upward-reaching shaft with great power, and enables it to work the dynamos in the power-house above, as will be described. the water discharges through the wheel in such a manner as to lift the whole shaft, thus taking away the tremendous end-thrust downward that would otherwise interfere greatly with the running of the machine through friction. after the water has done its work it flows off through the tunnel into the river below the falls. to the upper end of the power-shaft is attached a great revolving umbrella-shaped hood; to the periphery (circumference) of this hood is attached a forged steel ring, 5 inches in thickness, about 12 feet in diameter and from 4 to 5 feet in width. the whole of the revolving portion--including the ring upon which are mounted the field-magnets, the hood, and the shaft running to the bottom of the pit, where the turbine wheel is attached--weighs about thirty-five tons. the dynamos belong to the alternating type, and are comparatively simple in construction. in a previous chapter upon the dynamo it was stated that the fundamental feature was the relation that the field-magnet and the armature sustained to each other, and that in some cases the field-magnet revolves while the part that is technically called the armature remains stationary. in other cases the armature revolves and the field-magnets are stationary. in the latter case brushes and commutators are used, to catch and transfer the generated electricity, while in the former these are not needed, which simplifies the construction of the machine. as we have stated, the dynamos used at niagara are constructed with revolving field-magnets that are bolted on to the inner surface of the steel ring that is carried by the hood, so that there are no brushes connected with the machine except the small ones used to carry the current to the field-magnets. the current for power purposes is generated in a large stationary armature about ten feet in diameter and of the same depth as the revolving ring. the revolutions of the ring send out currents of alternating polarity, and each of the ten machines will furnish electrical energy equal to 5000 horse-power, so that when the work that is now under way is completed 50,000 horse-power can be furnished in the form of electricity. about 35,000 horse-power is now actually delivered to the various industrial enterprises. the dynamos are set horizontally, since the shaft which connects them with the turbine wheel stands in a perpendicular position. not all of the energy that is developed by the water-wheel is converted into electricity, but some of it appears as heat. in order to prevent the heat from becoming so great as to be dangerous to the machine it must be constructed in such a way as to admit of sufficient ventilation for cooling purposes. the armature is so constructed that there are air-passages running all through it, and on top of the revolving hood are two bonnet-shaped air-tubes set in such a way as to force the air down through the armature, which carries off the heat and warms the power-house, on the principle of a hot-air furnace. this great machine--which, in a way, is so simple in its construction--when in action conveys to the mind of the beholder a sense of wonderful power. it is only when we stand in the presence of such exhibitions as may be seen in this power-house, devised and executed by the genius of man, and in that greater presence, the mighty falls of niagara, that we get something of a conception of the power of the silent yet potent energy of the great king of daylight, the sun. there are very many interesting details that work in connection with this great power-plant, some of which we will describe, in a general way. standing within a few feet of each one of the great dynamos is a very beautifully constructed piece of machinery called the governor. the governor regulates the speed of the dynamos by partially opening and closing the water-gates that regulate the flow of water into the turbines. the question may be asked, why is there any regulation needed, if there is always an even head of water? there are two reasons--one because the load on the dynamo is constantly changing, and another that the head of water changes, although this latter fluctuation is in long periods. if the circuit leading out from the dynamo is broken, the rotating part of the dynamo will move with great ease and little power, as compared with what is required when the circuit is closed, and the current is going out and doing work. the increased amount of energy that will be required to keep the dynamo moving at a certain rate of speed when the load is on--in other words, when the circuit is closed--will depend upon the amount of current that is going out from the dynamo to perform work at other points. as the amount of current used outside for the various purposes is constantly changing, it follows that the load on the dynamo is constantly changing also. as the load changes, the speed will change, unless the amount of water that is flowing into the turbine is changed in a like proportion; hence the necessity for a governor that will perform this work. you can easily imagine that it will require a great amount of power to move the gate up or down with such a pressure of water behind it. it is not possible here to explain the operation of the governor in detail, as that could not be done without elaborate drawings; suffice it to say that the whole thing is controlled by a small ball governor such as we see used in ordinary steam-engines for regulating steam-pressure. the rising or falling of the balls of this governor to only a very slight extent will bring into action a power that is driven by the turbine itself, which is able to move the water-gate in either direction according as the balls rise or fall. for instance, if the balls rise beyond their normal position, it shows that the dynamo is increasing in speed, and immediately machinery is brought into action that shuts the water off in a small degree, just enough to bring the speed back to normal. if the balls drop to any extent, it shows that the load is too great for the amount of water, and that the dynamo is decreasing in speed; immediately the power is brought into action, now in the opposite direction, and the water-gate is opened wider. these slight variations of speed are constantly going on, and the constant opening and closing of the gate follows with them. it is a beautiful piece of machinery, and is beautifully adapted to the work it has to perform. it is continually standing guard over this greater piece of machinery that is exerting an energy of 5000 horse-power and prevents it from going wrong, both in doing "that which it should not do and leaving undone that which it should do." it is a machine that, when in action, points a moral to every thinking person who beholds it. every man has such a governor if he only has the inclination to use it. i have said further back that the water-head varies, but usually at long periods. this variation is chiefly caused by changes of wind, and it is very much greater than one would suppose without studying the causes. lake erie lies in an easterly and westerly direction, and when the wind blows constantly for a time from the west, with considerable force, the water piles up at the eastern end of the lake, which causes the level of the niagara river to rise to a very sensible extent. it is not so noticeable above the falls as below, because of the great difference in the width of the river at these two points. sometimes the river below the falls, as it flows through the narrow gorge, will vary in height from twenty to forty feet. when the wind stops blowing from the west and suddenly changes and blows from the east, it carries the water of the lake away from the east toward the west end, which will produce a corresponding depression in the niagara river. no doubt there is an effect produced by the difference of annual rainfall, but the effect from this cause is not so marked as that from the changing winds. another appliance used in the power-house, chiefly for handling heavy loads and transferring them from one point to another, is called the electric crane. it is mounted upon tracks located on each side of the power-house. the crane spans the whole distance, and runs on this track by means of trucks from one end of the power-house to the other. running across this crane is another track which carries the lifting-machinery, consisting of block and tackle, able to sustain a weight of fifty tons. situated at one end of the crane are one or more electric motors, which are able, under the control of the engineer, to produce a motion in any direction, which is the resultant of a compound motion of the two cars acting crosswise to each other together with the perpendicular motion of the lifting-rope connected with the block and tackle. it seems like a thing endowed with human reason, when we see it move off to a distant part of the building, reach down and pick up a piece of metal weighing several tons, carry it to some other portion of the building and lower it into place, to the fraction of an inch. while the machine itself does not reason, there is a reasoning being at the helm, who controls it and makes it subservient to his will. the machine is to the engineer who manipulates it what a man's brain is to the man himself. the brain is the instrument through which the unseen man expresses his will and impresses his work upon men and things in the visible world. chapter xxiv. niagara falls power--appliances. in the last chapter i described some of the appliances used in connection with the power-house. there are many things that are commonplace as electrical appliances when used with currents of low voltage and small quantity, that become extremely interesting when constructed for the purpose of handling such currents as are developed by the dynamos used at niagara. for instance, it is a very commonplace and simple thing to break and close a circuit carrying such a current as is used for ordinary telegraphic purposes, but it requires quite a complicated and scientifically constructed device to handle currents of large volume and great pressure. if such a current as is generated by a dynamo giving out 5000 horse-power under a pressure of 2200 volts should be broken at a single point in a conductor, there would be a flash and a report, attended with such a degree of heat and such power for disintegration that it would destroy the instrument. the circuit-breakers used at niagara are constructed with a very large number of contacts made of metal sleeves, or tubes, say one inch in diameter, so constructed that one will slide within the other; the sleeves being slotted so as to give them a little spring that secures a firm contact. these are all connected together electrically, on each half of the switch, as one conductor, so that when the switch is closed the current is divided into as many parts as there are points of contact in the switch. suppose there are 100 of these contact-points, a one-hundredth part of the current would be flowing through each one of them. if, now, these points are so arranged that they can be all simultaneously separated, the spark that will occur at each break will be very small as compared with what it would be if the whole current were flowing through a single point, and it would be so small that there would be no danger attending the opening of the switch. these switches are carefully guarded, being boxed in and under the control of a single individual. there is another apparatus that is a necessary part of every manufacturing or other kind of plant that uses electricity from this power-house, and this is called the transformer. many of you are familiar with the box-shaped apparatus that is used in connection with electric lighting when the alternating current is used. where simply heating effects are required, such as in electric lighting, for instance, the alternating current can be used to greater advantage than the direct current when it has to be carried to some distance, owing to the fact that it may be a current of high voltage. a greater amount can be carried through a small conductor; thus greatly reducing the cost of an electrical plant that distributes power to a distance. a transformer is an apparatus that changes the current from one voltage to another. in the ordinary electric-light plant, such as is used in a small town or village, the current that is sent out from the power-station has a pressure of from 1000 to 1500 volts, according to the distance to which it is sent. it would not do, however, for the current to enter a dwelling at this high pressure, because it is dangerous to handle, and the liability to fires originating from the current would be greatly increased. at some point, therefore, outside of the building, and not a great distance from it, a transformer is inserted which changes the voltage, say, from 1000 down to 50 or 100, according to the kind of lamps used. some lamps are constructed to be used with a current of fifty volts and others for 100 or more. the lamp must always be adapted to the current or the current to the lamp, as you choose. the human body may be placed in a circuit where such low voltage is used without danger, but it would be exceedingly dangerous to be put in contact with a pressure of 1000 or more volts, such as is used for lighting purposes. in principle the transformer is nothing more or less than an induction-coil on a very large scale. the ordinary induction-coil, such as is used for medical purposes, is ordinarily constructed by winding a coarse wire around an iron core. this core is usually made of a bundle of soft iron wires, because the wires more readily magnetize and demagnetize than a solid iron core would. around this coil of coarse wire, which we call the primary coil, is wound a secondary coil of finer wire. if now a battery is connected with the primary coil, which is made of the coarse wire, and the circuit is interrupted by some sort of mechanical circuit-breaker, each time the primary or battery circuit is opened there will be a momentary impulse in the secondary circuit of a much higher voltage; and at the moment the primary circuit is closed there will be another impulse in this secondary circuit in the opposite direction. the latter impulse is called the initial and the former the terminal impulse. a current created in this manner is called an _induced_ current. the initial current is not so strong as the terminal in this particular arrangement. if we should take hold of the two wires connected with the two poles of the battery and bring them together so as to close the circuit, and then separate them so as to break it we should scarcely feel any sensation--if there were only one or two cells, such as are ordinarily used with such coils. but if we connect these wires to the coils of the induction apparatus and then take hold of the two ends of the secondary coil and break and close the primary circuit we should feel a painful shock at each break and close, although the actual amount of current flowing through the secondary wire is not as great as that which flows through the primary; but the voltage (or electromotive force) is higher, and thus is able to drive what current there is through a conductor of higher resistance, such as the human body. for this reason there is more current forced through the body, which is a poor conductor, than can be by a direct battery current which has a lower voltage. if now we should take a battery of a number of cells, so as to get a voltage equal to that given off by the secondary coil, and connect it with the fine-wire coil instead of the coarse-wire coil--thus making what was before the secondary coil the primary--by breaking and closing the battery circuit as before we shall get a secondary or induced current in the coarse-wire coil, but it will be a current of low voltage, and will not produce the painful sensation that the secondary coil did. we have now described the principle of a transformer as it is worked out in an ordinary induction-coil. as has been stated, at niagara falls the current comes from the dynamos with an electromotive force or pressure of 2200 volts. for some purposes this voltage is not high enough, and for other purposes it is too high; therefore it has to be transformed before it is used! for some purposes this transformation takes place in the power-house, and for others it takes place at the establishment where it is used. for instance, take the current that is sent to buffalo, a distance of from twenty to thirty miles. the current first runs to a transformer connected with the power-house, where it is "stepped-up" (to use the parlance of the craft) from a voltage of 2200 to 10,000. it is carried to buffalo through wire conductors that are strung on poles, and is there "stepped-down" again through another transformer to the voltage required for use at that place. the object of raising the voltage from 2200 to 10,000 in this case is to save money in the construction of the line of conductors between the two points. if the voltage were left at 2200--the conductors remaining the same as they are now--the loss in transmission would be very great, owing to the resistance which these wires would offer to a current of such comparatively low voltage as 2200. to overcome this difficulty--if the voltage is not increased--it would be necessary to use conductors that are very much larger in cross-section (thicker) than the present ones are. and as these conductors are made of copper the expense would be too great to admit of any profit to the company. if we go back to an illustration we used in one of the early chapters on electricity we can better explain what takes place by increasing the voltage. if we have a column of water kept at a level say of ten feet above a hole where it discharges, that is one inch in diameter, a certain definite amount of water will discharge there each minute. if now we substitute for the hole that is one inch in diameter one that is only one-half inch in diameter a very much smaller amount of water will discharge each minute, if the head is kept at the same point--namely, ten feet. but if now we raise the column of water we shall in time reach a height which will produce a pressure that will cause as much water to discharge per minute through the one-half-inch hole as before discharged through the one-inch hole with only the pressure of a ten-foot column. this is exactly what takes place when the voltage is "stepped-up," which is equivalent to an increase of pressure. it will be seen from the foregoing that these transformers have to be made with reference to the use the current is to be put to. in general shape they are alike in appearance, the difference being chiefly in the relation the primary sustains to the secondary coils. there is another kind of transformer that is used when it is necessary to have the current always running in the same direction. this transformer, as heretofore explained, does not change the voltage of the current, but simply transforms what was an alternating into a direct current. by alternating current we mean one that is made up of impulses of alternating polarity--first a positive and then a negative. the direct current is one whose impulses are all of one polarity. the direct current is required for all purposes where electrolysis (chemical decomposition by electricity, as of silver for silver-plating, etc.) is a part of the process. the alternating current may be used without transformation in all processes where heat is the chief factor. for motive power either current may be used, only the electromotors have to be constructed with reference to the kind of current that is used. the rotary transformer, which may be driven by any power, consists of a wheel carrying a rotating commutator so arranged with reference to brushes that deliver the current to the commutator and carry it away from the same, that the brushes leading out from the transformer will always have impulses of the same polarity delivered to them. in the parlance of the craft, the transformers that are used to change the voltage from high to low, or vice versa, are called "static transformers," simply because they are stationary, we suppose. the others are called rotary, or moving transformers, to distinguish them from the other forms. the operation of the latter is purely mechanical, while the former is electrical. in some instances where the static transformers are very large they develop a great amount of heat, so much that it is necessary to devise means for dissipating it as fast as created. in some instances this is done by air-currents forced through them, but in others, where they are very large, oil is kept circulating through the transformer from a tank that is elevated above it, the oil being pumped back by a rotary pump into the tank where it is cooled by a coil of pipe located in the oil, through which cold water is continually circulating. by this means cold oil is constantly flowing down through the transformer, where it absorbs the heat, which in turn is pumped back into the tank, where it is cooled. having now traced the energy from the water-wheel through the various transformations and having described in a very general way the apparatus both for generating electricity and for transforming it to the right voltage necessary for the various uses to which it is put, we will proceed in our next chapter to follow it out to the points where it is delivered, and trace it through its processes, and the part it plays in creating the products of these various commercial establishments. chapter xxv. electrical products--carborundum. the production of electricity in such enormous quantities as are generated at niagara falls has led to many discoveries and will lead to many more. products that at one time existed only in the chemical laboratory for experimental purposes, have been so cheapened by utilizing electrical energy in their manufacture, as to bring them into the play of every-day life. still other products have only been discovered since the advent of heavy electrical currents. a substance called carborundum, which was discovered as late as 1891, has now become the basis of an industry of no small importance. it is a substance not unlike a diamond in hardness, and not very unlike it in its composition. the chief use to which it is put is for grinding metals and all sorts of abrasive work. it is manufactured into wheels, in structure like the emery-wheel, and serves the same purpose. it is much more expensive than the emery-wheel, but it is claimed that it will do enough more and better work to make it fully as economical. it was my pleasure and privilege to visit the factory at niagara falls, and through the courtesy of mr. fitzgerald, the chemist in charge of the works, i learned much of the manufacture and use of carborundum. the crude materials used in the manufacture of carborundum are, sand, coke, sawdust and salt; the compound is a combination of coke and sand. it combines at a very high heat, such as can be had only from electricity. when cooled down the product forms into beautiful crystals with iridescent colors. the predominating colors are blue and green, and yet when subjected to sunlight it shows all the colors of the solar spectrum to a greater or less degree. the crystals form into hexagonal shapes, and sometimes they are quite large, from a quarter to a half inch on a side. the salt does not enter into the product as a part of the compound, neither does the sawdust. the salt acts as a flux to facilitate the union of the silica and carbon. the sawdust is put into the mixture to render it porous so that the gases that are formed by the enormous heat can readily pass off, thus preventing a dangerous explosion that might otherwise occur. in fact, these explosions have occurred, which led to the necessity of devising some means for the ready escape of the gases. the process of manufacture as it is carried on at niagara is interesting. the visitor is first taken into the rooms where are stored the crude material, the sand, coke, sawdust and salt. the sand is of the finest quality and very white. the coke is first crushed and screened, the part which is reduced to sufficient fineness is mixed by machinery with the right proportion of sand, salt and sawdust. the coarser pieces of coke are used for what is called the core of the furnace, which will be described later on. this mixture is carried to the furnace-room, which has a capacity for ten furnaces, but not all of these will be found in operation at one time. here the workmen will be taking the manufactured material from a furnace that has been completed, and there another furnace is in process of construction, while a third is under full heat, so that one sees the whole process at a glance. these furnaces are built of brick, about sixteen feet in length and about five feet in width and depth. the ends and bed of the furnace are built of brick, and might be called stationary structures. the sides are also built of brick laid up loosely without mortar; each time the material is placed in the furnace, and each time the furnace is emptied, the side-walls are taken down. a furnace is made ready for firing by placing a mass of the mixture on the bottom, and building the sides up about four feet high (or half the height when it shall be completed). a trough, about twenty or twenty-one inches wide and half as deep, is scooped out the whole length of the pulverized stuff, and in this is placed what has before been referred to as the core of the furnace, namely, pure coke broken into small pieces, but not pulverized, as in the case of the other mixture. the amount used is carefully weighed, so as to have the core the proper size that experiment has proved to give the best results. the core is filled in and rounded over till it is in circular form, being about twenty-one inches in diameter. at each end of the furnace the core connects with a number of carbon rods--about sixty in all--that are thirty inches long and three inches in diameter. these carbon rods are connected with a solid iron frame that stands flush with the outer end of the furnace. on the inside the spaces between the rods are packed full of graphite, which is simply carbon or coke with all the impurities driven out, so as to make good electrical connections with the core. this core corresponds, electrically speaking, to the filament in an ordinary incandescent lamp, only it is fourteen feet long and twenty-one inches in diameter. the mixed material is now piled up over this core, and the walls at the sides are built up until the whole structure stands about eight feet from the floor--a mass of the fine pulverized mixture, with a core of broken coke electrically connected at the ends. it is now ready for the application of electricity, which completes the work. let us go back to the transformer-room and examine the electrical appliances that bring the current down to a proper voltage to produce the heat necessary to cause a union between the silica of the sand and the carbon of the coke, which results in the beautiful carborundum crystals that we have heretofore described. the current is delivered from the niagara power company under a pressure of 2200 volts. the conductors run first into the transformer-room, which adjoins the furnace-room, and is there transformed down from 2200 volts to an average of about 200 volts. the transformers at these works have a capacity of about 1100 horse-power. about 4 per cent of this power is converted into heat in the process of transformation, making a loss in electrical energy of a little over 40 horse-power. this heat would be sufficient to destroy the transformer if some arrangement were not provided to carry it off. we have already described how this is done through the medium of a circulation of oil. because of the low voltage and enormous quantity of the current passing from the transformer to the furnace very large conductors are required. the two conductors running to the furnace have a cross-section of eight square inches, and this enormous current, representing over 1000 horse-power, is passed through the core of the furnace, and is kept running through it constantly for a period of twenty-four to thirty-six hours. let us consider for a moment what 1000 horse-power means; as this will give us some conception of the enormous energy expended in producing carborundum. a horse-power is supposed to be the force that one horse can exert in pulling a load, and this is the unit of power. however, a horse-power as arbitrarily fixed is about one-quarter greater than the average real horse-power. if 1000 horses were hitched up in series, one in front of the other, and each horse should occupy the space of twelve feet, say, it would make a line of horses 12,000 feet long, which would be something over two miles. imagine the load that a string of horses two miles long could draw, if all were pulling together, and you will get something of an idea of the energy expended during the burning of one of these carborundum furnaces. within a half hour after the current is turned on a gas begins to be emitted from the sides and top of the furnace, and when a match is applied to it, it lights and burns with a bluish flame during the whole process. it is estimated that over five and one-half tons of this gas is thrown off during the burning of a single furnace. this gas is called carbon monoxide, and is caused by the carbon of the coke uniting with the oxygen of the sand. when we consider the vast amount of material that comes away from the furnace in the form of gas it is easy to see why it is necessary to introduce sawdust or some equivalent material into the mixture, in order to give the whole bulk porosity, so that the gas can readily escape. we should also expect that after five and one-half tons had been taken away from the whole bulk that it would shrink in size. this is found to be the case. the top of the mass of material sinks down to a considerable extent by the end of the time it has been exposed to this intense heat. gradually, after the current has been turned on, the core becomes heated, first to a red, and afterwards to an intense white heat. this heat is communicated to the material surrounding the core, producing various effects in the different strata, owing to the fact that it is not possible to keep a uniform heat throughout the whole bulk of material. some of it will be "overdone" and some of it "underdone." the material which lies immediately in contact with the core will be overheated, and that, which at one stage was carborundum, has become disintegrated by overheating. the silica of the compound has been driven off, leaving a shell of graphitic substance formed from the coke. after the current is shut off and the furnace has cooled down, a cross-section through the whole mass becomes a very interesting study. the core itself, owing to the intense heat it has been subjected to, has had the impurities driven out of the coke, leaving a substance like black lead, that will make a mark like a lead-pencil, and is really the same substance, known as plumbago, in one of its forms. it is the carbon left after the impurities have been driven out of the coke. surrounding the core for a distance of ten or twelve inches, radiating in every direction, beautifully colored crystals of carborundum are found, so that a single furnace will yield over 4000 pounds of this material. beyond this point the heat has not been great enough to cause the union between the carbon and silica, which leaves a stratum of partly-formed carborundum; outside of that the mixture is found to be unchanged. these carborundum crystals are next crushed under rollers of enormous weight, after which the crushed material is separated into various grades for use in making grinding-wheels of different degrees of fineness. this crushed material is now mixed with certain kinds of clay, to hold it together, and then pressed into wheels of various sizes in a hydraulic press, and afterward carried into kilns and burned the same as ordinary pottery or porcelain. these wheels vary in size from one to sixteen inches. the substances used as a bond in manufacturing wheels are kaolin, a kind of clay, and feldspar. while carborundum has already a large place as a commercial product, there is no doubt but that the uses to which it will be put will vastly increase as time goes on. this product may be called an artificial one, and never would have been known had it not been for the intense heating effects that are obtained from the use of electricity. it certainly never could have been brought into play as one of the useful agencies in manufacturing and the arts. it is not known to exist as a natural product, which at first thought would seem a little strange in view of the evidences of intense heat that at one time existed in the earth. its absence in nature is explained by mr. fitzgerald by the fact that "the temperatures of formation and of decomposition lie very close together." chapter xxvi. electrical products--bleaching-powder. another industry that has assumed large proportions at niagara falls, owing to the vast quantity of electricity produced there, is the manufacture of a commercial product called bleaching-powder, or chloride of lime. every one knows that chloride of sodium is simply common salt, so extensively used wherever people and animals exist. simple and harmless as it is, while it exists as a compound of the original elements, when separated into those elements they are each very unpleasant and even dangerous substances to handle. salt is one of the most common substances in nature. it is found in many parts of the world in solid beds, and is one of the prominent constituents of sea-water. salt is a compound of chlorine and a metal called sodium. sodium in its pure state has a strong affinity for oxygen, so much so that when a lump of it is thrown into water it takes fire and burns violently with a yellow flame. chlorine, the substance with which it unites to form common salt, is a greenish-colored gas, the fumes of which are very offensive and very dangerous even to breathe, if the quantity is very considerable. it is a curious fact in nature that two such substances as chlorine and sodium, both of them so difficult and dangerous to handle, should unite together to form such a useful and harmless compound as common salt. the important element in bleaching-powder is the chlorine which it contains. it is extensively used in the manufacture of paper and in all other materials where bleaching is required. the object of combining it with lime, forming a chloride of lime, is simply to have a convenient method of holding the chlorine in a safe and convenient manner until it is needed for use. the chemical works at niagara falls manufacture bleaching-powder on a very large scale. the part that electricity plays is to separate the chlorine from the sodium as it exists in common salt. at the works i was first taken into a room where a large quantity of salt was stored. a belt with little carrier-buckets on it picked up this salt and carried it into another room, where it was thrown into a vast mixing-vat containing water. the salt was mixed with water until a saturated solution was obtained. in a large room, covering one-half acre or more of ground, were assembled a great number of shallow vessels, about 4 by 5 feet square and 1 foot deep. these vessels were sealed up so that they were gas-tight. communicating with all of these vessels were pipes connecting with the great tank containing the saturated solution of salt. from the top or cover of each vessel is a pipe running to a main pipe that carries off the chlorine gas into another room as fast as it is formed. through each one of these vessels a current of electricity passes; the whole system consuming about 2000 horse-power. the electric current, as it passes through the brine, separates the chlorine from the sodium, the chlorine passing in the form of gas up through the pipes, before mentioned, into the main pipe, where it is carried into another large room and discharged into a system of gas-tight chambers. upon the floor of these chambers is spread a coating of unslacked lime ground into a fine powder. the lime has a strong affinity for the chlorine gas and rapidly absorbs it, forming chloride of lime. when the lime is fully saturated with the chlorine the gas is turned off from that chamber, which is then opened up and the chloride taken out for shipment. a new coating of lime is now spread in the chamber and the gas is turned on and the process repeated. there are a number of these chambers, so that the operation in all of its phases is going on continuously. the room where the chlorine gas is formed is thoroughly ventilated, a precaution which is very necessary in case any one of the vats should spring a leak, as they sometimes do. in each one of these vats where the electrolytic process is going on there are two products constantly passing off; one, as before mentioned, is chlorine gas, and the other caustic soda in solution. the solution in the vat is constantly being renewed by the saturated solution of salt from the reservoir before mentioned. there is one stream continuously coming into the vat and two going out, caused by the decomposing power of the electric current. the solution of caustic soda is carried to large evaporating-pans, where the water is driven out of it, leaving the caustic soda in dry, white sticks of crystalline formation. in this process the electric current, which comes from the power-house with an energy of 2000 horse-power, has to be transformed twice; first, to bring it to the proper voltage for the work of decomposition, and, secondly, to change it from an alternating to a direct current, by which all electrolytic processes are carried on. you will notice that the electrical energy expended in this establishment is double that used in the manufacture of carborundum. the caustic soda, which is one of the products from the decomposition of salt, is taken to another establishment, where, by still another electrical process, metallic sodium is manufactured. the process here being a secret one, the writer did not have the privilege of examining the details. chapter xxvii electrical products--aluminum. another comparatively new article of manufacture now produced in large quantities at niagara falls is aluminum. until within the last few years this metal was not used to any extent by manufacturers, because of the great expense attending its production. now, however, it is produced in such quantities as to make it about as cheap as brass, bulk for bulk. aluminum is a very light metal, with a color somewhat lighter than silver; its specific gravity being about one-third that of iron. aluminum is found in one of its compounds in great quantities in nature, especially in certain kinds of clay and in a state of silicate, as in feldspar and its associated minerals. it is found in great quantities in southern georgia, where it is mixed with the red oxide of iron that abounds in that region. here, it exists as alumina, which is an oxide of aluminum. before it is taken to the reduction-works the alumina is separated from all other substances. it is a white powder, tasteless, and not easily acted upon by acids. electricity is the chief agent in the production of metallic aluminum. the reduction company buys this alumina, which has been separated from the clay or ores where it is mined. in a large room there are located a great number of iron vats or crucibles, lined with carbon, about two or two and one-half feet deep, five or six feet long and four feet wide. immediately over each vat is constructed a metal framework, through which are inserted a large number of carbon rods about eighteen or twenty inches long and from two to two and one-half inches in diameter. this framework is electrically insulated from the iron crucibles. the framework and the carbons are connected with the positive conductor of the electric current, and the vat or crucible with the negative. these conductors are very large, something like a foot in width and an inch in thickness, and made of some good conductor of electricity. they have to be very large because they carry a current equal to 3050 horse-power. the current is one of great volume, but very low voltage; the electromotive force at each vat or crucible being only about seven volts. as the process is electrolytic, and not simply a heating process, the direct current must be used, and therefore the current coming from the power-house must be transformed twice; first to bring it to a proper voltage and secondly to change it from an alternating to a direct current. these iron vats or crucibles are connected up in series, electrically, and then they are filled with the alumina and certain other materials, which act either as a flux or as a means of increasing the conductivity of the mixture; just what this substance is, is probably one of the secrets of the process. when all of the crucibles are filled with the mixture the current is turned on and is kept on continuously night and day seven days in the week. all of the material in the different crucibles is heated to redness, when the process of separation takes place. the oxygen of the alumina is thrown off as a gas, and other residuum floats to the top of the crucible and is skimmed off. metallic aluminum in a melted state sinks to the bottom of the crucible, where it is dipped out from time to time with large iron ladles and poured into sand and molded into blocks similar to that of pig iron. from time to time, as the metal is dipped out, fresh alumina with the other substances are thrown in on top of the crucible, so that the process is continually going on, day and night, week in and week out. the heat in the process of reducing alumina, as we have before seen, is not the chief factor; it simply serves to reduce the compound to a fluid state so that the electrolytic action can readily take place. therefore it is not necessary to be brought to a white heat, as it is in the case of the production of carborundum, described elsewhere. it was extremely interesting to observe the wonderful magnetic effects that were produced in iron when brought into proximity with these enormous electrical conductors. the voltage was so low that one could handle them with impunity. the iron crucibles became so magnetic that a heavy bar of iron seven or eight feet long would cling to their sides, so that it would be held in an upright position. bars of iron would cling to the conductor at any point along its length, and, although these conductors were carrying an energy of over 3000 horse-power, they produced no perceptible effect upon the human body. the reason for this lies in the fact, first, that the body is not made of magnetic material, and, secondly, the pressure is so low that the body--being a poor conductor--would not easily allow the low-pressure current to pass through it. aluminum is fast becoming an important article of commerce, and it is destined to become more and more so on account of its extreme lightness as compared to other metals. it is found to be valuable also when used as an alloy with many of the other metals. one of the great drawbacks to its more extensive use lies in the fact that as yet no satisfactory method has been devised for soldering it. undoubtedly in time this difficulty will be solved, when its use will be greatly increased. it is estimated that in its various compounds aluminum forms about one-twelfth of the crust of the earth. chapter xxviii. electrical products--calcium carbide. another important use to which electricity is put at niagara falls is the manufacture of a new product, called calcium carbide. like carborundum and aluminum, this product could not have been produced in commercial quantities in advance of a means for producing electricity in enormous volume. calcium carbide is a compound of calcium and carbon. calcium is a white metal not found in the natural state, but exists chiefly as a carbonate of lime, which is ordinary limestone, including the various forms of marble. as a pure metal it is hard to obtain and very hard to maintain, as it readily oxidizes when in contact with the air. the symbol for calcium carbide is cac_{2}, which means that a molecule of this carbide is compounded of one atom of calcium and two atoms of carbon. ca stands for calcium and c for carbon. when the symbol has no figure following it, it means that one atom only enters into the compound; but if a figure follows, it means that as many atoms enter in as the figure represents. the process of manufacturing calcium carbide is as follows: ordinary lime before it is slacked is ground to a fine powder; then it is mixed with powdered coke or carbon in the proper quantities, so that when a chemical union takes place the proportion will be as before stated, one atom of calcium to two of carbon. as is well known, lime is procured by exposing ordinary limestone to a red heat for some hours together. the heat disengages the carbon dioxide, leaving only a combination of calcium and oxygen, which is common lime. the mixture of ground lime and coke is put into a crucible that surrounds the arc of an electric light of enormous dimensions; the carbon conductors amounting to an area of one square foot or more. in order to cause the carbon to unite with the calcium a very intense heat is required, such a heat as can be obtained only in the arc of an electric light. when the enormous current is turned on (amounting to over 3000 horse-power) the mixture is melted, and after an exposure to this intense heat for a given length of time the oxygen of the unslacked lime is thrown off and the carbon unites with the calcium, which remains in the proportions of one atom of calcium to two of carbon, as before stated. this, it will be noted, is purely a heat process, and an intense one at that. no electrolytic action being required, the alternating current is used without transformation to the direct current, as is necessary in the manufacture of bleaching-powder and aluminum, both of which are electrolytic processes. when the operation is completed the current is turned off and the compound allowed to cool. in cooling it assumes a slate color, which is slightly iridescent when exposed to light. it also crystallizes to a certain extent. the value of this new product consists in its ability to evolve acetylene gas in large quantities. a molecule of acetylene gas is composed of two atoms of carbon to two of hydrogen. to evolve the gas it is necessary only to pour water upon the calcium carbide, when a union takes place between the carbon of the carbide and the hydrogen of the water in the proportions above stated. if there is water enough the whole of the carbon will pass off with the gas, leaving a residuum of slacked lime. the value of acetylene gas lies in its very intense illuminating power. this is due to the fact that the gas is very rich in carbon as compared with other illuminating gases. it burns with a pure white light when properly mixed with air or oxygen, but if there is a lack of air it burns with a smoky flame. in this case the carbon is not all consumed and escapes into the air in the form of soot or smoke, but when burned with the proper mixture of oxygen or common air it becomes one of the most brilliant of illuminants. acetylene, like most other gases, becomes explosive when mixed with air in certain proportions. whether it is more dangerous to handle than ordinary illuminating gases the writer is not prepared to say, as he has not had the opportunity to make a thorough comparison between it and other gases from an experimental standpoint. experiment, after all, is the only sure road to absolute knowledge. theories are beautiful in books and lectures, but they often fail in the laboratory. acetylene is now being introduced as an illuminating gas for domestic and other purposes. several methods of handling it have been proposed. one is to condense it into strong metal cylinders and deliver it in that form; another is to erect generators at convenient places and generate the gas as it is used. a very ingenious contrivance has been invented for regulating the generation of the gas. a certain amount of the calcium carbide is placed in a gas-tight vessel containing water. as soon as the water comes in contact with the carbide the evolution of the gas begins. when the pressure on the inside of the vessel has reached a certain degree it is made, through mechanical contrivances, to lift the carbide out of the water and thus stop the evolution of the gas. when the pressure is relieved through the consumption of the gas at the burners it allows the carbide to drop into the water, when the evolution of the gas begins again. of course there is the same objection to this mode of lighting that attends all open burners; it is constantly discharging into the air the products of combustion, chiefly carbon dioxide, which is poisonous to animal life. as has been explained in some of the chapters on heat, in volume ii, the illuminating property of any gas is determined by the number of carbon particles that are contained in it, which become heated to incandescence as soon as they come in contact with the oxygen of the air, and remain so, for a brief period, during their passage between the two extremes of the flame. while acetylene equals electricity in its illuminating properties, the latter still stands without a rival when considered from a sanitary standpoint, as the use of electricity does not in any degree vitiate the air in a room where it is used. we have now given somewhat in detail the following processes that are carried on at niagara falls through the agency of electricity, viz.: the reduction of aluminum from its oxide alumina; the production of the new and useful compound called carborundum; the formation of calcium carbide used for the production of acetylene gas, and a large chemical works, where bleaching-powder is made. in addition to these works, there is an establishment for the production of sodium from caustic potash, which is one of the products arising from the decomposition of salt in the bleaching-powder works. there is also another establishment for the production of phosphorus made from the bones and shells obtained from the phosphate beds that abound in some of the southern states, on the coast of the atlantic ocean. there is in process of construction a plant for the purpose of manufacturing chlorate of potash by an electrical process. in addition to these establishments mentioned, the electricity is furnished for power purposes to the niagara electric light company; to the electric railway between niagara and buffalo; to the niagara falls railway, on the opposite side of the river; to the niagara power and conduit company of buffalo, and the niagara development company. this is only a small beginning of the uses to which electricity will be put as an agent for the development of heat, light and power as well as for the production of all substances where electrolysis is the chief factor. sixteen companies or more are now using electricity from the niagara power-house,--the whole amounting to about 35,000 horse-power. chapter xxix. the new era. when we consider the number of new products for whose existence we are indebted to electricity, and the number of old products that have heretofore existed experimentally, in the laboratory of the chemist only, that have now been brought into play as useful agents in the various arts and industries, we begin to realize that this is truly an electrical age and the dawning of a new era. how many, many things there are, familiar to the children of to-day, that were not even imagined by the children of twenty-five to fifty years ago. fifty years ago the only useful purpose to which electricity was put was that of transmitting news from city to city by the morse telegraphic code. it will be fifty-seven years the first of april, 1901, since the first telegraph-line was thrown open to the public. less than thirty years ago but little advance had been made in the use of electrical appliances beyond the perfection of certain private-line instruments, and a means for multiple transmission. about twenty years ago there were evidences of the beginning of a new era in electrical development. at no time in the history of the world has wonder succeeded wonder with such rapidity, producing such astounding results that have revolutionized all our modes of doing business and all of the operations of commercial and domestic life, as during the last two decades. we set our watches by time furnished by electricity from one central point of observation. we read the tape from hour to hour, upon which is recorded the commercial pulse of the world, as it throbs in the marts of trade, by means of this same speedy messenger. we enter a street-car that is lighted and heated, and at the same time propelled by the same wonderful agent. in our homes and on our streets night is turned into day by a light that outrivals all other illuminants. when we wish to speak to a friend who may be a mile or a thousand miles away we step to the end of a wire that comes within the walls of our dwelling and we talk to him as though face to face, and means are at hand by which we may write a letter to that same friend and deliver it to him in our own handwriting and over our own signatures, so quickly that it will appear before him in full form and completeness as soon as the last period is made at the end of the last line. one sees, and hears, and lives more in a single day in this age of electricity and steam than he did in twelve months sixty years ago. and yet there are those who cry out against modern inventions and modern civilization, and are constantly quoting the days of their grandfathers and great-grandfathers when "life was simple" and there was "time to rest." "why are we tormented with this thought-stimulating age?" they say. "why are our emotions called into action by modern music and modern art? why are we called upon to help the downtrodden and oppressed, and to help to elevate mankind to a higher level? why cannot we be left alone in peace and quiet, to live in the easiest way?" if this be good philosophy, then the swine, if he were a reasoning being, ought to be ranked among the greatest of philosophers--when he seeks a wallow in the sunshine and sleeps away his useless existence. if he is useful it is because some other being of a higher order uses him to help along his own existence. the man in these days who does not "keep up with the procession" is soon trodden under foot and some other man uses him as a stepping-stone to elevate himself. yet this is a selfish motive, after all. the world is now rapidly advancing in light, in knowledge, in power to use the infinite gifts that the creator has hidden in nature; but hidden only to stimulate and reward our seeking. every man can help in this grand progress,--if not by research and positive thought-power, at least by grateful acceptance and realization of what is gained. _look forward!_ as emerson puts it: "to make habitually a new estimate--that is elevation." index. acetylene gas at niagara, 230. alexandria, temple with loadstone, 20. amber--elektron, 6. ampère, theory of magnetism, 25. unit of electrical current, 85. galvanometer, 93. aluminum at niagara, 223. arabians, magnetic needle, 21. arago, germ of electromagnet, 93. aristotle mentions torpedo, 6. refers to magnet, 20. atmospheric electricity, ch. viii, 77. atoms and molecules, 39. of substances differ in weight, 42. relations to heat, 42. aurora borealis, 35. bain chemical telegraph register, 101. barlow on galvanism in telegraphy, 93. bell, alexander graham, radiophone, 171. bleaching-powder at niagara, 218. branly invents the coherer, 179. cables, submarine. see submarine cables. calcium-carbide at niagara, 228. capacity of a circuit, 118, 119. caustic soda, 221. chinese, magnetic needle, 21. chlorine and sodium, 219. circuit-breaker at niagara, 199. closed circuit and current, 122. coherer (wireless telegraphy), 179. columbus, compass variations, 22, 34. condenser in resistance-coil, 118. in morse relays, 131. conductors and non-conductors of electricity, 47. relation to electric light, 50. different resistances, 74, 83. cooke, needle telegraph, 108. crookes, prof., x-ray, 121. cuneus and the leyden jar, 8. curiosities, ch. xx, 171. daniell battery, 85. differential magnet, 115. dinocares and the loadstone, 20. dolbear, amos e., wireless telegraphy, 178. dupay discovers positive and negative electricity, 8. duplex telegraphy, 114. dynamo-electric machines, 67. invented by faraday, 14, 69. usual construction, 70. at niagara, 192. double transmission, 115. earth electric currents, in telegraphy, 99, 116, 182. earth magnetism, 32. effects of, on iron, 35. aurora, 35. telegraph-lines, 36. from sun's heat, 75. edison, thomas, railway telegraphy, 131. electromotograph, 175. electric currents, ch. vi, 49. not currents but atomic motion, 54. induction of, 56. guarded against, 169. at niagara, 193. electric generators, ch. vii, 62. frictional, 49. galvanic batteries, 62. storage-batteries, 64. dynamos, 67, 192. metal heating, 74. electricity, science of, 6. achievements of, 16. eras in science of, 18. theory of, ch. v, 39. not a fluid, a form of energy, 40. static and dynamic, 46. measurement of, ch. ix, 83. electric light, cause of, 50. electric machines, 49. frictional, 51. galvanic or chemical, 51. mechanical, 70. electromagnet invented by faraday, 14. commercial value, 23. theory of (soft iron), 26. permanent (steel), 28. condition of use, 30. the earth a, 32. germ of, 93. differential, 115. electromotograph, 175. ellsworth, miss, sends first telegraphic message, 96. ether, lines of force, 31. nature of, 40. ether, impressed by atomic motion, 56. inducing electric action, 56. farad, unit of capacity, 118. faraday, michael, 14. farmer, moses g., double transmission, 114. field, cyrus w., lays first atlantic cable, 156. field of a magnet, 31. fitzgerald, niagara falls chemist, 210. franklin catches the lightning, 8. identity of lightning and electricity, 10. kite experiment, 11. electric firing-telegraph, 88. frode, history of iceland, 21. gadenhalen uses magnetic needle 868 a.d., 21. galileo's seed-thought, 89. galvani, luigi, and galvanism, 12. galvanic batteries, 62. author's experience, 65. galvanometer, 75, 93. gilbert, dr., frictional electricity, 7. gintl, double transmission, 114. gray, elisha, constructs voltaic pile, 65. electrically transmits music, 91. experiments on transmission of music, articulate speech, and multiple messages, 123. files telephone caveat, 135. musical experiments, 136. speech receivers, 139. boys' telephone, 141. first telephone specification on record, 143. dial-telegraph, 161. automatic-printing telegraph, 163. telautograph, 165. electric musical receiver, 175. gray, stephen, electrician, 8. grier, john a., quoted, 67. guyot of provence mentions mariner's compass, 21. halske, double transmission, 114. harmonic telegraphy, 120. receivers, 125. relay, 130. hawksbee, francis, electrician, 7. heat, a mode of motion, 40. related to atoms, 42. begins and ends in matter, 44. electrical and mechanical energy the same, 46. henry, joseph, first practical telegrapher, 90. constructs long-distance line, 94. produces induction, 177. heraclea and the loadstone, 20. hertz experiments in ether-waves, 178. homer refers to loadstone, 20. horse-power, 214. house, royal e., printing telegraph, 108, 110. hughes, david e., printing telegraph, 108, 112. induction, 56. guarded against, 169. produced by henry, 177. keeper of a magnet, 31. kelvin, lord (sir w. thompson), cable message receiver, 158. "kick," in telegraphy, 115, 118. kleist and the leyden jar, 8. "let her buzz," 3. leyden jar invented, 8. lightning, electricity; franklin, 8. restoration of equilibrium, 78. lightning-rods, 80. dangerous conductors, 81. loadstone, 20, 21. maury, lieut., deep-sea soundings, 155. magnes, magnesia, 20. magnet, electro. see electromagnet. magnetic earth poles, 23, 32. magnetic lines of force, 31, 34, 60. magnetic needle, 21. variation of, 22. dip of, 22. action of, 33. magnetism, history of, 20. and electricity mutually dependent, 24. theories of, 24. in iron and steel, 25. in the earth, 32, 36. and sun-spots, 37. magnetization, limit of, 31. marconi, wireless telegraphy, 178-180. measurement of electricity, 83. ampère, unit of, 85. method of, 86. mercury luminous by shaking, 7. micro-farad, unit of capacity, 119. molecules of iron and steel natural magnets, 25. and atoms, 39. morse, s. f. b., devises code of telegraphic signals, 95. induces congress to construct line, 96. transmits battery current through water, 177. motion universal, 38. causes sound, heat, light, and electricity, 39. multiple transmission, ch. xiii, 114. duplex, 116. quadruplex, 118. multiple transmission, musical, 120. musical message receivers, 125, 139. musical tones transmitted, 91, 92, 120, 136. muschenbroeck, prof., and the leyden jar, 8. newton, sir isaac, electrician, 8. niagara falls power, chs. xxii to xxviii, 186 to 233. introduction--rock, water, power, 186. appliances: tunnel, power-house, 190. shaft, dynamos, 192. current, 193. governor, 194. water-head, 195. crane, 196. circuit-breaker, 199. transformer, 200. electromotive force, 204. electrical products--carborundum, 209. materials, 210. furnaces, 211. electric current, 213. horse-power, 214. method of work, 215. bleaching-powder, 218. chlorine and sodium, 219. method of work, 220. caustic soda, 221. aluminum, 223. crucibles and methods, 224. magnetic effects, 226. calcium carbide, 228. process, 229. acetylene gas, 230. other products, 232. oersted, galvanic current on magnetic needle, 93. ohm, g. s., resistance unit, 74. patents--caveat and application, 135. planté, storage-battery plates, 64. pliny mentions electrical properties of amber, 67. loadstone, 20. preece, double transmission, 114. prescott, geo. b., quoted, 104, 106, 163, 174. ptolemy philadelphus and loadstones, 20. pythagoras refers to natural magnets, 20. radiophone, 171. railway train telegraphy, 131. richman, prof., killed, 12. reiss, metallic telephone transmitters, 122. resistance, unit of, 74. -coil, 118. siemens, double transmission, 114. selenium in radiophone, 172. shephard, charles s., induction-coil, 122. stager, gen. anson, telegrapher, 110. stearns, joseph b., cures the "kick" in double transmission, 115. storage-battery, 24. strada, loadstone telegraph, 88. submarine cables, ch. xvii, 154. first lines, 154-5. maury's deep-sea soundings, 155. first atlantic, 156. retardations, 157. receiver, 158. sun-spots and magnetic storms, 37. telautograph, ch. xix, 165. telegraph: heliostat, 68. semaphore, 68. loadstone, 88. franklin's electric firing, 88. electrically dropped balls, 88. electric transmission of musical tones, 91. of signals, 94. morse register, 95. first line, 97. description, 98. reading by various senses, 100. bain, chemical recorder, 101. cooke needle, 108. wheatstone needle, 108. house printing, 108, 110. hughes printing, 108, 112. automatic systems, 109, 112. multiple transmission, 114. musical transmission, 120. musical receivers, 125. way duplex, 129. from moving railway trains, 131. repeater, 150. short-line dials, 159. printing, 163. wireless, ch. xxi, 176. telegraphic messages, receiving, 103. telephone, chs. xv, xvi, 134, 145. author's first experiment, 91. experiments, 123. caveat, 135. speech receivers, 139. boys' telephone, 141. first specification of, on record, 143. how telephone talks, 145. simple construction, 146. two methods of transmission: magneto and varied resistance, 142, 149. limit of transmission, 153. central station, 164. affected by heat-lightning, 183. telephote, 173. thales of miletus first described electrical properties of amber, 6. theophrastus mentions amber, 6. thermo-electric pile, 75. torpedo, the, 6. transformers at niagara, 200. transmission, multiple, ch. xiii, 114. trowbridge, prof., telephones through the earth, 188. tunnel at niagara, 190. tyndall, and gray's experiments, 92. unrest of the universe, 38. volt, unit of electrical pressure, 85. volta, alessandro, and the voltaic pile, 13. watt, james, 86. unit of electrical power, 86. way duplex system, ch. xiv, 129. wheatstone transmits musical tones mechanically, 92. needle telegraph, 108. dial-telegraph, 159. wireless telegraphy, ch. xxi, 176. signaling by ether-waves, 176. morse and henry, 177. trowbridge, dolbear, hertz, 178. branly, marconi, 179. marconi's system, 180. by earth-currents, 182. wolimer, king of goths, a natural battery, 7. book was produced from images made available by the hathitrust digital library.) the library of work and play carpentry and woodwork by edwin w. foster electricity and its everyday uses by john f. woodhull, ph.d. gardening and farming by ellen eddy shaw home decoration by charles franklin warner, sc.d. housekeeping by elizabeth hale gilman mechanics, indoors and out by fred t. hodgson needlecraft by effie archer archer outdoor sports, and games by claude h. miller, ph.b. outdoor work by mary rogers miller working in metals by charles conrad sleffel. [illustration: drawing by j. hodson redman. harold sending the c. q. d. message (_see page 355_).] _the library of work and play_ electricity and its everyday uses by john f. woodhull, ph.d. [illustration] mcgowen-maier & co. chicago, ill. all rights reserved, including that of translation into foreign languages, including the scandinavian copyright, 1911, by doubleday, page & company preface why do we pursue one method when instructing an individual boy out of school, and a very different method when teaching a class of boys in school? the school method of teaching the dynamo is to begin with the bar magnet and, through a series of thirty or forty lessons on fundamental principles, lead up to the dynamo, which is then presented, with considerable attention to detail, as a composite application of principles. this might be styled the synthetic method. he who teaches a boy out of school is pretty likely to reverse this order and pursue the analytic method. the class in school has very little influence in determining the order of procedure. the lone pupil with his questions almost wholly determines the order of procedure. out of school no one has the courage to deny information to a hungry boy; in school we profess to put a ban upon information giving, and we do quite effectually deaden his sense of hunger. the school method rarely yields fruit which lasts beyond the examination period; on the other hand, a considerable number of boys have become electrical experts without the aid of a school. this book is the story of how my boy and i studied _electricity_ together. we have had no other method than to attack our problems directly, and _principles_ have come in only when they were needed. my boy had learned to read when very young by having stories read to him while he watched the printed pages. the construction of sentences out of words and words out of letters had come to him very incidentally but all in due time, and when he first went to school rather late in life for a beginner he found himself more proficient than the other boys of his own age both in reading and in understanding the printed pages. i could see no good reason why he should not pursue the same method in studying electricity. we live in a modern apartment house in a great city. my boy likes to visit engine rooms and talk with the engineers about their machinery. his mother and i always encourage him to talk with us about the things in which he is most interested. if the family is alone at dinner, he is quite likely to lead the conversation into the field of electricity. when particularly burdened with my work i have learned to find relief by giving an afternoon to harold, who generally takes me to some electrical store or power station or to ride by electric train out into the country. contents chapter page i. the dynamo and the power station 3 ii. dynamo continued--the magnet 11 iii. the ammeter 25 iv. the wattmeter 35 v. the electric motor 43 vi. applications of the electro-magnet 57 vii. electric heating 97 viii. applications of electric heating 107 ix. lighting a summer camp by electricity 160 x. how electricity feels 168 xi. the electric sparking equipment for a gasolene engine 178 xii. electricity from central stations 204 xiii. electricity from an old mill 218 xiv. doing chores by electricity 240 xv. electric currents from chemical action and chemical action from electric currents 248 xvi. electrocution at millville 271 xvii. the telephone 274 xviii. electric bell outfit for the cottage 296 xix. using electricity to aid the memory 300 xx. the electric brick oven 305 xxi. electric waves 309 xxii. ringing bells and lighting lamps by electric waves 324 xxiii. telegraphing by electric waves 329 xxiv. halley's comet and electric waves 333 xxv. how the idea of a universal ether developed 339 xxvi. electric currents cannot be confined to wires 349 xxvii. wireless telegraphy in earnest 355 illustrations harold sending the c. q. d. message _frontispiece_ facing page testing a generator 8 wiring 16 wattmeter 40 testing the telegraphy outfit 62 electric bell 72 feeling electricity 174 operating the switchboard 204 induction coil of a wireless 330 electricity and its everyday uses i the dynamo and the power station one day harold expressed a desire to see the dynamos, five miles away, which furnish the electric light in our apartment. so i told him to invite his best friend to accompany us and we would go. when we were some distance from the station the boys noticed the very tall chimneys and inquired why tall chimneys were needed for dynamos. i explained that the dynamos were run by steam-engines, and steam-engines required the burning of coal. "oh!" said ernest, harold's friend, "i read in the paper that electricity is the rival of steam and is going to drive out the steam-engine." i suggested that we were about to see some steam-engines driving electricity out of that power station. but more seriously, i explained that steam-engines were used for many years as locomotives to draw the trains on the elevated railroads of new york city, and when at last they were displaced by electric trains some people thought that it was a case of electricity driving out steam, whereas what had really happened was that the steam power for running those trains had been concentrated at a central station, and its power was merely transmitted to the trains by means of electricity. the trains were, therefore, run by steam power quite as much as ever. in like manner, the surface cars of new york a few years ago were run by a cable, which was merely a very long belt used to transmit to the cars the power of steam-engines located at a central station. when they were changed to electric cars, electricity became the successful rival of nothing else than a twisted wire cable. the cars still run by steam power as before, but that power is transmitted by electricity instead of the discarded cable. steam has driven out the horse as a power for drawing street cars, and electricity has enabled us to gather all the steam engines into central stations, where now they are furnishing the power for moving surface, elevated, and subway cars for street traffic, as also trains for suburban travel. central station steam-engines are producing a vast amount of power, distributed all over the city by means of electricity, for doing a great variety of work and for furnishing electric light and heat, all of which we shall presently study. "just before we go into this central station, can you tell me how the elevator is run in our apartment house?" "it is an electric elevator," said harold. "and where does the electricity come from?" i inquired. "well, i know that it comes from the street mains, but do they come from this power station?" "yes," said i, "and we will now go in and see the steam-engines which lift you up stairs many times each day by sending electricity to run that elevator. if you choose to do so, you may claim for purposes of discussion that your elevator is run by steam." as we entered the building we came first to the dynamo room and both boys noticed that the tone which met their ears was that which i had produced for them in the telephone the night before. "i shall try to show you before we get through," i said, "that these dynamos are doing something which makes iron pulsate sixty times a second and that that is the cause of the pitch of this tone. but let us begin with the coal which is the source of all this power. "this particular station at the present time is burning forty tons of coal an hour. that is as much as mr. ---uses to heat his twelve-room house for a whole year. one pound of coal is capable of liberating enough energy to supply 5-3/4 horse-power for an hour. (written for short 5-3/4 h.p.h.) one ton of coal is capable of furnishing (2,000 × 5-3/4) 11,500 h.p.h. forty tons would yield 460,000 h.p.h. but the best furnaces, boilers, and steam-engines are terribly wasteful of energy. about nine tenths of all this energy is wasted and only one tenth, or about 46,000 horse-power per hour, is delivered by the steam-engines to the dynamos. "coal is already scarce in the world and the supply is rapidly being exhausted. meanwhile we are growing more dependent upon coal. a century ago we used scarcely any power except that of men, horses, and oxen, and what little heat men then used came chiefly from wood. they lived in cold houses, attended cold churches and schools, did not ride in steam or electric cars, and did not have power plants. our wood is nearly all gone, our coal is going, and we are very rapidly growing more dependent upon heat and power, our chief source of which is coal. wind power is too uncertain to depend upon, and we turned our backs upon water-power when we began to crowd into cities. what little water-power there is, however, is nearly all in use. "there is great need both that we learn how to save the major part of the energy of the coal which we now waste, and that we find a substitute for the coal to use when that is gone. "a part of the heat from the forty tons of coal which is being burned in this particular power plant goes into the water in the boilers. it converts this water into steam. the steam, if free to expand into the air, would occupy about one thousand seven hundred times the volume of the water. we compel it to expand through the cylinders of the steam-engine, using its force of expansion to make wheels go around--to make the dynamo revolve. these dynamos are not _devices for producing power but merely for transmitting_ the power of these steam-engines to far away places where it may be used, as, for instance, in our apartment house, where we are unwilling to walk upstairs and want some power to carry us. "our own apartment is fifty feet above the street. i weigh one hundred and sixty-five pounds. if i walk up stairs from the street to our apartment in one minute, which is the rate of a rather slow elevator, i work at the rate of one quarter of a horse-power. one hundred and sixty-five pounds raised two hundred feet in one minute requires one horse-power. you boys each weigh about half as much as i do, and if one of you walks up the same stairs in one minute you exert half the power that i do, or if you run up the stairs in half a minute you exert the same power, that is, one quarter of a horse-power. when we three walk up together in one minute we exert one half horse-power. if we all three run up the stairs in half a minute we expend one horse-power. now, the speed of elevators for apartment houses is about one hundred feet a minute. we are unwilling to walk up stairs, not because we are lazy but because we have the new york haste, and so we employ elevators which run at the rate of about one hundred feet a minute. [illustration: photograph by helen w. cooke. testing a generator] "these dynamos enable us to employ the power of this central station to run the elevator in our apartment house. here is a dynamo rolling over now in the act of sending out power, some of which goes to that elevator; and standing beside it is another waiting to be used when necessary. examining these dynamos, we find that they are composed of nothing else than iron and copper. about all that we can say of these mysterious machines is that the moving iron generates the electricity and the copper leads it away. [illustration: fig. 1] "each one of these dynamos has many hundred tons of iron in it. a huge wheel of iron, thirty-two feet in diameter, one hundred feet in circumference, portions of which are surrounded by insulated copper conductors, forms the centre-piece of the machine. this movable part weighs four hundred tons. around about this is a fixed ring of iron, portions of which are surrounded by insulated copper conductors. ordinarily the ring which is stationary is called 'the field,' and the wheel, which rotates, is called 'the armature,' although these terms are sometimes reversed for certain reasons. the movable part in these machines rotates about once a second, that is, its circumference moves a little faster than a mile a minute. the iron moving at this high rate of speed creates ether streams or electric currents, which are led off by the copper conductors. the generation of electricity on a large scale requires large masses of iron and high velocity." i noticed that the boys stood before this machine in a state of utter bewilderment, bewildered as a man who is told that what he had considered north is really south, bewildered as a man who, having wandered through a maze of city streets, looks up at length and unexpectedly finds the building he has been seeking towering before him. the questions they asked were entirely without thought. "what is inside of it?" "simply more iron and copper, such as you see on the surface," i replied. "but what makes it go?" "the steam engines, of course, four of which you see, are coupled directly to each dynamo." "but where does it get its electricity?" "don't forget that you are looking at _a generator_ of electricity. big mass of iron--rapid motion! that is the whole truth. but it cannot satisfy you as an answer until you have become used to it. we have seen all that we ought to see here to-day. let us drop the whole matter now, but return to my laboratory to-morrow, and i will give you the next step which will help you." the boys did no talking upon their return journey. whether one may say they were thinking or not i cannot tell, but certainly their ideas were incubating. ii the dynamo, continued--the magnet when we had gathered at my laboratory the next day i took down a spool of one pound no. 24 cotton-covered copper wire (fig. 2 _a_), which had its centre filled with wire nails. the boys had seen it before and remembered it. with flexible wires i connected the two ends of the wire on this spool to a sensitive ammeter, _b_, which had its zero in the middle of the scale, and i laid down upon the table a bar magnet, _c_. [illustration: fig. 2] "here," i said, "is a dynamo complete." the bar magnet furnishes the 'field' and this spool of copper wire, _a_, which i will move back and forth immediately over the magnet from end to end, is 'the armature.' _d_ and _e_ are the line wires and the circuit is completed through the ammeter to show whether we are generating electricity. and now as i move this armature along the field you see the needle of the ammeter move to the right from zero to ten. when the armature is moved in the opposite direction along the field the needle moves in the opposite direction past zero and on to ten at the left. the moving of the needle in the ammeter shows that we are generating electricity. the swinging to and fro of the needle shows that we are generating an alternating current of electricity. it is a mere matter of detail whether we move the armature or the field, as i will show you by letting the spool a rest quietly upon the table and moving the magnet to and fro lengthwise across the end of the spool. or i may accomplish the same results by moving them both in opposite directions. it is simply necessary that they move _with reference to each other_. some dynamos are made with stationary fields and rotating armatures, some with stationary armature and rotating fields, and some with both parts designed to rotate in opposite directions. "magnetism is not confined to the magnet. it extends more or less widely into the region about it. it is this region affected by the magnet that we designate its magnetic field. by bringing this sensitive compass needle into the region of this bar magnet from all directions, i show you that it has a slight power to change the direction of the needle when about a foot away. this power grows rapidly greater as the distance grows less. of course its field extends rather indefinitely, but we may say that this particular magnet has an appreciable field extending about one foot in all directions from it. we find upon examination that some magnets have bigger and stronger fields than others, that all have their strongest fields when first magnetized and lose their strength gradually, _but never entirely_. we find that hardened iron and steel hold magnetism longer than soft iron, _but all iron is magnetized somewhat at all times_. iron that is feebly magnetized can be made into a strong magnet by bringing it into a strong magnetic field. the earth is a feeble magnet, and that is why it gives direction to the compass needle. that is also probably the reason why every piece of iron upon the earth is a magnet, or, to put the cause back another step, we may say that whatever causes the earth to be a magnet also causes every piece of iron upon the earth to be likewise a magnet. "but thanks to oersted in denmark in 1819 and faraday in england in 1821 and joseph henry in albany, n. y., in 1827, we have learned to make exceedingly powerful magnets by sending a current of electricity in a whirl around the iron. this is the meaning of the coils of copper wire around iron cores in the dynamo, in electric bells, in telegraph sounders, in motors, etc., etc. to prevent the electric current from taking the shortest route, through the iron core or through the successive layers of copper wire, the iron core and the wire must be covered with something like wood or paper or cotton or silk or rubber--such things as electricity does not readily pass through--that is, insulating material. "joseph henry, while teaching in the albany academy, was the first to make electro-magnets. there was no such thing as wire covered with an insulating material then in the market, and he wound all his wire with silk ribbon. but in the year 1834 he made magnets which lifted thirty-five hundred pounds, to the astonishment of every one. a pair of such electro-magnets as i have here (fig. 3), each consisting of one pound of no. 24 cotton covered copper wire, eight hundred feet long, wound in one thousand turns about an iron core two inches in diameter, will lift several hundred pounds: much more than we three can lift, as i shall now show you." [illustration: fig. 3] the cores of the two magnets were bolted fast to an iron beam, and a large bar of iron with a ring in it was laid across the other free ends of the magnet cores. i made connections with the electric lighting circuit (that in my laboratory is what is called a direct current), and sent a current of electricity around the coils. the two boys and i tugged at the ring in the iron bar to no avail. we were unable to pull the iron bar away from the magnet. but when i opened the switch and cut off the electric current, one boy with one finger in the ring lifted the bar with perfect ease. "electro-magnets are now made with a magnetic intensity 90,700 times that of the earth's magnetism. electro-magnets are used for hoisting iron castings weighing many tons. here is a picture of an electro-magnet lifting a whole wagon load of kegs of nails from the wagon to the hold of a ship. "electro-magnets are our only means of utilizing electricity for power. it is the pull of electro-magnets that moves the electric car. electro-magnets are now used for pulling all the trains out of the grand central depot in new york city. "let us now compare the strength of our electro-magnet with that of the bar magnet used in our former experiment." i opened and closed the switch, which sent the electric current through my magnet coils at frequent intervals, and the two boys, each with a compass needle, searched the field for magnetic effects. they found that the magnetic field extended six or eight feet, but this piece of research was broken up by a new idea which appeared to strike them both at the same instant, for they shouted both together, "let's use this electro-magnet in place of the bar magnet for our dynamo experiment!" [illustration: photograph by helen w. cooke. wiring] "that is surely the next step in our programme," said i, "but you will need a steam-engine to move an armature in this magnetic field, will you not, judging from the struggle we had with that iron bar a few minutes ago?" the boys looked quite hopeless until i said, "the best thing about the electro-magnet remains yet to be told. you have perfect control of its strength by changing the amount of electricity which you send around the coil. "by means of an instrument which works like the motorman's controller on the electric car, i may control the amount of electricity which flows, just as well as you may control the flow of water by a faucet or stop-cock. by this means i will control the strength of the magnet so that you may move the armature in your dynamo experiment. "in 1821, faraday, at the royal institution, london, learned that he could produce magnetism by means of the electric current, and, in 1831, he learned that the reverse was also true, namely, that he could produce electricity from magnetism. this idea coming as the result of ten years of incessant search made him shout and dance like a child. you are feeling a little of the pleasure of his discovery." [illustration: fig. 4] i then fastened one of the coils upon the table underneath a small bench (fig. 4) and sent an electric current around it. the other coil, _b_, connected with the ammeter was pushed back and forth along the surface of the bench over this coil. the boys found that the more electric current i sent around the coil _a_, that is, the stronger i made the magnetic field, the harder it was to move the coil _b_. they found that the nearer _b_ was to _a_ the harder it was to move it. they found that the faster they moved _b_ the more electricity was produced. they tried laying _b_ upon its side upon the bench and thus moving it. they tried taking _b_ off the bench and moving it on all sides of _a_. they found it much harder to move in some ways than in others, but in all cases they found that the harder they had to work the more electricity was developed, as was shown by the ammeter. "the dynamo is any machine which will convert mechanical work into electricity. the magneto is one form of a dynamo which you have used much at the summer cottage, but have never seen the inside of. here are several (see figs. 5, 6, and 8) which i will let you examine inside and out, and with these i must leave you to yourselves for a time." when i returned i asked the boys why these dynamos were called _magnetos_. "because they have steel magnets for their fields," they replied. "there are several magnets bent in the shape of a horseshoe." "yes," i said, "in this case the field is made stronger by taking several magnets. have you noticed any armature?" "yes, it is made of iron with insulated copper wire wound around it." "please recall that the amount of energy you expend in going upstairs depends on two things: (1) your weight and (2) the speed with which you move. also recall that the amount of electricity you could generate with a dynamo depended upon the amount of energy you expended. therefore, the strength of the electric current which this machine may produce depends upon two things: (1) the strength of the magnetic field against which you must pull and (2) the speed of the motion of the armature. evidently this field is made as strong as it is possible to make it with steel magnets. now is there any device for giving high speed to the armature?" "yes, indeed," said the boys, "one has a pulley so that it may be connected by a belt with a gas engine, and the others have each a large cog-wheel working into a smaller one. we found in one of them that a single revolution of the crank gave six revolutions to the armature." i found that the boys had made large-sized drawings of the parts, and were preparing to report on the magneto as a form of dynamo at the next meeting of the science club, which we had started among the boys in school. [illustration: fig. 5] "i will loan you some apparatus so that you may give a very interesting demonstration on that subject," said i, "only let me show you how to use it first. connect the binding posts _d_ and _e_ of this magneto (fig. 5) with my ammeter. turn the crank _very_ slowly and notice that the needle of the ammeter swings to and fro with each revolution of the armature. that shows that you have not only a _dynamo_, but an _alternating current_ dynamo. [illustration: fig. 6] "now connect the binding posts _d_ and _e_ of this magneto (fig. 6) with a short piece of copper wire. turn the crank and you notice that this dynamo rings two electric bells. turn slowly and you notice that the alternations of the current are numbered by the strokes on the bells. the hammer swings to and fro just as the needle of the ammeter did. each bell therefore receives one stroke of the hammer for each revolution of the armature. now try to turn the crank steadily at the rate of one revolution per second. the armature is making six revolutions, or cycles, per second and you now have not only an alternating current dynamo but a _six-cycle alternating current dynamo_. the lighting circuit used in our apartment is a _sixty_-cycle alternating current. to be sure the armature of the dynamo which generates that current revolves only once a second, but it carries coils enough upon its rim to make that number of alternations. "now connect this telephone receiver with the binding posts _d_ and _e_ of this magneto (fig. 7). unscrew the cap of the receiver. move to one side the iron diaphragm and turn slowly the crank of the magneto. notice that the diaphragm vibrates in time with the alternations of the dynamo. replace the diaphragm, screw on the cap, hold the receiver to your ear and turn the crank as fast as you can. you will probably be able to make about sixteen cycles per second. the receiver in that case is giving forth a sound of the same pitch as a sixteen-foot closed organ-pipe. [illustration: fig. 7] "connect the telephone receiver to the binding posts _d_ and _e_ of this magneto (fig. 8), and by means of a belt connect the pulley to this series of cog-wheels. now you may turn the crank and readily make the armature revolve at the rate of sixty cycles per second, and you notice that you get the same tone that we heard in the dynamo room of the power station and the same tone the telephone receiver gave when i connected it to a coil in our apartment. the tone which is produced by sixty vibrations per second is very nearly that of the _c_ two octaves below middle _c_ on the piano. try it along with the piano and you will find it a little flat. this string on the piano is making sixty-four _vibrations per second_. [illustration: fig. 8] [illustration: fig. 9] "now connect this miniature telephone switchboard lamp with the magneto (fig. 9) and turn the crank fast. the lamp lights up to full brilliancy and you notice that the light is steady, although it is made by an alternating current passing through the filament in one direction, stopping entirely, and then passing in the opposite direction. the filament has no time to cool off, provided you turn fast enough, but try turning a little slower and you will notice the flickering of the lamp." iii the ammeter [illustration: fig. 10] at the last meeting of the science club so many questions were asked, which the demonstrators could not answer, that a programme committee, to whom such questions might be referred thereafter, was appointed. it was made the duty of this committee to assign to various members the task of searching for satisfactory answers, and when the material was ready to be reported to the club, the programme committee determined the time and order of presentation. i found that i had been made an honorary member of this committee and that it was expected that i should steer the committee. i told them that i accepted this appointment with the understanding that the fellow who steers is always the smallest man in the crew, and if they would do all the work i would enjoy the honorary title of cockswain. secretly, however, i appreciated that this was in effect adding several courses to my already rather heavy programme. i must, under the régime, direct a large number of inexperienced students in library research, in laboratory research, and in the art of giving demonstrations with apparatus and experiments to audiences. the most urgent questions, as also those which were next in the natural order, concerned the _ammeter_. i told the committee to make that the subject of the next meeting and to send to my laboratory on a certain day the person or persons whom they might appoint to report upon it. [illustration: fig. 11] i find that the boys never come singly, but generally in pairs. when the boys came they found lying upon the table an ammeter (fig. 11). i told one of them to take out the three screws in the front and remove the face of the instrument. i had told the boys that the instrument cost sixty dollars and that letting them open it was like letting them open my watch. as soon as the face came off one of the boys exclaimed that from my reference to the watch he had expected to see very complicated machinery with many wheels, but from the exceeding simplicity of the mechanism he could not see why it should cost sixty dollars. i told him that although it was a fine piece of workmanship it was fortunately very easy to understand, and i asked them if it reminded them of anything else that they had ever seen. after a few moments of reflection they agreed that it was very much like one of the magnetos. "well," said i, "where is the field?" [illustration: fig. 12] "is this horseshoe arrangement a magnet?" they inquired. "there is a compass needle right at your hand waiting to answer that question," i replied. they immediately found that it was a magnet. "well," i said, "to be really sure that it is a magnet you must find a portion of it that will _repel_ a portion of your compass needle as well as other portions in both horseshoe and needles which attract each other." whereupon, they found that the portion marked _n_ (fig. 13) repelled the blue end of the compass needle and attracted strongly the bright end of the needle, while the portion marked _s_ did the reverse. "we will call _n_ and _s_ the poles of the magnet. this is simply a steel bar magnet bent into the shape of a horseshoe." [illustration: fig. 13] "you told us," remarked one of the boys, "that steel magnets gradually lose their strength. how then can this be correct as a measuring instrument?" "it is the purpose of the iron case to enable this magnet to retain its magnetism, and if you will examine its field, as we did that of another magnet upon a former occasion, you will find that although this is a strong steel magnet its field does not extend outside of the iron case. it is as though we could box up magnetism and keep it from escaping. "now if this is like the magneto, where is the armature? the spool-like thing between the poles of the magnet looks just like the armature in one of the magnetos. "yes, it has an iron core with a coil of insulated wire around it, and you remember that when an electric current is sent around a piece of iron, that iron is made into a magnet, and if it is a magnet it must have poles. it is very delicately poised upon a pivot and will act exactly like your compass needle, which is also a little magnet with poles. i will send an electric current through the wire which surrounds this armature, and you notice that the needle which it carries moves to the right. notice that the lower end of this armature acts like the blue end of your compass needle in that it is repelled from the pole _n_ of the field and is attracted toward _s_ of the field. in like manner, the upper end or pole of the armature is repelled from _s_ and attracted to _n_ of the field. the blue end of the compass needle is called its north pole because it points north under the magnetic influence of the earth, and so we may call the lower end of the armature its north pole. "the electric current which i am sending through the armature comes first through one ordinary 16-candle-power electric lamp which you see lighted on this 'resistance board,' as it is called, and you notice that the needle points to .5. this means that half an ampere of electricity is passing through this lamp. i will now send the current through a 32-candle-power lamp, and you notice that the needle points to one, indicating that one ampere is required to light that lamp. but what prevents the needle from going farther, and what brings it back to zero each time?" the boys discovered a very small spring, like the hair spring of a watch, coiled around the pivot of the armature. "so, then, one ampere of electricity gives magnetism to this armature so that it may pull against its coiled spring hard enough to carry the needle to the point one. twice as much electricity will give it magnetism enough to carry it to two, and so on across the scale. "the full name of this instrument is ampere meter, which by usage has been shortened to ammeter. it was named in honour of andré marie ampère, who was born at lyons, in france, in 1775, the year our revolutionary war broke out. he died in 1836. when oersted made his famous discovery of the action of an electric current upon a magnetic needle, in 1819, ampère was in middle life (forty-four), and took up the same line of research with great vigour. the next year, 1820, he discovered what you will doubtless enjoy rediscovering now. "you will notice that the binding posts on the bottom of this ammeter are marked, one positive, +, and the other, negative -. the electric current now enters the instrument by the post marked + and after passing around the armature leaves by the post marked -. i will reverse the connections and thus send the current around the armature in the other direction, and you notice that its poles are now reversed. the lower end which was formerly the north pole of the armature has now become the south pole, as proven by the fact that it is repelled from the south pole of the field and attracted to its north pole. this carried the needle to the left, and inasmuch as the zero is in the middle of the scale we may with this instrument both measure the amount of current and tell its direction. you will recall that when we connected the magneto with this instrument, it indicated that the magneto sent the current first in one direction and then in the other, which we call an 'alternating current.' but you notice that the current which i am using in this laboratory flows continuously in one direction. this is called the 'direct current.' we shall find out how a dynamo may produce a direct current at another time. let us not forget, however, that we have repeated ampère's discovery, and found out that the direction in which we send the current around an electro-magnet determines which end shall be its north and which its south pole. if you will note carefully which way the wire is wound around the armature you will see that when i send the current in at the positive post it is passing around the north pole of the armature opposite to the direction in which the hands of a clock move. if i reverse the current it passes around the lower end of the armature _in the same direction as the hands of a clock move_ and then this end becomes a south pole. this is 'ampère's rule,' and it is what candidates for admission to college are very careful to learn. "before we replace the face of this ammeter i must call your attention to a wire running by a short cut from one binding post to the other, _s_ (fig. 14). suppose _a_ represents the wire around the armature. electricity, like water, goes more readily through a big conductor than a small one and more readily through a short than a long conductor. if _s_ and _a_ were water pipes, each having a stop-cock, we might easily adjust the cocks so that one tenth of the water would go through _a_ and nine tenths through _s_. or, indeed, without stop-cocks, the size and length of _s_ and _a_ might be so apportioned that one tenth of the water would flow through _a_ and nine tenths through _s_. this is precisely the adjustment which has been made with reference to the flow of electricity through this instrument. _s_ is called a 'shunt.' when the shunt is out all the current goes through _a_ and when the shunt is in only one tenth of the current goes through _a_. i have two other shunts, each of which may be put in the place of _s_. with the second only one hundredth of the current goes through _a_ and with the third only one thousandth of the current goes through _a_. thus i have an instrument which will measure anything from one thousandth of an ampere up to ten amperes. [illustration: fig. 14] "in this laboratory we pay about one cent for an ampere of electricity for one hour. twice as much coal must be consumed to furnish two amperes as one, and twice as much coal must be consumed to furnish an ampere for two hours as for one hour. hence we need an instrument which will keep account of time as well as amount of current. such an instrument we must look into next. "just before we pass to that, however, let me ask if you have ever heard of a 'shunt-wound' dynamo. can you guess from the way we have just used the word 'shunt' what the expression could mean with reference to a dynamo?" without hesitation the boys told me that it meant that the field and armature were wound parallel to one another, as shown by diagram in fig. 15. in which case the electric current which the machine generates divides, part of it going around the field and part around the armature. another type, called series-wound dynamos, is indicated by diagram in fig. 16, in which case the electric current goes through field and armature in succession. under either of these circumstances, how can the armature move with reference to the field? the answer will appear in the next chapter. [illustration: fig. 15] [illustration: fig. 16] iv the wattmeter we were able to maintain connections between the binding posts of the ammeter and the movable armature of flexible wires because the armature never moves more than one third of a revolution, but we now wish to examine an instrument in which the armature must not only make a complete revolution but must continue to revolve in the same direction indefinitely. how are connections made so that an electric current may pass from the fixed binding posts to the wire of the moving coil? i will lift the cover off this instrument, which is called a wattmeter, and let you find the answer to that question. i sent through the instrument the current from a 32-candle-power lamp. according to the ammeter, which was also in circuit, the amount was one ampere. the armature of the wattmeter revolved slowly and it was not long before the boys reported that connections for the current were made by strips of metal sliding on metal plates. the ends of the armature wire were fastened one to one plate and the other to the other plate, and the metal strips brush along over the surfaces of the plates. (that is why they are called "brushes," i said.) and the brushes slide from one plate to the other each time the armature makes half a revolution. (that is, the brushes change the connection and thus change the poles of the armature at the proper instant so that they are always attracted to the poles of the field toward which they are moving.) this is called a commutator. notice that while the ammeter was like the magneto in having a steel magnet for its field, the wattmeter is like the dynamo in having electro-magnets for both armature and field. notice in the second place that this instrument is an _electric motor_ since it is made to revolve by an electric current. if it were made to revolve by some other power it would generate electricity and would then be called a dynamo. indeed, let me tell you something which must at present be nothing more than a puzzle to you. _every machine, while it is being driven by an electric current as an electric motor, is, at the same time, acting as a dynamo to generate a current in the opposite direction._ notice in the third place that this is a shunt-wound instrument. the current which is sent into the instrument divides, and part of it goes through the field, while part goes through the armature. motors, as well as dynamos, are either shunt-wound or series-wound. but notice finally that the axle on which the armature is carried has a cyclometer arrangement which keeps account of the number of revolutions. the armature is going slowly enough for us to count the revolutions. with watch in hand we found that it made one hundred and twenty revolutions per minute. i next brought the current to the wattmeter through a 16-candle-power lamp and the ammeter, connected in series, showed that half an ampere was passing. we counted the revolutions of the wattmeter and found them to be sixty per minute. here, then, is a simple electric motor which will register the amount of electricity we use. it will register the same amount whether we use one ampere for one hour or half an ampere for two hours or two amperes for half an hour. in any case this product is called _one ampere hour_. but the words printed upon the dials of this instrument are not _ampere hours_, but _watt hours_ and the name of the instrument is _wattmeter_. this next requires explanation. follow me in a little roundabout journey and the matter will be readily understood when viewed from another approach. [illustration: fig. 17] when we were estimating the energy required to climb the stairs of an apartment house, we needed to take into account two factors, (1) our weight and (2) the time which we took in climbing them. the amount of coal burned, steam generated, electricity produced, to run our elevator depends upon two factors, (1) its weight and (2) its speed. that idea is fundamental. let us get at it in still another way. suppose we have a mill pond, (fig. 17, _a_). we construct a penstock _p_ and install a water-wheel, _s_, to operate a mill. our business increases and we install more machinery in our mill and must have more power to run it. we have two ways of getting it, (1) we may lengthen our wheel and enlarge our penstock so that a greater weight of water will fall upon the wheel, or (2) we may lengthen our penstock and move the wheel farther down so that the water will fall upon the wheel with greater velocity. it is just so with the electric current. like water it is driven on in its course by pressure. the unit for electric pressure is called a volt. if we wish to drive the wattmeter or any other electric motor twice as fast as now, we may choose whether we shall do so by doubling the volts of pressure or by doubling the amperes of quantity. the electric pressure on our mains is about one-hundred and ten volts. we three together weigh 330 pounds. our elevator brought us up stairs at the speed of 100 feet per minute. it requires one horse-power to raise 330 pounds 100 feet in a minute. the ammeter in the engine room showed that 7 amperes of electricity were sent through the motor of the elevator to bring us up. that is, seven amperes at 110-volt pressure give one horse-power. in the office building across the street where they use a 220-volt current 3-1/2 amperes are required to take us up stairs at the same speed. it is necessary that the same amount of coal be consumed to furnish the horse-power of energy whether we supply it by means of seven amperes at 110 volts or 3-1/2 amperes at 220 volts. you notice that the product is 770 in each case. the name given to this product is _watts_. more accurately 746 watts of electrical power are equivalent to one horse-power. the name of this unit commemorates the famous inventor of the steam engine, james watt (1736-1819). his monument now overlooks the clyde at his native town, greenock, scotland. to light a certain lamp, to heat a certain laundry iron, to furnish a certain amount of power for an electric motor, we must have a definite number of watts. we may choose whether we will have it at high or low voltage with correspondingly low or high number of amperes. [illustration: fig. 18] we will now connect with our laboratory current a 32-candle-power lamp, an ammeter, and a wattmeter, all in series, fig. 18, and in parallel with these a volt meter. this last instrument indicates the electric pressure. its mechanism will be examined later. the volt meter indicates 110 volts and the ammeter shows that one ampere is passing. the filament in the lamp resists the passage of the current. it gets quite hot and gives forth as much light as thirty-two candles. its resistance is just such that 110 volts of pressure send one ampere through it. we will now take the reading of the wattmeter, note the time and read it again later. one hour later its index showed that 110 watt hours of electrical energy had been converted into light and heat. this at the usual rate, costs 1.1 cents, one cent per hundred watt hours or ten cents per thousand watt hours, called a kilowatt hour. the more common 16-candle-power lamp costs about half a cent an hour to operate. it requires one horse-power to keep fourteen of them burning. [illustration: photograph by helen w. cooke. wattmeter] i will now take you to see the wattmeter which measures all the electric energy used in this building. you note down its reading and the date and the next time you come we will read it again and thus find out how much electricity has been used for electric lights, for electric ventilating fans, for electric elevators, for electric ovens, and electric irons in the school of household arts, for electric motors to run lathes and other machines in the school of technical arts, for electric experiments in my laboratories and lecture room, for electric vacuum cleaners and, lastly, for pumping the pipe organ in chapel. i saw by the boys' faces as they departed what would be the next question that they would bring to me. knowing, however, that the hour was up, they were too polite to press it then. v the electric motor in a few days i received a telephone message, asking if i could appoint an hour to meet the programme committee in my laboratory. i must confess that my pleasure in these meetings had increased so much that i was quite ready to slight other duties, if need be, to engage in them. moreover, since my business was education it was not difficult for me to regard these meetings in the light of a duty quite as important as my regular class instruction--perhaps more effective. at any rate the boys and i managed to get together. may god forgive the man who essays to teach boys, but does not love to be with them. of course at the last meeting of the science club every one wanted to know how we ran a pipe organ by electricity. moreover the electrical show was coming on in the city, and cows were to be milked by electricity, dishes were to be washed by electricity, rugs and furniture were to be cleaned by electricity, and innumerable distracting and distressing things were to take place. i told the boys that really only two kinds of things were to be done by electricity at the show, and if they would give me two one-hour appointments i would furnish them with the key to the whole show. we might as well begin to-day with the pipe organ question. a pipe organ is operated by air. it has bellows which are simply one form of an air pump. a boy is often employed to turn a crank which works the bellows. down in the basement underneath our pipe organ i will show you how a half-horse-power electric motor takes the place of a boy. we found a dark and dirty corner where a boy used to stand and turn a crank every time æsthetically inclined people enjoyed an organ recital in the room above. science, which has not been given credit for being _humanitarian_, put an electric motor into that dark corner and sent the boy up stairs to hear the music. the motor _grumbled_ at the dirt in the corner and compelled the janitor to keep it clean. the electric motor, better than any device i know, enforces justice, but never requires mercy, or at least rarely receives it. it comes nearer than any other machine to paying back all that you put into it. it is most economical when working up to its full capacity. i recommend that you look it over carefully and after a few minutes tell me what you have seen in it. [illustration: fig. 19] the boys said that it looked just like a dynamo. we must not forget that it is a dynamo, but is here used as a motor by sending an electric current through it. this fact, that a dynamo might be driven by an electric current and serve as a mover of other machinery, was first publicly exhibited in 1873 at the vienna exhibition, and by many believed to have been discovered by accident at that exhibit. but why does it look like a dynamo? it has a field whose magnetism is produced by an electric current sent through coils of wire, and it has an armature whose magnetism is likewise produced by the electric current. if it were used as a dynamo, where would it get the electric current to magnetize its field? from its own moving armature. is it adapted for direct current? yes. it has a commutator and brushes. is it shuntor series-wound? shunt-wound, as shown by diagram in fig. 20. [illustration: fig. 20] suppose we treat the machine as a dynamo. bring the ends of the line wire together, thus, as we say, closing the circuit. by some external force let us cause the armature to rotate and under the influence of the magnetic field it will generate an electric current, part of which will pass through the field and part through the line circuit. we may adjust the relative amount of wire in field and line so that any portion of the current we choose will pass through the field. the amount of current it will generate depends, (1) upon the strength of the field and (2) upon the speed of the armature. its field, although never entirely without magnetism, is very feeble at first, and hence in the first instance a very small current will be generated in the moving armature. this, however, will strengthen the field slightly, and as the field is strengthened the armature will generate more current, and thus by a mutual reaction the machine gradually "builds up" to full strength. [illustration: fig. 21] when now we use the machine as a motor, an electric current must be sent along the line wires in the opposite direction (fig. 21) from which it would come out of the machine when acting as a dynamo. it will then be noticed that, although the direction of the current through the field is the same, whether the machine is used as a dynamo or a motor, the direction through the armature, when used as a motor, is the reverse of that when used as a dynamo. you may perhaps be able to notice that the amount of wire on the field is considerably more than that on the armature. now if you will trace the wires carefully you will find that there is provided a way of supplementing the wire of the armature with some more wire in what is called the rheostat, fig. 22. this wire, or portions of it, is introduced into the armature circuit when the machine first starts. when, however, the machine has started and the armature is moving within the influence of a magnetic field, it plays the part of a dynamo at the same time that it is acting as a motor. two conflicting and opposite electro-motive forces therefore exist in the armature at the same time. in fig. 22 the arrow _a_ represents the direction of the electro-motive force which is impressed upon the armature, and the arrow _b_ represents the counter-electro-motive force which the moving armature develops. [illustration: fig. 22] this counter-electro-motive force, which develops while the machine is in motion, makes it unnecessary to hold back the current longer by the extra resistance of the rheostat and hence that is usually cut out. being used only for starting purposes and looking like a box, it is generally called the "starting box." if now it was intended that this motor should run at a constant speed, as is often the case, no other governor would be needed than this counter-electro-motive force, for whenever the machine begins to go faster, on account of reduced load, its counter-electro-motive force increases as the speed and holds in check the impressed electro-motive force. this acts very perfectly as a governor, and motors operate with notoriously constant speed under variable loads. but, of course, in this present instance the motor is required to work at a variable speed. it must pump air slowly for the soft passages of music, and it must work the pump to its utmost for the very strong passages. [illustration: fig. 23] to understand how an electric motor may pump an organ and have its speed automatically controlled, let us examine the diagram in fig. 23. the motor _m_ causes the shaft _s_ to revolve, carrying the crank _c_ around with it. the rod _r_ causes _a b_, the lower side of the bellows, to rise and fall, this side being hinged at _b_. the side _b c_, is fixed. when the side _a b_ is pushed upward by the crank rod the valve _f_ closes and the air in the compartment _h_ pushes open the valve _g_ and enters the compartment _j_. the upper side _d e_, of this compartment rises as it is filled with air. weights _k_, _k_, _k_, rest on the top of this and air ducts lead from this compartment to the pipes of the organ. the keys of the organ operate air cocks which open and close the air ducts connected with the organ-pipes. a chain connected with _e_ passes around the axle of the wheel _l_ and has a weight _w_ upon its lower end. the wheel _l_ carries a strip of brass _n_, which slides over metal points _p_, _p_, _p_, etc. the successive points are connected by coils of wire to furnish resistance. this series of coils is called a rheostat. the wires _t_ and _u_ form a loop from the armature of the motor and connect this rheostat in series with the armature. _u_ is connected with the brass strip _n_. notice that when the compartment _j_ is full of air and the side _d e_, is lifted to its greatest height the strip _n_ is moved to the lowest point _p_, and the electric current must pass from _u_ through all the resistance of the rheostat in order to get back to the armature by the wire _t_. this makes the motor go very slowly. when _d e_ sinks down, the strip _n_ moves to the upper points _p_, and the resistance is reduced step by step, enabling the motor to quicken its speed and pump faster as more air is required. small motors in order to be effective must travel at high speed. this motor when moving at its highest speed makes 1,800 revolutions per minute. the bellows on the other hand needs to be large and move slowly in order to be efficient. hence the motor is not in reality connected directly to the shaft _s_, but causes the shaft to revolve by means of a series of pulleys and belts. the pulley on the motor is three inches in diameter. it is connected by a flat leather belt with a wheel thirty inches in diameter. when the motor therefore, makes 1,800 revolutions per minute this wheel makes 180 revolutions per minute. the axle of this wheel carries a small cog-wheel three inches in diameter and it is connected by a chain belt with a cog wheel on the shaft _s_ (fig. 23). thus this shaft revolves thirty times per minute, that is, the rod _r_ rises and falls each second. a pull of one pound on the rim of the motor pulley will cause a pull of sixty pounds on the cogs of the wheel upon the shaft _s_. if the second belt were leather, a sixty-pound pull would cause it to slip on the smaller pulley. hence the second belt is a steel chain and the wheels have cogs, or sprockets, like a bicycle. [illustration: fig. 24] the organist before beginning to play closes a double-pole, single-throw switch (fig. 24), which sends the electric current to the motor. the motor pumps air until the bellows is full, and if the organist delays playing, the strip of brass _n_ (fig. 23) is carried below the lowest point _p_, thus cutting off the current and stopping the motor. as soon as he uses some of the air in the bellows, however, _n_ rises and makes contact with the points _p_ and the motor starts. this suggests that a somewhat similar thing is accomplished under electric cars which have air brakes. an electric motor pumps the air and compresses it in a tank. when the pressure reaches a certain point, say sixty pounds per square inch, it automatically shuts off the electric current from the motor which works the pump. but when the motorman uses some of the air to apply the brakes to the wheels, and the pressure in the tank falls below sixty pounds, the electric current is again automatically turned on to the motor. of course if an electric motor can operate a pump to compress air it may also work a pump to exhaust air. this is what is done in a vacuum cleaner. the electric pump as it is called (which means a pump worked by an electric motor), exhausts some of the air from a compartment in the machine, and the atmosphere pressing in through nozzle and hose carries dust from rugs and furniture with it into the compartment. the best vacuum cleaners will produce a pressure of seven or eight pounds per square inch, about half an atmosphere. this will remove dust from the warp and woof of a rug better than our greatest hurricanes can when the rugs are hung upon a line. there are three kinds of air pumps in use with vacuum cleaners: (1) bellows, (2) rotating disk or fan, (3) piston. to milk cows by electricity is simply to apply the vacuum-cleaner idea to the process, and, in general, doing things by electricity usually means doing them by some machine that is made to go by an electric motor. this then is the first key to the electrical show, and if you will remember to look first for the motor it may remove much of the mystery from some of the exhibits. in many cases it is not necessary to have a complete electric motor, but simply an electro-magnet to do the work. in booth no. 56 you will find a piano played by electricity. its keys are moving, but no hands strike them. there is no ghost at work here. a little strip of iron has been placed upon the under side of each key and a small electro-magnet is placed under that. it is only necessary that wires should run from these electro-magnets to two dry-battery cells and to push buttons, and a person far away may play the piano. in reality, however, it is not a person but a roll of punctured paper that opens and closes the electric circuits to these various magnets underneath the keys. it often happens that you see a person playing a pipe organ with his keyboard far removed from the organ itself. in this case the keys simply act as push buttons to close the electric circuit through electro-magnets placed in the organ itself. these electro-magnets operate the air valves of the various pipes. [illustration: fig. 25] you call at some apartment house where there is no hall boy, but a row of push buttons labelled with the names of the tenants. you push a button and the door which was locked opens apparently of its own accord. to say that the door opens by electricity is only to add mystery. what does happen is that an electric bell up in the apartment rings in response to your push of the button, and in reply the tenant pushes a button and the door is unlatched by an electro-magnet concealed in the door casing (fig. 25). so i would say that the first key to the electric show or to the multitude of electrical appliances which you meet in life is the electro-magnet. consider the motor as one illustration of its use. if you are really to understand the electric show you should go twice. i advise going with this key alone first and note down all the applications of electro-magnets which you can find there. when you have done so i shall be glad to have your report. vi applications of the electro-magnet it became quite the rage now among the boys to find as many uses of electro-magnets as possible. these were reported and explained to the club and a list kept. this list included: 1. dynamo. 2. magneto. 3. ammeter. 4. wattmeter. 5. motor. 6. electric piano and organ players. 7. electric door openers. already noticed in the preceding pages, and the following: 8. _the electric spinner_ (fig. 26).--a toy full of instruction. the standard is a steel magnet which produces a magnetic field. inside of this is an electro-magnet which serves as an armature. plainly visible on its shaft is a commutator to which the electric current from a dry cell is sent. this causes the armature to revolve and carry with it a series of colour disks which may be adjusted so as to show what tint or shade results from mixing colours in various proportions. [illustration: fig. 26] [illustration: fig. 27] [illustration: fig. 28] 9. _the electric engine_ (fig. 27).--this toy, with one dry battery cell, develops power enough to run several other toy machines. the diagram in fig. 28 will make its plan of operation plain. _b_ is the battery cell, _c_ the electro-magnets, _a_ an armature of iron. by a rod this armature is connected with a crank on the axle which carries the fly wheel _f_. another crank, _d_, upon the same axle serves like a push button to close the electric circuit at the right instant. the wire _g_ from the battery cell encircles the electro-magnet _c_ and then is connected to the iron base of the toy. when the crank _d_ touches the conductor _e_, which is a spring, the electric current passes around the magnet, the magnet pulls the iron armature _a_, and this gives an impulse to the wheel _f_ whose momentum carries it around during that portion of the revolution when _d_ is separated from _e_ and _a_ is receding from the magnet. it is customary to say that the circuit is closed through the base of the machine, but this language requires interpretation. it means that a way is provided for the electric current to pass through the base. a person who is expert in language but not in electricity might expect us to say "the circuit is open through the base." [illustration: fig. 29] 10. _the telegraph sounder_ (fig. 29).--this was a toy half a century ago, but since the days of samuel finley breese morse it has become of vast commercial importance. the western union telegraph company in 1909 had 211,513 miles of poles and cables, 1,382,500 miles of wire, 24,321 offices, sent 68,053,439 messages, received $30,541,072.55, expended $23,193,965.66, and had $7,347,106.89 in profits. in the united states more than 93,000,000 and in the world at large more than 600,000,000 messages are sent annually, and there are men still living who scoffed at morse's ideas as _impracticable_. it is interesting to contemplate what would happen to the stock exchange, to the newspapers, to the railroads, to the congressman addressing his constituents from the floor of a legislative chamber, to business in general, if the world were deprived of the telegraph. a few years ago a telegraph despatch was sent from new york to san francisco, tokio, london, and back to new york, 42,872 miles, in three minutes less than an hour. electricity can travel around the world in a fraction of a second, the time was consumed in repeating the message. i once sent a message from new york to new haven to announce that i was coming, and afterward took my train and reached new haven in time to receive my own message and pay the messenger boy. but i have never lost faith in the beneficent results of morse's labours. morse (1791-1872) was an artist and the first president of the national academy of design. he was likewise a professor in new york university and constructed his first experimental telegraph line upon the university campus in 1835. his first public line was built from washington to baltimore in 1844. the western union telegraph company was incorporated in 1856. of course the work of morse rested upon that of oersted, in copenhagen, who, in 1819, discovered electro-magnetism, and upon that of joseph henry of albany, who in 1827 first insulated the wires. [illustration: fig. 30] the application of the electro-magnet to producing telegraphic signals will be understood by referring to fig. 30. _b_ is the generator of an electric current--sometimes a battery and sometimes a dynamo. one wire from this goes to the earth, _e_. the other wire goes through a key, which, like a push button or a switch, serves to open or close the circuit. this is normally closed when not in use. through this the current passes around the electro-magnet _s_, which attracts the armature _a_, causing it to click against a metal stop, hence it is called the sounder. from this the current passes along the line wire to a distant station and there through the sounder and closed key to the earth. there is likely to be a generator at each station. the current must run continually through the system. if a battery is employed, the copper sulphate, or gravity cell, to be described later, is chosen, because it will endure continued usage better than any other. the operator, in sending signals, opens the circuit, the magnets cease to hold down the armatures, and they are raised by springs and strike against metallic stops above. it is customary to say that the circuit is completed through the earth. this statement misleads some persons into imagining an electric current capable of corroding water pipes and decomposing chemical compounds, passing through the earth between stations. [illustration: photograph by helen w. cooke. testing the telegraphy outfit] perhaps it will help to a better understanding of the truth if we think of a city pumping water out of the ocean, say to fight fire, and disposing of it again into the ocean. the ocean currents thus produced are not likely to be destructive. indeed, just as we measure height from the ocean level as zero, so we measure electric pressures as from the zero level of the earth's electrical state. [illustration: fig. 31] the key used by telegraphers is represented in fig. 31. it has connected with it a switch to keep the circuit closed when the key is not in operation. the morse code of signals consists of dots and dashes, when printed, as follows: a . b . . . c . . . etc. operators learn to read the message by the intervals between sounds. a dot consists of two taps of the sounder with a short interval between, and a dash consists of two taps with a longer interval between. one tap of the sounder is caused by its descending upon the metal stop below and another by its rising against the upper stop. telegraph sounders are operated on about a quarter of an ampere of current if from a battery circuit, or on about one tenth of an ampere from a dynamo circuit. the dynamo circuit is supplied with more volts of electric pressure, and hence its power is ample to cause the armature to strike the metal stops hard enough to be heard by the operator. for example a battery circuit may supply to the sounder a current with these characteristics: 2 volts × .25 amperes = .5 watts, while a dynamo circuit may give: 6 volts × .1 ampere = .6 watts. telegraph line wires are usually bare, the insulation being merely the glass knobs at the poles. clean water is a very good insulator but dirty water is a fairly good conductor. a wet telegraph pole may bring so much current to earth as to prevent all sounders on the line from operating. hence the line is separated from the poles by glass. the poles are about one hundred and thirty-two feet apart, making forty to the mile. the wires are usually galvanized iron one sixth of an inch in diameter. copper conducts six times as well as iron, and is now replacing iron in the lines. morse laid a submarine telegraph line in new york harbour and suggested a cable across the ocean. but that gigantic undertaking had to await the masterful intelligence of lord kelvin and the indomitable will of cyrus w. field. a submarine cable was laid across the strait of dover in 1850. it was cut by the anchor of a fisherman a few hours after it was laid. the first attempt to lay a submarine cable across the atlantic ocean was made in 1857. two ships of war, the _agamemnon_ of great britain and the _niagara_ of the united states, engaged in this undertaking. three hundred miles had been laid when the cable parted where the ocean was more than two miles deep. william thomson was on board the _agamemnon_ as electrical expert. he went home to study and improve the methods. the next year, 1858, the _agamemnon_ and the _niagara_ met in midocean each with a portion of the cable on board. the splice was made, and the _agamemnon_ started toward ireland and the _niagara_ toward newfoundland. when six miles apart the cable broke. the ships met again, made a new splice and again started in opposite directions. they laid eighty miles and the cable parted a second time. they met again, spliced and laid two hundred miles when it parted for the third time. they met a fourth time, made the splice and succeeded in laying the first cable from ireland to newfoundland on august 5, 1858. in a few weeks the insulation failed and no more messages could be sent. seven years were spent in studying the problem, and again in 1865 the _great eastern_, a mammoth ship, started to lay the cable. william thomson was again on board as the expert. when twelve hundred miles had been laid the cable parted in deep water. three times the cable was grappled and brought part way to the surface and lost again. the _great eastern_ returned to land. the next year, 1866, the _great eastern_, having on board william thomson (lord kelvin), mr. canning, the engineer of the expedition, and captain anderson, in command, laid the cable which has worked successfully ever since. thomson, canning, and anderson were knighted as a result of their labours. sir william thomson (1824-1907), afterward lord kelvin, is credited with having solved the difficult electrical problems connected with this enterprise. cyrus w. field (1819-1892), born in stockbridge, mass., helped to secure the many millions of dollars necessary to carry the work to completion. there are now seventy-three cables connecting europe and america, and two across the pacific ocean. cable rates are: new york to england, france, germany, or holland twenty-five cents a word, to switzerland thirty cents a word, and to japan one dollar and thirty-three cents a word. [illustration: fig. 32] the boys were kept very busy now looking up historical and biographical sketches, as well as working up the many applications of the electro-magnet. the next to be reported was: 11. _the relay_ (fig. 32).--telegraphing from 3,000 to 10,000 miles under the ocean is full of difficulties not now to be explained. of course when we attempt to telegraph many miles upon land we find that the resistance of the wire cuts down the strength of the current so that it will not move the sounder. this, however, is readily obviated by the relay devised by morse. it simply serves as an automatic key to close a circuit. a diagram will make this clear (fig. 33). suppose the line wire to be very long and on account of its resistance the current is too feeble to operate a sounder. it is likely to be about .025 ampere where the local sounder may require .25 ampere or ten times as much. it is easily possible to wind a magnet (fig. 33), _r_, such that .025 ampere will close the armature _a_, so that it may complete a local circuit when it would not make noise enough for a sounder. _b_ may represent a local battery of any desired strength which may operate the sounder _s_ of that station as loudly as may be desired. [illustration: fig. 33] [illustration: fig. 34] 12. _annunciator_ (fig. 34).--we live in a fifth-floor apartment. when we push the button to call the elevator a no. 5 appears in the annunciator in the elevator car. this tells the elevator boy where the call comes from. take out two or three screws and the annunciator opens, revealing a series of electro-magnets like the one shown in fig. 35. when an electric current passes around the coil it pulls back an iron catch and allows a number to drop so as to show through a small window. the elevator boy, having noted that the call is from the fifth floor, pushes up the number and the iron catch holds it until the coil is magnetized again by an electric current. [illustration: fig. 35] [illustration: fig. 36] [illustration: fig. 37] the annunciator has a bell to call attention. a cable of six wires enters this annunciator (fig. 36). one wire goes direct to the bell and the other five reach the bell through the separate coils of the electro-magnets which control the drops. but how are electrical connections made between a moving elevator car and the push buttons on various floors? the diagram in fig. 37 shows this in elevation. _b_ represents a battery of several dry cells located in the basement. one wire from it runs direct to the push buttons 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, located upon the five floors of the house. the other wire from the battery, together with wires from each of the five push buttons, all run to a point, _a_, half-way up the elevator shaft. here the six wires are gathered into a cable long enough to reach either to the top or the bottom of the elevator shaft. the other end of this cable enters the elevator car and runs to the annunciator. the wire from the battery goes direct to the bell. the wires from the various push buttons go through correspondingly numbered electro-magnets to the bell. when, therefore, we pushed the button on the fifth floor, we closed the gap in the electric circuit at that point. the current came up from the battery, passed through the button, went down the cable to the car, went through electro-magnet no. 5, went through the bell, and returned direct to the battery, thus completing the circuit. annunciators are used about buildings to call other attendants, besides the elevator boy. they are likewise used in burglar alarms to inform the householder which door or window is being forced. they are used in the fire department to tell what part of the city the call came from. [illustration: fig. 38] 13. _the electric bell and buzzer_ (fig. 38).--so common a thing as an electric bell really belongs to the present generation. bells were either novelties or toys when i was your age. they cost then many times what they do now and then were poorly made. nobody dared to trust them for front-door bells. it was necessary to have a card permanently posted over the push button saying, "if the bell does not ring, knock." in those days batteries were troublesome to care for, houses were not wired when built, and no one had learned the art of concealing the wires neatly. the buzzer is simply a bell minus gong and hammer. those shown in fig. 38 ring well on a single dry cell. a cell costing twelve cents operated one for two years while it was used as a call bell from dining room to kitchen, the current required being .15 ampere. [illustration: fig. 39] [illustration: electric bell] the connections are shown in the diagram (fig. 39). suppose the current to enter at the binding post _a_, pass around the magnets _b_ and then to the post _c_. the armature _d_ normally rests against the post _c_ and the current finds its way along this to the post _e_ and thence back to the battery. but as soon as the current passes, _b_ becomes a magnet and pulls the armature _d_ away from the post _c_, thus breaking the circuit, when _b_ ceases to be a magnet and a spring pushes the armature _d_ back against the post _c_ to repeat the operation. the armature _d_ carries a hammer which strikes the gong _f_. if the wire, which is usually connected with the binding post _e_, is connected with the post _c_, the "clatter" bell is changed to a "single-stroke" bell, and if the gong and hammer are removed the "bell" is changed to a "buzzer." [illustration: fig. 40] in the case of the buzzer, by changing the length of the armature or by weighting it, we may change the time of its vibrations and its tone. the connections between battery push button and bell form a complete circuit. in fig. 40 _b_ represents a battery, usually of dry cells, _b'_ represents the bell, and _p_ represents the push button. the electric circuit is "open," (that is, there is a break in the conductor) at _p_ until some one "pushes the button," that is, simply pushes against a spring so as to cause a piece of metal to bridge the gap in the conductor. then we say the circuit is "closed." [illustration: fig. 41] [illustration: fig. 42] push button devices and switches are innumerable. in every case they are simply devices for pushing one piece of metal against another and completing the circuit for an electric current. every one should unscrew and examine a few of them, both for the pleasure of seeing how they work and to learn how to make them work when they sometimes fail. not only in bells but in all other instruments where electro-magnets are used, the magnets are placed in pairs, fastened together upon an iron base. they are wound so that the free ends are made opposite poles by the electric current. like a horseshoe magnet, they form one magnet. the two poles thus placed are mutually helpful and each is stronger than it would be if separated from the other. [illustration: fig. 43] 14. _electric clocks, self-winding clocks, programme clocks._--a pretentious-looking thing which appeared like a dish pan with a glass bottom was opened by the boys and found to be the simplest of all clocks. it had an electro-magnet like that in fig. 44. a strip of iron acting as an armature across the free ends of this magnet, pushed like a finger against the cogs of a wheel. this wheel was on the axle of the minute hand and it had sixty cogs. the electric circuit was closed through the magnet for an instant each minute and the armature pushed the wheel ahead one cog. thus it made one complete revolution in an hour. a train of four other cog-wheels caused the hour hand to trail after at one twelfth the speed of the minute hand. this machinery made simply a small handful in an eighteen-inch stamped-metal "dish-pan" costing fifteen dollars. [illustration: fig. 44] a self-winding clock was opened and found to contain two dry battery cells, an electro-magnet which operated very much like that of a "clatter" bell, the hammer like a finger poking against the cogs of a wheel. once an hour the long hand closed the circuit through the battery and the magnet and its armature swung back and forth long enough to give the cog wheel one complete revolution and wind a spring, which it carried upon its axle. this spring kept the clock running one hour, until the next winding. [illustration: fig. 45] the programme clocks which were examined were self-winding clocks, but were connected by wires to the master clock which corrected them each hour. each time the long hand of the master clock came to twelve it closed an electric circuit through all the clocks in the system. in each clock the current passed around an electro-magnet and caused it to pull an armature against a metal stop and set each long hand exactly at twelve. this master clock is sometimes situated many miles away and may correct the time for a whole city. thus a master clock at washington, d. c., furnishes standard time to all parts of the united states. the master clock which we examined also closed the circuit at proper intervals through a series of programme bells placed in the various class rooms, and these called and dismissed classes automatically. 15. _watchman's time detector_ (fig. 45).--this is a device to compel a watchman to make his appointed trips. push buttons or switches are distributed about the building at various points, and it is made his duty to close the circuits at these points at stated times. when he does so, the fact is recorded by electro-magnets puncturing, or, in some way, marking a revolving time card in the clock. [illustration: fig. 46] 16. _circuit breakers_ (fig. 46).--electro-magnets are used to open switches and thus protect dynamos and other machines against a larger electric current than they are able to carry. the switch is held closed by a spring which, by an adjusting device, may be tightened or loosened. a dynamo which we examined had its circuit breaker adjusted so that it would remain closed if any current under 1500 amperes passed, but if a greater current than that passed it would strengthen the magnet sufficiently to open the switch and thus break the circuit. 17. _separating iron from ore._--in 1897 edison first proposed to use an electro-magnet to separate iron from crushed earth. fig. 47 represents the process. _e_ is an electro-magnet. _s_ is the stream of crushed ore containing iron. gravity would cause all the material to fall into bin _a_, but the electro-magnet _e_ pulls that portion of the material which is magnetic to one side so that it falls into the bin _b_. [illustration: fig. 47] [illustration: fig. 48] 18. _lifting magnets._--electro-magnets are made for use with hoisting apparatus to save the trouble of manipulating grappling hooks, etc. they may lift barrels and boxes of iron, the wood of the barrel or box being transparent, we say, to the magnetic influence. that is, the magnet will attract iron through the wood just as light will shine through glass. such magnets are used to pick up from the bottom of the sea cases of hardware from wrecked ships. (see the accompanying illustration, fig. 48.) in such cases the electric conductors which lead to and encircle the magnets must be well insulated from the water of the sea, otherwise the electric current would take the shorter path from one line wire through the sea water, which is a fairly good conductor, and back by the other line wire, rather than go the path of greater resistance around the magnet. electro-magnets are coming into use in foundries, etc., for lifting heavy iron castings. [illustration: fig. 49] 19. _electro-magnet on starting box._--as was explained under _electric motors_, a starting box is simply a series of resistance coils _r_, _r_, _r_, _r_, _r_, in fig. 49. when the motor is not in use the switch _l_ rests upon the point 1 and no electric current passes. when the switch is moved to point 2, the current entering at _a_ passes to the pivot of the switch and up the metal strip _l_ to the point 2, then around the series of coils, _r_, _r_, _r_, _r_, _r_, to the post _b_ and thence back to the generator. as the switch is moved to the right, the current passes through less and less of this resistance until, when it reaches point 7, all the coils of resistance are "cut out," that is, they are not in the path of the current. now the motor has reached its full speed and is developing enough counter-electro-motive force to protect itself against too much current. through a shunt, however, a portion of the current passes from _a_ to _b_ around the electro-magnet _e_, the two poles of which are presented to the metal strip _l_, which must be of iron. this magnet holds the switch over so long as the current is on, but when the current is cut off, by opening a switch in the line wire, _e_ ceases to be a magnet and _l_ is carried back to point 1 by a spring. thus an extra resistance must always be in circuit when the motor is first started. those who start motors are expected to move the lever _l_ of the starting box slowly from point to point, pausing a second or two on each to give the motor time to acquire proper speed for its protection. how too great a current would "burn out" a motor will be explained later. the motor man handles a lever for starting his car, which works like that of the "starting box." his "starting box," however, is called a "controller." although it accomplishes the same result as the starting box it has a wholly different and vastly more complex mechanism than that already described. the elevator boy, who runs our electric elevator, handles a lever which also does the same thing through far different mechanism. indeed, in his case electro-magnets are used to prevent him from cutting out resistance too fast if he should move his lever too quickly. 20. _starting switches for electric elevators._--the motor man has to be instructed particularly how he should handle the lever of his controller, and he is trusted to follow his directions to some extent, however lacking in intelligence and integrity he may be. but the elevator boy receives scarcely any instructions about his machine, and, indeed, his machine has been constructed pretty nearly "foolproof." it will automatically correct his errors of management. if he throws the handle from one extreme to the other, all resistance cannot be thrown out instantly, but this is accomplished by a series of electro-magnets closing one switch after another and thus cutting out resistance gradually. 21. _arc lamp feed._--as will be explained later, an arc lamp must have its carbons touching one another when the current is first thrown on, and then the carbons must be drawn apart from a quarter to half an inch. the upper carbon is lifted away from the lower one by a portion of the current passing by means of a shunt around an electro-magnet. [illustration: fig. 50] [illustration: fig. 51] [illustration: fig. 52] 22. _volt meter._--the volt meter measures the pressure of an electric current. the volt meter which we examined looked outside like our ammeter, and when we removed the face it appeared inside like an ammeter. there was the steel magnet of horseshoe shape to furnish a field (fig. 51), and there was an electro-magnet poised between its poles for an armature. the armature in the volt meter, however, had wound upon it finer wire and more of it than was the case in the ammeter. there was no shunt wire in the volt meter as there was in the ammeter. we connected in series a fluid cell (to be described later), the ammeter, and the volt meter (fig. 52). the ammeter shunt was removed so that all the current went through its armature. the volt meter needle went to one which was two thirds of the scale (fig. 53), and the ammeter needle indicated .016. that is, this particular cell can push sixteen thousandths of an ampere through the resistance of this volt meter, and .016 ampere passing through the armature of this volt meter will magnetize it sufficiently to move it against its spring, say sixty degrees. [illustration: fig. 53] [illustration: fig. 54] [illustration: fig. 55] we put into the circuit a lot more fine wire for resistance, _r_ (fig. 54), so that the volt meter needle went only half as far as before, that is to .5. the ammeter indicated only half as much as before, that is .008 ampere. we put in resistance enough to bring the volt meter needle down to .25 and the ammeter indicated one quarter of the original current. we put in less resistance, bringing the volt meter needle to .75, and the ammeter indicated three fourths of the original current. evidently the volt meter is merely an ammeter with a different scale marked upon its card. with a pen we marked upon the card of the volt meter a true ammeter scale (fig. 55). [illustration: fig. 56] in order to understand the volt meter, let us turn our attention for a moment to fig. 56. i have arranged the water tank _t_ at such a height above the faucet _f_ that when the faucet is opened one quart of water will flow in a minute. if i partially close the faucet, making the opening one half as large (that is, offering twice the resistance to the flow), half a quart will flow in a minute. if i make the resistance four times as great only one quarter of a quart will flow in a minute. it is evident that i could arrange a scale underneath the handle of the faucet to indicate the quantity of water flowing, just as the ammeter and volt meter indicate the quantity of electricity which flows. if now that much is understood, it will be easy to learn how the water faucet may be used to measure water pressure and the volt meter in like manner used to measure electric pressure. having set the faucet so that a quart will flow per minute, let us put on a longer tube _p_, and move the tank up to another shelf so that the distance from the water level in the tank to the faucet is twice as great as before. under the increased pressure water runs through the faucet twice as fast and we now get two quarts per minute. i purposely placed the tank out of sight behind a partition so that you might practise judging the water pressure by the flow at the faucet. we cannot very well talk about pressure in quarts. we might talk about it in pounds, but if we used this apparatus much we should probably get into the habit of talking about the pressure from one shelf, two shelves, three shelves, etc. in order that the pressure might remain nearly constant during the experiment we would probably introduce resistance (that is, partially close the faucet) so that the water level should not fall much. we might, for example, set the faucet so that half a pint would flow in a minute when the tank was on the first shelf. then a pint per minute would flow when the tank was on the second shelf and one and a half pints per minute when the tank was on the third shelf, etc. thus we should infer the pressure by measuring the quantity. one more illustration and the case will be clear. to save the trouble of measuring the quantity of water which flows through the faucet, suppose i introduce the device represented in fig. 57. _w_ is a small water wheel comparable to the armature of the volt meter. it carries a pointer which moves over a scale just as in the case of the volt meter. [illustration: fig. 57] it has a spring coiled around its axle which tends to keep the pointer at _0_, as in the case of the volt meter. the tank is placed upon the first shelf, the faucet is fixed so that a small amount of water flows and the needle moves to a certain figure upon the scale. we will mark this point one and call it "first-shelf pressure." the tank is lifted to the second shelf and the index moves to another point, which we will mark two and call it "second-shelf pressure." the tank is lifted to the third shelf and the index moves to a third point, which we will mark three and call it "third-shelf pressure," etc. ordinarily we measure water pressure with an instrument which allows no water to run to waste, but in measuring electric pressure by the volt meter some current must pass through the instrument, just as in the case of our water-wheel illustration in fig. 57. we put in large resistance so as to make this current as small as possible, while we let enough pass to move the armature. [illustration: fig. 58] now let us return to the volt meter itself. by referring to fig. 55, we see that it requires .024 ampere to move the needle of the volt meter clear across the scale, and we have found that one fluid cell was able to send enough current through the resistance of the armature to move the needle two thirds of the way across the scale. at this point we find fig. 1, which might be read "one-cell pressure." we prefer to commemorate the name of one of the workers in the field of electricity and call this pressure a "volt" after alessandro volta (1745-1827), born at como, italy. it is the electric pressure which is produced by one fluid cell of a certain kind. we say, then, that one volt pushes through the resistance of this armature .016 ampere. half a volt would push through the resistance of the armature half as much current or .008 ampere. at this point we put .5. thus each of the figures in the lower row (fig. 55) shows what part of a volt is required to send enough current through this particular armature to move the needle to that point. [illustration: fig. 59] we found out how much wire was wound upon the armature and put exactly the same amount in the outside resistance, _r_ (fig. 59). the needle now showed that one volt is able to push through twice the resistance of the armature only half as much current, and the needle stopped at .008 ampere. if this were to be the resistance in the volt meter circuit one volt should stand under .008 ampere and two under .016 and three under .024. it is evident then, that, if we know the internal resistance of a volt meter, we may make it capable of measuring greater electrical pressures by adding the proper amount of resistance. by putting at _r_, (fig. 59) nine times the internal resistance of the instrument, thus multiplying the total resistance tenfold, the figures upon the scale of volts may be read as whole numbers from one to fifteen. in this case it will require fifteen cells to push the needle clear across the scale and ten cells to push it two thirds of the way across. if now we add enough external resistance to multiply the resistance of the armature a hundred fold it will require 150 volts to push .024 of an ampere through the armature and pull its needle clear across the scale. in this case the figures upon the scale of volts are multiplied by one hundred and read from ten to one hundred and fifty. such a scale would adapt this volt meter for use with our 110-volt lighting circuit. volt meters are made with a series of such external resistances, called "multipliers," attached so that they may be easily thrown into the circuit. it is evident that we need some term so that we may speak of quantities of resistance. this need has given rise to a unit of resistance called an ohm, after george simon ohm (1789-1854) born at erlanger in bavaria. two inches of no. 36 german silver wire, such as is wound upon the armature of this volt meter, gives one ohm of resistance. there are 125 inches of this wire upon the armature. its resistance is, therefore, 62.5 ohms, and we may, therefore, say that one volt of electric pressure can push through 62.5 ohms of resistance .016 of an ampere of current. ohm discovered this relationship in 1827, and formulated it as follows: volts/ohms = amperes (not, however, using these words). (1 volt)/(62.5 ohms) = .016 ampere. 62.5) 1.0000 (.016 625 --- 3750 3750 ---this is called ohm's law, as every candidate for college admission will hear and hear again. [illustration: fig. 60] volt meters and armatures for the alternating current have electro-magnets for their fields as well as for their armatures. such instruments are equally well adapted for either direct or alternating currents. for when the current reverses its direction it reverses in field and armature alike, and thus a repulsion between like poles is maintained. such an instrument, however, cannot respond to as slight a current as those previously described, since they must consume some energy in both field and armature. 23. _telephone receiver_ (fig. 61).--it requires a stretch neither of the imagination nor of the truth to call a telephone receiver an electro-magnet, although perhaps it has never been called that before. we took it apart and found that it consisted of a steel-bar magnet _m_ (fig. 62), with a small spool of wire _w_ around one end of it. the ends of the wire on the spool run along inside the hard rubber shell to the two binding posts _a_ and _b_ at the other end. a disk of sheet iron _s_ is held in the large end of the case very near to, but not quite touching, the end of the magnet. when an alternating current is sent through the wire upon the spool it causes rapid changes in the strength of the magnetic field, if not reversals of the poles of the field, and the iron disk is made to vibrate, keeping time with the alternations of the current. [illustration: fig. 61] [illustration: fig. 62] in this laboratory we have seen that our current has sixty alternations per second. when it is connected with the receiver the disk, therefore, makes sixty vibrations per second, and produces a tone which has very nearly the pitch of c two octaves below the middle c upon the piano. 24. _spark coil_ (fig. 63).--the automobile spark coil which we have already used is an electro-magnet. the battery sends a current through wire coiled around an iron core. at one end of this iron core is an iron armature which is made to vibrate in precisely the same manner as the armature of an electric bell. this makes and breaks the current and causes rapid changes in the strength of the field. a rapidly changing magnetic field may be used to develop electricity in a conductor, as we have already seen in the case of the dynamo. [illustration: fig. 63] how it is used in the automobile spark coil will be shown later. it is sufficient now to mention it as a case of a magnetic field produced by an electric current passing through a wire coiled around an iron core, or, in short, an electro-magnet. induction coils, ruhmkorff coils, and transformers, to be described later, are closely related to this. they all create magnetic fields in the same way and are all electro-magnets. [illustration: fig. 64. transformers] vii electric heating it was washington's birthday. the schools were to have a holiday and the science club was to hold a special, open meeting at which i had been asked to present the subject of electricity in the household. i replied to the programme committee that that was too large a subject, but that i would talk upon electric heating. i warned them, however, that it would be a dry study, and not an entertainment. they replied that the father of his country had been born at a time of the year when the weather was unfavourable to outdoor sports, and that february usually found them acclimated to vigorous study. neither they nor their friends objected to study if it seemed to have a motive. i found an audience composed of old and young, men and women, girls and boys. most of them had left school--many of them because their teachers thought they were incompetent to continue. [illustration: fig. 65] not far from here is "a wheel in the middle of a wheel ... as for their rings they are so high that they are dreadful ... and the spirit of the living creature is in the wheels." those wheels are now sending the electric current to this room for our experiments. i propose to show that we convert electricity into heat by offering resistance to its flow. experience teaches us that resistance to motion always produces heat. at niagara falls thousands of tons of water descend at the rate of one hundred and sixty feet in three seconds. when the water reaches the bottom of the falls, it is moving a little faster than a mile a minute. the resistance which this mass meets after its fall retards its motion and generates heat. hundreds of meteors fall into our atmosphere daily, travelling a thousand times as fast as the waters of niagara falls. the resistance to their motion, which our atmosphere offers, heats them white hot, melts them, vaporizes them, burns them up, so that very few of them reach the solid earth in a solid condition. an iron spile driver, measuring two cubic feet, weighs about half a ton. when it falls sixteen feet upon the end of a spile it is moving at the rate of twenty miles an hour. the energy of this moving mass depends upon both its weight and its velocity, and when its motion is arrested by the spile that energy of motion is largely converted into heat energy, from which both the spile and the spile driver get hot. a piece of iron may be made red hot by pounding it with a trip hammer. count rumford found, in 1798, while boring cannon in the arsenal at munich, that the resistance which the iron offered to the motion of the boring tool furnished heat enough to boil water. seven hundred and seventy-eight foot pounds of mechanical energy when converted into heat would raise one pound of water (one pint) one degree. this is called the british thermal unit. the spile driver, weighing 1000 pounds, falling 16 feet upon a spile, produces heat enough to raise 1 pint of water 20 degrees. [illustration: fig. 66] here are two binding posts, _a_ and _b_, 8 feet apart (fig. 66), connected by copper wires with the dynamo circuit. the volt meter indicates 112 volts of pressure. i will close the circuit by stretching between _a_ and _b_ 8 feet of no. 24 iron wire. (this wire is about the thickness of a common pin.) the iron wire offers resistance to the flow of the electric current, thereby producing heat--heat enough as you see to make the wire white hot, indeed heat enough to raise it to something over two thousand degrees fahr., for now you see it has melted. we will put in a fresh piece of wire and connect also the ammeter in the circuit (fig. 67). as i close the circuit the needle of the ammeter at first indicates 20 or 30 amperes, but in a second drops to 8 amperes, and remains there a second until the wire melts and falls apart. one hundred and twelve volts of electric pressure are able to push 8 amperes of electricity through this wire when hot. [illustration: fig. 67] (112 volts)/(14 ohms) = 8 amperes 112 volts × 8 amperes = 896 watts 746 watts = one horse-power hence it required about one and one fifth horse-power to melt the wire in a second, and the heat produced was a little less than one british thermal unit, a unit much used by engineers. 1 pound raised 1 foot = 1 foot pound 550 foot pounds per second = 1 horse-power 778 foot pounds (1.4 h.-p.) = 1 b. t. u. (british thermal unit) = heat required to raise 1 pound of water 1° fahrenheit 1 volt × 1 ampere = 1 watt 746 watts = 1 horse-power in order to hold back 112 volts of electric pressure so that not more than eight amperes of electricity should pass, the iron wire must have offered about 14 ohms of resistance. the behaviour of the ammeter needle showed that the wire offered very much less resistance when cold than when hot. indeed eight feet of no. 24 iron wire offers about one and one third ohms resistance when cold, hence heat had increased its resistance to the passage of the electric current tenfold. this piece of iron wire offered resistance to the flow of the electric current. it offered resistance to the motion of the dynamo. this offered resistance to the steam-engine which drives the dynamo. this caused the governor of the engine to open and pass more steam from the boiler. this reduced the pressure at the steam gauge. this caused the fireman to shovel more coal into the furnace. the heat of the burning coal melts the wire, but it does it only after several changes. first, it is converted into mechanical energy in the steam-engine with great loss--about nine tenths being lost. second, it is converted into electrical energy by the dynamo, with some loss, and, third, it is conducted to the iron wire and converted back to heat with still further loss. it is evident that the most economical way to heat the wire would be to take it to the furnace. yet all electric cooking is done by sending electric current through wires embedded in the walls of the cooking utensils, and it is the most wasteful method of using the energy stored in coal that has yet been devised. [illustration: fig. 68] that merely connecting the binding posts _a_ and _b_ (fig. 67) by a small piece of wire should throw a load upon the dynamo miles away; should offer resistance to its motion, and make it require 1.18 horse-power more of energy to keep up its speed of revolution, is, indeed, uncanny. i will attempt to make it seem more real. at one end of the lecture table i have a rotary pump _p_ (fig. 68). the end of the rubber tube _a_, which leads to the pump is lying upon the table outside of the tank of water, _t_. while things are in this condition i move the crank which operates the pump with perfect ease. now while still turning the crank i pick up the tube _a_ and drop its free end into the water tank. i cannot now conceal the fact, even if i were disposed to do so, that i must work hard to keep the pump going. the pump itself tells you by its laboured sound that it is working hard, and the stream of water which issues from the pipe _b_ tells how much work i am performing. the pump is discharging five and a half pints of water per second, that is 5.5 pounds, and it raises this water 10 feet. hence i am doing 55 foot pounds of work per second, which requires one tenth of a horse-power. here is a lad who consents to try the experiment for us. he turns the crank easily while i am holding the tube _a_ out of the water, but when i lower it into the water he finds the resistance so great that, tug however much he may, he is unable to keep the pump going. at the other end of the table i have a small hand dynamo, _d_ (fig. 68), _m_ is an ammeter, _v_ is a volt meter, _s_ is a switch. all the wires are good-sized copper, and offer little resistance, except that stretched between the binding posts _a_ and _b_. this is a piece of fine german silver wire. while the switch is open i turn the crank of the dynamo with perfect ease. a small amount of current is going through the volt meter, but this is too slight to offer any perceptible resistance to the motion of the machine. notice that the volt meter needle moves according to the speed of revolution. if i turn the crank once a second the needle stands at 25 volts. the electric pressure increases or decreases according to whether i rotate the armature faster or slower. now i will attempt to keep the machine revolving at a constant rate while i close the switch _s_, and surely you must see that i have hard work to do so. the wire _a b_ has now become red hot. the volt meter shows 25 volts of pressure, and the ammeter shows 3 amperes of current. twenty-five volts × 3 amperes = 75 watts, which require one tenth of a horse-power (746 watts = 1 horse-power). the lad now takes my place at turning the machine and finds it easy when the switch is open, but i actually overload him by merely closing the switch. heating the wire red hot requires more energy than he is able to put forth. i proposed to the president that my lecture close at this point, and that each one in the room have a chance to _feel_ the load which was thrown upon the dynamo each time it was required to heat the wire. i suggested that each person should get a realizing sense of this fact, first by doing the work himself, and second by going home and reflecting upon this hint. when the switch is closed three amperes of electricity pass around the circuit. this increases the magnetism in both the field and the armature of the dynamo, and it requires one tenth of a horse-power more to keep the armature moving within the field against this magnetic pull. i further desired to announce that during this hour i had delivered to them the second key to the electrical show which i had promised a few days ago. the second key is: heat (and light) is produced by offering resistance to the flow of the electric current. the first key is the electro-magnet. these two unlock all the mysteries of the show. the president closed the formal exercises with the facetious remark that i had warned them before the lecture that they must work, so now each would be expected to take a turn at the cranks of the pump and dynamo. viii applications of electric heating the programme committee decided that each member of the science club should busy himself looking for _applications of electric heating_ and should consult me freely about the matter. my telephone was kept busy, my laboratory was in great demand, and we were all getting a good deal more education than the school was giving us credit for. the boys generally came to me in pairs, and each pair having worked up some illustration of heat produced by electricity reported it to the club. these were spread by the secretary in due form upon the minutes of the club and constituted "the proceedings of the science club." [illustration: fig. 69] 1. _the electric sad iron_ (fig. 69).--removing three screws the iron comes apart, revealing a lot of no. 24 german silver wire wound upon a sheet of mica. this is put between other sheets of mica (fig. 70) and tucked away within the body of the iron. german silver offers about twice the resistance of iron when it is cold, but, at the temperature of the sad iron when in use, there is not much difference between the resistance of the two metals. german silver wire, however, does not rust as iron wire would, and hence it is chosen. german silver is an alloy of copper, zinc, and nickel. [illustration: fig. 70] we put the 112-volt current upon this wire of the iron, and according to the ammeter it passed 4 amperes. its resistance must therefore have been 28 ohms. (112 volts)/(28 ohms) = 4 amperes electricity costs us about 10 cents per kilowatt hour. that is 10 cents for 1000 watts for an hour, or 1 cent for a hundred watts for an hour, or, on a 100-volt current, 1 cent for an ampere for an hour. it, therefore, costs about 4 cents or, more accurately, 4-1/2 cents an hour to heat this iron. persons sometimes carry electric irons with them, when they travel, to iron pocket handkerchiefs and other small articles while stopping at a hotel. before connecting an iron in a chandelier one must know the voltage used in the building. if the voltage in use in the building is not the same as that stamped upon the iron, it is not safe to connect it. not knowing this, many persons have had the embarrassment of "blowing a fuse" and extinguishing their own lights, and perhaps those of others in the same building, and very likely also ruining the iron. suppose we take for example this iron stamped _110 v; 400 watts_. (a slight variation of 5 or 10 volts will not injure an iron.) the wire in this iron we found to offer about 28 ohms resistance when hot, and it lets pass 4 amperes. this is about all the current which it is able to carry without melting. now suppose a 220-volt current is used in the building where it is proposed to connect the iron. this would force through the wire enough current to melt it. the wire was seen to be at a very dull-red heat when examined in a dark room. its temperature was about nine hundred degrees. at this temperature its resistance is about three times what it is when cold. we estimated by measurements that the iron contained about twenty-five feet of the wire. the boys then took twenty-five feet of no. 24 german silver wire and stretched it between two nails driven up in the laboratory (fig. 71, _a b_). the dynamo current was then sent through this. the end, _c_, of the wire from the dynamo was provided with a metal clip which could be slid along on the german silver wire. sliding this to the left, and thus shortening the distance on the german silver wire through which the current must pass, increased the amount of current and heated the wire hotter. the resistance decreases as the wire is shortened. [illustration: fig. 71] the boys wound this wire upon a piece of asbestos board (fig. 72), about nine inches square and one eighth of an inch thick, taking care to keep the successive turns half an inch apart. asbestos paper was wrapped around this. the two ends of the wire were left free for connections. this they called a "hot plate." [illustration: fig. 72] 2. _electric hot plate_ (fig. 73).--this when opened was found to have wire coiled up inside in the same manner as the sad iron. indeed the sad iron supported bottom side up makes a perfectly good hot plate. the particular hot plate which we examined had a three-point switch which gave three different heats for the plate. (see fig. 74.) when the switch _s_ is upon the first point the current goes through 112 ohms of resistance and 1 ampere passes: (112 volts)/(112 ohms) = 1 ampere [illustration: fig. 73] [illustration: fig. 74] this warms the plate slightly--enough to keep food warm which has been already cooked. this costs about one cent an hour. when the switch is placed upon the second point the current goes through 56 ohms of resistance and 2 amperes pass. (112 volts)/(56 ohms) = 2 amperes. this makes the plate warmer and is adapted to certain cooking processes. it costs about two cents an hour. when the switch is placed upon the third point the current goes through 28 ohms of resistance and 4 amperes pass. (112 volts)/(28 ohms) = 4 amperes. [illustration: fig. 75] we placed upon this hot plate a basin containing 1 pint of water (equals 1 pound) and heated it from the temperature of the room (68 degrees) to boiling (212 degrees) in 7 minutes and then put an egg in and boiled it 3 minutes. using 4 amperes for 10 minutes cost two thirds of a cent. if it takes 7 minutes to boil a pint of water it would require 1 hour to boil a gallon upon this hot plate using 4 amperes, or 448 watts. that is, it costs us about 4.5 cents a gallon to boil water by electricity. the cost is usually put at three and a half cents per gallon, but much depends upon conditions. 3. _traveller's cooker_ (fig. 75).--this consists of a hot plate with a covered basin permanently attached to it. 4. _electric coffee percolator_ (fig. 76) consists of a hot plate with a coffee percolator to sit upon it. the coffee percolator might sit upon any other hot plate or this hot plate might serve any other purpose, but people do not seem to think of that. [illustration: fig. 76] 5. _electric chafing-dish_ (fig. 77) consists merely of an electric hot plate with a chafing-dish attached. the electric coffee percolators and chafing dishes require from 300 to 600 watts according to size. if used on the 110-volt current they take about 3 to 6 amperes, and if adapted to the 220-volt current they take from 1-1/2 to 3 amperes, but cost the same to operate in either case. they have connected with them flexible cords and plugs to screw into the lamp sockets. [illustration: fig. 77] 6. _electric broilers_ are merely hot plates, generally corrugated to conduct off the melted fat. one that we examined had a switch for three heats: low, requiring 360 watts--costs 3.6 cents per hour; medium, requiring 600 watts--cost 6 cents per hour; high, requiring 1280 watts--cost 12.8 cents per hour. 7. _electric oven._--this one has double walls to retain the heat and has two large hot plates, one on the bottom and one on the top. it is large enough to hold four loaves of bread. it required 1520 watts for 40 minutes to heat it to the baking temperature and one hour to bake the bread. hence the cost of the electricity is about 25 cents, about what the bread would cost in the market. 8. _electric incubator._--this is simply a well-ventilated oven warmed by an electric hot plate and automatically controlled so that it keeps a constant temperature of 103 degrees. under these conditions chickens hatch from hens' eggs in three weeks. an incubator for 5 dozen eggs was found to take 25 cents' worth of electricity for the whole process of incubation. 9. _electric toaster._--the wire coiled up in sad irons and hot plates becomes hot enough to scorch cloth and paper, and even set fire to them if they come in direct contact. we proved this by opening the iron and touching paper to the wire while it was carrying the current. we also lighted a cigar by touching it to the wire. electric toasters have the hot german silver wire simply covered by a screen. 10. _electric cigar lighters_ (fig. 78).--the one we examined hung by a flexible cord from the chandelier. it had a small disk on the side which contained a lot of fine wire covered by perforated mica. the wire became red hot when the push button in the handle was pressed. it took half an ampere of 110-volt current, and operated only while the button was pushed. as near as we could calculate it cost .0003 of a cent to light a cigar. [illustration: fig. 78] [illustration: fig. 79] 11. _electric curling iron_ (fig. 79).--one who has flat hair needs no curling iron, but those who have round hair may curl it temporarily, if they will unscrew an electric light bulb and screw into its socket the plug of an electric curling iron. the flexible cord contains two wires insulated from each other. one of these wires is attached to the outer shell of the plug, the other wire is attached to the central button of the plug. these make connections with the two separate dynamo wires in the socket. the current comes down one of the wires in the flexible cord, passes through a coil of fine german silver wire inside of the curling iron, and returns by the other wire in the flexible cord. the small wire in the curling iron offers 220 ohms of resistance when hot and passes half an ampere of the 110-volt current. (110 volts)/(220 ohms) = .5 ampere. 12. _electric soldering irons_ (fig. 80).--or coppers, as they should be called, are ideal implements for soldering. they remain continually at the proper temperature and are free from corrosion. they require from 55 to 220 watts. on the 110-volt current they take from one half to two amperes. [illustration: fig. 80] 13. _electric heating pad_ (fig. 81).--this consists of resistance wire inside of a pad of soft material. it maintains a temperature of 180 degrees, and is an excellent substitute for a hot water bag. it contains about two hundred and twenty ohms of resistance and requires the same current as a 16-candle-power lamp. [illustration: fig. 81] 14. _electric fuses_ (fig. 82).--fuses are made of short pieces of wire or thin sheet metal. the metal is an alloy of lead and tin which melts at a low temperature. they derive their name from the fact that they readily fuse or melt. a building is wired in various separate circuits. the size of the copper wires used in each circuit is determined by the amount of current which the circuit is expected to carry. each circuit is protected by one or more fuses. these melt and cut off the current whenever too much passes for the copper conductor to carry without getting hot. the fuse wire melts at about six hundred degrees, while the copper will not melt until it reaches nearly two thousand degrees. this temperature is sufficient to set fire to wood, paper, and cloth. when any fuse melts, the current is cut off from all chandeliers, etc., in the particular circuit controlled by the fuse. this produces consternation among people who do not understand the function of a fuse. they become panic-stricken and begin to trample their neighbours to death in the theatre or on the electric train when they hear that a fuse is "blown" (which is the electrician's way of saying that it has melted). everyone should know that a fuse is a safety device. it is always enclosed in a box lined with sheet iron or asbestos, so that it is impossible for the flash, which occurs when the circuit is broken, to set fire to anything. [illustration: fig. 82] [illustration: fig. 83] 15. _electric gas lighter_ (fig. 83).--these usually have two or three small, dry battery cells in the handle. by pushing a button in the handle connection is made between this battery and a short piece of resistance wire in the tip. this wire gets red hot and lights the gas. it is a surprise to many that we can light illuminating gas without bringing a flame to it, and it is equally surprising that some flames, or at least sparks, may not be able to light the gas. the fact is that it is wholly a matter of _temperature and kind of gas_. iron heated to dull red will not light the illuminating gas now being furnished in new york city, while iron at a bright red heat will do so. iron may be hot enough to light illuminating gas but too cool to light gasolene vapour, which requires a dazzling white heat. iron which is just under the temperature at which it gives any light may set fire to wood and paper. after it has cooled a good deal below that, it will set fire to sulphur, and when it has cooled so that one may hold it in the hand, it is still hot enough to set fire to phosphorus. the glowing end of a lighted cigar, the spark made by striking flint, or the spark from a spark coil with a feeble battery, all fail to set fire to gasolene vapour, simply because they are not hot enough. fresh battery cells must occasionally be put in the handle of the electric gas lighter. four facts regarding the resistance of wires it is well to remember: 1. the longer the wire the more resistance it offers to the electric current. 2. the smaller the diameter of the wire the more resistance it offers. 3. some materials offer more resistance than others, for example, iron about six times as much as copper and german silver about twelve times as much as copper. 4. the common metals offer more resistance when hot than when cold, about double the resistance when heated to five hundred degrees. it is the reverse with carbon, which offers more resistance when cold than when hot. the carbon filament lamp offers about double the resistance when cold as when lighted to full brilliancy. 16. _electric flasher_ (fig. 84).--for automatically flashing electric lights. the one which we examined was constructed according to the plan shown in fig. 85. the lighting circuit is brought to the binding posts _b_ and _c_. a small insulated wire of high resistance connects _b_ and _c_, being wound around the metal bar _a b_. the resistance of this wire, when added to that of lamps, permits not more than one fifth of an ampere to pass, and this warms the wire slightly. the bar _a b_ is composed of two strips of metal, brass above and iron below. heat expands brass more than iron. the result is that when the current is turned on, the bar begins to curve downward until presently it touches the metal base of _c_. then the full current required to light the lamps which are in circuit passes. while the circuit is closed through the large metal strips not enough passes through the fine wire to warm it. on cooling, _a b_ curves upward and breaks the connection with _c_, and now the current begins again to warm up the small wire. [illustration: fig. 84] [illustration: fig. 85] the flasher that we examined was adapted to operate: one 32-candle-power lamp; or two 16-candle-power lamps; or four 8-candle-power lamps, on a one ampere circuit of 110-volt pressure. let us see what would happen if it were connected either with a current of higher voltage or a circuit of more lamps. suppose we have a 32-candle-power carbon filament lamp in circuit. this requires one ampere to light it. its resistance when hot is 110 ohms. (110 volts)/(110 ohms) = 1 ampere. when cold its resistance is about double or 220 ohms. the german silver wire of the electric flasher offers 330 ohms of resistance, and together they make 550 ohms. thus the current is cut down to .2 ampere. (110 volts)/(330 + 220 ohms) = .2 ampere suppose now we should undertake to use the same flasher and the same lamp on a 220-volt current. this might push more current through than the small wire could carry. it might melt, or its insulation might burn off before _a_ made contact with _b_; if not the lamp would certainly burn out after the contact. if we undertook to operate with this flasher several 32-candle-power lamps instead of one upon the 110-volt circuit, the result would be the same, for in that case the resistance would be reduced and, therefore, a greater current would pass than the wire could carry without undue heating. [illustration: fig. 86] the boys were at first troubled to see how increasing the number of lamps in a circuit would decrease the resistance in that circuit. fig. 86 was drawn to explain the matter. the lamps _l_, _l_, _l_, etc., are connected _in parallel_. each lamp makes an independent connection from one feed wire to the other. the flasher _a_ acts as a switch to close the circuit for the whole. now if we think of these wires as pipes to conduct water we would say that water flows from _d_ to _e_ through ten pipes more readily than through one. it would meet with only one tenth as much resistance. the result would be the same, if we should substitute for the ten pipes one pipe ten times as large in cross section. so it is with wires which are conducting electricity. introduce two in parallel, and you allow twice as much current to pass by reducing the resistance to one half. ten parallel conductors reduce the resistance to one tenth and allow ten times as much current to pass. [illustration: fig. 87] it is to be noticed that this flasher is an automatic switch which is opened or closed according to temperature. remove the fine wire from _a_ and we have precisely the device which regulated the temperature in our electric incubator. suppose the "thermostat" (as it is called in that case) is placed within the egg chamber which is to be kept at 103 degrees. a screw in the metal strip _c_ underneath the end of _a_ may be set so that it will normally touch _a_. suppose now the brass strip is underneath the strip of iron in _a_. as the hot plate warms up the egg chamber, the brass will expand more than the iron, and the bar will curve upward and break the connection with _c_. as soon as the current stops the temperature of the chamber begins to fall, and the bar curves downward again until connection is made. this device is capable of adjustment so as to keep the temperature constantly at 103 degrees or any other desired degree. the device is in use for scores of different purposes, including the regulation of temperature in school rooms. 17. _electric car heaters._--ten or fifteen years ago there were no heated street cars in new york city. now they are all heated by electricity and their maximum and minimum temperatures are regulated by law. the resistance wire may be seen in coils underneath the car seats. electric street cars usually operate on a 500 or 600-volt current. the amount of current used for heating varies from 2 to 12 amperes. perhaps 3 amperes may be taken as an average. 500 v × 3 _a_ = 1500 _w_ = 1-1/2 kilowatts. it costs the large electric railway companies about 1.5 cents per kilowatt hour to generate their supply of current. eighteen hours is considered a car day. 1-1/2 kilowatts × 18 hours = 27 kilowatt hours. 27 kilowatt hours at 1.5 cents = 40 cents per car day. 18. _heating apartments by electricity._--for heating apartments by electricity the same sort of apparatus is used as that already described for heating cars. a family of four adults, living in an eight-room apartment with at least 120 cubic feet of fresh air admitted per minute, will use on an average ten amperes of the 110-volt current. the cost will be about two dollars and fifty cents per day or seventy-five dollars per month. although this is as much as the entire rental of a perfectly comfortable apartment, the novelty and the convenience attract tenants and the extra cost of rent does not deter them. [illustration: fig. 88] 19. _electric bedroom heater._--one of the boys constructed a heater for his own room as follows: he procured a box eight inches deep by eighteen inches square on the bottom. this he lined with asbestos paper. he then stood it upon its side and arranged four incandescent light sockets as shown in fig. 88. these were connected by a flexible cord to a plug which he could insert in place of a lamp in the chandelier. he placed this heater on the floor underneath the window and usually had 16-candle-power lamps in the sockets. he claimed that it was a jolly foot warmer and kept the room comfortable without other heat. he turned on from one to four lamps according to his need and replaced the 16-candle-power lamps by 32-candle-power lamps when the weather was extremely cold. i remarked that he must have light along with heat by this arrangement, and i should think that might be objectionable when he desired to sleep at night. he said that he always turned it off, and opened the window at night, always preferring a cold room to sleep in. [illustration: fig. 89] 20. _cooking with incandescent lamps._--this piece of apparatus was devised by the boys and used in my laboratory. a sheet iron basin _a_, was inverted over four 16-candle-power incandescent lamps, shown in elevation by fig. 89, and shown in plan by fig. 90. the sides of the basin were cut so as to admit the glass globes of the lamps, but the sockets and keys were outside, so that it was convenient to turn on and off the lamps separately, thus using one half to two amperes of current, as desired. this rested upon another basin, _b_. basin _b_ was covered with asbestos for the lamps to lie on and the whole was attached to a board base, _c_. a flexible cord and plug allowed us to attach this to the chandelier. a pint of water was boiled upon this stove in fifteen minutes, and refreshments have been served hot from it repeatedly. [illustration: fig. 90] 21. _electric fireless cooker._--there are five indictments against ordinary cooking processes. 1. they heat the house in summer. 2. they convert what would be pleasant flavours in the food into noxious odours about the house. 3. they cannot be controlled with regard to time and temperature as scientific experiments should be. 4. they confine the cook too closely and are not sufficiently automatic. 5. they are wasteful of fuel. it would seem that electricity might enable us to cure most of these evils. to be sure the production of heat by electricity is wasteful of fuel, and it seems doubtful how the account will balance regarding the fifth item. but the remaining four items furnish a very hopeful field for research. i use the last word advisedly, and think it is just as applicable to high school boys as to university students. after experimenting awhile the boys and i concluded to give a dinner party in the laboratory and invite a few friends to test the results of our cooking. we procured a cylinder of magnesia such as is used for covering large steam-pipes. this was inverted over our electric stove which was illustrated in fig. 89. the magnesia was cut at the bottom, so as to give access to the key sockets of the lamps, (fig. 91). first upon the electric stove was placed a covered dish containing a roast of lamb. above this was another dish containing a vegetable, and upon the top of that was a pudding. a flat piece of magnesia was used as a cover to the whole. through a hole in this was suspended a thermometer. [illustration: fig. 91] this "fireless cooker" was sitting in the centre of the dinner table when the guests gathered around it. we had these problems for investigation: 1. will this cooker heat the house in summer? all testified that they did not know that there was any heat about it until they laid their hands upon it, and then they found it only very slightly warm. 2. is there any smell of cooking here? the process has been carried on from start to finish right on this table. all agreed that no smell could be detected. i then turned off the electric current which had been running until now and served the meat and vegetable, leaving the pudding inside to be kept warm by the hot walls of the cooker. 3. regarding the control of the process: we were using 32-candle-power lamps, which gave us a variable current, from 0 to 4 amperes, and a watch and a thermometer. we had control, but as yet lacked knowledge of how it should be used. in the present case we had arbitrarily decided to begin with temperature of 400 degrees, continue it for 20 minutes, then turn off all the electric current, and let the temperature fall gradually. this had been done at our convenience in the morning before school. at a quarter before twelve we had found the temperature at 200 degrees, and turned on all the current, and now, at five minutes past twelve o'clock, all testified that the lamb was particularly good--neither too well done nor undercooked, and that its flavour was better than usual. as for economy of fuel, we find at least that we get better results from incandescent lamps than from hot plates used in the same apparatus, and the electric equipment enables us to put the heat exactly where it is needed and nowhere else. 22. _incandescent lamp._--we feel quite justified in putting the incandescent lamp under the heading, _applications of electric heating_, since the electric lamps in general use convert 96 per cent. of the electric energy into heat and only 4 per cent. into light. they were originally made by introducing a short piece of fine wire into the circuit, choosing the kind of wire, its diameter, and its length so as to make the proper relation between resistance and voltage, in order that enough current might pass to make it white hot, but not quite melt it. platinum wire was first chosen because it would stand the highest heat without melting and without rusting. we will pass our 112-volt current through 9 feet of the no. 24 iron wire. the wire is heated to bright red, but does not melt as it did when we used 8 feet in a former experiment. the increased length has added resistance, and, as you see by the ammeter, cut the current down from 8 to 7.5 amperes. i will now darken the room and you find that it is giving light enough to read by. but you notice that the light is growing dimmer, its colour is growing redder, and the ammeter indicates that less current is passing. i will cut off the current and let you examine the wire and you notice that a crust has formed upon it. this is due to the oxygen of the air which unites with the iron, forming iron rust. iron rust does not conduct electricity. we have converted no. 24 iron wire into a wire of smaller diameter with a sheath of iron rust around it. we might prevent the rusting by putting the wire in a glass globe and exhausting the air from it. i have here a piece of no. 24 platinum wire which has about the same resistance as iron wire when cold, but you notice that i may use a very much shorter length than i did of the iron wire because it will endure a very much higher heat without melting. reducing the length would reduce the resistance, but reducing the resistance would allow more current to pass. if more current should pass it would make the wire hotter, and raising the temperature would increase the resistance, which would cut down the current, etc. by sliding the clip _c_ (fig. 92), along, i finally reach a point where conditions balance so that i get a very brilliant light, dangerously near the fusing point of the platinum which is three thousand degrees above the boiling point of water. in 1879 mr. thomas a. edison literally searched the whole world for something better than platinum for the filament of an incandescent lamp. he finally decided upon charred threads of a bamboo which he found in japan. no research was ever more timely than this. whereas there was practically no electric lighting before 1880, soon after that there began a phenomenal demand for carbon filament lamps. in 1890, 800,000 of these lamps were manufactured in the united states. in 1900 the number had risen to 25,000,000. in 1909 central stations were supplying electric current to 41,807,944 incandescent electric lights. by far the greatest number are still made with carbon filaments. [illustration: fig. 92] [illustration: fig. 93] we examined an ordinary 110-volt 16-candle-power carbon filament lamp, (fig. 93). as near as we could estimate, its filament measured about eight inches in length. we broke open the bulb of this lamp by laying it upon the table and tapping it with a board. the bulb broke with rather a loud noise and the brittle carbon filament broke into many pieces. we found one of these pieces and measured its diameter with a wire gauge, (fig. 94). it was the same size as no. 33 wire, which we also found by the wire gauge was the size of no. 90 sewing cotton. the diameter of no. 33 wire was given upon the wire gauge as .007 inch. when lighted, the filament of this lamp had looked to be about the size of no. 18 wire, which has a diameter of .04. that is, the filament when lighted looked six times as thick as it really was. those who use sewing cotton learn quickly to know the size of the thread by its number. so those who have much to do with wire easily learn the system of designating sizes by numbers. here are some selected figures easy to remember. a trolley wire is about one third of an inch in diameter. it is designated as no. 0. notice in the following table that as the numbers rise by six the diameters are divided by two. notice also that as the diameters diminish by two the resistance increases by four. [illustration: fig. 94] table of resistance of copper wires _nos._ _diameter_ _resistance_ 0 .32 inch 10560 feet to the ohm 6 .16 " 2640 " " " " 12 .08 " 660 " " " " 18 .04 " 165 " " " " 24 .02 " 40 " " " " 30 .01 " 10 " " " " 36 .005 " 2.5 " " " " 42 .003 " 1 " " " " 10,560 feet equal two miles. number 36 is the wire used upon the spools of telegraph receivers. they offer 75 ohms of resistance and therefore contain 30 feet of wire (30 × 2.5 = 75). these resistances are for ordinary school room temperatures. since iron has six times, and german silver twelve times the resistance of copper, divide the figures of the third column by six, and the table will answer for iron wire, or divide those figures by twelve and the table may be used for german silver wire, thus: _number feet to the ohm_ _nos._ _diameter_ _copper_ _iron_ _german silver_ 0 .32 inch 10560 1760 880 6 .16 " 2640 440 220 12 .08 " 660 110 55 18 .04 " 165 27 14 24 .02 " 40 6 32 inch 30 .01 " 10 1.5 8 " 36 .005 " 2.5 .45 2 " 42 .003 " 1 2 inch 1 " these figures are not exact, but useful. we procured a string of eight small lamps (fig. 95), such as are used in lighting christmas trees. each was marked 14 volt, 2-candle-power. the carbon filament of each was about one inch long and apparently the same diameter as that of the 16-candle-power lamp. when the 110-volt current was sent through the group of eight connected in series they seemed to give about the same light as the single 16-candle-power lamp. it is as though the filament of the 16-candle-power lamp had been cut into eight pieces, and distributed through eight small lamps. we introduced an ammeter into the circuit and found that half an ampere of electricity passed through the single 16-candle-power lamp--and half an ampere likewise passed through the group of eight 2-candle-power lamps. [illustration: fig. 95] the 110-volt current can push an ampere of electricity through eight inches of carbon thread seven thousandths of an inch in diameter, and when this happens the filament gets hot enough to give out as much light as sixteen standard candles. in the place of the 16-candle-power lamp, we put a 32-candle-power 110-volt lamp. the ammeter indicated one ampere. the carbon filament was larger (no. 30, diameter = .01 inch), so as to allow more current to pass. an 8-candle-power 110-volt lamp was substituted; one quarter of an ampere passed. a 4-candle-power 110-volt lamp was used; one eighth of an ampere passed. a 100-candle-power 110-volt lamp was substituted; three amperes of current passed through it. in all these cases the lamps which passed the larger current had the larger filaments. a little practice would enable one to distinguish between these lamps without labels by examining their filaments. among these 110-volt lamps, it is to be noted that the amount of light which they give is proportional to the amount of current which they pass. and it is convenient to remember that one ampere of electricity for one hour costs about one cent. we introduced into the socket a "hylo" lamp (fig. 96). the filament, _a_, took half an ampere of electricity, gave 16-candle-power of light, and cost half a cent an hour. when the lamp was turned in its socket the current was switched off of the filament _a_, and on to the filament _a_. this took .03 of an ampere, gave one candle-power of light, and cost .03 of a cent an hour, or at the rate of about $3.00 a year, burning continuously day and night. [illustration: fig. 96] the uses of such a lamp are apparent in rooms which have no daylight. however, a wall switch at the entrance of such a room, making it easy to throw on and off the light entirely, seems to be a more satisfactory arrangement. one of the boys connected a wattmeter in the circuit with a hylo lamp and found that the small filament did not pass current enough to move the armature of the wattmeter. hence that may be burned alone without affecting the consumer's bills. we took a 16-candle-power 220-volt lamp, and lighted it by a 220-volt current. the meter showed that it allowed only one quarter of an ampere to pass. the filament was very much smaller than that in the 110-volt, 16-candle-power lamp. the pressure was twice as great as before, but the resistance was four times as great, and hence only half as much current passed. we find that it costs just as much to generate one quarter of an ampere at 220-volt pressure as it does to generate half an ampere at 110-volt pressure. we must, of course, pay for electricity according to the cost of producing it. to produce .5 ampere at 110-volt pressure costs the same as one ampere at 55-volt pressure, or .25 amperes at 220 volts. it will be noticed that the products of the two factors in each case are the same. the product of an ampere multiplied by a volt is a watt. in each of the above three cases the amount of electrical energy is 55 watts. this will produce a definite quantity of light--about 16 candle-power when the carbon filament is used, and this quantity does not vary as either volts or amperes, but as the product of these, namely, watts. each of these lamps is called a 55-watt lamp, and, since they each give 16 candle-power of light, a carbon filament lamp gives one candle-power of light for three and a half watts of electricity. electricity for lighting purposes usually costs _10 cents per kilowatt hour_, that is, 10 cents for 1000 watts for one hour, or one cent for 100 watts for one hour. hence a 55-watt lamp costs a trifle more than half a cent for one hour, or exactly .55 cents, and a 32-candle-power lamp costs 1.1 cents per hour. we introduced into the socket a 48-candle-power 110-volt tungsten lamp (fig. 97), and turned on the 110-volt current. the ammeter showed 55 ampere. hence the lamp is a 60-watt lamp, and requires one and a quarter watts per candle-power. that is, the metal tungsten is nearly three times as efficient as carbon for producing light from electricity. [illustration: fig. 97] with pincers we broke off the tip of a 32-candle-power carbon filament lamp, making a small hole in the large end of the bulb. the air rushed in. we then put the lamp in the socket and turned on the current. the carbon filament glowed as usual, and slowly burned up, growing smaller as it did so. the ammeter which was in circuit showed that the current, which was one ampere at the beginning, grew steadily less as the filament grew smaller, until finally when it was about one quarter of an ampere, the circuit was broken by the filament burning in two. we removed the lamp from the socket and with a dropper tube introduced a little lime water, and shook it to absorb any gas which might have been formed in there. it became milky white, as it always does when introduced where carbon has been burned. this would be a sufficient proof that the filament was made of carbon, if we did not already know it. the air is exhausted from these bulbs to prevent the carbon filament from burning up. [illustration: fig. 98] the carbon filament lamps were, as has been said, the invention of mr. thomas a. edison in 1879. such a statement must, however, be qualified by the assertion that this, like nearly all invention, was but the consummation of a long line of researches made by many men for many years. the early filaments were made of bamboo thread, charred, but now they are drawn like spider's web out of a sticky liquid and carbonized at a high temperature. they are attached in the lamp to short pieces of platinum wire which are sealed through the glass walls of the bulb. one wire connects with the brass collar of the bulb, and the other with the central piece of brass at the base of the bulb. we dissected a socket and found that when the lamp is placed in the socket, the collar of the lamp is screwed into the collar of the socket, and the base of the lamp comes in contact with a brass spring in the bottom of the socket (fig. 98). the spring is connected with one copper wire bringing electricity from the dynamo. the collar is connected with the other wire from the dynamo. this connection is made and broken by turning the key of the socket. the wires are made of copper since copper is a particularly good conductor of electricity. no electricity can flow unless this circuit is complete. socket keys and wall switches make or close gaps in this circuit. no copper wires for carrying electric-lighting current are smaller than no. 12, which has a diameter of .08 or about one twelfth of an inch. the intention is to have as little resistance to the current as possible, except in the filament of the lamp itself. there resistance is purposely introduced in order to convert electricity into light, light without heat if that were possible, but since that has not yet been found possible, heat for the sake of the accompanying light. unhappily only 4 per cent. of the electrical energy goes into light and 96 per cent. goes into useless, or even harmful, heat. the tungsten lamps, which are now coming into use, are nearly three times as efficient in the production of light as are the carbon filament lamps. the dynamo exerts its entire pressure upon the lamp and furnishes current as follows: a dynamo of 110-volt pressure gives: 1 ampere = 110 watts, through a 32-candle-power lamp, cost one cent an hour, or .5 ampere = 55 watts, through a 16-candle-power lamp, cost half a cent an hour, or .25 ampere = 27-1/2 watts, through an 8-candle-power lamp, cost a quarter of a cent an hour. a dynamo of 220-volt pressure gives: .5 ampere = 110 watts, through a 32-candle-power lamp, cost one cent an hour, or .25 ampere = 55 watts, through a 16-candle-power lamp, cost half a cent an hour, or .125 ampere = 27-1/2 watts, through an 8-candle-power lamp, cost a quarter of a cent an hour. the carbon filament lamps, barring accidents, have a natural life varying from 600 to 1000 hours of actual incandescence. at the end of that period the filament has become so thin that it will fall apart by ordinary usage. it is never profitable, however, to use them for their whole lifetime. the lamp gradually volatilizes carbon and deposits it upon the inner walls of the bulb, producing a smoky appearance and shutting off light. as the filament grows thinner by this process, it offers greater resistance to the current, and as the amount of current grows less the proportion of light to current grows rapidly less, so that at last instead of paying for 3.5 watts of electricity per candle-power of light one must pay for perhaps seven or eight watts per candle-power. we pay fifteen cents apiece for 16-candle-power lamps, and it is economy to renew them about twice a year, if they are burned, say three hours a day, or a little over five hundred hours. it is interesting to note that when a direct current is used the evaporation from the carbon filament always takes place at the negative end alone, that is, the end from which the current is leaving the lamp. if an alternating current is used the evaporation goes on from all parts of the filament alike. this is a case of evaporation from the solid state. carbon does not boil below 6,000 degrees, and the filament reaches about 2,450 degrees. tantalum, tungsten, and osmium lamps have metal filaments. these metals are better conductors than carbon but unlike carbon their resistance increases as their temperature rises, and their special virtue is that they are capable of enduring an extremely high temperature without melting. the wire used in some of these filaments is as small as .002 of an inch, or no. 44. in order to furnish sufficient resistance to prevent the 110-volt current from melting, they often have a length exceeding two feet. this is laced back and forth within the small bulb. at the temperature of bright incandescence their resistance may be increased as much as fivefold and sometimes becomes about ten ohms to the inch. like all metals they are more brittle when cold than hot. hence when cleaning such lamps it is advisable to turn on the current to avoid breaking the filament by jarring. filaments which are too fragile to endure the jar of ordinary railway travel, when cold, have gone through railway wrecks safely when lighted. it is a general rule that good conductors of electricity grow more resistant as the temperature rises while non-conductors resist less as the temperature rises. hence the insulating material which is used to cover copper wires fails to protect if highly heated. if a 110-volt lamp is put into a 220-volt circuit, one might expect that the lamp would burn out without doing further damage to the circuit, but this is not the case. as the filament approaches its melting point, 6000 degrees, it becomes so good a conductor that it carries current enough to melt a fifteen ampere fuse. it is, therefore, the fuse that protects the circuit and not the burning out of the lamp. the bulb containing the highly heated carbon vapour would conduct the current as an arc lamp does. [illustration: fig. 99] 23. _arc lamp._--we fastened two electric light carbons to the ends of copper wires connected for the 110-volt current. a rheostat, _r_ (fig. 99), in circuit, was set at 6.5 ohms. one lower carbon was fastened into a clamp, and the other was touched to it, and then drawn away about three-eighths of an inch. a very brilliant light was produced. probably about 1800 candle-power. the ammeter _a_ showed 10 amperes, and the volt meter _v_ showed 45 volts. 45 volts × 10 amperes = 450 watts, 1800 candle-power, 25 watts per candle-power. the arc light is the cheapest of all lights but is too dazzlingly bright for household purposes. it is used for outdoor lighting chiefly, and particularly for large search-lights. the temperature is over 6000 degrees, which boils the carbon and fills the gap between the two pencils with a stream of carbon vapour. this conducts the current like the filament in an incandescent lamp. the air gap between the carbon pencils would have a resistance of many thousand ohms if it were not for the presence of the carbon vapour. the hot carbon vapour reduces the resistance of this space to 4.5 ohms. (45 volts)/(4.5 ohms) = 10 amperes. or (110 volts)/(6.5 + 4.5 ohms) = 10 amperes. the carbon pencils account for part of this resistance--not more than a third of an ohm however. it is evident that arc lamps in use must have an automatic mechanism which shall permit the carbons to touch whenever the current is not passing, but which shall draw them apart to the proper distance after the carbon vapour has been formed, or, as we say, after the arc has been established. this mechanism is nothing else than electro-magnets which are operated by the lighting circuit itself. it may require thoughtful examination to recognize these as electro-magnets, in every case, but that is what they are. sometimes they are coils of wire, which do not have iron cores and armatures separate to be sure--but nevertheless they have both of these united in one movable rod, and they produce magnetic fields. suppose i pass an electric current around this coil _a_ (fig. 100). the region about the coil becomes a magnetic field with its north pole situated at a point in space, say _n_. the influence of this field causes the iron rod to become a magnet with its south pole uppermost, and if the current is strong enough, and the field which it produces is strong enough, it will lift the iron rod up into the coil. by varying the strength of the current you see i may make this rod dance up and down in space touching nothing--a veritable ghost dance. [illustration: fig. 100] it may be pettifogging to say that the upper portion of this iron rod is the core of the magnetic field, and its lower portion is the armature. yet this is right, and pettifogging may be right when it is the only way to bring out the fact. our great study now is to produce light without heat, or at least to come as near to it as the firefly does. the firefly gives 98 per cent. light and two per cent. heat. the arc lamp gives 12 per cent. light and 88 per cent. heat. the carbon filament gives 4 per cent. light and 96 per cent. heat. when we have made considerable progress in that direction we shall take electric lamps out of the chapter on electric heating and form a new chapter on electric lighting. one might expect that a rod made of carbon would quickly burn up, particularly when raised to the exceeding high temperature of the electric arc. while it is true that carbon in the form of charcoal burns so readily that it is used instead of kindlings for lighting a fire, carbon in the form of graphite in our so-called "lead" pencils and carbon as it is prepared for electric light pencils burns only very slowly even at exceedingly high temperatures. the carbon rods used in arc lamps endure a temperature of over 6000 degrees, without losing more than one inch an hour, and half of that is simply volatilized--not burned. one of the most interesting improvements ever made in the arc light is that of enclosing the arc in an inner glass globe. this globe is closed airtight below with a small opening above. when the arc is formed the oxygen of the air in the inner globe is soon consumed and then combustion is no longer possible. we illustrated this by an experiment. an ordinary cork was chosen to fit the large end of an argand lamp chimney and through a hole in this was passed one of the carbon rods (fig. 101). a metal clamp made connections between this carbon and the negative wire from the dynamo. the other carbon, attached by a clamp to the positive wire, was thrust down into the upper end of the chimney until it touched the negative carbon, and then drawn upward a short distance, drawing an arc, as we say. this soon makes an atmosphere within the chimney where combustion cannot go on for want of oxygen. the arc, however, continues to glow as in the open air, and the carbons may be drawn further apart than in the open air without breaking the arc, hence more of the external resistance may be cut out and a higher voltage put upon the lamp. [illustration: fig. 101] carbons which burn out in a single night if used in open arc lamps last two weeks in enclosed arc lamps. the lower carbon, when removed from the lamp chimney of the last experiment, served as a lead pencil to write on paper. the positive carbon would not make a mark on paper. in all arc lamps carbon is distilled from the positive pencil, condensing upon the negative pencil as graphite, which is the material used in making "lead" pencils. they are called "lead" pencils because they were originally made of lead, but now they are made of graphite which is mined from the earth. as soon as the arc is broken it becomes evident that the positive carbon has been heated much the hotter of the two, a fact that could not be detected while it was lighted because of the dazzling brightness of the arc. the negative carbon turns black almost immediately, while the positive carbon remains at a bright red heat for some time. this fact needs to be borne in mind when adjusting arc light carbons in search-lights, stereopticons, and all like apparatus in which the light must be placed at the focus of a lens. that is, it is necessary to know from what point the light really comes and it is necessary to have some adjusting device to keep this point continually at the focus of the lens. 24. _search-light._--(fig. 102). this is simply an arc lamp with reflectors behind it and lenses in front of it. the whole apparatus is pivoted so as to be easily made to shine in any direction. the function of the lenses and the reflectors is to collect stray rays of light and send them all out in the same direction. this is shown in fig. 103 where for simplicity the lens is represented as a single piece. _l_ represents a point of light which will naturally send its rays out in all directions as the radii of a sphere; _m_, _m_, _m_ represents a bright reflecting surface which is given that peculiar curve called a parabola. it has the unique faculty of reflecting in a parallel direction all the rays which may fall upon it from _l_, so long as _l_ is kept at that particular point called the focus, _a b_ is a lens of glass which has that peculiar curve that enables it to bend all rays which fall upon it from _l_, so that they may pass out parallel. [illustration: fig. 102] 25. _stereopticon._--this also has the necessary devices to gather the rays of the arc lamp and send them forth parallel, and in addition it has a series of lenses which produce upon a distant screen an enlarged picture of any transparent object held in these parallel rays. [illustration: fig. 103] [illustration: fig. 104] 26. _burglar's flash-light._--there are many forms of this. the one we examined is represented in fig. 104. we unscrewed a metal ring at the left-hand end and found, first a glass lens and behind that a miniature electric light, requiring three volts and half an ampere. we knew, therefore, that it must be supplied with two cells, since one cell may give not more than 1.5 volts. we also knew that it would only be used to _flash_ a light, since if dry cells are required to furnish half an ampere continuously they soon run down. behind the lamp there was a bright metal reflector--the lens and reflector are fairly well represented in fig. 103. the filament of the lamp is connected with two small battery cells in the handle. these may be removed and replaced by new ones by unscrewing a cap at the right-hand end. the circuit is closed by a metal spring on the side of the tube, which acts as a push button. it is situated where it may be conveniently pressed by the thumb. the small batteries necessarily have a short life and must be replaced quite frequently. being a special thing they cost nearly twice what the regular dry cell does. [illustration: fig. 105] 27. _mercury vapour lamp._--this is an interesting variety of arc light in which the vapour of mercury takes the place of the vapour of carbon. _g_, in fig. 105, represents a glass tube from which the air has been exhausted. the wires of the lighting circuit are fused into the ends of the tube. at one end, and in contact with one of these wires, is a small pool of mercury. by pulling the cord _c_ the tube is tilted on the pivot _p_, so that a stream of mercury flows along the whole length of the tube and closes the electric circuit. when the tube falls back into its normal position, as represented in the figure, the electric arc persists upon the mercury vapour. incandescent mercury vapour gives light strong in green, blue, and violet, but deficient in red and yellow. it, therefore, gives nothing its natural appearance but casts a ghastly hue over everything. this lamp was invented in 1902, by peter cooper-hewitt, grandson of the founder of cooper union in new york city. it gives a very suitable light for making photographic prints, and is much used for that. this lamp operates upon the 110-volt circuit. it is the longest step yet taken toward getting light without heat, but perhaps shows what we must expect when we reach that goal, namely, unsatisfactory colour values in the light. probably such is the case with the firefly. 28. _the moore light._--in 1896 prof. d. mcfarland moore brought out his vacuum tube light (fig. 106). we visited an ordinary dry goods store which had been equipped with this. glass tubing is put together very much as one would put up a stove pipe or a job of plumbing. the joints are fused and made air-tight by playing a flame upon them after the pipe is up in place. this pipe is led around into all nooks and corners where there would be dark places. the air is pumped out of this tube and a trifling amount of some vapour is introduced, the kind varying according to the tint of colour which is desired. [illustration: fig. 106] metal terminals are fused into the ends of this tube. the tube we saw was seventy-five feet long. a 1000-volt alternating current is applied to the terminals and the vapour becomes incandescent, filling the whole tube full of light. the first thing that the boys remarked was that although the room was brilliantly lighted no object cast a shadow. it seemed as though light was everywhere and there was no chance to screen it off. 29. _the nernst lamp._--in 1897 the nernst lamp appeared in germany. it is a good illustration of an insulating substance becoming a conductor when heated to a high temperature. the "glower," as it is called, is composed of one or several short rods of clay-like material. this is first heated by sending the electric current through resistance wire placed directly underneath it and connected in shunt with it. when it gets hot, current begins to pass through it, and is automatically cut off from the resistance coil. the glower produces an intensely bright and white light although it does not itself exceed the temperature of 1742 degrees. electric installations are now so carefully constructed that fires from poor insulation are very rare. less than one fire in three hundred appears to be traceable to that cause. 30. _electric welding._--nothing is more common in electrical matters than heat produced by poor contacts. in this laboratory are two chandeliers, each controlled by a wall switch. after the current has been on the chandeliers for half an hour you will always find one of those wall switches warm, while the other is not perceptibly warmer than other objects in the room. the explanation is that there is poor contact in one of them. when two metal conductors touch one another at a mere point the electric current, in passing from one of these conductors to the other across such a narrow bridge, meets resistance and develops heat--sometimes heat enough to fuse the point, and either break the contact, or, what is more likely, start a minute arc at that point. in some cases this makes the apparatus dangerously hot, and in other cases it bridges the gap with a broader and better contact--a true electric weld. electric welding is applied to everything, from chicken fence to railway rails. enormously large currents are used for the purpose, in some cases as high as 50,000 amperes being employed. the rails of railroads are welded end to end by a current of several thousand amperes sent through the joint by perhaps two or three volts. the joint heats and fuses together merely because the poor contact offers resistance to this enormous current. ix lighting a summer camp by electricity summer had arrived. the science club had held its last meeting for the season. harold had engaged three other boys to spend the summer at the farm. i had the roof of an old mill reshingled and gave it to them for a camp. they were to make it over inside. i sent the boys to the country as early as it was possible for them to get away. it would be six weeks later before i could follow them. [illustration: fig. 107] when i did arrive i found they had elaborate schemes indeed. the first floor of the mill had been partitioned off into rooms, as shown in diagram (fig. 107), _a_, _b_, _c_ and _d_ being bedrooms; _e_ was a wash room, the like of which has never been seen before. it had not occurred to me that the mill pond _m_, which came to the very corner of the building, would furnish the boys a complete system of city water-works. at _g_, in the corner of this room, they had cut a hole in the floor and nailed slats across upon the under side of the timbers, making a depressed floor for a shower bath. this was directly over a stream of water which issued from the mill pond. hanging from the ceiling over this spot was the nozzle of a garden hose. the other end of this hose ran into the mill pond. the nozzle was capable of delivering either a stream or a shower, according to which way it was twisted in its socket. it was also capable of shutting off entirely the flow of water. the boys asked me to hold my hand in the shower, and to my astonishment it was warm. "what, pray, is your heating system?" i inquired. they invited me to go and see. moored outside in the mill pond at the corner of the building was our motor boat, which the boys were allowed to use freely and which they understood as well as any one. [illustration: fig. 108] they said that ordinarily they used for the shower the cool water of the lake, which they much preferred, and which ran of its own accord, the lake being a trifle higher than the nozzle of the shower, but knowing my antipathy for the cold bath they had slipped the end of the rubber hose over the outlet pipe of the pump which served to cool the gasolene engine in the boat. the engine uncoupled from the propeller was heating and pumping water for my shower bath, and i immediately accepted the invitation to enjoy it. certainly no bath was ever more delightful than that one, coming, as it did, at the close of a hot, dirty ride from the city. i had hastened the bath, because it was already dusk and i had no candle at the mill, but suddenly the room lighted up as if by magic. i saw then what had before escaped my notice, a miniature electric lamp, six-volt, two-candle-power, tungsten, such as are used for tail lights on automobiles. since tungsten requires about 1.25 watts per candle-power it was a 2.5-watts lamp, and since it was adapted to six volts it would take about four tenths of an ampere. 6 volts × .4 ampere = 2.4 watts. the little wire filament looked to be about 1.5 inches long. its resistance must have been 15 ohms. 6 volts/15 ohms = .4 ampere. a battery of five cells was used to furnish electric current for the lamp. lamps were installed in the bedrooms also and were not intended to be used more than half an hour at a time. dry battery cells are excellent for this purpose, and for so small a current the cheapest dry cells are as good as the more expensive ones. these cost fifteen cents a cell. they were connected by short pieces of bare copper wire; no. 18 "in series," as shown in fig. 109. a wire ran from the central (carbon) binding post of one cell to the marginal (zinc) binding post of the next cell. this battery was placed on a shelf in a convenient place. a bare copper wire, no. 18, was attached to the carbon post at one end of the battery and another to the zinc post at the other end of the battery, and these two wires ran to all the rooms where lamps were placed. the wires were fastened up on the walls by staples, taking care that they should nowhere come in contact with each other and "short circuit" the battery. whenever it was necessary for one wire to cross another, small pieces of pasteboard were tacked up to prevent their touching each other. the lamps _l_ (fig. 109) were connected to these wires "in parallel." they cost forty cents apiece, and the miniature sockets, into which they were screwed, cost five cents each. one of these sockets was screwed to the side of the door casing in each bedroom. wires were attached to the line wires, simply by twisting them together. one of these came down to one side of the socket and the other came to the other side of the socket through a switch, _s_, made of a strip of sheet zinc. the cost of the entire installation was as follows: 5 dry cells at 15c .75 5.2 cp., 6-volt tungsten lamps at 40c 2.00 5 miniature wall sockets at 5c .25 wire, etc. .20 --- $3.20 [illustration: fig. 109] suppose each lamp is used thirty minutes a day for 100 days, making a total of fifty hours. there are five lamps, making a total of 250 lamp hours. each lamp takes .4 of an ampere, making a total of 100 ampere hours. the lamps are operated at six volts, making a total of 600 watt hours. 100 days .5 an hour each day -- 50 hours 5 lamps -- 250 lamp hours .4 ampere for each lamp -- 100 ampere hours 6 volts -- 600 watt hours this amount of electrical energy would cost six cents if generated by a dynamo. it is generally stated that electricity costs fifty times as much if generated by battery as by dynamo. in this case the battery actually did serve for the whole season of 100 days and was not exhausted at the end of the season. indeed, since that season, the boys have found that battery cells which had been too much exhausted for use on the engine served very well on the lamps. by use the cells lose, not much in voltage, but in the ability to furnish sufficient quantity in amperes to make the hot spark required for igniting the mixture of gasolene and air in an engine cylinder. when they have been discarded for use with the engine they may still furnish the small amount of current required for the lamps--provided not too many lamps are used at one time. the dynamo current is always surprisingly cheap when compared with that produced by a battery, but, on the other hand, we are never as economical in the use of the dynamo current as we are with that of the battery. if all five of the lamps in the above equipment were lighted at the same time and kept burning for half an hour, the battery would run down rather badly and would not fully recover. but if one only is used at a time and for not more than thirty minutes, or if more than one is used at a time and for a proportionately shorter period, the battery will receive no damage. dry battery cells may be purchased for either twenty-five cents or fifteen cents each. the chief difference is that the former are capable of giving larger current than the latter, when working against very small resistance. for example, the former may give twenty to twenty-five amperes on a short circuit, that is, connected directly with the ammeter without other resistance, while the latter may give not more than six to ten amperes under similar conditions. for most purposes, other than igniting gasolene engines, in which dry cells are used, an exceedingly small current is required. the electric bell, for example, may not require more than .2 of an ampere and that intermittently. now it is found by experience that the dry cells which are only capable of furnishing on short circuit six to ten amperes will last quite as long in bell work as one which may give on short circuit twenty to twenty-five amperes. hence it is good economy to buy them. "what a fine sitting room you have here! (fig. 107, _f._) when do you expect to fit it up?" said i. instantly reminding myself, however, that boys do not want a sitting room, i inquired what they intended to use this fine, large room for. they told me that they had plans for making a machine shop out of that. the idea had been suggested by a counter shaft which still hung from the ceiling, and they had discovered that the old mill wheel would still roll over if the penstock were repaired. i replied that i would see what could be done about that sometime. on the next day matters concerning the motor boat engaged our attention. x how electricity feels what is more fickle and yet more fascinating than a motor boat? on the morning after my arrival at millville the boys wanted me to go out with them in the motor boat on the mill pond, as our beautiful little lake is called. each one took a hand at trying to start the boat, but although she had acted perfectly well the day before, on this morning no one could get a single explosion. the switch was closed. the gasolene was turned on. the carburetor valves were set at the mark. the spark coils responded with their familiar buzz. she had been primed and, when she had refused to respond to this treatment, the pet valves were opened and the wheel rolled over several times to sweep out the cylinders. but absolutely nothing moved her--neither coaxing nor gibes. suddenly some one rolled the wheel over for the five-hundredth time and she started and behaved well all day. all this would not have given us the slightest aggravation if we could only have found out what was the matter and what it was we finally did to correct it. but this we shall probably never know, and hence we are worshippers of the motor boat while we continue to distrust it and complain of it. while the boat was running one of the boys noticed that a binding post at the end of one of the spark plugs seemed to be loose. he inadvertently put out his hand to tighten it and received a terrific shock. this raised the question among the boys, why one gets a shock from some of the binding posts in the electrical equipment but not from others. i suggested that we run in and call at the house to get my portable measuring instrument (fig. 110) and a little lunch, and then go up to the upper end of the lake and take our time in examining the electrical equipment of the boat. [illustration: fig. 110] the engine had two cylinders. there were two batteries--one for each cylinder. each battery consisted of five dry cells like the one represented in fig. 111. "now, why don't i feel the electricity when i touch the binding posts of this dry cell?" inquired one of the boys as he handled one of the cells which we had taken out. "well, i'll give you two reasons why do you not feel it," said i. "first, because you were touching only one binding post at a time. you must touch both of the binding posts of the battery cell at the same time, so that the electric current may pass from one post to the other through your body. second, even when you do touch both binding posts at the same time you feel no current, simply because you offered probably about 100,000 ohms of resistance to the passage of the current and inasmuch as the one cell exerts only 1.5 volts of pressure, it could send only about .0000015 of an ampere through you. this you cannot feel. [illustration: fig. 111] (1.5 volts)/(100,000 ohms) = .0000015 amperes. "i now connect my instrument as a volt meter between the binding posts of the cell and you see it indicates 1.5 volts, and when i connect it for an instant as an ammeter you see it indicates twenty amperes. that is twice as much as they use for executing criminals by electricity. so you see if you could reduce your resistance sufficiently this one battery cell might kill you. some people have less resistance than others. the resistance of the body is chiefly in the outer skin. if one's hands are dry and his skin has been made tough and horny by hard work, he has many times the resistance of one whose hands are moist and whose skin is thin and tender. "suppose we select the tip of the tongue as the portion of the body which will offer the least resistance and will be most sensitive to slight electric currents. let us then connect one dry cell with the ammeter and place the tip of the tongue between the bare ends of the wire at _t_ (fig. 112). [illustration: fig. 112] "i have connected the ammeter so that it will indicate thousandths of an ampere, and you see that the needle moves only slightly. we cannot call it more than .001 ampere." each boy in turn tried sending the current through his tongue and each tried to tell how it felt. one said it tingled, another said it felt warm, another said it tasted sour and the other said he did not feel or taste anything. "well," i said, "whether you feel anything or not one-thousandth of an ampere is passing through your tongue and you are offering fifteen hundred ohms of resistance. (1.5 volts)/(1500 ohms) = .001 ampere "your hand offers nearly seventy times as much resistance as your tongue. suppose we try increasing the voltage, or pressure, of our electric current. we will connect in series the ten cells, making a battery which you see by the volt meter gives fifteen volts of pressure. we now find that having ten times the pressure it sends ten times as much current as formerly through the tongue." (15 volts)/(1500 ohms) = .01 ampere each one now testified that the battery sent all the current he cared to take through his tongue. if they send one thousand times as much as that through a criminal no wonder it kills him. it produces a twitch when the contact is first made, afterward a decided sensation of warmth and acid taste. if we should increase the voltage tenfold more, say the 110-volt dynamo current (direct current), and touch the bare conductors with our hands, the ammeter would indicate about .001 ampere. that is, although this current has about seventy times as much push, or voltage, as a dry cell, no more electricity passes through the fingers than did through the tongue in the preceding experiment with one cell. the fingers offer so much greater resistance. by wetting the fingers and pressing them firmly upon the bare wires, we may make the ammeter read .01, that is, we may increase the current tenfold by reducing the resistance to one tenth. but there is nothing disagreeable about the feeling. if the same experiment is tried with the 110-volt alternating current, although the quantity of current which passes through the fingers is the same as before, the tingling is more perceptible than in the case of the direct current. if we join together seventy-five dry cells, giving a voltage of 112, and press the bare wires with our wet fingers, the ammeter will indicate .01, but there is no tingling sensation, merely a slight warmth. the battery current, being continuous, causes no twitching of the muscles while the contact is closed. the direct current dynamo furnishes a slightly pulsating current. hence, one may tell by the feeling whether an electric current comes from a battery or a direct current dynamo. the alternating-current dynamo gives a surging of electricity back and forth in the wires, and this may be distinguished from the direct current by its feeling; when, however, the number of alternations per second is increased very greatly, one may receive through the body considerable quantities of electricity without feeling it. with a very high frequency current one may put himself in circuit and light a 16-candle-power lamp without any disagreeable sensation. the outer skin is our chief insulation. if it is dry and well toughened by work it offers a resistance of over 100,000 ohms upon gentle contact. a wounded spot, or places like the tongue with moist, thin skin, may offer a resistance as low as 500 ohms. if one has a pin prick or a splinter in his hand which he cannot locate, he may hold one bare wire of a 110-volt alternating circuit in one hand and move the other bare wire about on the suspected region, and know when it reaches the spot by a tingling sensation. [illustration: photograph by helen w. cooke. feeling electricity] one may touch lightly the 220-volt direct current and scarcely note any difference between this and the 110-volt direct current, because one is not very sensitive to the difference between .001 ampere and .002 ampere passing through his body. (100 volts)/(100,000 ohms) = .001 ampere, and (200 volts)/(100,000 ohms) = .002 amperes physicians treat certain ailments by the use of the electric current. for this purpose they invariably use a pulsating or alternating current and reduce the resistance by using metal handles and wet sponges for contact with the skin, but even so a very small amount of current passes. the moderate twitching of the muscles seems to be the end sought. men who are supposed to be killed by electric shocks often die from other causes. a man perching upon an electric light pole, repairing wires, may come in contact with a wire charged, say, to 2000 volts. he may receive a shock which throws him in an unconscious condition across another live wire which burns its way into his flesh, or he may fall to the ground and be killed by the fall. a workman may hold a tool so as to short circuit a current through it, making it red hot in his hands. so many men who have been shocked into unconsciousness by high voltage currents have recovered consciousness later that we cannot say how much current is required to kill a man. for the execution of criminals 1800 to 2000 volts are used, and by special metal contacts ten to fourteen amperes are forced through the body. the first execution of a criminal by electricity was performed in sing sing prison, new york state, in 1890. there was at that time a hot controversy among experts over the question whether death, or merely unconsciousness, could be produced by electricity. to be on the safe side the legislature passed a law requiring that the electrocution of a criminal should be followed immediately by the dissection of his body. only six states out of forty-nine have thus far adopted that method of capital punishment, five have abolished capital punishment, and thirty-eight still prefer hanging to electrocution. but it should be remembered that it is amperes, not volts, that kill. one often hears the meaningless expression, "he received 2000 volts into his body." the volts indicate the pressure, analogous to pounds per square inch of water pressure. amperes of electricity are analogous to gallons of water. it is possible to have exceedingly high voltage of electricity without amperes enough to do damage. when one holds his finger near to a rapidly moving leather belt and a stream of sparks passes between the finger and the belt, the voltage may be 50,000 or even 100,000, but the quantity in amperes is too small to do any damage or even produce much sensation. a similar thing is true when one produces sparks by rubbing a cat's back, or lights the gas by a spark produced by rubbing the feet upon a carpet. such sparks are miniature lightning discharges. the real lightning does damage because it furnishes quantity, measurable in amperes, as well as extremely high volts of pressure. at this point i was reminded by the boy who had received a shock from the engine that morning that he had touched only one binding post. how then had he closed a circuit through his body, and how could he receive such a terrible shock when there were only a few battery cells to produce the electric current. i replied that he had the distinction of having encountered about a 5000-volt current. in the language of the newspapers he might say, _took 5000 volts and still live._ we must next proceed to show how he really did close the circuit and how the spark coil enables a battery of a few dry cells to produce exceedingly high voltages. xi the electrical sparking equipment for a gasolene engine under the shade of a great sugar maple, with millville lake spread before us, we took apart and examined the entire equipment for producing the electric sparks to explode the mixture of gasolene and air in the cylinders of our motor boat. the engine has two cylinders. for each cylinder there is a separate battery and spark coil. inasmuch as the electrical outfit is duplicated for each cylinder it will be necessary for us to consider the case of one cylinder only. when this engine is running, 700 explosions per minute are produced in each cylinder. in one-twelfth of a second the following four events take place: 1. the cylinder is swept clear of the products of combustion formed by the last explosion. 2. four drops of gasolene are vaporized and mixed with one quart of air and pushed into the cylinder by the pressure of the atmosphere. 3. this mixture is compressed by the piston in the cylinder to about one-fifth its original volume. 4. the mixture is heated to its kindling temperature, which is above 2000 degrees. it then burns with a sudden expansion, which drives the piston before it and pushes the crank which is concealed in the lower end of the cylinder half-way around. the crank is attached to the shaft, which carries the fly-wheel upon one end and the propeller wheel upon the other end. the momentum of the moving parts--chiefly that of the fly-wheel--suffices to accomplish the remaining half of the revolution. that any machine could be devised which could repeat these four events 700 times a minute was unthinkable a few years ago. the first men who thought that a gasolene engine could be a practical thing were considered visionaries, but now they are found to be more practicable than steam engines. they are so efficient that they compete with the steam engine upon its own ground, and, in addition, they have opened up regions of usefulness which the steam engine can never exploit. so far as we can see, they have a permanent monopoly of the navigation of the air. it is with the fourth event mentioned above, viz., kindling the explosive mixture, that we are now concerned. the high temperature required for this is obtained by forcing an electrical current against resistance. five dry battery cells would very readily heat a short piece of fine wire to a sufficiently high temperature to explode the mixture, but it is impossible to alternately heat and cool a wire twelve times a second. it is too slow an operation. the only other method known at present is to imitate the lightning and force an electric current against the resistance of the air with sufficient power to produce the required heat. this, however, requires an extremely high voltage--at least 5000 volts, and our battery of five cells has not more than seven and a half volts of pressure. the interesting question then is, how does the spark coil enable us to raise the voltage from 7 to 5000. to help toward an understanding of the matter i took seven small wire nails which i found in the boat--they were sixpenny finishing nails. i then took two or three yards of no. 24 insulated magnet wire, such as is used upon electric bells, etc. i use it more often than any other wire, and always have some about the boat. i fastened one end of this wire to one of the binding posts of a dry cell (fig. 113), _a_, and attached branches _c_ and _d_ to it. the other end, _b_, was left free to act as a switch for closing the circuit by touching it to the remaining binding post. [illustration: fig. 113] [illustration: fig. 114] [illustration: fig. 115] one boy then touched the bare ends _c_ and _d_ to the tip of his tongue, while i touched repeatedly the binding post with _b_. there was, of course, no sensation. we now wound a portion of the wire upon the bundle of nails, laying on about fifty turns. (see fig. 114.) the tongue was now placed at _t_ and _b_ was touched a few times to the free binding post. a very decided shock was felt, not while the end of the wire was resting upon _b_, but at the instant of touching and again at breaking the connection. the shock was noticeably stronger at the instant of breaking than of making the connection. there was also a spark formed when the connection was broken, which did not appear before the coil was made. we next wound on more of the wire--about fifty more turns (fig. 115). when now connections were made and broken at _b_ the tongue at _t_ felt a much more decided shock, and a larger spark occurred at _b_ when the circuit was broken. both the tongue and the spark indicate that the voltage is creeping up very rapidly in this series of experiments. we next connected two cells in series, then three, four, and finally five cells in place of the one. the spark grew larger and "fatter," as the boatmen say, with each addition of a cell. it was not pleasant to use the tongue in the experiment after the number of cells exceeded two. i removed the branch _d_ from the wire _b_ and connected it to the binding post, as shown in fig. 116. i then removed the crystal from my watch and poured into it a little gasolene. i rubbed the ends of _b_ and _d_ together over this, and when they separated the spark which was produced would not light the gasolene. we had made a coil which produced a spark that looked like a miniature flame, but still was not hot enough to set fire to gasolene vapour. it simply needs more iron in the core and more turns of wire about it. bringing the ends of the wires together and separating them is somewhat like drawing an arc with the arc light carbons. it requires a vastly higher voltage to make a spark jump across an air gap than it does to lead it across thus. [illustration: fig. 116] the kind of coil we have made (only larger) is very much used in houses as a gas-lighting coil (to be described later). it is very much used also for exploding gasolene engines. it generally passes under the name of the "make and break" coil. the revolving shaft of the engine is made to push together the ends of the wire and separate them at the right instant to make the spark for explosion. of course this is done inside of the engine cylinder. that type of coil does not offer resistance enough to protect the battery, and dry cells soon run down if used with it. the coils that we have in this boat are somewhat different from that, the details of which we cannot now entirely explain. they offer enough resistance to cut the current required of the battery down to one third what the "make and break" coil would take and at the same time they raise the voltage so much higher that the spark will jump across an air gap without being led across as an arc. hence they are called "jump spark" coils. [illustration: fig. 117] it will be remembered that when we were studying the dynamo we produced an electric current by moving a magnet. we may now add that an electric current may be produced by simply changing the strength of a magnetic field. the coil that we have just made creates a magnetic field in the region about itself whenever a current is passing through it. the tongue at _t_ (fig. 117) detects an extra current while the magnetic field is being produced, or while it is dying away, or it will detect any slight variations in the strength of the current which produces the magnetic field. it is customary to distinguish between these two currents. the battery current which produced the magnetic field is called the primary current and the current which is detected by the tongue is called the secondary current. the primary current in our experiments had only a few volts of pressure, from one to seven. the secondary current had many volts, as indicated by the spark. if we rub the end of the wire _c_ across the binding post under _b_ (fig. 117) no spark occurs. the current does not in this case go through the coil, and no secondary current is produced. whenever we touch the wire _b_ to that post we have, in addition to the primary current which has not voltage enough to produce a spark, a secondary current flowing in the same wire at the same time and having voltage enough to produce a spark. the primary current is continuous while the contact is closed; the secondary current is momentary, as the tongue detects, and is produced only while changes are being made in the strength of the magnetic field. we will now take another piece of wire and wind upon the coil about two hundred more turns, leaving this outer coil wholly disconnected from the inner one, (fig. 118). i connect _c_ and _d_, the terminals of what we may call the secondary coil, with my measuring instrument and i connect _a_, one of the terminals of the primary coil, with the battery. i then rub _b_, the other primary terminal across the free binding post of the battery. at the instant of closing the primary circuit--that is, of building up the magnetic field--a secondary current is induced in the secondary coil, which lasts for only an instant, too brief a time for the needle to measure it, although its motion indicates both the presence and the direction of the induced current. while the primary circuit remains closed--that is, while no change is occurring in the strength of the magnetic field--the needle returns to zero, indicating no secondary current. but when now the primary circuit is broken and the magnetic field loses its strength, the needle indicates a momentary current in the secondary coil and _in the opposite direction from what it had been at first_. [illustration: fig. 118] if, therefore, i rapidly make and break the current at _b_ i produce an alternating current in the secondary coil. i will connect _c_ and _d_ with a miniature lamp and, resting a coarse file upon the free binding post, i will rake the end of the wire _b_ up and down upon this file so that, as it dances along upon the file, it will rapidly make and break the primary circuit, and therefore rapidly change the strength of the magnetic field. you notice that the lamp lights up moderately well. it is being lighted by an alternating current. i move the wire a little more slowly and you see the flicker of the alternations. according to the label upon the lamp it requires ten volts, and our battery could not give that. we have therefore "stepped up" the voltage as we say and we have a veritable step-up transformer. in this case the primary and secondary circuits are entirely separate. it is a familiar fact that different electric currents may pass through the same wire at the same time without apparent conflict. we send numerous telegraph despatches through the same wire at the same time. it is quite as easy for several pairs of persons to telephone over the same wire at the same time as it is for those same several pairs to carry on separate conversations in the same room at the same time, at, say, an "afternoon tea." we may use the same wire at the same time to carry direct and alternating currents. this fact was first discovered in 1902 by bedell of cornell university. primary and secondary currents do not require separate primary and secondary coils to convey them. they may or may not be connected into one continuous coil. it is quite immaterial whether they are connected or not so long as they are in the same magnetic field. indeed, it seems that the field outside of the wire may be quite as important as the wire itself. [illustration: fig. 119] we have now 100 turns in the primary and 200 turns in the secondary coils. let us connect _b_ with _c_ so as to make one continuous circuit of 300 turns. let us then put a branch upon _b_ to connect with the battery, thus having 100 turns for the primary circuit, and put a branch upon _a_ to connect with the lamp, thus having 300 turns upon the lamp, (fig. 119). when now we rub _b_ upon the file, as before, the lamp lights up more brightly than before, indicating that we have stepped up the voltage still higher. varying the strength of the magnetic field induces a secondary current and the voltage of the induced current is determined, in part, by the number of turns in the secondary circuit. if what we have been saying is true we ought to be able to get these same results from an electric bell. to test this we connected wires with _a_ and _c_, (fig. 120), and since i knew that the secondary current at _s_ would be too severe for the tongue we decided to feel it with the hands. for this purpose we want a larger surface than the wires themselves offer for contact with the hands, and so i twisted the bare end of each wire around an iron spike. the four boys then arranged themselves in line, joining hands, and the boy at each end of the line held a spike in his free hand. thus we had put the enormous resistance of four human bodies joined in series in the secondary circuit. when now i connected two dry cells with _a_ and _b_ (_p_, fig. 120) the hammer of the bell acted, like the file in the former case, as interrupter of the primary circuit. as it rapidly made and broke the primary circuit, it produced rapid changes in the strength of the magnetic field and thus induced a secondary current which the boys all felt. the fact that it forced its way through four bodies shows that its voltage was high. the high voltage was also indicated by the spark which always occurred in the bell. the primary circuit in this case has not more than three volts while the secondary has more than a hundred. we have it in our power to give the secondary current almost any voltage we choose, with this limitation _each increase in voltage necessitates a proportional sacrifice of quantity_. the watt power induced in the secondary circuit cannot exceed that contributed to the primary circuit--indeed cannot quite equal it since there is some loss in heat. [illustration: fig. 120] suppose we operate a bell on a primary current having three volts and .25 ampere, that is, .75 watt. suppose then the voltage of the secondary current is stepped up to fifty times three, or 150 volts. the quantity of secondary current will be found to be somewhat less than one fiftieth of .25 or .005 ampere. the 150-volt alternating current from the bell is more tolerable than that from a 150-volt dynamo, because the quantity is limited in the former case. our spark coil has a vibrator which acts precisely like the hammer of the bell to make and break the primary circuit and thus make rapid changes in the magnetic field produced by the primary coil. the primary coil of the spark coil is many times larger than the coil of the bell, that is, it contains many more turns of wire. it has much more iron in the core. we use upon it five cells instead of the two cells upon the bell. the result of all this is that we have a much more powerful magnetic field than that in the bell and many more watts of energy from which to induce a secondary current. now the number of turns employed in the secondary circuit of our spark coil is very great, stepping its voltage up to thousands where the bell induced hundreds. [illustration: fig. 121] suppose we now repeat our experiment in which we tried to light the gasolene in the watch crystal, using now the spark coil of the boat instead of our small "home-made" coil. in fig. 121, b is the battery of five dry cells. _s_ is a switch. _v_ is the vibrator, which, like the hammer of an electric bell, makes and breaks the primary circuit. of course the coil has a core of iron, although that is not here represented, and, of course, the coil has many hundred turns instead of the few here represented, and of course also it is built up of many layers instead of one as here represented. the secondary has very many more turns than the primary, but those in which the primary current passes are common to both circuits. there is also a condenser--not here represented, and not to be described in this book. the result of all this is that the secondary circuit has a voltage of between 5000 and 10,000, and a spark jumps across the gap at _c_ between one sixteenth and one eighth of an inch long. this spark is hot enough to light the gasolene which i have put in the watch crystal at _c_. [illustration: fig. 122] let us return to the bell for a few minutes. i have here a miniature lamp which requires 10 volts and .1 ampere, that is, 1 watt, which i will connect at _s_ (fig. 122). when now i close the primary circuit with two cells at _p_ you notice that the lamp lights up, but faintly. it is not receiving .1 ampere. remember we have only .75 watt at our disposal and this lamp requires 1 watt. hence it is getting only three quarters enough energy. we connect in a third cell and now it lights up to full brilliancy. the resistance of this lamp must be about 100 ohms. (10 volts)/(100 ohms) = .1 ampere the resistance of the four boys might have been 60,000 ohms, and the voltage of the secondary circuit might in that case have been, say, 150. (150 volts)/(60,000 ohms) = .0052 ampere how does it happen that the secondary current had a pressure of 150 volts on the boys but cannot supply even the 10 volts required by the lamp? perhaps we can be brought to appreciate the answer to that question best by asking ourselves some others quite like it. why did not the man who built our mill two generations ago locate it upon the small stream that flowed near his house? the small stream was more conveniently located for him and it has quite as much fall as he got at the foot of this lake. we sometimes express the fact by saying that the "head of water" or the water pressure was quite as much in one of these cases as the other. one boy said that the stream sometimes gives out. another one said that it never did have water enough to run that wheel. "undoubtedly the trouble is with the quantity," said i, "but i want to show you that we cannot maintain the pressure unless there is sufficient quantity back of it." [illustration: fig. 123] in fig. 123, suppose _a_ represents a small, slim tank of water three feet high. the water-wheel _w_, requires one gallon of water a minute pushed along by a three-foot head of water pressure to run it. the supply pipe _s_ is bringing into the tank not more than one quart of water per minute. a gate at _r_ enables us to regulate the flow of water, as we regulate the flow of electricity, by using more or less resistance. now it is evident that if we close the gate, or partially close it, and allow the tank to fill with water, we may then open the gate and run the wheel for a short time, but the level of the water in the tank soon begins to fall and the pressure grows less and the wheel stops moving. it is just so with all generators of electric current. if we take from them more than they can supply continuously the voltage falls. this is notoriously true of dry cells. like the water tank represented in fig. 123, they "run down" if used continuously to furnish, say, one ampere of current, but they may furnish it for a short time, the voltage rapidly falling meanwhile. then if given a short rest they "pick up" and will again furnish full pressure. the voltage of a dry cell falls somewhat when it is required to give the very small amount of current required to actuate a volt meter, say .015 ampere. hence, our volt meter will not quite correctly show what the voltage of a single cell would be on open circuit. notice that, when i put one cell upon this volt meter the needle shows 1.42 volts; but when i put four cells in series upon it the needle indicates six volts, as nearly as we can read it. that is, the voltage of each cell in this case appears to be 1.5. what has increased the voltage of a cell from 1.42 to 1.50? simply this: when .015 ampere, the amount required by the volt meter, was taken from one cell it reduced its pressure, but when a multiplier with ten times the resistance was added we secured our reading by using only .006 ampere of current, and this did not appreciably reduce the true pressure of the cells. the induced current from our bell when held back by 60,000 ohms of resistance in the four boys was able to push with 150 volts of pressure, and .0025 ampere passed without noticeably reducing this pressure, but when the same current was held back by only 100 ohms in the filament of the lamp nearly forty times as much current passed, and the pressure dropped to something less than ten volts. "we will try an experiment to show how the voltage will suddenly fall when we reduce the resistance of your four bodies. [illustration: fig. 124] "fill these two empty tin pails in which our lunch was brought with water from the lake and sprinkle in the salt left over from the lunch. now twist a bare copper wire around the bail of each pail and connect these with the bell so as to get the induced current from its magnet. (see fig. 124.) let the two pails of water be the terminals of the two wires at _s_. now you four boys wet your hands in the water and then join hands, and those at the two ends of the line put your free hands upon the outside of the pails of water while i close the primary circuit. you of course feel the current just as you did when you held the spikes in your hands in a former experiment. but now you two end boys put your free hands into the salt water, and you instantly get a very smart shock. the resistance is no longer 60,000. it has dropped way down to 2000, and if the voltage had remained at 150 you would have received a terrible shock, but the voltage has dropped down to five. it is as though you had been pushing very hard against a post and it suddenly gave way. you cannot push against a thing which offers no resistance. so the voltage falls when resistance is reduced, and particularly if the source of supply has very little capacity. here is another experiment you must try when you go back to the city. at a certain water faucet in my laboratory the pressure is disagreeably high. the water flows with great force and spatters badly. we can easily reduce the pressure so that the water will flow in a limpid stream. fig. 125 shows the situation; _f_ is the faucet, and in the pipe underneath the sink there is a stop-cock _c_. this may be adjusted permanently so that the faucet _f_ will act pleasantly. the same thing is represented again at the gas stove. let _f_ in the fig. 125 represent a gas cock at the stove. suppose the pressure is so high that the gas flames pass more gas than is readily consumed. it is possible to adjust a stop-cock like c further back in the pipe so as to produce hotter flames, get rid of the poisonous fumes of half burned gas, and cut down the monthly gas bills one half. [illustration: fig. 125] "my garden hose will usually throw a stream across the street, which is very desirable when one wishes to sprinkle the street, but this pressure is disastrous when i wish to sprinkle the flowers. turning down the stop-cock at the nozzle makes it shoot a smaller stream but more spiteful in pressure, knocking the flowers to pieces and washing the soil away from their roots. but if i partially close the stop-cock at the side of the house where the hose is attached i may have the stream of water flow as gently as i choose. "i should meet precisely the same situation if i tried to ring an ordinary electric bell by a 110-volt current, and i should use the same method of overcoming the difficulty. "the great virtue of the dynamo is that it can furnish a large supply so that the voltage is kept constant on a great flow of current. [illustration: fig. 126] "i have not forgotten the question, but have tried to work toward its answer all this time. the question is, why did ernest get a shock this morning when he touched only one binding post, and when the battery of five cells is not capable of giving shocks to any one who touches its binding posts directly? we need one more diagram to give the final answer. in fig. 126 _e_ represents the binding post from which the shock was received. _b_ is the battery of five cells, _c_ is the spark coil, _g_ is the engine cylinder, _f_ is the spark plug. when one wishes to start the engine he closes the switch _s_. this makes a continuous conductor from the battery to the metal cylinder itself. as the engine rolls over it closes the gap in the conductor at _d_ for an instant. the primary circuit is then completed and the current passes from _b_ to the cylinder, through the metal of the cylinder to _d_, then to the coil _c_, where it passes through a portion of the coil and then back to the battery. the vibrator on the coil causes the magnetic field to rapidly vary in strength. this induces a secondary current in the whole coil which, because it passes through a very great number of turns, has a high voltage. this passes from _c_ through _b_ to the base of the engine, then up the walls of the cylinder to the plug _f_, then jumps across the gap at _a_, causing the spark which explodes the mixture of gasolene and air in the cylinder. the spark plug _f_ is porcelain--an exceedingly good insulator. through the centre of this passes a wire from _a_ to _e_. the current passes up this and back to _c_. now the engine rests upon the floor of the boat, and ernest stood upon the same floor. the wood of this floor when dry and clean is a very good insulator, but when wet, and particularly when wet with water that has ever so slight an amount of any salt in solution, it becomes a conductor for such high tension currents. when therefore ernest, standing upon the floor of the boat, touched the binding post, _e_, this induced current of high voltage found it about as easy to pass from the metal of the engine cylinder through the wood to his body and through his body to _e_ as to jump across the short air gap at _a_. there are two things upon which he may congratulate himself. "1. while the coil stepped up the voltage so high it reduced the available quantity of the current, so that the shock was a safe one. "2. he received only a portion of the current which passed. the major part of it passed across the gap at _a_, otherwise we should have noticed that the engine missed an explosion when he touched the binding post." the only part of this electrical outfit from which one may receive a shock is that line from _e_ to _c_. the greatest difference in electric pressure is always to be found between the two extremities of the electric generator; as, for example, between the carbon end and the zinc end of the battery, the positive and negative poles of the dynamos; the right-hand and left-hand end of this coil. since the right-hand end is connected by good conductors with the metal of the engine and with the floor of the boat and through it with our bodies, we are in the same electrical condition as the right end of the coil; but the left-hand end and the wire connecting it with _e_ are forced by the varying magnetic field into a very different state of electric tension, and it is insulated from the engine and from us by the porcelain spark plug. we say that the "difference in potential" between the two sides of this system is 5000 to 10,000 volts. the water in this lake flows through the stream at the other end of the lake to the ocean. the water of the ocean evaporates to form clouds. clouds drift over the land and drop their rain to replenish the lake. the difference in water level between this lake and the ocean is twenty feet. a difference in water level is what makes it a water power and it is what occasioned the building of our mill. this difference of water level corresponds in our electric generators to the difference in potential. the difference in potential maintained by our battery of five cells when not producing current is 7.5 volts. the difference in potential between the two ends of our coil, when the battery is agitating its magnetic field, is perhaps a thousand times as much, or 7500 volts. the boys took their swim in the lake and afterward, while we were all on shore lying on the grass, they brought up again the question of the machine-shop. they were anxious to know if i had any plans in regard to it. i said i had been thinking about it a good deal over night but had been waiting to hear their plans. well, they thought it would be good to have a turning lathe, but could not think of anything else unless it might be a grindstone run by power. i said i had thought of a central station electric plant. at this they all sat up. "hydro-electric stations are the proper thing now," i remarked. "on the rio grande river in colorado they are constructing several plants where water power will be utilized to generate electricity for use more than one hundred and fifty miles away. for transmitting electricity to such a distance they step up the voltage, or electro-motive force as it is called, to 100,000 volts. they are harnessing the au sable river in michigan to generate electricity and transmit it at 135,000 volts e. m. f. to towns nearly two hundred miles away. electricians use e. m. f. for electro-motive force, just as you boys use "exams." as slang for the motive force in school. of course we are aware that since 1896 some of the water power of niagara had been converted into electric power to run street cars and factories and furnish electric light and electric heat as far away as buffalo, twenty-six miles distant. about $18,000,000 are now being invested in hydro-electric enterprises even in mexico. by this time the boys were all standing up and staring at me, while harold inquired if i were talking in my sleep. "i have at any rate succeeded in waking you all up," said i, "and what i have said is not altogether a joke. let me explain somewhat at length." xii electricity from central stations large dynamos generate electricity very much more cheaply than small machines can, and machines which have a full load continually produce the current very much more cheaply than those which run upon very light load part of the time. the largest central stations with load evenly distributed for the whole day could furnish electricity profitably at four cents per kilowatt hour. there are many small electric lighting plants which furnish current from sundown to midnight only at fifteen cents per kilowatt hour, with little profit. the transformer (fig. 127) makes it possible to gather all this generation of electricity for sparsely settled districts into large central stations, located sometimes far away from the consumer perhaps, where there is abundant power in some water-fall, thus saving the expense of coal for running the dynamos. [illustration: photograph by helen w. cooke. operating the switchboard] a few years ago there were no central stations for this purpose. now according to the latest census reports there are in the united states about 30,000 plants, including those which belong to certain cities, that generate electricity for sale, and there are twice as many more isolated plants to furnish light and power in factories, hotels, etc. [illustration: fig. 127] the money invested in central station business now exceeds six billion dollars, and the annual output of electric current is sufficient to keep eight billion 16-candle-power carbon filament electric lights burning continuously night and day. all this has more than doubled in the last five years. central stations are now furnishing about five times as much current for heating, cooking, and charging automobiles as they did five years ago. about one third of all the central stations depend on water power. [illustration: fig. 128] [illustration: fig. 129] we might take as the type of hydro-electric central station, that is, one which generates electricity by water-power, the glenwood station of the central colorado power company. this station has two 9000 horse-power water turbines. each water-wheel drives an alternating-current generator which develops 4000 volts of e. m. f. these water wheels and generators are shown in fig. 129. the penstocks are to be seen coming through the back wall of the building. they bring water at 170 foot head, or about seventy-five pounds per square inch static (standing) pressure. three huge transformers, each weighing twenty-six tons, step up the e. m. f. from 4000 to 100,000 volts. these are the cylinders shown in fig. 130. they simply contain a great many coils of copper wire with a vast amount of iron at the centre. they accomplish in a large way what our spark coil does in a lesser degree. but why go to all this expense to produce such a dangerous and troublesome voltage? the answer briefly is, that while it is dangerous and troublesome the expense is not so great as it would be to supply by any other method the electric current required. denver and numerous other places, large and small, require electric current. from one to two hundred miles away on the grande river, there is vast power running to waste. we have to choose on the one hand between buying power in the shape of coal and distributing power plants to those various localities where electricity is needed, and on the other using this water-power, which is now running to waste, to generate electricity which we may transmit and distribute throughout the one hundred and eighty-five miles to denver, leadville, boulder, dillon, idaho springs, etc. but electric energy transmitted a long distance suffers great loss. [illustration: fig. 130] suppose, for instance, i needed to supply fifty amperes at one hundred-volt pressure ten miles distant from the generator, and had a conductor the size of a trolley wire to bring the current. the resistance of the trolley wire is one ohm for every two miles, or five ohms. the drop in voltage is found by multiplying the amperes of current by the ohms of resistance. ten miles from the central station, therefore, the drop on fifty amperes would be 50 × 5 = 250 volts. it would, therefore, be necessary to maintain a pressure of 350 volts at the generator to deliver the fifty amperes at 100 volts. the energy supplied by the generator is 350 volts × 50 amperes = 17,500 watts = 17.5 k. w. the energy delivered to the consumer is 100 volts × 50 amperes = 5000 watts = 5 k. w. in order to deliver fifty cents' worth of electricity per hour to the consumer it would, in this case, be necessary to generate $1.75 worth of electricity at the central station. that is, about seventy per cent. of the energy generated would be wasted in transmission. if now we decide to generate this electrical energy at ten times as high voltage it will be necessary to transmit only one tenth as many amperes, or five. in this case the drop in voltage would be 5 amperes × 5 ohms = 25 volts. it would be necessary to maintain 1025 volts of pressure at the generator to deliver to the consumer the five amperes at 1000 volts = 5000 watts. that is, to deliver 5000 watts in this case we must generate 1025 volts × 5 amperes = 5125 watts, and less than 2-1/2 per cent. of the energy generated would be lost in transmission. if now the consumer must have his energy delivered at 100 volts, we must introduce a step-down transformer at his end of the line which may give him 50 amperes at 100 volts = 5000 watts. this transformer, being small, will cause a loss of 15 or 20 per cent., but if there were a very large amount to transform it might be done with a loss of only 4 per cent. [illustration: fig. 131] [illustration: fig. 132] it is not thought to be advisable to raise the voltage at the generator higher than 4000. this will not suffice to supply large working currents to a greater distance than about six or eight miles. for a distance of 10 miles 6000 volts are desirable; for 50 miles 30,000 volts; for 100 miles 60,000 volts; for 165 miles 100,000 volts; and for 200 miles 120,000 volts. notice that in this table the voltage rises at the rate of 600 per mile. since it is not desirable for the generator itself to produce a higher voltage than 4000, we must depend upon transformers to produce these high voltages. let us then consider, a little more in detail, the construction of a transformer. i have here some drawings of one which i propose that we make in the machine shop, and use in our central station equipment in the future. we will procure the thinnest and softest sheet iron possible and cut out of it a lot of pieces shaped like the letter h with the dimensions shown in fig. 131. these are to be piled one upon another, with strips of paper between, until the pile is 1-1/2 inches thick. then four pieces of board are to be bolted to the sides of these (fig. 132). the dimensions of each of the four blocks, is to be 7-1/2 inches long by 3 inches wide by 1-1/2 inches thick. upon the cross bar of the h we will wind 400 turns of no. 12 double cotton-covered copper wire, bringing out the ends for future attachments, and then wind on 1200 turns of no. 10 double cotton-covered copper wire. the wire will fill the space between the blocks as indicated by the diagram in fig. 133. we will then cut strips of the sheet iron 6 inches long by 1-1/4 inches wide, and bridge across the ends of the h, prying open the leaves of sheet iron and tucking them in between as shown in fig. 134. we shall then drill a hole at each corner and bolt them in place. binding posts will be placed at _a_, _b_, _c_, and _d_ (fig. 134), and the two ends of the no. 12 wire will be brought to _a_ and _b_ and those of the no. 18 wire will be brought to _c_ and _d_. going through all this detail of construction has probably made you lose sight of the essential features of this transformer. let us for a moment turn back and see what they are. we have a large coil of wire 3 inches long and 7-1/2 inches in diameter. it is composed of a coarse winding and a fine winding, which we may designate as the primary and secondary coils, if we choose. of course the only reason for having different sizes of wire is so that we may send larger currents through one than the other. the coil has a laminated iron core, that is, it is composed of layers of sheet iron. these layers are insulated from one another. this is essential, although we cannot explain why now. but perhaps the most essential feature of the transformer is that iron extends clear around from one pole of this electro-magnet to the other. fig. 135 represents a section through the coil made in the plane of _e f g_ (fig. 134). the core of the magnet is represented as heavily shaded. the _magnetic circuit_ is said to be closed from one pole of this magnet to the other through the strips of iron which pass across the ends and down the sides of the coil. the arrows show the path of the magnetic circuit. the dotted portion shows where the copper wire may be supposed to have been cut across. inasmuch as the electric current is induced in the secondary circuit by continually varying the strength of the magnetic field as much as possible, the alternating current is the most desirable to use in the primary. if the direct current were used an interrupter would be necessary, which would of course produce too much sparking when any but low tension currents are used in the primary circuit. the most interesting and curious fact about the transformer is that the voltages of the primary and secondary currents are in exact proportion to the number of turns in the wire of the two circuits. [illustration: fig. 133] [illustration: fig. 134] [illustration: fig. 135] in our transformer the number of turns in the coil between the binding posts _a_ and _b_ is 400 and the number of turns between _c_ and _d_ is 1200. if now we connect a 112-volt alternating current with the binding posts _a_ and _b_, a volt meter connected across between _c_ and _d_ will show 336 volts, and if _b_ and _c_ be connected by a short wire, bringing in 1600 turns into the secondary circuit, a volt meter connected across between _a_ and _d_ will show a voltage of 448. or if, leaving _b_ and _c_ still connected by a short wire, we connect the 112-volt alternating current to _a_ and _d_ a volt meter connected across between _a_ and _b_ will show 28 volts, or if connected between _c_ and _d_ it will show 84 volts, and if finally the 112-volt current is connected to _c_ and _d_ the pressure between _a_ and _b_ will be 37-1/3. [illustration: fig. 136] the story, then, of the central station which we have chosen as a type is briefly this: falling water makes dynamos revolve, generating a 4000-volt alternating current. this current is sent through the primary windings of transformers. the secondary windings of these transformers have twenty-five times as many turns as the primary coils. this steps up the voltage from 4000 to 100,000, making it necessary to send only one twenty-fifth as many amperes over the lines as would be required at 4000 volts, and reduces the loss in transmission to nearly one twenty-fifth. at the other end of the line the current traverses the secondary windings of transformers, and the consumer receives his current from primary coils which may step the e. m. f. down to any required volts of pressure, generally 110. now i shall be glad to have you consider whether this suggests any practicable problems for us here in millville. the sun is nearly setting and i suppose the family is expecting me home. [illustration: fig. 137] xiii electricity from an old mill millville is only a name or rather a reminiscence. there was once a village here, but now its population has all gone with the tide down the river, even its ghost appears to have departed. the ruins have all fallen, except the mill, which we propose to revivify. i had built a summer cottage on the shore of the lake, about one mile from the mill. the absolute stillness of the place charmed me when worn out by the noise and heat and dirt and smell of the city. here even the owl twittered softly as if afraid to disturb the silence. the silence which was such a boon to me seemed to be oppressive to the younger members of the family. to prevent therefore their becoming dissatisfied with the place and wishing to go to other resorts, i planned to have some of their best friends spend much of the summer with us, and i encouraged their plans for making use of the mill. i will not offer this as an excuse for introducing electricity into a sleeping valley. indeed, electricity has always disported itself there in the lightning, jumping from cloud to mountain peak as i have seen it nowhere else on earth. the next time i saw the boys they had ambitious plans indeed. the penstock at the mill was to be repaired. the water-wheel was to drive an alternating current dynamo. the voltage of this current was to be stepped up by a transformer. it was to be transmitted to the cottage and there the e. m. f. was to be stepped down again by another transformer. my wife suggested that if it interfered with the simple life it would have to step down and out. harold, however, assured his mother that they were going to simplify everything--even the subject of electricity. their plans were: to light the cottage by electricity; introduce a number of electric back logs, with coloured glass bottles; heat the fireless cooker by electricity; pump the water for the house by electricity; run mother's sewing machine by electricity; run the washing machine and wringer by electricity; heat sad irons by electricity; percolate coffee, wash dishes and run the vacuum cleaner by electricity; operate the door bell and the telephone and wind the clock by electricity. i was sure that if they carried out these plans they would stay in millville at least that summer, so i said go ahead. we fixed the penstock. the boys estimated that 10 cubic feet of water per second would pass through it. they said that a cubic foot of water weighed 62.5 pounds and 10 cubic feet weighed 625 pounds. they said it fell at the rate of 7 vertical feet a second, making 4375 foot-pounds per second. but 550 foot-pounds per second is one horse-power, hence this is about 8 horse-power. since one horse-power is equivalent to 746 watts of electricity, we have, if we could generate it without loss, said the boys, nearly the equivalent of 6 kilowatts of electricity, or about 54 amperes at 110 volts. there were several things they wanted to know before they could go further with their plans. 1. how many of these electrical appliances we would be likely to use at one time. 2. how much current each device would require. 3. how much they must allow for losses in generating the current, in transmitting it, and in transforming it. we assured them that we would never use more than twenty amperes, say, two thousand watts at one time. they might install a fuse, or circuit breaker in our line to protect their plant against a greater load from us. i told them that they might allow 20 per cent. loss of energy at the dynamo in converting water-power into electric-power. i would suggest generating their current at 115 e. m. f. and stepping it up to 460 for transmission to us, and then stepping it down to about one hundred and ten volts for our use. they might count on about one-third loss on our supply, that is, they would need to generate about three thousand watts in order to deliver us 2000 watts. i suggested making our line of no. 6 copper wire, which has a resistance of two ohms to the mile. the distance from the mill to the cottage is one mile, and the complete circuit therefore would require two miles of wire, or four ohms of resistance. if we start with 3000 watts and lose 14 per cent. in transforming we shall have 2580 watts to transmit. if the voltage has been stepped up fourfold there will be about 5.6 amperes to transmit which will suffer a loss of 22.4 volts in passing through four ohms of resistance on the line. the loss in transmission will be about 5 per cent., and we shall have on arrival at the cottage about two thousand four hundred and fifty watts with a voltage of 437.6. if now in stepping this down to one fourth the voltage, viz., 109.4, we lose 14 per cent., we shall have left something over two thousand one hundred watts, or nearly twenty amperes. assuming that you are able to generate 4800 watts of electricity and that 3000 watts must be furnished for transmission to the cottage, you have left 1800 watts, which will give you something over fifteen amperes at 115 volts for use in your machine shop. i suggest that we get a dynamo which will generate both alternating and direct current--the alternating current you will send to the cottage, and the direct current you will have for use at the machine shop. but how is it possible for a dynamo to generate both alternating and direct current at the same time? [illustration: fig. 138] [illustration: fig. 139] recall that all dynamos are generators of alternating current. if the brushes rest upon rings upon the axle they send forth alternating current--but if the brushes rest upon commutator bars they send forth direct current. now we will have two sets of brushes, one pair of which shall rest upon the rings on the axle, and they will collect alternating current for the cottage, while the other pair will slide over the commutator bars and collect direct current for the machine shop. i have constructed a model which will make it plain. here is a piece of a broom handle (fig. 138), one foot long, which shall represent the axle of an armature. _a b c d_ is a stout wire which represents the coil of the armature. in this case it has no iron at its centre. nevertheless it will serve as an armature having one loop of its coil left. _e_ and _f_ are rings, sawed from a piece of brass pipe, which fit snugly upon the axle. another ring of the brass pipe was sawed lengthwise, as shown in fig. 139. these two halves are also fastened upon the axle and one end of the wire loop, _c_, is fastened to one of these, and the other end of the loop, _b_, is fastened to the other half of the ring. these two halves of the piece of brass pipe are placed so that their edges are near to each other but do not touch on either side of the axle. the two ends of this wire loop are also connected with the rings _e_ and _f_. a short wire connects _b_ and _e_ and another connects _c_ and _f_ passing through the wood of the axle, as shown by the dotted line. we will now revolve this loop slowly about its axle in a strong magnetic field. to produce this field i will send two amperes of electricity through the coils of wire (fig. 140), which surround two iron pole pieces that are screwed into an iron base. between the poles _n_ and _s_ of this electro-magnet we will thrust this wire loop and revolve it as an armature very slowly. meanwhile i connect two wires to my sensitive ammeter and let their free ends brush along on the rings _e_ and _f_. the needle of the ammeter swings to and fro for each half revolution of the armature, showing an alternating current of .01 amperes. if this armature had many turns of wire instead of this one loop, if it had an iron core, and if it should revolve at high speed, the results would differ in degree but not in kind. [illustration: fig. 140] we will now move the wires which are acting as brushes over to the metal pieces _b_ and _c_. when now we revolve the armature the needle swings to the right, and just as the needle is about to swing back each brush slides from the plate on which it is rubbing to the opposite one and the needle gets another impulse forward. if the armature is turned rapidly the pulses disappear and the needle stands constantly at about .015 amperes. this then is both an alternating and a direct current dynamo. it simply needs more iron, more copper wire, and more rapid motion, to give us the 4800 watts of electrical energy we are seeking. "but how shall we produce the current which we wish to send around the spools of the field?" inquired the boys. "connect the field with the brushes which rub upon the commutator," i replied. "it will magnetize its own field." * * * * * as good luck would have it, we found that the ledge of rock which furnished the basis for the mill dam was immediately underneath the floor at the north end of the machine shop. upon this we built up a solid foundation for the dynamo. our water-wheel gave a speed of 240 revolutions per minute to the counter shaft. a pulley of two feet in diameter upon this counter shaft was belted to the pulley of one foot in diameter upon the dynamo--thus giving its armature a speed of 480 revolutions per minute. we had to fix a governor upon the water-wheel to keep this speed constant at varying loads. the voltage is very sensitive to slight changes in the speed of the generator. we had next to plan what equipment we should need for the machine shop and to decide where to locate each machine. the first machine we installed was a lathe adapted for use both with metals and wood. among the adjuncts of this were all sorts of drills, chisels, circular saws, grinding and burnishing tools, etc. the second machine located was a small forge with an electric fan to furnish the blast. these were followed by a small band saw and a small planer. the fifth machine was a big grindstone and the sixth was an emery wheel. the boys had a long discussion, running through several days, on the question whether these machines should be belted to the counter shaft, and thus get power directly from the water-wheel, or whether each machine should be operated by an electric motor attached to it. harold said: "suppose i want to saw a piece of wood requiring a horse-power, i must start an eight horse-power water-wheel which will run a six-horse-power dynamo which will operate a two-horse-power motor that will revolve the saw. there is a loss in each machine, and the lighter the load the greater the loss. in order that the motor may deliver one horse-power to the saw, it must receive from the dynamo, say, one and one-half horse-power, and in order that the dynamo may deliver to the motor one and one-half horse-power, it must receive from the water-wheel, say, two horse-power. what is the matter with my saving time and energy by sawing off the block with my own right arm?" "but," said ernest, "you forget that this water-wheel and the dynamo must run all the time by the terms of our agreement with the cottage, and they will run fairly well loaded, so that the starting of the saw will not entail any such losses as you reckon. furthermore the water-power is running to waste, anyway. you simply divert its channel when you start all this machinery. that's all. and lastly, if the saw requires a horse-power, as you say, your right arm could not furnish it." "oh," interposed dyne, "it would take a horse-power to do it as quickly as the machine does, but harold simply proposes to take more time in sawing the block and less in running the machinery. an infant can do the work of a horse if you give him proportionally more time." "i don't like the idea," drawled erg, "that this machinery has got to be kept running all the time. when will a fellow get a chance to sleep or go a-fishing or have any vacation, with this central-station machine shop on his hands all the time?" i had inquired how the last two boys won their nicknames of _dyne_ and _erg_ and had been informed that one was very keen about dining and the other had a great aversion for work. they had doubtless seen these terms somewhere in their reading of physics, but they appeared to have forgotten their significance by a too familiar use of them. i told them that these were sacred terms, the first being a name for the unit of force, while the second designated the unit of work. both boys said that under those circumstances they would like to shed the names. the names, however, stuck and the boys themselves might, i think, be said to exercise a maximum of power with the least waste of energy. this idea of running the plant continuously had evidently received no attention hitherto and it bid fair to quench all the enthusiasm until i came to the rescue by proposing a storage battery. if we can procure a battery in which we may store energy, which shall always be on draught by merely pushing a button, one which "is not injured by overcharging nor too rapid discharging, nor even by complete discharge"; one which is not injured by standing idle for any length of time, either charged or discharged; and finally one which "is practically foolproof"--we want to try it. i propose that you appoint a committee to look into it. but at any rate this enterprise must go on even if i have to hire a man to live in the loft of the mill and keep the machinery going. [illustration: fig. 141] "no man in the loft," said dyne, "while i have my rations." "there will be no need for him so long as i can store energy here," said erg, "so let the job of equipping the establishment go on in the regular fashion." after a long confab one evening at the mill we settled upon the arrangement shown in fig. 141. _d_ represents the location of the doors and _w_ that of the windows. the equipment is designated as follows: _a_, saw; _b_, planer; _c_, lathe; _e_, emery wheel; _f_, grindstone; _g_, dynamo; _h_, forge; _i_, storage battery; _j_, switchboard; _k_ and _l_, counter shafts suspended from the ceiling. the water-wheel is belted directly to the counter shaft _l_. this revolves at the rate of 240 r. p. m. a two-foot pulley on this shaft is belted to a one-foot pulley on the dynamo _g_, giving the dynamo a speed of 480. a 4-inch pulley on this counter shaft is belted to a 16-inch pulley on the grindstone _f_, giving the stone a speed of 60 r. p. m., or one revolution per second. a 32-inch pulley on shaft _l_ is belted to an 8-inch pulley on the counter shaft _k_, giving a speed of 4 times 240, or 960 r. p. m. 12-inch pulleys on this shaft are belted to 6-inch pulleys on each of the machines _a_, _b_, and _c_, giving them a speed of 1920 r. p. m., and a 16-inch pulley on this shaft is belted to a 4-inch pulley on the emery wheel, giving it a speed of 3840 r. p. m. as soon as everything was in running order, harold took his mother down to the machine shop and started all the machinery going at once, and while they stood in the middle of the room i heard him explaining to her how she might find out the speed of each machine. he said that she must start with the grindstone, because that goes slowly enough to count. she held her watch in hand and counted the number of revolutions in a minute, as he directed, and found them to be sixty. then he asked her to judge how much larger the pulley on the grindstone was than the corresponding one on the counter shaft. she said that she thought it looked four times as large. he told her that she had it just right, and explained that the shaft must move four times as fast as the stone, or 240. "now how fast do you think the emery wheel is going?" she acknowledged that she had no idea. "well," said he, "when you get real used to it you can tell by the tone a wheel makes just about how fast it is going." then he explained how she might calculate its speed by looking at the pulleys, and she found that the counter shaft was going four times as fast as the shaft _l_ and that the emery wheel was going four times as fast as _k_. hence it was going sixteen times as fast as _l_, or 3840 r. p. m. his mother said she thought that it was fascinating to stand in the middle of the room with the slowly moving grindstone on one hand and emery wheel moving sixty-four times as fast on the other hand and think that they were propelled by the same water-wheel. i handed harold a speed indicator which i had just received, (fig. 142), the mechanism of which was all visible. harold looked at it for a minute and found stated upon it that the wheel _b_ had 100 cogs, and he very quickly inferred that the axle _a_, whose screw threads fitted into these cogs, must revolve one hundred times each time the wheel _b_ revolves once. the tip end of this axle had a soft rubber cap _c_. without suggestion from me he soon held this rubber shoe against the end of the axle of the emery wheel and counted, not thirty-eight, but thirty-six revolutions of the wheel of the speed indicator in one minute. this puzzled him and he inquired how it happened that the emery wheel made only 3600 rather than 3840 revolutions per minute. [illustration: fig. 142] "well," said i, "we always have to count on belts slipping some, particularly upon very fast moving pulleys and upon very small pulleys. here are two belts to slip, and still you are losing only the effect of one revolution of the counter shaft _l_ in a minute. grind something on the emery wheel and you will find that the belts will slip more. in fact, grinding upon the emery wheel will compel the water-wheel to go more slowly until its governor opens and gives it more water. the water-wheel makes fifteen revolutions per minute and the emery wheel goes 256 times as fast as that. one pound of resistance at the emery wheel is like 256 pounds of resistance at the water-wheel. you notice the same thing when you use the saw or planer, or even present a chisel to a piece of soft wood in the turning lathe. "the only machine here that it is important to keep running at constant speed is the dynamo. we shall probably notice the dimming of our lights at the cottage every time you saw a block or grind with the emery wheel or even polish with the felt buffer, because the speed of the dynamo will slacken for a moment and the voltage will drop a little." in addition to sending electric current to the cottage the dynamo was to keep the battery stored all the time. each machine had an appropriate motor attached to it which could run it by drawing current directly from the battery when the water-wheel was not running. thus if one wanted to sharpen his pocket knife he merely closed a switch at the lathe and used the small stone, or if he wished to sharpen his lead pencil he put it in the lathe and applied a chisel to it. these motors were all adapted to the 110-volt direct current and the battery contained fifty-seven cells, each cell being rated a little under two volts. the boys frequently discussed possible combinations in this system. i spent a great deal of time loafing around among them in a comatose condition, and they talked quite as freely when i was around as when they were alone among themselves. one day i heard dyne say, "suppose we should store in a reservoir the water which comes down the penstock during a day and store all the electricity it will generate in a day in a storage battery, then at night let the battery run the dynamo backward as a motor, and that turn the water-wheel backward as a rotary pump, we should have the water in the upper reservoir to begin work with the next morning and the problem of perpetual motion would be solved. "aw, why do you want to do all that," said erg, "when nature is doing it for us?" ernest said he had a better scheme than that. he would turn the battery current on to all the motors in the room and they would run the counter shafts forward and the counter shafts would run the dynamo forward and the dynamo would charge the battery, and so you could keep up the motion perpetually if you wanted to. "get out your pencils," said harold, as he took down a copy of houston and kennelly. "let us see how we would come out if we tried dyne's proposition for, say, twenty hours, storing the energy from the falling water for ten hours in the battery and then using this energy during the next ten hours for re-storing the water in the upper pond. we will say that the water-wheel furnishes eight horse-power for ten hours--eighty horse-power hours." i notice it is stated in this book that small dynamos are usually unable to deliver more than 75 per cent. of the energy impressed upon them, and storage batteries and motors deliver about 80 per cent. of the energy impressed upon them. the accounts would, therefore, stand as follows: _dynamo_ _horse-power hours_ _dr._ _cr._ to energy impressed by water-wheel 80 by energy delivered to storage battery 60 by loss in heat 20 -------- 80 80 (assuming that the battery was able to receive all the dynamo could give.) storage battery account to energy impressed by dynamo 60 by energy delivered back to dynamo running as motor 48 by loss in heat 12 -------- 60 60 _dynamo running as motor_ _horse-power hours_ _dr._ _cr._ to energy impressed by battery 48 by energy delivered back to water-wheel 36 by loss in heat 12 -------- 48 48 (this dynamo being a particularly inefficient motor.) we cannot give the account of a water-wheel acting as a pump, because such a machine has not yet been perfected. it is evident however that if a water-wheel could be devised that should be a perfect pump, the losses in this chain of machinery are more than half; indeed, the accounts show them to be 60 per cent. we should, therefore, be able to return less than half the water drawn from the lake each day, and we should rapidly move toward bankruptcy. "well," said ernest, "my proposition is more successful than that, because it sets out to be a fool proposition." it was first suggested by the snake who undertook to swallow himself. suppose the account does taper down from eighty to one, so does the snake, but he still remains "wise as a serpent." our account would stand as follows: _dynamo_ _battery_ _motors_ 36 27 27 20 20 15 15 12 12 9 9 7 7 5 5 4 4 3 3 2 2 1 1 .8 .8 .6 .6 .48 .48 .36 .36 .27 .27 .20 .20 .15 .15 .12 .12 .09 .09 .07 .07 .05 .05 .04 .04 .03 .03 .02 .02 .01 .01 .003 it is evident that while our energy would dwindle continually we should never quite come out of the little end of the horn, since any number may diminish by 20 per cent. of itself indefinitely. "let us get at something practical," said erg. "how are we going to furnish electricity to the cottage when the dynamo is not running? if we put a storage battery at the cottage, how are we going to store it having nothing but alternating current up there; and if we attempt to transmit current from our central station battery, how are we going to get along with the drop in the voltage?" "i'll tell you how to do that," said dyne. "they want 20 amperes and the line offers 4 ohms of resistance. that means a drop of 80 volts. we have simply to provide a subsidiary battery of 48 cells, which we may throw in series with our 57 cells when we supply electricity to the cottage, and then they will have the right voltage for use out there." "yes," said erg, as he rolled over, "they will have the right voltage when they use 20 amperes, but what will happen if they simply turn on one lamp. the drop in voltage then will be (.5 amperes × 4 ohms =) 2 volts; 105 cells at 1.8 volts a cell will send out there 189 volts minus the drop of 2 volts, leaving 187 volts upon a lamp adapted to 110 volts, and it will immediately burn out. the same thing would happen to any single piece of apparatus if the current was turned upon it alone. the only thing they could do if they wanted to light a lamp, say in the middle of the night to take a dose of medicine, would be to start up all together, all their lamps, sewing machine, wringer, dishwasher, fireless cooker, vacuum cleaner, etc., etc., to keep down the voltage so that one lamp would not burn out." "i have read," said ernest, "that they use rectifiers, which convert the alternating into direct current, for storing batteries. these are much used over the country. electric automobiles run by storage batteries, and in the great majority of communities there is no other electric current than the alternating. so they would be helpless without the rectifier. we should then get another battery of fifty-five cells for the cottage and keep it stored by using a rectifier with our alternating current. "but all their equipment up there," said ernest, "is adapted to the alternating current. of what use would a direct current be to them?" "well," said harold, "it is all the same whether you have alternating or direct current on lamps, cooking apparatus, etc., and i have understood that they have motors which run on both alternating and direct currents. if so, that would fix them up all right." the boys now turned to me for the first time to inquire whether motors could be obtained which would run on both alternating and direct current, and i replied that small motors for running sewing machines, vacuum cleaners, etc., were made which would serve us, perhaps not economically, but as they were the only solution to our problem we could get along with them. "why don't they have alternating current batteries?" inquired erg. "well, it is time that we learned about the nature of batteries," said i, "if you boys are going to have two storage batteries to care for." xiv doing chores by electricity chores were my salvation in youth, and those chores were not trifles. i was made to feel that the whole family depended on my milking the cows, bringing in the eggs, keeping the wood box full of wood, the water pail full of water brought from the old well, churning the butter, feeding and watering the animals, and performing a multitude of regular daily and weekly tasks. as i grew older my responsibilities were allowed to increase proportionally so that i might feel some measure of the dignity of being a mainstay and a support of the family. long before i reached manhood occasional opportunities were presented for me to play the full part of a man. these sometimes came during a temporary absence or sickness of my father, but more often, as i learned afterward, by his skilfully eliminating himself from the situation so that i might try my powers. we attempt in the present generation to furnish a substitute for the old time chores by our daily programme in school or in summer camp, but i often wonder whether this round of trifles can make men. can one grow great without having a chance to feel occasionally that the world depends upon what he does? [illustration: fig. 143] the great advantage of millville to us all lies in the fact that my wife is a good organizer. she immediately saw that the introduction of electricity into the cottage enabled her to assign chores to us all. these chores were assigned so that the establishment ran like clock-work. on monday morning in a large room, called the wash room, she arranged the soiled clothes in five piles. pile no. 1 contained sheets and pillow cases; no. 2, white shirts, shirtwaists, and other starched clothes; no. 3, underclothes; no. 4, towels, etc., and no. 5, coloured clothes. here stood a washing machine run by electric motor and a wringer run by the same motor (fig. 143). by the side of it sat a tub for rinsing water and next to that a tub for bluing water. two boys placed a wash boiler over a two-burner oil stove, put five pails of water into it, and cut up one cake of laundry soap which they also put in. when this was boiling hot, about half of it was poured into the washing machine. the other half was to take its place later in the washing machine. the first pile of clothes was put in and the motor run for five minutes. this batch was then run through the wringer into the rinsing water, and then again through the wringer into the bluing water, and then through the wringer a third time into the clothes basket, and hung upon the line out doors in the clear sunshine, which did more than all else to make them sweet and clean. a basket of such clothes from the line makes you want to plunge your face right into it and take a good whiff. there is nothing like it except a mow full of new hay. the piles of soiled clothes follow one another through this series of tubs on about a fifteen to twenty minutes headway, so that the whole family washing is done wholly by two boys inside of two hours. each pile after the first is given ten minutes in the washing machine. on tuesday the ironing is done with electric irons (fig. 144). on friday the house is cleaned by the vacuum cleaner, run by electricity (fig. 145). [illustration: fig. 144] [illustration: fig. 145] on saturday a lot of baking is done in a series of fireless cookers (fig. 146). the sewing machine runs more than ever before. i hear "it is such fun to sew with an electric motor." and the electric fan which harold installed for his mother over the sewing machine "makes that the coolest spot in the house." [illustration: fig. 146] [illustration: fig. 147] chores do not take all of the time, nor most of the time. they are simply the important things which must be done right on time. meanwhile there is plenty of time for other things and a vast lot of experimenting goes on down at the mill. it is my chief entertainment to stroll down there every day and look on. one day i found this project on trial: on the floor (fig. 148, _f_) of the room over the wash room at the mill a large dripping pan _a_, was set on blocks of wood so that one corner was lower than the rest. a rubber pipe, _b_, brought water to this pan from the mill pond, an inverted faucet, _c_, regulating the flow. the overflow from the pan fell into a funnel, _d_, the stem of which went through a hole in the floor. a short piece of rubber pipe connected this with the nozzle, _e_, of a gardener's sprinkling can, which hung from the ceiling in the compartment for the shower bath. electric lamps attached to a board, _g_, were inverted over the pan of water, so that the bulbs of the lamps were immersed in the water. the electric current for these lamps was controlled by a switch, _h_, placed by the side of the water faucet. when one wanted a shower he could have it as cold or as hot as he chose by adjusting properly the switch and the faucet. moreover, it was not necessary for him to wait, for warm water flowed immediately. [illustration: fig. 148] in discussing this the boys said that a 32-candle-power lamp used 110 watts, and that since 96 per cent. of the energy supplied to the lamps went into heat each lamp transformed 105 watts of electrical energy into heat. but 100 watts sufficed to raise one pint (one pound) of water five degrees in one minute. they used seven lamps or about one horse-power, and adjusted the flow so that the shower delivered one quart of lake water per minute warmed for a tepid bath. [illustration: fig. 149] the next time i sauntered down to the mill the boys were working on what they called an electric shower bath. they had fastened upon the wall of the bath room an electric bell (fig. 149), and placed on a shelf near by a battery of two dry cells, _p_. the switch which closed this primary circuit was on the wall by the side of the faucet and electric heating switch (fig. 148). one of the wires, _s_, for the secondary circuit was carried up and connected to the pan _a_ (fig. 148). the other wire was fastened to a sheet of zinc about a foot square, which lay upon the floor of the shower bath. the idea was that when one was taking a shower bath, if he chose to vary his sensations he might step upon the sheet of zinc, close the switch in the primary circuit and let the secondary current pass through his body by way of the shower. they said that it was particularly prescribed for slow people. speaking of chores, of course the most insistent chore was to keep the storage batteries stored. this process gave rise to many questions, through which the information contained in the next chapter was brought out. xv electric currents from chemical action and chemical action from electric currents luigi galvani (1737-1798) of bologna, italy, in 1786 unwittingly produced an electric current from chemical action. because he was eagerly seeking other results he misinterpreted this. several words in the dictionary are becoming either obsolete or misnomers. for example, galvanism is an old-fashioned word for an electric current. the expression _galvanic electricity_ is a relic of the abandoned idea that there are several kinds of electricity, of which galvani discovered one. galvanized iron is wholly a misnomer. it is a name used for iron which has been coated with zinc, and it suggests the idea that somehow the zinc is coated upon the iron by means of an electric current, whereas in fact it is done by dipping the iron into melted zinc. alessandro volta (1745-1827) of como, italy, took up the discovery of galvani, interpreted it correctly, and perfected the method of producing electricity by chemical action. what these two men really discovered was that it is possible to produce continuous currents of electricity. before that electricity was known only by the instantaneous discharge or spark. from the name of volta is derived the word volt, which designates the unit of electro-motive force. the adjective _voltaic_ is synonymous with _galvanic_, as voltaic or galvanic cell, voltaic or galvanic current. for a long time it was thought that such an adjective was needed to designate electric currents generated by chemical action as a peculiar kind of electricity. we no longer think of electricity which is generated by chemical action as different from that generated by a dynamo or from any other source. for about seventy-five years after the discovery of galvani chemical action was our only method of generating currents of electricity, and it is largely owing to the inadequacy of this method of production that so few uses for electricity were discovered previous to the perfection of the dynamo about a third of a century ago. two things have conspired to bring about this _age of electricity_. (1) the dynamo reduced the cost of production from five dollars to ten cents per kilowatt hour. (2) mankind grew extravagant, greatly increased the number of things which it considered necessary, and at length became both able and willing to spend more for the things which it demanded. the so-called voltaic cell is of scarcely more than academic interest now. the school which, as a rule, follows half a century behind practical life, has taught and still teaches the philosophy of the galvanic cell with great particularity. it is now being urged to undertake the teaching of the dynamo. meanwhile the dynamo has almost driven out of existence all electric battery cells except the storage cell and the so-called "dry cell," and each year the dynamo is encroaching more and more upon the territory of the dry cell. in the present day, when a passenger upon a street car pushes a button to stop the car, he uses, not a voltaic cell, but a 500-volt dynamo current to ring a small buzzer, and it costs the company not one-hundredth part as much as it would to furnish him a battery equipment to do the same thing. small dynamos and magnetos are displacing dry battery cells in the sparking equipment of motor boats and automobiles. we lifted a dry battery cell out of its pasteboard case and found that it was contained in a metal cup of sheet zinc. the top of this was sealed over airtight with pitch, the purpose of which is to prevent this "dry" cell from drying up. we dug away the hardened pitch and found a black powder which was distinctly moist. in case the pitch becomes cracked or a hole appears in the zinc cup, the moisture passes out and the cell ceases to act as a generator of electric current. the zinc cup had a lining of pasteboard on the sides and the bottom, similar to the pasteboard which enveloped the outside, only the lining was quite moist. a corrugated rod of carbon about an inch in diameter occupied the middle of the cup, and the space around it was packed full of a mixture of ammonium chloride, manganese dioxide, and other substances like plaster, etc., which differ with different cells. a dry cell which has been long in use is quite apt to show stains upon its pasteboard case. these are caused by holes which appear in the zinc. the production of electric current by the cell is dependent wholly upon a chemical action between the zinc and the ammonium chloride which results in the destruction of both. this chemical action cannot go on without moisture. the zinc cup of the particular cell which we were examining appeared to be intact, and we proceeded to dig out the black powder. its black colour is due to the manganese dioxide. ammonium chloride is white. we lifted out the carbon rod and scraped the zinc cup clean. the binding posts attached to both the zinc cup and the carbon rod were left intact. into the zinc cup we now poured a tumblerful of water and added about a quarter of its volume of hydrochloric acid, setting the whole into a large bowl to guard against disaster. bubbles of gas were formed rapidly, causing the liquid to effervesce as a tumbler of soda water would do. we inverted an empty tumbler over the cup so as to collect this gas. in about two minutes we lifted the tumbler, still holding its mouth downward, and brought a lighted match to it. there was a flash and the contents burned with a pale-blue flame. some of the zinc had united with some of the hydrochloric acid and set free hydrogen gas, which is one of the constituents of the acid. this is typical of chemical actions. something similar takes place between the ammonium chloride and the zinc. three interesting things occur in this experiment: 1. chemical action, just described, is produced. 2. heat is produced. this was very evident when we took the zinc cup up in our hands. it was as hot as though boiling water had been put into it. 3. an electro-motive force is produced. this we showed by connecting one end of a piece of copper wire to the binding post of the zinc cup and the other end of the wire to an electric bell. another wire ran from the bell to the carbon rod. when the carbon rod was lowered into the acid the bell rang. within ten minutes holes began to appear in the side of the zinc cup. the acid contents began to flow out into the bowl, and not long after the zinc fell to pieces. after fifteen or twenty minutes the action began to grow less. the acid was being used up as well as the zinc. if enough acid is added the zinc will wholly disappear. we have chosen substances which would produce striking results in this experiment, but the same sort of thing is going on about us continually. one summer by the seashore i fastened a brass plate upon my boat with two screws--one of brass and one of galvanized iron. the plate was attached below the water line so that it might be acted upon by the salt water. within three weeks the head of the galvanized iron screw had entirely dissolved, while the brass screw was as good as ever. a galvanized iron screw near by but not in contact with the brass was still in as good order as ever. i had simply made an electric battery cell out of the ocean by dipping into it zinc and brass in contact. a most interesting relationship exists between the three kinds of activity in the cell, which have been mentioned, viz.: (1) chemical action; (2) production of heat; (3) production of electric current. as has been already noted, chemical action produces heat. conversely, if we apply heat to the cell we greatly increase its chemical action. we have also noted that chemical action produces an electric current, but unless the current is allowed to flow through some external channel like a closed circuit of wire the chemical action is greatly restrained or entirely checked. [illustration: fig. 150] in a glass tumbler i put a rod of pure zinc (fig. 150, _zn_), and an electric light carbon, _c_. a short wire, _a_, was arranged for connecting the two externally. in the tumbler was put some water with about one tenth its volume of sulphuric acid. no chemical action was evident until the wire was touched to the zinc, closing the circuit. then bubbles of hydrogen gas gathered upon the surface of the carbon rod, and clung to it very tenaciously. we lifted out the carbon rod and rinsed off the bubbles in another tumbler of water, and then returned the carbon to its place in the cell. the experiment was repeated many times, and each time no bubbles of hydrogen, which is in this case the sign of the chemical action, appeared until the circuit was closed for the flow of the electric current. incidentally it should be said that the amount of hydrogen produced by the chemical action is a measure of the amount of electric current produced. incidentally also it should be said that the bubbles of hydrogen clinging to the carbon rod check and almost stop both the chemical action and the production of electric current when the circuit is closed. if now we put in sodium bichromate to use up the hydrogen as fast as it is produced we may have a continuous current whenever the circuit is closed. chemical action does not entirely cease in this cell when the circuit is opened. but if two cells are prepared, and one is left with its circuit closed while the other remains with its circuit open, it will be found that the zinc disappears and the acid is used up in the closed cell in a short time, while these remain not greatly changed for a long time in the cell on which the circuit is open. no cell will remain forever without chemical action, yet a dry cell which might use up its zinc and ammonium chloride in a few hours if the circuit is closed may be kept idle three or four years, and still be able to furnish electricity enough to ring a bell. some persons feel defrauded if the author of a book fails to give them all the new words and conventional terms which belong to any subject. for such here is a page or so. it is conventional to speak of the electric current as flowing from the carbon through the wire to the zinc, although every one has suspicions that it may flow in the other direction or even that it may not flow at all. it is conventional to designate any part of the circuit from which the current comes as positive (+) to any other part toward which it flows, this latter being considered negative to the former and designated (-). the current is conceived of as making a complete circuit, from carbon to zinc through the wire and from zinc to carbon through the liquid. hence, the binding post of the carbon rod is called the + pole and that of the zinc is called the-pole, while the zinc rod or plate beneath the surface of the fluid is called the + plate and the carbon is called the-plate. the liquid is termed the electrolyte. the sodium bichromate, introduced to cause the hydrogen to unite with oxygen, is called an oxidizing agent or even a _depolarizing_ agent, and hydrogen collecting upon the negative plate is said to polarize the cell. hydrogen may be made to collect upon the carbon or negative plate until the electric current reverses its direction. the hydrogen is said to be more than the zinc. if we connect the zinc and carbon rods with the wires bringing an electric current from the dynamo we may make either one positive as we choose, according to which is connected with the positive wire. hydrogen bubbles will collect upon whichever plate we make the negative one. when we send an electric current from the dynamo into this cell it is called an electrolytic cell, and when it is used to generate an electric current it is called a battery cell. in either case the electrolyte is decomposed and put through a chemical change, though the chemical action in one case is the reverse of that in the other, and the direction of the electric current in one case is the reverse of that in the other. for example let us consider the case of a zinc rod and a carbon rod immersed in sulphuric acid and the external circuit closed. the current passes as indicated by the arrows in fig. 151, and the chemical actions result in hydrogen leaving the sulphuric acid and zinc taking its place, forming zinc sulphate. this is a white salt and for purposes of this experiment must remain dissolved in water. so far we have been considering a generator of electricity--a battery cell. we may introduce something at _m_, say a motor, which will indicate that an electric current is flowing. at length the cell ceases to generate current and is, as we say, "run down." suppose now we substitute a dynamo in place of the motor in this circuit, connecting it so that the carbon rod shall be its positive pole and the zinc its negative pole. we now call this an electrolytic cell, (fig. 152). the current will decompose the zinc sulphate. the zinc will be coated upon the zinc rod and hydrogen will be procured from the water present, of which it is a constituent, to form again sulphuric acid as originally. [illustration: fig. 151] [illustration: fig. 152] we shall thus restore the conditions which prevailed in the first case as represented in fig. 151. h_{2}so_{4} is the chemist's designation of sulphuric acid and znso_{4} is his expression for zinc sulphate. the experiment illustrates a storage battery so called. it might better be called a chemical transformer. it is wholly unnecessary that one rod be composed of zinc. if we begin with both rods of carbon immersed in a solution of znso_{4}, and send into this cell the dynamo current, the carbon which acts as the negative pole will be coated with zinc in a short time, and we shall have in effect a rod of zinc and one of carbon as before. after a minute or two we may disconnect the generator and substitute in its place a bell as indicator, and it will ring, showing that we have transformed electrical energy into chemical energy which is now being retransformed into electrical energy. we say that we store electricity by this means, which is, however, no more true than that a farmer stores his farm in the bank when he sells it and deposits the money until he shall need it to buy another farm. here is a very beautiful blue salt. i will drop a few crystals of it into a tumbler of water and dip in two carbon pencils connected to the dynamo current, using between fifty and sixty ohms of resistance in the circuit so as to have two amperes flowing. after a minute or two i lift out the negative carbon and you see that it is well plated with copper. the blue salt is copper sulphate. if we weigh the negative carbon, both before and after the experiment, we shall find that copper has been depositing at the rate of one ounce in twelve hours. if we reduce the current one half, making it one ampere, it will deposit copper at the rate of one ounce in twenty-four hours. one ampere will separate three ounces of lead in a day from a solution of any lead salt; it will separate .9 ounce of iron in a day from a solution of any iron salt, and it will liberate from water, which is a compound of hydrogen, one gallon of the gas in ten hours. the amount of chemical action is a measure of the amount of electrical energy expended. before the present form of commercial wattmeter was devised electrolytic cells were used to determine what the consumer's bill for electricity should be each month. these chemical meters contained a solution of zinc sulphate for the electrolyte and both the positive and the negative plates were of zinc. while the current is passing, zinc from the solution is coated upon the negative plate and zinc from the positive plate takes its place in the solution, thus maintaining a constant strength of solution. here are three iron nails. i propose that you plate one with zinc and another with copper and then expose all three to the weather and see which will rust. i propose that you replate all the spoons at the cottage and the metal tops of the salt cellars with silver. electro-plating results better if done slowly. ten volts and .1 ampere will be sufficient current. in the storage battery we generally use lead for both positive and negative plates and dilute sulphuric acid for the electrolyte. hydrogen is liberated at the positive plate and oxygen unites with the negative plate. when the charging current is cut off the chemical action reverses, and an electric current is produced by the cell. in all other batteries there is a destruction of one plate and of the electrolyte, which cannot be fully restored by a charging current, although in the case of the lead and sulphuric acid combination the charging and discharging of the cell may go on alternately for a very long period without permanent change or loss of any substance except water. there is, however, plenty of loss of energy in this as in other transformers. one hundred ampere hours of current expended to charge a storage battery will yield from seventy-five to eighty-five ampere hours while the battery is discharging. the lead storage battery is, however, full of disappointments for those who do not properly care for it. it is irretrievably ruined if neglected and allowed to charge too far, or discharge too far, or evaporate too much water, etc. the voltage of a lead cell must not rise above 2.2 nor fall below 1.8. it must not be allowed to furnish at any one time a greater number of amperes than it is rated for. it must not stand idle too much. it must not be cleaned up and put away for a period. in fact, the lead-sulphuric acid battery is so poorly adapted to our need that i feel disposed to try mr. edison's new storage battery. this has nickel hydrate packed in tubes of metallic nickel for the positive plates and iron oxide pressed into pockets in a sheet of metallic iron for the negative plate. a solution of potassium hydrate in water is used for the electrolyte. this is said to be uninjured by being emptied out and left idle, as our batteries must be for a large part of the year. the e. m. f. of this battery is less than that of the lead battery, being only 1.2 volts. we shall therefore need ninety-six cells (type _b-4_) for the machine shop and ninety-one cells of the same kind for the cottage. our dynamo will be unable to charge at one time more than sixty of these cells connected in series. the particular chore which you boys must perform is to see that the voltage of these batteries is maintained at about 1.2. it should be charged up to 1.8 volt at least once a week and never allowed to discharge to a lower pressure than one volt. the level of the electrolyte must be maintained one half inch above the plate by adding distilled water occasionally. a few years ago every student of chemistry was more or less agitated by the thought that more than half of every clay bank was composed of metal nearly as valuable, or at least as costly, as gold. this is aluminum. by all the methods then known it was a very difficult and expensive process to extract the metal from the clay. at length, by the perfecting of the dynamo, the chemist had under his control great and powerful electric currents which enabled him to unlock any chemical compound however refractory and isolate its elements. as a result aluminum became common enough and cheap enough for even kitchen utensils. the metal calcium which a short time ago was an exceedingly rare substance worth $40 an ounce is now fairly abundant and cheap for chemical experiments, although it has no qualities which will give it an extended use. powerful electric currents, such as are obtained at niagara, enable us to combine elements into hitherto unknown chemical compounds. carbon and silicon are made to unite to form carborundum, which vies with the diamond for hardness. carbon and calcium unite to form calcium carbide, used with water to form acetylene gas. in such processes the intense heat of the electric arc--perhaps 6000 degrees--is employed, together with the electrolytic action of the current, to separate and combine substances. enormous currents are used in the electric furnaces for producing chemical reactions--from 1000 to 30,000 amperes at a time. electric currents passing through the human body expend their energy partly in heat and partly in electrolysis. so simple and harmless a thing as common salt would become a virulent poison if it could be electrolized in the body into its elements _sodium_ and _chlorine_. let us make use of an electric current to decompose water into its elements, hydrogen and oxygen. i have a three-ounce wide-mouthed bottle (fig. 153) and through its cork i pass two short pieces of no. 24 platinum wire by pushing a stout needle through first. i fill this bottle with pure water and cut a slight furrow in the side of the cork, where water may drip out when the gas is produced in the bottle. we crowd the cork firmly into the mouth of the bottle and invert it. no water drops out. we bend the ends of the platinum wires into hooks and hang upon them the wires bringing the dynamo direct current. there is no evidence of chemical action. pure water is an exceedingly poor conductor of electricity. let us now put about fifty-five ohms of resistance into the dynamo circuit, so that it will pass about two amperes, and put a very small pinch of salt into the water, which makes it so good a conductor that its resistance may be ignored. when now we close the circuit, as before, a brisk effervescence takes place. bubbles of gas rapidly form on the platinum wires and break away, rising through the liquid. twice as many form on the negative wire as on the positive one. as these gases rise to the top of the bottle an equal volume of the water drips out through the small hole in the cork. [illustration: fig. 153] two amperes of electricity will liberate two fluid ounces of hydrogen at the negative pole and one fluid ounce of oxygen at the positive pole, in five minutes. hence in five minutes the bottle should be full of a mixture of two gases, two thirds of which, by volume, is hydrogen and one third oxygen. we will catch the water which drips out so that we may measure it. the bottle being now full of gas i shut off the current, and removing the cork i bring a flame to its mouth. a very loud and startling explosion takes place. we pour the water back into the bottle, and it seems to fill it as well as before. we have decomposed a few drops of water--not enough to measure--into two gases, one of which, the hydrogen, occupied two thirds of the bottle, and the other, oxygen, occupied the remaining third. at ordinary temperatures they would not reunite, but when raised to their kindling temperature they united, producing light, heat, a loud noise, and the few drops of water which had been originally decomposed by the current. this is the electrolysis of water. i wonder if any such chemical action took place in ernest's body when he received that severe shock on the motor boat the other day. it is significant that the "dry" battery cell must be moist in order that chemical action may go on in it. compare with that fact several others that we may learn from observation, for example: baking powders must be kept dry to retain their strength. that is, if they get moist chemical action will begin in them, and the gas which is one of the products of this chemical action will pass off. now it is the sole function of baking powders to produce gas within the dough, and if the gas has wholly or partially escaped they will fail to make the bread stuff "light." the same reasons obtain for keeping seidlitz powders and other effervescing salts, such as vichy and kissingen, dry. it is to prevent the chemical action which is provoked by the presence of water. the same thing is true of the rusting of iron, and the various kinds of corrosion of metals. we may prevent such action indefinitely by keeping them dry. berries, fruits, meats, milk, eggs, grain--all kinds of foods--are preserved from spoiling--from chemical changes--by drying them and keeping them dry. the same thing is true of wood, paper, cloth, etc. a wooden fence post may last from five to ten years. a fence rail, being less exposed to moisture, may last two or three times as long. the interior wood of a house may last a century or two, while the exterior wood, being exposed to the weather, may require repairs very frequently. shingles on the roof do not last as long as shingles on the side of the house. those on a steep roof last longer than those on a flatter one. a pitch of at least forty-five degrees in a roof is desirable to keep it dry. the north and west sides of a house being least exposed to storm in this climate last the longer. precious books, records, deeds, wills, etc., on paper must be preserved in dry air. a sail will keep strong and white if kept dry. but it is impressed upon us by our experiences that sunlight is even more potent than moisture to produce chemical change. photographic processes are dependent upon the power of light to produce chemical changes. the fading of our tapestries and our garments, the tanning of our skins, the development of green material in the leaves of plants, all are evidently the direct result of sunlight. a picture hung on the wall prevents the wall paper behind it from being faded by the light, or it prevents the wood behind it from being turned yellow by the light. folds in our garments prevent them from being faded all alike. very many substances to be found in a chemical laboratory, in a drug store, or in a kitchen must be kept in the dark if they are to be guarded against chemical change. no experienced housewife would let a barrel of flour or potatoes sit in the sun, and every housewife knows that the sun is the best agent for bringing about those chemical changes which she desires. hence she puts her bedding, her milk pans, her bread box, her butter jar, etc., "out to sun." she has open plumbing, that the sun may enter those dark and dirty corners. if you would guard a substance against chemical change, keep it in a dry, dark place. we have come to associate the sun and the weather as disintegrating forces. hence the south and east sides of the building need most frequent repairs. every one who has made time exposures in photography knows that the sunlight from the east is, as a rule, two or three times as powerful as that from the west. there is less moisture and dust in the air to screen us from the early morning sun than from the late afternoon sun. when there is enough moisture in the air to make the sun look red, those rays from it which would produce chemical action, called actinic rays, are cut off. photographic processes are then exceedingly slow. it is like exposing a plate in a dark room behind the ruby glass. but our daily experiences teach us that not only moisture and light but also heat stimulates chemical action. we restrain chemical action by cold when we put things in the ice box. we hasten chemical action by heat when we put things on the stove. winter restrains all the chemical activities of nature, and summer quickens all the vegetable and mineral kingdoms into chemical activity. if we would preserve a substance from chemical change we must keep it in a _cool, dark, dry_ place. now those conditions which will favour the chemical activity of a battery cell will enable it to produce electricity, and those conditions which will restrain chemical action will enable us to preserve the cell from running down. but we have lately learned that other forms of radiation besides light and heat exist and aid in chemical action. we may produce radiographs--pictures on photographic plates--without light but with invisible rays, which are akin to light and to electricity. xvi electrocution at millville the old mill was infested with rats. my wife laid down to the boys the principle that good housekeepers were never troubled with vermin of any kind. the rats' sole occupation is to search for food. if you don't feed them they will not stay with you. but the boys said that they were glad of a chance to try an experiment on the rats. so one day when i went down to the mill i found them discussing the possibility of killing the rats by electricity. harold said that he had read that it took much less electricity to kill any animal than to kill a man, and he would like to try, for instance, whether the shock which they had received from a bell would kill a rat. "well, who's going to sit by," said erg, "to close the primary circuit when the rat happens to get himself into the secondary circuit?" "make him close it himself by some device," said ernest. "they have a regular thoroughfare, a beaten highway, along by the wall, under the mill and up through a hole in the floor of my bedroom," said dyne. [illustration: fig. 154] [illustration: fig. 155] "well," said harold, "i propose an electric trap which shall have two compartments. we will keep cheese in the inner compartment, the walls of which shall be of wires so that the rats may see the cheese. the floor of the outer apartment shall be covered with wire, as shown in fig. 154. the wires of the secondary circuit from the bell (fig. 156) shall be fastened to the binding posts _b_ and _c_ (fig. 154). the partition _d_ shall be a swing door into the apartment _a_ where the cheese is. this is shown in profile in fig. 155. _d_ must act as a switch to close the primary circuit through the bell _p_ (fig. 156). we will have three dry cells in the primary circuit. now this is the way it will work: a rat comes up from under the mill with wet and slimy feet--just suited for making contact for the electric current to enter his body. the smell of the cheese attracts him. he circles around the trap several times, watching the cheese in apartment _a_ through the wire screen. he sees a narrow opening into this apartment under the door _d_. he puts himself in position upon the floor of the outer apartment _b_, his feet bridging the gaps between the two systems of wires belonging to the secondary circuit. when he thrusts his head under the door and pushes it, it swings in a little, bringing one metal strip against another, which belongs to the primary circuit. this closes that circuit. he will never hear the bell ring, for the electric current which will shock him to death travels 186,000 miles per second, while his sensations travel only sixty miles an hour. if the involuntary recoil of his muscles does not make him jump back, so that the door will shut and stop the bell from ringing, dyne will be awakened and he will close the door, since we will put the trap at that hole where the rats enter his bedroom." [illustration: fig. 156] the next night three rats were electrocuted by this device. i told the boys they had so many interesting things going on at the mill that we should have to have a telephone between it and the cottage so that we could talk them over. xvii the telephone the telephone was the great invention of our centennial year, 1876. elisha gray and alexander graham bell each claimed to have been the inventor. it is quite probable that each did discover it independently, but the result of the long patent suit was that the court awarded the claim to bell. it is, therefore, known as the bell telephone. many who installed telephones during the first few years of their existence had them taken out again as nuisances. they are far greater nuisances now than at that time, but the necessity of them has come upon us and entirely enslaved us. there were more than eleven billion messages sent by telephone in the united states in 1907. the capital invested in telephone business was $814,616,004. the income for that year was $184,461,747. all of these items had more than doubled during the previous five years. in 1880 there were about eight times as many miles of telegraph wires as of telephone wires. in 1907, there were about eight times as many miles of telephone wires as of telegraph wires. the bell system had 3,132,063 stations, and independent companies had 2,986,515 stations in 1907. the first telephone line ran from salem to boston, mass. this was in 1877. the next year the first telephone exchange was established. it was eight years before a telephone line was extended from boston to new york. on october 18, 1892, the first telephone message was sent from new york to chicago. previous to 1895 telephoning, like telegraphing, was done by one wire, using the earth, as we say, to complete the circuit. but at about that time electric car and electric lighting lines became so common that they interfered with telephoning. these currents running in lines parallel to the telephone wires induced currents in them, and when a person put a receiver to his ear for conversation he heard the hum of electric light dynamos and the buzz of electric cars so loud that conversation was quite impossible. the next step was to introduce a return wire--the double metallic circuit as we call it. thus outside currents induce equal and opposite currents in the two wires of the circuit, which neutralize each other. it was this same year, 1895, that the "central battery" system was introduced into telephone equipment. this is not usually a battery at all, but a dynamo. the price of all electrical supplies in 1895 was about one tenth what it had been in 1885, and at the same time the goods were of far better quality. important telephone patents expired in this year, and immediately private and independent lines began to be established. it was also in 1895 that the telephone company began to use an automatic registering device which enabled it to charge telephone rates according to the number of calls. the boys unscrewed the end of a telephone receiver (fig. 157) and found inside a permanent magnet made of several steel bars bolted together (fig. 158). this was shown to be a magnet by presenting a small pocket compass to either end. the left-hand end of this magnet proved to be its north pole by repelling the blue end of the compass needle. [illustration: fig. 157] [illustration: fig. 158] [illustration: fig. 159] on the left-hand end of the magnet was a small spool of no. 36 copper wire, silk covered. it offered 75 ohms of resistance, and since it takes 2-1/2 feet of this wire to furnish 1 ohm of resistance the spool contains 187-1/2 feet. a thin disc of soft iron .01 inch in thickness is held by the hard rubber case very near to but not quite touching this end of the magnet. we drew this disc to one side, as shown in fig. 159, and connected the receiver by wires to a magneto. we turned the crank of the magneto slowly and the iron disk danced up and down, keeping time with the revolutions of the armature. the magneto furnished an alternating current, which, when it flowed around the coil in one direction, strengthened the pole of the magnet, and in the reverse direction weakened the pole. when the crank was turned so as to produce twenty to thirty revolutions of the armature per second the dancing of the disc sounded like the low hum produced by the wing of a humming bird. when a large, wide-mouthed bottle was brought near to this the sound was greatly reinforced, as the sound of a bee becomes louder when he appears at your open window. we next replaced the iron disc and put on the cap again. we then connected the receiver at _s_ (fig. 160) and connected two dry cells at _p_. when the primary circuit was closed the disc vibrated in time with the hammer of the bell making the same tone. we substituted for the bell a series of buzzers. the smallest had an armature about one inch long, while that of the largest was about two inches long. the shorter the armature the faster it vibrated, and the higher was the pitch of its tone. we arranged these as shown in fig. 161. _a_, _c_, _d_, _e_ and _f_ are the buzzers. _b_ is a battery of two cells and _g_, _h_, _i_, _j_ and _k_ are springs of sheet brass which act as push buttons. by operating upon these springs with one's fingers, as upon the keys of an organ, it was possible to represent the tones of a reed organ after a fashion. the armatures are reeds and they are made to vibrate by electro-magnets. we called it an electric organ. the telephone receiver was connected at _t_, and the wires which led to it were lengthened so that the receiver might be a long distance away. the disc in the receiver kept time with the armature of each buzzer when it sounded and faithfully reproduced its sound. but the strangest thing was that when any two buzzers sounded together, or, indeed, if all five buzzers sounded together, the receiver responded to them all at the same time, so that a person in another room or in another house, with the receiver at his ear, might hear exactly what those did who were in the same room with the buzzers. the wires from the receiver were connected with the coil in each buzzer so as to get the induced current, as shown in detail in fig. 160. [illustration: fig. 160] [illustration: fig. 161] [illustration: fig. 162] we took a telephone induction coil (fig. 162) and fastened it to a board as represented in fig. 163, _i_. one wire of the primary circuit was fastened to the binding post _a_. the other wire from the primary coil passed to the switch _s_ and then to the battery. from the battery the wire ran to the binding post _b_. _c_ is a steel tuning fork. the secondary circuit is closed through a telephone receiver. these wires are extended so that the receiver is too far distant for the tuning fork to be heard through the air. when the switch _s_ is closed the tuning fork acts as the interrupter for the primary circuit, and it interrupts according to its time of vibration. if, for instance, the fork gives the tone of middle _c_ on the piano it vibrates 256 times a second. it interrupts the primary circuit 256 times a second. it induces an alternating current of the same frequency in the secondary circuit. the diaphragm of the telephone receiver vibrates in perfect time with the tuning fork and produces the same tone as the tuning fork. we had a series of tuning forks giving a variety of tones, which we could substitute one after another in place of this one. the receiver reproduced accurately the tone of each one of them. [illustration: fig. 163] [illustration: fig. 164] we took a small induction coil (fig. 164) _c_ and fastened one end of the primary circuit to a battery, _b_. the wire at the other end of the primary circuit was bent into a hook _h_. this hook was adjusted about a quarter of an inch from the end of the iron core of the coil. the other wire from the battery was attached to the steel strings of a piano, _p_. when the coil _c_ was brought over a string and the hook _h_ was allowed to pass beneath the string and touch it very gently, the primary circuit was closed through the string, which served as an interrupter of the current and vibrated according to its tone. the secondary coil, not represented in the figure, was connected to a distant telephone receiver, which reproduced the tones of the piano strings. producing a tone is merely a matter of making something vibrate with the required frequency. it may be a piano string, or a tuning fork, or a reed of an electric buzzer, or the diaphragm of a telephone receiver. if it vibrates 256 times a second, it will produce the same tone as middle _c_ on a piano; if it vibrates 512 times a second it will produce the _c_ which is an octave above, and if 128 times a second an octave below middle _c_. the human voice is produced by vocal cords in the throat, which vibrate with the proper frequency to give any required tone. but how can we make the human voice act as an interrupter of the primary circuit? an examination of the telephone transmitter will supply the answer to this question. [illustration: fig. 165] [illustration: fig. 166] the boys after taking the transmitter (fig. 165) apart proceeded to make one which should answer the purpose as follows: a block of wood about one inch thick and three inches square (fig. 166), _a_, was hollowed out, making a cone-shaped cavity about one half inch deep and one inch broad. this cavity was filled with small pieces of graphite, _g_, made by cutting up a lead pencil. an old tin-type, _d_, was laid over this as a diaphragm and tacked around the edges. a binding post, _e_, passed through the block, its head being buried in the graphite at the bottom of the cavity. the binding post _f_ furnished contact with the tin-type. one dry cell was placed at _b_ and the sensitive ammeter was connected at _c_. the needle showed that although a small current was passing it was constantly varying in strength. tapping upon the table, walking across the floor of the room, shouting, and particularly whistling, caused variations in the conducting power of the graphite and consequently variations in the current strength. this is precisely the condition we wished to produce in the primary circuit. [illustration: fig. 167] we next substitute for the ammeter at _c_ the primary and secondary coil of the telephone. in fig. 167 _t_ is the transmitter, _b_ is a battery of two dry cells, _p_ is the primary winding of the coils, and _s_ is the secondary winding. to this a telephone receiver, _r_ is connected by wires long enough to reach into another room. a person holding the receiver at his ear could hear everything said or done in the room where the transmitter was almost as plainly as though he were present in the room. [illustration: fig. 168] two such transmitters were made and the second one was placed in the room where the receiver had been, while a second receiver was installed near the first transmitter. the arrangement is shown in fig. 168. _t_ is the transmitter at one end of the line and _t'_ the transmitter at the other end. _b_ and _b'_ are the batteries at each end, _p_ and _p'_ the primary coils, _s_ and _s'_ the secondary coils and _r_ and _r'_ the receivers. with this arrangement two persons carried on a conversation with perfect ease, holding the receivers to their ears, presenting their mouths to the transmitters and speaking in moderate tones. _h_ and _h'_ are hooks upon which the receivers are to be hung when not in use. these hooks act as switches to open and close the primary circuit. a spring normally pushes the hook upward and closes the circuit, but while the receiver is hanging upon it the circuit is open at this point. thus the battery is saved from running down when the telephone is not in use. the wires were finally extended from the mill to the cottage and this equipment was installed at each end. it will be noticed that the secondary circuit includes two receivers and two secondary coils besides the wire of the lines to offer resistance. the receivers offer 75 ohms of resistance each. the secondary coils offer 250 ohms each and the line wires between the mill and the cottage offer 100 ohms. this makes a total of 750 ohms for the secondary circuit. but the rapid alternations which are induced in the secondary circuit impede the electric current ten times as much as the resistance already mentioned. when considering alternating currents passing through coils of wire we are obliged to take into account two kinds of resistance: 1. ohmic resistance. 2. impedance. "you boys understand the resistance to the flow of the electric current, which we have so often measured in ohms. but i want to show you that there is another kind of resistance which alternating current meets. here is a coil containing 1000 feet of no. 20 copper wire. i throw on to it, for only an instant, the 110-volt direct current, and the ammeter reads 11 amperes, showing that it offers a resistance of 10 ohms to the direct current. i now throw on the alternating current, and the ammeter shows only a small fraction of an ampere. the surging of the current back and forth induces a counter electro-motive force, in the successive layers of the coil, which we call _impedance_. in the experiment which we have just performed _impedance_ is fifty times as important a factor as ohmic resistance. impedance depends chiefly upon the frequency of alternation. the impedance in telephone circuits is particularly large because of the extremely high frequency of the alternations produced by the tones of the human voice, these being usually not far from ten times as rapid as those of alternating currents in common use. "we may estimate the total resistance of our telephone circuit as equivalent to 7500 ohms. "our secondary coils have forty times as many turns as the primary coils, and by means of them the voltage is stepped up to somewhere near one hundred on open circuit. when closed through the line, however, the voltage drops down to about ten. the result is that the actual current which passes between the cottage and the mill when we telephone is not far from .001 ampere. we may, however, hear a whisper transmitted by .000001 ampere or less. "the tone _e´_ which is produced by the tenth key above middle _c_ on the piano, is the one most readily heard over the telephone. it is produced by anything which vibrates 640 times per second." [illustration: fig. 169] we used no. 12 galvanized iron wire for our telephone lines. two miles of no. 12 copper wire would offer 16 ohms of resistance. the iron wire offers about 100 ohms. but this is a trifle when compared with the total resistance. we used a double metallic circuit so as to avoid the effects of inductance from our electric lighting circuit. [illustration: fig. 170] the next thing that we were obliged to consider was some arrangement for calling persons to the telephone for conversation. we decided to use magnetos and alternating current bells. fig. 169 shows the essential mechanism of the bells. the bell at each end of the line consists of two gongs _a, b_ and _a´ b´_, with a hammer _c_, _c´_ between them. this hammer is attached to an iron armature _h_, _h´_, pivoted over the electro-magnets, _m_, _m´_, in such a way that it rocks back and forth when an alternating current passes through the lines _d e_, _f g_. the bells at both ends of the line always ring together, since they are connected in series. a magneto (fig. 170) is situated at each end of the line. this, as has been previously explained, is a generator of electricity, in which the field is furnished by steel magnet, _m_. the armature _a_ is a coil of wire whose ends are in contact with the leading out wires _d_ and _c_ by means of brushes which slide upon rings. the armature is revolved by hand. the crank and cog wheels employed to produce high speed are not shown in the figure. by turning the armature rapidly this magneto will develop 60 volts e. m. f. on open circuit. the magnets of the bells are wound with a very large number of turns of very fine wire, so that .025 ampere is sufficient to ring them. [illustration: fig. 171] figure 171 shows how the magneto at either end of the line is introduced into the circuit for the purpose of ringing the bells. _b_ and _b'_ represent the bells, _m_ and _m'_ the magnetos, and _p_ and _p'_ represent switches. springs push them upward so that they normally close the circuit through the bells. when a person at _p_ wishes to call another at _p'_ he pushes the switch _p_ down so as to bring his magneto _m_ into series with the bells. when now he turns the crank and generates the electric current, both bells ring. his own bell serves the purpose of telling him that the line is operating all right. the other bell calls the party desired for conversation. as soon as the operator removes his finger from the switch _p_ the spring throws it upward again, leaving his bell in circuit, so that he may be called at any time, but cutting out of the circuit his magneto, which would introduce unnecessary resistance. the same wires which carried the current for ringing the telephone bells carried also the current for operating the telephone receiver. when the receiver is removed from the hook it releases a twofold switch. this serves the double purpose of closing the primary circuit through the local battery and substituting the telephone receiver circuit for the bell-ringing circuit upon the line. we used fifty chestnut poles to carry our line between the mill and the cottage. each pole had a cross bar, on one end of which the electric light and power wires were carried and on the other end the telephone wires. glass insulators prevented the wires from coming in contact with the wood of the cross bars. the necessity for this was impressed upon the boys by something which happened while they were stringing the wires. the telephone apparatus at the mill had been installed and the two leading out wires had been connected to it. one of these was coiled up on the floor, while the other had been strung along upon the poles for half a mile, but had not yet been attached to the insulators on the poles. while the boys were lunching at the mill, one of them gave the crank of the magneto a turn, when, to the astonishment of all, the bell rang. the circuit had been completed through the damp wood of the mill, through the damp wood of some of the poles, and through the earth. after lunch the wire, so far as it had been strung, was fastened to the insulators upon the poles. but when some one turned the crank of the magneto the bell still rang. we walked along the line to see where the difficulty was. we found the end of the line about half a mile from the mill dangling free from the ground, but touching a tall spear of grass. when this was moved away from the spear of grass the magneto could no longer ring the bell. the slight current required to ring this bell--.025 ampere--had found its way through the spear of grass, through the woodwork of the mill and through the earth. we had no sooner got the two telephone wires properly strung and attached to the hundred glass insulators when a thunder storm came up, and drove us back to the mill for shelter. pretty soon the bell rang and we, supposing that some one at the cottage was trying to call, went to the instrument, but could get no response, nor could we make the bell ring. lightning had sent an alternating current over the line which rang the bell, but the strength of the current was too great for our coils of fine wire and one of them was burned out, as we say. in other words, the wire had melted at the point where it offered the greatest resistance. the burned-out coil was replaced, and then we installed lightning arresters which were of two kinds. the first were simply fuses which were introduced into the line to protect it against any current too large for the apparatus to carry, and the second was a plate, _c_ (fig. 172). these are to be found upon the top of the magneto cases. a wire is connected with _c_, and its other end is grounded by being connected with a piece of iron pipe which is driven deep into moist earth. [illustration: fig. 172] the plate _a b_ is inserted in the line, and the gap between this and the plate _c_ offers sufficient resistance so that the telephone circuit suffers no leakage at this point, but lightning has such extremely high tension that it readily passes across this gap and finds its way to the earth without damaging the instruments. we have already noticed that our alternating current dynamo, which produces 60 vibrations per second in the telephone receiver, causes it to give a tone very nearly like the _c_, which is two octaves below middle _c_ upon the piano. _c_ requires 64 vibrations per second. we may speed up our dynamo so as to make it yield a tone exactly like _c_ or even above it. dr. cahill of holyoke, mass., has devised an organ in which alternating current dynamos produce the necessary number of vibrations for each tone. the name _telharmonium_ has been proposed for this organ. it has a separate dynamo for each tone, each dynamo having a frequency corresponding to the tone required of it. the dynamo, for instance, which produces middle _c_ makes the electric currents surge back and forth 256 times a second, and this causes the diaphragm of a telephone receiver to vibrate 256 times a second, and this sends forth 256 air waves per second, and when these reach our ears we recognize the tone we call middle _c_. the frequency of alternation in a dynamo may be increased by either increasing its speed of revolution or by increasing the number of coils upon its armature. mr. cahill's great organ looks like a large machine shop with many counter shafts geared so as to run at different speeds. on each shaft are a large number of little dynamos whose armatures have various numbers of coils. the organist, who may be far removed from this "machine shop," fingers an ordinary keyboard. each key opens and closes a switch, thus bringing into action its own dynamo. if the key which is known as _c_, one octave below middle _c_, is pressed down, a switch closes the circuit between the telephone and a dynamo which gives 128 double alternations of current. the tone which is produced by 128 vibrations per second is the one most often heard from a man's voice in ordinary conversation. another key brings into action upon the same telephone receiver--and at the same time if desired--a dynamo which gives twice as many alternations per second and produces the tone most often heard in female conversation. it is middle _c_. another key might bring into action a dynamo which gives 64 vibrations per second to the diaphragm of the telephone receiver. this would send forth a tone very nearly like the base note of our 60-cycle alternating current dynamo. the following table shows a series of ten tones which might be produced by the same little piece of sheet iron in a telephone receiver played upon by ten dynamos at the same time. the whole list of ten tones would sound well when produced simultaneously. the great mystery is that the iron disc can vibrate in such a complex manner. it is important to note, however, that the number of vibrations in each of the upper tones is a multiple of that of the lowest tone: 2nd octave above c´´--1024 (= 16 × 64) middle c g´ -768 (= 12 × 64) e´ -640 (= 10 × 64)[a] 1st octave above c´ -512 (= 8 × 64) middle c g -384 (= 6 × 64) e -320 (= 5 × 64) middle c c -256 (= 4 × 64)[b] 1st octave below g -196 (= 3 × 64) middle c c, -128 (= 2 × 64)[c] 2nd octave below c,,- 64 (= 1 × 64) middle c [c] the tone most easily reproduced by the vocal cords of a man. [b] the tone most easily reproduced by the vocal cords of a woman. [a] the tone which the telephone receiver responds to most readily. the table covers the range of the human voice, male and female. all the intermediate tones, with their sharps and their flats, are produced each by its own separate dynamo. the insignificant amount of current required to operate a telephone receiver makes it possible to furnish the music of these dynamos to many and far distant telephones. this naturally suggests the idea of having a great musician perform upon the keyboard and have many auditors scattered about the city in their private homes or even in many public halls, for the telephone receiver can readily be made audible to a good-sized audience. xviii electric bell outfit for the cottage the boys asked me what arrangement of electric bells we needed at the cottage and so i gave them this problem to work out by themselves: 1. we want a bell in the kitchen to be rung by a push button at the front door. but there are times when no one is in the kitchen and hence, 2. we want a bell upstairs to make a single stroke whenever the kitchen bell is rung from the front door. 3. we want a floor push under the dining-room table which will cause the kitchen bell to ring a single stroke. 4. we want a push button in the dining-room which will cause both bells to clatter and call people from their beds, from the piazza, the lawn, etc., to their meals. this equipment needs only one battery of two dry cells, two bells, three push buttons and about two hundred feet of wire. it should cost less than five dollars. the boys drew many plans and tried many schemes and at last determined upon the plan shown in fig. 173. _p_ is the floor push under the dining-room table. when the circuit is closed at this point the current leaves the battery from the carbon pole _c_, passes up and around the magnets of the kitchen bell and back to the zinc pole of the battery _z_ by way of the push button _p_. all other circuits are open. [illustration: fig. 173] _p´_ is the push button at the front door. when the circuit is closed at this point the current leaves the battery at _c_, passes up to the right-hand binding post of the kitchen bell and divides, part going through each bell. the portion of the current which goes through the kitchen bell passes around the magnets and through the armature to the left-hand binding post before it can find a path back to the battery. hence, the kitchen bell clatters. the portion of the current which passes to the upper bell goes around its magnets and finds a path back from the middle binding post to the battery by way of _p´_. hence the bell upstairs rings with a single stroke. _p´´_ is a push button situated upon the wall by the side of the door which leads from the dining-room to the kitchen. when the circuit is closed at this point, the current leaves the battery at _c_, passes up to the right-hand binding post of the kitchen bell and divides, part of it going through each bell. the portion which goes through the kitchen bell passes around its magnets and through its armature to the left-hand binding post, then up to the middle binding post of the upper bell, through its armature to its left-hand binding post and back to the battery by way of the push button _p´´_. the other portion of the current passes directly up to the right-hand binding post of the upper bell, around its magnets, and through its armature to its left-hand binding post, thence back to the battery by way of the push button _p´´_. hence, both bells clatter and keep time with each other. the upper bell will ring independently of the lower bell, but the lower bell is dependent upon the upper one to open and close its circuit, somewhat as a relay. soon after the cottage had been equipped with electric bells i went to the mill one day and found a push button at the door. upon going in i was curious to examine the electric bell outfit of that place and found what is illustrated in fig. 174. [illustration: fig. 174] a switch, _s_, had been attached to the bell. the boys said that when they felt well they kept the switch upon the left-hand point and the bell rang as a clatter bell. when they felt a little sick they put the switch upon the middle point and the bell rang with a single stroke, but when they felt very sick they put the switch upon the dead point and the bell did not ring at all. xix using electricity to aid the memory for the sparking equipment of the motor boat we use dry cells which have an internal resistance of not more than .06 ohm. they will, when short circuited through the ammeter for only an instant, give 25 amperes. (1.5 volt)/(.06 ohm) = 25 amperes when we allow for a slight resistance in the ammeter itself, and for the drop in voltage, we see that the internal resistance of a cell must be even less than .06 ohm. after being used about two months upon the motor boat these cells develop more internal resistance, and they will then show not more than six to ten amperes when short circuited through an ammeter. they are then not reliable for ignition of the engine, but are quite as good as ever for bell-ringing, and often continue so for more than a year. the result is that we always have more partly run-down dry cells than we can use. seeing them about has stimulated the boys to devise ways for using them. the housekeeper is distracted by carrying on so many cooking processes at one time. she forgets the eggs, and lets them boil five minutes instead of three because the coffee must percolate twelve minutes, and she lets the coffee percolate twenty instead of twelve minutes because the biscuit must bake twenty minutes, and the biscuit are forgotten because the pies must come out in thirty minutes, and the cake in forty minutes. all this worries the cook. harold is a sympathetic boy and enters into the troubles of others. i had at one time shown him how to bore a hole in a glass plate in five or ten minutes by using a round file wet with water. one day he presented the kitchen with a clock, intended to relieve the burdened memory of the cook. this is represented in fig. 175. [illustration: fig. 175] an ordinary kitchen clock had a hole bored through the glass which covers its face. this glass is easily moved around in its metal rim, bringing the hole over any desired minute upon the face. one wire of the battery is attached to a leg of the clock, the other goes to a bell, and then the wire from the bell is poked through this hole. when the minute hand reaches that point the electric current is closed through the metal of the clock, and the bell rings warning that the eggs, coffee or what not are done. we each urged that our memories should share in the vacation, and applied for one of these outfits. i took one of the clocks and cut back the minute hand so as to make it shorter than the hour hand, and then had the hole in the glass made so that the hour hand should close the electric circuit. this was kept at my study table and reminded me of my appointments. some used these clocks to alarm themselves in the morning when they slept overtime. another reminder is shown in fig. 176. _c_ is a float which rises and falls with the water in our house tank. a cord running over two pulleys connects this with a weight, _d_, hanging in front of a scale upon the wall of the kitchen. this indicates how much water there is at any time in the tank, which is situated in the garret. the boys arranged a bell and battery so that when the tank is nearly empty the weight _d_ will pull upward a spring, _a_, and make it close the circuit through the bell to warn that water must be pumped. when the tank is nearly full the weight _d_ pushes down the spring _b_ and rings the bell again. [illustration: fig. 176] harold said that yeast cakes were the heaviest tax upon our memories. if some one started for the village store, before he got out of hearing, a call would come after him, "i forgot the yeast cake. please put that on the list." when one returned from the village store with numerous packages, he would generally hear, "my yeast cake was forgotten." we tried all sorts of schemes to get rid of this yeast-cake nuisance, and finally adopted harold's "curled bread" project. we had built a brick oven out back of the house for experimental purposes. harold proposed that the boys bake a month's supply of bread at a time, and, when it was a day or two old, cut it all into thin slices and let it dry. these slices curled up as they dried and were known as "curled bread." a flour barrel was filled with it each month. it kept perfectly any length of time. the family voted it to be better than crackers and better than fresh breadstuff of any kind. harold's suggestion regarding yeast cakes worked so well and was such a relief to our memories that i proposed he next attack the problem of the often forgotten salt in cooking. xx the electric brick oven we had no end of experiments with brick ovens. one of the most interesting was that wherein we used the brick fireplace as an oven and did the family baking in it. on a cold morning we would build up a smart wood fire in the fireplace and enjoy it during breakfast time. then we shovelled out the coals and the ashes, and shut it up tight with a sheet iron arrangement and utilized the heat stored in the bricks for doing all sorts of cooking. our outdoor brick oven and our monthly baking day were such a success that they led to the construction of another oven of smaller dimensions for the kitchen. this one was heated by electric lamps--one in each of the eight corners. it had double glass doors in front so that the cooking process might be watched. the glass of the inner door would be clouded with moisture for a while, when the cooking first began, but this would soon clear up, and then the lamps enabled us to watch the colour changes in baking, etc. the lamps in the upper part of the oven were connected with a different switch from those in the lower part of the oven, so that we were able to control the browning on top or bottom at pleasure. harold introduced a device for automatically controlling the temperature of this oven. [illustration: fig. 177] strips of brass and iron, _b_ and _i_ (fig. 177), were riveted together. these were fastened in the socket _a_. they are shown edgewise in the diagram. the upper end of this compound strip is free to bend back and forth in the plane of the paper, as here represented. they normally touch the screw _c_. one of the electric light wires runs from the lamps in the oven to this screw _c_. one wire of the dynamo circuit _g_ goes to the lamps, and the other connects with _a_. thus the compound strip acts as a switch to open and close the circuit upon the lamps. this thermostat, as it is called, was placed inside of the oven. heat causes brass to expand more than iron and therefore when the temperature reaches a certain height the thermostat curves, so as to break the contact with _c_, and the lamps go out. when the temperature falls a little the thermostat straightens until contact is again made with _c_. _c_ is a screw and can be made to advance or recede in its socket _e_, so that the temperature of the oven may be maintained at any point desired. the wire of the screw _c_ extends to the outside of the oven, where it carries an index, _d_, over the face of a dial, as shown in fig. 178. [illustration: fig. 178] the cook may set this index at any desired degree, and the lamps will indicate when that degree has been reached. the thing to be baked is then put inside and the clock, illustrated in fig. 175, is set so as to warn when the time is up. the electric spark which occurs when the thermostat breaks contact with _c_ causes the metals to corrode at that point, and corroded metals are poor conductors. this corrosion is due to the oxygen of the air. there is one metal--the expensive platinum--which is not corroded by the electric spark. we drilled small holes in the end of the screw _c_ and in the brass strip and pounded into these holes little pieces of platinum wire. harold said he felt like a dentist filling a tooth. this furnished good, clean contact at all times. it takes a long time to heat up the brick oven, but it holds its heat a long time and makes an excellent fireless cooker after the lamps are turned out. it does not allow heat to escape into the kitchen, which makes it a comfort in our summer cottage. we are all becoming daft on _slowly cooked_ food--a sort of ripening process which gives time for the chemical changes to take place and develops the finest flavours of the food. xxi electric waves much has been said about bringing young people up to do what they don't like to do so as to make them strong and virtuous. my own life has always been guided by a different principle. it is: _find something worth while which you will enjoy doing, and do it with your might._ i am bringing up my boy on the same principle. in september we have a real desire to get back to our work in the city, and in june we have an eager longing for the occupations of millville. i am not aware that there is any part of my work which i would like to be relieved from, and harold and his mother said that they were now ready to return to the city apartment with real pleasure for a winter. one evening we were seated about the dinner table when harold asked me how electricity could travel without wires. i replied, "it travels as light does. but i am very much puzzled to know why it ever follows a wire when light does not." this did not settle the question and left us both unsatisfied, so i told him to invite two or three of his best friends in to-morrow evening, and i would perform some experiments for them that would at least help them to think further upon this subject. when the evening came i showed the boys an automobile spark coil to which i had attached two knobs, _a_ and _b_ (fig. 179), and with which i had connected two dry battery cells. when i touch the wire _c_ to the binding post _d_ a spark passes between the knobs _a_ and _b_. when this spark occurs at least four kinds of waves pass out in all directions from the spark gap between the knobs. [illustration: fig. 179] first, sound waves go through the air. our ears detect these. if the air is removed from around the apparatus no sound wave can go forth. a careful examination of the internal ear shows us that it is constructed so as to respond to such air waves. second, light waves go forth. these affect our eyes. we are blind to the first kind of waves and deaf to the second. the light waves travel without air--somewhat better without air than with air. a microscopic examination of the eye indicates that it is constructed so as to respond to waves. we believe there are waves in the ether which fills all space. sound waves travel in air at the rate of one mile in five seconds. we had this nicely illustrated at the sea shore one summer. the steamer touched each morning at a wharf which we could plainly see two miles distant. we could see the steam arise when she blew the warning whistle, and with our watches we found that it always required ten seconds for the sound to reach us after we saw the steam of the whistle. this at least showed us that it takes five seconds longer for sound waves to travel a mile than it does for light waves to travel the same distance. for light had to travel the same distance before we could see the steam arise from the whistle. although the time it takes for light to travel a mile is inconceivably small, we have a simple method of finding out that it requires eight minutes for light waves to come to us from the sun. the satellites of the planet jupiter, in revolving about that body, disappear and reappear at regular intervals, acting as flash lights to mark time. [illustration: fig. 180] the earth, being 92,000,000 miles distant from the sun, is 184,000,000 miles farther from jupiter when at _b_ than it is when at _a_. (see fig. 180.) it is found by observation that sixteen minutes more are required for the light waves from a reappearing satellite to reach us at _b_ than when we are at _a_. hence eight minutes would be required for light waves to travel the distance from the sun to the earth. although light travels at the inconceivable velocity of 186,000 miles per second, the nearest star is so far distant that it takes light three and a half years to come from it to us. the north star requires forty-two years to send its light to us, and arcturus is so far away that waves of light sent out from it one hundred and sixty years ago are only just reaching us now, and if it should cease to send forth light now men would continue to see it for five generations yet to come. a third kind of wave which goes forth in the ether from the spark gap of our coil is a heat wave. this affects neither our eyes nor our ears, but i will undertake to make you conscious of it by another method. [illustration: fig. 181] before a mixture of gasolene vapour and air can be ignited its temperature must be raised to about 2000 degrees fahrenheit. i will show that heat waves pass out from this spark gap by placing my watch crystal filled with gasolene underneath the knobs of the spark coil, (fig. 181). when now i close the electric circuit at the battery the mixture of gasolene vapour and air just above the watch crystal is ignited. if i increase the distance between the knobs you still hear the crackle of the sound waves and see the light waves, but the mixture of gasolene vapour and air does not ignite, because there are not heat waves enough. the automobilist expresses this fact by saying a "fat" spark or a "warm" spark is needed. a battery which has ceased to give a sufficiently hot spark to explode the mixture of gasolene and air in the cylinder of a gasolene engine may serve all other purposes quite as well as ever. it may ring bells almost as long as it ever would. i proved that the temperature for igniting a mixture of gasolene vapour and air was nearly as high as melting iron, by heating an iron rod to a dull red heat and bringing it to the watch crystal containing gasolene. it did not take fire. i showed that it could not be ignited by a lighted cigar, nor even by a glowing coal taken from the fire. it was necessary to heat the iron rod to a very bright red heat--nearly white heat, or nearly to its melting point, before it would ignite the mixture. these heat waves are ether waves, differing from light only in having greater wave length. they travel at the speed of light, they travel better without air than with air. they come from the sun and all other light-giving bodies. indeed, an ordinary incandescent electric lamp gives out about twenty-four times as much energy in heat as in light. heat waves are being thrown off from all bodies which are around us. the steam radiators are placed in this room for the express purpose of sending out heat waves through the ether in this room. this is the chief method of distributing heat, and it is hindered rather than helped by the presence of the air. the walls, ceiling, floor, furniture, people--everything here is sending out heat waves. the fourth kinds of waves, which go out from the spark gap of our coil, are also waves in the ether. they are still longer than heat or light. we have ears for sound, eyes for light, and temperature sensation for heat, but as yet we have not evolved a delicate sense organ for detecting electric waves. at least few of us claim to have such a sense. i will, however, undertake to make you feel electricity. i then adjusted the coil so that each boy might take a mild electric shock from it by touching the two knobs. that is by placing himself in the spark gap. they agreed that although they could not hear, see, taste, or smell electricity they were a little more familiar with it now, having felt it. sound waves in air, as given out by the piano, vary in length from, say, four inches to forty feet, those having the shorter wave length being the higher pitched tones. light waves in the ether, as given out by the sun, vary in length from, say, 1/60000 to 1/80000 of an inch, those having the shorter wave length being the violet-coloured light, which may be seen in the rainbow, and those having the longer wave length being the red-coloured light of the rainbow or the sunset. heat waves, which are also waves in the ether, vary in length from above 1/80000 to, say, 1/5000 of an inch. roentgen or x waves are ether waves, shorter than light; while hertzian, or wireless telegraph waves are very long ether waves, varying from a few feet to many rods in length. those used by marconi in sending despatches across the atlantic ocean are as long as 1000 feet, four or five of them cover a mile, and 12,000 of them cover the whole distance from cape cod to poldhu. electric waves are easily broken up into the shorter heat waves, or the still shorter light waves. on the other hand roentgen waves are readily transformed into the longer light waves, and are thus brought within our powers of vision. sound waves of various lengths (of high and low pitch) all travel at the same speed (one mile in five seconds), else how would the piccolo and the bass horn of the distant band sound together. so ether waves of various lengths (light, heat, electricity, etc.) all travel at the same speed, _i. e._, 186,000 miles per second. for detecting the electric waves which may be sent out from the spark gap of our automobile spark coil i shall ask you to help me prepare a special piece of apparatus. one boy may file this silver ten-cent piece and another may file this nickel five-cent piece, each gathering the filings upon a piece of paper. a third boy may select a piece of glass tubing about one eighth of an inch in the inside diameter, and with a three-cornered file cut off a short piece, about one and a half inches long, and smooth the ends with a wet file. a fourth boy may select a piece of stout copper wire nearly as large as the bore of the glass tubing, and cut from it two pieces, each about two inches long. wind one end of each of these with thread to make them fit snugly in the glass tubing. [illustration: fig. 182 coherer] we thrust one of the wires into the tube, then mixed equal parts of the silver and nickel filings and put as much of the mixture into the tube as we could hold upon the tip of a penknife blade, and then thrust in the other copper wire. (see fig. 182.) the ends of the wire were about one eighth of an inch apart and the gap was loosely filled with the metal filings. this was connected by short pieces of copper wire, as shown in fig. 183, to a dry battery cell, _b_, and a sensitive ammeter. when all connections were made the needle of the ammeter remained at zero, showing that no electric current was passing, that is, the battery cell was unable to send any electricity through the metal filings. this is the apparatus which is to help us detect electric waves when they pass about us. electricity has been called invisible light, that is, invisible to our eyes, and this apparatus has been called an "electric eye" because it will detect electric waves in the ether, just as our eyes may detect light waves passing through the ether. [illustration: fig. 183] we placed the automobile spark coil upon the table near to the tube containing the filings of silver and nickel, and as soon as we made a spark pass between the knobs the ammeter needle moved half way across the scale, indicating that the spark had somehow influenced the metal filings in the tube so that now they permitted the battery cell to send some electric current through them and through the ammeter. i asked one of the boys to tap the tube slightly with a lead pencil so as to jar the metal filings, and as soon as he did so the needle of the ammeter went back to zero. [illustration: fig. 184] the spark coil sent electric waves out in every direction, and those which hit the metal filings made them cohere together. in that condition they allowed the dry cell to send through them enough current to move the needle of the ammeter. tapping the tube made the metal filings break apart again, in which condition they do not allow the current of the cell to pass in sufficient quantity to move the needle. this tube is called a _coherer_, because the filings in it cohere together. the apparatus then serves to indicate when electric waves are passing. as yet, however, it would not respond when the spark coil was more than one foot away. our next step was to attach extra pieces of wire, each ten or twelve feet long, at either end of the coherer, as indicated in fig. 184. one of these wires was stretched out upon the floor while the other one was connected with the wire of a picture hanging upon the wall. we now found that the coherer would respond when the spark coil was operated several feet away. the extra wires which we had attached to the coherer are called antennæ, because they suggest the long "feelers" or antennæ of some insects. [illustration: fig. 185] our next step was to put antennæ upon the spark coil also, as shown in fig. 185. one of these wires was stretched out upon the floor, while the other one was connected with the wire of a picture hanging upon the wall on the opposite side of the room from where the coherer was. we now found that the coherer would respond when the spark coil was operated in the farthest part of the room. with the wires which were lying upon the floor extending toward each other, but lacking several feet of touching, the coherer responded when the spark coil was operated in various other rooms of the house, although the doors between were shut. when the floor wires were connected to the water pipes the coherer would respond when the spark coil was operated in a neighbouring house. we tried a similar experiment, substituting an ordinary electric bell for the spark coil. the coherer or electric eye detected that ether waves were sent forth from an electric bell every time a spark was produced in the bell. for this purpose connections were made, as shown in fig. 186. one dry battery cell was used to ring the bell. the floor wire _a_, or, as it is usually called, the ground wire, was connected to the binding post 1, and the other antenna was connected to the screw 3, and then supported aloft on a picture hung upon the wall. with this transmitter we sent waves across the room which were detected by the coherer. [illustration: fig. 186] we constructed a simple spark coil as follows: we bought a pound of no. 24 single cotton covered copper wire, such as is used in the electro-magnets of bells. it was, when we bought it, wound upon a wooden spool. we filled the hole in the centre of this spool with wire nails. one dry cell was connected with this (fig. 187). when the wires at _d_ were touched together, and then separated, a spark was produced at that point. a ground wire was connected at _b_, and an antenna at _c_, as before. using this apparatus now as a transmitter of ether waves, we found that the coherer detected them. [illustration: fig. 187] we next gave our attention to making changes in the receiving apparatus, not to change the coherer, but to provide substitutes for the ammeter. a sensitive _relay_ was procured, which is essentially like a bell or buzzer except that it does not clatter. it will be readily understood, by referring to the accompanying fig. 188, that _r_ is a coil of insulated wire around an iron core exactly like what we see in the electric bell. (in practice there will be a pair instead of one of them.) such coils are called electro-magnets, because when electricity flows in the wires they become magnets, and will attract iron. _a_ is an iron spring, _b_ is a dry battery cell and _c_ is the coherer. whenever an ether wave passes the coherer permits the battery cell to send a current around the magnet of the relay, and it attracts the iron spring _a_, so that it hits against the metal post _d_ with a click. whenever we used this to respond to ether waves the click of the relay suggested the telegraph sounder. how it served in wireless telegraphy will appear in the following pages. [illustration: fig. 188] xxii ringing bells and lighting lamps by electric waves [illustration: fig. 189] harold was to have a birthday party, to which many of his school friends were invited. for this occasion he prepared, with my help, to perform for the girls and boys some electrical experiments, and particularly to give all who chose to try it an electric shock. for this purpose he had them all join hands, and the electric charge was sent through the whole line at once. one thing he did shocked his mother more than anything else. he instituted a mock court, at which one of the boys was tried, convicted and condemned to be executed by electricity. the whole affair was enacted with no great solemnity, but the electrical experiment was voted a great success by the executed "criminal." the following group of experiments, however, seemed to give the most satisfaction: on a table was placed the coherer connected to the relay, and in another room was placed the spark coil for sending ether waves. he had this operated by a confederate whom he chose for the purpose. he then connected two wires to the relay, one at _d_ and the other at _e_ (fig. 189). these ran to a battery cell and a bell in a far corner of the room. at a given signal (a cough) the confederate made a spark at the spark coil in the other room; this sent ether waves through the partition between the rooms; the ether waves caused the coherer to pass electricity from the dry cell no. 1, to close the relay spring _r_. this acted like a switch to close the second circuit through the dry cell no. 2 and the bell, which rang out to the surprise of all. it continued to ring until he tapped the coherer tube and broke apart the filings. when this had been tried to the satisfaction of all, the company was invited to another room. here they found an electric train with tracks, train sheds, stations, tunnels, bridges, switches, signals, etc., arranged upon a centre table. the electric train was to be started by ether waves. a wire from the railroad track was connected with _e_ of the relay (see fig. 190). a wire from _d_ of the relay was connected to the third rail through a battery of sufficient strength (battery 2). the electric train completed the circuit by connecting the tracks with the third rail. all heard the crack of the spark coil in the adjoining room, and saw the train start immediately. ether waves had caused battery 1 to close the relay _r_. this had closed the circuit so that battery 2 might run the train, of course by means of a motor in the train. he tapped the coherer. the relay spring _r_ flew open and the train stopped. presently another crack from the adjoining room, and the train instantly started again. when all the details of the electric train had been examined the company was invited to go to the dining room, which was dimly lighted by candles. all were seated and busily conversing when the crackling noise of the spark coil was again heard, and a group of little electric lights flashed forth upon a birthday cake. the wires from the lamps and a battery to run them had been connected with the binding posts _d_ and _e_ of the relay. [illustration: fig. 190] the chandelier over the dining-room table had a pendant push button _a_ (fig. 191), with which the regular electric lights could be turned on and off. this i had removed and extended the wires down upon the table. it was only necessary to connect these to the binding posts _d_ and _e_ of the relay, and the next wave from the spark coil lighted the chandelier. [illustration: fig. 191] the flexible wires underneath the dining-room table with which the maid is usually summoned from the kitchen were next extended up and connected with _d_ and _e_ of the relay, and the maid was called in by an ether wave. she brought with her a tray in the centre of which stood an earthenware cup, such as is used for baking custard. this had been filled with a mixture of granulated sugar and powdered potassium chlorate. four dry battery cells stood around this upon the tray connected in series (fig. 192). a very small iron wire connecting two of these cells dipped into the sugar mixture. two wires from the battery were connected to _d_ and _e_ of the relay. at the proper signal an ether wave was sent out by the spark coil. the coherer closed the relay and the relay acted as a push button to close the circuit of the four cells upon the tray. the fine wire dipping into the sugar and potassium chlorate got red hot. this caused the mixture to flash up and burn in most beautiful coloured flames. (fig. 193). [illustration: fig. 192] [illustration: fig. 193] on this occasion harold's friends gave him, with due formalities, the degree of e. e., which they said meant _electrical expert_, and ever since that night he has been called "the expert." i inquired of the young folks, as their party was breaking up, if they understood harold's explanations of all these things, and he replied that he at any rate understood them better having attempted to explain them. xxiii telegraphing by electric waves the next time harold and i experimented we arranged something to save us the trouble of tapping the coherer each time we used it. we employed simply an electric bell, _b_ (fig. 194), from which we removed the gong. by reference to the figure the arrangement will be understood. each time ether waves cause the metal filings to cohere and the battery _b^{1}_ closes the relay _r_, battery _b^{2}_ causes the hammer of _b^{3}_ to tap against the coherer. this causes the current to cease to flow from _b^{1}_ and the relay opens again by its own spring. [illustration: fig. 194] [illustration: fig. 195] our next addition was a telegraph sounder as shown in fig. 195. _b^{1}_ is a single dry cell, _c_ is the coherer, _r_ is the relay, _b^{2}_ is now a battery of three cells. part of its current goes to _b^{3}_, the tapper for the coherer, and part of its current goes to the electro-magnet of the telegraph sounder _s_. ordinarily a spring holds the iron strip _d_ up against the metal stop _a_, but when the current passes through the electro-magnet it pulls down this iron strip with a click against the metal stop _e_. but while this is happening _c_ is being tapped by _b_, and is ready to respond to each wave. it was only necessary now to have some code of signals in order to communicate by telegrams. we learned the system of dots and dashes, or short and long periods marked off by the sounder, which all telegraphers use and which is known as the morse alphabet, and very soon harold and i were telegraphing from one room to another messages of several sentences at a time, the morse alphabet being told off on the spark coil and being received through the coherer and telegraph sounder. it was not long before harold and one of the neighbours' boys were exchanging messages between their homes, each having a spark coil and the necessary receiving apparatus, and having extended their antennæ to the top of the buildings into what are called in the wireless language _aerials_. [illustration: photograph by helen w. cooke. induction coil of a wireless] the fever for wireless telegraphy spread like wild-fire among the boys. in a few months they had formed a "wireless club." they had each read anywhere from ten to thirty books and articles upon the subject, and had secured the latest improved apparatus. they made it a practice to spend hours daily at their instruments picking up and keeping on file messages which were sent to and from steamers leaving the harbour for european ports. on one occasion they showed me from these files scores of messages--fond, personal, and supposedly private farewells to friends and communications between business partners which they would never have made on land without first closing the office door. the boys had acquired a mass of technical knowledge upon the subject which far exceeded my comprehension. but their teachers in school complained that they would learn nothing else, and some of the boys had already received warning that they might fail of promotion. how to have compelling interests without riding hobbies is the great problem for both boys and men. i have known many boys who could, or at least would, do nothing well in school or out, except some specialty like manual training or science. in later years they were so deficient in education that they could hold no worthy position in anything. my anxiety was to save my boy from such a fate. i was determined that he should have a fair share of all kinds of culture. to this end we read together much of biography, history and classical literature, ancient and modern, through the medium of the english language. as both prevention and cure of the wireless telegraph mania i deemed it not necessary to suppress enthusiasm, nor to introduce obviously useless tasks for the sake of the training which might be in them. my method was, on the contrary, to encourage my boy to have several hobbies which he might ride with enthusiasm, but to make it a rigorous rule to exchange his "mount" occasionally. xxiv halley's comet and electrical waves [illustration: fig. 196] it was the year 1910 and halley's comet was approaching the sun. on may 18 its tail might be expected to reach the earth. astronomers had requested all who might be possessed of wireless telegraph apparatus to watch on that day for any peculiar behaviour of their apparatus so that evidence might be obtained whether or not the comet sends forth such ether waves as we call electricity. harold desired me to explain the whole matter to his group of friends, which i did on a subsequent evening, as follows: "although halley's comet has come within the earth's orbit about three thousand times since its first recorded appearance, i know of no man living who can give a satisfactory account of having seen it. any one who has seen it before must be at least seventy-five years old, for it requires seventy-five years to make one complete circuit of its own orbit. but no one who is now seventy-five could have observed it intelligently, and even one who is now eighty-five years old would have to tell what he saw when he was ten years old and has remembered for seventy-five years. furthermore, any account of how it looked on a former return is no guide to how it may appear on this trip. you may properly think of the comet as a group of solid pieces no bigger than the stones you may throw, scattered, two or three to the mile, through a space 12,500 miles broad. this extremely thin cloud of particles does not reflect enough sunlight to be visible, even in a telescope, in any part of its journey, and hence we should be wholly unaware of its existence if it did not sometimes have the strange faculty of giving out light of its own _while in that part of its own orbit nearest to the sun_. at such a time there is a hazy light enveloping the mass of small bodies, and streaming away sometimes many million miles from them. the mass of small bodies is generally referred to as the nucleus, and the stream of luminous gas which the nucleus gives forth is called the tail, though it reminds me more of a search-light. "it does not trail along behind the comet but always points away from the sun (fig. 197). the normal thing for a comet to do is to begin to develop a faint light and a short streamer as it gets near to the sun, to have its light grow brighter and its streamer to grow longer until it reaches the point nearest the sun, and then to have its light grow dimmer and the streamer grow shorter as it recedes from the sun. [illustration: fig. 197] "it has many times been suggested that this strange search-light appearance may be an electrical phenomenon, some form of ether waves which the comet sends forth when under the immediate influence of the sun. but not all comets are alike in this matter, nor does the same comet always act alike on succeeding trips, so that we may not predict what halley's comet will do on this visit. it would be natural to suppose that halley's comet, like radium, might in time lose the power to radiate off material, in which case it might at length become wholly invisible to us, even though it continued to travel in its wonted path. our only way of knowing of its existence then would be that on its returns some of its small pieces might be attracted to the earth and enter our atmosphere as meteors. this sort of thing is continually happening, and may be the last reminders of once brilliant comets. "for almost a century it has been the common belief that light is merely a wave motion in the ether. our eyes respond to ether waves of certain length only. waves a little longer than those which affect our eyes are felt by us as heat waves. waves still longer than those of heat are the so-called electric waves. these we use in wireless telegraphy. there are still shorter waves than those of light. these affect the sensitive plate in photography. they help to form the green material in the leaves of plants and the brilliant colours in flowers. they assist in the fading of our clothes and the tanning of our skin. these are called chemical waves. still shorter waves in the ether than those of which we have just spoken are the x rays, and all the strange things which they may do have not yet been determined. certain it is that they can make dreadful sores in our flesh. they can penetrate through wood and paper, but not metals. they pass readily through flesh, but not bones. all such ether waves are treated in a book by sylvanus p. thompson, entitled 'light visible and invisible,' in which he points out that electricity, heat, light, chemical rays, etc., are all alike in being ether waves, and this was suspected by james clerk maxwell and others half a century ago, and has come now to be quite generally believed. "halley's comet, already having been _seen_ upon this return, must be sending out those ether waves which we call light; whether it is also sending forth some of the other kinds of ether waves may yet be determined." my audience being chiefly composed of those persons who were present at harold's birthday party, they pressed me to tell them more about wireless telegraphy and similar matters, and so i agreed to give them at some future date some account of the history of these ideas. but my present purpose was to start an interest in astronomy as an antidote for the wireless epidemic, and so i invited all who desired to do so to come again one week from that evening, bringing with them such opera and field glasses as they might be able to secure. i promised to show them how to make a telescope such as galileo had more than three hundred years ago. i agreed to go out with them several evenings and scan the sky with our telescopes, and to tell them of some readable books and articles upon astronomical matters. xxv how the idea of a universal ether developed the evening for the meeting of the science club had arrived. its membership had increased tenfold within a year. at its monthly meetings, which were open to the public, an audience of two hundred, old and young, was usually present--a number about three times that of the regular membership. general science was now the study of this club. at its weekly meetings, which only members attended, the studies of specific topics by individuals, oftentimes illustrated by experiments, were reported. these meetings were held in one of my laboratories, while the open monthly meeting was always held in my lecture room, with some rather famous speakers to instruct the audience. an enthusiastic friend of science had given a fund with the stipulation that we should engage the services of those who both knew their subjects and had acquired the art of presentation. the fund was $10,000 and it yielded $500 a year. i think beyond question it was doing more for science than any other fund of ten times that amount which can be mentioned. on the particular evening of which i am about to speak, the lecturer told the members of the science club frankly how, beginning at the age of thirteen, he had spent forty years of _enjoyment in study_, that he had always found great satisfaction in the study of ancient civilizations and literatures. he had been fortunate, he said, in having teachers early in life who could make these subjects full of meaning to him. his greatest satisfaction, however, during the last twenty-five years had been found in tracing the development of modern science, both in the evolution of its theories and in its applications to modern industries. he said he was sure that young people of high-school age would find it profitable to learn, for instance, how the modern theory of combustion had developed slowly through the centuries, even if to do so they must curtail somewhat their study of how greece and rome developed and declined. he said that science furnished a tremendously rich field of study for young people, which as yet had been untouched by our schools, first, because educational conservatism had made it impossible to determine the relative importance of subjects of study, and, second, because education in science had, for a brief period, found its worst enemies within its own camp. he would like especially to commend on this evening some historical studies in science, and had chosen for his subject, "how the idea of a universal ether developed." men seem to talk freely now about the transmission of light, heat, and electricity by means of the _ether_. how did this idea arise? is it a product of wild imagination? or did the idea develop out of experiences which, if given to any person of fair intelligence, would yield the same result? a little over thirty years ago, at the royal institution of great britain, james clerk maxwell (1831-1879) delivered a lecture on "action at a distance." it was no new subject, but rather one of the oldest and most often discussed subjects from the days of the ancient greeks down to the present. we talk of gravitation as an attraction or pull between the various bodies of the universe, but how can they pull one another without some material bond between? this was sir isaac newton's great puzzle which he never solved, though he expended upon it the greatest efforts of his great intellect. the sun appears to repel the tail of the comet, yet how can there be a push without intervening material with which to push? when we speak of light pouring or streaming in, do we think of it as a substance? when we speak of warm bodies losing heat, or when we cover them to keep the heat in, are we thinking of heat as a substance? what are heat, light, electricity, magnetism, and gravitation? these are no new questions. they are certainly older than history. various ideas have prevailed at different times. it is much easier to change our ideas than to change our language. you occasionally see and hear the words calorie and caloric used in connection with heat. they stand for an idea, abandoned for three generations, that heat is a substance called caloric, which saturates warm bodies and drains out of them when they cool off. i hardly think these ideas either arise or fall without good and sufficient reason. each theory has been the natural conclusion from our observations of nature as far as we have gone with them. to be sure, it is difficult for us to see how men acquired, from any observations of nature, the idea of light which seems to have prevailed previous to the time of aristotle, three and a half centuries b.c. this idea was that objects were made visible by something projected from the eye itself. still, the questions which i have indicated regarding heat, light, and electricity have impelled men for many centuries to observe nature for hints as to the answers. the doctrine of the universal ether as a medium for transmitting wave motions, and of light, heat, and electricity as being motions of different wave length, is the natural conclusion of the present time. it may give place to another theory when we have further facts to reason upon. imagine your never having seen a harp or other musical instrument. would it require a long time, do you think, for you to find out its use, at least to this extent, that it will produce tones whenever the strings are made to vibrate? that the short strings vibrate more rapidly than the long ones, and at the same time produce tones of a higher pitch? imagine that having become familiar with the harp you should successively come upon scores of other musical instruments of very differing types. you would soon become adept at divining their uses. now, a study of the microscopic structure of the eye, for one thing, would suggest that light may be in the nature of a vibration. scores of other lines of study in a similar manner have at length brought all who pursue them to the conclusion that light is a form of vibration. robert hooke in england (1631-1703) and christian huygens in holland (1629-1695), back in the seventeenth century seem to have been the first to give expression to this idea, which was nothing more than an inkling in hooke's mind, but which was the necessary result of observations on the part of huygens. for nearly a century the idea lay dormant, largely because sir isaac newton (1642-1727), the cleverest thinker of his time, opposed it. it was perhaps unfortunate for the success of the theory that huygens, its founder, adopted the word ether, for that was an old term, and had been very badly overworked. the word ether, or æther as it was often written, had been invented in the days of ignorance, for such foolish reasons as: (a) because "nature abhors a vacuum," or (b) "for planets to swim in," or (c) "to constitute electric atmospheres and magnetic effluvia," or (d) "to convey sensations from one part of our bodies to another." "when we remember," says maxwell, "the mischievous influence on science which hypotheses about æthers used formerly to exercise, we can appreciate the horror of æthers which sober-minded men had during the eighteenth century." newton in england (1642-1727) and laplace in france (1749-1827) stoutly opposed the undulatory theory of huygens and championed a corpuscular or emission theory, that light-giving and heat-giving bodies emit a subtile fluid. there is no other instance in the whole history of modern physics in which truth was so long kept down by authority. fresnel (1788-1827) and arago (1786-1853) in france appear to be the only persons during the eighteenth century who caught a clear vision of the truth of the undulatory theory. but it remained for mr. thomas young (1773-1829), a colleague of sir humphrey davy at the royal institution, in his bakerian lecture (1801) on "theory of light and colour" to bring together such good evidence for the ether wave theory that it has hardly been questioned since. young, like davy, was a most remarkable man in literature and in science. it was he who first deciphered the rosetta stone, now in the british museum, and gave us a key to the egyptian hieroglyphics. probably he was the only man who was able to overthrow the influence of newton's authority even a century after newton did his work. faraday's (1791-1867) chief work as director of the laboratory of the royal institution, london, was a study of ether phenomena, particularly electric and magnetic. about seventy-five years ago he became impressed with the fact that although wires may give direction to an electric current the electric influence is not confined to the wires, but may permeate more or less widely the region about them. nearly fifty years ago maxwell (1831-1878) professor of physics at cambridge university, england, conceived the idea that light is electricity of a very short wave length. nearly twenty-five years ago heinrich hertz (1857-1894), in germany, proved by experiments the existence of electric waves, and measured their length and velocity, determining their various characteristics as compared with light. about fifteen years ago marconi developed a wireless telegraph apparatus, which made it possible to use electric waves for purposes of communication. thirteen years ago (1897) the first wireless telegraph company was formed. eleven years ago (1899) the international yacht races in new york harbour were reported by wireless telegraph, and bulletin boards in new york city announced to waiting crowds the details of the race while it was in progress. nearly ten years ago (1901) wireless despatches were first sent across the atlantic ocean. wireless telegraphy was opened for public use in 1905, and very soon the company began to coöperate with the regular telegraph companies. nearly all coastwise and trans-atlantic steamers are now equipped with wireless telegraph outfits, and a law has passed both houses of congress making it obligatory on the part of steamers which carry fifty or more passengers to have such equipment. on several disabled steamers, notably the _republic_, loss of life has been averted by the wireless emergency call for help, to which the captains of all steamers feel obliged to respond. if you desire to communicate with a friend who left for europe several days ago, you simply write him a telegram, addressing it to his ship, and deliver it at your nearest telegraph office. each telegraph office has a record of the location of every ship having a wireless telegraph outfit. it despatches your message to the wireless station along the coast which is nearest to your friend's steamer, and from this station it is sent on the ether to the ship. or in some cases it may be repeated from one ship to another along the atlantic highway until it reaches the desired one. thus also news of important events on either continent is distributed daily on board ships which are crossing the ocean. there are said to be more than 50,000 amateur wireless stations in the united states, and already congress is taking steps to regulate the use of the wireless telegraph in order to prevent interference with government and other important messages. more than three dozen books and countless magazine articles have already been written upon wireless or ether wave telegraphy. hundreds have and thousands are contributing to our knowledge of ether wave phenomena. if the names of all who have said or done something to render stable the foundations of this idea of a universal ether, whose undulations account for the phenomena of heat, light, and electricity, were to be mentioned, the list would contain nearly all the important workers in the field of physics for the last century. xxvi electric currents cannot be confined to wires harold said that if electricity was so much like light that it could go without wires he thought light ought to be enough like electricity to be conducted by wires on occasions. i told him that i had no hope of being able to confine light to a wire; indeed, if the science club would give me an opportunity i would show them that even when electricity follows the general direction of a wire its influence is not confined to the wire. as a result of this bid i received an invitation to address an open meeting of the science club. [illustration: fig. 198] in my first experiment on that occasion i took a one-pound spool of no. 24 cotton-covered copper wire and crowded the hole in the spool full of wire nails _a_ (fig. 198). i disconnected the wires from an electric drop lamp and connected them to _b_ and _c_, the ends of the wire from the spool. our electric lighting circuit was what is called the _alternating current_. i also had a second spool, _b_, precisely like the first. the wires from this were connected to a miniature lamp, _l_, such as is used at the switchboard of a telephone exchange. we then screwed the drop-light plug into the chandelier and turned on the electric current. i brought spool _b_ with the miniature lamp near to spool _a_, as shown in fig. 199, and when it was within a distance of about two inches the little lamp lighted up to full brilliancy, thus showing that while the electric current is passing in the wire of spool _a_ its influence is not confined to the wire, but exhibits itself in the region outside of the wire. to illustrate still further this fact we substituted an electric bell in the place of the lamp _l_, and when the spool _b_ was brought near to _a_ the bell rang. but the most striking illustration was obtained when a telephone receiver was put in the place of _l_. with this held to the ear while the spool _b_ was brought toward _a_ a humming sound could be heard when _b_ was about a foot distant from _a_. this sound grew rapidly louder as _b_ approached _a_, until, when the spool _b_ rested upon the spool _a_, a sound like the peal of a pipe organ was heard all over the apartment. the tone was very nearly that of the key on the piano which is two octaves below middle _c_. i unscrewed the cap on the large end of the telephone receiver, took it off, and moved the thin iron diaphragm to one side, when it began to dance about at great speed. it was keeping time with the dynamo, five miles away, which generated the electric current. the dynamo changed the direction of the electric current sixty times per second, and this made sixty vibrations per second. the dynamo sent out ether waves which affected the telephone receiver, although the receiver was not connected to the dynamo by wires. to emphasize the fact that the dynamo had lighted the lamp, rung the bell and made the telephone receiver hum without being connected with them, i repeated all these experiments in a different way. spool _a_, connected as before with the electric lighting circuit, was concealed beneath the table. for spool _b_ i substituted spool _c_ (fig. 199), on which the wire was wound so as to appear like a candlestick. on the top of this was placed the miniature electric lamp screwed into a miniature socket and connected to the wires of the spool. this "witches' candle," as we called it, was sitting unlighted upon the table when i called attention to the fact that if i moved it to a certain spot upon the table it flashed into full light. (of course this spot was directly over spool _a_.) i moved it slowly away from that spot and its light slowly grew dim and disappeared. [illustration: fig. 199] on the table was also sitting a cream pitcher in which i had placed spool _b_ with a buzzer attached to it. remarking that this pitcher groaned for more cream whenever it was empty, and thus of its own accord called the waiter, i moved it to the spot on the table directly over spool _a_, when the buzzer gave forth a sound like a husky bumble-bee shut up in a resounding bottle. at this signal my assistant came in and took up the pitcher and placed my silk hat upon the table, when it instantly boomed forth a base note two octaves below middle _c_ of the piano. out of the hat i took a coil and the telephone receiver and the mystery was solved. [illustration: fig. 200] in 1819 hans christian oersted in denmark (1777-1851) first noted that the region about a wire carrying an electric current has an influence upon a magnet. i will show this fact by a simple experiment. i magnetize a stout sewing needle by drawing it from end to end across the pole of a steel magnet, and by means of a triangular piece of paper and a fine thread i suspend it a few inches above the table (fig. 200). i then lay upon the table a piece of wire parallel with the needle and fasten one end of it to one binding post of a dry cell. whenever i touch the other end of the wire to the other binding post of the cell, thus sending an electric current through the wire, the magnetized needle is deflected at right angles. this experiment, performed by oersted, seems to have started faraday upon that wonderful series of researches which has resulted in giving us the dynamo. xxvii wireless telegraphy in earnest we had decided to let harold make a trip to europe alone. the first message from him after his departure was a brief note to his mother saying that they had had a turbulent voyage, but all had landed safely upon the other side, none the worse for their experiences. the next day a number of letters came to me from total strangers. one of these ran as follows: my dear sir: prompted by my own impulses, and urged to do so by the passengers under my charge, i improve this first opportunity to express to you our high appreciation for your noble but very modest son, to whom more than to any one else we owe the lives of all on board our fated ship. i am sending this direct to you both, because i understand a father's heart and because the young man escaped as soon as we came to land, without any of us learning his address. i beg you will communicate to him the desire of the president of our company to meet him and personally to thank him for his gallant conduct. i am also instructed to say that whenever harold desires to cross the ocean the best which any ship i may command can afford will be his without charge. very respectfully yours, -------captain. s. s. another letter was the following: my dear sir: permit me to congratulate you on having such a heroic and self-possessed son. we, his fellow passengers, are, if possible, as proud of him as you must be. i fear that his account of the affair will not do himself full justice, and so, with your permission, i will give you the full details as i have gathered them from the passengers, from the crew, and from my own observation. during the last night of our voyage a thick fog closed about us. the constant blowing of the fog whistle made the night dismal. few persons slept at all. about two o'clock in the morning the ship struck a reef, and instantly it seemed as though every person on that ship reached the decks at the same time. the water poured in and put out the fires. the ship heeled badly, and it seemed that any minute she might slip off the reef on which she was resting into deep water and go down. to add to our horror fire broke out. it seems to have started in the wireless operator's room. very much damage was done to the wireless outfit itself, and the operator was badly burned, so much so that he was taken to the ship's hospital suffering with many painful and dangerous wounds. meanwhile the flames spread rapidly and we were unable to summon help. the crew and many of the passengers fought the flames, but with little success. in the midst of our despair word passed around the ship that an unknown boy from among the passengers was sending the c. q. d. message to all the world by wireless. it was afterward learned that your harold was the youth. he had repaired the damaged apparatus sufficiently to establish connection with a storage battery which he found, and, under the captain's direction, was sending forth that hurry call for help known to all the wireless fraternity and heeded by all sea-faring men. i learned that your boy was not a regular operator, but that somehow he had learned to send this message and also to send out the captain's calculations of our position at sea. he was also able to detect that his call had been heard and that help was coming, although he could not understand much that came to his instrument in reply to his calls. i learned, also, that he was one of the first to reach the operator's room and to give assistance. he was himself badly burned, so much so that one hand was being dressed by a nurse while he was continually using the other to operate his instrument. i can testify, my dear sir, that he appeared to be the calmest and most self-possessed person on board that ship, as i saw him in the glare of the dreadful flames which lit up the blackest night. i am an artist and would like to attempt to paint that scene, which has left its lasting impression upon my soul. i beg that you will allow me to exhibit it for a time in several of our galleries and finally present it to your family. help came none too soon. we were all transferred to other boats, but the sea was rising, and scarcely had we reached a safe distance when the burning ship slipped into the sea and disappeared. i do not know by which boat your son reached the land. in the great confusion i lost sight of him at last. he has doubtless communicated with you by this time, and i shall esteem it a great favour if you will put me in communication with him again. in order that i may do justice to him in the painting i would like to arrange with him a few sittings while he is in europe. could you kindly send me a photograph of him which will assist me somewhat? most sincerely and gratefully yours, --------. the letter contained several references to mutual acquaintances. * * * * * harold's letters have been frequent and full of the pleasure he is having in european travel, but the only thing he has said about the voyage is that "it was not worth so much fuss." [illustration] the country life press garden city, n. y. * * * * * transcriber's notes: obvious typos and inconsistencies in spelling have been corrected: p31. intrument -> instrument p35. mantain -> maintain p48. represents the [the] counter-electro-motive force p64. 2 volts × .1 ampere = .6 watts. -> 6 volts × .1 ampere = .6 watts. the correct voltage is deduced from the preceding paragraph. p141. 55 ampere -> .55 ampere p168. familar -> familiar p173. preceptible -> perceptible p229. p230. countershaft -> counter shaft p259. h_{2}so^{4} -> h_{2}so_{4} p295. note c refers to c´ not c´´ and these should be labelled c, and c,, to denote octaves below middle c. p316. electri-tricity -> electricity p356. oufit -> outfit throughout the text: the few cases of "volt-meter" have been changed to "volt meter" which has been used for the majority of the text. the single instances of watt meter and watt-meter have been changed to wattmeter which has been used for the majority of the text. the few cases of "electro magnet" have been changed to "electro-magnet" which has been used for the majority of the text. in the table of contents: chapter xii page number changed from 118 to 218 chapter xv name changed from "electricity from chemical action and chemical action from electricity" to match text which reads "electric currents from chemical action and chemical action from electric currents" in the table of illustrations: "operating a switchboard" changed to match caption which reads "operating the switchboard" p63. the example of morse code given is correct for "original" or american morse. it has some differences from continental or international code which is the current standard. the spacing of the dots is significant. [frontispiece: "she turned with a start, though her loss of self-possession lasted but a moment."] phantom wires a novel by arthur stringer author of "the wire tappers," "the loom of destiny," etc. illustrated by arthur william brown boston little, brown, and company copyright, 1908, by arthur stringer. copyright, 1907, by little, brown, and company. all rights reserved. i _it's the bad that's in the best of us leaves the saint so like the rest of us: it's the good in the darkest curst of us redeems and saves the worst of us._ ii _it's the muddle of hope and madness, it's the tangle of good and badness, it's the lunacy linked with sanity, makes up and mocks humanity!_ a. s. contents chapter i. the end of the tether ii. the azure coast iii. the shadowing past iv. the widening road v. the great divide vi. the woman speaks vii. our friend the enemy viii. "foreigners are fools" ix. the lark in the ruins x. the tightening coil xi. the intoxication of war xii. the doorway of surprise xiii. "the folly of grandeur" xiv. awakening voices xv. wireless messages xvi. broken insulation xvii. the tangled skein xviii. the severed knot xix. the ultimate outcast xx. the spider and the fly xxi. the pit of despair xxii. the entering wedge xxiii. the waking circuit xxiv. the ghosts of thought xxv. the ruling passion xxvi. the crown of iron xxvii. the straits of chance xxviii. the human element xxix. the last ditch xxx. one year later--an epilogue phantom wires chapter i the end of the tether durkin folded the printed pages of the newspaper with no outward sign of excitement. then he took out his money, quietly, and counted it, with meditative and pursed-up lips. his eyes fell on a paltry handful of silver, with the dulled gold of one worn napoleon showing from its midst. he remembered, suddenly, that it was the third time he had counted that ever-lightening handful since partaking of his frugal coffee and rolls that morning. so he dropped the coins back into his pocket, dolefully, one by one, and took the deep breath of a man schooling himself to face the unfaceable. then he looked about the room, almost vacuously, as though the old-fashioned wooden bed and the faded curtains and the blank walls might hold some oracular answer to the riddle that lay before him. then he went to the open window, and looked out, almost as vacuously, over the unbroken blue distance of the mediterranean, trembling into soft ribbons of silver where the wind rippled its surface, yellowing into a fluid gold towards the path of the lowering sun, deepening, again, into a brooding turquoise along the flat rim of the sea to the southward where the twin tranquilities of sky and water met. it was the same unaltering mediterranean, the same expanse of eternal sapphire that he had watched from the same riviera window, day in and day out, with the same vague but unceasing terror of life and the same forlorn sense of helplessness before currents of destiny that week by week seemed to grow too strong for him. he turned away from the soft, exotic loveliness of the sea and sky before him, with a little gesture of impatience. the movement was strangely like that of a feverish invalid turning from the ache of an opened shutter. durkin took up the newspaper once more, and unfolded it with listlessly febrile fingers. it was the paris edition of "the herald," four days old. still again, and quite mechanically now, he read the familiar advertisement. it was the same message, word for word, that had first caught his eye as he had sipped his coffee in the little palm-grown garden of the hotel bristol, in gibraltar, nearly three weeks before. "presence of james l. durkin, electrical expert, essential at office of stephens & streeter, patent solicitors, etc., empire building, new york city, before contracts can be culminated. urgent." only, at the first reading of those pregnant words, all the even and hopeless monotony, all the dull and barren plane of life had suddenly erupted into one towering and consuming passion for activity, for return to his old world with its gentle anaesthesia of ever-widening plans and its obliterating and absolving years of honest labor. he would never forget that moment, no matter into what ways or moods life might lead him. the rhythmic pound and beat of a company of british infantry, swarthy and strange-looking in their neutral-tinted khaki, marched briskly by on the hard stone road, momentarily filling the garden quietnesses with a tumult of noise. a bugle had sounded from one of the fortified galleries high above him, had sounded clearly out across the huddled little town at the foot of the rock, challenging, uncompromising, thrillingly penetrating, as the paper had fluttered and shaken in his fingers. he had accepted it, in that first moment of unreasoning emotionalism, as an auspicious omen, as the call of his own higher life across the engulfing abysses of the past. he had forgotten, for the time being, just where and what he was. but that grim truth had been forced on him, bitterly, bafflingly, after he had climbed the narrow streets of that town which always seemed to him a patchwork of nationalities, a polyglot mosaic of outlandish tongues, climbed up through alien-looking lanes and courts, past moorish bazaars and turkish lace-stores and english tobacco-shops, in final and frenzied search of the american consul. he had found the consulate, at last, on what seemed a back street of the spanish quarter, a gloomy and shabby room or two, with the faded american flags over the doorway clutched in the carven claws of a still more faded eagle. and he had waited for two patient hours, enduring the suspicious scowls of a lean and hawk-like spanish housekeeper, to discover, at the end, that the american consul had been riding at hounds, with the garrison hunt club. and when the consul, having duly chased a stunted little spanish fox all the way from legnia to algeciras, returned to his official quarters, in english riding-breeches and irradiating good spirits, durkin had seen his new-blown hopes wither in the blossom. the consul greatly regretted that his visitor had been kept waiting, but infinitely greater was his regret that an official position like his own gave him such limited opportunity for forwarding impatient electrical inventors to their native shores. no doubt the case was imminent; he was glad his visitor felt so confident about the outcome of his invention; he had known a man at home who went in for that sort of thing--had fitted up the lights for his own country house on the sound; but he himself had never dreamed such a thing as a transmitting camera, that could telegraph a picture all the way from gibraltar to new york, for instance, was even a possibility! . . . the department, by the way, was going to have a cruiser drop in at mogador, to look into the looting of the methodist missionary stores at fruga. there was a remote chance that this cruiser might call at the rock, on the homeward journey. but it was problematical. . . . and that had been the end of it all, the ignominious end. and still again the despairing durkin was being confronted and challenged and mocked by this call to him from half way round the world. it maddened and sickened him, the very thought of his helplessness, so aeschylean in its torturing complications, so ironic in its refinement of cruelty. it stung him into a spirit of blind revolt. it was unfair, too utterly unfair, he told himself, as he paced the faded carpet of his cheap hotel-room, and the mild riviera sunlight crept in through the window-square and the serenely soft and alluring sea-air drifted in between the open shutters. it meant that a new and purposeful path had been blazed through the tangled complexities of life for him, yet he could make no move to take advantage of it. it meant that the door of his delivery had been swung wide, with its mockery of open and honest sunlight, and yet his feet were to remain fettered in that underworld gloom he had grown to hate. he must still stay an unwilling prisoner in this garden of studied indolence, this playground of invalids and gamblers; he must still dawdle idly about these glittering, stagnating squares, fringing a crowd of meaningless foreigners, skulking half-fed and poorly housed about this opulent showplace of the world that set its appeasing theatricalities into motion only at the touch of ready gold. durkin remembered, at that moment, that he was woefully hungry. he also remembered, more gratefully, that the young chicagoan, the lonely and loquacious youth he had met the day before in the _café_ of the "_terrasse_," had asked him to take dinner with him, to view the splendor of "_ciro's_" and a keeper of the _vestiaire_ in scarlet breeches and silk stockings. afterwards they were to go to the little bon-bon play-house up by the more pretentious bon-bon casino. he was to watch the antics of a band of actors toying with some mimic fate, flippantly, to the sound of music, when his own destiny swung trembling on the last silken thread of tortured suspense! yet it was better than moping alone, he told himself. he hated loneliness. and until the last few weeks he had scarcely known the meaning of the word! there had always been that other hand for which to reach, that other shoulder on which to lean! and suddenly, at the sting of the memories that surged over him, he went to the window that opened on its world of sea and sunlight, and looked out. his hands clutched the sill, and his unhappy eyes were intent and inquiring, as they swept the world before him in a slow and comprehensive gaze. "_wherever you wait, wherever you are, in all this wide world, frank, come here, to me, now, now, for i want you, need you!_" his lips scarcely murmured the vague invocation; it was more an inarticulate wish phrasing itself somewhere in the background of his clouded brain. but as he awoke to the tumult of his emotions, to the intensity of his attitude, whilst he stood there projecting that vague call out into space, he turned abruptly away, with the abashment of a reticent man detected in an act of theatricality, and flung out of the room, down into the crowded streets of monte carlo. chapter ii the azure coast as durkin and the young chicagoan once more stepped out of the brilliantly lighted theatre, into the balmy night air, a seductive mingling of perfumes and music and murmuring voices blew in their hot faces, like a cooling wave. durkin was wondering, a little wearily, just when he could be alone again. a group of gay and laughing women, with their aphrodisiac rustle of silk and flutter of lace, floated carelessly past. "who are _they_?" asked the youth. durkin half-envied him his illusions and his ingenuousness of outlook; he was treading a veritable amphitheatre of orderly disordered passions with the gentle objective stare of a child looking for bright-colored flowers on a battleground. durkin wondered if, after all, it was not the result of his mere quest of color, of his studying art in paris for a year or two. "i wonder who and what they are?" impersonally reiterated the younger man, as his gaze still followed the passing group to where it drifted and scattered through the lamp-strewn garden, like a cluster of golden butterflies. "those are the slaves who sand the arena!" retorted durkin, studying the softly waving palms, and leaving the other a little in doubt as to the meaning of his figure. the younger man sighed; he was beginning to feel, doubtless, from what different standpoints they looked out on life. "oh, well, you can say what you like, but this is the centre of the world, to _my_ way of thinking!" "the centre of--putrescence!" ejaculated durkin. the younger man began to laugh, with conciliatory good-nature, as he glanced appreciatively back at the sweetmeat stateliness of the casino front. but into the older man's mind crept the impression that they were merely passing, in going from crowded theatre to open garden and street, from one playhouse to another. it all seemed to him, indeed, nothing more than a transition of theatricalities. for that outer play-world which lay along monaco's three short miles of marble stairway and villa and hillside garden appeared to him, in his mood of settled dejection, as artificial and unnatural and unrelated as the life which he had just seen pictured across the footlights of the over-pretty and meringue-like little theatre. "well, monte carlo's good enough for me, all right, all right!" persisted the young chicagoan, as they made their way down the lamp-hung promenade. and he laughed with a sort of luxurious contentment, holding out his cigarette-case as he did so. the older man, catching a light from the proffered match, said nothing in reply. something in the other's betrayingly boyish laugh grated on his nerves, though he paused, punctiliously, beside his chance-found companion, while together they gazed down at the twinkling lights of the bay, where the soft and violet mediterranean lay under a soft and violet sky, and the boatlamps were languidly swaying dots of white and red, and the promontory stood outlined in electric globes, like a woman's breast threaded with pearls, the young art-student expressed it, and the perennial, ever-cloying perfumes floated up from square and thicket and garden. there was an eternal menace about it, durkin concluded. there was something subversive and undermining and unnerving in its very atmosphere. it gave him the impression of being always under glass. it made him ache for the sting and bite of a new england north-easter. it screened and shut off the actualities and perpetuities of life as completely as the drop and wings of a playhouse might. its sense of casual and careless calm, too, seemed to him only the rest of a spinning top. its unrelated continuities of appeal, its incessant coquetries of attire, its panoramic beauty of mountain and cape and sea-front, its parade of corporeal and egotistic pleasures, its primordial and undisguised appeal to the carnival spirit, its frank, exotic festivity, its volatile and almost too vital atmosphere, and, above all, its glowing and over-odorous gardens and flowerbeds, its overcrowded and grimly dionysian promenade, its murmurous and alluring restaurants on steep little boulevards--it was all a blind, durkin argued with himself, to drape and smother the cynical misery of the place. underneath all its flaunting and waving softnesses life ran grim and hard--as grim and hard as the solid rock that lay so close beneath its jonquils and violets and its masking verdure of mimosa and orange and palm. he hated it, he told himself in his tragic and newborn austerity of spirit, as any right-minded and clean-living man should hate paper roses or painted faces. every foot of it, that night, seemed a muffled and mediate insult to intelligence. the too open and illicit invitation of its confectionery-like halls, the insipidly emphatic pretentiousness of the casino itself--durkin could never quite decide whether it reminded him of a hurriedly finished exposition building or of a child's birthday cake duly iced and bedecked--the tinsel glory, the hackneyed magnificence, of its legitimatized and ever-orderly gaming dens, the eternal claws of greed beneath the voluptuous velvet of indolence--it all combined to fill his soul with a sense of hot revolt, as had so often before happened during the past long and lonely days, when he had looked up at the soft green of olive and eucalyptus and then down at the intense turquoise curve of the harbor fringed with white foam. always, at such times, he had marveled that man could turn one of earth's most beautiful gardens into one of crime's most crowded haunts. the ironic injustice of it embittered him; it left him floundering in a sea of moral indecision at a time when he most needed some forlorn belief in the beneficence of natural law. it outraged his incongruously persistent demand for fair play, just as the sight of the jauntily clad gunners shooting down pigeons on that tranquil and edenic little grass-plot at the foot of the promontory had done. for underneath all the natural beauty of monaco durkin had been continuously haunted by the sense of something unclean and leprous and corroding. under its rouge and roses, at every turn, he found the insidious taint. and more than ever, tonight, he had a sense of witnessing destiny stalking through those soft gardens, of tragedy skulking about its regal stairways. for it was there, in the midst of those unassisting and enervating surroundings, he dimly felt, that he himself was to choose one of two strangely divergent paths. yet he knew, in a way, that his decision had already been forced upon him, that the dice had been cast and counted. he had been trying to sweep back the rising sea with a broom; he had been trying to fight down that tangled and tortuous past which still claimed him as its own. and now all that remained for him was to slip quietly and unprotestingly into the current which clawed and gnawed at his feet. he had been tried too long; the test, from the first, had been too crucial. he might, in time, even find some solacing thought in the fitness between the act and its environment--here he could fling himself into an obliterating niagara, not of falling waters, but of falling men and women. yes, it was a stage all prepared and set for the mean and sordid and ever recurring tragedy of which he was to be the puppet. for close about him seethed and boiled, as in no other place in the world, all the darker and more despicable passions of humanity. he inwardly recalled the types with which his stage was embellished; the fellow puppets of that gilded and arrogant and idle world, the curled and perfumed princes, the waxed and watching _boulevardiers_ side by side with virginal and unconscious american girls, pallid and impoverished grand dukes in the wake of painted but wary parisians, stiff-mustached and mysterious austrian counts lowering at doughty and indignant englishwomen; bejeweled beys and pashas brushing elbows with unperturbed new england school-teachers astray from cook's; monocled thieves and gamblers and princelings, jaded tourists and skulking parasites--and always the disillusioned and waiting women. "that play got on your nerves, didn't it?" suddenly asked the lazy, half-careless voice at his side. durkin and the young chicagoan were in the musky-smelling promenade by this time, and up past the stands at the sea-front the breath of the mediterranean blew in their faces, fresh, salty, virile. "this whole place gets on my nerves!" said durkin testily. yes, he told himself, he was sick of it, sick of the monotony, of the idleness, of the sullen malevolence of it all. it was gay only to the eyes; and to him it would never seem gay again. "oh, that comes of not speaking the language, you know!" maintained the other stoutly, and, at the same time, comprehensively. he was still very young, durkin remembered. he had toyed with art for two winters in paris, so scene by scene he had been able to translate the little drama that had appeared so farcical and frenchy to his older countryman in exile. durkin's lip curled a little. "no--it comes of knowing _life_!" he answered, with a touch of impatience. he felt the gulf that separated their two oddly diverse lives--the one the youth eager to dip into experience, the other a fugitive from a many-sided past that still shadowed and menaced him. he listened with only half an ear as the chicagoan expounded some glib and ancient principle about the fairy tale being even truer than truth itself. "why," he continued argumentatively, "everything that happened in that play might happen here, tonight, to you or me!" "rubbish!" ejaculated durkin, brusquely, remembering how lonely he must indeed have been thus to attach himself to this youth of the studios. but he added, as a matter of form: "you think, then, that life today _is_ as romantic as it once was?" "_mon dieu_!" cried the other. "look at monte carlo here! of course it is. it's more crowded, more rapid; it holds _more_ romance. we didn't put it all off, you know, with doublet and hose!" "no, of course not," answered durkin absently. life, at that moment, was confronting him so grimly, so flat and sterile and uncompromising in its secret exactions, that he had no heart to theorize about it. "and a thing isn't romantic just because it's moss-grown!" continued the child of the studios, warming to his subject. "it's romantic when we've emotionalized it, when we've _felt_ it, when it's hit home with us, as it were!" "if it doesn't hit too hard!" qualified the older man. "for instance," maintained the young chicagoan, once more proffering his cigarette-case to durkin, "for instance, take that big mercedes touring-car with the canopy top, coming down through the crowd there. you'll agree, at first sight, that such things mean good-bye to the mounted knight, to chivalry, and all that romantic old horseman business." "i suppose so." "but, don't you see, the horse and armor was only a frame, an accidental setting, for the romance itself! it's up to date and practical and sordid and commonplace, you'd say, that puffing thing with a gasoline engine hidden away in its bowels. it's what we call machinery. but, supposing, now, instead of holding monsieur le duc somebody, or milord so-and-so, or signor comte somebody-else, with his wife or his mistress--i say, supposing it held--well, my young sister alice, whom i left so sedately contented at brighton! supposing it held my young sister, running away with an indian rajah!" "and you would call that romance?" "exactly!" durkin turned and looked at the approaching car. "while, as a matter of fact," he continued, with his exasperatingly smooth smile, "it seems to be holding a very much overdressed young lady, presumably from the folies-bergère or the olympia." the younger man, looking back from his place beside him, turned to listen, confronted by the sudden excited comments of a middle-aged woman, obviously parisian, on the arm of a lean and solemn man with dyed and waxed mustachios. "you're quite wrong," cried the young chicagoan, excitedly. "it's young lady boxspur--the new english beauty. see, they're crowding out to get a glimpse of her!" "who's lady boxspur?" asked durkin, hanging stolidly back. he had seen quite enough of riviera beauty on parade. "she's simply ripping. i got a glimpse of her this afternoon in front of the _terrasse_, after she'd first motored over from nice with old szapary!" he lowered his voice, more confidentially. "this frenchman here has just been telling his wife that she's the loveliest woman on the riviera today. come on!" durkin stood indifferently, under the white glare of the electric lamp, watching the younger man push through to the centre of the roadway. the slowly-moving touring-car, hemmed in by the languid midnight movement of the street, came to a full stop almost before where he stood. it shuddered and panted there, leviathan-like, and durkin saw the sea breeze sway back the canopy drapery. he followed the direction of the excited young chicagoan's gaze, smilingly, now, and with a singularly disengaged mind. he saw the woman's clear profile outlined against the floating purple curtain, the quiet and shadowy eyes of violet, the glint of the chestnut hair that showed through the back-thrust folds of the white silk automobile veil swathing the small head, and the nervous, bird-like movement of the head itself. he did not move; there was no involuntary, galvanic reaction; no sudden gasp and flame of wonder. he simply held his cigarette still poised in his fingers, half-way to his lips, with the minutest relaxing of the smile that still hovered about them, while a dull and ashen grayness crept into his face, second by waiting second. it was not until his eyes met hers that he took three wavering and undecided steps toward her. with a silent movement--more of warning than of fright, he afterward told himself--she pressed her gloved fingers to her lips. what her intent eyes meant to say to him, in that wordless, telepathic message, durkin could not guess; all thought was beyond him. but in a moment or two the roadway cleared, the car shook and plunged forward, the floating curtains fluttered and trailed behind. durkin turned blindly, and pushed and ran and dodged through the languidly amazed promenaders, following after that sudden and bewildering vision, as after his last hope in life. but the fine, white, limestone riviera dust from the fading car's tire-heels, and the burnt gases from its engines, were all the road held for him, as it undulated off into hillside quietnesses. he heard the young chicagoan calling after him, breathless and anxious. but he ran on until he came to a side street, shadowed with garden walls and villas and greenery. slipping into this, he immured himself in the midnight silences, to be alone with the contending forces that tore at him. if his companion was right, and such things as this made up romance, then, after all, the drama of life had lost none of its bewilderment. for the woman he had seen between the floating purple curtains was his own wife. chapter iii the shadowing past durkin's first tangible feeling was a passion to lose and submerge himself in the muffling midnight silences, the silences of those outwardly quiet gardens at heart so old in sin and pain. he felt the necessity for some sudden and sweeping readjustment, and his cry for solitude was like that of the child wounded in spirit, or that of the wild animal sorely hurt in body. before he could face life again, he felt, he had to build up about him the sustaining fabric of some new and factitious faith. but as intelligence slowly emerged from the mist and chaos of utter bewilderment, as reason crept haltingly back to her seat, his first blind and indeterminate rage fell away from him. his first black and blinding clouds of suspicion slowly subsided before practical and orderly question and cross-question. thought adjusted itself to its new environment. painfully, yet cautiously, he directed his ceaseless artillery of interrogation toward the outer and darker walls of uncertainty still so blankly confronting him. it was not that he had been consumed by any direct sense of loss, of deprivation. it was not that he had feared open and immediate treachery. if a rage had burned through him, at the sudden and startling sight of his own wife thus secretly masquerading in an unknown rôle, it was far from being a rage or mere jealousy and distrust. they had, in other days, each passed through questionable and perilous experiences. both together and alone they had adventured unwillingly along many of the more dubious channels of life. they had surrendered to temptation; they had sown and reaped and suffered, and become weary of it. they had struggled slowly yet stoically up towards respectability; they had fought for fair-dealing; they had entered a compact to stand by each other through that long and bitter effort to be tardily honest and autumnally aboveboard. what now so disturbed and disheartened him was the sudden sense of something impending, the vague apprehension of some momentous and far-reaching intrigue which he could not even foreshadow. and it was framing itself into being at a time when he had most prayed for their untrammelled freedom, when he had most looked for their ultimate emancipation from the claws of that too usurious past. but, above all, what had brought about the sudden change? why had no inkling of it crept to his ears? why was she, the passionate pleader for the decencies of life whom he had last watched so patiently and heroically imparting the mastery of the pianoforte to seven little english children in a squalid paris _pension_, now lapsing back into the old and fiercely abjured avenue of irresponsibility? why had she weakened and surrendered, when he himself, the oldtime weakling of the two, had clung so desperately to the narrow path of rectitude? and what was the meaning and the direction of it all? and what would it lead to? but why, above all, had she kept silent, and given him no warning? durkin looked up and listened to the soft rustling of the palm branches. the bray of a distant band saddened him with an unfathomable sense of homesickness. through an air that seemed heavy with languid tropicality, and the waiting richness of life, he caught the belated glimmer of lights and the throb and murmur of string music. it carried in to him what seemed the essential and alluring note of all the existence he had once known and lived. yet day by day he had fought back that sirenic call. it had not always been an open victory--the weight of all the past lay too heavily upon him for that--but for _her_ sake he had at least vacillated and hesitated and temporized, waiting and looking for that final strength which would come with her first wistful note of warning, or with her belated return to his side. yet here was opportunity lying close and thick about him; here chance had laid the board for its most tempting game. in that way, as the young chicagoan had said, they stood in the centre of the world. but he had turned away from those clustering temptations, he had left unbroken his veneer of honorable life, for her sake--while she herself had surrendered, unmistakably, irrevocably, whatever strange form the surrender might even at that moment be taking. all he could do, now, was to wait until morning. there would surely be some message, some hint, some key to the mystery. while everything remained so maddeningly enigmatic, he raked through the tangled past in search of some casual seed of explanation for that still undeciphered present. he recalled, period by period, and scene by scene, his kaleidoscopic past career, his first fatal blunder as a grand trunk telegraph operator, when one slip of the wrist brought a gravel train head-on into an odd fellows' excursion special, his summary dismissal from the railroad, and his unhappy flight to new york, his passionate struggle to work his way up once more, his hunger for money and even a few weeks of leisure, that his long dreamed of photo-telegraphy apparatus might be perfected and duly patented, his consequent fall from grace in the postal-union offices, through holding up a trivial racing-return or two until he and his outside confederate had been able to make their illicit wagers, then his official ostracism, and his wandering street-cat life, when, at last, the humbling and compelling pinch of poverty had turned him to "overhead guerrilla" work and the dangers and vicissitudes of a poolroom key-operator. he recalled his chance meeting with macnutt, the wire-tapper, and their partnership of privateer forces in that strange campaign against penfield, the alert and opulent poolroom king, who had seemed always able to defy the efforts and offices of a combative and equally alert district-attorney. most vividly and minutely of all, he reviewed his first meeting with frances candler, and the bewilderment that had filled him when he discovered her to be an intimate and yet a reluctant associate with macnutt in his work--a bewilderment which lasted until he himself grew to realize how easy was the downward trend when once the first false step had been made. he brought back to mind their strange adventures and perils and escapes together, day by day and week by week, their early interest that had ripened into affection, their innate hatred of that underground life, which eventually flowered into open revolt and flight, their impetuous marriage, their precipitate journey from the shores of america. then came to him what seemed the bitterest memories of all. it was the thought of that first too fragile happiness which slowly but implacably merged into discontent, still hidden and tacit, but none the less evident. that interregnum of peace had been a tantalus-like taste of a draught which he all along knew was to be denied him. yet, point by point, he recalled their first quiet and hopeful weeks in england, when their old ways of life seemed as far away as the america they had left behind, when they still had unbounded faith in themselves and in the future. just how or where fell the first corroding touch he could never tell. but in each of them there had grown up a secret unrest--it was, he knew, the hounds of habit whimpering from their kennels. "no one was ever reformed," he had once confided to frances, "by simply being turned out to grass!" so it was then that they had tried to drug their first rising doubts with the tumult of incessant travel and change. his wife had lured him to secluded places, she had struggled to interest him in a language or two, she had planned quixotic courses of reading--as though a man such as he might be remolded by a few months of modern authors!--and carried him off to centres of gaiety--as though the beat of hungarian bands and outlandish dances could drive that inmost fever out of his blood! he endured aix-les-bains and its rheumatics, with their bridge-whist and late dinners and incongruous dissipations, for a fortnight. then they fled to the huddled little hotels and _pensions_ of the narrow and dark wooded valley of karlsbad, under skies which frank declared to be bluer than the blue of forget-me-nots, where, amid brahmins from india and royalty from austria and audacious young duchesses from paris and students from petersburg and berlin, and undecipherable strangers from all the remotest corners of the globe, it seemed to durkin they were at last alone. he confided this feeling to his wife, one tranquil morning after they had drunk their sprudel from long-handled cups, at the spring where the comely, rubber-garmented native girls caught and doled out the biting hot spray of the geyser. they were seated at the remoter end of the glass-covered promenade, and a band was playing. something in the music, for once, had saddened and dispirited frank. "alone?" she had retorted. "who is ever alone?" "well, our wires are down, for a little while, anyway!" laughed durkin, as he sipped the hot salt water from the china cup. it reminded him, he had said, of all his past sins in epitome. frank sighed wearily, and did not speak for a minute or two. "but, after all," she said at last, in a meditative calmness of voice, "there are always some sort of ghostly wires connecting us with one another, holding us in touch with what we have been and done, with our past, and with our ancestors, with all our forsaken sins and misdoings. no, jim, i don't believe we are _ever_ alone. there are always sounds and hints, little broken messages and whispers, creeping in to us along those hidden circuits. we call them intuitions, and sometimes we speak of them as character, and sometimes as heredity, and weakness of will--but they are there, just the same!" the confession of that mood was a costly one, for before the week was out they had, in some way, wearied of the sight of that daily procession of nephritics and neurotics, and were off again, like a pair of homeless swallows, to the rhine salmon and the black forest venison of baden. from there they fled to the mountain air of st. moritz, where they were frozen out and driven back to paris--but always spending freely and thinking little of the vague tomorrow. durkin, indeed, recognized that taint of improvidence in his veins. he was a spendthrift; he had none of the temperamental foresight and frugality of his wife, who reminded him, from time to time, and with ever-increasing anxiety, of their ever-melting letter of credit. but, on the other hand, she stood ready to sacrifice everything, in order to build some new wall of interest about him, that she might immure him from his past. she still planned and schemed to shield him, not so much from the world, as from himself. yet he had seen, almost from the first, that their pursuit of contentment was born of their common and ever-increasing terror of the future. each left unuttered the actual emptiness and desolation of life, yet each nursed the bitter sting of it. day by day he had put on a bold face, because he had long since learned how poignantly miserable his own misery could make her. and, above all things, he hated to see her unhappy. chapter iv the widening road under the softly-waving palms of that midnight garden, durkin relived their feverish past, month by remembered month, until they found the need of money staring them in the face. he reviewed each increasing dilemma, until, eventually, he had left her in her squalid paris pension with her music pupils and the last eighty francs, while he clutched at the passing straw of an exporting house clerkship in marseilles. the exporting house, which was under american guidance, had flickered and gone out ignominiously, and week by desperate week each new promise of honest work seemed to wither into a chimera at his feverish touch. he had been told of a demand for electrical experts at tangier, and had promptly worked his passage to that outlandish sea-port on a belgian coasting-steamer, only to find a week's employment installing a burglar-alarm system in the ware-house of a liverpool shipping company. in gibraltar, a week or two longer, he had been able to supply his immediate wants through assisting in the reconstruction of a moving-picture machine, untimely wrecked on the outskirts of fez by moorish fanatics who had believed it to be the invention of the evil one. it was at gibraltar, too, that his first mocking hopes for some renewal of life had come to him, along with the vague hint that his transmitting camera had at last been recognized, and perhaps even marketed. but escape from that little seaport had been as difficult as escape from gaol. he had finally effected a hazardous and ever-memorable migration from algeciras to cimiez, but only by acting as chauffeur for a help-abandoned, gout-ridden, and irritable-minded ex-ambassador to persia, together with a scrupulously inattentive trained nurse, who, apparently, preferred diamonds to a uniform, and smuggled incredible quantities of hand-made lace under the tonneau seat-cushions. and then he had found himself at monte carlo, still waiting for word from paris, fighting against a grim new temptation which, vampire-like, had grown stronger and stronger as its victim daily had grown weaker and weaker. for along the sea-front, one indolent and golden afternoon, he had learned that an american yacht in the harbor was sending ashore for a practical electrician, since a defective generator had left its cabins of glimmering white and gold in sudden darkness. durkin, after a brief talk with the second officer, had been taken aboard the tender and hurried out to where the lightless steamer rocked and swung at her anchor chain in the intense turquoise bay. he had hoped, at first, that he was approaching his ship of deliverance, that luck was favoring the luckless and at last the means of his escape were at hand. so he asked, with outward unconcern, just what the yacht's course was. they were bound for messina, the second officer had replied, and from there they went on to corfu for a couple of weeks, and then on to ragusa. he went on board and looked over the armature core. it was of the slotted drum type, he at once perceived, built up of laminations of soft steel painted to break up eddy currents, and as he tested the soft amber mica insulation about the commutators of hard-rolled copper, he knew that the defective generator could be repaired in three-quarters of an hour. but certain scraps of talk that came to his ears amid the clink of glasses, from one of the shadowy saloons, had stung into vague activity his old, irrepressible hunger for the companionship of his own kind, his own race. it was uncommonly pleasant, he had told himself as he had caught the first drone of the lowered, confidential voices, to hear the old home talk, and even broken snatches of old home interests. as he explored the ship and minutely examined automatic circuit-breaker and switchboard and fuse, he even made it a point to see that his explorations took him into the pantry-like cabin next to the saloon from which these droning voices drifted. as he gave apparently studious and unbroken attention to a stretch of defective wiring, he was in fact making casual mental note of the familiar tones of the distant voices, listening impersonally and dreamily to each question and answer and suggestion that passed between that quietly talking group. one of the talkers, he soon found, was a supreme court judge on his vacation, equable and deliberative in his occasional query or view or criticism; another was apparently a secret agent from the office of the new york district-attorney, still another two were either scotland yard men or members of some continental detective bureau--this durkin assumed from their broad-voweled english voices and their seemingly intimate knowledge of european criminal procedure. the fifth man he could in no way place. but it was this man who interrupted the others, and, apparently taking a slip of paper from some inside pocket or some well-closed wallet, read aloud a list which, he first explained, had been secured from some undesignated safe on the night of a certain raid. "three hundred and twenty shares of national bank of commerce," read the voice methodically, the reader checking off each item, obviously, as he went along. "one certificate of forty-seven shares of united states steel preferred; two certificates of one hundred shares each of erie railroad first preferred; eighteen personal cheques, with names and amounts and banks attached; seven i. o. u.'s, with amounts and dates and initials." "probably worthless, from our point of view!" interposed a voice. the dreaminess suddenly went out of durkin's eyes, as he listened. "postal-union telegraph bonds, valued at $102,345," went on the reading voice, and again the interrupting critic remarked: "which, you see, we may regard as very significant, since it both obviously and inferably demonstrates that the telegraph company and the poolrooms are compelled to stand together!" durkin followed the list, with inclined head and uplifted hands, forgetting even his simulation of work, until the end was reached. "in all, you see, one quarter of a million dollars in negotiable securities, if we are to rely on this memorandum, which, as i stated before, ought to be authentic, for it was taken from the penfield safe the night of the first raid." durkin started, as though the circuit with which his fingers absently toyed had suddenly become a live wire. "penfield!" the word sent a little thrill through his body. penfield--the very name was a challenging trumpet to him. but again he bent and listened to the drone of the nearby voices. "and keenan, you say, is in genoa?" asked one of the englishmen. "if he's not there now he will be during the week," answered the american. "you're sure of that?" "all i know is that our milan man secured duplicates of his cables. three of them were in cipher, but he was able to make reasonably sure of the genoa trip!" "it would be rather hard to get at him, _there_!" "but if he strikes north, as you say, and goes first to liverpool, and gets home by the back door, as it were, by taking a steamer to quebec or montreal----" "that's a mere blind!" "but why say that?" "because he's too wise to stride british territory, before he unloads. it's not a mere matter of stopping the transfer of this stock, or whether or not all of it is negotiable. what we want is tangible and incriminating evidence. the signatures of those cheques are----" that was the last word that came to durkin's ears, for at that moment a steward, with a tray of glasses, hurried into the pantry. his suspicious eye saw nothing beyond a busy electrician replacing a switchboard. but before the intruding steward had departed the second officer was at durkin's elbow, overlooking his labors, and no further word or hint came to the ears of the listener. but he had heard enough. the flame had been applied to the dry acreage of his too arid and idle existence. he had remained passive too long. it was change that brought chance. and even though that change meant descent, it would, after all, be only the momentary dip that preceded the upward flight again. and as he gazed thoughtfully landward, where monte carlo lay vivid and glowing under the sheltering alpes-maritimes, like a golden lizard sunning itself on a shelf of gray rock, he felt within him a more kindly and comprehensive feeling for that flower-strewn arena of vast hazards. it was, after all, the great chances of life that made existence endurable. its only anodyne lay in effort and feverish struggle. and his chance for work had come! half an hour later he was rowed ashore, with a good havana cigar between his teeth and three good english sovereigns in his pocket. as he made his way up to his hotel he could feel some inner part of him still struggling and shrinking back from the enticing avenue of activity which his new knowledge was opening up before him. he smiled, now, a little grimly, as he sat under the rustling palms and thought of those old, unnecessary scruples. he had been holding himself to a compact which no longer existed. and, all along, he had been regarding himself as the weakling, the vacillator, when it was he who had held out the longest! he had even, in those earlier hesitating moments, consolingly recalled to his mind how monsieur blanc's modestly denominated société anonyme des bains de mer et cercle des étrangers made it a point to proffer a railway ticket to any impending wreck, such as himself, who might drift like a stain across its roads of merriment, or leave a telltale blot upon one of its perennially beautiful and ever-odorous flower-beds. but now, as he reviewed those past weeks of hesitation and inward struggle, a sense of relapse crept over him. as he recalled the picture of the clear-cut profile between the floating purple curtains, a vague indifference as to the final outcome of things took possession of him. he almost exulted in the meaning of the strange meeting, which, one hour before, had seemed to bring the universe crashing down about his head. then, as his plans and thoughts took more definite shape, his earlier recklessness merged into an almost pleasurable sense of relief and release, of freedom after confinement. he felt incongruously grateful for the lash that had awakened him to even illicit activity; life, under the passion for accomplishment, under the zest for risk and responsibility, seemed to take on its older and deeper meaning once more. it was, he told himself, as if the foreign tongue which he had so wearily heard on every side of him, for so long, had suddenly translated itself into intelligibility, or as if the text beneath the pictures in those ubiquitous illustrated papers from paris, which he had studied so blankly and so blindly, had suddenly become as plain as his own english to him. but his moment of exaltation, his mood of careless emancipation, was a brief one. he was no longer alone in life. his bitterness of heart had blinded him to obligations. he had not yet fathomed the mystery of frank's appearance. he had not yet even made sure of her relapse. above all, he had not put forth a hand to help her in what might be an inexplicable extremity. the morning could still bring some word from her. he himself would spend the day in search of her. he would have to proceed guardedly, but he would leave no stone unturned. it was not, he told himself, that he was giving fate one last chance to treat more kindly with him. it was, rather, that all his natural being wanted and reached out for this woman who had first taught him the meaning and purpose of life. . . . his mind went back, suddenly, to one afternoon, months before, at abbazia, when they had come up from sea-bathing in the adriatic. he had leaned down over her, to help her up the angiolina bath steps, wet and slippery with sea-water. the mingled gold and chestnut of her thick hair was dank and sodden with brine, the wistful face that she turned up to him was pinched and colorless and blue about the lips. she seemed, of a sudden, as she leaned heavily on his arm, a presaging apparition out of the dim future, an adumbration of her own body grown frail and old, looking up to him for help, calling forlornly to him for solace. and in that impressionable moment his heart had gone out to her, in a burst of pity that seemed deeper and stronger than love itself. chapter v the great divide durkin waited until, muffled and far away, the throb and drone of an orchestra floated up to him. this was followed, scatteringly, by the bells of the different _tables d'hôte_. they, too, sounded thin and remote, drifting up through the soft, warm air that had always seemed so exotic to him, so redolent of foreign-odored flowers, so burdened with alien-smelling tobacco smoke, of unfamiliar sea scents incongruously shot through with even the fumes of an unknown and indescribable cookery. while that genial shrill and tinkle of many bells meant refreshment and most gregarious frivolity for the chattering, loitering, laughing and ever-spectacular groups so far below him--and how he hated their outlandish gibberish and their arrogant european aloofness!--it meant for him hard work, and hard work of a somewhat perilous and stimulating nature. for, as the last of the demurely noisy groups made their way through the deepening twilight to the different hotels and cafés that already spangled the hillsides with scattering clusters of light, durkin coolly removed his shoes, twisted and knotted his two bath towels into a stout rope, securely tied back his heavy french window-shutter of wood with one of his sheets, and having attached his improvised rope to the base of the shutters, swung himself deftly out. on the return swing he caught the cast-iron water-pipe that scaled the wall from window tier to window tier. down this jointed pipe he went, gorilla-like, segment by segment, until he reached what he knew to be the hotel's third floor. here he rested for a moment or two against the wall, feeling inwardly grateful that a mediterranean climate still made possible monaco's primitive outside plumbing--to the initiated, he inwardly remarked, such things had always their unlooked-for advantages. he also felt both relieved and grateful to see that the two windows between him and his destination had been left shuttered against the heat of the afternoon sun. the third window he could see, was not thus barricaded, although, as he had expected, the sash itself was securely locked. once convinced of this, he dropped down, stealthily, and lay full length on the balcony flooring, with his ear close against the casement woodwork, listening. reasonably satisfied, he rose to his knees, and took from his vest pocket a small diamond ring. holding this firmly between his thumb and forefinger, he described a semi-circle on the heavy window-glass. he listened again, intently. then he took a small cold-chisel from still another pocket, and having cut away the putty at the base of the semicircle, smote the face of the glass one sharp little tap. it cracked neatly, along the line of the circling diamond-scratch, so that, with the help of a suction cap made from the back of a kid glove, he was able to draw out the loosened segment of glass. then he waited and listened still again. as he thrust in through the little opening a cautiously exploring hand the casual act seemed to take on the dignity of a long-considered ritual. it was a ceremonial moment to him, he felt, for it marked his transit, across some narrow moral divide, from lonely ascent to lonely decline. the impression stayed with him only a second. he turned back to his work, with a reckless little up-thrust of each resolute shoulder. his searching fingers found the old-fashioned window lever, of hammered brass, and on this he pressed down and back, quietly. a moment later the sash swung slowly out, and he was inside the room, closing the shutters and then the window after him. he stood there, in the dark quietness, for what must have been a full minute. then he took from his pocket a box of wax matches. he had purchased them for the purpose, from the frugal old woman who month by month and season by season carried on her quiet trade at the foot of the casino steps, catching, as it were, the tiny drippings from the flaring tapers in that temple of gold. and day after day, one turn of the roulette wheel took and gave more money than all her years of frugal trade might amass! taking one of the vestas, he struck a light, and holding it above his head, carefully examined the room, from side to side. then he tiptoed to a door, which stood ajar. this, he saw by a second match, was a sleeping-room; and the two rooms, obviously, made up the suite. a door, securely locked, opened from the sleeping-room into the outer hallway. the door which opened from the larger room was likewise locked, but to make assurance doubly sure durkin slid a second inside bolt, for already his quick eye had caught the gleam of its polished brass, just below the door-knob of the ordinary mortised lock. then, groping his way to the little switchboard, he touched a button, and the room was flooded with light. he first looked about, carefully but quickly, and then glanced at his watch. he had at least two hours in which to do his work. any time after that pobloff might return. and by midnight at least the prince's valet would be back from nice, to begin packing his master's boxes. he slipped into the bedroom, and took from the bed a blanket and comforter. these he draped above the hall door, to muffle any chance sound. then he turned to the northeast corner of the room, where stood what seemed to be a dressing cabinet, with little shelves and a plate-glass mirror above it. the lower part of it was covered by a polished rosewood door. one sharp twist and pry with his cold-chisel forced this flimsy outer door away from its lock. beneath it, thus lightly masked, stood the more formidable safe door itself. durkin drew in a sharp breath of relief as he looked at it with critical eyes. it was not quite the sort of thing he had expected. if it had been a combination lock he had intended to tear away the woodwork covering it, pad the floor with the bed mattress, and then pry it over on its face, to chisel away the cement that he knew would lie under its vulnerable sheet-iron bottom. but it was an ordinary, old-fashioned lock and key "mennlicher," durkin at the first glance had seen--the sort of strong box which a third avenue cigar seller, at home, would scarcely care to keep on his premises. yet this was the deposit vault for which hotel guests, such as prince ignace slevenski pobloff, paid ten francs a day extra. the sound of footsteps passing down the hallway caused the intruder to draw back and listen. he turned quickly, waited, and came to a quick, new decision. before doing so, however, he re-examined the room more critically. this prince ignace slevenski pobloff was, obviously, a man of taste. he was also a man of means--and durkin wondered if in that fact alone lay the reason why a certain young belgian adventuress had followed him from tangier to algeciras, and from algeciras to gibraltar, and from gibraltar still on to the riviera. she had, at any rate, not followed a scentless quarry. he was not the mere curled and perfumed impostor so common to that little principality of shams. even the garrulous young chicagoan, from whom durkin had secured his first casino tickets, was able to vouch for the fact that pobloff was a true _boyard_. he was also something or other in the imperial diplomatic service--just what it was durkin could not at the moment remember. but he nursed his own personal convictions as to the moral stability of this true _boyard_. he had quietly witnessed, at algeciras, the prince's adroit card "riffling" in the sun-parlors of the reina cristina, when the gouty ex-ambassador to persia had parted company with many cumbersome dollars. durkin's only course, in that time of adversity and humility, had been one of silence. but he had inwardly and adventurously resolved, if ever fate should bring him and the prince together under circumstances more untrammelled, he would not let pass a chance to balance up that ledger of princely venality. for here indeed was an adversary, durkin very well knew, who was worthy of any man's steel. so the intruder, opening and closing drawers as he went, glanced quickly but appreciatively at the highly emblazoned cards lying on the little red-leather-covered writing-table, at the litter of papers bearing the red and blue and gold of the triple-crowned double eagle, at the solid gold seal, at the row of splendid and regal-looking women in silver photograph holders, above the reading-desk, and a decanter or two of cut-glass. in one of the drawers of this desk he found an ivory-handled revolver, a toy-like thirty-two caliber hammerless, of english make. durkin glanced at it curiously, noticed that each chamber held its cartridge, turned it over in his hand, replaced it in the drawer, and after a moment's thought, took it out once more and slipped it into his hip pocket. then his rapidly roving eye took in the sable top-coat flung carelessly across the foot of the bed, the neat little heelless tunisian slippers beneath it, the glistening, military-looking boots, each carefully nursing its english shoe-tree, a highly embroidered smoking-cap, an ivory-handled shaving-set in its stamped morocco case, one razor for each day of the week, and the silver-mounted toilet bottles, so heavily chased. having, apparently, made careful mental note of the rooms, durkin once more turned back to the switchboard, and prying loose the fluted molding that concealed the lighting-wires, he scraped away the insulating tissue and severed the thread of copper with a sweep or two of his narrow file. he felt safer, in that enforced darkness, for the work which lay before him. the black gloom was punctuated by the occasional flare of a match, and the silence broken now and then, as he worked before the safe, by the metallic click and scrape of steel against steel, and by the muffled rasp and whine of his file against the wax-covered key which from time to time he fitted into the unyielding safe lock. as he filed and tested and refiled, with infinite care and patience, his preoccupied mind ranged vaguely along the channel of thought which the events of the last half-hour had opened up before him. he wondered why it was that fortune should so favor those who stood the least in need of her smile. for four nights during the last seven, he knew, the prince had won, and won heavily, both in the casino and in the club privé. yet, on the other hand, there was the little bulgarian princess with rooms just across the corridor from his own, and the rightful possessor of the plain little diamond with which he had just cut his way into this more sumptuous chamber. for a week past now, down at the casino, she had been losing steadily, as of course the vast and undirected majority always must lose. even her solitaire earrings had been taken to nice and pawned, durkin knew. three days before that, too, her maid--and who is ever anybody on the riviera without a maid?--had been reluctantly and woefully discharged. at the trente et quarante table, as well, durkin had watched the last thousand-franc note of the princess wither away. "and this, my dear, will mean another three months with my sweet old palsied duc de la houspignolle," she had laughingly yet bitterly exclaimed, in excellent english, to the impassive young oxford man who was then dogging her heels. she was a wit, and she had a beautiful hand, even though she was no better than the rest of monte carlo, ruminated the safe-breaker easily, as he squinted, under the flare of a match, at the ward indentations in his wax-covered key-flange. his thoughts went back, as he worked, to the timely yet unexpected scene at the stair-head, two hours before. there he had helped a slim young _femme de chambre_ support the princess to her room, that royal lady having done her best to drown her ill fortune in absinthe and american high-balls--which, he knew, was ever an impossible combination. she had collapsed at the head of the stairs, and as he had helped lift her he had first caught sight of the solitaire diamond on the limp and slender finger. this reactionary mood, in the face of the earlier more tragical hours of that day of wearing anxieties, was almost one of facetiousness. he seemed to revel in the memory of what, in time, he knew, would be humiliating to him. it was a puny little diamond ring, of but three or four carats' weight, he mused, and yet with it had come the actual, if not the moral, turn in the tide of all his restless activities. it marked the moment when life seemed to fall back to its older and darker areas; it was the first diminutive milestone on his new road of adventure. but he would return the ring, of that he stoutly reassured himself, for he still nursed his ironic sense of justice in the smaller things. yes, he would return the ring, he repeated, with his ever-recurring inapposite scrupulosity, for the young princess was a lady of fortune under an unlucky star, like himself. durkin smiled a little, over his wax-covered key, as he still filed and fitted and listened. then he gave vent to an almost inaudible "ah!" for the bit of the key made the complete circuit, at last, and the wards of the lock clicked back into place. he swung open the heavy iron door, cautiously, listened for a moment, and then struck another match. that pobloff might have the bank-notes with him was a contingency; that he would carry about with him two thousand napoleons was an absurdity. and durkin knew the money had not been deposited--to ascertain that had been part of his day's work. the prince, of course, was a prodigal and free-handed gentleman--how much of his winnings had already leaked through his careless fingers it was impossible to surmise. durkin even resented the thought of that extravagance--as though it were a personal and obvious injustice to himself. if it was all the fruit of blind chance, if it came thus unearned and accidental, why should he not have his share of it? already monte carlo had taught him the mad necessity for money. but now, of all times, it was necessary for him. one-half, one-quarter, of the sum which this careless-eyed slavic aristocrat had carried so jauntily away from the trente et quarante table would endow him with the means to come into his own once more. it was essential that he secure his sinews of war, even before he could continue his search for frank, or rescue her from the dangers that beset her, if she still wished for rescue. if he regretted the underground and underhand steps through which that money could alone come into his possession, he consoled his still protesting conscience with the claim that it was, after all, only a battle of wit against disinterested wit. for, self-delusively, he was beginning once more to regard all organized society and its ways as a mere inquisitorial process which the adventurous could ignore and the keen-witted could circumvent. warfare, such as his, must be a law unto itself! then he gave all his attention to the work before him, as he lifted from the safe, first a small steel despatch box, neatly initialed in gold, "i. s. p.," and then a packet of blue-tinted envelopes, held together by two rubber bands, and written on, here and there, in a language which the intruder assumed to be russian. next came a japanned-tin box, which proved to hold nothing but a file of quite unintelligible, seidlitz-powder-colored papers, and then what seemed, to durkin's exploring fingers, to be a few small morocco cases. the question flashed through his mind: what if, after all, the money he was looking for was not to be found! he struck still another match, with impatient hands. his first fever of audacity had burned itself out, and some indefinite cold reaction of disdain and disgust was setting in. stooping low, he peered into the safe once more. then he gave a little sigh of relief. for there, behind a row of books that looked like small ledgers or journals, he caught sight of a stout leather bag, tied with a corded silk rope. he dropped the burned-out end of the match, and, thrusting in an arm, lifted out the bag. as he placed it on the floor the muffled click of metal smote on his ear. he wiped the sweat from his forehead, with a sense of relief. he had risked too much to go away empty-handed. he tore at the carefully knotted cord, first with his fingers and then with his teeth. it was not so heavy as he had hoped it might be. on more collected second thoughts, indeed, it was woefully light. but the knot defied his efforts. he took out a second match, and was on the point of striking it. instead of doing so, he stood suddenly erect, and then backed noiselessly into the remotest corner of the room. for a key had been thrust into the lock of the anteroom door, and already the handle was being slowly turned back. durkin's breath quickened and shortened, and his hand swung back to his hip pocket. then he waited, with his revolver in his hand. he counted and weighed his chances, quickly, one by one, as he stood there, in the black silence. he caught the diffused glimmer of the reflected light from the outer room as the door opened and closed, sharply. but the momentary half-light did not give him a glimpse of who or what was before him, for in a second all was blackness again. his first uneasy thought was that it was a very artful move. he and that other were alone there, in the utter darkness. neither, now, would have the advantage. he had been a fool to leave one of the doors without its double lock, of some sort. he had once been told that it was always through the more trivial contingency that the criminal was ultimately trapped. he strained his ears, and listened. he could hear nothing. yet he was positive that he could feel some approaching presence. it may have been a minute vibration of flooring; it may have been through the operation of some occult sixth sense. but he was sure of that mysterious other, coming closer and closer to him. suddenly something seemed to stir and move in the darkness. he crouched, with every nerve and muscle ready, and a moment later he would have relieved the tension with some sort of cry, had he not realized that it was the wooden swiss clock above the cabinet, beginning to strike the hour. the sound came to an end, and durkin was assuring himself that it could now be neither pobloff nor the valet, when a second sound sent a tingle of apprehension through his frame. it was the blue spurt of a match that suddenly cut the blackness before him. the fool--he was striking a light! durkin crouched lower, and watched the flame as it grew on the darkness. the direct glare of it made him blink a little, but he swung his revolver barrel just above it, and a little to the right. he was more confident now, and quite collected. however it all turned out, it could not be much worse than starving to death, unknown and alone in some public square of monaco. as the tiny luminous circle flowered into wider flame the match was held higher. durkin could see the rose-like glow between the phalanges of the fingers shielding the light. then, of a sudden, a face grew out of the blackness, a white face shadowed by a plumed hat. it was a woman's face. durkin lowered his revolver, slowly, inch by inch. it was his wife who stood there in the darkness, not six paces away from him. "_you_!" he gasped involuntarily, incredibly. sheer wonder survived his instinctive recoil. it was the bolt, striking twice in the same spot. the two white faces looked at each other, gaped at each other, insanely. he could see her breath come and go, shortly, and the deathly pallor of her face, and the relaxed lower jaw that had fallen a little away from the drooping upper lip. but she neither moved nor spoke. the match burned to her finger-ends, and fell to the floor. darkness enveloped them again. "you!" he repeatedly vacuously. the blackness and the silence seemed to blanket and smother him, like something tangible to the touch. he took three steps toward where she still stood motionless, and in an agonized whisper cried out to her: "_my god, frank, what is it_?" chapter vi the woman speaks "ssssh!" said the woman under her breath, as she clutched durkin's arm. he shook her hand off, impatiently, although the act seemed at cross-purposes with his own will. "but you--here!" he still gasped. "oh, jim!" she half-moaned, inadequately. yet an _aura_ of calmness seemed to surround her. so great was his own excitement that the words burst from him of their own will, apparently, and sounded like the utterance of a voice not his own. "what's it mean! how'd you get here?" he could hear her shuddering, indrawn sigh. "what, in the name of heaven, do _you_ want in here? why don't you speak?" there was a moment of unbroken silence. for the first time it seemed to come home to him that this woman who confronted him was his own wife, in the flesh and blood. "what are _you_ doing here?" she demanded at last. he responded, even in his mood of hot antagonism, to some note of ever-sustained appeal about her. even through the black gloom that blanketed and blinded him some phantasmal and sub-conscious medium, like the imaginary circuit of a multiplex telegraph system, seemed to carry to his mind some secondary message, some thought that she herself had not uttered. she, too, was suffering, but she had not shown it, for such was her way, he remembered. a wave of sympathy obliterated his resentment. he caught her in his arms, hungrily, and kissed her abandonedly. he noticed that her skin was cold and moist. "oh, jim," she murmured again, weakly. "it's so long, isn't it?" then she added, with a little catch of the breath, as though even that momentary embrace were a joy too costly to be countenanced, "turn on the lights, quick!" "i can't," he told her. "i've cut the wires." he felt at her blindly, through the muffling blackness. she was shaking a little now, on his arm. it bewildered him to think how his hunger for her could still obliterate all consciousness of time and place. "why didn't you write?" she pleaded pitifully. "i did write--a dozen times. then i telegraphed!" "not a word came!" she cried. "then i wrote twice to london!" "and _those_ never came. oh, everything was against me!" she moaned. "but how did you get here?" he still demanded. she did not answer his question. instead, she asked him: "where did you send the paris letters?" "to 11 bis avenue beaucourt." she groaned a little, impatiently. "that was foolish--i wrote you that i was leaving there--that i _had_ to go!" "not a line reached me!" he heard her little gasp of despair before she spoke. "i was put out of there," she went on, hurriedly and evenly, yet with a _vibrata_ of passion in her crowded utterance. "there wasn't a penny left--the pupils i had gave up their lessons. what they had heard or found out i don't know. then i got a tiny room in the rue de sèvres. i sold my last thing, then our wedding ring, even, to get it." "and then what?" "i still waited--i thought you would know, or find out, and that in some way or other i should still hear from you. i would have gone to the police, or advertised, but i knew it wouldn't be safe." once more the embittering consciousness of some dark coalition of forces against them swept over him. fate, at every step, had frustrated them. "i advertised twice, in the herald?" "where would i see the herald?" "but you must have known i was trying to find you--that i was doing everything possible!" "i knew nothing," she answered, in her poignantly emotionless voice. and the thought swept through durkin that something within her had withered and died during those last grim weeks of suffering. "but here--how did you get here--and what's this lady boxspur business?" he still insisted. "yes, yes," she almost moaned, "if you'll only wait i'll tell you. but is it safe to stay here? have you thought where we are?" "yes; it's safe, quite safe, for an hour yet." "why didn't you send me money, or help me?" she asked, in her dead and unhappy monotone. "i did, eighty francs, all i had. i hadn't a penny left. i didn't know the damned language. i prowled about like a cat in a strange garret, but i tried everything, from the american consul at nice to a _herald_ correspondent at san remo. then i got word of a consumptive young writer from new york, at mentone--but he died the day i was to meet him. then i heard of the new marconi station up the coast, and worked at wireless for two weeks, and made twenty dollars, before they sacked me for not being able to send a message out to a messina fruit-steamer, in italian. then i chanced on the job of doctoring up a generator on an american yacht down here in the bay." "yes, yes--i know how hard it is!" "but listen! when i was on board at work i overheard a supreme court judge and a special agent from the central office in new york and two english detectives talking over the loss of certain securities. and those securities belong to richard penfield!" he knew that she had started, at the sound of that name. "penfield!" she gasped. "what of him?" "when the district-attorney's men raided penfield's new york gambling club, one of penfield's new men got away with all his papers. they had been withdrawn from the fifth avenue safe deposit company, for they were mostly cheques and negotiable securities, worth about two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. but beyond all their face value, they constituted _prima facie_ evidence against the gambler." "but what's all this to us, now?" "they were smuggled to new jersey. there the jersey city chief of police took action, and this agent of penfield's carried the documents across the north river and up to stamford. from there he got back to new york again, by night, where he met a second agent, who had secured passage on the _slavonia_ for naples. the first man is macnutt." "macnutt!" ejaculated the listening woman. "yes, macnutt! he compromised with penfield and swung in with him when the district-attorney started pounding at them both. the second man is a lawyer named keenan, who was disbarred for conspiracy in the brayton divorce case. keenan and his papers are due at genoa on friday. i found some of this out on board the yacht. i thought it over--and it was the only way open for me. i couldn't stand out against it all, any longer. i thought i could make the plunge, without your ever knowing it--and perhaps get enough to keep you out of any more messes like this!" "you had given me up?" she cried, reprovingly. "no--no--no--i'd only given up waiting for chances to _find you_. my god, don't you suppose i knew you needed me!" "it would have been too late!" she said, in her dead voice. "it's too late, already!" "then you don't care?" he demanded, almost brokenly. "i'll never complain, or whine, again!" she answered with dreary listlessness. "then why _are_ you in this room?" "_i mean that i've given up myself_. i'm in it, now, as deep as you! i couldn't fight it back any longer--it _had_ to come!" "but why, and how! why don't you explain?" he could feel her groping away from him in the darkness. "wait," she whispered. "but why should i wait?" he demanded. "listen! that second room door is still unlocked, and there's danger enough here, without inviting it." he groped after her into the bedroom. he could hear the gentle scrape of the key and the muffled sound of the lock as she turned it, followed by the cautious slide of the brass bolt, lower on the door. he waited for her, standing at the foot of the bed. he could hear her sigh of weariness as she sat down on the edge of the disordered mattress. then, remembering that he had cut the wires of only the larger room, he felt his way to the button at the head of the bed. he snapped the current open and instantly the blinding white light flooded the chamber. "_is_ it safe here, any longer?" she asked restlessly, pausing a moment to accustom her eyes to the light, and then gazing up at him with an impersonal studiousness of stare that seemed to wall and bar her off from him. still again he was oppressed by some sense of alienation, of looming tragedy between them. she, too, must have known some shadow of that feeling, for he saw the look of troubled concern, of unspoken pity, that crept over her face; and he turned away brusquely. she spoke his name, quietly; and his gaze coasted round to her again. she watched him with wide and hungry eyes. her breast heaved, at his silence, but all she said was: "is it safe, jim?" "yes, it's perfectly safe. so tell me what you have to say. it doesn't mean any greater risk. we would only have to come back again--for i've work to do in this room yet!" the return of the light seemed to give a new cast of practicality to his thoughts. "what sort of work?" his wife was asking him. "seventeen hundred napoleons in gold to find," he answered grimly. "oh, it's not that, not _that_!" she said, starting up. "it's the papers, the gibraltar papers!" "papers?" he repeated wonderingly. "yes, the imperial specifications. pobloff's a paid agent in the french secret service. they say he was the man who secured kitchener's afghanistan frontier plans, and in some way or other had a good deal to do with the curzon resignation." "ah, i _thought_ there was something behind our _boyard_!" "a year ago last march he was arrested in jamaica, by the british authorities, for securing secret photographs of the port royal fortifications. they court-martialed one of the non-commissioned officers for helping him get an admission to the fortress, but the officer shot himself, and pobloff had the plates spirited away, so the case fell through. now he's got duplicates of every upper gallery and every new fortification of the rock at gibraltar." "but why waste time over these things?" "pobloff got them through an english officer's wife. she was weak--and worse--she lost her head over him. i can't tell you more now. but there is an order for five hundred pounds waiting for me at the british embassy, in rome, from the foreign office, if i secure those papers!" "that's twenty-five hundred dollars?" "yes, almost." "and i was on the point of crawling away with a few napoleons!" said durkin in a whisper. he began to succumb to the intoxication of this rapidity of movement which life was once more taking on. he was speed-mad, like a motorist on a white and lonely road. yet an ever-recurring dismay and distrust of the end kept coming to him. "but how did you come to find all this out? what happened after the rue de sèvres?" "oh, it was all easy and natural enough, if i could only put it into words. after a few days, when i was hungry and sick, i went to one of the english hotels. i would have taken anything, even a servant's work, i believe." he cursed himself to think that it was through him that she had come to such things. "but i was lucky," she went on, hurriedly. "one afternoon i stumbled on a weeping lady's maid, on the verge of hysterics, who found enough confidence in me, in time, to tell me that her mistress had gone mad in her room and was clawing down the wallpaper and talking about killing herself. it was true enough, in a way, i soon found out, for it was an english noblewoman who had fought with her husband two weeks before in london, and had run away to paris. what she had dipped into, and gone through, and suffered, i could only guess; but i know this: that that afternoon she had drunk half a pint of raw alcohol when the frightened maid had locked her in the bath-room. so i pushed in and took charge. first i wired to the woman's husband, lord boxspur, who sent me money, at once, and an order to bring her home as quietly as possible. he met us at calais. it was a terrible ordeal for me, all through, for she tried to jump overboard, in the channel, and was so insane, so hopelessly insane, that a week after we reached london she was committed to some sort of private asylum." "and then?" asked durkin. "then boxspur thought that possibly i knew too much for his personal comfort. i rather think he looked on me as dangerous. he put me off and put me off, until i was glad to snatch at a position in a next-of-kin agency. but in a fortnight or two i was even more glad to leave it. then i went back to lord boxspur, who this time sent me helter-skelter back to paris, to bribe a blackmailing newspaper woman from giving the details of his wife's misfortunes to the continental correspondent of a london weekly. but even when that was done, and i had been duly paid for my work, i was only secure for a few weeks, at the outside. all along i kept writing for you, frantically. so, when things began to get hopeless again, i went to the british embassy. i had to lie, terribly, i'm afraid, before i could get an audience, first with an under secretary, and then with the ambassador himself. he said that he regretted he could do nothing for me, at least, officially. he looked at my clothes, and laughed a little, and said that of course, in cases of absolute destitution he sometimes felt compelled to come to the help of his fellow-countrymen. i told him that i knew the world, and was willing to undertake work of any sort. he answered that such cases were usually looked after at the consulate, and advised me to go there. but i didn't give him up, at once. i told him i was resourceful, and experienced, and might undertake even minor official tasks for him, until i had heard from my husband. then he hesitated a little, and asked me if i knew the continent well, and if i was averse to traveling alone. then he called somebody up on his telephone, and in a few minutes came out and shook his head doubtfully, and advised me to apply at the consulate. instead of that, i went not to the english, but to the american consul first. he told me that in five weeks a sea-captain friend of his was sailing from havre to new york, and that it might not be impossible to have me carried along." "that's what they always say!" "it was the best he could do. then i went to the british consul. he spoke about references, which left me blank; and tried to pump me, which left me frightened. but he could do nothing, he told me, except in the way of a personal donation, and that, he assumed, was out of the question. so i went back to the embassy once more. i don't know why, but this time, for some reason or other, the ambassador believed in me. he gave me a week's trial as a sort of second deputy private secretary, indexing three-year-old correspondence and copying roumanian agricultural reports. then he put me on ordinance-report work. then something happened--i can't go into details now--to arouse my suspicions. i rummaged through the storage closet in my temporary office and looped his telephone wire with twenty feet of number twelve wire from a broken electric fan, and an unused transmitter. then, scrap by scrap, i picked up my first inklings of what was at that moment worrying the foreign office and the people at the embassy as well. it was the capture of the gibraltar specifications by prince slevenski pobloff. when a foreign office secret agent telephoned in that pobloff had been seen in nice, i fought against the temptation for half a day, then i went straight to the ambassador and told him what i knew, but not how i came to know it. he gave me two hundred francs and a ticket to monte carlo, with a letter to deliver in rome, if by any chance i should succeed." "that would give us the show we want! _that_ would give us a chance!" she did not understand him. "a chance for what?" chapter vii our friend the enemy durkin was pacing up and down the small room in his stockinged feet, looking at her, from time to time, with a detached, but ever studiously alert glance. then he came to a stop, and confronted her. the memory of the night before, in the promenade, with the sudden glimpse of her profile against the floating automobile curtain, came back to his mind, with a stab of pain. "but what has all this to do with lady boxspur?" he suddenly demanded, wondering how long he should be able to have faith in that inner, unshaken integrity of hers which had passed through so many trials and survived so many calamities. but she hurried on, as though unconscious of both his tone and his attitude. "that has more to do with the next-of-kin agency. i left it out, of course, but if you _must_ know it now, and here, i can tell you in a word or two." "one naturally wants to know when one's wife ascends into the aristocracy!" "and a mercedes touring car as well! but, oh, jim, surely you and i don't need to go back to all that sort of thing, at this stage of the game," she retorted wearily. she felt wounded, weighed down with a perverse sense of injury at his treatment, of injustice at his coldness, even in the face of the incongruous circumstances under which they had met. but she went on speaking, resolutely, as though to purge her soul, for all time, of explanation and excuse. "that next-of-kin agency was a dingy little office up two dingy stairs in chancery lane. for a few days their work seemed bearable enough, though it hurt me to see that all their income was being squeezed out of miserably poor people--always the miserably poor, the submerged souls with romantic dreams of impending good fortune, which, of course, always just escaped them. that, i could endure. but when i found that the agency was branching out, and was actually trying to present me for inspection as a titled heiress, in sore need of a secret and immediate marriage, i revolted, at once. then they calmly proposed that i embark for america, as some sort of bogus countess--and while they were still talking and debating over what mild and strictly limited extravagances they would stand for, and just what expenses they would allow, i bolted! but their scheming and plotting had given me the hint, for i knew, if the worst came to the worst, i would not be altogether under the thumb of lord boxspur. so when i came south from paris i simply assumed the title--it simplified so many things. it both gave me opportunities and protected me. if, to gain my ends and to reconnoitre my territory, i became the occasional guest--remember, jim, the most discreet and guarded guest!--of count anton szapary--who carried a hundred thousand crowns away from the vienna jockey club a month or two ago--you must simply try to make the end justify the means. i was still trying to get in touch with you. one of his automobiles was always politely placed at my disposal. it was a chance, well, scarcely to be missed. for, you see, it was my intention to meet his highness, the prince ignace slevenski pobloff, under slightly different circumstances than would prevail if he and his valet should quietly step through that door at the present moment!" she laughed, a little bitterly, with a reckless shrug of the shoulders. durkin, nettled by the sound of tragedy in her voice, did not like the sound of that laugh. then, as he looked at her more critically, he saw that she was white and worn and tired. but it was the words over which she had laughed which sent him abruptly hurrying into the next room with a lighted match, to read the hour from the little swiss clock above the cabinet. "if we're after anything here we've got to get it!" he said, with conscious roughness. "it's later than i thought." "very well," she answered, quietly enough. then she turned to him, as he waited with his hand on the bedroom light-button, before switching it off. "you need never be afraid that i will bother you with any more of my hesitations, and scruples, and half-timid qualms, as i once did. all that is over and done with. i feel, now, that we're both in this sort of work from necessity, and not by accident. it has gripped and engulfed us, now, for good." he raised a hand to stop her, stung to the quick by the misery and bitterness of her voice, still asking himself if it was not only the bitter cry of love for some neglectful love's reply. but she swept on, abandonedly. "there's no use quibbling and fighting against it. we've got to keep at it, and wring out of it what we can, and always go back to it, and bend to it, and still keep at it, to the bitter end!" "frank, you mustn't say this!" he cried. "but it's truth, pure truth. we're only going to live once. if we can't be happy without doing the things we ought not to do--then we'll simply _have to be criminals_. but i want my share of the joy of living--i want my happiness! i want _you_! i lost you once, and almost forever, by hoping it could be the other way--but it's too late!" "frank!" he pleaded. "i want you to see where we are," she said, with slow and terrible solemnity. "if i am to be saved from it, now, or ever again, _you_ must do it--_you--you_!" she drew herself together, with a little shiver. "come," she said, "we've got our work to do!" he looked at her white face for one moment, in silence, bewildered, and then he snapped shut the button. "we had better look through the safe at once," she went on apathetically. something in her tone, if not her words themselves, as she had spoken, sent a wave of what was more than startled misery through her husband. he once more felt, although he felt it vaguely, the note of impending tragedy which she was so premonitarily sounding. it brought to him a dim and hurried vision of that far-off but inevitable catastrophe which lay, somewhere, at the end of the road they were traveling. their only hope and solace, it seemed to him, must thereafter lie in feverish and sustained activity. they must lose themselves in the dash and whirl of daring moments. and it was not from pleasure or from choice, now; it was to live. they must act or perish; they must plot and counterplot, or be submerged. yet he would do what he could to save himself, as she, in turn, must do what she could for herself--if they came to the end of their rope. a minute later they were bending together over the contents of the dismantled safe. he was striking matches. by this time they were both on their knees. "you run through these papers, while i see what can be done with the despatch box," he whispered to her. then he put the little package of vestas between them, so they might work by their own light. from time to time the soft spurt of the lighting match broke the silence, as frank hurriedly ran her eye over the different packets, and as hurriedly flung them back into the safe. it was a relief to durkin to think that he at least had someone beside him who could read french. busy as he was, he incongruously recalled to his mind how he once used to study the little printed announcements in his hotel rooms, wondering, ruefully, if the delphic text meant that lights and fires were extra, and if baths must be paid for, and vainly trying to discover what his last basket of wood might cost. yes, he told himself, he was a hunter out of his domain. he would always feel intimidated and insecure in this land of aliens and unknowns. he even sympathetically wondered who it was that had said: "foreigners are fools!" then a sudden, irrational, inconsequential sense of gratitude took possession of him, as he felt and heard the woman at work so close beside him. there was a feeling of companionship about it that made the double risk worth while. "there's nothing here!" frank was saying, under her breath. "then it _must_ be the box!" he told her. durkin knew it was already too late to file and fit a skeleton key. his first impulse was to bury the box under a muffling pile of bedding and send a bullet or two through the lock. but his wandering eye caught sight of a morocco sheath-knife above them on the wall, and a moment later he had the point of it under the steel-bound lid, and as he pried it flew open with a snap. he waited, listening, and lighting matches, while frank went through the papers, with nervous and agile fingers, mumbling the inscriptions as she hurriedly read and cast them away from her. "i thought so!" she said at last, crisply. the packet held half a dozen blueprints, together with some twelve or fourteen sheets of plans and specifications, on tinted "flimsy." durkin noticed they were drawn up in red and black ink, and that at the bottom of each document were paragraphs of finely-penned, scholarly-looking writing. one glance was enough for them both. frank refolded them and caught them together with a rubber band. then she thrust them into the bosom of her dress. both rose to their feet, for both were filled with the selfsame sudden passion to get into the open once more. "that must go back, now!" whispered frank, for durkin was stooping down again, over the leather bag that held the napoleons. "thank heaven," he answered gratefully, "it's not _that_!" "not _yet_!" she whispered back, bitterly, as she heard the chink and rattle of metal in the darkness. but some day it might be. then she heard another sound, which caused her to catch quickly at durkin's arm. it was the sound of a key turning in the lock, followed by an impatient little french oath, and the weight of a man's body against the resisting door. then the oath was repeated, and a second key was turned, this time in the nearer door. "it's pobloff!" she whispered. she had felt the almost galvanic, precautionary response of durkin's body; now she could hear his whispered ejaculation as he clutched at her and thrust her back. "_you_ must get away, quick, whatever happens," he said hurriedly. there was a second tremor and rattle of the door; it might come in at any moment. "don't think of me," she whispered. "it's _you_!" "but, my god, how'll you get out of this?" he demanded, in a quick whisper. he was trying to force her back into the little anteroom. "no, no; don't!" she answered him. "i can manage it--more easily than you!" "but how?" he was still crowding and elbowing her back, as though mere retreat meant more assured safety. "no, _no_!" she expostulated, under her breath. "i can shift for myself. it's _you_--you must get away!" she was forcing the packet from her bosom into his hands. "take care of these, quick! now here's the window ready. oh, jim, get away while you've got the chance!" "i can't do it!" he protested. "you _must_, i tell you. i wouldn't lie to you! on my honor, i promise you i'll come out of this room, unharmed and free! but quick, or we'll both lose!" even in that moment of peril the thought that she was still ready to face this much for him filled his shaken body with a glow that was more keenly exhilarating than wine itself. there was no time for words or demonstration: the action carried its own eloquence. he was already halfway through the opened window, but he turned back. "do you care, then?" he panted. he could hear the quick catch of her breath. "good or bad, i love you, jim! you know that! now, hurry, oh, hurry!" he caught her hand in his--that was all there was time for--while with his free hand durkin thrust the packet down into his pocket. "if it turns out wrong--i mean if anything should happen to me, go straight to the embassy with them, in rome. good-bye!" "ah, then you _do_ expect danger!" he retorted, already back at the window again. "no--no!" she whispered, resolutely, barring his ingress. "hurry! good-bye!" "good-bye," he whispered, as he slipped down on his hands and knees and crawled along the balcony, like a cat, through the darkness. then the woman closed the window, and waited. chapter viii "foreigners are fools" frances durkin, as she turned back into the darkness of the room, desperately schooled herself to calmness. she warned herself that, above all, she must remain clear-headed and collected, and act coolly and decisively, when the moment for action arrived. but as the seconds slipped by, and the silence remained unbroken, a shred of forlorn hope came back to her. each moment meant more assured safety to her husband--he, at least, was getting away unscathed and unsuspected. and that left her almost satisfied. she still waited and listened. perhaps, after all, the prince had taken his departure. perhaps he had gone back to the _portier's_ office, for explanations. perhaps it had not even been pobloff--merely a drunken stranger, mistaken in his room number, or servants with a message or with linen. she groped softly across the room, until she came to the door. she found it draped and covered with a heavy blanket. holding this back, she slipped under it, and peered through the keyhole into the illuminated hallway. there seemed to be nobody outside. "it is a rule of the game, i believe, never to shoot the rabbit until it is on the run!" the words, spoken in excellent english, and barbed with a touch of angry cynicism, smote on her startled ears like an alpine thunderclap. she emerged from under the blanket, slowly, ignominiously, ashamed of even her peeping-tom abandonment of dignity. as she did so she saw herself being looked at with keen but placid eyes. the owner of the eyes in one hand held a lighted bedroom lamp. in his other hand he held a flat, short-barreled pocket revolver, of burnished gun-metal, and she could see the lamplight glimmer along its side as it menaced her. she did not gasp--nor did she shrink away, for with her the situation was not so novel as her antagonist might have imagined. indeed, as she gazed back at him, motionless, she saw the look of increasing wonder which crept, almost involuntarily, over his white, lean, slavic-looking face. frances durkin knew it was pobloff. he was tall, exceptionally tall, and she noticed that he carried off his faultlessness of attire with that stiff but tranquil _hauteur_ which seems to come only with a military training. the forehead was high and white and prominent, with oddly marked depressions, now thrown into shadow by the lamp light, above and behind the highly-arched eyebrows, on each extremity of the frontal bone. the nose was long and narrow-bridged, and the face itself was unusually long and narrow, and now quite colorless. this gave a darker hue to the thin mustache and the trim imperial, through which she caught a glint of white teeth, in what seemed half a smile and half a snarl. the hair was parted almost in the centre, a little to the right, and but for the pebbled shadows about the sunken, yet still bright eyes, he would be called a youthful-looking man. she understood why women would always speak of him as a handsome man. "i am sorry, but i was compelled to force the bolt," he said, slowly, with his enigmatic smile. she still looked at him in silence, from under lowered brows. her fingers were locking and unlocking nervously. "and to what do i owe this visit?" he demanded mockingly. he was quite close to her by this time. she took a step backward. she could even smell brandy on his breath. "your english is admirable!" she answered, as mockingly. "as your energy!" he retorted, taking a step nearer the still open door. then he looked about the room, slowly and comprehensively. on his face, in the strong sidelight, she could see mirrored each fresh discovery, as step by step he covered the course of the completed invasion. she followed his gaze, which now rested on the rifled safe. a little oath, in russian, suddenly escaped his lips. then he turned and strode into the anteroom, and she could hear him making fast and locking the outer hall door. then he withdrew the key, and came back to her. "i must still regard you, of course, as my guest," he said slowly, with his easy menace. "you europeans always give us lessons in the older virtues!" she retorted, as mockingly as before, in her soft contralto. he looked at her, for a moment, in puzzled wonder. then he held the lamp closer to her face. he nursed no illusions about women. frances durkin knew that for years now he had made them his tools and his accomplices, never his dictators and masters. but as he looked into the pale face, with the shadowy, almost luminous violet eyes, and the soft droop of the full red lips, and the still girlish tenderness of line about the brow and chin, and then at the betraying fulness of throat and bosom, the mockery died out of his smile. it was supplanted by a look more ominously purposeful, more grimly determined. "what, madam, did you come here for?" he demanded. she shrugged an apparently careless shoulder. "his highness, the prince ignace slevenski pobloff, has always been the recipient of much flattering attention!" she found it still safest to mock him. "we have had enough of this! what is it? money? or jewelry?" she spurned the leather bag on the floor with the toe of her shoe. he could hear the clink and rattle of the napoleons that followed the movement. he started suddenly forward and bent over the broken despatch box. his long white fingers were running dexterously through the once orderly little packets. "_or something more important_?" he went on, as he came to the end of his stock. then he gave a little half-cry, half-gasp; and from the look on his face the woman saw that he realized what was missing. he peered at her, with alert and narrow eyes, for a full minute of unbroken silence. then, with a little movement of finality, he turned away and put down the lamp. "i regret it, but i must ask you for this--this document, without equivocation and without delay." she opened her lips to speak, but he cut in before any sound fell from them. "let there be no misunderstanding between us. i know precisely what you have taken; and it will be in my hands _before you ever leave this room_!" she had a sense of destiny shaping itself before her, while she stood a helpless and disinterested spectator of the vague but implacable transformation which, in the end, must in one way or the other so vitally concern her. "i have nothing," she answered simply. he waved her protest aside. "madam, have you thought, or do you now know, what the cost of this will be to you?" he was towering over her now. she was wondering whether or not there was a ghost of a chance for her to snatch at his pistol. "i can pay only what i owe," she maintained evasively. he looked at her, and then at the locked door. his face took on a sudden and crafty change. the rage and anger ebbed out of him. he placed the lamp on the dressing-table of polished rosewood. then his lean, white fingers meditatively adjusted his tie, and even more meditatively stroked at the narrow black imperial, before he spoke again. "what greater crown may one hope for, in any activity of life, than a beautiful woman?" he asked quietly. there was a moment of unbroken silence. for the first time a touch of fear came to her shadowy eyes, and they were veiled by a momentary look of furtiveness. "what do you mean?" "i mean, madam, simply that you will now remain with me!" "that is absurd!" she noticed, for the first time, that he had put away his revolver. "it is not absurd; it is essential. permit me. in my native country we have a secret order which i need not name. if the secrets of this order came to be known by an individual not already a member, one of two things happened. he either became a member of the order, or he became a man who--who could impart no information!" "and that means----?" "it means, practically, that from this hour you are, either willing or unwilling, a partner in my activities, as you now are in my possession of certain papers. pardon me. the penalty may seem heavy, but the case, you will understand, is exceptional. also, the nature of your visit, and the thoroughness of your preparations"--he swept the dismantled room with his grim but mocking glance--"have already convinced me that the partnership will not be an impossible one." "but i repeat, this is theatrical, and absurd. you cannot possibly keep me a--a prisoner here, forever!" he looked at her, and suddenly she shrank back from his glance, white to the lips. "you will not be a prisoner!" "i am quite aware of that!" "you will not be a prisoner, for then you would not be a partner. the coalition between us must be as silent as it is essential. but first, permit me!" she still shrank back from his touch, consumed with a new and unlooked-for fear of him. and all the while she was telling herself that she must remain calm, and make no mistake. the remembrance came to her, as she stood there, of how she had once thought it possible to approach him in a more indirect and adroit fashion, as the wayward and life-loving lady boxspur. she shuddered a little, as she recalled that foolish mistake, and pictured the perils into which it might have led her. she could detect more clearly now the odor of brandy on his quickening breath. his face, death-like in its pallor, flashed before and above her like a semaphoric sign of imminent danger. action of some sort, however obvious, was necessary. "i want a drink," she gasped, with a movement toward the cabinet. he turned and caught up the heavy glass brandy-decanter, emitting a nervous and irresponsible laugh. in one hand he held the decanter, in the other the half-filled tumbler. that, at least, implied an appreciable space of time before those hands could be freed. in that, she felt, lay her hope. quicker than thought she darted to the door over which still swung the shrouding blanket. she knew the key had already been turned in the lock, from the outside; the only thing between her and the freedom of the open hall was one small bolt shaft. but before she could open the door pobloff, with a little grunt of startled rage, was upon her. she fought and scratched like a cat. the blanket tumbled down and curtained them, the plumed hat fell from the woman's disheveled head, a chair was overturned. but he was too strong and too quick for her. with one lithe arm he pinioned her two hands close down to her sides, crushing the very breath out of her body. with his other he beat off the muffling blanket, and dragged her away from the door. then he shook her, passionately, and held her off from him, and glared at her. one year earlier in her career she knew she would surely have fainted from terror and exhaustion. even as it was, she seemed about to school herself for some relieving and final surrender to the inevitable, only, her vacantly staring eyes, looking past him, by accident caught sight of a little movement which brought her drooping courage into life again. for she had seen the window-shutter slowly widen, and then a cautious hand appear on the ledge. she watched the shutter swing in, further and further, and then the stealthy figure, with its padded feet, emerge out of the darkness into the half-lighted room. she could even see the pallor of the intruder's face, and his quick movement of warning that reminded her of the part she must play. "i give up!" she gasped, in simulated surrender, falling and drooping with all her weight in pobloff's arms. he caught her and held her, bewildered, triumphant. "you mean it?" he cried, searching her face. "yes, i mean it!" she murmured. then she shuddered a little, involuntarily, for she had seen durkin catch up one of his shoes, hammer-like, where it protruded from the side pocket of his coat--and she knew only too well how he would make use of it. as pobloff bent over her, unwarned, unsuspecting, almost wondering for what she was waiting with such confidently closed eyes, durkin crossed the carpeted floor. it was then that the woman flung up her own arms and encircled the stooping russian in a fierce and passionate grasp. he laughed a little, deep in his throat. she told herself that she was at least imprisoning his hands. durkin's blow caught the bending figure just at the base of the skull, behind the ear. the impact whipped the head back, and sent the relaxing body forward and down. it struck the floor, and lay there, huddled, face down. the woman scrambled to her feet, breathing hard. "close the shutters!" said durkin quickly. then he turned the unconscious man over on his back. then he caught up a couple of towels and securely tied, first the inert wrists and then the feet. quickly knotting a third towel, he wedged and drilled a sharp knuckle joint into the flesh of the colorless cheek, between the upper and lower incisors. when the jaw had opened he thrust the knot into the gaping mouth, securely tying the ends of the towel at the back of the neck. "have you everything?" whispered frank, who had once more pinned on the plumed hat, and was already listening at the panel of the hall door. there was no time to be lost in talk. "yes, i think so." "your baggage?" "my baggage will have to be left, but, god knows, there's little enough of it!" he wiped his forehead, and looked down at the bound figure, already showing signs of returning consciousness. they heard laughter, and the sound of footsteps passing down the hall without. durkin stood beside his wife, and they listened together behind the closed door. "not for a minute--not yet," he whispered. then he looked at her curiously. "i wonder if you know just what a close call that was!" "yes, i know," she said, with her ear against the panel. he peered back at the figure, and took a deep breath. "and this is only an intermission--this is only an overture, to what we may have to face! now's our chance. for the love of heaven, let's get out of here. we've got hard work ahead of us, at genoa--and we've got only till friday to get there!" he did not notice her look, her momentary look of mingled reproof and weariness and disdain. "now, quick!" she merely said, as she flung the door open and stepped out into the hall. luckily, it was empty, from end to end. durkin, with assumed nonchalance, walked quietly away. she waited to turn the key in the door, and withdrew it from the lock. then she followed her husband down the corridor, and a minute or two later rejoined him in the fragrant and balmy midnight air of monaco. chapter ix the lark in the ruins it was not until frances durkin and her husband were installed in an empty first-class compartment, twining and curling and speeding on their way to genoa, that even a comparative sense of safety came to them. it was durkin's suggestion that it might not be amiss for them to give the impression of being a newly-married couple, on their honeymoon journey; and, to this end, he had half-filled the compartment with daffodils and jonquils, with carnations and violets and roses, purchased with one turn of the hand from a midnight flower-vender, on his way down from the hills for any early morning traffic that might offer. so as they sped toward the italian frontier, in the white and mellow mediterranean moonlight, threading their way between the tranquil violet sea bejeweled with guardian lights and the steep and silent slopes of the huddled mountains, they lounged back on their hired train-pillows, self-immured, and unperturbed, and quietly contented with themselves and their surroundings. at least, so it seemed to the eyes of each scrutinizing guard and official, who, after one sharp glance at the flower-filled compartment and the crooning young english lovers, passed on with a laugh and a shrug or two. yet, at heart, durkin and frank were anything but happy. as they sped on, and his wife pointed out to him that the selfsame road they were taking between confining rock and sea was the same narrow passage, so time-worn and war-scarred, once taken by greeks and ligurians, romans and saracens, it seemed to durkin that his first fine estimate of the life of war and adventure had been a false one. his old besetting doubts and scruples began to awake. it was true that the life they had plunged into would have its dash and whirl. but it would be the dash of a moment, and the whirl of a second. then, as it always must be, there would come the long interval of flight and concealment, the wearying stretch of inactivity. he felt, as he gazed out the car window and saw town and village and hamlet left behind them, that the same wave of excitement that cast him up would forever in turn drag him down--and it all resulted, he told himself, in his passing distemper of fatigue and anxiety, in a little further abrasion, in a little sterner denudation of their tortured souls! it was at ventimiglia that the _capostazione_ himself appeared at the door of their compartment, accompanied by a uniformed official. the two fugitives, with their hearts in their mouths, leaned back on their cushions with assumed unconcern, cooing and chattering hand in hand among their flowers, while a volley of quick and angry questions, in italian, was flung in at them from the opened compartment door. to this they paid not the slightest attention, for several moments. frank turned to her interrogators, smiled at them gently and impersonally, and then shook her head impatiently, with an outthrust of the hands which was meant to convey to them that each and every word they uttered was quite incomprehensible to her. the _capostazione_, who, by this time, had pushed into their compartment, was heatedly demanding either their passports or their tickets. frank, who had buried her face raptly in her armful of jonquils, looked up at him with gentle exasperation. "we are english," she said blankly. "english! we can't understand!" and she returned to her flowers and her husband once more. the two uniformed intruders conferred for a moment, while the _conduttore_, on the platform outside, naturally enough expostulated over the delay of the train. "these fools--these aren't the two!" frank heard the _capostazione_ declare, in italian, under his breath, as they swung down on the station platform. then the shrill little thin-noted engine-whistle sounded, the wheels began to turn, and they were once more speeding through the white moonlight, deeper and deeper into italy. "i wonder," said frank, after a long silence, "how often we shall be able to do this sort of thing? i wonder how long luck--mere luck, will be with us?" "_is_ it luck?" asked her husband. she was still leaning back on his shoulder, with her hand clasping his. accompanying her consciousness of escape came a new lightness of spirit. there seemed to come over her, too, a new sense of gratitude for the nearness of this sentient and mysterious life, of this living and breathing man, that could both command and satisfy some even more mysterious emotional hunger in her own heart. "yes," she answered, as she laughed a little, almost contentedly; "we're like the glass snake. we seem to break off at the point where we're caught, and escape, and go on again as before. i was only wondering how many times a glass snake can leave its tail in its enemy's teeth, and still grow another one!" and although she laughed again durkin knew how thinly that covering of facetiousness spread over her actual sobriety of character. it was like a solitary drop of oil on quiet water--there was not much of it, but what there was must always be on the surface. in fact, her mood changed even as he looked down at her, troubled by the shadow of utter weariness that rested on her colorless face. "what would we do, jim," she asked, after a second long and unbroken silence, "what would we do if this thing ever brought us face to face with macnutt again?" "but why should we cross that bridge before we come to it?" was durkin's answer. she seemed unable, however, to bar back from her mind some disturbing and unwelcome vision of that meeting. she felt, in a way, that she possessed one faculty which the rapid and impetuous nature of her husband could not claim. it was almost a weakness in him, she told herself, the subsidiary indiscretion of a fecund and grimly resourceful mind. like a river in flood, it had its strange and incongruous back currents, born of its very oneness of too hurrying purpose. it considered too deeply the imminent and not the remoter and seemingly more trivial contingency. "but can't you see, jim, that the further we follow this up the closer and closer it's bringing us to macnutt?" "macnutt is ancient history to us now! we're over and done with him, for all time!" "you are wrong there, jim. you misjudge the situation, and you misjudge the man. that is one fact we have to face, one hard fact; macnutt is not over and done _with us_!" "but haven't you made a sort of myth of him? isn't he only a fable to us now? and haven't we got real facts to face?" "ah," she said protestingly, "there is just the trouble. you always refuse to look _this_ fact in the face!" "well, what are the facts?" he asked conciliatingly, coercing his attention, and demanding of himself what allowance he must make for that morbid perversion of view which came of a too fatigued body and mind. "the facts are these," she began, with a solemnity of tone that startled him into keener attentiveness. "you found me in macnutt's office when he was planning and plotting and preparing for the biggest wire-tapping _coup_ in all his career. you were dragged into that plot against your will, almost, just as i had been. but macnutt gave us our parts, and we worked together there. then--then you made love to me--don't deny it, jim, for, after all, it was the happiest part of all my life!--and we both saw how wrong we were, and we both wanted to fight for our freedom. so i followed you when you revolted against macnutt and his leadership." "no, frank, it was _you_ who led--if it hadn't been for you there would never have been any revolt!" he broke in. "we fought together, then, tooth and nail, and in the end we surrendered everything but our own liberty--just to start over with free hands. but it wasn't our mere escape to freedom that maddened macnutt; it was the thought that we had beaten him at his own game, that we had stalked him while he was so busy stalking penfield. then he trapped us, for a moment, and it was sheer good luck that he didn't kill me that afternoon in his dismantled operating-room, before doogan and his men attacked the house. but, as you know, he kept after us, and he cornered you again, and you would have killed _him_, in turn, if i hadn't saved you from the sin of it, and the disgrace of it. then we thought we were safe, just because the world was big and wide; because we had made our escape to europe we thought that we were out of his circuit, that we were beyond his key-call--but here we are being led and dragged back to him, through keenan. but now, just because there is still an ocean between us, you begin to believe that he has given up every thought of getting even!" "well, isn't it about time he did? we've beaten him twice, at his own game, and i see no reason why we shouldn't do it again!" "but how often can we be the glass snake? i mean, how many times can we afford to leave something behind, and break away, and hope to grow whole and sound again? and when will macnutt get us where we can't break away? i tell you, jim, you don't know this man as i know him! you haven't understood yet what a cruelly designing and artful and vindictive and long-waiting enemy he can be. you haven't seen him break and crush people, as i once did. it's the memory of that makes me so afraid of him!" "there's just the trouble, frank," cried durkin. "the man has terrified and intimidated you, until you think he is the only enemy you have. i don't deny he isn't dangerous, but so is pobloff, and so is doogan, for that matter, and this man keenan as well!" "but they would never crush and smash you, as macnutt will, if the chance comes!" she persisted passionately. "you don't see and understand it, because you are so close to it and so deep in it. it's like traveling along this little riviera railway. it's so crooked and tunneled and close under the mountains that even though we went up and down it, for a year, from nice to nervi, we could never say that we had seen the riviera!" durkin looked out at the terraced hills, at the undulating fields and the heaped masses of blue mountains under the white italian moonlight, and did not speak for several seconds. he had always carried, while with her, the vague but sustained sense of being shielded. until then her hand had always seemed to guard him, impersonally, as the hand of a busy seeker guards and shelters a candle. now, for some mysterious reason, he felt her brooding guardianship to be something less passive, to be something more immediate and personal. he knew--and he knew it with a full appreciation of the irony that lurked in the situation--that her very timorousness was now endowing him with a new and reckless courage. so he took her hand, gratefully, before he spoke again. "well, whatever happens, we are now in this, not from choice, as you said before, but from necessity. if it has dangers, frank, we must face them." "it is nothing _but_ danger!" "then we must grin and bear it. but as i said, i see no reason why we should cross our bridges before we come to them. and we'll soon have a bridge to cross, and a hard one." "what bridge?" "i mean keenan, and everything that will happen in genoa!" chapter x the tightening coil henry keenan, of new york, had leisurely finished his cigar, and had as leisurely glanced through all the three-day-old london papers. he had even puzzled, for another half-hour, over the pages of a _tribuna_. then, after gazing in an idle and listless manner about the empty and uninviting hotel reading-room, he decided that it was time for him to go up to his room. he made his leisurely way to the lift, ascended to the fourth floor, stepped out, and drew his room-key from his pocket, as he walked down the hall, in the same idle and listless manner. as he turned the corner the listlessness went from his face, and a change came in his languid yet ever-restless and covert eyes. for a young woman was standing before his door, trying to fit a key to the lock. this, he decided as he paused three paces from her and studied her back, she was doing quite openly, with no slightest sense of secrecy. she wore a plumed hat, and a dark cloth tailor-made suit that was unmistakably english. she still struggled with the key, unconscious of his presence. his tread on the thick carpet had been light; he had intended to catch her, beyond equivocation, in the act. but now something about the lines of her stooping figure caused henry keenan to remove his hat, respectfully, before speaking to her. "could i assist you, madam?" he asked, close to her side by this time. she turned, with a start, though her loss of self-possession lasted but a moment. but as she turned her startled eyes to him keenan's last doubt as to whether or not it was a mere mistake withered away from his mind. he knew, from the hot flush that mounted to her cheeks and from the mellow contralto of her carefully modulated english voice, that she belonged to that vaguely denominated yet rigidly delimited type that would always be called a woman of breeding. "if you please," she said shortly, stepping back from the door. he bent over the key which she had left still in the lock. as he did so he glanced at the number which the key, protruding from the lock, bore stamped on its flat brass bow. the number was thirty-seven, while the number which stood before his eyes on the door was forty-one. under ordinary circumstances the apparent accident would never have given him a second thought. but all that day he had been oppressed by a sense of hidden yet continual espionage. this feeling had followed him from the moment he had landed in genoa. he had tried to argue it down, inwardly protesting that such must be merely the obsession of all fugitives. and now, even to find an unknown and innocent-appearing young woman trying to force an entrance into his room aroused all his latent cautiousness. yet a moment later he felt ashamed of his suspicions. "why, this is room forty-one," she cried, over his shoulder. he withdrew the key and looked at it with a show of surprise. "and your key, i see, is thirty-seven," he explained. she was laughing now, a little, through her confusion. it was a very pleasant laugh, he thought. she looked a frank and companionable woman, with her love for the merriment of life touched with a sort of autumnal and wistful sobriety that in no way estranged it from a sense of youth. but, above all, she was a beautiful woman, thought the listless and lonely man. he looked at her again. it was his suspicion of being spied upon, he felt, that had first blinded him to the charm of her appearance. "it was the second turn in the corridor that threw me out," she explained. he found himself walking with her to her door. she had thought to find some touch of the boweryite about him, some outcropping of the half-submerged bunco-steerer. instead of that, both his look and his tone carried some tinge of quiet yet dominant gentility, reminding her, as she had so often been taught before, that the criminal is not a type in himself, that only fanciful and far-stretched generalizations could detach him as a species, or immure and mark him off from the rest of his kind. she glanced at him still again, at the seemingly melancholic and contemplative face, that strangely reminded her of dürer's portrait of himself. as she did so there was carried to her memory, and imprinted on it, the picture of a wistful and lonely man, his countenance touched, for all its open irish smile, with some wordless sorrow, some pensive isolation of soul, lean and gaunt with some undefined hunger, a little furtive and covert with some half-concealed restlessness. "aren't you an american?" he was asking, almost hopefully, it seemed to her. "oh, no," she answered, with her sober, slow smile. "i'm an englishwoman!" he shook his head, whimsically. "indeed, i'm sorry for that!" said the celt. she joined in his laugh. "but i've lived abroad so much!" she added. "then you must know italy pretty well, i suppose?" "oh, yes; i've traveled here, winter after winter." she picked out a card from her pocket-book, on which was inscribed, in spencerian definiteness of black and white, "miss barbara allen." it had been the card of lady boxspur's eminently respectable maid--and frances durkin had saved it for just such a contingency. he read the name, slowly, and then placed the card in his vest pocket. if he noticed her smile, he gave no sign of it. "and you like genoa? i mean, _is_ there anything to like in this place?" he asked companionably. "i'll be hanged if i've seen anything but a few million mementoes of christopher columbus!" "there's the palazzo bianco, and the palazzo rosso, and, of course, there's the campo santo!" "but who cares for graveyards?" "all europe is a graveyard, of its past!" she answered lightly. "that was what i thought you americans always came to see!" he laughed a little, in turn, and she both liked him better for it and found it easier to go on. she felt, from his silences, that no great span of his life had been spent in talking with women. and she was glad of it. "i like the riggi," she added pregnantly. "the riggi--what's that, please?" "that's the restaurant up on the hill." she hesitated and turned back, before unlocking her door. "it's charming!" he was on the point, she knew, of making the plunge and asking if they might not see the riggi together, when something in her glance, some precautionary chilliness of look, checked him. for she had seen that even now things might advance too hurriedly. it would be wiser, and in the long run it would pay, she warned herself, to draw in--for as she still lingered and chatted with him she more and more felt that she was face to face with a resourceful and strong-willed opponent. she noticed, through all the outward celtic gentleness, the grim and passionate mouth, the keenness of the shifty yet penetrating hazel-gray eyes, the touch of almost bull-dog tenaciousness about the loose-jointed, high-shouldered figure, and, above all, the audacity of the careless irish-american smile. that smile, she felt, trailed like a flippant and fluttering tail to the kite of his racial solemnity and stubbornness of purpose, enabling it to rise higher even while seeming to weigh it down. "and you always travel alone?" he finally asked, shaking off the last of his reserve. "oh, i'm a bit of a globe-trotter--that's what you'd call me on your side of the ocean, isn't it? you see, i go about southern europe picking up things for a london art firm!" "and where do you go next?" "oh, perhaps to milan, perhaps to naples; it may even be to rome, or it might turn out to be syracuse or taormina. with me, everything depends, first on the weather, and, next, on what instructions are sent on." she inwardly marveled at the glibness and spontaneity with which the words fell from her tongue. she even took a sort of secret joy in the dramatic values which that scene of play-acting presented to her. "and do you ever go to new york?" "yes, such a thing might happen, any time." it was as well, she told herself, to leave the way well paved. "_that's_ the city for you!" he declared, with a commending shake of the head. of the truth of that fact frances durkin was only too well aware; but this was a conviction to which she did not give utterance. as they stood chatting together in the deserted hallway, a man, turning the corner, brushed by them. he merely gave them one casual glance of inquiry, and then looked away, apparently at the room-numbers on the lintels. the young woman chanced to be tapping half-carelessly, half-nervously, with her key on the panel of her door. it meant nothing to her comrade, but to the passing man it resolved itself into an intelligible and coherent message. for it was in morse, and to his trained and adept ear it read: "this--is--keenan--keep--away!" chapter xi the intoxication of war it was two days later,--and they had been days of blank suspense for him,--that durkin made his way to frank's room, unobserved. his first resolution had been to wait for a clearer coast, but his anxiety overcame him, and he could hold off no longer. as he opened the door and stepped noiselessly inside he caught sight of her by the window, her face ruminative and in repose. it looked, for the moment, unhappy and tired and hard. she seemed to stand before him with a mask off, a designing and disillusioned woman, no longer in love with the game of life. or it was, he imagined, as she would look ten years later, when her age had begun to tell on her, and her still buoyant freshness was gone. it was the same feeling that had come to him on the angiolina steps, at abbazia. he even wondered if in the stress of the life they were now following she would lose the last of her good looks, if even her ever-resilient temperament would deaden and harden, and no longer rise supreme to the exacting moment. or could it be that she was acting a part for him? that all this fine _bravado_ was an attitude, a rôle, a pretense, taken on for his sake? could it be--and the sudden thought stung him to the quick--that she was deliberately and consciously degrading herself to what she knew was a lower plane of thought and life, that the bond of their older companionship might still remain unsevered? but, as her startled eyes caught sight of him, a welcoming light came into her relaxed face. with her first spoken word some earlier touch of moroseness seemed to slip away from her. if it required an effort to shake herself together, she gave no outward sign of it. she had promised that there should be no complaining and no hesitations from her; and durkin knew she would adhere to that promise, to the bitter end. she went to him, and clung to him, a little hungrily. there seemed something passionate in her very denial of passion. for when he lifted her drooping head, with all its wealth of chestnut shot through with paler gold, and gazed at her upturned face between his two hands, with a little cry of endearment, she shut her mouth hard, on a sob. "you're back--and safe?" he asked. she forced a smile. "yes, back safe and sound!" "but tired, i know?" "yes--a little. but--" she broke off, and he could see that she was rising from her momentary luxury of relaxation as a fugitive rises after a minute's breathing-spell. "well?" he asked anxiously. "_pobloff has found us_!" she said, in her quiet contralto. "he's here, you mean?" "he's in genoa. i caught sight of him in a cab, hurrying from the french consulate to the cafe jazelli. i slipped into a silversmith's shop, as he raced past, and escaped him." "and then what?" "then several things happened. but first, tell me this: did you get a chance to look over keenan's room?" "i was bolted inside twenty minutes after you and he had left the hotel. his trunk was even unlocked; i looked through everything!" "which, of course, was charming work!" she interpolated, with not ungentle scorn. he shrugged his shoulders deprecatively. "not quite as charming as dining with your new friend!" "i almost like him!" admitted the woman frankly, femininely rejoicing at the note of jealousy in the other's voice. "and no worse than some of the work we've done, or may soon have to do!" then he went on, with rising passion: "and i'll tell you this, frank whatever we do, and whatever we have to go through, we've got to get those securities out of keenan! we've got to have them, now! we've got to pound at it, and dog him, and fight him, and outwit him, until we either win or lose and go under! it's a big game, and it has big risks, but we're in it too deep, now, to talk about drawing back, or to complain about the dirty work it leads to!" "i wasn't complaining," she reproved, in her dead voice. "i only spoke a bald truth. but you don't tell me what you've found." "i got nothing--absolutely nothing; not one shred of information even. there's nothing in the room. it stands to reason, then, as i told you from the first, that he is carrying the papers about with him!" "that will make it harder," she murmured monotonously. "and you're sure your telegram has sent the scotland yard men to como?" "it must have, or we'd be running into them. the new yorker is a pinkerton man." he started pacing back and forth in front of her, frowning with mingled irritation and impatience. "then what about pobloff?" he suddenly asked. "five minutes after we had stepped out of the hotel he met us, face to face. with keenan, i had no chance of getting away. so i simply faced it out. then pobloff shadowed us to the riggi, watched us all through luncheon, and followed us down to the city again. and here's the strange part of it all. keenan saw that we were being shadowed, from the first, and i could see him fretting and chafing under it, for he imagines that it's all because of what he's carrying with him. so, on the other hand, pobloff has concluded keenan and i are fellow-conspirators, for he let me go to the lift alone, just to keep his eye on keenan, who told me he had business at the steamship agency." "but why should we be afraid of pobloff, then?" "it's a choice of two evils, i should venture to say. but that's not all. as soon as i was free from each of them, and had left them there, carrying out that silent and ridiculous advance and retreat between them, i had to think both hard and fast. i decided that the best thing for me to do would be to slip down to rome, at once, and make my visit to the embassy." "yes, i found your note, telling me that." "when i saw that i was being followed at the station i bought a ticket for busalla, as a blind, and went in one door of my compartment and then out the other. my _wagon lit_ was standing on the next track. i didn't change from the one train to the other until the train for rome started to move. then i slipped out, and jumped for the moving platform, and was bundled into my right carriage by a guard, who thought i was trying to commit an anna karenina suicide--until i gave him ten francs. whether i got away unnoticed or not i can't say for sure. but pobloff will have resources here that we know nothing of. from now on, you may be sure, he will have keenan watched by one of his agents, night and day!" "then, good heavens, we've got to step in and save keenan from pobloff!" "it amounts to that," admitted frank. "yet, in some way, if we could only manage it, the two of them ought to fight our battle out for us, between themselves!" "that's true--but _did_ you get to rome?" "yes, without trouble." "and you got the money?" "only half of it. they hedged, and said the other half could not be paid until pobloff's arrest. jim, we must be on our guard against that man." "pobloff doesn't count!" ejaculated durkin impatiently. "it's keenan we have to have our fight with--_he's_ the man, the offender, we want!--_that_ means only two hundred and fifty pounds!" "but that is money honestly made!" "and so will this be money honestly made. the one was legalized by the government authority; the other, in the end, will be recognized as--well, as detectional and punitive expediency. that's why i say pobloff doesn't count!" "but pobloff _does_ count," persisted frank. "he's a vindictive and resourceful man, and he has a score against us to wipe out. besides all that, he's a master of intrigue, and he has the entire secret service of france behind him, and he knows underground europe as well as any spy on the continent. he will keep at us, i tell you, until he thinks he is even!" "then let him--if he wants to," scoffed durkin. "my work is with keenan. if pobloff tries interfering with us, the best thing we can do is to get the british foreign office after him. _they_ ought to be big enough for him!" "it's not a matter of bigness. _he_ won't fight that way. he would never fight in the open. he knows his chances, and the country, and just where to turn, and just how far to go--and where to hide, if he has to!" "that's true enough, i suppose. but oh, if i only had him in new york, i'd fight him to a finish, and never edge away from him and keep on the run this way!" "of course; but, as you say, is it worth while? after all, he's only an accident in the whole affair now, though a disagreeable one. and, what's more, pobloff will never follow us out of europe. this is his stamping ground. he had misfortune in america, and he's afraid of it. as i said before, pobloff and keenan are the acid and the alkali that ought to make the neutral salts. i mean, instead of trying to save them from each other, we ought to fling them together, in some way. let pobloff do the hunting for us--then let us hunt pobloff!" "but keenan is wary, and shrewd, and far-seeing. how is he to be caught, even by a pobloff?" "that only time and pobloff can tell. it will never be by brigandage--keenan will never go far enough afield to give him a chance for that. but i feel it in my bones--i feel that there is danger impending, for us all." durkin turned and looked at her, wondering if her woman's intuition was to penetrate deeper into the unknown than his own careful analysis. "what danger?" he asked. "impending dangers cease to be dangers when they can be defined. it's nothing more than a feeling. but the strangest part of the whole situation is the fact that not one of us, from any corner of the triangle, dares turn to the police for one jot of protection. none of us can run crying to the arms of constituted authority when we get hurt!" a consciousness of their lonely detachment from their kind, of their isolation, crept through durkin's mind. he felt momentarily depressed by a sense of friendlessness. it was like reverting to primordial conditions, wherein it was ordained that each life, alone and unassisted, should protect and save itself. he wondered if primitive man, or if even wild animals, did not always walk with that vague consciousness of continual menace, where lupine viciousness seemed eternally at war with vulpine wariness. "then what would you suggest?" he asked the woman, who sat before him rapt in thought. "that we watch keenan, continuously, night and day. he has been hunted and followed now for over two months, and he is only waiting for a clear field to take to his heels. and when he goes he is going for america. that i know. if we lose sight of him, we lose our chance." durkin walked to the window, and looked out at the tiled roofs and the squat chimney-pots, above which he could catch a glimpse of bursting sky-rockets and the glow of greek fire from the narrow canyons of the streets below. "what are all the fireworks for?" he asked her casually. "it's a saint's day, of some sort, they told me at the office," she explained. he was about to turn and speak to her again, after a minute's silence, when a low knock sounded on the door. he remained both silent and motionless, and the knock was repeated. "in a moment!" called the woman, as she motioned durkin to the door of her clothes-closet. he drew back, with a shake of the head. he revolted momentarily against the ignominy of the movement. but she caught him by the arm and thrust him determinedly in, closing the door on him. then she hurriedly let her wealth of chestnut hair tumble about her shoulders. then she answered the knock, with the loosened strands of chestnut in one abashed hand. it was keenan himself who stood in the hall before her. chapter xii the doorway of surprise "may i speak to you a moment?" asked keenan, taking a step nearer to her as he spoke. she seemed able, even under his quiet composure, to detect some note of alarm. "will you come in?" she asked, holding the door wide for him. "if you don't mind the intrusion." she had closed the door, and stood facing him, interrogatively. "what i am going to ask you, miss allen, is something unusual. but this past week has shown me that you are an unusual woman." he hesitated, in doubt as to how to proceed. "in america," she said, laughing a little, to widen his avenue of approach, "you would call me emancipated, wouldn't you?" he bowed and laughed a little in return. "but let me explain," he went on. "i am in what you might call a dilemma. for some reason or other certain persons here are watching and following me, night and day. in america--which, thank god, is a land of law and order--this sort of thing wouldn't disturb me. but here"--he gave a little shrug--"well, you know what they say about italy!" "then i wasn't mistaken!" she cried, with a well-rung note of alarm. he looked at her, narrowly. "ah, i suspected you'd have an inkling! but what i have here makes the case exceptional--and, perhaps, a little dangerous!" he drew from his pocket a yellow-tinted manila envelope, of "legal" size. frank's quick glance told her that it was by no means empty. "it may sound theatrical, and you may laugh at me, but will you take possession of these papers for me, for a few days? no, let me explain first. they are important, i confess, for, although valueless commercially, they contain personal and private letters that are worth a good deal to me!" "but this means a great responsibility," demurred frank. "yes; but no danger--at least to you, since you are in no way under suspicion. you said that in five days you would probably be in naples. supposing that i arrange to meet you at, say, the hôtel de londres there, and then repay you for your trouble." "but it's so unusual; so almost absurd," still demurred the acting woman. the eavesdropper from the closet felt that it was an instance of diamond cutting diamond. how hard and polished and finished, he thought, actor and actress confronted each other. "will you take the risk?" the man was asking. she looked from him to the packet and then back to him again. "yes, if you insist--if it is really helping you out!" she replied, with still simulated bewilderment. he thanked her with something more than his professional, placid crispness, and put the packet in her outstretched hand. "is that all?" "yes, everything." "in naples, in five days?" "yes; the hôtel de londres. and now i must leave you." he startled her by taking her hand and wringing it. she was still looking down at the packet as he withdrew, and the door closed behind him. she listened for a moment, and then turned the key in the lock. durkin, stepping from his place of concealment, confronted her. they stood gazing at each other in blank astonishment. frank's first impulse was to tear open the envelope. but on second thoughts she flew to her alcohol tea-lamp and lighted the flame. it was only a minute or two before a jet of steam came from the tiny kettle spout. over this she shifted and held the gummed envelope-flap, until the mucilage softened and dissolved. then, holding her breath, she peeled back the flap, and from the envelope drew three soiled but carefully folded copies of the london _daily chronicle_. the envelope held nothing more. a little cry of disappointment escaped durkin, while frank turned the papers over in her fingers, in speechless amazement. the very audacity of the man swept her off her feet. it was both a warning and a challenge, grim with its suggestiveness, eloquent with careless defiance. that was her first thought. "the fool--he's making fun of you!" said durkin, with a second passionate oath. frank was slowly refolding the papers, and replacing them in the envelope. "i don't believe that's it," she said, meditatively. "i believe he is trying me--making this a test!" she carefully moistened the gum and resealed the envelope, so that it bore no trace of having revealed its contents. she stood gazing at her husband with studious and unseeing eyes. "if he comes back i'll know that i am right," she cried, with sudden conviction. "if he finds that i am still here, and that his packet is still intact and safe, he'll do what he wants to do. and that is, he'll trust me with the whole of his securities!" she quenched the alcohol flame and replaced the lamp in its case. "if he comes back," mocked durkin. "do you know what you and i ought to be doing, at this moment? we ought to be following that man every step he takes." "but where?" she shook her head, slowly, in dissent. "that's for us to find out. but can't you feel that he's left us in the lurch, that we're shut up here, while he's giving us the laugh and getting away?" "jim, listen to me. during this past week i've seen more of keenan than you have." "yes, a vast sight more!" he interjected, heatedly. "and i feel sure," she went on evenly, "that he is more frightened and worried than he pretends to be. he is, after all, only a tricky and ferrety irish lawyer, who is afraid of every power outside his own little circuit of experience. he's afraid of italy. i suppose he has nightmares about _brigantaggio_, even! he's afraid of foreigners--afraid of this sort of conspiracy of silence that seems surrounding him. he's even afraid to take his precious documents and put them in a safe-deposit vault in any one of the regularly established institutions here in genoa. there are plenty of them, but he isn't big and bold enough to do his business that way. he's been a fugitive so long his only way of warfare now is flight. and besides, he can never forget that his work is underground and illicit. that is why he carries his documents about with him, on him, in his pockets, like a sneak thief with a pocketful of stolen goods. i don't mean to say that he isn't smooth and crafty, and that he won't fight like a rat when he's cornered! but i do believe that if he and penfield could get in touch today, here in genoa, he would hand over every dollar of those securities, and give up the job, and get back to his familiar old lairs among the new york poolrooms and wardheelers and petty criminals where he knows his enemies and his friends!" durkin strode toward the door impatiently. he hesitated for a moment, but had already stretched out his hand to turn the key when he drew back, silently, step by step. for a second time, on the panel, without, the low knock was sounding. frank watched the closet door draw to and close on durkin; then she called out, with assumed and cheery unconcern, "come in." she did not look up for a moment, for she was still busy with her hair. the door opened and closed. "i trust i do not intrude?" frank's brush fell from her hand, before she even slowly wheeled and looked, for it was the suave and well-modulated baritone of pobloff. "what does this mean?" she demanded vacantly, retreating before his steady and scornful gaze. "simply, madam, that you and i seem seldom able to anticipate each other's calls!" she made a pretense of going to the electric signal. "it is quite useless," explained the russian quietly. "the wires are disconnected." he took out his watch and glanced at it. "indeed, as a demonstration that others enjoy privileges which you sometimes exert, in two minutes every light in this room will be cut off!" the woman was panting a little by this time, for her thoughts were of durkin and his danger, as much as of herself. she struggled desperately to regain her self-possession, for there was no mistaking the quiet but grim determination written on the russian's pallid face. and she knew he was not alone in whatever plot he had laid. she would have spoken, only the sudden flood of blackness that submerged her startled her into silence. the lights had gone out. she demanded of herself quickly, what should be her first move. while she stood in momentary suspense, a knock sounded still once more on her door. "come in," she called out quickly, loudly, now alert and alive to every movement. it was keenan who stepped in from the half-lighted hall. he would have paused, in involuntary amazement, at the utter darkness that greeted him, only footsteps approaching and passing compelled him to act quickly. he stepped inside and closed and locked the door. she had not been mistaken. he _had_ come back. chapter xiii "the folly of grandeur" there flashed through frances durkin's mind, in the momentary silence that fell over that strange company, the consciousness that the triangle was completed; that there, in one room, through a fortuitousness that seemed to her more factitious than actual, stood the three contending and opposing forces. the thought came and went like a flash, for it was not a time for meditation, but for hurried and desperate action. the sense of something vast and ominous seemed to hang over the darkness, where, for a second or two, the silence of absolute surprise reigned. the last-comer, too, seemed to feel this sense of something impending, for a moment later his voice rang out, clear and unhesitating, with a touch of challenge in it. "miss allen, are you here? and is anything wrong?" "stand where you are!" the voice of the woman answered, through the darkness, firm and clear. "yes. i am here. but there is another person in this room. he is a man who means harm, i believe, to both of us!" "ah!" said the voice near the door. the woman was speaking again, her voice high and nervous, from the continued suspense of that darkness and silence combined, a dual mystery from which any bolt might strike. "above all things," she warned him, "you must watch that door!" her straining ears heard a quiet click-click; she had learned of old the meaning of that pregnant sound. it was the trigger of a revolver being cocked. "all right--i'm ready," said the man at the door, grimly. then he laughed, perhaps a little uneasily. "but why are we all in darkness this way?" "the wires have been cut--that is a part of his plan!" keenan took a step into the room and addressed the black emptiness before him. "will the gentleman speak up and explain?" no answer came out of the darkness. frank knew, by this time, that keenan would make no move to desert her. "have you a lamp, or a light of any kind, miss allen?" was the next curt, businesslike question. "oh, be careful, sir!" she warned him, now in blind and unreasoning terror. "have you a light?" repeated keenan authoritatively. "i have only an alcohol lamp; it gives scarcely any light--it is for boiling a teapot!" "then light it, please!" "oh, i dare not!" she cried, for now she was possessed of the unreasoning fear that one step in any direction would bring her in contact with death itself. "light it, please!" commanded keenan. "nothing will happen. i have in my hand here, where i stand, a thirty-eight calibre revolver, loaded and cocked. if there is one movement from the gentleman you speak of, i will empty it into him!" both keenan and frank started, and peered through the blackness. for a careless and half-derisive, half-contemptuous laugh sounded through the room. pobloff, obviously, had never moved from where he stood. frank slowly groped to the wall of her room, and felt with blind and exploring hands until she came to her bureau. then sounded the clink of nickel as the lamp was withdrawn from its case and the dry rattle of german safety-matches. then the listeners heard the quick scrape and flash of the match against the side of the little paper box, and the puff of the wavering blue flame as the match-end came in contact with the alcohol. after all, it was good to have a light! incongruously it flashed through her mind, as wayward thoughts and ideas would at such moments, how relieved primitive man amid his primitive night must have been at the blessed gift of the first fire. the wavering blue flame widened and heightened. in a moment the inky room was pallidly suffused with its trembling half-light. outside, through the night, sounded muffled street noises, and the boom and hiss and spurt of fireworks. the two peering faces turned slowly, until their range of vision had swept the entire room. then they paused, for motionless against the west wall, between the closet door and the corner, stood pobloff. his arms were folded, and he was laughing a little. frank drew nearer keenan, instinctively, wondering what the next movement would be. it was pobloff's voice that first broke the silence. "this woman lies," he said, in his suavely scoffing baritone. "this woman----" "why don't you say something--why don't you do something!" cried frank, hysterically, turning to keenan. "ring the bell!" commanded keenan. "it's useless--the wires are cut," she panted. she could see that, above and beyond all his craftiness, his latent irish fighting-blood was aroused. "then, by god, i'll put him out myself. if there's any fight between him and me "--he turned on pobloff--"we won't drag a woman into it!" the tall, gaunt russian against the wall was no longer laughing. "pardon me," he said, advancing a step. "this woman has in her possession a packet of papers--of personal and private papers, which concern neither you nor her!" "but what if it _does_ concern me?" demanded keenan. "the gentleman is talking nonsense," said pobloff, unperturbed. yet he leaned forward and studied him more closely, through the half-light, studied him as the deliberating terrier might study the captured rat that had dared to bite back at him. "this woman, i repeat, has certain papers about her!" "and what of that?" cried keenan blindly. frank saw, to her joy, that he was misled. "simply this: that if the lady i speak of hands those papers to me, here, the matter is closed, for all time!" "and if she doesn't?" "then she will do so later!" a grunt of sheer rage broke from keenan's lips. but he checked it, suddenly, and wheeled on the woman. "give him the package," he ordered. she hesitated, for at the moment the thought of keenan's trust had passed from her mind. "do as i say," he repeated curtly. frank, remembering, drew the yellow manila envelope from her bosom, and with out-stretched arm handed it to pobloff. the russian took it in silence. then with a few quick strides he advanced to the alcohol lamp. as he did so both keenan and frank noticed for the first time the blunt little gun-metal revolver he held in his right hand. "again you will pardon me," said pobloff, with his ever-scoffing courtliness. "a mere glance will be necessary, to make sure that we are not--mistaken!" he tore open the envelope with one long forefinger, and stooped to draw forth the contents. it was then that keenan sprang at him. frank at the moment, was marveling at the unbroken continuity of evidence linking her with her uncomprehending opponent. the sudden leap and cry of keenan sent a tingle of apprehension up and down her body. she asked herself, vaguely, if all the rest of her life was to be made up of this brawling and fighting in unlighted chambers of horror; if, now that they were in the more turgid currents for which they had longed, there were to come no moments of peace amid all their tumult and struggling. then she drew in her breath with a little gasp, for she saw pobloff, with a quick writhe of his thin body, free his imprisoned right arm, and strike with the metal butt of his revolver. he struck twice, three times, and the sound of the metal on the unprotected head was sickening to the listening woman. she staggered to the closet door as the man fell to the floor, stunned. "jim! oh, jim, quick!--he's killing him!--i tell you he's killing him!" durkin said "'ssssh!" under his breath, and waited. for in the dim half-light they could see that the russian had ripped open keenan's coat and vest, and from a double-buttoned pocket on the inside of the inner garment was drawing out a yellow manila envelope, the fellow to that which had already been thrust into his hands. it was then that durkin sprang forward. pobloff saw him advance. he had only time to reverse his hold on the little gun-metal revolver and fire two shots. the first shot went wide, tearing deep into the plastered wall. the second cut through the flap of his assailant's coat-pocket, just over the left hip, scattering little flecks of woollen cloth about. but there was no time for a third shot. it seemed brutal to frank, but she allowed herself time for neither thought nor scruples. all she remembered was that it was necessary--though once again she asked herself if all her life, from that day on, was to be made up of brawling and fighting. for durkin had brought down on the half-turned head the up-poised bedroom chair with all his force. pobloff, with a little inarticulate cry that was almost a grunt, buckled and pitched forward. "that settles _you_!" the stooping man said, heartlessly, as he watched him relax and half roll on his side. frank watched him, too, but with no sense of triumph or success, with no emotion but slowly awakening disgust, against which she found it useless to struggle. she watched him with a sense of detachment and aloofness, as if looking down on him from a great height, while he tore upon the manila envelope and gave vent to a little cry of satisfaction. they at last possessed the penfield securities. then she went over and replenished the waning flame in the alcohol lamp. "we've got to get away from here now," said durkin quickly. "and the sooner the better!" she looked about her, a little helplessly. then she glanced at keenan. "see, he's coming to!" "are you ready?" durkin demanded sharply. "yes," she answered, in her dead and resigned voice, as she took up her hat and coat. "but where are we going?" "i'll tell you on the way down. only you must get what you want, and hurry!" "but is it safe now?" she demurred, "and for _you_?" he thought for a moment, with his hand on the doorknob. then he turned back. "you'd better keep this, then, until i find what we have to face, outside here!" he passed into her hand the manila envelope, and stepped out into the hall. a moment later she had secreted the packet, along with pobloff's revolver, which she picked up from the floor. then she ran to the door, and locked it. she would fight like a hornet, now, she inwardly vowed, for what she held. then she caught her breath, behind the locked door, for the sounds that crept in from the hallway told her that her fear had not been groundless. she heard durkin's little choked cry of pain and surprise, for he had been seized, she knew, and pinned back against the door. it was pobloff's men, she told herself. they had him by the throat, she knew by the sound of the guttural oaths which they were trying to choke back. she could hear the kick and scrape of feet, the movement of his writhing and twisting body against the door, as on a sounding-board. she surmised that they had his arms held, otherwise he would surely have used his revolver. she was conscious of a sort of wild joy at the thought that he could not, for they were going through him, from the quieted sounds, pocket by pocket, and she knew he would have shot them if he could. "there's nothing here!" said a voice in french. frank, listening so close to them, could hear the three men breathe and pant. "then the woman has it!" answered the other voice, likewise in french. "shut up! she'll get on!" and frank could hear them tear and haul at durkin as they dragged him down the hall--just where, she could not distinguish. she ran over to keenan and shook him roughly. he looked at her a little stupidly, but did not seem able to respond to her entreaties. "quick!" she whispered, "or it will be too late!" she flung her pitcher of water in his face and over his head, and poured brandy from her little leather-covered pocket-flask down his throat. that seemed to revive him, for he sat up on the carpeted floor, mumblingly, and glowered at her. then he remembered; and as she bathed his bruised head with a wet towel he caught at her hand foolishly. "have we lost them?" he asked huskily, childishly. "no, they are here! see, intact, and safe. but you must take them back. neither of us can go through that hall with them!" "why not?" "we're watched--we're prisoners here!" "then what'll we do?" he asked weakly, for he was not yet himself. "you must take them, and get out of this room. there is only one way!" "what is it?" "you see this rope. it's meant for a fire-escape. you must let yourself down by it. you'll find yourself in a court, filled with empty barrels. that leads into a bake-shop--you can see the oven lights and smell the bread. give the man ten _lira_, and he's sure to let you pass. can you do it? do you understand?" "yes," he said, still a little bewildered. "but where will i meet you?" she pondered a moment. "in trieste, a week from tomorrow. but can you manage the rope?" he laughed a little. "i ought to! i've been through a poolroom raid or two, over home!" "in trieste then, a week from morrow!" she handed him her brandy-flask. "you may need it," she explained. he was on his feet by this time, struggling to pull himself together. "but you can't face that alone," he remonstrated, with a thumb-jerk toward the hall. "i won't see you touched by those damned rats!" "'ssssh!" she warned him. "they can't do anything to me now, except search me for those papers!" "but even that!" "i'll wait until i see you're safely down, then i'll run for the stairs. they've shut off all the lights outside, in this wing, but if they in any way attempt to ill-treat me, before i get to the main corridor, i'll scream for help!" "but even to search you"--began keenan again. "yes, i know!" she answered evenly. "it's not pleasant. but i'll face it"--she turned her eyes full upon him--"for you!" they listened for a moment together at the opened window. the red lights were still burning here and there about the city in the streets below, and the carnival-like cries and noises still filled the air. and she watched him anxiously as he and his packet of documents went down the dangling hemp rope, reached the stone paving of the little court, and disappeared in the square of light framed by the bake-shop window. then she turned back into the room, startled by a weak and wavering groan from pobloff. she went to him, and tried to lift him up on the bed, but he was too heavy for her overtaxed strength. she wondered, as she slipped a pillow under his head, why she should be afraid of him in that comatose and helpless state--why even his white and passive face looked so vindictive and sinister in the dim light of the room. but as he moved a little she started back, and caught up what things she could fling into her gladstone bag, and put out the light, and groped her way across the room once more. then she flung open the door and stepped out into the hall, with a feeling that her heart was in her mouth, choking her. she ceased running as she came to the bend in the hall, for she heard the sound of voices, and the light grew stronger. she would have dodged back, but it was too late. then she saw that it was durkin, beside three jabbering and gesticulating guardie di pubblica sicurezza. "oh, there you are!" said his equable and tranquil voice, as he removed his hat. she did not speak, accepting silence as safer. "i brought these gentlemen, for someone told me there was a drunken englishman in the halls, annoying you, and i was afraid we might miss our train!" she looked at the _gendarmes_ and then on to the excited servants at their heels, in bewilderment. she was to escape, then, in safety! "explain to these gentlemen just what it was," she heard the warningly suave voice of her husband saying to her, "while i hurry down and order the carriage!" she was nervous and excited and incoherent, yet as they followed at her side down the broad marble staircase she made them understand dimly that their protection was now unnecessary. no, she had not been insulted; not directly. but she had been affronted. it was nothing--only the shock of seeing a drunken quarrel; it had alarmed and upset her. she paused, caught at the balustrade, then wavered a little; and three solicitous arms in dark cloth and metal buttons were thrust out to support her. she thanked them, in her soft contralto, gratefully. the drive through the open air, she assured them, would restore her completely. but all the while she was thinking how needlessly and blindly and foolishly she had surrendered and lost a fortune. her path of escape had been an open one. * * * * * * "won't they find out, and everything be known, before we can get to the station?" she asked, as the fresh night air fanned her throbbing face and brow. "of course they will!" said durkin. "but we're not going to the station. we're going to the waterfront, and from there out to our steamer!" "for where?" she asked. "i scarcely know--but anywhere away from genoa!" chapter xiv awakening voices frances durkin's memory of that hurried flight from genoa always remained with her a confusion of incongruous and quickly changing pictures. she had a recollection of stepping from her cab into a crowded sailors' _café chantant_, of pushing past chairs and tables and hurrying out through a side door, of a high wind tearing at her hair and hat, as she and durkin still hurried down narrow, stone-paved streets, of catching the smell of salt water and the musky odor of shipping, of a sharp altercation with an obdurate customs officer in blue uniform and tall peaked cap, who stubbornly barred their way with a bare and glittering bayonet against her husband's breast, while she glibly and perseveringly lied to him, first in french, and then in english, and then in italian. she remembered her sense of escape when he at last reluctantly allowed them to pass, while they stumbled over railway tracks, and the rough stones of the quay pavement, and the bundles of merchandise lying scattered about them. then she heard the impatient lapping of water, and the outside roar of the waves, and saw the harbor lights twinkling and dancing, and caught sight of the three great white shafts of light that fingered so inquisitively and restlessly along the shipping and the city front and the widening bay, as three great gloomy italian men-of-war played and swung their electric searchlights across the night. then came a brief and passionate scene with a harbor ferryman, who scorned the idea of taking his boat out in such a sea, who eloquently waved his arms and told of accidents and deaths and disasters already befallen the bay that night, who flung down his cap and danced on it, in an ecstasy of passionate argumentation. she had a memory of durkin almost as excited as the dancing harbor orator himself, raging up and down the quay with a handful of italian paper money between his fingers, until the boatman relented. then came a memory of tossing up and down in a black and windy sea, of creeping under a great shadow stippled with yellow lights, of grating and pounding against a ship's ladder, of an officer in rubber boots running down to her assistance, of more blinking lights, and then of the quiet and grateful privacy of her own cabin, smelling of white-lead paint and disinfectants. she slept that night, long and heavily, and it was not until the next morning when the sun was high and they were well down the coast, that she learned they were on board the british coasting steamer _laminian_, of the gallaway & papyani line. they were to skirt the entire coast of italy, stopping at naples and then at bari, and then make their way up the adriatic to trieste. these stops, durkin had found, would be brief, and the danger would be small, for the _laminian_ was primarily known as a freighter, carrying out blue-stone and salt fish, and on her return cruise picking up miscellaneous cargoes of fruit. so her passenger list, which included, outside of frank and durkin, only a consumptive welsh school-teacher and a broken-down clergyman from birmingham, who kept always to his cabin, was in danger of no over-close scrutiny, either from the neapolitan guardie municipali on the one hand, or from any private agents of keenan and penfield on the other. even one short day of unbroken idleness, indeed, seemed to make life over for both frank and durkin. steeping themselves in that comfortable sense of security, they drew natural and easy breath once more. they knew it was but a momentary truce, an interregnum of indolence; but it was all they asked for. they could no longer nurse any illusions as to the trend of their way or the endlessness of their quest. they must now always keep moving. they might alter the manner of their progression, they might change their stroke, but the continuity of effort on their part could no more be broken than could that of a swimmer at sea. they must keep on, or go down. so, in the meantime, they plucked the day, with a touch of wistfulness born of their very distrust of the morrow. the glimmering sapphire seas were almost motionless, the days and nights were without wind, and the equable, balmy air was like that of an american mid-summer, so that all of the day and much of the night they spent on deck, where the welsh schoolmaster eyed them covertly, as a honeymoon couple engulfed in the selfish contentment of their own great happiness. it reminded frank of earlier and older days, for, with the dropping away of his professional preoccupations, durkin seemed to relapse into some more intimate and personal relationship with her. it was the first time since their flight from america, she felt, that his affection had borne out the promise of its earlier ardor. and it taught her two things. one was that her woman's natural hunger for love was not so dead as she had at times imagined. the other was that durkin, during the last months, had drifted much further away from her than she had dreamed. it stung her into a passionate and remorseful self-promise to keep closer to him, to make herself always essential to him, to turn and bend as he might bend and turn, but always to be with him. it would lead her downward and still further downward, she told herself. but she caught solace from some blind belief that all women, through some vague operation of their affectional powers, could invade the darkest mires of life, if only it were done for love, and carry away no stain. in fact, what would be a blemish in time would almost prove a thing of joy and pride. and in the meantime she was glad enough to be as happy as she was, and to be near durkin. it was not the happiness she had once looked for, but it sufficed. they caught sight of a corner of corsica, and on the following night could see the glow of the iron-smelting fires on elba, and the twinkle of the island shore-lights. from the bridge, too, through one of the officers' glasses, frank could see, far inland across the pontine marshes, the gilded dome of st. peter's, glimmering in the pellucid morning sunlight. she called durkin, and pointed it out to him. "see, it's rome!" she cried, with strangely mingled feelings. "it's st. peter's!" "i wish it was the statue of liberty and new york," he said, moodily. she realized, then, that he was not quite so happy as he had pretended to be. and she herself, from that hour forward, shared in his secret unrest. for as time slipped away and her eye followed the heightening line of the apennines, she knew that tranquil tyrrhenian sea would not long be left to her. it was evening when they rounded the terraced vineyards of ischia. a low red moon shone above the belching pinnacle of vesuvius. frank and durkin leaned over the rail together, as they drifted slowly up the bay, the most beautiful bay in all the world, with its twilight sounds of shipping, its rattle of anchor chains, its far-off cries and echoes, and its watery, pungent southern odors. they watched the ship's officer put ashore to obtain _pratique_, and the yellow flag come down, and heard the signal-bells of the engine-room, as the officer returned, with a great cigar in one corner of his bearded mouth. there was nothing amiss. there were neither carabinieri nor guardie di pubblica sicurezza to come on board with papers and cross-questions. before the break of day their discharged cargo would be in the lighters and they would be steaming southward for the straits of messina. that night, on the deserted deck, at anchor between the city and the sea, they watched the glimmering lights of naples, rising tier after tier from the _immacolatella nuova_ and its ship lamps to the _palazzo di capodimonte_ and its near-by _osservatorio_. and when the lights of the city thinned out and the crowning haze of gold melted from its hillsides, with the advancing night, frank and durkin sat back in their steamer-chairs and looked up at the stars, talking of home, and of the future. yet the beauty of that balmy and tranquil night seemed to bring little peace of mind to durkin. there were reasons, of late, when moments of meditation were not always moments of contentment to him. his wife had noticed that ever-increasing trouble of soul, and although she said nothing of it, she had watched him narrowly and not altogether despondently. for she knew that whatever the tumult or contest that might be taking place within the high-walled arena of his own ego, it was a clash of forces of which she must remain merely a spectator. so she went below, leaving him in that hour of passive yet troubled thought, to stare up at the tranquil southern stars, as he meditated on life, and the meaning of life, and what lay beyond it all. she knew men and the world too well to look for any sudden and sweeping reorganization of durkin's disturbed and restless mind. but she nursed the secret hope that out of that spiritual ferment would come some ultimate clearness of vision. it was late when he called her up on deck again, ostensibly to catch a glimpse of vesuvius breaking and bursting into flame, above _barra_ and _portici_. she knew, however, that slumbering and subterranean fires other than vesuvius had erupted into light and life. she could see it by the new misery on his moonlit face, as she sat beside him. yet she sat there in silence; there was so little that she could say. "do you know, you've changed, frank, these last few months!" he at last essayed. "haven't there been reasons enough for it?" she asked, making no effort to conceal the bitterness of her tone. "you're not happy, are you?" "are _you_?" she asked, in turn. "who can be happy, and think?" she waited, passively, for him to go on again. "you said you didn't much care what happened, so long as it kept us together, and left us satisfied." "isn't that enough?" she broke in, hotly, yet thrilling with the thought that he was about to tear away the mockery behind which she had tried to mask herself. "no, it isn't enough! and now we're out of the dust of it, these last few days, i can see that it never can be enough. i've just been wondering where it leads to, and what it amounts to. i've had a feeling, for days, now, that there's something between us. what is it?" "ourselves!" she answered, at last. "exactly! and that is what makes me think you're wrong when you cry that you'll stoop every time i stoop. every single crime that seems to be bringing us together is only keeping us apart. it's making you hate yourself, and because of that, hate me as well!" "i couldn't do _that_!" she protested, catching at his hands. "but i can see it with my own eyes, whether you want to or not. it can't be helped. it's beginning to frighten me, this very willingness of yours to do the things we oughtn't to. why, i'd be happier, even, if you did them under protest!" "but what is the difference, if i still _do_ them?" "it would show me that you weren't as bad as i am--that you hadn't altogether given up." "i couldn't altogether give up, and live!" she cried, with sudden passion. "but you told me as much, that night in monte carlo?" "i didn't _mean_ it. i was tired out that night; i was embittered, and insane, if you like! i _want_ to be good! no woman wants sin and wrongdoing! but, o jim, can't you see, it's you, you, i want, before everything else!" he smote the palms of his hands together, in a little gesture of impotent misery. "that's just it--you tried to make me save myself for my own sake,--and it couldn't be done. it was a failure. and now you're trying to make me save myself for your sake----" "it's not your salvation i want--it's _you_!" "but it's only through being honest that i can hold and keep you; can't you see that? if i can't trust myself, i can't possibly trust _you_!" "couldn't we try--once more?" her voice was little more than a whisper. he looked up at the soft and velvet stars that peered down so voluptuously from a soft and velvet sky. he looked at them for many moments, before he spoke again. "if i got back to my work again, my right and honest work, i _could_ be honest!" he declared, vehemently. "but we _are_ going back," she assuaged. "yes, but see what we have to go through, first!" "i know," she admitted, unhappily. "but even then, we could say that it was to be for the last time." "as we said before--and failed!" "but this time we needn't fail. think what it will mean if you have your work on your transmitting camera waiting for you--months and years of hard and honest work--work that you love, work that will lead to bigger things, and give you the time, yes, and the money, you need to perfect your amplifier. but outside of that, even to have your work--surely that's enough!" "i'd have to have you, as well!" he said, out of the silence that had fallen upon them. "you always will, jim, you know that!" "but i'm afraid of myself! i'm afraid of my moods--i'm afraid of my own distrust. i have a feeling that it may hurt you, sometime, almost beyond forgiveness!" "i'll try to understand!" she murmured. and again silence fell over them. "i'm afraid of making promises," he said, half whimsically, half weakly, after many minutes of thought. "i don't want you to promise--only _try_!" she pleaded, swept by a wave of gratitude that seemed to fling her more intimately than ever before into her husband's arms. yet it was a wave, and nothing more. for it receded as it came, leaving her, a moment later, chilled and apprehensive before their over-troubled future. with a little muffled cry of emotion, almost animal-like in its inarticulate intensity, she turned to her husband, and strained him in her arms, in her human and unhappy and unsatisfied arms. "oh, love me!" she pleaded, brokenly. "love me! love me--for i need it!" they seemed strangely nearer to each other, after that night, and the peacefulness of their cruise to bari remained uninterrupted. and once clear of that port durkin's nervousness somewhat lightened, for he had figured out that they would be able to connect with one of the cunard liners at trieste. from there, if only they escaped attention and detection in the harbor, they would be turning homeward in two days. one thing, and one thing only, lay between frank and her husband: she had not yet found courage to tell him of the loss of the penfield papers. and the more she thought of it, the more she dreaded it, teased and mocked by the very irony of the situation, disquieted and humiliated at the memory of her own pleadings for honesty while she herself was so far astray from the paths she was pointing out. that sacrifice of scrupulosity on the altar of expediency, trivial as it was, was the heritage of her past life, she told herself. and she felt, vaguely, that in some form or another it would be paid for, and dearly paid for, as she had paid for everything. it was only as they steamed into the harbor of trieste, in the teeth of a _bora_ and a high-running sea, that this woman who longed to be altogether honest allowed herself any fleeting moment of self-pity. for as she gazed up at the bald and sterile hills behind that clean and wind-swept austrian city, she remembered they had been thus denuded that their timbers might make a foundation for venice. she felt, in that passing mood, that her own life had been denuded, that all its softening and shrouding beauties had been cut out and carried away, that from now on she was to be torn by winds and scorched by open suns--while the best of her slept submerged, beyond the reach of her unhappy hands. but durkin, at her side, through the driving spray and rain, pointed out to her the huge rolling bulk and the red funnels of the cunarder. "thank heaven!" he said, with a sigh of relief, "we'll be in time to catch her!" the _laminian_ dropped anchor to the windward of the liner, and as dusk settled down over the harbor frank took a wordless pleasure in studying the shadowy hulk which was to carry her back to america, to her old life and her old associations. but she was wondering how she should tell him of the loss of the penfield securities. it was true that the very crimes that should have bound them together were keeping them apart! suddenly she ran to the companionway and called down to her husband. "look!" she said, under her breath, as he came to the rail, "they're talking with their wireless!" she pointed to the masthead of the cunarder, where, through the twilight, she could "spell" the spark, signal by signal and letter by letter, as the current broke from the head of the installation wires to the hollow metal mast, from which ran the taut-strung wires connecting, in turn, with the operating office just aft and above the engine-rooms. "listen," she said, for in the lull of the wind they could hear the short, crisp spit of the spark as it spelt out its mysterious messages. durkin caught her arm, and listened, intently, watching the little appearing and disappearing green spark, spelling off the words with narrowing eyes. "they're talking with the station up on the mainland. do you hear what it is? can't you make it out?" it was, of course, the continental, and not the morse, code, and it was not quite the same as stooping over and listening to the crisp, incisive pulsations of a "sounder." but frank heard and saw and pieced together enough of the message to clutch, in turn, at durkin's arm, and wait with quickened breath for the answering spark-play. "no--such--persons--on--board--send--fuller--description." there was a silence of a minute or two, and then the mysterious hertzian voice lisped out once more. "description--not--forwarded--by--embassy--man--and--wife--are wanted-for robbery--at--monte--carlo--also--at--genoa--name--durgin--or-durkin." the listening man and woman looked at each other, and still waited. "oh, this _is_ luck!" said the listener, fervently, as he drew a deep breath. "this _is_ luck!" "listen, they're answering again!" cried frank. "why--not--confer--with--trieste--authorities--will--you--please-telephone--our--agents--to--send--out--tender--to take--off--admiral-stuart." then came the silence again. "yes," sounded the minute electric tongue from the mountain-top, so many miles away. "good--night!" "good--night!" replied the articulate mass of heaving steel, swinging at her anchor chains. chapter xv wireless messages "what are we to do?" asked frances durkin, turning from the masthead to her husband's studious face. "we've got to jump at our chance, and get on board the _slavonia_ over there!" "in the face of those messages?" "it's the messages that simplify things for us. all we now have to do is to get on board in such a manner that the ship's officers will have no suspicions. they mustn't dream of linking us with the runaway couple who are being looked for. that means that we must not, in the first place, appear together, and, in the second, of course, that we must travel and appear as utter strangers!" "but supposing keenan himself is on board that steamer?" parried frank. "it is obvious that he isn't, for then it would be quite unnecessary to send out any such messages by wireless." "but supposing it's pobloff?" "didn't you say that pobloff would never follow us out of europe?" "but even if it's keenan?" she persisted. "then you must remember that you are miss allen, at your old trade of picking up little art relics for wealthy families in england and america. you will have yourself rowed directly over to the _slavonia's_ landing ladder--you can see it there, not two hundred feet away--and go on board and secure a stateroom from the purser. the clearing papers can be attended to later. i'll have the _laminian_ dingey take me ashore, somewhere down near barcola, if it can possibly be done in this wind. then i'll come out to the _slavonia_ later, having, you see, just arrived on the train from venice!" she shook her head doubtfully. an inapposite and irrational dread of seeing him return to the dangers of land took possession of her. she knew it would be impossible for her to put this untimely feeling into words, so that he would see and understand it; and, such being the case, she argued with him stubbornly to alter his plan, and to allow her to be the one to go ashore, while he went immediately to the liner. he consented to this at last, a little reluctantly, but the thought that he was safely installed in his cabin, as she made her way shoreward through the dusk, in the pitching and dripping little dingey, consoled her for the sense of loneliness and desertion which her position brought to her. the wind had increased, by this time, and the rain was coming down in slanting and stinging sheets. but her spirit did not fail her. from the water-front, deserted and rain-swept, she called a passing street carriage, and drove to the hotel bristol. there she sent the driver to ask if any luggage had arrived from venice for miss allen. none had arrived, and miss allen, naturally, appeared in great perturbation before the sympathetic but helpless hotel manager. she next inquired if it was possible to ascertain when the cunard steamer sailed. "the _slavonia_, madam, leaves the harbor at daybreak!" "at daybreak! then i must go on board tonight, at once!" "i fear it is impossible, madam. the _bora_ is blowing, as you see, and the harbor is empty!" "but i _must_ get on board!" she cried, and this time her dismay and despair were not mere dissimulation. the landlord shrugged his shoulders, while frank, calling out a peremptory order, in italian, to her driver, left him at the curb looking after her through the driving rain, in bewilderment. she went first to the steamship offices. they were closed. then she sought out the cunard tender--it was lightless and deserted. then she hurried to the water-front, driving up and down along that lonely stretch of deserted quays, back and forth, coaxing, wheedling, trying to bribe indifferent and placid-eyed boatmen to row her out to her steamer. it was useless. it could not be done. it was not worth while to risk either their boats or their lives, even in the face of the fifty, one hundred, two hundred _lira_ which she flaunted in their unperturbed faces. grating and rocking against the quayside, above the heads of the group about her, she caught sight of a white-painted steam launch, with a high-standing bow, and on it a uniformed officer, smoking in the rain. she approached him without hesitation. could he, in any way, carry her out to her steamer? she pointed to where the lights of the _slavonia_ shone and glimmered through the gray darkness. they looked indescribably warm and homelike to her peering eyes. the officer looked her up and down in stolid austrian amazement, trying to catch a glimpse of her face through her wet and flattened traveling veil. could he take her out to her steamer? no; he was afraid not. yes, it was true he had steam up, and that his crew were aboard, but this was the official patrol of the captain of the port--it was not to carry passengers--it was solely for the imperial service of the austrian government. she pleaded with him, weeping. he was sorry, but the captain of the port would permit no such irregularity. "where is the captain of the port, then?" she demanded. the officer puffed his cigar slowly, and looked her up and down once more. he was in his office in the administration building--but the officer's shrug and smile told her that it was, in his eyes, no easy thing to secure admission to the captain of the port. the very phrase, "the captain of the port," that had been bandied back and forth for the last few minutes, became odious to her; it seemed to designate the title of some august and supernatural and tyrannous power who held her life and death in his hands. she turned on her heel and drove at once to the administration building. here, at the entrance, she was confronted by a uniformed sentry, who, after questioning her, passed her on to still another uniformed personage, who called an orderly, and sent that somewhat bewildered messenger and his charge to the anteroom of the captain of the port's private secretary. frank had a sense of hurrying down long and jail-like corridors, of ascending stairs and passing sentries, of questionings and consultations, of at last being ushered into a softly-lighted, softly-carpeted room, where a white-bearded, benignant-browed official sat in a swivel-chair before a high walnut desk. he shook his head mournfully as he listened to her story. but she did not give up. she even amazed him a little by the sheer impetuosity of her speech. "is there much at stake, _signorina_?" he asked, at last, as she paused for breath. "_a man's soul is at stake_!" was the answering cry that rang through the quiet room. the captain of the port smiled a little cynically, scarcely understanding. yet something almost fatherly about his sad and wistful face steeled her to still further persistence, and she afterward remembered, always a little shamefaced, that she had wept and clung to his arm and wept still again, before she melted and bent him from his official determination. she saw, through blurred and misty eyes, his hand go out and touch an electric button at his side. she saw him write three lines on a sheet of paper, an attendant appear, and heard an order briefly and succinctly given. she had gained her end. the captain of the port rose as she turned to go from the room. "good night, and also good-bye, _signorina_!" he said quietly, with his stately, old-world bow. she paused at the door, wordlessly demeaned, momentarily ashamed of herself. she felt, in some way, how miserable and low and self-seeking she stood beneath him, how high and firm he stood above her, with his calm and disinterested kindliness. she turned back to him once more. "good-bye," she said inadequately, in her tearful and tremulous contralto. "good-bye, and thank you, again and again!" he bowed from where he stood in the center of his quiet and sheltered office, seeming, to her, a strangely old-time and courtly figure, a proud yet unpretentious student of life at peace with his own soul. the years would come and go, the years that would so age and wear and torture _her_, but he would reign on in that quiet office unchanged, contented, still at peace with himself and all his world. "good-bye," she said for the third time, from the doorway. then she hurried down to her waiting carriage and raced for the quay. there she took an almost malicious delight in the bustle and perturbation to which her return gave sudden rise. the sleepy and sullen crew were stirred out, signals were clanged, ropes were cast off; and down in her little narrow cabin, securely shut off from the driving spray, she could feel and hear the boat lurch and pound through the waves. then came shrill calls of the whistle above, the sound of gruff voices, the rasp and scrape of heaving woodwork against woodwork, the grind of the ladder against the boat-fenders, the cry of the officer telling her to hurry. she walked up the _slavonia's_ ladder steadily, demurely, for under the lights of the promenade deck she could see the clustering, inquisitive heads, where a dozen crowding passengers tried to ascertain just who could be coming aboard with such ceremony. leaning over the rail, with a cigar in his mouth, she caught sight of her husband. as she passed him, at the head of the ladder, he spoke one short sentence to her, under his breath. it was a commonplace enough little sentence, but as the purport of it filtered through her tired mind it stung her into both a new wariness of attitude and thought and a new gratefulness of heart. for as she passed him, without one betraying emotion or one glance aside, he had whispered to her, under his breath: "_keenan is here, on board. be careful!_" chapter xvi broken insulation the _slavonia_ was well down the adriatic before keenan was seen on deck. both frank and durkin, by that time, had met in secret more than once, and had talked over their predicament and decided on a plan of action. "whatever you do," durkin warned her, "don't let keenan suspect who i am! don't let him get a glimpse of you with me. my part now has got to be what you'd call 'armed neutrality.' if anything unforeseen turns up--and that can only be at palermo or gibraltar--i'll be watching near by to come to your help in some way--but, whatever you do, don't let keenan suspect this!" "you mean that we mustn't even look at each other?" she cried, in mock dismay. "precisely," he continued. "what if an officer should introduce you to me?" she laughed a little. the untimeliness of her laughter disturbed him. more and more often, during the last few weeks, he had beheld the signs of some callousing and hardening process going on within her. "oh, in that case," he answered, "you'll find me very glum and uncongenial. you'll probably be only too glad to leave me alone!" she nodded her head in meditative assent. her problem was a difficult one. "jim," she said suddenly, "why should we play this waiting and retreating game during the next two weeks? here we have keenan on board, with nothing to interfere with our operations. why can't we work a little harder to win his confidence?" "we?" asked the other. "well, why couldn't _i_? all along, during those days in genoa, i had the feeling that he would have believed in me, if some little outside accident had only confirmed his faith in me. we can't tell, of course, just what he found out after that pobloff affair, or just how he interpreted it, or whether he is as much in the dark as ever. if that is the case, we may stand just where we were before with keenan!" "but i thought you wanted to get away from this sort of thing?" "i do--when the time comes," she evaded, tortured by the thought that she had withheld anything from him. "i do--but are we to let keenan go, when we have him so close to us?" "then go ahead and both capture and captivate him!" said durkin, with a voice that was gruff only because it was indifferent. still again he was oppressed by the feeling that she was passing beyond his power. "but see, jim--i'm getting so old and ugly!" and again she laughed, with her own show of indifference, though her husband knew, by the wistfulness of her face, that she was struggling to hold back some deeper and stronger current of feeling. so he thrust his hands deep in his pockets, and refused to meet her eyes for a second time. "i don't see why we should be afraid of either palermo or gibraltar," durkin went on at last, with a half-impatient business-is-business glance about him. "keenan is alone in this. he has no agents over here, that we know of, and he daren't put anything in the hands of the authorities. he's a runaway, a fugitive with the district-attorney's office after him, and he has to move just as quietly as we do. mark my words, where he will make his first move, and do anything he's going to do, will be in new york!" "then why can't i prepare the ground for the new york situation, whatever it may be?" she demanded. "you mean by standing pat with keenan?" "precisely." "then how will you begin?" "by sending him a note at once, telling him how i slipped away from genoa to venice, and asking him the meaning of the pobloff attack--in other words, by appearing so actively suspicious of _him_ that he'll forget to be suspicious of _me_." "and what do you imagine he will answer?" "i think he will send me back word to say absolutely nothing about the genoa episode--he may even claim that it's quite beyond his comprehension. that will give us a chance to meet more naturally, and then we can talk things over more minutely, at our leisure." durkin wheeled on her, half-angrily. through all their career, he had remained strangely unschooled to any such concession as this. it was an affront to his dormant and masculine spirit of guardianship; it seemed a blow in the teeth of his nurturing instinct, an overriding of his prerogatives of a man and a husband. "while you're making love to him on the bridge-deck, on moonlight nights!" he flung back at her, bitterly. "do you think i could?" she murmured, with a ghost of a sigh. durkin emitted a little impatient oath. "don't swear, jim!" she reproved him. the vague prescience that some day he should lose her, that in some time yet to be she should pass beyond his reach and control, still again filtered through his consciousness, like a dark and corroding seepage. he caught her by the arm roughly, and looked into her face, for one silent and scrutinizing minute. "do you care?" she asked, and it seemed to him there was a tremor of happiness in her tone. "i _hate_ this part of the business!" he cried, with still another oath. "oh, do you care?" she reiterated, as her arms crept about him valiantly, yet a little timidly. he surrendered, against his will, to the gentle artillery of her tears. they startled and unmanned him for a little, they came so unexpectedly, for as he crushed her in his sudden responding embrace, the impulse, at that time and in that place, seemed the incongruous outcropping of some deeply submerged stratum of feeling. "if you _do_ care, jim, why do you never tell me so?" she demanded of him, in gentle reproof. he then noticed, for the first time, the hungry and unsatisfied look that brooded over her face. he confessed to himself unhappily that something about him was altered. "this cursed business knocks that sort of thing out of you," he expiated, discomforted at the thought that a feeling so long disregarded could grip him so keenly. and all the while he was torn by the misery of two contending impressions; one, the dim, subliminal foreboding that she was ordained for worthier and cleaner hands than his, the other, that this upheaval of the emotions still had the power to shake and bewilder and leave him so wordlessly unhappy. it was the ever-recurring incongruity, the repeated syncretism, which made him vaguely afraid of himself and of the future. then, as he looked down into her face once more, and studied the shadowy violet eyes, and the low brow, and the short-lipped mobile mouth so laden with impulse, and the soft line of the chin and throat so eloquent of weakness and yielding, a second and stronger wave of feeling surged through him. "i love you, frank; i tell you i do love you!" he cried, with a voice that did not seem his own. and as she lay back in his arms, weak and surrendering, with the heavy lashes closed over the shadowy eyes, he stooped and kissed her on her red, melancholy mouth. yet as he did so the act seemed to take on the touch of something solemn and valedictory, though he fought back the impression with his still reiterated cry of "i love you!" "then why are you unkind to me?" she asked, more calmly now. "oh, can't you see i want you--all of you?" he cried. "then why do you leave me where so much must be given to other things, to hateful things?" she asked, with her mild and melancholy eyes still on his face. "god knows, i've wanted you out of it, often enough!" he avowed, desolately. and she made no effort to alleviate his suffering. "then why not take me out of it, and keep me out of it?" she demanded, with a cold directness that brought him wheeling about on her. he suddenly caught her by the shoulders, and held her away from him, at arms' length. she thought, at first, that it was a gesture of repudiation; but she soon saw her mistake. "i swear to god," he was saying to her, with a grim tremor of determination in his voice as he spoke, "i swear to god, once we are out of this affair, _it will be the last_!" "it will be the last!" repeated the woman, broodingly, but her words were not so much a declaration as a prayer. chapter xvii the tangled skein it was the _slavonia's_ last night at sea. in another twelve hours the pilot would be aboard, quarantine would be passed, the engines would be slowed down, and the great steamer would be lying at her berth in the north river, discharging her little world of life into the scattered corners of a waiting continent. already, on the green baize bulletin-board in the companionway the purser had posted the customary notice to the effect that the steamer's operator was now in connection with new york city, and that wireless messages might be received for all points in europe and america. there was a chill in the air, and to frances durkin, sitting beside keenan on the promenade deck, there seemed something restless and phantasmal and ghostlike in the thin, north atlantic sunlight, after the mellow and opulent gold of the mediterranean calms. it seemed to her to be a presage of the restless movement and tumult which she felt to be before her. she had not been altogether amiss in her predictions of what the past fortnight would bring forth. she had erred a little, she felt, in her estimate of keenan's character; yet she had not been mistaken in the course of action which he was to pursue. for, from the beginning, after the constraint of their first meeting on board had passed away, he had shown her a direct and open friendliness which now and then even gave rise to a vague and uneasy suspicion in her own mind. this friendliness had brought with it an easier exchange of confidences, then a seeming intimacy and good-fellowship which, at times, made it less difficult for frank to lose herself in her rôle. keenan, one starlit night under the shadow of a lifeboat amidships, had even acknowledged to her the dubiousness of the mission that had taken him abroad. later, he had outlined to her what his life had been, telling her of his struggles when a penniless student of the city law school, of his early and unsavory criminal-court efforts, and his unhappy plunge into the morasses of eighth-ward politics, of his campaign against the "dave kelly" gang, and the death of his political career which came with that opposition, of his swinging round to the tides of the times and taking up with bucket-shop work, of his "shark" lawyer practices and his police-court legal trickeries, of his gradual identification with the poolroom interests and his first gleaning of gambling-house lore, of his drifting deeper and deeper into this life of unearned increment, of his fight with the bar association, which was taken and lost before the judiciary committee of congress, and of his final offer of retainer from penfield, and private and expert services after the second raid on that gambler's saratoga house. frank could understand why he said little of the purpose that took him to europe. although she waited anxiously for any word he might let fall on that subject, she respected his natural reticence in the matter. he was a criminal, low and debased enough, it was true; but he was a criminal of such apparent largeness of mind and such openness of spirit that his very life of crime, to the listening woman, seemed to take on the dignity of a nietzsche-like abrogation of all civic and social ties. yet, in all his talk, he was open and frank enough in his confession of attitude. he had seen too much of criminal life to have many illusions or to make many mistakes about it. he openly admitted that the end of all careers of crime was disaster--if not open and objective, at least hidden and subjective. he had no love for it all. but when once, through accident or necessity, in the game, he protested, there was but one line of procedure, and that was to bring to illicit activity that continuous intelligence which marked the conduct of those who stood ready to combat it. society, he declared, owed its safety to the fact that the criminal class, as a rule, was made up of its least intelligent members. when criminality went allied with a shrewd mind and a sound judgment--and a smile curled about keenan's melancholy celtic mouth as he spoke--it became transplanted, practically, to the sphere and calling of high finance. but if the defier of the establish rule preferred the simpler order of things, he continued, his one hope lay in the power of making use of his fellow-criminals, by applying to the unorganized smaller fry of his profession some particular far-seeing policy and some deliberate purpose, and through doing so standing remote and immune, as all centres of generalship should stand. this, he went on to explain, was precisely what penfield had done, with his art palaces and his european jaunts and his doling out of political patronage and his prolonged defiance of all the police powers of a great and active city. he had organized and executed with napoleonic comprehensiveness; he had fattened on the daily tribute of less imaginative subordinates in sin. and now he was fortified behind his own gold. he was being harassed and hounded for the moment--but the emotional wave of reform that was calling for his downfall would break and pass, and leave him as secure as ever. "now, my belief is," keenan told the listening woman, "that if you find you cannot possibly be the napoleon of the campaign, it is well worth while to be the ney. i mean that it has paid me to attach myself to a man who is bigger than i am, instead of going through all the dangers and meannesses and hardships of a petty independent operator. it pays me in two ways. i get the money, and i get the security." "then you believe this man penfield will never be punished?" he thought over the question for a moment or two. "no, i don't think he ever will. he stands for something that is as active and enduring in our american life as are the powers arrayed against him. you see, the district-attorney's office represents the centripetal force of society. penfield stands for the centrifugal force. they fight and battle against one another, and first one seems to gain, and then the other, and all the while the fight between the two, the struggle between the legal and the illegal, makes up the balance of everyday life." "you mean that we're all gamblers, at heart?" "i mean that every broadway must have its bowery, that the world can only be so good--if you try to make it better, it breaks out in a new place--and the master criminal is a man who takes advantage of this nervous leakage. we call him the occasional offender--and he's the most dangerous man in all society. in other words, the passion, as you say, for gambling, is implanted in all of us; the thought of some vast hazard, of some lucky stroke of fate, is in your head as often as it is in mine. you tell me you are a hard-working art collector, making a decent living by gadding about europe picking up knick-knacks. now, suppose i came to you with a proposal like this: suppose i told you that without any greater personal discomfort, without any greater danger or any harder work, you might, say, join forces with me and at one play of the game haul in fifty thousand dollars from men who no more deserve this money than we do, i'll warrant that you'd think over it pretty seriously." the woman at his side laughed a little, and then gave a significantly careless shrug of her small shoulders. "who wouldn't?" she said, and their eyes met questioningly, in the uncertain light. "women, as a rule, are timid," he said at last. "they usually prefer the slower and safer road." "sometimes they get tired of it. then, too, it isn't always safe just because it's slow!" it seemed to give him the opening for which he had been waiting. he looked at her with undisguised yet calculating admiration. "i'll wager _you_ would never be afraid of a thing, if you once got into it, or wanted to get into it!" he cried. she laughed again, a self-confident and reassuring little laugh. "i've been through too many things," she admitted simply, "to talk about being thin-skinned!" "i knew as much!" "why do you say that?" "i could see it from the first. you've got courage, and you're shrewd, and you know the world--and you've got what's worth all the rest put together. i mean that you're a fine-looking woman, and you've never let the fact spoil you!" there was no mistaking the pregnancy of the glance and question which she next directed toward him. "then why couldn't you take me in with you?" she asked, with a quiet-toned solemnity. she had the sensations of a skater on treacherously thin ice, as she watched the slow, cautious scrutiny of his unbetraying face. but now, for some reason, she knew neither fear nor hesitation. "and what if we did?" he parried temporizingly. "well, what if we did?--men and women have worked together before this!" even in the dim light that surrounded them she could notice the color go out of his intent and puzzled face. from that moment, in some mysterious way, she lost the last shred of sympathy for his abject and isolated figure, and yet she was the one, she knew, who had been most unworthy. "and do you understand what it would imply--what it would mean?" he asked slowly and with significant emphasis. she could not repress her primal woman's instinct of revolt from the thoughts which his quiet interrogation sent at her, like an arrow. but she struggled to keep down the little shudder which woke and stirred within her. he had done nothing more than respond to her tacit challenge. but she feared him, more and more. until then she had advanced discreetly and guardedly, and as she had advanced and taken her new position he had as guardedly fallen back and held his own. it had been a strange and silent campaign, and all along it had filled frank with a sense of stalking and counter-stalking. now they were plunging into the naked and primordial conflict of man against woman, without reservations and without indirections--and it left her with a vague fear of some impending helplessness and isolation. she had a sudden prompting to delay or evade that final step, to temporize and wait for some yet undefined reinforcements. "and you realize what it means?" he repeated. "yes," she said in her soft contralto. a feeling of revulsion that was almost nausea was consuming her. this, then, she told herself, was the bitter and humiliating price she must pay for her tainted triumph. "and would you accept and agree to the conditions--the only conditions?" he demanded, in a voice now hatefully tremulous with some rising and controlling emotion. she had the feeling, as she listened, that she was a naked slave girl, being jested over and bidden for on the auction block of some barbaric king. she felt that it was time to end the mockery; she no longer even pitied him. "listen!" she suddenly cried, "they are beginning to send the wireless!" they listened side by side, to the brisk kick and spurt and crackle of the fluid spark leaping between the two brass knobs in the little operating-room just above where they sat. they could hear it distinctly, above the drone of the wind and the throb of the engines and the quiet evening noises of the orderly ship--spitting and cluttering out into space. to the impatient man it was nothing more than the ripple of unintelligent and unrelated sounds. to the wide-eyed and listening woman it was a decorous and coherent march of dots and dashes, carrying with it thought and meaning and system. and as each word fluttered off on its restless hertzian wings, like a flock of hurrying carrier-pigeons through the night, the woman listened and translated and read, word by word. "then we go it together--you and i--for all it's worth!" keenan was saying, with his face near hers and his hand on her motionless arm. "listen," she said sharply. "it--it sounds like a bag of lightning getting loose, doesn't it?" for the message which was leaping from the lonely and dipping ship to the receiving wires at the highland heights station was one that she intended to read, word by word. it was a simple enough message, but as it translated itself into intelligible coherence it sent a creeping thrill of conflicting fear and triumph through her. for the words which sped across space from key to installation-pole read: "woman--named--allen--will--bring--papers--to--p--field's--downtown-house--i--will--wait--word--from--you--at--philadelphia--advise--me-of--situation--there--and--wire--d--in--time--kerrigan." it was only then that she was conscious of the theatricalities from which she had emerged, of the man so close beside her, still waiting for her play-acting word of decision. it was only then, too, that she fully understood the adroitness, the smooth and supple alertness, of her ever-wary and watchful companion. but she rose to the situation without a visible sign of flinching. taking one deep breath, as though it were a final and comprehensive gulp of unmenaced life, she turned to him, and gazed quietly and steadily into his questioning eyes. "yes, if you say it, i'm with you now, whether it's for good or bad!" "and this is final!" he demanded. "if you begin, you'll stick to it!" "to the bitter end!" she answered grimly. and there was something so unemotionally decisive in her tone that he no longer hesitated, no longer doubted her. chapter xviii the severed knot it was in the gray of the early morning, as the _slavonia_ steamed from the upper bay into the north river and the serrated skyline of manhattan bit into the thin rind of sunrise to the east, that durkin and frank came suddenly together in a deserted companionway. she had been praying for one hour more, and then all would be set right. "i want to see you!" he said sharply. she looked about to make sure they were unobserved. "i know it--but i daren't run the risk--now!" "why not now? what has changed?" he demanded. "i tell you we can't, jim! we might be seen here, any minute!" "what difference should that make?" "it makes every difference!" "by heaven, i've _got_ to see you!" for the first time she realized the force of the dull rage that burned within him. "i want to know what's before us, and how we're going to act!" "i tell you, jim, i can't talk to you here!" "you mean you don't care to!" he flashed out. "can't you trust me?" she pleaded. "trust you? what has trust to do in a business like ours?" "it is _your_ business--until you put an end to it!" and her voice shook with the repressed bitterness of her spirit. "i tried to see you quietly, last night, but you had gone to your cabin. i have a feeling that we're under the eye of every steward on this ship--i _know_ we are being watched, all the time. and if you were seen here with me, it would only drag you in, and make it harder to straighten out, in the end. can't you see what's going on?" "yes, i _have_ been seeing what's going on--and i'm sick of it!" "oh, not _that_, jim!" she cried, in a little muffled wail. "you know it would never be that!" his one dominating feeling was that which grew out of the stinging consciousness that she wanted to escape him, that the moment had come when she could make an effort to evade him. but he was only paying the penalty! he had sowed, he told himself, and it was only natural that in time he should reap! already he was losing her! already, it might be, he had lost her! "won't you be reasonable?" she was saying, and her voice sounded faint and far away. "i've got to see this through now, and one little false move would spoil everything! i must land by myself. i'll write you, at the bartholdi, when and where to meet me!" the noise of approaching footsteps sounded down the carpeted passageway. he had caught her by the arm, but now he released his grip and turned away. "quick," she whispered, "here's somebody coming!" she was struggling with the ends of her veil, and durkin was aimlessly pacing away from her, when the hurrying steward brushed by them. a moment later he returned, followed by a second steward, but by this time durkin had made his way to the upper deck, and was looking with quiescent rage at the quays and walls and skyscrapers of new york. before the steamer wore into the wharf frank had seen keenan and a last few words had passed between them. she sternly schooled herself to calmness, for she felt her great moment had come. at his request that her first mission be to deliver a sealed packet at the office of richard penfield, in the lower west side, she evinced neither surprise nor displeasure. it was all in the day's work, she protested, as keenan talked on, giving her more definite instructions and still again impressing on her the need for secrecy. she took the sealed package without emotion--the little package for which she had worked so hard and lost so much and waited so long--and as apathetically secreted it. equally without emotion she passed durkin, standing at the foot of the gangway. something in his face, however, warned her of the grim mood that burned within him. she pitied him, not for his suffering, but for his blindness. "don't follow me!" she muttered, between her teeth, as she swept unbetrayingly by him, and hurriedly made her way out past the customs barrier. it was not until she had reached the closed carriage keenan's steward had already ordered for her that she realized how apparently cursory and precipitate had been that hurried word of warning. but there was time for neither explanation nor display of emotion. it could all be made clear and put right, later. she heard the nervous trample of hoofs on the wooden flooring, the battle of truck-wheels, the muffled sound of calling voices, and she leaned back in the gloomy cab and closed her eyes with a great sense of escape, with a sense of relief tinged with triumph. as she did so the door of her turning cab was opened, and the sudden square of light was blocked by a massive form. she gave a startled little cry as the figure swung itself up into the seat beside her. then the curtained door swung shut, with a slam. it seemed like the snap of a steel trap. "hello, there, frank!--i've been looking out for you!" said the intruder, with a taunt of mockery in his easy laugh. _it was macnutt_. she gaped at him stupidly, with an inarticulate throaty gasp, half of protest, half of bewilderment. "you see, i know you, frank, and keenan doesn't!" and again she felt the sting of his scoffing laughter. she looked at the subdolous, pale-green eyes, with their predatory restlessness, at the square-blocked, flaccid jaw, and the beefy, animal-like massiveness of the strong neck, at the huge form odorous of gin and cigar smoke, and the great, hairy hands marked with their purplish veinings. it seemed like a ghost out of some long-past and only half-remembered life. it came back to her with all the hideousness of a momentarily forgotten nightmare, made newly hideous by the sanities of ordered design and open daylight in which it intruded. and her heart sank and hope burned out of her. "you! how dare _you_ come here?" she demanded, with a show of hot defiance. he looked at her collectedly and studiously, with an approving little side-shake of the bull-dog, pugnacious-looking head. "you're the same fine looker!" was all he said, with an appreciative clucking of the throat. oh, how she hated him, and everything for which he stood! by this time they had threaded their way out of the tangled traffic of west street, and were rumbling cityward through the narrower streets of greenwich village. frank's first intelligible feeling was one of gratitude at the thought that durkin had escaped the trap into which she herself had fallen. that did not leave the situation quite so hopeless. her second feeling was one of fear that he might be following her, then one that he might not, that he would not be near her in the coming moment of need--for she knew that now of all times macnutt held her in the hollow of his hand--that now, as never before, he would frustrate and crush and obliterate her. there were old transgressions to be paid for; there were old scores to be wiped out. keenan and his penfield wealth were nothing to her now--she was no longer plotting for the future, but shrinking away from her dark and toppling present, that seemed about to buckle like a falling wall and crush her as it fell. month after month, in europe, she had known visions of some such meeting as this, through nightmare and troubled sleep. and now it was upon her. macnutt seemed to follow her line of flashing thought, for he emitted a short bark of a laugh and said: "it's pretty small, this world, isn't it? i guessed that we'd be meetin' again before i'd swung round the circle!" "where are we going?" she demanded, trying to lash her disordered and straggling thoughts into coherence. "we're goin' to the neatest and completest poolroom in all manhattan!" "poolroom?" she cried. "yes, my dear; i mean that we're drivin' to penfield's brand-new downtown house, where, as somewhat of a hiker in the past, you'll see things done in a mighty whole-souled and princely fashion!" "but why should i go there? and why with you?" "oh, i'm on penfield's list, just at present, kind o' helpin' to soothe some of the city police out o' their reform tantrums. and you've got about a quarter of a million of penfield's securities on you--so i thought i'd kind o' keep an eye on you--this time!" her first impulse was to throw herself headlong from the cab door. but this, she warned herself, would be both useless and dangerous. through the curtained window she could see that they were now in the more populous districts of the city, and that the speed at which they were careering down the empty car-tracks was causing early morning foot-passengers to stop and turn and gaze after them in wonder. it was now, or never, she told herself, with a sudden deeper breath of determination. with a quick motion of her hand she flung open the door, and leaning out, called shrilly for the driver to stop. he went on unheeding, as though he had not heard her cry. she felt macnutt's fierce pull at her leaning shoulder, but she struggled away from him, and repeated her cry. a street boy or two ran after the carriage, adding to the din. she was tearing and fighting in macnutt's futile grasp by this time, calling desperately as she fought him back. as the cab swerved about an obstructing delivery-wagon a patrolman sprang at the horses' heads, was jerked from his feet, and was carried along with the careering horse. but in the end he brought them to a stop. before he could reach the cab door a crowd had collected. a hansom dashed up as the now infuriated officer brushed and elbowed the crowd aside. above the surging heads, in that hansom, frank could see the familiar figure, as it leaped to the ground and dove through the closing gap of humanity, after the officer. it was durkin; and now, in a sudden passion of blind fear for him she sprang from the cab-step and tried to beat him back with her naked hands, foolishly, uselessly, for she knew that if once together macnutt and he would fall on one another and fight it out to the end. the patrolman caught her back, roughly, and held her. "what's all this, anyway?" it surprised him a little, as he held her, to find that the woman was not inebriate. "i want this woman!" cried durkin, and at the sound of his voice macnutt leaned forward from the shadows of the half-closed carriage, and the eyes of the two men met, in one pregnant and contending stare. a flash of inspiration came to the trembling woman. "i will give everything up to him, officer, if he'll only not make a scene!" she was fumbling at a package in the bosom of her dress. "he can have his stuff, every bit of it--if he'll let it go at that!" durkin caught his cue as he saw the color of one corner of the sealed yellow manila envelope. "stand back there!" howled the officer to the crowding circle. "and you, shut up!" he added to macnutt, now horrible to look upon with suppressed rage. "this woman lifted a package of mine, officer," said durkin quickly. "if it's intact, why, let her go!" his fingers closed, talon-like, on the manila envelope. he flashed the unbroken red seal at the officer, with a little laugh of triumph. that laugh seemed to madden macnutt, as he made a second ineffectual effort to break into that tense and rapid cross-fire of talk. "and you don't want to lay a charge?" the policeman demanded, as he angrily elbowed back the ever intruding circle. "let 'em go!" said durkin, backing toward his cab. "but what's the papers, and what t'ell does _she_ want with 'em?" interrogated the officer. "correspondence!" said durkin easily, almost lightheartedly. "kind of personal stuff. they're--_he's_ drunk, anyway!" for stumbling angrily out of the cab, macnutt was crying that it was all a pack of lies, that they were a quarter of a million in money and that the officer should arrest durkin on the spot, or he'd have him "broke." "and then you'll chew me up an' spit me out, won't you, you blue-gilled irish bull-dog?" jeered the irate officer, already out of temper with the unruly crowd jostling about him. "i say arrest that man!" screamed the claret-faced macnutt. "and i say i'll run _you_ in, and run you in mighty quick, if you don't get rid o' them jim-jams pretty soon!" "by god, i'll take it out of _you_ for this, when my turn comes!" raved macnutt, turning, purplish gray of face, on the deprecating durkin. "i'll take it out of you, by god!" "there--there! he's simply drunk, officer; and the woman has squared herself. i don't want to press any charge. but you'd better take his name!" "drunk, am i? you'll be drunk when i finish with you. you won't have a name, you'll have a number, when i'm through with you!" repeated the infuriated macnutt. "look here, the two o' you!" suddenly exclaimed the outraged arm of the law, "you climb into that hack and clear out o' here, as quick as you can, or i'll run you both in!" macnutt still expostulated, still begged for a private audience in the street-corner saloon, still threatened and pleaded and protested. the exasperated officer turned to the cab-driver, as he slung the street loafers from him to right and left. "here, you get these fares o' yours out o' this--get them away mighty quick, or i'll have you soaked for breakin' the speed ord'nance!" then he turned quickly, for the frightened woman had emitted a sharp scream, as her bull-necked companion, with the vigor of a new and desperate resolution, bodily caught her up and thrust her into the gloom of the half-curtained carriage. "oh, jim, jim, don't let him take me!" she cried mysteriously to the man she had just robbed. but the man she had just robbed looked at her with what seemed indifferent eyes, and said nothing. "don't you know where he's taking me? can't you see? it's to penfield's!" she cried, through her weakening struggles. a new and strange paralysis of all his emotions seemed to have crept over durkin, as he watched the cab door slammed shut and the horses go plunging and curveting out through the crowd. "you'd better get away as quiet as you can!" said the policeman, in an undertone, for durkin had slipped a ten-dollar bill into his unprotesting fingers. "you'd better slide, for if the colonel happens along i can't do much to help you out!" then, with his hand on durkin's cab door he said, with unfeigned bewilderment: "say, what's the game of your actress friend, anyway?" durkin turned away in disgust, without answering. she was no longer his friend; she was his enemy, his betrayer! he had lived by the sword, and by the sword he should die! he had triumphed through crime, and through crime he was being undone! he had led her into the paths of duplicity; he had taught her wrong-doing and dishonor; and with the very tools he had put in her hand she had cut her way out to liberty, and turned and defeated him! then he remembered the scene on the _slavonia_, and her passionate cry for him, for his love. in the wake of this came the memory of still earlier scenes and still more passionate cries for what he had so scantily given her. then suddenly he smote his knees with his clenched fists, and said aloud: "it can't be true! it can't be true!" chapter xix the ultimate outcast any passion so neutral and negative as jealousy soon burned itself out in an actively positive brain like durkin's. and it left, as so often had happened with him, manifold gray ash-heaps of regret for past misdeeds. it also brought with it the customary revulsion of feeling, and a prowling hunger for some amendatory activity. yet with that hunger came a new and disturbing sense of fear. he was realizing, almost too late, the predicament into which he and frank had stumbled, the danger into which he had passively permitted his wife to drift. it was not until after two hours of fierce and troubled thought, however, that durkin left the bartholdi, and taking a hansom, drove down that man-crowded crevasse where lower broadway flaunted its semitic signboards to the world, directly to the criminal courts building in centre street. once there, he made his way to the office of the district-attorney. as he thoughtfully waited for admission into that democratized court of last appeal there passed through his mind the dangers and the chances that lay before him. the situation had its menaces, both obvious and unforeseen, but the more he thought it over the more he realized that the emergency called for action, at once decisive and immediate. he had already bungled and hesitated and misjudged. blind feeling had warped his judgment. until then he had blocked out his path of action only crudely; there had been little time for the weighing of consequences and the anticipation of contingencies. he had acted quickly and blindly. he had both succeeded and been defeated. still again the actual peril hanging over his wife came home to him. in the dust and tumult of battle, and in the black depths of the jealous vapors that had so blinded and sickened him, he had for the moment forgotten just what she meant to him, just how handicapped and helpless he stood without her. if the thought of their separation touched him, because of more emotional reasons, it was already too early in his mood of reaction to admit it to his own shamefaced inner self. yet he felt, now, that through it all she was true gold. it was only when the tie stood most strained and tortured that the sense of its actual strength came home to him. as these thoughts and feelings swept disjointedly through his busy head word was sent out to him that he might see the district-attorney. the office he stepped into was curtain-draped and carpeted, and hung with framed portraits, and strewn with heavy and comfortable-looking leather arm-chairs. durkin had expected it to look like an iron-grilled precinct police-station, and he was a little startled by the sense of luxury and well-being pervading the place. tilted momentarily back in a leather chair, behind a high-backed hardwood desk, the visitor caught a glimpse of one of those nervously alert, youngish-old figures which always seemed to him so typically american. the man behind the high-backed desk paused in his task of checking a list of typewritten names, and motioned durkin to a seat. the visitor could see that he was with an official who would countenance no profligate waste of time. so he plunged straight into the heart of his subject. "this office is at present carrying on a campaign against richard penfield, the poolroom operator and gambler." the district-attorney put down his paper. "this office is carrying on a campaign against every lawbreaker brought to its attention," he corrected, succinctly. then he caught up another type-written sheet. "how much have you lost?" he asked over his shoulder. "i'm not a gambler," retorted durkin as crisply. his earlier timidity had faded away, and more and more he felt the relish of this adventure with the powers that were opposing him. "i suppose not--but how much were your losses?" "i've lost nothing!" durkin was growing impatient of this curtly condescending tone. it was the ponderosity of officialdom, he felt, grown playful, in the face of a passing triviality. the district-attorney turned over the card which had been brought in to him, with a deprecating uplift of the eyebrows. "most of the people who come here to talk about penfield and his friends come to tell me how much they've lost." he leaned back, and sent a little cloud of cigarette smoke ceilingward. "and, of course, it's part of this office's duty to keep a fool and his money together--as long as possible. what is it i can do for you?" "i want your help to get a woman out of penfield's new downtown house!" "what woman?" "she is--well, she is a very near friend of mine! she's being held a prisoner there!" "by the police?" "no, by certain of penfield's men." "what men?" "macnutt, the wire tapper, is one of them!" "and you would like us to get after macnutt?" "yes, i would!" "on the charge of wire tapping?" "that should be one of them!" "then i can only refer you to the decision of the court of appeals in the mccord case, and the appellate division's reversal of the 'green-goods' conviction of 1900! in other words, sir, there is no law under which a wire tapper can be prosecuted." "but it's not a conviction i want, as much as the woman. i want to save _her_." "is she a respectable woman?" durkin felt that his look was answer enough. "is she a frequenter of poolrooms?" durkin hesitated, this time, and weighed his answer. "i don't think so." "she's not a frequenter?" "no!" "some rather nice women are, you know, at times!" "she may have been, once, i suppose, but i know not recently." "ah! i see! and what do you want us to do?" "i want your help to get her out of there, today, before any harm comes to her." "what sort of harm?" durkin found it hard to put his fears and feelings into satisfactory words. he was on dangerous seas, but he made his way doggedly on, between the charybdis of reticence and the scylla of plain-spoken suggestion. "i see--in other words, you want the police to raid penfield's downtown gambling establishment before two o'clock this afternoon, and release from that establishment a young lady who drove there, and probably not for the first time, in an open cab in the open daylight, because certain ties which you do not care to explain bind you to the young lady in question?" the brief and brusque finality of tone in the other man warned durkin that he had made no headway, and he caught up the other's half-mocking and tacit challenge. "for which, i think, this office will be adequately repaid, by being brought into touch with information which will help out its previous action against penfield!" "who will give us this?" durkin looked at his cross-examiner, nettled and impatient. "i could!" "but will you?" "yes, on the condition i have implied!" "in other words, you stand ready to bribe us into a doubtful and hazardous movement against the strongest gambler in all new york, on the expectation of an adequate bribe! this office, sir, accepts no bribes!" "i would not call it bribery!" "then how would you describe it?" "oh, i might be tempted to call it--well, coöperation!" some tinge of scorn in his words nettled the officer of the law. "it all amounts to the same thing, i presume. now, let me tell you something. even though you came to me today with a drayful of crooked faro layouts and doctored-up roulette wheels from penfield's house, it would be practically impossible, at this peculiar juncture of municipal administration, to take in my men and carry out a raid over captain kuttrell's head!" "ah, i see! you regard penfield as immune!" "penfield is _not_ immune!" said the public prosecutor. the oldish-young face was very flushed and angry by this time. "don't misunderstand me. as a recognized and respected citizen, you always have the right to call on the officers of the law, to secure protection and punishment of crime. but this must be sought through the natural and legitimate channels." "what do you mean by that?" "i mean go to the police." "but to lay a charge with the police would be impracticable, in this case." "why would it?" "simply because it wouldn't get at penfield, and it would only lead to--to embarrassing publicity!" "exactly so! and you may be sure, young man, that penfield is quite aware of that fact. to be candid, it is just such things as this that allow him to be operating today. if you start the wheels, you must stand the racket!" "then you allow a notorious gambler to break every law of the land and say you can give me no help whatever in balking what amounts to a criminal abduction?" the swivel-chair creaked peremptorily, as the public prosecutor turned sharply back to his desk. "you'd better try the police!" he bit out impatiently. durkin strode to the door. he was halfway through it, when he was called sharply back. "don't carry away the impression, young man, that we're not fighting this man penfield as hard as we can!" "it looks like it!" mocked the man in the doorway. "one moment--we have been after this man penfield, and his kind, and we're still after them. but we don't pretend to accomplish miracles. this city is made up of mere human beings, and human beings still have the failing of breaking out, morally, now in one place, now in another. we can compress and segregate those infectious blots, but until you can show us the open sore we can't put on the salve. if you are convinced you are the object of some criminal activity, and are willing to hold nothing back, i can detail two plain-clothes men from my own office to go with you and help you out." durkin laughed, a little recklessly, a little scoffingly. two plain-clothes men to capture a steel-bound fortress! "don't trouble them. they might make penfield mad--they might get themselves talked about--and there's no use, you know, making a mess of one's mayoralty chances!" and he was through the door indignantly, and as indignantly out, before the district-attorney could so much as flick the ash off his cigarette-end. but after doing so, he touched an electric button, and it was at once answered by an athletic-looking clerk with all the earmarks of the collegian about him. "tell barney to follow that man who just went out. tell him to keep him under his eye, closely, and report to me tonight! hurry these papers back to the fire commissioner. then get that window up, and let the mott street merchants' protective association in!" durkin, in the meantime, hurried uptown in his hansom, consumed with a feeling of resentment, torn by a fury of blind revolt against all organized society, against all law and authority and order. still once more it seemed that some dark coalition of forces silently confronted and combated him at every turn. the consciousness that he must now fight, not only alone, but in the face of this unjust coalition brought with it a desperate and almost intoxicating sense of audacity. if the law itself was against him, he would take fate into his own hands, and go to his own ends, in his own way. if the machinery of justice ground so loosely and so blindly, there remained no reason why he himself, however recklessly he went his way, should not in the end disregard its engines and evade its ever-impending cogs. he would show them! he would teach them that red-tape and officialism could only blunder blindly on at the heels of his elusive and lightfooted wariness. if they were bound to hold him down and delegitimatize him and keep him a pariah and a revolter against order, he would show them what he, alone, could do in his own behalf. and as he drove hurriedly through the crowded city streets, still lashing himself into a fury of resentment against organized society; he formulated his plan of action, and mentally took up, point by point, each new move and what it might mean. as he pictured, in his mind, each anticipated phase of the struggle he felt come over him, for the second time, a sort of blind and irrational fury, the fury of a rat in a corner, fighting for its life and the life of its mate. chapter xx the spider and the fly "and here's where we two hang out!" it was macnutt who spoke. frances durkin was neither protesting nor struggling when he drew up in front of what she knew to be penfield's lower gambling club. it stood in that half-squalidly residential and half-heartedly commercial district, lying south of washington square, a little to the west of broadway's great artery of traffic. a decorous and unbetraying door, bearing only the modest sign, "the neptune club," and a narrow stairway leading to an equally decorous and uncompromising hall, gave no hint, to the uninitiated, of what the great gloomy walls of the building might hold. but on one side of the narrow door she could make out an incongruously ornate and showy cigarstore; on the other, an equally unlooked-for woman's hair-dressing and manicuring parlor. in the one, indeed, you might sedately purchase a perfecto, and take your peaceful departure, never dreaming of how closely you had skirted the walls of the busiest poolroom south of all twenty-third street. in the other you might have your hair quietly shampooed and marcelled and dressed, and return to your waiting automobile, utterly oblivious of the fact that within thirty feet of you fortunes were being still staked and lost and won and again swept away at one turn of a wheel, or one stroke of a chalk on a red-lined blackboard. it was through the hair-dressing parlor that macnutt led the dazed and unprotesting frank, pinning her to his side by the great arm that was, seemingly, so carelessly linked through hers. he gave a curt nod to the capped and aproned attendant, who touched a button on her desk, without so much as a word of challenge or inquiry. the machine-like precision with which each advance was watched and guarded, disheartened the imprisoned woman. "i'm boss here for a while, and i'm goin' to clean out the building, so that you can have this little picnic all to your lonely!" remarked macnutt, as he pushed her on. a door to the rear of the second parlor swung open, and as she was led through it she noticed that it was sheathed with heavy steel plating. still another door, which opened as promptly to macnutt's signal, was armored with steel, and it was not until this door had closed behind them that her guardian released the cruel grip on her arm. then he chuckled a little, gutturally, deep in his pendent and flaccid throat. "we're up to date, you see, doin' business in a regular armor-clad office!" frank looked about her, with widening eyes. macnutt laughed again, at the sense of surprise which he read on her face. it was obviously a poolroom, but it was unlike anything she had ever before seen. it was heavily carpeted, and, for a place of its character, richly furnished. the walls were windowless, the light being shed down from twelve heavily ornamented electroliers, each containing a cluster of thirty lamps. these walls, which were upholstered with green burlap, bordered at the bottom with a rich frieze of lacquered and embossed _papier-mâché_, were divided into panels, and dotted here and there with little canvases and etchings. on the east end of the room hung one especially large canvas, crowned with a green-shaded row of electric lamps. macnutt, with a chuckle of pride, touched a button near the door, and the huge canvas and bouguereau-looking group of bathing women painted upon it disappeared from view, disclosing to frank's startled eyes a bulletin blackboard, such as is used in almost every poolroom, for the chalking up of entries and the announcement of jockeys and weights and odds. macnutt pressed a second button, and the twelve electric fans of burnished brass hummed and sang and droned, and filled the room with a stir of air. "a little diff'rent, my dear, from the way they did business when you and me were pikers, up in the west forties, eh?" frank remained silent, as the bathing women, with a methodic click of the mechanism, once more dropped down through the slit in the picture frame, and hid the red-lined bulletin board from view. "gamblers, like us, always were weak on art," gibed macnutt. "there's dick penfield, spendin' a hundred thousand a year on pictures an' vases an' rugs, and sam brucklin makin' his saratoga joint more like a second salon than a first-class bucket-shop, and larry wintefield, who knows more about a genuine daghestan than you or me knows about a morse sounder, and al macadam, who can't buy chinaware fast enough! as for me, i must say i have a weakness for a first-class nood!" the woman beside him shuddered. "that's all right--but i guess a heap o' these painters would be quittin' the profession if it wasn't for folks of our callin'!" frank's roving but unresponding eyes were taking in the huge mahogany table, in the centre of the room, the empty, high-backed chairs clustered around it, the countless small round tables, covered with green cloth, which flanked the walls, and the familiar penfield symbol, of three interlaced crescents, which she saw stamped or embossed on everything. he went to one of the five cherry-wood desks which were strewn about the room, and still again touched a button. "blondie," he said to the capped and aproned attendant who answered the call from the hair-dressing parlors, "i want you to meet this lady friend of mine! miss frances candler, this is miss blondie bonnell, late of wintefield's saratoga sanitarium for sick purses, and still later of macadam's mott street branch! now, blondie, like a good girl, run along and get the lady something to drink!" this proffered refreshment the outraged lady in question silently refused, staring tight-lipped at the walls about her. but macnutt, on this score, made ample amends, for having gulped down one ominously generous glass of the fiery liquid, he poured another, and still another, into the cavern of his pendulous throat, with repeated grateful smacks of the thick and purplish lips. "now, i'm goin' to show you round a bit, just to make it plain to you, before business begins for the day. i want you to see that you're not shut up in any quarter-inch cedar bandbox!" he took her familiarly by the arm and led her to a door which, like the others, was covered with a plating of steel, and heavily locked and barred. "necessity, you see, is still the mother of invention," he said, as his finger played on the electric signal and released the obstructing door. "if we're goin' to do poolroom work, nowadays, we've got to do it big and comprehensive, same as morgan or rockefeller would do their line o' business. you've got to lay out the stage, nowadays, to carry on the show, or something'll swallow you up. why, when we worked our last wire-tapping scheme with a hobo from st. louis, who was rotten with money, we escorted him, on two hours' notice, into as neat a lookin' postal-union branch office as you'd care to see, with half a dozen fake keys a-goin' and twenty actors and supers helpin' to carry off the act. _that's_ the up-to-date way o' doin' it! that's how a man like penfield makes this kind o' graftin' respectable and aboveboard and just about as honest as bein' down in the cotton exchange!" he was leading her down a narrow hallway, four feet wide, with unbroken walls on either side of them. at the end of this still another armored door led into a medium-sized room, as bald and uninviting as a dentist's waiting-room. here he led her to two horizontal slits in the wall and told her to look down. she did so, and found herself peering below, out into the well-stocked cigar-store, with a clear view of the entrance. "that's the conning-tower of this here little floating fortress," chuckled macnutt, at her shoulder. "this place you're in is steel-lined, and it would take three hours o' chisel and sledge work for anybody, from eggers up to braugham himself, to get inside, even though he did find us out, and even though he did escape the sulphuric bottles between the bricks. each one o' these little slits is in line with a nice gilded cigar sign on the shop side of the wall. so no one down there, you see, knows who's eyin' them. _we_ don't need any lookout, hangin' round the street-front and tippin' us off. our man down below sizes up everyone who comes into that shop. if he's all right, the button's touched, and the white light flashes, and he gets through. if he's not, the cigar clerk rings another button, just under his counter, and we know what to do. if it's a case o' raid, our lookout flashes the red light through each o' the four rooms, with one push of the button, and then our second man throws back the switch and puts out every light in the buildin'. then with another button push, the locks of every door are thrown shut, and they're four inches thick, most of them, and of good oak and steel. if the electricity should give out, here, you see, are the hand bolts, which can be run out at any time. then we've got a little mercerized steel office, which you won't see, where our cashier and our sheet-writers work!" frank said nothing, but her still roving eyes took in each detail, bit by bit, as she warned and schooled herself to note and remember each door and room and passage. "and now, in case you may be lookin' for it without my help, i'm goin' to take you down and show you the way out. we go through this little passage, and then we take up this steel trapdoor. it's heavy, you see! then we go down this nice little grill-work iron ladder--don't pull back, i've got you!--and then we open this next very fine steel door--so; and here we are in what you'd call the safety-deposit vaults. it's a mighty handsome-lookin' safe, all laid in portland cement, as you can see, but we're not goin' to tarry lookin' into that just now." he was already feeling his way ahead of her, and she was still desperately struggling to impress each detail on her distracted mind. "you see, if we want to get out, we go through this hall, and follow this little passageway, one end openin' up right under the sidewalk, in the refractin' glass manhole. leading to the back, here, is a second passage, all barred, the same as the others. so, if our front is shut off, and they're hot on our trail, we shut everything after us as we go, and then open this neat little steel trapdoor, and find ourselves smellin' fresh air and five lines full of washin' from that dago tenement just above us!" "and why are you showing me all this?" demanded frank. he looked at her out of his pale-green furtive eyes, and locked the door with a vindictive snap of the bolts. "i'll tell you why, my gay young welcher, for we may as well understand one another, from the start. now that penfield's shut up his newport place and is coolin' his heels up in montreal for a few months, i'm runnin' this nickel-plated ranch myself. and i've got a few old scores to wipe out--some old scores between that enterprisin' husband o' yours an' myself!" "what has he ever done to you? why, should you want to punish _him_?" argued frank, helplessly. "i'm not goin' to punish him!" declared macnutt, with a little laugh. "that's just where the damned fine poetic justice of the thing comes in. _he's goin' to punish himself_!" chapter xxi the pit of despair frances durkin looked at the jeering man before her, studiously, belligerently. "what do you mean by saying he'll punish himself?" she demanded. she seemed like a woman who had just awakened. her earlier comatose expression had altogether passed away. there was life, now, in every line of her body. "i mean that durkin's got his quarter of a million in securities, all right, all right, but, by god, i've got _you_! and i mean that he's goin' to, that he's _got_ to, make a choice between them and you. so we'll just wait and find out which he loves best, his beau or his dough!" and he laughed harshly at the feeble witticism, as he added, in his guttural undertone: "and i guess we get the worth of our money, whichever way it goes!" frank's impression was that he was half drunk, that he was mumbling vaguely of revenges which grew up and died in their utterance. her look of open scorn stung him into a sudden tremor of anger. "oh, don't think i'm spoutin' wind! if durkin's the man you think he is, and i hope he is, _he'll be tryin' to nose his way into this place before midnight tonight_!" "and he will," cried frank, exultantly, "and with the whole precinct police force behind him!" "he daren't!" retorted macnutt. "he daren't get within a hundred yards of the central office, and he daren't show his nose inside a precinct station-house! and that's not all, either. there's no captain on this side of new york who's goin' to buck against the whole tammany machine an' poke into this penfield business. if that young man with the butterfly necktie over on centre street thinks he can keep us movin', he's got to do a heap less talkin' and a heap more convictin' before he can put _our_ lights out! that air is good enough for politics--but it's never goin' to break this here penfield combination! oh, no, jimmie durkin knows how the land lays. he's one o' your bold and brainy kind, who likes to shut himself up in a garret for a week, and make maps of what he's goin' to do, an' how he's goin' to do it, and then trip off by his lonely and do his huntin' in the dark! and he's goin' to try to get in here, before midnight, tonight, and what's more, _he's goin' to find it uncommonly easy to do_!" "you mean you'll entice him and trap him here?" "no, i won't lay a finger on him. you'll do the enticin', and he'll do the trappin'! i won't even be round to see--till afterward!" "what do you mean by that?" "i mean we're holdin' open house tonight," mocked macnutt, "and that durkin will maybe drop in!" "and then what will it be?" "come this way, my beauty, and i'll show you. first thing, though, just notice this fact. we're not goin' to make it too hard and discouragin' for durkin. this trap-door will be left unlocked. also, that front manhole will be left kind of temptingly open, with a few chunks o' loose coal lyin' round it, so that even a mercer street roundsman couldn't help fallin' into it! oh, yes, he'll find it easy enough!" frank followed him without a word, as he made his way through the low and narrow steel-lined tunnel leading to the vault-room. "now, my dear, i guess this is the only way he'll be able to get at you, unless he comes in a flyin' machine, and the first place he'll nose through will be this room. so, bein' old at the business, he's sure to try a crack at our safe. at least, he'll go gropin' around for a while. not an invitin'-lookin' piece o' furniture, i grant you, but that's neither here nor there. it's not the safe that'll be detainin' durkin, or any other housebreaker who tries to get gay on these premises. if you look hard, maybe you'll be able to see what's a damned sight more interestin'!" frank looked, but she saw nothing beyond the great vault and the burnished copper guard-rail that surrounded it, like the fender about a marine engine. "you don't notice anything strikin'?" he interrogated wickedly. she did not. he emitted a guttural little growl of a laugh, and stepped over to a half-hidden switchboard, high up on the wall. he threw the lever out and down, and the kiss of the meeting metals sounded in a short and malevolent spit of greenish light. "are you on?" taunted macnutt. frank's slowly comprehending eyes were riveted on the burnished copper railing, on which, only a moment before, her careless fingers had rested. there was no sign, no alteration in the shining surface of that polished metal. but she knew that a change, terrible and malignant, had taken place. it was no longer a mild and innocent guard-rail. it was now an instrument of destruction, an unbuoyed channel of death. she stood staring at it, with fixed and horrified eyes, until it wavered before her, a glimmering and meandering rivulet of refracted light. "are you on?" reiterated the watching man. the wave of pallor that swept over her face seemed to change her eyes from violet to black, although, for a moment, their gaze remained as veiled and abstracted as a sleep-walker's. then a movement from her companion lashed and restored her to lucidity of thought. for, from where it leaned against the wall, macnutt had caught up a heavy door-sheathing of pressed steel. it was painted a burgundy red, to match the upholstery of the upper room where it had once done service, and on the higher of the two panels was embossed the penfield triple crescent. this great sheet of painted steel macnutt held above his head, as a hesitating waiter might hold a gigantic tray. then he stepped toward the shimmering guard-rail, and stood in front of it. "now, this luxurious-lookin' rear-admiral's rail-fence is at present connected with a tapped power circuit, or a light circuit, i don't know which. all i know is that it's carryin' about a twenty-eight-hundred alternatin' current. and just to show that it's good and ready to eat up anything that tries monkeyin' round it, watch this!" he raised the burgundy-red door-sheathing vertically above his head, and stepping quickly back, let it descend, so that as it fell it would strike the metal of the sunken vault-top and the copper guardrail as well. the very sound of that blow, as it descended, was swallowed up in the sudden, blinding, lightning-like flash, in the hiss and roar of the pale-green flame, as the sheet of steel, tortured into sudden incandescence, bridged and writhed and twisted, warping and collapsing like a leaf of writing-paper on the coals of an open fire. a sickening smell of burning paint, mingling with the subtler gaseous odors of the corroding metal, filled the little dungeon. "don't! that's enough!" gasped the woman, groping back toward the support of the wall. macnutt shut off the current, and kicked the charred door-sheathing, already fading from incandescence into ashen ruin, with his foot. the smell of burning leather filled the room, and he laughed a little, turning on the woman a face crowned with a look of belial-like triumph, with dark and sunken circles about the vindictive, deep-set eyes. once, in an evening paper, she had pored over the picture of an electrocution at sing sing, a haunting and horrible scene, with the dangling wires reaching down to the prisoner, strapped and bound in his chair, the applied sponges at the base of the spine, the buckled thongs about the helpless ankles, the grim and waiting gaol officials, the boyish-looking reporters, with watches in their hands, the bald and ugly chamber, and in the background the dim figure of retributive justice, with uplifted arm, where an implacable finger was about to touch the fatal button. time and time again that vision had brought terror to her midnight dreams, and had left her weak and panting, catching at her startled husband with feverish and passionate hands and holding him and drawing him close to her, as though that momentary guardianship could protect him from some far and undefined danger. "oh, mack," she burst out hysterically, over-wrought by the scene before her, "for the love of god, don't make him die this way! give him a fighting chance! give him a show! do what you like with _me_, but don't blot him out, like a dog, without a word of warning!" "it's not my doin'!" broke in her tormentor. "it's inhuman--it's fiendish!" she went on. "i can't stand the thought of it!" macnutt laughed his mirthless laugh once more. "oh, i guess you'll stand it!" "but i can't!" she moaned. "oh, yes; you'll stand it, and you'll see it, too! you'll be right here, where you can take the whole show in, this time! it won't be a case o' foolin' the old man, like it was last time!" "i will be here?" she gasped. "you'll be right on the spot--and you'll see the whole performance!" she drew her hands down, shudderingly, over her averted face, as though to shut something even from her imagination. "and do you know what'll be the end of it all?" macnutt went on, in his frenzied mockery. "it'll all end in a little paragraph or two in the _morning journal_, to the effect that some unknown safecracksman or other accidentally came in contact with a live wire, and was shocked to death in the very act of breaking into a pious and unoffendin' cigar-store vault! and you'll be the only one who'll know anything different, and i guess you won't do much squealin' about it!" she wheeled, as though about to spring on him. "i will! i will, although i wither between gaol walls for it--although i die for it! i'm no weak and foolish woman! i've known life bald to the bone; i've fought and schemed and plotted and twisted all my days almost, and i can die doing it! and if you kill this man, if you murder him--for it is murder!--if you bring this dog's death on him, i will make you pay for it, in one way or another--i'll make you mourn it, david macnutt, as you've made me mourn the first day i ever saw your face!" she was in a blind and unreasoning passion of vituperative malevolence by this time, her face drawn and withered with fear, her eyes luminous, in the dungeon-like half-lights, with the inner fire of her hate. "keep cool, my dear, keep cool!" mocked macnutt, without a trace of trepidation at all her vague threats. "durkin's not dead yet!" she caught madly at the slender thread of hope which swung from his mockery. "no! no, he's _not_ dead yet, and he'll die hard! he's no fool--you've found that out in the past! he will give you a fight before he goes, in some way, for he's fought you and beaten you from the first--and he'll beat you again--i know he'll beat you again!" her voice broke and merged into a paroxysm of sobbing, and macnutt looked at her bent and shaken figure with meditative coldness. "he may have beaten me, once, long ago--but he'll never do it again. he won't even go out fightin'! he'll go with his head hangin' and his nose down, like a sneak! and you'll see him go, for you'll be tied there, with a gag in your pretty red mouth, and you'll neither move nor speak. and there'll be no light, unless he gets so reckless as to strike a match. but when the light does come, my dear, it'll be a flash o' blue flame, with a smell o' something burnin'!" the woman covered her face with her hands, and swayed back and forth where she stood. then macnutt held back his guttural laugh, suddenly, for she had fallen forward on her face, in a dead faint. chapter xxii the entering wedge it was at least four o'clock in the afternoon--as the janitor of the building later reported to the police--when a postal-union lineman, carrying a well-worn case of tools, made his way up through the halls and stairways of one of those many italian apartment houses just south of washington square and west of broadway. this lineman worked on the roof, apparently, for some twenty minutes. then he came down again, chatted for a while with the janitor in the basement, and giving him a cigar, borrowed an eight-foot step-ladder, for the purpose of scaling some twelve feet of brick wall, where the adjoining office building towered its additional story above the apartment-house roof. if the janitor had been less averse to mounting his five flights of stairway, or less indifferent as to the nature of the work which took the busy telegraph official up to his roof, he might, that afternoon, have witnessed both a delicate and an interesting electrical operation. for once up on the second roof, and sure that he was under no immediate observation, the lineman in question carefully unpacked his bag of tools. his first efforts were directed toward the steel transom which covered the trapdoor opening out on the roof. this, he discovered with a grunt of disappointment, resisted even his short, curved steel lever, pointed at one end, like a gigantic tack-drawer. restoring this lever to the bottom of his leather tool-bag, he made his way to the southeast corner of the building, where a tangle of insulated wires, issuing from the roof beneath his feet, merged into one compact cable, which, in turn, entered and was protected by a heavy lead pipe, leading, obviously, to the street below, and thence to the cable galleries of broadway itself. it took him but a minute or two to cut away a section of this protecting pipe. in doing so, he exposed to view the many wires making up an astonishingly substantial cable, for so meager an office building. he then turned back to his tool-case and lifted therefrom, first a bunnell sounder, and then a wheatstone bridge, of the post-office pattern, a coil of kk wire, a pair of lineman's pliers, and a handful or two of other tools. still remaining in the bottom of his bag might have been found two small rubber bags filled with nitroglycerine, a cake of yellow soap, a brace and bit, a half-dozen diamond-pointed drills, a box of timers, and a coil fuse, three tempered-steel chisels, a tiny sperm-oil lantern and the steel "jimmy" which had already been tested against the obdurate transom. then, skilfully relaxing the metallic cable strands, he as carefully graduated his current and attached his sounder, first to one wire and then to another. each time that the little bunnell sounder was galvanized into articulate life he bent his ear and listened to the busy cluttering of the dots and dashes, as the reports of races, as the weights and names of jockeys, and lists of entries and statements of odds and conditions went speeding into the busy keys of the big poolroom below, where men and women waited with white and straining faces, and sorrowed and rejoiced as the ever-fluctuant goddess of chance brought them ill luck or success. but durkin paid little attention to these flying messages winging cityward from race-tracks so many miles away. what he was in search of was the private wire leading from penfield's own office, whereon instructions and information were secretly hurried about the city to his dozen and one fellow-operators. it was from this wire that durkin hoped, without "bleeding" the circuit, to catch some thread of fact which might make the task before him more lucid and direct. he worked for an hour, connecting and disconnecting, testing and listening and testing still again, before the right wire fell under his thumb. then he listened intently, with a little start, for he knew he was reading an operator whose bluff, heavy, staccato "send" was as familiar to his long-practiced ear as a well-known face would be to his watching eyes. it was macnutt himself who was "sending." his first intercepted message was an order, to some confederate unknown, to have a carriage call for him at eight. that, durkin told himself, was worth knowing. his second despatch was a warning to a certain "al" mackenzie not to fail to meet penfield in albany, sunday, at midnight. the third message was brief, and seemed to be an answer to a question which had escaped the interloper. "yes, got her here, and here she stays. things will happen tonight." "ah!" ejaculated durkin, as he wiped his moist forehead, while the running dots and dashes resolved themselves into the two intelligible sentences. then he looked about him, at the leaden sky, at the roofs and walls and windows of the crowded and careless city, as a _sabreur_ about to enter the arena might look about him on life for perhaps the last time. "yes," he said, with a meditative stare at the transom before him, "things _will_ happen tonight." chapter xxiii the waking circuit it was a thick and heavy night, with a drizzle of fine rain blanketing the city. every now and then a lonely carriage spluttered along the oily and pool-strewn pavement of the cross-street. every now and then, too, the rush and clang of the broadway cars echoed down the canyon of rain-swept silence. durkin waited until the lights of the cigar-store went out. then he once more circled the block, keeping to the shadows. as he passed the darkened cigar-store for the second time his foot, as though by accident, came sharply in contact with the refracting-prismed manhole cover which had sounded so hopefully hollow to his previous tread. as he had half-suspected, it was loose. he stooped quickly, to turn up his trousers. as he did so three exploring fingers worked their way under the ledge of the unsecured circle of iron and glass. it came away without resistance. he looked about him cautiously, without straightening up; then by its shoulder-strap he carefully lowered his leather tool-bag into the passage below, and as guardedly let himself down after it. he waited and listened for a minute or two, before replacing the cover above him. from the river, in the distance, he could hear the booming and tooting of the steam craft through the fog. a hurrying car rumbled and echoed past on the broadway tracks. two drunken wanderers went singing westward in the drizzling rain. then everything was silence again. durkin replaced the covering, noiselessly, and feeling to right and left with his outstretched hands, crept inward through the narrow tunnel in which he found himself. his fingers came in touch with the chilly surface of a steel-faced door. it sounded heavy and unyielding to his tentative tap, and his left hand was already reaching back for the tool-bag which hung by its strap over his shoulder when his questioning right hand, pushing forward, discovered that the door was unlocked, and swung easily outward without resistance. he felt and fondled the heavy bolts, thoughtfully, puzzled why it should be so, until he remembered seeing the half-dozen pieces of anthracite lying about the manhole on the sidewalk above. that, he told himself, possibly explained it. some careless wagon-driver, delivering his load, had left the place unlocked. but before he crept into the wider and higher passage before him he paused to take out the revolver which he carried in his hip pocket, to unlimber it, and carefully feel over the chambered cylinder, to make sure every cartridge-head stood there, in place. this done, he replaced it, not at his hip, but loose and free, in the righthand pocket of his coat. then he once more began feeling his way along the smooth cement floor. he was enveloped in a darkness as absolute as though he had been shrouded in black velvet--even the glimmer of the refracted street lamps did not penetrate further than the doorway of the first tunnel. there was a smell of dampness in the air, as of mouldy plaster. it was the smell of underground places. durkin hated it. he had to feel his way about the entire circle of that second narrow chamber before he came to where the inner doorway stood. it, too, was unlocked, and for the first time some sense of betrayal, some intimidation of being trapped, some latent suspicion of artfully concealed duplicity, flashed through his questioning mind. he listened, and was greeted by nothing but silence. then he swung the door softly and slowly open. as he did so he leaped back, and to one side, with his right hand in his coat pocket. for there suddenly smote on his ears the sharp clang and tinkle of metal. he stood there, crouched, for a waiting minute, and then he laughed aloud, for he knew it was only the sound of some piece of falling iron, striking on the cement. to make sure of it, he groped about the floor, and stumbled on the little bar of steel that had fallen. yet why it had been there, leaning against the door, he could not comprehend. was it there by accident? or had it been meant as a signal? it showed him one thing, however; its echoing fall had demonstrated to him that the room he had entered was both higher and larger than the one he had left. it might be nothing more than a furnace-room, yet he told himself that he must be on his guard, that from now on his perils began. then he wondered why he should feel this premonitory sense, and in what lay the dividing line, and where lay the difference. yet as he stood there, with his back against the wall, he felt something dormant and deep-seated stirring within him. it was not a sense of danger; it arose from no outward and tangible manifestations. but somewhere, and persistently, at the root of his being, he heard that subliminal and submerged voice which could be neither silenced nor understood. he took three groping paces forward, as if to put distance between himself and this foundationless emotion which some part of him seemed struggling to defy. but for the second time he stood stockstill, weighed down by the feeling of some presence, oppressed by the sense of something vaguely hanging over him. he felt, as frank had once said, how like a half-articulate key, at the end of an impoverished circuit, consciousness really was; how the spirit so often, in this only half-intelligible life of theirs, flutters feebly with hints and suggestions to which it could never give open and unequivocal utterance. even language, and language the most artful and finished, was, after all, merely a sort of clumsy morse--its unwieldy dots and dashes left many a mood of the soul unknown and inarticulate. as he stood there, in doubt, questioning himself and that vague but disturbing something which stood before him, he decided to put a summary end to the matter. fumbling in his pocket, and disregarding any risk which the movement might entail, he caught up a match and struck it. as he shaded the flame and threw it before him, his straining eyes caught only the glimmer of burnished metal--a guard-rail of some description--and the dark and ponderous mass of what seemed a deposit vault. the match burned down, and dropped from his upthrust fingers. he decided to grope to the rail, and feel along the metal until he reached some point of greater safety. he extended his fingers before him, as a blind man might, and took one shuffling step forward. then a thought came to him, with the suddenness and the shock of an electric current, as a radiating tingle of nerves, followed by a strangely sickening sense of hollowness about the chest, swept through his body. _could it be frank herself in danger, and wanting him_? more than once, in the past, he had felt that mysterious medium, more fluid and unfathomable than electricity itself, carry its vague but vital message in to him. he had felt that call of soul to soul, across space, along channels less tangible than hertzian waves themselves, yet bearing its broken message, which later events had authenticated and still later cross-questioning had doubly verified. he had felt, at such moments, that there were ghostly and phantasmal wires connecting mind with mind; that across these telepathic wires one anxious spirit could in some way hold dim converse with the other; that the soul itself had its elusive "wireless," and forever carried and gave out and received its countless messages--if only the fellow-soul had learned to await the signal and disentangle the dark and runic code. yes, he told himself, as he stood there, thoughtfully, as though bound to the spot by some power not himself,--yes, consciousness was like that little glass tube which electricians called a coherer, and all his vague impressions and mental-gropings were those disorderly, minute fragments of nickel and silver which only leaped into continuity and order under the shock and impact of those fleet and foreign electric waves, which floated from some sister consciousness aching with its undelivered messages. and the woman who had so often called to him across space and silence, in the past, was now sounding the mystic key across those ghostly wires. but what the messages was, or from what quarter it came, he could not tell. he stood there tortured and puzzled, torn by fear, thrilled and stirred through every fiber of his anxious body. this was followed by a sense of terror, sub-conscious and wordless and irrational, the kind of terror that comes to a child in unknown places, in the dead of some unknown night. "_for the love of god, what is it_?" his dry lips demanded, speaking aloud into the emptiness about him. he waited, almost as if expecting some answering voice, as distinct and tangible as his own. but nothing broke the black silence that blanketed him in from the rest of all the world and all its living things. the sweat of agony came out on his face; his body hung forward, relaxed and expectant. "_what is it you want to say_?" he repeated, in a hoarse and muffled scream, no longer able to endure that silent and nameless something which surrounded him. "_what is it you want to say_?" chapter xxiv the ghosts of thought in the ensuing silence, as the unbroken seconds dragged themselves on, durkin called himself a fool, and, struggling bitterly with that indeterminate uneasiness which possessed him, pulled himself together for some immediate and decisive action. he could waste no more time, he told himself, in foolish spiritualistic seances with his own shadow. he had too much before him, and too short a time in which to do it. his troubles, when he came to face them, would be realities, and not a train of vapid and morbid self-vaporings. he advanced further into the darkness of the room, slowly, with his hands outstretched before him. he would feel for the friendly support and guidance of the metal railing, and then grope his way onward. for as yet he had only carried the enemy's outposts. then, for a second time, and for no outward reason, he came to a dead halt. he felt as if some elusive influence, some unnamable force, was holding and barring him back. again he struck a match, recklessly, and again he saw nothing but the burnished metal railing and the dark mass of the vault. it was with almost a touch of exasperation that he stood there in his tracks, and slowly, methodically, thoroughly, surveyed the four quarters of the lightless room in which he found himself. he scrutinized the heavy, enmuffling gloom with straining eyes, first in one direction and then in another. there was nothing to be seen, and not a sound reached his ears. he had been in the room perhaps not three minutes, yet it seemed to him as many hours. then he peered about him still again, wondering, for the first time, by what psychological accident his eyes turned in one particular direction, slightly above and before him, to the right of the direction in which he was advancing. to rid himself of this new idea, and to decentralize the illusion, he shifted his position. but still his gaze, almost against his will, turned back toward the former point, as though the blanketing blackness held some core, some discernible central point, toward which he was compelled to look, as the magnetic needle is compelled to swing toward the north. surrendering to this impulse, he gaped through the darkness at it, with a little oath of impatience. as he did so he began to feel stir at the base of his spine a tiny tremor of apprehension. this tremor seemed suddenly to explode into a mounting shudder of fear, flashing and leaping through his body until the very hair of his head was stirred and moved with it. the next moment the startled body responded to clamoring volition, and he turned and fled blindly back into the outer passageway, with a ludicrous and half-articulate little howl of terror. for growing out of the utter blackness he had seen two vague points of light, two luminous spots, side by side, taking on, as he faced them, all the mysteries of all the primeval night which man ever faced. he felt like a hunter, in some jungled midnight, a midnight breathless and soundless, who looks before him, and slowly discerns two glowing and motionless balls of fire--who can see nothing else, in all his world--but from those two phosphorescent points of light knows that he is being watched and stalked and hunted by some padded hunger lurking behind them. in the unbroken and absolute silence which seemed to mock at his foolish and stampeding fears, an immediate reaction of spirit set it. he felt almost glad for this material target against which to fling his terrors, for this precipitation of apprehension into something tangible. he groped through his bag, hurriedly yet cautiously, for his little sperm-oil lantern. then he took up the revolver that lay loosely in his coat pocket. a moment later a thin little shaft of light danced and fingered about the inner room. he could, at first, see nothing but the line of burnished copper stretching across his path and flashing the light back in his eyes. behind this, a moment later, he made out the dark and gloomy mass of the black safe. then he looked deeper, with what was still again a flutter of enigmatical fear about his heart, for that twin and ghostlike glow which had filled him with such precipitate terror. but there was no longer anything to be seen. he played his interrogative finger of light up and down, and it was a full minute before his slowly-adjusting sight penetrated to the remoter and higher area of the surrounding walls. it was then, and not till then, that he discovered the fact that the wall on his right opened and receded, some five feet above the floor-level, into a dimly-outlined alcove. as he looked closer he made out that this alcove had, obviously, been filled by the upper portion of a heavy iron staircase, leading to the floor above. the entire lower half of this stairway, where once it must have obtruded into the vault chamber, had been cut away. it was on the remaining upper portion of this dismantled stairway that his pencil of light played nervously and his gaze was closely riveted. for there, above his natural line of vision, half-hidden back in the heavy shadows, his startled eyes made out a huddled and shadowy figure. it was a woman's figure, in black, and motionless. it was bound hand and foot to the iron stair-stanchions. he did not notice, in that first frenzied glance, the white band that cut across the lower part of her face, so colorless was her skin. but as he looked for the second time, he emitted a sudden cry, half-pity, half-anger, for slowly and thinly it filtered into his consciousness just what and who that watching figure was. and then, and then only, did he speak. and when he did so he repeated his earlier cry. "my god, frank, what is it?" there was no response, no answering movement or gesture. he called to her again, but still absolute silence confronted him. as he crept closer to her, step by step, he saw and understood. the two luminous eyes, burning through the dark, had been his wife's. she had been imprisoned and tied there; but bound and muffled as she was, the strength of her desire, the supremacy of will, had created its new and mysterious wire of communication. some passion of want, some sheer intensity of feeling, had found and used its warning semaphore. she had spoken to him, without sound or movement. yet for what? yet for what? that was the thought that seemed to dance back and forth across the foreground of his busy brain. that was what he wondered and demanded of himself as he clambered and struggled and panted up the wall into the narrow and dusty alcove, and cut away the sodden gag between her aching jaws. the tender flesh was indented and livid, where the tightened band had pressed in under the cheek-bones. the salivated throat was swollen, and speechless. the tongue protruded pitifully, helpless in its momentary paralysis. "oh, he'll smart for this! by heaven, he'll smart for this!" declared durkin, as he stooped and cut away the straps that bound her ankles to the obdurate iron, and severed the bands that bruised and held her white wrists. even then she could not speak, though she smiled a little, faintly and forlornly and gratefully. she struggled to say one word, but it resolved itself into a cacophonous and inarticulate mumble, half-infantile, half-imbecile. "oh, he'll pay for this!" repeated the raging man, as he lowered her, limp and inert, to the floor below and leaped down beside her. she sank back with a happy but husky gasp of weakness, for the benumbed muscles refused to obey, and the cramped and stiffened limbs were unable to support her. all she could do was to hold her husband's hand in her own, in a grateful yet passionate grip. she must have been imprisoned there, he surmised, at least an hour, perhaps two hours, perhaps even longer. he started up, in search for water. it might be, he felt, that a lead water-pipe ran somewhere about them. he would cut it without compunction. he took two steps across the room, when an audible and terrified note of warning broke from her swollen lips. he darted back to her, in wonder, searching her straining face with his little shaft of lantern light. she did not speak; but he followed her eyes. they were on the burnished copper railing refracting the thin light that danced back and forth across that dungeon-like chamber. he questioned her fixed gaze, but still he did not understand her. she caught his hand, and retained it fiercely. he thought, from her pallor, that she was on the point of fainting, and he would have placed her full length on the hard cement, but she struggled against it, and still kept her hold on his hand. then she took the tiny lantern from his fingers, and bending low, tapped with it on the cement. durkin, listening closely, knew she was sounding the telegrapher's double "i"--the call for attention, implying a message over the wire. slowly he spelt out the words as she gave them to him in morse, irregular and wavering, but still decipherable. "the--railing--is--charged!" "charged?" he repeated, as the last word shaped itself in his questioning brain. he took the lantern from her hand, and swung the shaft of light on the glimmering copper. from there he looked back at her face once more. then, in one illuminating flash of comprehension, it was all clear to him. with a stare of blank wonder he saw and understood, and fell back appalled at the demoniacal ingenuity of it all. "i see! i see!" he repeated, vacuously, almost. then, to make sure of what he had been told, he crossed the room and picked up the bar of steel that had fallen at his feet as he first entered the door. this bar he let fall so that one end would rest on the metal vault-covering and the other on the rail of copper. there was a report, a sudden leap of flame, and the continued hissing fury of the short-circuited current, until the bar, heated to incandescence, twisted and writhed where it lay like a thing of life. he drew a deep breath, and watched it. that was the danger he had so closely skirted? that was the fate which he had escaped! he stood gazing at the insidious yet implacable agent of death, spluttering its tongue of flame at him like an angry snake; and, as he looked, his face was beaded with sweat, and seemed ashen in color. then a sense of the dangers still surrounding them returned to his mind. he shook himself together, and, making a circuit of the room, found the switch and turned off the current. as he did so he gave a little muffled cry of gratitude, for across the rear corner of the room ran two leaden water-pipes. into one of these he cut and drilled with his pocket-knife, ruthlessly, without a moment's hesitation. he was suddenly rewarded by a thin jet of water spraying him in the face. he caught his hat full of it, and carried it to frank, who drank from it, feverishly and deeply. it not only brought her strength back to her; but, after it, she could speak a little, though huskily, and with considerable pain. "can you walk?" she signalled, yes. "we've got to get out of here, at once!" he could see that she understood. "can you come now?" he asked. she nodded her head, and he helped her to her feet. together, the one leaning heavily on the other's arm, they paced up and down the already flooded floor, until power came back to her aching limbs, and steadiness to her tired nerves. "it would be better not to go together. i'll help you out and give you fifty yards' start. if anything should happen, remember that i'm behind you, and that, after this, i'm ready to shoot, and shoot without a quaver." again she nodded her head. "but listen. when you get up through the sidewalk grating, keep steadily on for two blocks, toward the west. then turn north for half a block, and go into the family entrance at kieffer's. if nothing happens, i'll join you there. if anything does occur to keep me back, give them to understand that you've missed the last train for your home in east orange; put this five-dollar bill down and ask for a front room on the second floor. from there you must watch for me. if it's anything dangerous i'll signal you in passing." by this time he had led her down the narrow, tunnel-like passageway and was helping her up into the rain-swept street. "whatever happens, remember that i'm behind you!" he repeated. their struggles, as he assisted her up through the narrow opening, were ungainly and ludicrous; yet, incongruously enough, there came to him a fleeting sense of joy in even that accidental and impersonal contact of her hand with his. then he braced himself against the narrow brick walls where he stood, appearing a strange and grotesque and bodiless head above the level of the street. thus peering out, he watched her as she beat her way down the wind-swept sidewalk. already, through the drifting midnight rain, the outline of her figure was losing its distinctness. he was reaching down for his wet and sodden hat, to follow her, when something happened that left him transfixed, a motionless and bodiless head on which startled horror had suddenly fallen. for out of the quiet and shadowy south side of the street, where it had been silently patrolling under lowered speed, swerved and darted a wine-colored, surrey-built touring car with a cape top. durkin recognized it at a glance; it was penfield's huge machine. its movement, as it swung in toward the startled woman, seemed like the swoop of a hawk. it appeared to stop only for a moment, but in that moment two men leaped from the wide-swung tonneau door. when they clambered into it once more durkin saw that frank was between them. and one of the men was macnutt, and the other keenan. he heard the one sharp scream that reverberated down the empty street, followed by the fading pulsations of the departing car, when with an oath of fury, he was already working his arms up through the narrow manhole. as he did so he heard a second, hoarser cry, succeeded by the heavy tramp of hurrying feet, and then a peremptory challenge. turning sharply, he caught sight of a patrolling roundsman, bearing down on him from the corner of broadway; and he saw that the officer was drawing his revolver as he charged across the wet pavement. it was already too late to free himself. with an instinctive movement of the hands he caught up the manhole cover, shield-like. as he did so he saw the glimmer of the polished steel and heard the repeated challenge. but he neither paused nor hesitated. he let his knees break under him, and as he fell he saw to it that the rim of the manhole dropped into its waiting circular groove. then he heard the sound of a shot, of a second and a third, from the policeman's pistol. but as he secured the cover with its chainlock, and dropped down into the tunnel below, the reports seemed thin and muffled and far away to durkin. a moment later, however, he heard the ominous and vibrant echo of the officer's night-stick, on the asphalt, frenziedly rapping for assistance. chapter xxv the ruling passion beyond that first involuntary little cry of terror frances durkin uttered no sound, as she found herself in the hooded tonneau, wedged in between macnutt and keenan. that first outcry, indeed, had been unwilled and automatic, the last reactionary movement of an overtried and exhausted body. a wave of care-free passivity now seemed to inundate her. she made no attempt to struggle; she nursed no sense of open resentment against her captors. the battery of her vital forces was depleted and depolarized. she experienced only a faintly poignant sense of disappointment, of indeterminate pique, as she realized that she was no longer a free agent. leaning back in the cushioned gloom, inert, impassive, with her eyes half-closed, she seemed to be drifting through an eddying veil of gray. the voices so close beside her sounded thin and far off. an impression of unreality clung to her, an impression that she was floating through an empty and rain-swept world from which all life and warmth had withered. "it's not _her_ i want--it's durkin!" macnutt was saying, with an oath, as they swung around the corner into the blinking and serried lights of eighth avenue. "it's that damned groundhog i'm goin' to dig out yet!" "well, you can't go back _there_ after him!" protested keenan. "can't i? well, i'm goin' back, and i'm goin' to get that man, and i'm goin' to fry him in his own juices!" he pushed the woman's inert weight away from him, and leaned out from under the cape, with a sharp word or two to penfield's chauffeur. then he suddenly whistled and waved his arm. "what are you doing that for?" keenan demanded of him. keenan had caught the drooping figure, and was making an effort to support it. his face, for some unknown reason, was almost as colorless as the face that lay so passively against his rain-soaked shoulder. "i'm goin' back!" declared macnutt. "is it worth while--now?" demurred the other. "i'm goin' to get my hooks on durkin, even if i have to wade through every raidin' gang in the precinct!" "and then what?" deprecated keenan. "then i'll meet you at penfield's house, uptown, and the show will come to a finish!" "and what am i expected to do?" demanded keenan, impatiently. for the approaching four-wheeler had come to a standstill beside them, and macnutt was already out in the rain. "you take care o' _that_!" he pointed a contemptuous finger toward the motionless woman, "and mighty good care!" "but how's all this going to help us out?" "i'll show you, when the time comes. here's the key for penfield's house. you'll find it nice and quiet and secluded there, and if i _do_ bring durkin back with me, by heaven, you'll have the privilege o' seein' a lurid end to this uncommonly lurid game!" he tossed the key into the tonneau. keenan picked it up in silence. they heard the clatter of the horses' hoofs on the wet asphalt, the sharp closing of the cab door, the rattle of the wheel-tires across the steel car-tracks, and he was gone. a moment later they were dipping up the avenue between two long rows of undulating lights, with the rain drifting in on their faces. then keenan turned and looked down at the woman beside him. during several minutes of unbroken silence frank nursed the dim consciousness of his keen and scrutinizing glance. but her mind seemed encaged in a body that was already dead; she had neither the will nor the power to look up at him. then, with no warning word or gesture, he stooped down and kissed her on her heavy red mouth. at any other time, she knew, she would have fought against that tainting touch; every drop of red blood in her body would have risen to combat it. but now she neither repulsed it nor responded to it. she seemed submerged and smothered in a tide of terrible indifference. she even found herself weighing the meaning of that affront to all that was not ignoble in her. she even caught at it, with an inward gasp of enlightenment. it meant more than she had at first seen. it brought a new scene to the shifting drama; it meant a new turn to the hurrying game. it meant that if she only waited, and could be wise and wary and calculating, she still might hug to her breast some tattered hope for the impending end. she knew that keenan was still watching her; she knew that he was, in some manner, being torn between contending feelings, that some obliterating impulse was falling between him and that grim concert of forces of which he was a member. it was the shadow of passion falling across the paths of duty--it was the play and the problem as old as the world. and what was she, then? that was the question she asked herself, with a little sobbing gasp--what was she, trading thus, even in thought, on her bruised and wearied body? what had she fallen to, what was it that had deadened all that was softer and better and purer within her, that she could thus see slip away from her the last solace and dignity of her womanhood? there, she told herself bitterly, lay the degradation and the ultimate danger of the life she had led. it was there that the grimmer tragedy came into her career. the surrender of ever greater and greater hostages to expediency, the retreat to ever meaner and meaner instruments of activity, the gradual induration of heart and soul, the desperate and ever more desperate search for self-deceiving extenuations, for self-blinding condonement, for pitiful and distorting self-propitiation--in these lay the inward corruption, more implacably and more terribly tragic than any outward blow! she had once deluded herself with the thought that a life of crime might lose at least half of its evil by losing all of its grossness. she had even consoled herself with the thought that it was the offender against life who saw deepest into life. it was but natural, she had always argued with herself, that the thwarted consciousness, that the erring and suffering heart, should yield deeper insight into the dark and complicated ranges of spiritual truth than could the soul forever untried and unshaken. the tempted and troubled heart, from its lonely towers of unhappiness, must ever see further into the meaning of things than could those comfortably normal and healthy souls who suffered little because they ventured little. she had ventured much, and she had lost much. she had thought to hold some inmost self aloof and immune. she had dreamed that some inward irreproachability of thought, some light-hearted tact of open conduct, might leave still untainted that deeper core of thought and feeling which she had long thought of as conscience, while some deceiving and sophistical transmutation of values whispered to her adroitly that in some way all good might be bad, and that all bad might in some way be good. but that, she now knew, was a mockery. she was the sum of all that she had thought and acted. she was a disillusioned and degraded and unscrupulous woman, steeped in enormities so dark that it appalled and sickened her even to recall them. she was only the empty and corroded shell of a woman, all that once aspired and lived and hoped in her eaten away by the acid currents of that underground world into which she had fallen. yet rather than it should end in that slow and mean and sordid inner tragedy of the spirit, she told herself fiercely, she would fling open her last arsenal of passion and come to her end in some ironic blaze of glory that would at least lend sinister radiance to a timelessly base and sorry eclipse. so she lay back in keenan's clasp quiescently, unresistingly, but watchfully. for she knew that the end, whatever it might be, was not far away. chapter xxvi the crown of iron durkin's first feeling, as he scrambled to his feet and half-stumbled, half-groped his way along the narrow, tunnel-like passage, was an untimely and impotent and almost delirious passion to get out into the open and fight--fight to the last, if need be, for all that narrowing life still held for him. this feeling was followed by a quick sense of frustration as he realized his momentary helplessness and how comprehensive and relentless seemed the machinery of intrigue opposing him. yet, he told himself with that lightning-like rapidity of thought which came to him at such moments of peril, however intricate and vast the machinery, however carefully planned the line of impending campaign, the human element would be an essential part of it. and his last forlorn hope, his final fighting chance, lay in the fact that wherever the human element entered there also entered weakness and passion and the possibility of accident. what now remained to him, he warned himself as he hurriedly locked and barred the two steel doors which shut off the first and second passageway, was to think quickly and act decisively. somewhere, at some unforeseen moment, his chance might still come to him. as for himself, he felt that he was safe enough, for the time being. the officer who had detected him in the manhole would be sure to follow up a case so temptingly suspicious. the police, in turn, could take open advantage of an intrusion so obviously unauthorized and ominous as his own, and find in it ample excuse for investigating a quarter which for many months must have been under suspicion. but, under any circumstances, well guarded as that poolroom fortress stood, its resistance could be only a matter of time, and of strictly limited time, once the reserves were on the scene. durkin's first thought, accordingly, was of the roof, for, so far as he knew, all escape from the ground floor was even then cut off. yet the first door leading from the vault chamber he found to be steel-bound and securely locked. he surmised, with a gasp of consternation, that the doors above him would be equally well secured. he remembered that penfield never did things by halves, and he felt that his only escape lay in that upward flight. so he saw that it was to be a grim race in demolition; that while he was to gnaw and eat his way upward through steel and brick, like a starving rat boring its passage up through the chambers of a huge granary, his pursuers would be pounding and battering at the lower doors in just as frenzied pursuit. he no longer hesitated, but moved with that clear-thoughted rapidity of action which often came to him in his moments of half-delirium. turning to his tool-bag and scooping out his bar of soap, he kneaded together enough of the nitroglycerine from one of the stout rubber bags to make a mixture of the consistency of liquid honey. this he quickly but carefully worked into the crack of the obstructing door. then he attached his detonator, and shortened and lighted his fuse, scuttling back to the momentary shelter of the outer passage, making sure to be beyond the deadly "feathered radius" of the nitro. there he waited behind the steel-bound door for the coming detonation. the sound of it smote him like a blow on the chest, followed by a rush of air and a sudden feeling of nausea. but he did not wait. he groped his way in, relocked the passage door and crawled on all fours through the smoke and heavy, malodorous gases. the remnants of the blasted door hung, like a tattered pennon, on one twisted hinge, and his way now lay clear to the ladder of grilled ironwork leading to the floor above. but here the steel trapdoor again barred his progress. one sharp twist and wrench with his steel lever, however, tore the bolt-head from its setting, and in another half-minute he was standing on the closed door above, shutting out the noxious smoke from the basement. between him and the stairway stood still another fortified door, heavier than the others. he did not stop to knead his paste, for already he could hear the crash of glass and the sound of sledges on the door at the rear of the cigar-shop. catching up a strand of what he knew to be the most explosive of all guncottons--it was cellulose-hexanitrate--he worked it gently into the open keyhole and again scuttled back to safety as the fuse burnt down. he could feel the building shake with the tremor of the detonation, shake and quiver like a ship pounded by strong head seas. a remote window splintered and crashed to the floor, sucked in by the atmospheric inrush following the explosion-vacuum. he noticed, too, as he mounted the narrow stairs before him, that he was bleeding at the nose. but this, he told himself, was no time for resting. for at the head of the second stairway still another sheet of armored steel blocked his passage, and still again the hurried, hollow detonation shook the building. the ache in his head, behind and above the eyes, became almost unbearable; his stomach revolted at the poisonous gases through which he was groping. but he did not stop. as he twisted and pried with his steel lever at the lock of the trapdoor that stood between him and the open air of the housetop, he could already hear the telltale splintering of wood and sharp orders and muffled cries and the approaching, quick tramping of feet. he fought at the lock like a madman, for by this time the trampling feet were mounting the upper stairs, and doors were being battered and wrenched from their hinges. he had at least made their work easy for them; he had torn open the heart of penfield's stronghold; he had blazed a path for those officers of the law who had bowed before the inaccessibility of the building he had disrupted single-handed! "good!" he cried, in his frenzied delight. "give it to them good! wreck 'em, once for all; put 'em out of business!" then he gave a sudden relieving "ah!"--for the sullen wood had surrendered its bolts, and the door swung open to his upward push. the night wind, cold and damp and clean, swept his hot and grimy face as he pulled himself up through the opening. even as he did so he heard the gathering sounds below him growing clearer and clearer. he squatted low in the darkness, and with a furtive eye ever on the dismantled trapdoor, groped his way, gorilla-like, closer and closer to the wall against which he knew the janitor's ladder to be still leaning. then he dropped flat on his face, and wormed his way toward the nearest chimney, not twelve feet from him, for a wet helmet had emerged from the trap opening. a moment later a lantern was flashing and playing about the rainy roof. "we've got 'em! quick, lanigan; we've got 'em!" cried the helmeted head exultantly, from the trapdoor, to someone below. the next moment durkin, prone on his face, heard the crack of a revolver and the impact of the ball as it ricochetted from the roof-tin, not a yard from his feet. he no longer tried to conceal himself, but, rolling and tumbling toward the eave-cornice, let himself over, and hung and clung there by his hands, while a second ball whistled over him. he felt desperately along the flat brick surface, with his kicking feet, wondering if he had misjudged his direction, sick with a fear that he might be dangling over an open abyss. he shifted the weight of his body along the cornice ledge, still pawing and feeling, feverishly and ridiculously, with his gyrating limbs. then a joy of relief swept through him. the ladder was there, and his feet were already on its second step. as he ran, cat-like, across the lower apartment-house roof, he knew that he stood in full range of his pursuers above, and he knew that by this time they were already crowding out to the cornice-ledge. there was no time for thought. he did not pause to look back at them, to weigh either the problem or the possible consequences in his mind; he only remembered that that afternoon he had noticed five crowded lines of washing swinging in multi-colored disarray at the back of that many-familied hive of life. he hesitated only once, at the sheer edge of the roof, to make sure, in the uncertain half-light, that he was above those crowded lines. "let him have it--there he goes!" cried a voice above, and at that too warning note his hesitation took wing. durkin leaped out into space, straddling the first line of sodden clothes as he fell. even in that brief flight the thought came to his mind that it would have been infinitely better for him if the falling rain had not weighted and flattened those sagging lines of washing. then he remembered, more gratefully, that it was probably only because of the rain that they still swung there. as his weight came on the first line it snapped under the blow, as did the second, which he clutched with his hands, and the third, which he doubled over, limply, and the fourth, which cut up under his arm-pit. but as he went downward he carried that ever-growing avalanche of cotton and woolen and linen with him, so that when his sprawling figure smote the stone court it fell muffled and hidden in a web of tangled garments. chapter xxvii the straits of chance how his flight ended durkin never clearly remembered. he had a dim and uneasy memory of the lapse of time, either great or little, the confused recollection of waking to his senses and fighting his way free from a smothering weight of wet and clinging clothes. as he struggled to his feet a stab of pain shot through his left hand, and up through his forearm. it was so keen and penetrating that he surmised, in his blank and unreasoning haste, that he must have torn a chord or broken a bone in his wrist. but on a matter like that, he felt, he could now waste no time. if he had, indeed, been unconscious, he concluded, it had been but momentary. for as he groped about in search of his hat, dazed and bruised, he found himself still alone and unmolested. creeping through the apartment-house cellar, and out past the door of the snoring and still undisturbed janitor, he crouched for a waiting moment or two behind an overloaded garbage-can, in the area. hearing nothing, he staggered up the narrow stairs to the level of the sidewalk, wet and ragged and disheveled, blackened and soiled and begrimed. the street seemed deserted. he felt sick and faint and shaken, but he would not give up. he half-stumbled, half-staggered along, splashing through little pools of rain held in depressions of the stone sidewalk, supporting himself on anything that offered, hoping, if this were indeed the end, that he might crawl away into some dark and secluded corner of the city, to hide the humiliating ignominy of it all. in front of a chinese laundry window he saw that he could go no further. his first impulse was to creep inside, and make an effort to bribe his way to secrecy, although he knew that within another quarter of an hour the tightening cordon of the police would entirely surround the block. as he swayed there, hesitating, he heard the thunder of hoofs and the rumble of wheel-tires on the soggy asphalt. his first apprehensive thought was that it would prove to be a patrol-wagon, with police reserves from some neighboring precinct. but as he blinked through the darkness he made out a high-platformed metropolitan milk company's delivery-wagon swinging down toward him. he staggered, with a slow and heavy wading motion, out to the centre of the street, a strange and spectral figure, with outstretched arms, uttering a sharp and halting cry or two. the driver pulled up, thirty long and dreary feet past him. "what in hell d'you want?" he demanded irately, raising his whip to start his team once more, as he caught a clearer view of the seemingly drunken figure. "i'll give you a fiver," said durkin thickly, "if you'll gi' me a lift!" he held the money in his hand, as he stumbled and panted to the wagon-step. that put an end to all argument. "climb in, then--quick!" cried the big driver, as he caught his passenger by a tattered coat sleeve and helped him up into the high-perched seat. "but for the love o' god, who's been doin' things to you?" he went on, in amazement, as he saw the bruised and bleeding and ash-colored face. "they threw me out o' their damned dope shop!" cried durkin, with an only half-simulated thickness of utterance, as he jerked a shaking thumb toward the lights of the chinese laundry. "and i guess--i'm--i'm a bit knocked out!" for he felt very weak and faint and weary, though the cold rain and the open night air beat on his upturned face with a sting that was gratefully refreshing. "they certainly did make a mess o' you!" chortled the unmoved driver, as they rumbled westward and took the corner with a skid of the great wheels that struck fire from even the wet car-tracks. he tucked the bill down in his oil-coat pocket. "feelin' sick, ain't you?" "yes!" "where d'you want to go?" he asked more feelingly. "where d'you go?" parried durkin. "hoboken ferry, for th' lackawanna number eight!" "then that'll do me," answered the other weakly. he leaned back in his high and rocking seat, grasping the back rail with his right hand. he felt as if the waves of a troubled and tumultuous sea were throwing him up, broken and torn, on some island of possible safety. he felt dizzy, as though he were being tossed and plunged forward to some narrow bar of impending release and rest. he did not ask of himself just what seas boomed and thundered on the opposing side of that narrow stretch of promised security. he knew that they were there, and he knew that the time would soon come when he must face and feel them about him. he had once demanded rest; but he knew that there now could be no rest for him, until the end. he might hide for a day or two, like a hunted animal with its hurt, but the hounds of destiny would soon be at his heels again. all he asked, he told himself, was his man's due right of momentary relapse, his breathing spell of quietness. he was already too stained and scarred with life to look for the staidly upholstered sanctuaries, the padded seclusions of simple and honest wayfarers. he was broken and undone, but his day would come again. he looked at his limp and trailing left hand. to his consternation, he saw that it dripped blood. he tried to push back his coat sleeve, but the pain was more than he could endure. so with his right hand he lifted the helpless arm up before his eyes, as though it were something not his own flesh and blood, and for the first time saw the splinter of bone that protruded from the torn flesh, just below the wrist-joint. he felt for his handkerchief, dizzily, and tried to bandage the wound. this he never accomplished, for with a sudden little gasp he fainted away, and fell prone across the oil-skinned lap of the big driver. that astounded person drew up in alarm at the side entrance of a street-corner saloon. he was on the point of repeating his sturdy call for help, when a four-wheeler swung in beside his wagon-step, and delivered itself of a square-shouldered, heavy-jawed figure, muffled to the ears in a rain-coat. the newcomer took in the situation with a rapid and comprehensive glance of relief. "so there he is, at last!" he said, as he came forward and caught up the relaxed and still unconscious figure. "where'd you get a license for buttin' in on this?" expostulated the surprised driver. "buttin' in?" cried the man in the raincoat, as he lifted the limp figure in his great, gorilla-like arms. "this isn't buttin' in--this is takin' care o' my own friends!" "friend o' yours, then, is he?" queried the weakening driver. "a friend o' mine!" cried the other angrily, for his man was already safely in the cab. "you damned can-slinger, d'you suppose i'm wastin' cab-fare doin' church rescue work? of course he's a friend o' mine. "and not only that," he added, under his breath, as he swung up into the cab and gave the driver the number of penfield's uptown house, "and not only that--he's a friend o' mine who's worth just a little over a quarter of a million to me!" chapter xxviii the human element it was slowly, almost reluctantly, that durkin returned to full and clear-thoughted consciousness. even before he had opened his eyes he realized that he was in a hurrying carriage, for he could feel every sway and jolt of the thinly cushioned seat. he could also hear the beat of the falling rain on the hood-leather, and on the glass of the door beside him, as he lay back in the damp odors of wet and sodden upholstery. then he half-opened his eyes, slowly, and saw that it was macnutt beside him. the discovery neither moved nor startled him; he merely let the heavy lids fall over his tired eyes once more, and lay there, without a movement or a sign. tatter by tatter he pieced together the history of the past few hours, and as memory came tardily back to him he knew, in a dim and shadowy way, that he would soon need every alertness of mind and body which he could summon to his help. but still he waited, passive and unbetraying, fighting against a weakness born of great pain and fatigue. he was keenly conscious of the cab's abrupt stopping, of the passing of money between macnutt and the lean and dripping night-hawk holding the reins, of being half-carried and half-dragged, in the great, bear-like grasp of his captor, across the wet sidewalk, to the foot of a flight of brownstone steps. these steps were wide and ponderous, and led up to an equally wide and ponderous-looking doorway crowned with ornamental figures of marble on a sandstone background. these carven figures, wet and glistening in the light of the street-lamps, stood out incongruously gloomy and ghostly, like the high relief on a sarcophagus. instead of mounting the steps, however, macnutt hauled his captive limply in under their shadow, to the basement door opening off the stone-flagged area. there, after fumbling with his keys for a moment or two, he quietly unlocked the heavy outer grating of twisted ironwork and then the inner door of oak. durkin made a mental note of the fact that both of these doors were in turn locked after them. the two then made their way through the darkness down what must have been a long passage. its floor was padded with carpet, and some fugitive and indefinable odor seemed to suggest to the prisoner an atmosphere of well-being, of a house both carefully furnished and scrupulously managed. macnutt softly opened a door on the right, and, after listening for a cautious moment or two, as softly entered the room into which this door led. and still again a key was turned and withdrawn from the lock. even with his eyes closed durkin, as he lay there husbanding his strength, was conscious of the sudden light that flooded the room. covertly opening that eye which remained in the heavy shadow, separating the lashes by little more than the width of a hair, he could make out a large room, upholstered and carpeted in green, with green-shaded electroliers above two billiard tables that stood ghastly and bier-like beneath their blanketing covers of white cotton. against the walls stood massive, elephantine club chairs of green fumed oak, and it was into one of these that macnutt had dropped the inert and unresponding durkin. at the far end of the room the stealthy observer could make out what was assuredly the entrance to an electric elevator. in fact, as he looked closer he could see the two mother-of-pearl buttons which controlled the apparatus; for it was plain that this elevator was one of those automatic lifts not uncommon in city residences of the more palatial order. then, as he quietly but busily speculated on the significance of this discovery, durkin suddenly caught sight of a triple crescent carved on the arm of the chair against which he leaned. and as he made out that familiar device he knew that he was in penfield's uptown house once used as his residence and later as his private clubrooms. at this discovery his alert but well-veiled glance went back to macnutt. he saw his captor fling off his wet and draggled raincoat and then shake the water from a dripping hat-brim. this he seemed to do without haste and without emotion. durkin next saw his enemy gaze about the entire circle of the room scrutinizingly, the subdolous green eyes coming to a rest only when they fell on his own relaxed figure. "and this is where the music starts!" muttered macnutt aloud, as he strode toward durkin. even before he had uttered that half-articulate little sentence his captive was possessed by a sudden conviction of approaching climax. he knew, somewhere deep in the tangled roots of consciousness, that either he or the other must go down that night, that one was destined to win and that the other was destined to lose, that the ancient fight was about to be settled, and settled for all time. in that agonized and hurried and yet lucid-thoughted summing up of ultimate values durkin realized that it would be useless to resist what was immediately before him. he was too shaken and weak for any crude battle of brute strength against brute strength. with his wounded hand, which even then sent throbbing spears of pain from finger-tip to shoulder, and with his bruised and weary and stiffened body, he knew that any test of strength in the muscular and ape-like arms of macnutt was out of the question. so he lay back, weak and unresisting, every now and then emitting from his half-opened lips a little moan of pain. but behind the torn and battered ramparts of the seemingly comatose body his vigilant mind paced and watched and kept keenly awake. as he felt the great hands pad and feel about his body, and the searching fingers go through his clothes, pocket after pocket, some sentinel intelligence seemed to watch and burn and glow like a coal deep within the ashes of all his outer fatigue. he waited quiescent, as he felt the heated, animal-like breath on his face, as the ruthlessly exploring hands tore open his vest, as they ripped away the inner pocket which had been so carefully sewn together at the top, as they drew out the tied and carefully sealed packet of papers for which he had been searching. more than once durkin thought that if ever those documents, for which he had endured and suffered and lost so much, were again wrested from him, it would be only after some moment of transcendent conflict, after some momentous battle of life's forlornest last reserves. yet now, impassively and ignominiously, he was surrendering them to the conqueror, supinely, meanly, without even the solace of some supreme if vain resistance! he listened to macnutt's gloating little "ah!" of triumph without a sign or movement. but, even then, in that moment of seeming frustration, durkin's subterranean yet terrible pertinaciousness, his unparaded bull-dog indefatigability, glowed and burned at its brightest. they were not yet in their last ditch. "that's _one_ part of it!" muttered macnutt, as he stowed away the packet and rebuttoned his coat. it was a shadowed and lupine eye which durkin cautiously opened as he felt more than heard macnutt's quick footsteps on the carpeted floor. covertly, and without moving, he saw the other man walk to the elevator, saw the play of his finger on the mother-of-pearl button, saw the automatic door noiseless slide away, and the descended and waiting cage locked on a level with the floor. he saw macnutt step inside, and the finger again play on one of a row of five pearl buttons set in the polished wood of the cage-wall, and the elevator noiselessly ascend. the moment it went up durkin was on his feet. he first ran to the two doors at the opposite end of the billiard-room. they were both securely locked; and they were his only means of escape. then he hurriedly circled the two huge tables, in search of some implement of defense. but the denuded room offered nothing. then he dashed to the elevator shaft. as he had surmised, it was an automatic electric lift, operating from the cellar below to the top of the house. the cage, so far as he could make out, now stood opposite the third floor. the controlling apparatus, the motor into which the power wires led, was, of course, in the cellar beneath him. it would be easy enough to twist one of the billiard-table covers into a rope, and drop down to the shaft-bottom, twelve feet below. there he could tie a bit of string to the emergency switch, watch the first movement of the descending cage, and shut off the current at the right moment. that would mean that the descending cage, robbed of its power, would hang a dead weight in its steel channel, the safety brake would automatically apply itself, and anybody within the cage would remain locked and imprisoned there, halfway between floors, helpless to descend or ascend, hemmed in by the four blank walls of the shift. he decided not even to waste time on twisting up a table-cover. he would hang by his right hand, and drop to the bottom. but a sudden glint and flutter of light reminded him of his danger. the cage was descending. it was only a matter of seconds before macnutt stepped once more from the cage into the billiard-room, yet as he did so he saw nothing but the still limp and relaxed form of durkin, huddled back in his huge chair, emitting from between his half-parted lips an occasional weak groan of pain. a gloating and half-demoniacal chuckle broke from the newcomer's lips. in one hand he carried a decanter of brandy, in the other a seltzer siphon. durkin could hear the gurgle and ripple of the liquid into the glass; a moment later he knew that macnutt was bending over him. "here, you, wake up out o' that!" he said, with still another chuckle of ominous glee. he shook the relaxed figure roughly. "get awake, there! this is _too_ good--this is something you can't afford to miss, you damned welcher!" he poured the scalding liquor down the other's throat. some of it spilled and ran into the hollow of his neck; some of it dribbled on his limp collar and his coat lapels. but durkin took what he could, and was glad of it. the pain of his wounded arm was very acute. "kind o' recalls our first meetin', eh?" demanded macnutt, as he watched the other slowly open his wondering eyes. "kind o' remind you of the day i loosened you up with brandy and seltzer, that first time i had to drag and coax you into this dirty business?" and again his captor laughed, wickedly, mirthlessly. "go on, take some more! i'm goin' to give you enough to light you all to glory!" he gloated. and still he poured the liquor down the unresisting man's throat. he dragged the other to his feet. "come on now, quick! there's a little scene waitin' for you upstairs--something that'll kind o' soothe and console you for gettin' so done up!" they were in the elevator by this time, mounting noiselessly upward. durkin could feel the fire of the brandy soar up to his brain and sing through his veins. macnutt supported him as they stepped from the elevator cage into a darkened room. on the far side of this room, from between two heavy portières, a gash of light cut into the otherwise unbroken gloom. a sound of voices floated out to them and macnutt tightened his grip on the other's arm, as they stood and listened, for it was frances durkin and keenan talking together, hurriedly, impetuously, earnestly. "but does it make any difference what i have been, or who i am?" the woman's voice was asking. "i did my part; i did my work for you. now you ought to give me a chance!" still holding the other back, macnutt circled sidewise, until they came into the line of vision with the unsuspecting pair in the other room. keenan, they could see, held one heavy hand on the woman's shoulder, intimately; and she, in turn, looked up into his face, in an attitude as open and intimate. "you know, now, what i have known before you!" whispered macnutt, into the ear of the tortured durkin. "you lie!" murmured durkin's lips, but no sound came from them, for his staring eyes were still on the scene before him. "listen then, you fool!" was all his tempter whispered back. and they stood together, listening. "but i _am_ giving you a chance," keenan next replied, and his long, melancholy celtic face was white and colorless with emotion. "i'm giving you the only chance that life holds for both of us!" "i know it!" said the woman. keenan's arms went out to her, and she did not draw back. instead, she reached up her own seemingly wearied and surrendering arms, without a word, and held him there in her obliterating embrace. he swayed a little, where he stood, and for a moment neither moved nor spoke. macnutt, narrowly watching the shadowy face of durkin, saw pictured on that pallid and changing countenance fear and revolt, one momentary touch of despairing doubt, and then a mounting and all-consuming passion of blind rage. in that drunken rage seemed to culminate all his misgivings, his suspicions, his apparent betrayals of the past. he trembled and shook like a man in a vertigo; the fingers of his upraised right hand opened and closed spasmodically; his flaccid lips fell apart, vacuously, insanely. "i'll kill her!" he ejaculated under his breath. macnutt knew that his moment had come. without a spoken word he caught his revolver up from his coat pocket. then he thrust it, craftily, into the other man's hand. the insane fingers closed on the handle of it, the glaring and expressionless eye peered along the steadying barrel. macnutt held his breath, and waited. it must be soon, he knew, before the moment of madness had burnt itself out. the woman under the white light of the electrolier drew back from keenan, with her eyes still on his face, so that her head and shoulders stood out, a target of black against the white fore-ground. then she drew one hand quickly across her forehead, and, wheeling slowly, let her puzzled glance sweep the entire circle of the room, until once more her eyes rested upon the expectant eyes of keenan. durkin, through all his rage, shut his teeth on a sudden sob. it was all over. it was the end. a change suddenly swept across the woman's face, a light of exaltation leaped into her dilated pupils, and her hand went up to her heart. was it some small sound or movement that she had heard, or was it some minute vibration of floor that she had felt? "_jim, it's you_!" she shrilled out suddenly, into the heavy silence, in a tense and high soprano, with a voice not like her own. "_jim, where are you_?" she called passionately, as she beat keenan impotently back with her naked hands. "help me, quick! can't you see i need you? can't you see this is _killing me_?" keenan fell back before her, aghast. "you fool, you weak fool!" she shrieked at him madly. "do you think i meant that? do you dream i could respect or care for an animal like you! do you imagine i would endure the touch of your hands, if it wasn't to save me till this? do you dream----?" she stopped suddenly, for with one sweep of his advancing arm durkin tore the heavy portière from its curtain-rings, and he stood before them, in the flat white light of the electrics. chapter xxix the last ditch durkin advanced into the room quickly, the revolver in his right hand. it was a short-barreled bull-dog gun of heavy caliber, ugly and menacing as it swung from his out-thrust wrist, held low, with the right elbow pressed close in to his side. in the doorway stood macnutt. his eyes were staring, his bullock head thrown back, bewildered at the sudden change that one sweep of an arm had brought to the scene. as durkin edged craftily round, with his back to the side wall, so that his eye commanded the silent trio before him, frank made a movement to draw away from keenan, who stood grotesquely petrified, his lean jaw fallen, the melancholy celtic face touched more with wonder than with fear. "don't move!" commanded her husband, as he saw the motion. "stay where you are!" she looked at him, as bewildered as the others. "that man, you'll find, is armed." "you lie--you fool!" "that man, i say, is armed!" keenan laughed, scoffingly. "take his revolver from him!" commanded durkin. a momentary hesitation held her back. "take it, i say! and, by god, if he so much as moves a finger, i'll blow the top of his head off!" the woman confronted keenan once more, but he fell back a step or two. "there's no need of that," he broke in angrily. "if you want the gun, i'll give it to you!" and as he spoke his arm swung down and back to his hip pocket. "stop that!" cried durkin sharply, as he saw the movement. "keep those hands up, or, by heaven, i'll let you have it!" his arm, by this time, was tense and rigidly out-stretched, and his steady pistol-barrel pointed just between the other man's ludicrously blinking eyes. in the silence that followed the woman reached back, and without further hesitation drew the revolver from the motionless man's pocket. it was a formidable, long-barreled "colt," which, with one sharp motion of the fingers, she promptly unlimbered, exposing the breech. in each cylinder chamber, she saw, lay a loaded cartridge. once assured of this, she snapped shut the breech and balanced the gun in the purposeful embrace of her fingers. "now what?" she asked, with her eyes turned to her husband. but the triumph suddenly died out of her face. she was only in time to hear durkin's sharp cry of anger, and to see his quick spring through the wide door-way, as the guard-door of the elevator closed and the cage shot up into space. "we've missed him!" he gasped, with a cry of rage, as he ran to the door through which macnutt, in that moment of excitement, had disappeared. frank kept her eyes on keenan. she, too, began to feel the sense of some vast finality in their moves and actions that night. keenan laughed. it was a dry and joyless laugh, but it was discouraging. "what's on the floor above?" demanded durkin, wheeling on him. "the floor above," slowly responded the other, "is richard penfield's private offices, where his safe is, and where your friend, no doubt, is now depositing his valuables, behind a burglar-proof time-lock!" "oh, that's it, is it!" cried durkin. he turned to the woman sharply. "frank, quick! leave keenan to me!" "yes!" she answered, with coerced attention. "macnutt must not get out of this house! we must stop him before he gets down this shaft. you go down by the stairs, quick, to the lowest basement. you'll find the motor operating the elevator. what you must do is to get to the switch, and shut off the power before this car can get past us! quick!" he still faced keenan, but his eye followed her to the door. "if he does come, kill him; shoot him down, i say, like a dog--_or he'll kill you_!" he could hear, through those silent hallways, the muffled rustling of her skirts and the sound of her flying feet on the waxed and polished wood. then the silence suddenly became oppressive. it was the unseen foe that he was afraid of, the undiscerned force that he feared. his uneasy and alert mind struggled to grasp the problem of how and where macnutt would strike, if strike he did, out of the darkness of that silent and deserted house. durkin decided that above all things he must render impossible the descent of the elevator cage. but for a moment he could think of no bar that might be flung across the path of that complex and almost irresistible machinery, once awakened into its full power. then the solution of the riddle came to him. still menacing the silent keenan with his revolver, he flung over, with one quick and reckless push of his foot, the heavy mahogany table that stood in the centre of the room. then he turned to keenan. "push that table out into the elevator shaft!" he ordered. the other man did not move. and time was precious; every second was precious! durkin repeated his command. "furniture-moving is not my vocation!" answered keenan, folding his arms. as durkin sprang forward, there was no mistaking his meaning. "i'll count ten," he said, white-lipped. "unless the table goes out, _you_ go out!" and he began counting, silently, numeral by numeral. "well, if you insist!" said keenan, with a shrug. even as keenan, at the menace of his reiterated command to hurry, threw open the guard door, durkin was wondering, in his feverish activity of mind, just how soon macnutt's next move would come, and just how and where he would strike. the answer to that question came more quickly than he had expected. and it came grimly, and in a manner most unlooked for. for even as the reluctant keenan stooped over the heavy table, not ten feet from the shaft, the elevator cage descended. it flashed by the open door without stopping on its hurried course. but as it winged past that square of open light a revolver shot rang out and reëchoed through the room. durkin, peering across the curling smoke, saw keenan pitch forward on his hands, struggle and thrash to his feet once more, like a wounded rabbit. then he fell again, prone on his face, close beside the shaft door. there he lay, breathing in little gurgles. durkin, with little beads of sweat on his pallid face, realized what it meant. that flying shot had been intended for _him_. macnutt, in that desperate and hurried and unreasoning last chance, had delivered his blow, but had been mistaken in his man! this knowledge flashed through his mind with the rapidity of a kinetoscope plate, and a moment later was obliterated by still another hurrying impression. for, through the deserted house rang two short and terrified screams, high-pitched and piercing. they were a woman's screams, and he knew they could come from no one but frank. he turned and hurled himself down the stairway, without even waiting to recover the revolver that had fallen a minute before from his startled fingers. he was conscious only of flinging the weight of his sliding body on the flume-like surface of the smooth balustrade, with his feet clattering on the polished steps as he went. he turned and dashed on to the head of the next stairway, and in the same manner flung himself to the floor beneath, and then to the next, and the next, until he was in the gloom of the basement itself. breathless and panting, he groped his way through the darkness, to where a glimmer of light came from what he hurriedly took to be the engine-room. there, as he darted through the narrow doorway, into the circle of dim light from the one tinted globe in the lowered elevator cage, a strange sight met his eyes. it shocked and flung him into a second or two of blank indecision, of volitionless and thoughtless inactivity. for one moment of ominous calm it smote and held him there, before the sudden blind, cyclonic rush of brain and body which the vision gave rise to. for at the door of the open cage macnutt and frank fought and struggled and panted together. the man was inside, on the bottom of the cage, the woman was outside it. her huddled but still resisting body was locked and jammed halfway across the narrow door. one of her opponent's great, ape-like strangling arms was about her neck. but the fingers at the end of it were caught between her strong white carnivorous teeth; and they became stained with blood as, in her frenzy, she fought and bit and struggled, with the blind fury of some final despair. her revolver she had been unable to use; it lay out of her reach, behind them on the floor of the cage. macnutt, as he strained and tore at her resisting body, was fighting and edging his way with her back into the cage, to where that waiting revolver lay. he himself was already well within the narrow opening, sprawled out red and disheveled and titanesque on the cage floor. but she was resisting him, inch by inch, fighting desperately, like a cornered cat, for her very life, yet knowing there could be only one end to that uneven conflict. durkin, after one comprehending glance, followed his first animal impulse of offense, and descended on macnutt, beating at the prone, bull-like head, with its claret-colored bald spot, across which ran one livid scratch. he pounded on the clustered fingers of the gorilla-like hand, crushing and bruising them against the gilded iron grill-work, through which was interwoven the penfield triple crescent. the clutching arms relaxed, but only for a moment. in that moment, however, durkin had stooped and with the one hand that remained with him to use, struggled to tear frank away from the deadly clutch. this he would surely have done had not macnutt seen his chance, and with his free hand suddenly caught at the wounded wrist that hung stained and limp at his enemy's side. that sudden, savage torture of the lacerated flesh was more than the weak and exhausted body of durkin could endure. he emitted one little involuntary cry; then every protesting nerve and sinew capitulated, a white light seemed to flash and burn at the base of his very brain, and then go out. he fell fainting on the hard maple floor. for a moment or two, like a defeated prize-fighter, he panted and struggled, ludicrously yet pathetically, to rise to his feet, but the effort was futile. it was as he found himself ebbing down through some soft and feathery emptiness that he seemed to hear a pitiful and imploring voice call thinly out, "_mack_!" still fainter he seemed to hear it, "_mack_! _come up_! _i'm dying_!" he remembered, lazily, that it sounded like the distant voice of keenan--but where was keenan? then he seemed to hear the purr and murmur of distant machinery, followed by a gentle puff of sound and what he hazily dreamed was the smell of powder smoke. then he remembered no more. * * * * * * just how or at what juncture he lost consciousness he could never clearly remember. but his first tangible impression was the knowledge that his wife was once more pouring brandy down his throat and imploring him to hurry. then the sound of muffled blows echoed from above. "quick, jim, oh, quick, or it will be too late. no, not that way. we can't go by the front--that's cut off. by the back--this way--i've got everything open!" "but what's the noise?" asked durkin weakly. "that's the police, with a fireman's axe, breaking in the front door. but, see, it's not too late! these steps take us up to the back court, and this iron gate opens on a lane that runs from the supply department of the hotel there, right through to the open street!" he shambled after her, white and tottering. "quick, jim, quick!" she reiterated, as she supported him through the low gate, and kept her arm in his as they passed down the dark lane, with its homely smells of early cookery and baking bread. only one passion possessed them--the blind and persistent and unreasoning passion for escape, for freedom. "but macnutt--where's macnutt?" demanded durkin, coming to a stop. "no--no--quick!" gasped frank, tugging at his arm. "i tell you i've got to have it out with that man!" protested the pitiably dazed but dogged combatant at her side. "you can't, jim!" "but i've got to!" "you can't--you can't," she moaned, "for he's dead!" a sudden sickening fear crept through his aching bones, seeming to leave them fluid, like wax. "you--you did it?" he asked unsteadily. the face he gazed into looked aged and worn and pallid in the dim half-light of the breaking morning. a sudden great pity for her tore at his heart. "no," she cried fiercely. "no--not me!" but she was still tugging insanely at his obdurate arm. "i tell you, jim, you must hurry, or it will be too late!" "thank god!" he gasped, scarcely hearing her pleadings. they were skirting three early delivery-wagons, waiting to unload at the supply door of the hotel. a boy passing in the street beyond was shrilly whistling "tammany." "tell me--now!" demanded durkin. "when you fainted macnutt reached back for the revolver. he would have shot you, only keenan called for him. he cried down the shaft that he was dying. he--he must have pushed the button as he fell. macnutt was still on the floor of the cage, leaning out to take aim at us. then the steel of the shaft-door and the steel of the elevator cage as it went up came to--oh--i _can't_ tell you now!" durkin came to a stop, swaying against her. "you mean the cage worked automatically, that it went up, with macnutt still leaning out?" "yes!" gasped the woman brokenly; and durkin felt the shiver of the tortured body on which he leaned. he was silent as they swung into the open street. his exhausted and uncoördinating brain was idly busy with some vague impression of the poignant irony of that end, of how that uncomprehending yet ineluctable power with which this man had toyed and played and sinned had, at the ultimate moment, established its authority and exacted its right. he pulled himself up with a fluttering gasp, weak, sick, overcome, and was wordlessly grateful for the sustaining arm at his side. for, once in the open, they were walking eastward, without a sense, momentarily, of either direction or destination. above the valley of the mist-hung street a thin and yellow light showed where morning was coming on, tardily, thickly. the boy whistling "tammany" passed out of hearing. "thank god! oh, thank god!" frank suddenly sobbed out, tossed and exalted on a wave of blind gratitude. "god?" moaned the defeated and unhappy man at her side, dragging painfully on with his bruised and bitter body. "what has god to do with all this--or with us?" she could not answer. she saw only a wide and gloomy vista of tangled crime and offense, stretching back into the past, as the tumbled and huddled waves of a sea run out to its crowding skyline. but it was the sea that had delivered them. broken, frustrated and defeated, hunted and homeless, without consolation for her yesterday or respect for her today, she looked up at the slowly wakening morning with a feeling that seemed to fuse and blend into the fiercest of joy. then the momentary exaltation died out of her weary body. they had life--but life was not enough! a sense of something within her falling and crumbling away, a silence of dark questioning and indecision, took possession of her. then out of her misery she cried still again, passionately, persistently, as she clutched and clung to him, her mate for whom and with him she was once destined to be a wanderer over the face of the earth: "there must be a god! i tell you, there _must_ be a god. he has let us escape!" the man looked at her, questioningly. "don't you understand? this is the last?" "the last?" "yes--yes, the last! you said it would be never again, if once you escaped from this!" he had forgotten. but the woman at his side, holding him up, had remembered. "come!" she said. and they went on again. chapter xxx one year later--an epilogue frances waited for her husband, walking slowly up and down under the row of pallid city maples. she preferred the open light of the square to the gloom of the street that cut like a canyon between the towering office-buildings on either side of it. there was a touch of autumn in the air, and a black frost of the night before had left the sidewalks carpeted with the mottled roans and yellows and russets of the fallen leaves. summer was over and gone. and all life, in some way, seemed to have aged with the ageing of the year. there was something mournful, to the ears of the waiting woman, in the very rustle of the dry leaves under her feet, as she paced the square. the sight of the half-stripped tree-branches, here and there, depressed her idle mind with the thought of skeletons. the smell of the dying leaves made her heart heavy. they seemed to be whispering of death, crying out to her at the mutability of all things that lived and breathed. and she had so wanted always to live and exult in living; she had so trembled at the thought of these creeping changes and the insidious passing away of youth and all it meant to her! "i hate autumn, most awfully," she had confessed to her husband that morning, dolefully. she went on, passing from under the shadow of the trees, grateful for the reassuring thin sunshine of the late afternoon, that touched the roofs and the tree-tops with gilt, and bathed the more towering office-buildings in a brazen glory of light, and left the street-dust swimming in a vapor of pale gold. the city noises seemed muffled and quiescent. a sense of fulfillment, of pensive maturity, of tranquillity after tumult, lay over even the urban world before her. she scarcely knew why or how it was, but it left her melancholy, lonely, homesick for things she could not name. the waiting woman looked up, and saw her husband. suddenly, with one deep breath, all the emptiness of life was a thing, if not of the past, at least of the background of consciousness. he was quite close to her by this time, and as she stood there, waiting, she swept him with her quick and searching gaze. he appeared before her, in that fleeting moment of impersonal vision, strangely objective, as completely and acutely visualized as though she had looked upon him for the first time. something in his face wrung her heart, foolishly, something in the wordless, rembrandt-like poignancy with which it stood out, through the cold autumn sunlight of the late afternoon, in its mortal isolation of soul, its sense of being detached and denied the companionship of its kind. he looked old and tired. he, too, was voyaging towards some melancholy autumnal maturity, some sorrowful denudation of youth, that left him pitiful to her impotently aching heart. he, too, stood in want of some greater love than even she could ever bring to him, as surely as she still cried out for the solace of some companionship, not closer than his, but of a different fiber. she had found herself, of late, vaguely hungering for some influence less autumnal, less vesper-like, to hold and wall her back from those grayer hours of retrospection which crept into her life. yet this was a secret she had kept always locked in her own holy of holies. for even in the face of that indeterminate feeling, it still stabbed her like a knife to think of any thought or life coming between her and her husband. she hurried to him, with her habitual little throaty cry, and caught his arm in hers. the gesture was almost a passionate one. "jim, you're working too hard!" she said, as they went on again, arm in arm. he studied her upturned face. the pale oval under the great heavy crown of glinting chestnut seemed paler than usual, the violet eyes seemed more shadowy. there clung to her a puzzling and unfamiliar sense of fragility. "what is it?" he asked, coming to a stop. "i'm worried about _you_!" she cried. "this is the fourth, almost the fifth month, you've shut yourself up with that transmitter!" "but it's _work_!" he answered, unmoved. "yes, i know, but work without a holiday, without rest----" "but think what it's going to be to us! all i've got to do now is to get my selenium cell simplified enough for commercial purposes! and another month will do it!" "but eight months ago you said that!" "there's nothing left to stick us _now_. once i get this cell the way i want it, we'll start manufacturing, for all we're worth. in less than six months we'll be filling contracts here in america. two months later we'll be introducing into seven different countries in europe a fully protected and patented transmitting camera as far ahead of the old-fashioned photophone as a bell telephone is ahead of a tin speaking-tube." "i know, jim; but you must be more careful! you must, in some way, stop working so hard!" "who could help it, at this sort of work?" he protested, contentedly. she felt that he, too, had stumbled upon that timeless and mysterious paradox of existence, that incongruous law which ordains that as one surrenders and relinquishes and gives, so one shall live the richer and deeper. "i tell you, frank," her husband was saying, "the more i know of electricity the more i bow down before it, in wonder, the prouder i am to be mixed up in its mysteries! just think of what it's come to be, this thing we call electricity, since the day primitive man first rubbed a piece of amber and beheld the puny miracle of magnetic attraction! why, today it harnesses tides and waterfalls, and tames and orders force, and leaves power docile and patient, swinging meek and ready from a bit of metal thread! it lightens cities, at a turn of the wrist; it hurls your voice half way round the world, it guides sailors and measures and weighs the stars; it threads empires together with its humming wires; it's the shuttle that's woven all civilization into one compact fabric! it's the light of our night-time, and the civilizer of our world. it explodes mines, and heals sickness. it creeps as silent as death through a thousand miles of sea, and yet it's the very tongue of our world! it prints and carves and beautifies; it rises to the most stupendous tasks, and then it stoops to the most delicate work!" "and it lets me ring you up, my beloved own, and hear your voice, your living voice!" even beyond her laughter he could catch the rapt note as she spoke. he responded to that note by catching at her gloved hand, and keeping it in his gratefully. "yes, but it does even more than annihilate space and turn wheels and despatch trains. think what it's doing with wireless alone! and _that_ is only the beginning! why, the whole world is alive and athrob with energy, with stored-up power aching to be used--and some day it will be electricity that will teach all nature how to work and toil for man! as yet we don't even know what it is! it's formless, to us, bodiless, invisible, imponderable! it's still unknown--as unknown as god!--and almost as mysterious!" "oh!" she reproved. "i've sometimes wondered if those lightning flashes and those terrifying things that used to fill the temples in the eleusinian mysteries didn't simply mean that those old priests of apollo knew more about electric currents than we imagine." "and even jove's bolts were only electricity, weren't they?" she assented. "so you're right, in a way--their god and their power _were_ electricity! perhaps it was electricity prometheus stole!" "no, it's older than prometheus, it's older than adam, it's mixed up in some way with the very origin of life itself! it's the most mysterious thing in the world--and the most beautiful!" he concluded, with solemn conviction. they walked on in silence for a moment or two. a dead leaf fell and drifted between them. the afternoon deepened into twilight. "o, jim, not the most beautiful!" said frank, suddenly, thrilled and shaken with some wayward passion of gratitude, as acute as it was unheralded. he looked down at her, puzzled. "oh, i'm glad, jim; glad!" she cried, irrelevantly. "glad for what?" "for this--for you--for everything!" his face clouded a little, for a moment, with the shadow of the past that could and would not be altogether past. "i thought we'd decided to let that--stay closed?" he said. there was a note of reproof in his voice. "do you know what _i_ think is the most beautiful thing in all the world, jim?" she went on, as irrelevantly as before, but holding his arm still more tightly entangled in hers. "i think it's redemption!" "redemption?" "yes--i think there's nothing ever done, or made, or written of, or sung of by poets, more beautiful than a soul, a poor, unhappy human soul, coming into its own once more! oh, i don't believe i can ever make you feel it as i feel it--but i don't believe there's an adventure or a movement in all life more beautiful than the rehabilitation--that's the only word i can use!--of a man's heart, or a woman's! think of it, jim!--what can be lovelier than the restoration of sanity and beauty and meaning to a suffering and tortured life? health after sickness is lovely, and so is healing after disease, and quietness after unrest, and peace after struggle. but that, jim, is only for the body. it's only for something of a day or two, or a year or two. when a soul is redeemed, it's something that leaves you face to face with--with eternity!" again he studied her rapt and mournful eyes, at sea, wondering to what new turn the sacrificial instinct of her sex was leading her. "what has made you think of all this?" he demanded of her, a little unhappily, a little afraid of the old wounds that were healing so slowly. "why should you remind me of how hard it is, and how little i've been able to do?" she was silent for several minutes again, as they walked on, slowly, under the spectral autumn trees, with the rustling dead leaves at their feet. she found it hard to answer him. "'the saints are only the sinners who kept on trying!'" she quoted to him, for the second time in their lives. then she came to a full stop. "oh, jim, i need you so much, now!" she cried out, at last, pitifully, and still again he could not bridge the abyss that lay between one thought and another. "need me?" "yes, need you!" again a dead leaf fluttered and drifted between them. "what is it?" he asked, more gently. she put her hand on his shoulder, and when she spoke her voice was little more than a whisper. and he, the man who had spoken of trivial mysteries, bowed before that supremest mystery which broods and centres in the thought of motherhood. "we'll have to be good now--terribly good!" she wailed. and she tried to laugh up at him, with a touch of her old bravery, in a futile effort to make light of her tears. "30" _by the same author._ =fun with magnetism.= a book and complete outfit for _sixty-one experiments_. =fun with electricity.= a book and complete outfit for _sixty experiments_. =fun with puzzles.= a book and complete outfit for _four hundred puzzles_. =fun with soap-bubbles.= a book and complete outfit for _fancy bubbles and films_. =hustle-ball.= an american game. played by means of magic wands and polished balls of steel. =jingo.= the great war game, including =jingo junior=. =how two boys made their own electrical apparatus.= a book containing complete directions for making all kinds of simple apparatus for the study of elementary electricity. =the study of elementary electricity and magnetism by experiment.= this book is designed as a text-book for amateurs, students, and others who wish to take up a systematic course of simple experiments at home or in school. _in preparation._ =things a boy should know about electricity.= this book explains, in simple, straightforward language, many things about electricity; things in which the american boy is intensely interested; things he wants to know; things he should know. _ask your toy dealer, stationer, or bookseller for our books, games, puzzles, educational amusements, etc._ thomas m. st. john, 407 west 51st st., new york. the study of elementary electricity and magnetism by experiment containing two hundred experiments performed with simple, home-made apparatus by thomas m. st. john, met. e. author of "fun with magnetism," "fun with electricity," "how two boys made their own electrical apparatus," etc. [illustration: logo] new york thomas m. st. john 407 west 51st street 1900 copyright, 1900, by thomas m. st. john. to the student. this book is designed as a text-book for amateurs, students, and others who wish to take up a systematic course of elementary electrical experiments at home or in school. the student is advised to begin at the beginning, to perform the experiments in the order given, and to understand each step before proceeding. certain principles and explanations necessarily precede the practical and perhaps more interesting applications of those principles. in selecting the apparatus for the experiments in this book, the author has kept constantly in mind the fact that the average student will not buy the expensive pieces usually described in text-books. the two hundred experiments given can be performed with simple, inexpensive apparatus; in fact, the student should make at least a part of his own apparatus. for the benefit of those who wish to make their own apparatus, the author has given, throughout the work, explanations that will aid in the construction of certain pieces especially adapted to these experiments. for those who have the author's "how two boys made their own electrical apparatus," constant references have been made to it as the "apparatus book," as this contains full details for making almost all kinds of simple apparatus needed in "the study of elementary electricity and magnetism by experiment." thomas m. st. john. _new york, april, 1900._ the study of elementary electricity and magnetism by experiment part i--magnetism part ii--static electricity part iii--current electricity the study of elementary electricity and magnetism by experiment. table of contents. part i.--magnetism. page. chapter i. =iron and steel= 3 introduction.--kinds of iron and steel.--exp. 1, to study steel.--discussion.--exp. 2, to find whether a piece of hard steel can be made softer.--annealing.--exp. 3, to find whether a piece of annealed steel can be hardened.--hardening; tempering.--exp. 4, to test the hardening properties of soft iron.--discussion. chapter ii. =magnets= 7 kinds of magnets.--exp. 5, to study the horseshoe magnet.--poles; equator.--exp. 6, to ascertain the nature of substances attracted by a magnet.--magnetic bodies; diamagnetic bodies.--practical uses of magnets.--exp. 7, to study the action of magnetism through various substances.--magnetic transparency; magnetic screens.--exp. 8, to find whether a magnet can give magnetism to a piece of steel.--discussion; bar magnets.--exp. 9, to make small magnets.--exp. 10, to find whether a freely-swinging bar magnet tends to point in any particular direction.--north-seeking poles; south-seeking poles; pointing power.--the magnetic needle; the compass.--exp. 11, to study the action of magnets upon each other.--exp. 12, to study the action of a magnet upon soft iron.--laws of attraction and repulsion.--exp. 13, to learn how to produce a desired pole at a given end of a piece of steel.--rule for poles.--our compass.--review; magnetic problems.--exp. 14, to find whether the poles of a magnet can be reversed.--discussion; reversal of poles.--exp. 15, to find whether we can make a magnet with two n poles.--exp. 16, to study the bar magnet with two n poles.--discussion; consequent poles.--exp. 17, to study consequent poles. exp. 18, to study the theory of magnetism.--theory of magnetism; magnetic saturation.--exp. 19, to find whether soft iron will permanently retain magnetism.--retentivity or coercive force; residual magnetism.--exp. 20, to test the retentivity of soft steel.--discussion.--exp. 21, to test the retentivity of hard steel.--exp. 22, to test the effect of heat upon a magnet.--discussion.--exp. 23, to test the effect of breaking a magnet.--discussion. chapter iii. =induced magnetism= 20 exp. 24, to find whether we can magnetize a piece of iron without touching it with a magnet.--temporary magnetism; induced magnetism.--exp. 25, to find whether a piece of steel can be permanently magnetized by induction.--exp. 26, to study the inductive action of a magnet upon a piece of soft iron.--polarization; pole pieces.--exps. 27-30, to study pole pieces. chapter iv. =the magnetic field= 23 exp. 31, to study the space around the magnet, in which pieces of iron become temporary magnets by induction.--discussion; the magnetic field.--exp. 32, to study the magnetic field of a bar magnet.--magnetic figures; lines of magnetic force.--exps. 33-37, to study the magnetic fields of various combinations of bar magnets.--exps. 38-39, to study the lifting power of combinations of bar magnets.--discussion; compound magnets.--exps. 40-42, to study the magnetic field of the horseshoe magnet.--discussion; resistance to lines of force.--exp. 43, to show that lines of force are on all sides of a magnet.--discussion.--exp. 44, to study a horseshoe magnet with movable poles.--discussion; advantages of horseshoe magnets. chapter v. =terrestrial magnetism= 31 the magnetism of the earth.--declination.--exp. 45, to study the lines of force above and below a bar magnet placed horizontally.--the dip or inclination of the magnetic needle.--exp. 46, to study the dip or inclination of the magnetic needle due to the action of the earth.--discussion; balancing magnetic needles.--exps. 47-48, to study the inductive influence of the earth.--discussion.--natural magnets.--exp. 49, to test the effect of twisting a wire held north and south in the earth's magnetic field.--exp. 50, to test for magnetism in bars of iron, tools, etc. part ii.--static electricity. chapter vi. =electrification= 39 some varieties of electricity.--exp. 51-52, to study electrification by friction.--discussion.--electrified and neutral bodies.--force; resistance; work; potential energy; electrification.--heat and electrification.--exps. 53-54, to study electrical attraction.--discussion.--exp. 55, to study mutual attractions.--mutual attractions.--exps. 56-58, to study electrical repulsions.--the carbon electroscope.--discussion of experiments 56, 57, 58.--exp. 59, to study the electrification of glass.--questions.--exp. 60, to compare the electrification produced by ebonite and flannel with that produced by glass and silk.--discussion.--laws. chapter vii. =insulators and conductors= 47 exps. 61-63, to study insulators.--conductors.--exp. 64, to study conduction.--discussion.--exp. 65, to study conduction.--telegraph line using static electricity.--discussion.--relation between conductors and insulators.--electrics and non-electrics.--exp. 66, to study the effect of moisture upon an insulator.--discussion.--exp. 67, to test the effects of moisture upon bodies to be electrified. chapter viii. =charging and discharging conductors= 52 the electrophorus.--exp. 68, to learn how to use the electrophorus.--exp. 69, to study "charging by conduction."--exp. 70, to study potential; electromotive force.--pressure; potential; electromotive force; current, spark.--theories about electrifications.--exp. 71, to study some methods of discharging an electrified body.--disruptive, conductive and convective discharges.--exp. 72, to study intermittent or step-by-step discharges.--discussion.--exp. 73, to ascertain the location of the charge upon an electrified conductor.--discussion.--hollow and solid conductors.--exp. 74, to study the effect of points upon a charged conductor.--electric density.--electric wind. chapter ix. =induced electrification= 60 electric fields; lines of force.--exp. 75, to study electric induction.--electric polarization; theory of induction.--exp. 76, to learn how to charge a body by induction.--free and bound electrifications.--exp. 77, to show that a neutral body is polarized before it is attracted by a charged one.--polarization precedes attraction.--exp. 78, to find whether electric induction will act through an insulator.--dielectrics.--exp. 79, to find whether a polarized conductor can act inductively upon another conductor.--successive induction.--inductive capacity.--exp. 80, to study the action of the electrophorus.--discussion.--details of action.--exp. 81, to see, hear, and feel the results of inductive influence and polarization.--discussion. chapter x. =condensation of electrification= 68 exp. 82, to find whether a large surface will hold more electrification than a small one.--electrical capacity.--exp. 83, to find whether the capacity of a given conductor can be increased without increasing its size.--condensation; condensers.--the leyden jar.--fulminating panes.--induction coil condensers.--submarine cables.--exp. 84, to study the condensation of electrification.--discussion.--exp. 85, to study the action of the condenser.--discussion.--exp. 86, to study the effect of electrical discharges upon the human body.--shocks; dischargers.--exps. 87-88, to show the strong attraction between opposite electrifications in the condenser.--discussion.--exp. 89, to show how the condenser may be slowly discharged.--the electric chime.--exp. 90, to ascertain the location of a charge in a condenser.--discussion.--exp. 91, to find whether any electrification remains in the condenser after it has once been discharged.--residual charge.--exp. 92, to study successive condensation; the chime cascade.--discussion. chapter xi. =electroscopes= 77 electroscopes.--our leaf electroscope.--exp. 93, to study the leaf electroscope; charging by conduction.--discussion.--exp. 95, to learn some uses of the electroscope.--discussion.--the proof-plane. chapter xii. =miscellaneous experiments= 81 exp. 96, to show that friction always produces two kinds of electrification.--discussion.--exp. 97, to show "successive sparks."--exp. 98, to show to the eye the strong attraction between a charged and a neutral body.--exp. 99, to feel the strong attraction between a charged and a neutral body.--exp. 100, the human body a frictional electric machine.--static electric machines. chapter xiii. =atmospheric electricity= 84 atmospheric electricity.--lightning.--thunder.--lightning rods.--causes of atmospheric electricity.--st. elmo's fire.--aurora borealis. part iii.--current electricity. chapter xiv. construction and use of apparatus 89 exp. 101, to study the effect of the electric current upon the magnetic needle.--electrical connections.--current detectors.--exp. 102, to study the construction and use of a simple "key."--exp. 103, to study the construction and use of a simple "current reverser."--exp. 104, to study the simple current detector.--exp. 105, to study the construction and use of the simple galvanoscope.--discussion; true readings.--exp. 106, to study the construction and use of a simple astatic needle.--astatic needles.--exp. 107, to study the construction and use of a simple astatic galvanoscope.--astatic galvanoscopes. chapter xv. galvanic cells and batteries 102 exp. 108, to study the effect of dilute sulphuric acid upon carbon and various metals.--to amalgamate.--dilute sulphuric acid.--discussion.--exp. 109, to study the effect of dilute sulphuric acid upon various combinations of metals.--discussion.--exp. 110, to study the construction of a simple voltaic or galvanic cell.--the electric current.--source of the electrification.--the electric circuit; open and closed circuits.--plates or elements.--direction of current.--poles or electrodes.--chemical action in the simple galvanic cell.--action in cell using impure zinc; action using pure zinc.--exp. 111, to see what is meant by "local currents" in the cell.--local action; local currents.--reasons for amalgamating zinc plates.--exp. 112, to study the "single-fluid" galvanic cell.--the simple cell.--polarization of cells.--effects of polarization.--remedies for polarization; depolarizers.--exp. 113, to study the "two-fluid" galvanic cell.--setting up the two-fluid cell.--care of two-fluid cell.--copper sulphate solution.--chemical action in the two-fluid cell.--various galvanic cells; open and closed circuit cells.--the leclanché cell--dry cells.--the bichromate of potash cell.--the daniell cell.--the gravity cell. chapter xvi. the electric circuit 115 exp. 114, to see what is meant by "divided circuits" and "shunts."--divided circuits; shunts.--exp. 115, to see what is meant by "short circuits." chapter xvii. electromotive force 117 electromotive force.--unit of e. m. f.; the volt.--exp. 116, to see whether the e. m. f. of a cell depends upon the materials used in its construction.--discussion.--electromotive series.--exp. 117, to see whether the e. m. f. of a cell depends upon its size.--discussion. chapter xviii. electrical resistance 120 resistance.--exp. 118, to study the general effect of "resistance" upon a current.--external resistance; internal resistance; unit of resistance; the ohm.--resistance coils; resistance boxes.--simple resistance coil.--exp. 119, to test the power of various substances to conduct galvanic electricity.--conductors and nonconductors.--exp. 120, to find the effect of sulphuric acid upon the conductivity of water.--internal resistance.--exp. 121, to find what effect the length of a wire has upon its electrical resistance.--discussion.--exp. 122, to find what effect the size (area of cross-section) of a wire has upon its electrical resistance.--discussion.--exp. 123, to compare the resistance of a divided circuit with the resistance of one of its branches. discussion.--exp. 124, to study the effect of decreasing the resistance in one branch of a divided circuit.--current in divided circuits. chapter xix. measurement of resistance 130 exp. 125, to study the construction and use of a simple wheatstone's bridge.--the simple bridge.--equipotential points.--example.--exp. 126, to measure the resistance of a wire by means of wheatstone's bridge; the "bridge method."--allowances for connections.--exps. 127-137, to measure the resistances of various wires, coils, etc., by the "bridge method."--table.--exp. 138, to study the effect of heat upon the resistance of metals.--effect of heat upon resistance.--exp. 139, to measure the resistance of a wire by the "method of substitution."--simple rheostat.--exp. 140, to measure the e. m. f. of a cell by comparison with the two-fluid cell.--exp. 141, to measure the internal resistance of a cell by the "method of opposition." chapter xx. current strength 142 strength of current.--unit of current strength; the ampere.--measurement of current strength.--the tangent galvanometer.--the ammeter.--the voltameter.--unit of quantity; the coulomb.--electrical horse-power; the watt.--ohm's law.--internal resistance and current strength.--exp. 142, having a cell with large plates, to find how the strength of the current is affected by changes in the position of the plates, the external resistance being small.--exp. 143, same as exp. 142, but with small plates.--exp. 144, to find whether the changes in current strength, due to changes in internal resistance, are as great when the external resistance is large, as they are when the external resistance is small.--discussion, with examples.--arrangement of cells and current strength.--cells in series.--cells abreast.--exp. 145, to find the best way to join two similar cells when the external resistance is small.--exp. 146, to find the best way to join two similar cells when the external resistance is large.--best arrangement of cells. chapter xxi. chemical effects of the electric current 151 chemical action and electricity.--electrolysis.--exp. 147, to study the electrolysis of water.--composition of water.--electromotive force of polarization.--exp. 148, to coat iron with copper.--exp. 149, to study the electrolysis of a solution of copper sulphate.--electroplating.--exp. 150, to study the chemistry of electroplating.--discussion.--electrotyping.--voltameters.--exp. 151, to study the construction and action of a simple "storage" cell.--secondary or storage cells. chapter xxii. electromagnetism 158 electromagnetism.--exp. 152, to study the lines of force about a straight wire carrying a current.--ampere's rule.--lines of force about parallel wires.--exp. 153, to study the lines of force about a coil of wire like that upon the galvanoscope.--exp. 154, to study the magnetic field about a small coil of wire.--coils.--polarity of coils.--exp. 155, to test the attracting and "sucking" power of a magnetized coil or helix.--exp. 156, to find whether a piece of steel can be permanently magnetized by an electric current.--exp. 157, to study the effect of a piece of iron placed inside of a magnetized coil of wire. chapter xxiii. electromagnets 165 electromagnets.--cores of electromagnets.--exps. 158-163, to study straight electromagnets; lifting power; residual magnetism of core; magnetic tick; magnetic figures; magnetic field.--horseshoe electromagnets.--use of yoke.--experimental magnets.--method of joining coils.--exps. 164-173, to study horseshoe electromagnets; to test the poles; to study the inductive action of one core upon the other; magnetic figures; permanent magnetic figures; lifting power; residual magnetism when magnetic circuit is closed.--closed magnetic circuits. chapter xxiv. thermoelectricity 175 exp. 174, to find whether electricity can be produced by heat.--home-made thermopile.--thermoelectricity.--peltier effect.--thermopiles. chapter xxv. induced currents 178 electromagnetic induction.--exp. 175, to find whether a current can be generated with a bar magnet and a hollow coil of wire.--discussion.--induced currents and work.--exp. 176, to find whether a current can be generated with a bar magnet and a coil of wire having an iron core.--exp. 177, to find whether a current can be generated with a horseshoe magnet and a coil of wire having an iron core.--induced currents and lines of force.--exp. 178, to find whether a current can be generated with an electromagnet and a hollow coil of wire.--exp. 179, to find whether a current can be generated with an electromagnet and a coil of wire having an iron core.--discussion of exps. 178-179.--exp. 180, to study the effect of starting or stopping a current near a coil of wire or other closed circuit.--exp. 181, to study the effect of starting or stopping a current in a coil placed inside of another coil.--discussion of exps. 180-181.--direction of induced current.--laws of induction.--primary and secondary currents.--exp. 182, to see what is meant by alternating currents.--direct and alternating currents.--self-induction; extra currents. chapter xxvi. the production of motion by currents 187 currents and motion.--exp. 183, motion produced with a hollow coil and a piece of iron.--exp. 184, motion with hollow coil and bar magnet.--exp. 185, motion with electromagnet and piece of iron.--exp. 186, motion with electromagnet and bar magnet.--exp. 187, motion with electromagnet and horseshoe magnet.--exp. 188, motion with two electromagnets.--discussion of exps. 183-188.--exp. 189, rotary motion with a hollow coil of wire and a permanent magnet.--exp. 190, rotary motion with an electromagnet and a permanent magnet.--discussion of exps. 189-190. chapter xxvii. applications of electricity 192 things electricity can do.--exp. 191, to study the action of a simple telegraph sounder.--discussion.--telegraph line; connections.--operation of line.--exp. 192, to study the action of the "relay" on telegraph lines.--the relay.--exp. 193, to study the action of a two-pole telegraph instrument.--exp. 194, to study the action of a simple "single needle telegraph instrument."--exp. 195, to study the action of a simple automatic contact breaker, or current interrupter.--automatic current interrupters.--exp. 196, to study the action of a simple electric bell, or a "buzzer."--electric bells and buzzers.--exp. 197, to study the action of a simple telegraph "recorder."--exp. 198, to study the action of a simple "annunciator."--discussion.--exp. 199, to study the shocking effects of the "extra current." induction coils.--action of induction coils.--transformers.--the dynamo.--the electric motor.--exp. 200, to study the action of the telephone.--the telephone.--the bell, or magneto-transmitter.--the receiver.--the carbon transmitter.--induction coils in telephone work.--electric lighting and heating.--arc lamps.--the incandescent lamp. chapter xxviii. wire tables 208 apparatus list 210 index 215 magnetism a few dont's for young students. don't fail to make at least a part of your own apparatus; there is a great deal of satisfaction and pleasure in home-made apparatus. don't experiment in all parts of the house, if working at home. fit up a small room for your den, and carry the key. don't begin an experiment before you really know what you are trying to do. read the directions carefully, then begin. don't rush through an experiment to see what happens at the end of it. see what happens at each step, and notice every little thing that seems unusual. don't try to do all parts of an experiment at the same time. understand one part, then proceed. don't fail to ask yourself questions, and form an opinion about the results of an experiment before you read what the author has to say about it. don't fail to keep a note-book. keep all the data and arithmetical work for future reference. don't leave the apparatus around after you have finished the day's work. part i.--magnetism. chapter i. iron and steel. _=1. introduction.=_ we should know something about iron and steel at the start, because we are to use them in nearly every experiment. the success with some of the experiments will depend largely upon the quality of the iron and steel used. when we buy a piece of iron from the blacksmith, we get more than iron for our money. hidden in this iron are other substances (carbon, phosphorus, silicon, etc.), which are called "impurities" by the chemist. if all the impurities were taken out of the iron, however, we should have nothing but a powder left; this the chemist would call "chemically pure iron," but it would be of no value whatever to the blacksmith or mechanic. the impurities in iron and steel are just what are needed to hold the particles of iron together, and to make them valuable. by regulating the amount of carbon, phosphorus, etc., manufacturers can make different grades and qualities of iron or steel. when carbon is united with the _pure_ iron, we get what is commonly called iron. _=2. kinds of iron and steel.=_ _cast iron_ is the most impure form of iron. stoves, large kettles, flatirons, etc., are made of cast iron. _wrought iron_ is the purest form of commercial iron. it usually comes in bars or rods. blacksmiths hammer these into shapes to use on wagons, machinery, etc. _steel_ contains more carbon than wrought iron, and less than cast iron. _soft steel_ is very much like wrought iron in appearance, and it is used like wrought iron. _hard steel_ has more carbon in it than soft steel. tools, needles, etc., are made of this. =experiment 1. to study steel.= _apparatus._ a steel sewing-needle (no. 1).[a] [footnote a: _=note. each piece of apparatus used in the following experiments has a number. see "apparatus list" at the back of this book for details. the numbers given under "apparatus," in each experiment, refer to this list.=_] =3. directions.= (a) bend a sewing-needle until it breaks. is the steel brittle? (b) if you have a file, test the hardness of the needle. _=4. discussion.=_ "needle steel" is usually of good quality. it will be very useful in many experiments. do you know how to make the needle softer? =experiment 2. to find whether a piece of hard steel can be made softer.= [illustration: fig. 1.] _apparatus._ fig. 1. a needle; a cork, ck (no. 2); lighted candle (no. 3). the bottom of the candle should be warmed and stuck to a pasteboard base. =5. directions.= (a) stick the point of the needle into ck, fig. 1, then hold the needle in the flame until it is red-hot. (the upper part of the flame is the hottest.) (b) allow the needle to cool in the air. (c) test the brittleness of the steel by bending it. test its hardness with a file (exp. 1). _=6. annealing.=_ this process of softening steel by first heating it and then allowing it to cool slowly, is called _annealing_. all pieces of iron and steel are, of course, hard; but you have learned that some pieces are much harder than others. =experiment 3. to find whether a piece of annealed steel can be hardened.= _apparatus._ the needle just annealed and bent; cork, etc., of exp. 2; a glass of cold water. =7. directions.= (a) heat the bent portion of the needle in the candle flame (exp. 2) until it is red-hot, then immediately plunge the needle into the water. (b) test its brittleness and hardness, as in exp. 2. _=8. hardening; tempering.=_ good steel is a very valuable material; the same piece may be made hard or soft at will. by sudden cooling, the steel becomes very hard. this process is called _hardening_, but it makes the steel too brittle for many purposes. by _tempering_ is meant the "letting down" of the steel from the very hard state to any desired degree of hardness. this may be done by suddenly cooling the steel when at the right temperature, it not being hot enough to produce extreme hardness. (the approximate temperature of hot steel can be told by the colors which form on a clean surface. these are due to oxides which form as the steel gradually rises in temperature.) =experiment 4. to test the hardening properties of soft iron.= _apparatus._ a piece of soft iron wire about 3 in. (7.5 cm.) long (no. 4); the candle, water, etc., of exp. 3. =9. directions.= (a) test the wire by bending and filing. (b) heat the wire in the candle flame as you did the needle (fig. 1), then cool it suddenly with the water. study the results. _=10. discussion.=_ soft iron contains much less carbon than steel. the hardening quality which steel has is due to the proper amount of carbon in it. if you have performed the experiments so far, you will be much more able to understand later ones, and you will see why we are obliged to use soft iron for some parts of electrical apparatus, and hard steel for other parts. chapter ii. magnets. _=11. kinds of magnets.=_ among the varieties of magnets which we shall discuss, are the natural, artificial, temporary, permanent, bar, horseshoe, compound, and electro-magnet. [illustration: fig. 2.] _the horseshoe magnet_, h m (fig. 2), is the most popular form of small magnets. the red paint has nothing to do with the magnetism. the piece, a, is called its _armature_, and is made of soft iron, while the magnet itself should be made of the best steel, properly hardened. the armature should always be in place when the magnet is not in use, and care should be taken to thoroughly clean the ends of the magnet before replacing the armature. the horseshoe magnet is _artificial_, and it is called a _permanent_ magnet, because it retains its strength for a long time, if properly cared for. =experiment 5. to study the horseshoe magnet.= _apparatus._ fig. 2. the horseshoe magnet, h m (no. 16). =12. directions.= (a) remove the armature, a, from the magnet, then move a about upon h m to see (1) if the curved part of h m has any attraction for a, and (2) to see if there is any attraction for a at points between the curve and the extreme ends of h m. _=13. poles; equator.=_ the ends of a magnet are called its _poles_. the end marked with a line, or an n, should be the _north_ pole. the unmarked end is the _south_ pole. n and s are abbreviations for north and south. the central part, at which there _seems_ to be no magnetism, is called the _neutral point_ or _equator_. =experiment 6. to ascertain the nature of substances attracted by a magnet.= _apparatus._ the horseshoe magnet, h m (fig. 2); silver, copper, and nickel coins; iron filings (no. 17), nails, tacks, pins, needles; pieces of brass, lead, copper, tin, etc. (ordinary tin is really sheet iron covered with tin.) use the various battery plates for the different metals. =14. directions.= (a) try the effect of h m upon the above substances, and upon any other substances thought of. _=15. magnetic bodies; diamagnetic bodies.=_ substances which are attracted by a magnet are said to be _magnetic_. a piece of soft iron wire is magnetic, although not a magnet. very strong magnets show that nickel, oxygen, and a few other substances not containing iron, are also magnetic. some elements are actually repelled by a powerful magnet; these are called _diamagnetic_ bodies. it is thought that all bodies are more or less affected by a magnet. _=16. practical uses of magnets.=_ many practical uses are made of magnets, such as the automatic picking out of small pieces of iron from grain before it is ground into flour, and the separation of iron from other metals, etc. the most important uses of magnets are in the compass and in connection with the electric current, as in machines like dynamos and motors. (see experiments with electro-magnets.) =experiment 7. to study the action of magnetism through various substances.= _apparatus._ horseshoe magnet, h m; a sheet of stiff paper; pieces of sheet glass, iron, zinc, copper, lead, thin wood, etc.; sewing-needle. (a tin box may be used for the iron, and battery plates for the other metals.) =17. directions.= (a) place the needle upon the paper and move h m about immediately under it. (b) in place of the paper, try wood, glass, etc. (c) invent an experiment to show that magnetism will act through your hand. (d) invent an experiment to show that magnetism will act through water. _=18. magnetic transparency; magnetic screens.=_ substances, like paper, are said to be _transparent_ to magnetism. iron does not allow magnetism to pass through it as readily as paper and glass; in fact, thick iron may act as a _magnetic screen_. =experiment 8. to find whether a magnet can give magnetism to a piece of steel.= =19. note.= you have seen that the horseshoe magnet can lift nails, iron filings, etc.; you have used this lifting power to show that the magnet was really a magnet, and not merely an ordinary piece of iron painted red. can we give some of its magnetism to another piece of steel? can we pass the magnetism along from one piece of steel to another? _apparatus._ the horseshoe magnet, h m; two sewing-needles that have never been near a magnet; iron filings. =20. directions.= (a) test the needles for magnetism with the iron filings, and be sure that they are not magnetized. (b) remove the armature, a, from h m, then touch the point of one of the needles to one pole of h m. (c) lay h m aside, and test the point of the needle for magnetism. (d) if you find that the needle is magnetized, rub its point upon the point of the other needle; then test the point of the second needle for magnetism. _=21. discussion; bar magnets.=_ a piece of good steel will attract iron after merely touching a magnet. to thoroughly magnetize it, however, a mere touch is not sufficient. there are several ways of making magnets, depending upon the size, shape, and strength desired. for these experiments, the student needs only a good horseshoe magnet, or, better still, the electro-magnets described later; with these any number of small magnets may be made. straight magnets are called _bar magnets_. =experiment 9. to make small magnets.= _apparatus._ fig. 3. the horseshoe magnet, h m; sewing-needles; iron filings. (see apparatus book, pg. 140, for various kinds of steel suitable for small magnets.) =22. directions.= (a) hold h m (fig. 3) in the left hand, its poles being uppermost. grasp the point of the needle with the right hand, and place its point upon the n or marked pole of h m. (b) pull the needle along in the direction of its length (see the arrow), continuing the motion until its head is at least an inch from the pole. (c) raise the needle at least an inch above h m, lower it to its former position (fig. 3), and repeat the operation 3 or 4 times. do not slide the needle back and forth upon the pole, and be careful not to let it accidentally touch the s pole of h m. (d) test the needle for magnetism with iron filings, and save it for the next experiment. [illustration: fig. 3.] [illustration: fig. 4.] =experiment 10. to find whether a freely-swinging bar magnet tends to point in any particular direction.= _apparatus._ fig. 4. a magnetized sewing-needle (exp. 9); the flat cork, ck (no. 2); a dish of water. (you can use a tumbler, but a larger dish is better.) =23. note.= an oily sewing-needle may be floated without the cork by carefully lowering it to the surface of the water. all magnets, pieces of iron and steel, knives, etc., should be removed from the table when trying such experiments. why? =24. directions.= (a) place the little bar magnet (the needle) upon the floating cork, turn it in various positions, and note the result. _=25. north-seeking poles; south-seeking poles; pointing power.=_ it should be noted that the _point_ swings to the north, provided the needle is magnetized as directed in exp. 9. this is called the north, or north-seeking pole. the n-seeking pole is sometimes called the marked pole. for convenience, we shall hereafter speak of the n-seeking pole as the n pole, and of the s-seeking pole as the s pole. we shall hereafter speak of the tendency which a bar magnet has to point n and s, as its _pointing power_. an unmagnetized needle has no pointing power. _=26. the magnetic needle; the compass.=_ a small bar magnet, supported upon a pivot, or suspended so that it may freely turn, is called a _magnetic needle_. when balanced upon a pivot having under it a graduated circle marked n, e, s, w, etc., it is called a _compass_. these have been used for centuries. (see apparatus book for home-made magnetic needles.) =experiment 11. to study the action of magnets upon each other.= _apparatus._ two magnetized sewing-needles (magnetized as in exp. 9); the cork, etc., of exp. 10. =27. directions.= (a) float each little bar magnet (needles) separately to locate the n poles. (b) leave one magnet upon the cork, and with the hand bring the n pole of the other magnet immediately over the n pole of the floating one. note the result. (c) try the effect of two s poles upon each other. (d) what is the result when a n pole of one is brought near a s pole of the other? =experiment 12. to study the action of a magnet upon soft iron.= _apparatus._ a magnetized sewing-needle; cork, etc., of exp. 10; a piece of soft iron wire, 3 in. long; iron filings. =28. directions.= (a) test the wire for magnetism with filings. be sure that it is not magnetized. if it shows any magnetism, twist it thoroughly before using. (exp. 19.) (b) float the magnetized needle (exp. 10), then bring the end of the wire near one pole of the needle and then near the other pole. (c) place the wire upon the cork, hold the needle in the hand and experiment. _=29. laws of attraction and repulsion.=_ from experiments 11 and 12 are derived these laws: (_=1=_) _=like poles repel each other=_; (_=2=_) _=unlike poles attract each other=_; (_=3=_) _=either pole attracts and is attracted by unmagnetized iron or steel.=_ the attraction between a magnet and a piece of iron or steel is mutual. attraction, alone, simply indicates that at least one of the bodies is magnetized; repulsion proves that both are magnetized. =experiment 13. to learn how to produce a desired pole at a given end of a piece of steel.= _apparatus._ same as in exp. 9. =30. directions.= (a) magnetize a sewing-needle (exp. 9) by rubbing it upon the n pole of h m from _point to head_. float it and locate its n pole. (b) take another needle that has not been magnetized, and rub it on the same pole (n) from _head to point_. locate its n pole. (c) magnetize another needle by rubbing it from _point to head_ upon the s pole of h m; locate its n pole. can you now determine, beforehand, how the poles of the needle magnet will be arranged? _=31. rule for poles.=_ the end of a piece of steel which last touches a n pole of a magnet, for example, becomes a s pole. _=32. our compass=_ (no. 18). while the floating magnetic needle described in exp. 10, and shown in fig. 4, does very well, it will be found more convenient to use a compass whenever poles of pieces of steel are to be tested. fig. 5 shows merely the cover of the box which serves as a base for the magnetic needle furnished. we shall hereafter speak of this apparatus as _our compass_, o c. (see apparatus book, chap. vii, for various forms of home-made magnetic needles and compasses.) =33. review; magnetic problems.= to be sure that you understand and remember what was learned in exp. 11, do these problems: 1. using the s pole of the horseshoe magnet, magnetize a needle so that its head will become a n pole. test with floating cork, as in exp. 11. 2. using the n pole of the horseshoe magnet, magnetize a needle so that its head shall be a s pole. test. 3. magnetize two needles, one on the n and one on the s pole of the horseshoe magnet, in such a way that the two points will repel each other. test. if the student cannot do these little problems at once, and test the results satisfactorily to himself, he should study the previous experiments again before proceeding. [illustration: fig. 5.] [illustration: fig. 6.] =experiment 14. to find whether the poles of a magnet can be reversed.= _apparatus._ fig. 6. the horseshoe magnet, h m; a thin wire nail, w n, 2 in. (5 cm.) long; a piece of stiff paper, cut as shown, to hold w n; thread with which to suspend the paper; compass, o c (no. 18). =34. directions.= (a) magnetize w n so that its point shall be a s pole. test with o c to make sure that you are right. (b) swing w n in the paper (fig. 6), then _slowly_ bring the s pole of h m near its point. note result. (c) _quickly_ bring the s pole of h m near the point. is w n still repelled? has its s pole been reversed? _=35. discussion; reversal of poles.=_ the poles of weak magnets may be easily reversed. this often occurs when the apparatus is mixed together. it is always best, before beginning an experiment, to remagnetize the pieces of steel which have already served as magnets. the same may be shown by magnetizing a needle, rubbing it first in one direction, and then in another upon the magnet, testing, in each case, the poles produced. =experiment 15. to find whether we can make a magnet with two n poles.= _apparatus._ the horseshoe magnet, h m; an unmagnetized sewing-needle; compass, o c (no. 18). =36. note.= you have already learned that the polarity of a weak magnet can be changed (exp. 14). can you think of any method by which _two n poles_ can be made in one piece of steel? =37. directions.= (a) place the needle upon h m, as in fig. 7. (b) keeping the part, c, in contact with the n pole of h m, and using the n pole of h m as a pivot, turn the needle end for end so that its head will be in contact with the s pole of h m. (c) pull the needle straight from h m, being careful not to slide it in either direction. (d) test the polarity of the ends with o c (fig. 5), and save it for the next experiment. [illustration: fig. 7.] [illustration: fig. 8.] =experiment 16. to study the bar magnet with two n poles.= _apparatus._ the strange magnet just made (exp. 15); iron filings; compass, o c (no. 18). =38. directions.= (a) sprinkle filings over the whole length of the needle and then raise it (fig. 8). (b) break the needle at its center, and test, with o c, the two new ends produced at that point. remember that repulsion is the test for polarity. _=39. discussion; consequent poles.=_ iron filings cling to a magnet where poles are located. in this case, two small magnets were made in one piece of steel; they had a common s pole at the center. the pointing power (§ 25) of such a magnet is very slight; would it have _any_ pointing power if we could make the end poles of equal strength? intermediate poles, like those in the needle just discussed, are called _consequent poles_. practical uses are made of consequent poles in the construction of motors and dynamos. =experiment 17. to study consequent poles.= _apparatus._ an unmagnetized sewing-needle; horseshoe magnet, h m (no. 16); iron filings (no. 17); compass (no. 18). =40. directions.= (a) let _w_, _x_, _y_, and _z_ stand for four places along the body of the needle, _w_ being at its point and _z_ at its head. (b) touch _w_ with the n pole of h m, _x_ with the s pole, _y_ with the n pole, and _z_ with the s pole. do not slide h m along on the needle, just _touch_ the needle as directed. (c) cover the needle with filings, then lift it. =experiment 18. to study the theory of magnetism.= _apparatus._ a thin bar magnet, b m (no. 21); iron filings; a sheet of paper. fig. 9 shows simply the edge of b m and the paper. b m should be magnetized as directed in exp. 9. [illustration: fig. 9.] =41. directions.= (a) sprinkle some iron filings upon a sheet of paper. (b) bring one pole of b m in contact with the filings (fig. 9), and lightly sweep it through them several times, always in the same direction. are the filings _simply_ pushed about? (c) do the same with a stick, and compare the result with that produced with b m. _=42. theory of magnetism; magnetic saturation.=_ this bringing into line the particles of iron indicates that each particle became a magnet. this experiment should aid in understanding what is thought to take place when steel is magnetized. the pile of filings represents the body to be magnetized, and each little filing stands for a particle of that body. a bar of steel is composed of extremely small particles, called _molecules_. they are very close together and do not move from place to place as easily as the pieces of filings. a magnet, however, when properly rubbed upon the steel, seems to have power to make the molecules point in the same direction. this produces an effect upon the whole bar. each molecule of the steel is supposed to be a magnet. when these little magnets pull together, the whole bar becomes a strong magnet. when a magnet is jarred, and the little magnetized molecules are mixed again, they pull in all sorts of directions upon each other. this lessens the attraction for outside bodies. steel is said to be _saturated_, when it contains as much magnetism as possible. a piece of steel becomes slightly longer when magnetized. it is thought, by many, that there is a current of electricity around each molecule, making a little magnet of it. (see electro-magnets.) =experiment 19. to find whether soft iron will permanently retain magnetism.= _apparatus._ a piece of soft iron wire, 3 or 4 in. (7.5 to 10 cm.) long (no. 4); the horseshoe magnet, h m; iron filings; flat cork, f c (no. 2), and the dish of water used in exp. 10 (fig. 4). =43. directions.= (a) magnetize the wire (exp. 9). notice that the wire clings strongly to h m. (b) test the lifting power of the little wire magnet by seeing about how many iron filings its poles will raise. (c) test the pointing power (§ 25) of the wire by floating it on f c (fig. 4). (d) holding one end of the wire in the hand, thoroughly jar it by striking the other end several times against a hard surface. (e) test the lifting and pointing powers, as in b and c. _=44. retentivity or coercive force; residual magnetism.=_ soft iron loses _most_ of its magnetism when simply removed beyond the action of a magnet. we say that it does not retain magnetism; that is, it has very little _retentivity or coercive force_. this is an important fact, the action of many electric machines and instruments depending upon it. a slight amount of magnetism remains, however, in the softest iron, after removing it from a magnet. this is called _residual magnetism_. a piece of iron may show poles, when tested with the compass, although it may have almost no pointing power. =experiment 20. to test the retentivity of soft steel.= _apparatus._ a wire nail, w n (no. 19); horseshoe magnet, h m; iron filings; flat cork, f c; the dish of water (exp. 10, fig. 4). =45. directions.= (a) with h m magnetize the nail; this is made of soft steel. (b) test the lifting and pointing powers of w n (exp. 19). (c) strike w n several times with a hammer to jar it. (d) again test its lifting and pointing powers. _=46. discussion.=_ soft steel has a greater retentivity than soft iron. it contains less carbon than cast or tool steel, and is called mild steel or machinery steel. you do not want soft steel for permanent magnets. =experiment 21. to test the retentivity of hard steel.= _apparatus._ a hard steel sewing-needle (no. 1); other articles used in exp. 20. =47. directions.= (a) magnetize the needle with h m. (b) test its lifting and pointing powers (exp. 19). (c) hammer the needle and test again as in (b). =experiment 22. to test the effect of heat upon a magnet.= _apparatus._ a magnetized sewing-needle; the candle, cork, etc., of exp. 2. (see fig. 1.) =48. directions.= (a) test the needle for magnetism. (b) stick the needle into the cork (fig. 1), and heat it until it is red-hot. (c) test the needle again for magnetism. (d) see if you can again magnetize the needle. _=49. discussion.=_ heating a body is supposed to thoroughly stir up its molecules. jarring or twisting a magnet tends to weaken it. (see exp. 19.) the molecules of steel do not move about or change their relative positions as readily as those of soft iron. when the molecules of hard steel are once arranged, by magnetizing them, for example, they strongly resist any outside influences which tend to mix them up again. a magnet does not attract a piece of red-hot iron. the particles of the hot iron are supposed to vibrate too rapidly to be brought into line; that is, the iron cannot become polarized by induction. (see exp. 24.) =experiment 23. to test the effect of breaking a magnet.= _apparatus._ a magnetized sewing-needle; iron filings; compass, o c (no. 18). [illustration: fig. 10.] =50. directions.= (a) break the little bar magnet (needle), and test the two new ends produced for magnetism, with the iron filings. (fig. 10). (b) touch the two new poles together to see whether they are like or unlike. (c) test the nature of the poles with o c (fig. 5) (d) break one of the halves and test its parts. _=51. discussion.=_ the above results agree with the theory that each molecule is a magnet (exp. 18). no matter into how many pieces a magnet is broken, each part becomes a magnet. (fig. 10). this shows that those molecules near the equator of the magnet really have magnetism. their energy, however, is all used upon the adjoining molecules; hence no external bodies are attracted at that point. chapter iii. induced magnetism. [illustration: fig. 11.] =experiment 24. to find whether we can magnetize a piece of iron without touching it with a magnet.= _apparatus._ horseshoe magnet, h m; iron filings, i f (fig. 11). =52. directions.= (a) hold the armature of the magnet in a vertical position (fig. 11), its lower end being directly in a little pile of iron filings. (b) bring the n pole of h m near the upper end of a, but do not let them touch each other. (c) keeping a and the pole of h m the same distance apart, lift them. do any filings cling to a? (d) without moving or jarring a, take h m away from it and note result upon the filings. _=53. temporary magnetism; induced magnetism.=_ the armature, a, was induced to become a magnet without even touching h m. its magnetism was _temporary_, however, as the filings dropped as soon as the _inductive action_ of h m was removed. a small amount of residual magnetism (44) remained in a. soft iron is exceedingly valuable, because it has very little retentivity (44), and because it can be easily _magnetized by induction_. the armature was made of soft iron. it had _induced magnetism_. it was a _temporary magnet_. =experiment 25. to find whether a piece of steel can be permanently magnetized by induction.= _apparatus._ an unmagnetized sewing-needle; horseshoe magnet, h m; iron filings; sheet of stiff paper. =54. directions.= (a) test the needle for magnetism. (b) place the unmagnetized needle upon the paper, then move h m about immediately under it, so that the needle will be attracted. (c) test the needle again for permanent magnetism. [illustration: fig. 12.] =experiment 26. to study the inductive action of a magnet upon a piece of soft iron.= _apparatus._ horseshoe magnet, h m; iron filings, i f; a piece of soft iron wire about an inch long, i w (fig. 12), placed upon the n pole of h m; compass, o c (no. 18), (§ 32). =55 directions.= (a) test the lower end of i w for magnetism with i f. (b) leaving i w upon the n pole of h m, test the pole at the lower end of i w with o c, to determine whether it is n or s. (c) jar i w (exp. 19), then place it upon the s pole of h m, and again test the polarity of the lower end. _=56. polarization; pole pieces.=_ the wire, i w (fig. 12), was acted upon by induction (exp. 24) and behaved like a magnet. poles were produced in it, so we say that the wire was _polarized_. pieces of iron, placed upon the poles of a magnet, are called _pole pieces_. it should be noted that the lower end of the wire has a pole _like_ the pole of h m, to which it is attached. =experiments 27-30. to study pole pieces.= _apparatus for experiments 27-30._ horseshoe magnet, h m; soft iron wires; iron filings, i f. =57. directions.= (a) suspend two wires, each about an inch long (fig. 13) from one pole of h m. do their lower ends attract or repel each other? [illustration: fig. 13.] [illustration: fig. 14.] =experiment 28.= =58. directions.= (a) place the two wires just used so that one shall cling to the n pole of h m, and the other to the s pole of h m (fig. 14). (b) bring the lower ends of the wires near each other. do they attract or repel each other? =experiment 29.= =59. directions.= (a) bend a 2-inch iron wire, as in fig. 15, and place it upon the poles of h m. (b) see if its central part, marked x, will strongly attract filings. [illustration: fig. 15.] [illustration: fig. 16.] =experiment 30.= =60. directions.= (a) bend the wire just used a little more, and place its ends upon _one_ pole of h m (fig. 16). (b) see if the iron filings and small wires will cling to its central part. chapter iv. the magnetic field. =experiment 31. to study the space around a magnet, in which pieces of iron become temporary magnets by induction.= _apparatus._ a bar magnet, b m (no. 21); a compass (no. 18); a sheet of stiff paper about 1 ft. (30 cm.) square, with a center line, c l, drawn parallel to one of its sides (fig. 16-1/2), and with another line, e w, drawn perpendicular to c l. (see apparatus book, chap. vi., for various ways of making home-made permanent magnets.) =61. directions.= (a) lay the paper upon the table, and place the compass over the center of the line, c l, previously drawn. (b) place the eye directly over the compass-needle, then turn the paper until the line is n and s; that is, until the line is parallel to the length of the needle. pin the paper to the table to hold its center line n and s. (c) place b m upon the paper, as shown (fig. 16-1/2), its n pole to the north, and its center at the cross line, e w. [illustration: fig. 16-1/2.] (d) slowly move the compass entirely around and near b m, and note the various positions taken by the needle. note especially the way in which its n pole points. this is to get a general idea of the action of the needle. (e) place the compass in the position marked 1, which is on e w, about 1 in. from the line, c l. press the wooden support down firmly upon the paper to show, by the dent made in the paper by the pin-head, the exact place on the paper that is under the center of the compass-needle. before removing the compass from this position, look down upon it again, and make a dot on the paper with a pencil directly under each end of the needle. remove the compass, and draw a line through the dent and the two dots just made. this will show a plan of the exact position of the needle. (f) repeat this for the various points marked 2, 4, 6 in. from c l, always marking on the plan the position of the n pole of the needle. do the same with the other points marked on fig. 16-1/2 by dots, and study the resulting diagram. _=62. discussion; the magnetic field.=_ the compass-needle was decidedly affected all around b m (fig. 17), showing that induction can take place in a considerable space around a magnet; this space is called the _magnetic field_ of the magnet. let us consider _one_ position taken by the compass-needle in the field of b m (fig. 17), as, for example, the one in which the needle has been made black. the s pole of the black needle is attracted by the n pole of b m, and is repelled by the s pole of b m. the n pole of the compass-needle is attracted by the s pole of b m, and is repelled by b m's n pole. the position which it takes, therefore, is due to the action of these 4 forces, together with its tendency to point n and s. [illustration: fig. 17.] every magnet has a certain magnetic field, with its lines of force passing through the surrounding air in certain definite positions. as soon, however, as a piece of iron or another magnet is brought within the field, the original position of the lines of force is changed. this has to be considered in the construction of electrical machinery. =experiment 32. to study the magnetic field of a bar magnet.= _apparatus._ a sheet of stiff paper; iron filings, i f; bar magnet, b m (no. 21); a sifter for the filings (no. 24); (see apparatus book, §48, 49, 50, for home-made sifters.) =63. directions.= (a) place b m upon the table, and lay the paper over it. (b) with the sifter sprinkle some filings upon the paper directly over b m, then tap the paper gently, to assist the particles to take final positions. study the results. _=64. magnetic figures; lines of magnetic force.=_ the filings clearly indicated the extent and nature of the magnetic field of b m. you should notice how the filings radiate from the poles, and how they form curves from one pole to the other. they make upon the paper a _magnetic figure_. each particle of the filings becomes a little magnet, by induction (exp. 24), and takes a position which depends upon attractions and repulsions, as discussed in exp. 31. magnetism seems to reach out in lines from the poles of a magnet. the position and direction of some of the lines are shown by the lines of filings. they are very distinct near the poles, and are considered, for convenience, to start from the n pole of a magnet, where they separate. they then pass through the air on all sides of the magnet, and finally enter it again at the s pole. these lines are called _lines of force_ or _lines of magnetic induction_. the poles must not be considered mere points at the ends of a magnet. as shown by magnetic figures, the lines of magnetic induction flow from a considerable portion of the magnet's ends. =experiments 33-37. to study the magnetic fields of various combinations of bar magnets.= _apparatus for exps. 33-37._ two bar magnets, b m (nos. 21, 22); an iron ring, i r (no. 23); iron filings, i f; a sheet of stiff paper; the sifter (no. 24). =65. note.= the student will find it very helpful to make the magnetic figures of the combinations given. thoroughly magnetize the bar magnets upon an electro-magnet, or upon a strong horseshoe magnet, and mark their n poles in some way. the n poles may be marked by sticking a small piece of paper to them. =66. directions.= (a) arrange the two magnets, b m, as in fig. 18, with their unlike poles about an inch apart. (the dotted circle indicates the iron ring to be used in the _next_ experiment. about a quarter, only, of the magnets are shown.) (b) place the paper over the magnets, and sift filings upon it immediately over the unlike poles. note particularly the lines of filings between n and s. (c) make a sketch of the result. (see experiments with electromagnets, and the illustrations of magnetic figures with them.) =experiment 34.= =67. directions.= (a) leaving the opposite poles an inch apart, as in exp. 33, place the iron ring, i r (no. 23), between them (fig. 18, dotted circles). (b) place the paper over it all, and sprinkle filings upon it to get the magnetic figure. (c) make a sketch of the resulting figure, and compare it with the figure made in exp. 33. why do the lines of force appear indistinct in the center of the ring and around it? (see §74.) [illustration: fig. 18.] [illustration: fig. 19.] =experiment 35.= =68. directions.= (a) arrange the two bar magnets, as in exp. 33, but with their two n poles an inch apart. (b) make the magnetic figure of the combination. do the lines of force flow from one n pole directly to the n pole of the other? do the particles of filings reaching out from one b m attract or repel those from the other b m? =experiment 36.= =69. directions.= (a) place the two bar magnets side by side, so that their unlike poles shall be arranged as in fig. 19. (b) make the magnetic figure. =experiment 37.= =70. directions.= (a) turn one b m end for end, so that their like poles shall be near each other, but otherwise arranged as in fig. 19. (b) make and study the magnetic figure. =experiments 38-39. to study the lifting power of combinations of bar magnets.= _apparatus for exps. 38-39._ two bar magnets, b m (no. 21, 22), of about equal strength; iron filings, i f. =71. directions.= (a) find out about how many filings you can lift with the n pole of one magnet. (b) place the two magnets together (fig. 20), their _like_ poles being in contact; then see whether the two n poles will lift more or less filings than one pole. [illustration: fig. 20.] =experiment 39.= =72. directions.= (a) remove all filings from the two magnets just used, and hold them tightly together (fig. 20), with their _unlike_ poles in contact. (b) compare the amount of filings you can lift at one end of this combination with that lifted in exp. 38 (a) and (b). _=73. discussion; compound magnets.=_ many lines of force pass into the air from two like poles. such a combination is called a _compound magnet_. a piece of thin steel can be magnetized more strongly in proportion to its weight than a thick piece, because the magnetism does not seem to penetrate beyond a certain distance into the steel. thin steel may be magnetized practically through and through. a thick magnet has but a crust of magnetized molecules; in fact, a thick magnet may be greatly weakened by eating the outside crust away with acid. by riveting several thin bar or horseshoe magnets together, thick permanent magnets of considerable strength are made. _=74.=_ lines of force, in passing from the n to the s pole of a magnet, meet a resistance in the air, which does not carry or conduct them as easily as iron or steel. in the arrangement of exp. 39 the lines of force are not obliged to push their way through the air, as each magnet serves as a return conductor for the lines of force of the other. either magnet may be considered an armature for the other. to show in another way that few lines of force pass into the air, the student may lay the above combination upon the table and make a magnetic figure. (see apparatus book, p. 38, for method of making home-made compound magnets.) in the case where a ring was placed between the poles of two bar magnets (exp. 34), the lines of force from the n pole jumped across the first air-space. they then disappeared in the body of the ring, until they were obliged to jump across the second air-space, to get to the s pole. the weakness of the field in the central space was clearly shown by the filings. there were no stray lines of force passing through the air, because it was easier for them to go through the iron ring. this will be discussed again under "dynamos and motors." (see also § 78.) =experiments 40-42. to study the magnetic field of the horseshoe magnet.= _apparatus for exps. 40-42._ horseshoe magnet, h m; iron filings, i f; sheet of stiff paper. =75. directions.= (a) place h m, with its armature removed, flat upon the table, and cover it with the paper; then make the magnetic figure. (exp. 32.) (b) compare the number of well-defined curves at the poles with the number at the equator. =experiment 41.= =76. directions.= (a) make the magnetic figure of h m with its armature in place. (b) is the attraction for outside bodies increased or decreased by placing the armature on h m? =experiment 42.= =77. directions.= (a) lay h m flat upon the table, and place one or two matches between its poles and the armature; cover with paper as before, and make the magnetic figure. do lines of force still pass through the armature? _=78. discussion; resistance to lines of force.=_ it is evident, from the last 3 experiments, that lines of force will pass through iron whenever possible, on their way from the n to the s pole of a magnet. when the armature of a horseshoe magnet is in place, most of the lines of magnetic induction crowd together and pass through it rather than push their way through the air. air is not a good conductor of lines of force; and the magnet has to do work to overcome the resistance of the air, when the armature is removed, in order to complete the magnetic circuit. this work causes a magnet to become gradually weaker. the soft iron armature is an excellent conductor of lines of force; it completes the magnetic circuit so perfectly that very little work is left for the magnet to do. =experiment 43. to show that lines of force are on all sides of a magnet.= _apparatus._ our compass, o c (no. 18); horseshoe magnet, h m; glass tumbler, g t; sheet of stiff paper; iron filings, i f. arrange as in fig. 21. h m may be supported in a vertical position by placing paper, or a handkerchief, under it. the poles should just touch the stiff paper placed over the tumbler. [illustration: fig. 21.] =79. directions.= (a) sprinkle iron filings upon the paper, and study the resulting magnetic figure. (b) place o c upon the paper in different positions. does the magnetic needle always come to rest about parallel to the lines of filings? _=80. discussion.=_ the student should keep in mind the fact that the filings in the magnetic figure show the approximate extent and form of the magnetic field simply in one plane. if the paper were held in some other position near the magnet (in a tilted position, for example,) the lines of filings would not be the same as those produced in exp. 40-42. the lines of force come out of every side of the n pole. when a magnetic needle is placed in any magnetic field, its n pole points in the direction in which the lines of force are passing; that is, it points towards the s pole of the magnet producing the field. =experiment 44. to study a horseshoe magnet with movable poles.= _apparatus._ a narrow strip of spring steel, s s (no. 25); iron filings, i f. =81. directions.= (a) magnetize the spring steel, s s. (b) bend s s until its poles are about 1/4 in. apart, then using it as a horseshoe magnet, and keeping its poles the same distance apart, see about how many filings you can lift. (c) clean the poles of s s, press them tightly together, then again test its lifting power with filings. [illustration: fig. 22.] _=82. discussion; advantages of horseshoe magnets.=_ when the opposite poles of the flexible magnet are pressed together, the lines of force do not have to pass through the air; there is very little attraction for outside bodies. the same effect is produced with the armature (exp. 41). a horseshoe magnet has a strong attraction for its armature, because it has a _double power to induce and to attract_. suppose the n pole of a bar magnet, b m (fig. 22), be placed near one end of a piece of iron, as, for example, the armature, a. a will become a temporary magnet by induction (exp. 24). the s pole of a, polarized by induction, will be attracted by b m, while its n pole will be repelled by b m; so, you see, that a bar magnet does not pull to advantage. chapter v. terrestrial magnetism. _=83. the magnetism of the earth.=_ the student must have guessed, before this, that the earth acts like a magnet. it causes the magnetic needle to take a certain position at every place upon its surface, and this position depends upon the earth's attractions and repulsions for it. the earth has lines of force which flow from its n magnetic pole, and these lines, before they can get to the earth's s magnetic pole, must spread out through the air on all sides of the earth. as the magnetic needle points to the earth's n magnetic pole (which is more than 1,000 miles from its _real_ n pole), it is evident that the compass-needle does not show the _true_ north for all places upon the earth's surface. in fact, the n pole of the needle may point e, w, or even s. this effect would be seen by carrying a compass around the earth's n magnetic pole. [illustration: fig. 23.] _=84. declination.=_ for convenience, we shall represent the true n and s, at the place where you are experimenting, by the full line, n s, in fig. 23. the dotted line shows the direction taken by the compass-needle. the angle, a, between them, is called the _angle of variation_ or the _declination_. this angle is not the same for all places; and, in fact, it changes slowly at any given place; so it becomes necessary to construct _magnetic maps_ for the use of mariners and others. =experiment 45. to study the lines of force above and below a bar magnet placed horizontally.= _apparatus._ a bar magnet, b m (no. 21); compass, o c (no. 18). =85. directions.= (a) lay b m upon the table and place o c upon its center. note the position of the compass-needle. (b) slide o c along from one end of b m to the other, and study the effect upon its needle. do lines of force curve _over_ b m as well as around its sides, as shown in exp. 31? (c) place o c upon the table. hold b m horizontally above o c, and move o c back and forth under b m. does the needle remain horizontal, or does it show that lines of force pass _under_ b m on their way from its n to its s pole? [illustration: fig. 24.] _=86. the dip or inclination of the magnetic needle.=_ the needle is said to dip when it takes positions like those in fig. 24. compass-needles should be horizontal, when properly balanced, and entirely free from all effects other than those of the earth. the excessive dip shown (fig. 24) is due, of course, to the efforts of the magnetic needle to place itself in the direction in which the lines of force of b m pass. =experiment 46. to study the dip or inclination of the magnetic needle, due to the action of the earth.= _apparatus._ fig. 25. our compass, o c (no. 18); horseshoe magnet, h m (no. 16); piece of paper. =87. directions.= (a) place o c upon the table, and mark upon a piece of paper the height of the n pole of its needle above the table. (fig. 25.) the paper should be held in a vertical position, and near the pole. [illustration: fig. 25.] (b) with h m reverse the poles of the compass-needle (exp. 13), so that its former n pole shall become a s pole. (c) place the needle upon its pivot again, and mark upon the paper, as before, the height of its new n pole above the table. does the needle remain horizontal? (d) remagnetize the needle, and reverse its poles so that it will again balance. [illustration: fig. 26.] _=88. discussion; balancing magnetic needles.=_ if a piece of unmagnetized steel be balanced and then magnetized, it will no longer remain horizontal; it will dip. try this. compass-needles are balanced after they are magnetized. can you now see why the needle did not remain horizontal after its poles were changed? a piece of steel first balanced and then magnetized, has to have its s pole slightly weighted, as suggested by the line at s (fig. 26 x), to make it horizontal. the magnetic needle does not tend to dip at the earth's equator, because the lines of force of the earth are nearly horizontal at the equator. as we pass toward the north or south on the earth, the lines of force slant more and more as they come from or enter the earth's magnetic poles. what position would the needle take if we should hold it directly over the earth's n magnetic pole? fig. 24 shows what the needle does when held near the poles of a bar magnet. =experiments 47-48. to study the inductive influence of the earth.= _apparatus for exps. 47-48._ compass, o c, (no. 18); an iron stove poker, or other rod of iron; a hammer. (the iron and hammer are not furnished.) =89. note.= you have seen (exp. 24), that iron becomes magnetized by induction when placed near a magnet. as the earth acts like a huge magnet, having poles, lines of force, etc., will it magnetize pieces of iron which are in the air or upon its surface? =90. directions.= (a) test the poker for poles with o c, remembering that _repulsion_ is necessary to prove that it is polarized. if the poker has very weak poles, proceed; but if it shows some strength, hold it in an east and west direction, and hit it several sharp blows on the end with the hammer. test for polarity again. (b) with one hand hold the poker in the n and s line, give it a dip toward the north, and strike it several times with the hammer to thoroughly stir up its molecules. (c) test again for poles with o c, and note especially whether the lower end (of the poker) became a n or a s pole. =experiment 48.= =91. directions.= (a) turn the poker end for end (see exp. 47); repeat the striking, and test again the pole produced at the lower and north end of it. (b) now hold the poker horizontally in the east and west line, and pound it. (c) test for poles. has this strengthened or weakened the poker magnet? _=92. discussion.=_ dipping the poker places it nearly in the same direction as that taken by the earth's lines of force. the magnetic influence of the earth acts to advantage upon the poker, by induction, only when the poker is properly held. it no doubt occurs to the student that the end of a magnetic needle which points to the north is really opposite in nature to the north magnetic pole of the earth. the n pole of a needle, then, must be in reality a s pole to be attracted by the earth's n pole. it has been agreed, for convenience, to call the n-seeking pole of a magnet its n pole. _=93. natural magnets.=_ nearly all pieces of iron become more or less magnetized by the inductive action of the earth's magnetism. your poker was slightly magnetized at the start, perhaps, from standing in a dipping position. induction takes place along lines of force. in northern latitudes the earth's lines of force have a dip to the north. you should now see why the greatest effect was produced upon the poker when it, also, was made to dip. parts of machinery, steel frames of bridges and buildings, tools in the shop, and even certain iron ores, become polarized by this inductive action. these might all be called natural magnets. magnetic iron ore, called lodestone, is referred to, however, when speaking of _natural magnets_. lodestone was used thousands of years ago to indicate n and s, and it was discovered, later, that it could impart its power to pieces of steel when the two were rubbed together. =experiment 49. to test the effect of twisting a wire held north and south in the earth's magnetic field.= _apparatus._ compass, o c (no. 18); a piece of soft iron wire, 6 in. (15 cm.) long (no. 15). bend up about an inch of the wire at each end so that it may be firmly held when twisting it. =note.= you have seen that we can _pound_ magnetism into or out of a piece of iron at will. can we _twist_ it into a wire and out again without the use of magnets? =94. directions.= (a) test the wire for poles with o c. (b) hold the wire in a n and s direction, dipping it at the same time, as directed in exp. 47 for the poker, and twist it back and forth. (c) test again for poles with o c. as the poles of the wire may be very weak, bring them _slowly_ toward the compass-needle (see exp. 14), and note the _first_ motions produced upon the needle. (d) hold the wire horizontally east and west, twist and test again. has its magnetism become weaker or stronger than before? =experiment 50. to test for magnetism in bars of iron, tools, etc.= _apparatus._ steel drills; files; chisels; bars or rods of iron that have been standing in an upright position; stove-lid lifters; stove pokers, etc., etc.; a compass. =95. directions.= (a) with the compass test the ends of the above for magnetism, and note which ends are s. notes. static electricity part ii.--static electricity chapter vi. electrification. _=100. some varieties of electricity.=_ _static electricity_ does not seem to "flow in currents" as readily as some other varieties; its tendency is to stand still, hence the name, static. the simplest way to produce it is by friction. _thermo electricity_ is produced by changes in temperature. when certain combinations of metals become hotter or colder, a current is produced. _voltaic_ or _galvanic electricity_ is produced by chemical action. batteries give this variety. _induced electricity_ is produced by other currents, and by combinations of magnets and moving coils of wire, as in the dynamo. this is, by far, the most important variety of electricity, and the dynamo is the most important producer of it. each of the above varieties of electricity will be studied experimentally with simple apparatus. =experiments 51-52.= to study electrification by friction. _apparatus._ ebonite sheet, e s (no. 26); flannel cloth, f c (no. 30). see what is said in preface about static electricity. =101. directions.= (a) examine e s. note that its surface is not smooth, like that of ordinary hard-rubber combs. can you think of any reason for this? (b) hold its flat surface near your face, then near the back of your hand. do you feel anything unusual? (c) lay e s upon a flat board, or uncovered wooden table, and slide it about. can you easily pick it up? (d) place e s flat upon the table again; keep it from sliding about with your left hand, and rub it _vigorously_ for a _minute_ with f c. does e s act exactly as it did before in (b) and (c)? (e) repeat the experiment in a dark room. (f) thoroughly electrify e s, and see if it will cling to the wall strongly enough to support its own weight. _=102. discussion; electrified and neutral bodies.=_ the ebonite sheet became _electrified_ or _charged_; and as the _electrification_ was produced by friction, we may say that the action of the ebonite indicated the presence of _frictional electricity_. no one can tell _just_ why the ebonite acted so queerly, but we can learn a great deal by experimenting. bodies which are not charged are said to be _neutral_. the table, chairs, earth, etc., are neutral. we may consider that a neutral body has been _discharged_. _=103. force; resistance; work; potential energy; electrification.=_ it takes _force_ to raise water into a tank placed on the roof. in raising the water, _work_ has to be done, and _we_ have to do the work; but when we once have the water in the tank we have accomplished something. the water has _potential energy_; that is, on account of its high _position_, we can make it do some work by simply turning a stop-cock so that the water can run out and turn a water-wheel, for example. it takes _force_ to vigorously rub a piece of ebonite with a flannel cloth, for _resistance_ has to be _overcome_; that is, _work_ has to be done. several things are accomplished by this work; heat is produced, for we can _feel_ that the ebonite gets warm; we can _hear_ sounds and _see_ sparks. the simple muscular exertion on our part has been changed to heat, light, and sound. the most wonderful part of it all, however, is that we have electrified or charged the ebonite. _we_ did the work at first, and now the ebonite has the power to do something, as you will soon see. _electrification_ is, then, a sort of potential energy. _=104. heat and electrification.=_ we say that heat passes to or from a body to make it hot or cold. heat _produces_ the sensation of warmth, but heat isn't warmth. we can force a cold body to become hot; in other words, we can get it into a hot condition in various ways, such as rubbing it, hammering it, or by placing it near or in contact with another hot body. electrification is, also, a condition or state into which we can force a body; but electrification isn't electricity. we know whether a body is hot or cold by its effects upon us, upon thermometers, and upon other bodies. we can tell, also, whether a body is electrified or not by the way it acts, and, in certain cases, by the sound, heat, and light which accompany the electrification. do not get the idea that an electrified body is covered with a layer of electricity just as a board is covered with a layer of paint. [illustration: fig. 28.] =experiment 52.= =105. directions.= repeat exp. 51, but in place of the ebonite, use hot tissue-paper, hot brown paper, hot newspaper, or a hot silk handkerchief. rub your hand vigorously over them. do these become charged? =experiments 53-54. to study electrical attractions.= _apparatus._ the ebonite sheet, e s (no. 26); flannel cloth, f c (no. 30); small pieces of dry tissue-paper, t p (no. 31); thread (no. 32). =106. directions.= (a) thoroughly electrify e s as before, then lift and hold it in the air. (fig. 28.) (b) see what the paper and thread will do when held loosely near e s. _=107. discussion.=_ exp. 53 shows that _an electrified body attracts neutral ones_. this much was known about electricity over 2,000 years ago. they didn't have ebonite then, but some of the educated men of greece knew that amber would attract light bodies after being rubbed. the greek word for amber is _elektron_, and from this has been made the word _electricity_. =experiment 54.= =108. directions.= charge a sheet of hot paper by friction; lift it, by its opposite ends, and lower it over small pieces of tissue-paper placed on the table. what happens to the little pieces? =experiment 55. to study mutual attractions.= _apparatus._ the support and its attachments (see § 109); support wire, s w (no. 36); silk thread, s t (no. 33), or a rubber band, r b (no. 45); ebonite rod, e r (no. 28); flannel cloth, f c (no. 30); wire swing, w s (no. 37). tie one end of s t to w s, fig. 29; tie the other end of s t to s w; adjust w s by bending, if necessary, so that it will securely hold e r. it will be found convenient to use a rubber band instead of s t; if you do, let w s straddle one end of r b (fig. 33), and hang the other end of r b upon s w. =109. the support= consists of a support base (s b, fig. 56), a support rod (s r, fig. 56), and a support wire (s w, fig. 29). there is a small hole in one end of s r to receive the wire, s w, and a large hole in the other end to take the short ebonite which holds the insulating table (fig. 32). a little paper should be wound around the lower end of s r, so that it will stand solidly in the spool which forms a part of the base. =110. directions.= (a) electrify e r with f c, and place e r in the swing, w s (fig. 29). [illustration: fig. 29.] (b) bring your finger near one side of the rubbed end of e r, then near the unrubbed end, and compare the results. =111. mutual attractions.= _a neutral body_, like the hand, for example, _attracts electrified ones_. from exp. 53, 54, 55, it is seen that the attraction between a neutral and an electrified body is mutual; each attracts the other. =experiment 56. to study electrical repulsions.= _apparatus._ same as for exp. 55; ebonite sheet, e s (no. 26). =112. directions.= (a) charge e r, and place it in w s, fig. 29. (b) charge e s, and bring it slowly near one side of the charged end of e r. =experiment 57. to study electrical repulsions.= _apparatus._ a sheet of tissue-paper, t p (no. 31); shears or a knife. cut t p, as in fig. 30. each leg should be about 1/4 in. wide and 3 or 4 in. long. =113. directions.= (a) heat the paper, then place it flat upon the table and electrify it by rubbing it with your hand. you must rub away from the uncut part, or you will break the legs. (b) raise t p, holding it by the uncut part. note the action of legs, and make a sketch of them. [illustration: fig. 30.] [illustration: fig. 31.] =experiment 58. to study electrical repulsions.= _apparatus._ ebonite rod, e r (no. 28); a carbon electroscope, c e, fig. 31 (see § 114); the support complete (see § 109); small piece of damp tissue-paper. _=114. the carbon electroscope.=_ light an ordinary match, and let it burn until it is charred through and through. the black substance remaining is _carbon_. this is very light; it has, also, another important property which you will soon understand. tie a small piece of the carbon to one end of a dry _silk_ thread, and fasten the other end of the thread to the support wire, s w, which is fastened to the support (fig. 31). we shall call this piece of apparatus the _carbon e-lec-tro-scope_. (see electroscopes, chapter xviii., apparatus book.) =115. directions.= (a) electrify e r, then hold it near the carbon of the electroscope. (b) bring the charged rod near little pieces of _damp_ tissue-paper. _=116. discussion of experiments 56, 57, 58.=_ in 56 the two pieces of ebonite were made of the same material, and both were rubbed with flannel. they must have been similarly electrified. in 57, different parts of the same piece of paper were similarly electrified. in 58, the little piece of carbon took some of the electrification from the charged rod, just as it would take molasses from your finger should your sticky finger touch it. the electrification on the carbon must have been of the same kind as that on the rod. the carbon was _charged by contact_. we learn, then, that _two bodies repel each other when they have the same kind of electrification_. do two charged bodies _always_ repel each other? is it possible that there are different kinds of electrifications? =experiment 59. to study the electrification of glass.= _apparatus._ the sheet of glass, g (no. 38), heated (a hot bottle or lamp chimney will do); a piece of silk large enough to rub g. (a silk handkerchief is just the thing, but in case you have no silk, use the flannel cloth, f c, no. 30.) =117. directions.= (a) vigorously rub the hot glass with the silk (or flannel), also heated. (b) test g for electrification by means of little pieces of tissue-paper and the carbon electroscope, exp. 58. _=118. questions.=_ will two pieces of electrified glass repel each other? arrange an experiment to show whether you are right or not. is the charge on the glass exactly like that on the ebonite? do you know how to find out? =experiment 60. to compare the electrification produced by ebonite and flannel with that produced by glass and silk.= _apparatus._ the support (see § 109); wire swing, w s (no. 37); ebonite rod, etc., of exp. 55 (fig. 29); the glass, g, and silk of exp. 59. =119. directions.= (a) electrify e r, and place it in w s, fig. 29. (b) bring the uncharged glass near e r, noting the action of e r. (c) heat and electrify g; bring it near e r, and carefully note whether the attraction between them is stronger or weaker than before, or whether they repel each other. _=120. discussion.=_ we know that the glass was electrified, because it lifted tissue-paper; hence, its charge was not of the same kind as that on the ebonite. had the electrifications been exactly alike, we should have had a repulsion (exps. 56, 57, 58). the exact difference between these two kinds of electrifications is not known. it has been agreed, for convenience, to call that produced by glass and silk a _positive_ electrification. with ebonite and flannel a _negative_ electrification is produced. the sign + is generally written for the word positive, and for negative. these signs indicate _kind_, and not more or less, as in arithmetic. _=121. laws.=_ we have learned from the experiments these facts, which are called _laws_: (1) charges of the same kind repel each other; (2) charges of unlike kinds attract each other; (3) either kind of a charge attracts, and is attracted by a neutral body. chapter vii. insulators and conductors. =experiment 61. to study insulators.= _apparatus._ ebonite rod, e r (no. 28); flannel cloth, f c (no. 30); tissue-paper, t p (no. 31). =122. directions.= (a) holding one end of e r in the hand, charge the other end by rubbing it with f c. (b) with bits of the t p test each end of e r for a charge, and compare the results. =experiment 62. to study insulators.= _apparatus._ the ebonite sheet, e s (no. 26); flannel cloth, f c (no. 30). =123. directions.= (a) thoroughly electrify e s (exp. 51, d), then lift and hold it in the air, as in fig. 28. (b) by moving your rounded knuckle about near the surface of e s, see if you can get more than one spark from it. =experiment 63. to study insulators.= _apparatus._ a hard-rubber comb (not furnished); flannel cloth, f c (no. 30); dull pointed nail (no. 19). =124. directions.= (a) electrify the comb with f c. (b) move the nail along near the teeth of the comb, and listen carefully. _=125. discussion of experiments 61, 62, 63; insulators.=_ in 61 the electrification remained at one end of the rod. in 62 and 63 the sparks showed that all parts of the ebonite were not discharged at the same time. a substance, like ebonite, which will not allow electrification to pass from one part of it to another, is called an _insulator_. silk and glass are also insulators. do you now see why a silk thread was used to make the carbon electroscope? why do they fasten telegraph wires to glass insulators? _=126. conductors.=_ it has already been stated that water in an elevated tank has potential energy. we can allow the water to flow through a conducting pipe to another tank a little lower than the first, and it will still retain much of the potential energy, but not all. can we conduct from one place to another this peculiar state of things, this queer form of potential energy which we call electrification? it is clear, from the last experiments, that in order to do it we need something besides ebonite, which really acts like a closed stop-cock to the flow of electrification. to keep electrification in one place we need an insulator; to get it from one place to another we need a _conductor_. insulators are as important as conductors. you saw that sparks went to the finger from the ebonite, so we call the finger a conductor. you have learned that attractions and repulsions show the presence of electrification. can we have our charged body in one place and get attractions or repulsions at some other place? [illustration: fig. 32.] =experiment 64. to study conduction.= _apparatus._ fig. 32; the support (see § 109); a bent hairpin, h p (no. 39); ebonite sheet, e s; flannel cloth, f c; tin disk, b f b (no. 40), which is the bottom of the flat-box, f b; the insulating table, i t (see § 127). =127. the insulating table= consists of a tin box (exactly like that used for the electrophorus cover), and an ebonite rod about 1-3/4 in. long. see § 139 for full details about fitting the rod into the box, etc. the lower end of the short rod fits into the large hole in one end of the support rod, s r. arrange as in fig. 32. b f b should swing about very easily. =128. directions.= (a) charge e s, then rub it upon i t, as shown, noting the action of b f b. _=129. discussion.=_ ebonite being an insulator (§ 125), we say that i t, h p and b f b were _insulated_. you can see that the electrification must have passed through i t and h p to get to the disk, b f b. h p was the _conductor_, allowing the disk, also, to become charged. the wood, s r, is a conductor, and, as it was not insulated from the earth, s r was neutral. account for the attraction. (see § 121.) [illustration: fig. 33.] =experiment 65. to study conduction.= _apparatus._ a copper wire, c w (no. 44); insulating rubber band, r b (no. 45, fig. 33); wire swing, w s (no. 37); the other half of the flat box, t f b (no. 41); apparatus of exp. 69. =130. telegraph line.= to have our telegraph line using frictional electricity complete, we must have: (1) some way of generating or making the electricity; (2) some means of getting it or its effects to the other end of the line; (3) some way of showing that it has been taken there. the charged e s will be the source of the electrification. new york will represent the end at which we _send_ the message, so at n. y. we must have a _sending instrument_. see fig. 33, which explains itself. r b or a silk thread must be used to _insulate_ the sender. around one leg of w s is twisted one bare end of the _conductor_, c w. boston will represent the end of the line at which the message is received, and there we need a _receiving instrument_. this is similar to the apparatus described in exp. 69, fig. 37. in addition to this, tie the middle of a moist cotton thread that is 6 in. long, to b c (fig. 37), and let its two free ends lie over the top and reach down against the bottom of the tin; that is, on the left-hand side. fig. 42 will give you an idea in regard to the looks of the thread; at first, however, it should be close to the bottom of the tin. twist the other bare end of the copper wire around b c. when the line is properly constructed and ready for use, both instruments and c w are entirely insulated. do not let any part of c w touch the table or your clothing. =131. directions.= (a) touch the insulated sending instrument with the charged ebonite sheet, and watch for any motion in the receiving instrument. =note.= better results will be obtained by using the charged electrophorus cover as the source of electrification, instead of e s. (exp. 68.) _=132. discussion.=_ the action here was like that in the previous experiment, the difference being that a longer _conductor_ was used. electrification is always looking for some place to get to the earth, just as water will run from a roof to the ground. you will understand more about it a little later. in our apparatus just described, the only way that the earth could be reached was through the wooden rod s r. do not get the idea that real messages are sent in any such way, or that electricity flows through a wire as water flows through a pipe. _=133. relation between conductors and insulators.=_ the above terms are merely relative. static electricity is easily conducted by dry wood, while galvanic electricity is practically insulated by it. a substance may be an insulator for currents of low potential, while at the same time it will conduct high potential currents. (see potential § 144.) _=134. electrics and non-electrics.=_ bodies like glass, sealing-wax, amber, etc., were called electrics by the first students of electricity, because it was upon these substances that they could easily produce electrification. they called iron and other metals non-electrics, because they could detect no electrification after rubbing them. can you explain why they did not detect any electrification on metals? can you devise an experiment to prove that metals may be charged? do you see any relation between a non-electric and a conductor? =experiment 66. to study the effect of moisture upon an insulator.= _apparatus._ same as for exp. 65, with the exception of the copper wire; this is to be replaced by a dry silk thread about 2 feet (60 cm.) long (no. 33). =135. directions.= (a) see if a charge can be sent through the thread, in the same manner as it was through the copper. is dry silk a conductor? (b) thoroughly wet the thread, being careful not to wet the rubber band insulator (fig. 33); see if wet silk is a conductor. _=136. discussion.=_ dry silk is an insulator, while wet silk is a good conductor of _static_ electricity. it is the water, however, which really does the conducting. even small amounts of moisture on glass, or other insulators, will allow the charge to escape. glass collects much moisture from the air. do you now see why it is necessary, to get good results, to have the paper, glass, etc., hot before electrifying them? =experiment 67. to test the effects of moisture upon bodies to be electrified.= _apparatus._ two pieces of newspaper, each about 4 in. (10 cm.) square. =137. directions.= (a) heat one piece to make it thoroughly dry, and leave the other cold. (b) stroke each, say 10 times, with your hand, pressing them upon the table; then place them upon the wall at the same time, being careful not to let them touch your clothing. see which will cling to the wall the longer. chapter viii. charging and discharging conductors. _=138. the electrophorus.=_ while the ebonite sheet alone, or a good hard-rubber comb, may be used for many experiments in frictional electricity, the sparks produced are small, and the ebonite has to be electrified as often as it is discharged. to obtain real good sparks, and to avoid this continual rubbing, the student should be provided with an _e-lec-troph'-o-rus_. this is, really, a simple, cheap, and efficient frictional electric machine. an electrophorus consists of 2 insulators and 1 conductor--that is, of 3 parts: (1) insulating handle, (2) cover, and (3) a plate or base of insulating material. [illustration: fig. 34.] =139. our electrophorus= is shown in fig. 34. for the insulating _handle_ use the ebonite rod, e r (no. 28); for the _plate_, use the ebonite sheet, e s (no. 26). the _electrophorus cover_, e c (no. 42), furnished, is a tin box with a fancy top. a hole has been punched in the center of its top, and into the hole has been riveted a short tube, so that the handle, e r, can be firmly held. the hole has been made a little larger than e r for convenience. to make e r fit tightly in the hole, so that you can lift e c, wrap a small piece of paper around the end of e r before pushing it into the hole. you can easily find out how much paper to use to make a good fit. with a knife cut away all loose points of paper that stick out of the hole around e r; this is _important_. the top and bottom of e c should be pressed firmly together. first learn how to use the electrophorus. with the large amount of electrification produced we can then find out how it works. =experiment 68. to learn how to use the electrophorus.= _apparatus._ shown in figs. 34, 35. _do not fail to read_ § 139. =140. directions.= (a) place e s upon a _flat_, uncovered, wooden table, and rub it _vigorously_ for a _minute_ with the _warm_ flannel, f c, to thoroughly charge it. do not let e s slide about, and do not lift it from the table. (b) with the right hand grasp e r at its extreme end, and place e c upon e s. (c) touch e c for an instant with a finger of your left hand (fig. 35). (d) remove your finger entirely from e c, then lift e c by its insulating handle, e r, at the same time holding e s down to the table, if it tries to follow e c. [illustration: fig. 35.] [illustration: fig. 36.] (e) bring your left hand near e c (fig. 36). you should get a good spark from e c. (f) it is not necessary to immediately rub e s again. you have discharged e c by taking a spark from it. to _recharge_ it, simply place it upon e s again; let it remain there while you count 5; touch it as before, and then lift by e r. =141. extra notes.= you may repeat the above operation many times. as soon as the sparks begin to get small, electrify e s again. the charge on e c is +, although that on e s is -. you will understand, later, why this is so. =if you do not get a good spark= from the electrophorus, read the directions again. the ebonite must be well electrified; the cover must be lifted by the _end_ of its handle; you must _touch_ the cover and _withdraw your finger_ from it _before_ lifting. you must allow the cover to remain upon the ebonite 3 or 4 seconds each time. the board, or table, upon which e s rests, must be _flat_, and not warped, so that e c will fit down perfectly upon e s. =experiment 69. to study "charging by conduction."= _apparatus._ fig. 37. to one end of a _silk_ thread, s t, is tied a little bent clamp, b c (no. 46); the other end of s t is tied to the support wire, s w (no. 36); the bottom of the flat box, b f b (no. 40), is supported by b c, and thus _insulated_ from the table and earth; the electrophorus (exp. 68) is also necessary. =142. directions.= (a) charge e c (exp. 68), and bring it near b f b (fig. 37). note the spark. (b) repeat (a) twice, noting the relative sizes of the sparks. does b f b continue to be attracted by e c? (c) bring your knuckle slowly towards the charged disk, b f b. [illustration: fig. 37.] [illustration: fig. 38.] =experiment 70. to study potential; electro-motive force.= _apparatus._ the insulating table, i t, fig. 38. (for details see exp. 64; the electrophorus exp. 68). =143. directions.= (a) pass a spark from the thoroughly charged e c (exp. 68) to i t. (b) recharge e c, and see how many times i t will take good sparks from it, and note the relative sizes of the sparks. (c) as soon as i t refuses to take more sparks from e c, touch e c to see if it is completely discharged. (d) touch i t. _=144. pressure; potential; electro-motive force.=_ water runs down hill. it always tries to run from a high place to a lower one. electrification acts very much like water in this respect. we say that water has a _pressure_, or a _head_ of so many feet. in speaking of a charge, we say that it has a _potential, or an electro-motive force_. water may have a high or low pressure, and a charge may have a high or low potential. the greater the pressure of water, the harder it tries to break away and get somewhere; the greater the potential of a charge, the farther it will jump to your hand. _=144a. current; spark.=_ electrification will easily pass from a place of high potential to one of low potential through a conductor, and when it _passes_ we say we have an _electric current_, or a _current of electricity_. water has no desire to flow on a dead level, and the electric current does not care to flow between two places of equal potential. the potential of the earth and of all neutral bodies is zero; that is, they have no charge, no potential; so it is very easy for a charge to escape into the earth. dry air is a pretty good insulator, but when the attraction between a charged and a neutral body gets great enough, the spark rips right through the air. benjamin franklin proved by experiment that lightning is caused by the electrification in the clouds and air. (see atmospheric electricity.) =145. theories about electrifications.= _the "one-fluid" theory_ suggests that neutral bodies have a certain amount of electrification, and that they have a certain potential called zero potential. if the potential of a body becomes greater than that of the earth, the body is said to be positively electrified; if the potential of the body is less than that of the earth, it is said to be negatively electrified. if we fill a bottle with sea water, we have a great deal of water when we compare it with the bottle, but a very little water when we compare it with the sea. the earth is so large that small amounts of electrification taken from it or added to it do not affect its potential to any extent. =146.= _the "two-fluid" theory_ suggests that there are two absolutely different kinds of electrification, one called positive (+), and the other negative (-). when these two are equal in quantity, the body is said to be neutral. if the body contains more + than -, the body is said to be charged positively. it is evident then, if the two-fluid theory be accepted, that no matter how strongly a body is charged positively there must be in it _some_ negative electrification; that is, we may charge a neutral body + by adding + electrification to it, or by taking electrification from it. there must always be, then, some + and electrifications in a body. these theories do not require much consideration by the student of elementary electricity. the best thing he can do is to learn what electricity can do, and how it can be used. [illustration: fig. 39.] =experiment 71. to study some methods of discharging an electrified body.= _apparatus._ the electrophorus (exp. 68); an ordinary pin (fig. 39). =147. note.= you have seen sparks pass from e c to your rounded knuckle, and to other conductors. in all of these cases the discharge was _sudden_, one spark doing the work. can we _slowly_ discharge e c, or discharge it without sounds? =148. directions.= (a) thoroughly charge e c, and test it with your knuckle to be sure that it is working properly. (b) charge e c again; hold the pin in your left hand (fig. 39), and _slowly_ bring its _head_ toward e c; listen for sparks. (c) recharge e c, and bring the _point_ of the pin slowly toward it. touch e c to see whether it has been discharged or not. _=149. disruptive, conductive, and convective discharges.=_ sudden discharges, accompanied by bright sparks, are said to be _disruptive_. when the electrification is continuously carried away by a conductor, there is a _conductive_ discharge. there is a _convective_ discharge when the electrification escapes from points into the air. (see § 155.) the nature of the discharge depends upon the potential of the charge, upon the nature of the charged conductor, and upon the nature of the surrounding air and objects. convective discharges are often _silent_, as in exp. 71 (c). in this case, electrification passed from the earth through the pin-point to the cover to neutralize it. (see induced electricity.) [illustration: fig. 40.] =experiment 72. to study intermittent or step-by-step discharges.= _apparatus._ electrophorus (exp. 68); carbon electroscope (§ 114), (exp. 58). =150. directions.= (a) charge e c, then hold your hand on one side of the carbon (fig. 40), and hold e c upon the opposite side. what should the carbon do? _=151. discussion.=_ the carbon and e c were insulated, while the hand was "grounded"--that is, it was connected with the earth. carbon is a good conductor; it may be quickly charged and discharged. =experiment 73. to ascertain the location of the charge upon an electrified conductor.= _apparatus._ the electrophorus (exp. 68); the insulating table, i t (exp. 64); the tin box, t b (no. 47), fig. 41; a piece of moist cotton thread, c t, 5 or 6 in. long, bent double, and hung over the edge of the open box, t b. one-half of c t should be inside of t b, which, in turn, should stand on i t. [illustration: fig. 41.] =152. directions.= (a) charge e c; pass a spark to t b, and note the action of both parts of c t. _=153. hollow and solid conductors.=_ the moist thread, being a conductor, became charged as well as the box. the electrification seemed to be entirely on the outside of t b. a hollow conductor will hold as large a charge as a solid one having the same amount of surface. this refers to charges of static electricity, not to currents. an electric current passes through the whole substance of a conductor. =experiment 74. to study the effect of points upon a charged conductor.= _apparatus._ the electrophorus (fig. 34); a pin, bent slightly to keep it from rolling. =154. directions.= (a) charge e c; test its charge with your knuckle. be sure that you get a good spark. (b) charge e c again, and hold it by its insulating handle, e r, long enough to count 10 before discharging it with your knuckle. be sure that it holds its charge during this time. (c) while e c is upon e s (fig. 34), lay the bent pin upon e c, so that its point will project into the air. the point should stick out about 1/4 in. from the edge of e c. (d) touch e c; raise it by e r; count 10 as before; then test with your knuckle to see if e c is still charged. _=155. electric density; electric wind.=_ a charge resides upon the outside of a conductor (exp. 73), and it continually tries to escape. it seems to pile up at points and corners, and we say that it is denser at such places than at well-rounded parts of a charged conductor. all points and sharp places should be removed from a conductor, if it is desired to keep a charge for any length of time. electrification may escape from a point so rapidly that currents are produced in the surrounding air. as the particles of air become charged, they repel each other. the movement of the air particles may be so great that a lighted candle will be affected when placed near the point. this current of air is called _electric wind_. electrification easily passes from points, and the electrophorus may be easily and silently discharged by holding a pointed pin near it (exp. 71, c). thorns, leaves with sharp edges, etc., have a great effect upon atmospheric electricity. they allow a silent escape of electrification from the earth to neutralize that in the clouds which is opposite in nature. (see atmospheric electricity.) chapter ix. induced electrification. _=156. electric field; lines of force.=_ in our study of magnetism you learned that a magnet can act through the air, and induce a piece of iron to become a magnet. you saw how the iron filings arranged themselves around the magnet, showing that the lines of force reached out from the poles in a very peculiar manner. there is an _electric field_ all around a charged conductor, just as there is a magnetic field about a magnet. the lines of force in the electric field pass from the positively charged body to the negatively charged one, or to some neutral one, which, you will soon see, is practically the same thing. when the positively charged electrophorus cover is held above the negatively charged ebonite sheet, a very strong electric field exists between them. =157. note.= you have seen that we can _charge_ an insulated conductor by _touching_ it with the charged cover, or by allowing a spark to pass to the conductor. what effect, if any, has a charged body upon an insulated conductor _before_ they touch each other, and before any spark passes to the conductor? [illustration: fig. 42.] =experiment 75. to study electric induction.= _apparatus._ fig. 42. the insulating table, i t (for details see exp. 64); tin box, t b (no. 47, fig. 42); moist cotton thread, c t; the electrophorus (exp. 68); tie c t around one end of the closed t b, and leave the ends of c t long enough to hang down over the end. place a match on each side of t b to keep it from rolling. =158. directions.= _part 1._--(a) pass a spark from the charged e c to t b, and note the action of the thread, which will be our electroscope. remove e c. (b) touch the charged t b with the finger, watching c t. _part 2._ (c) bring the re-charged e c near the neutral t b, and parallel to its end surface; but keep them at least an inch apart, so that a spark cannot pass. watch c t. (d) withdraw e c, and try to explain the action of c t. _=159. electric polarization; theory of induction.=_ this experiment should remind the student of exp. 24, in magnetism, in which a piece of soft iron was magnetized by the inductive action of a magnet. the soft iron was in a magnetic field; it became polarized. is it possible that the box, t b, was polarized, being in the electric field of e c? we know, by the action of c t (fig. 42), that the top end of t b was charged while e c was in place. the charge was not conducted. you know, from previous experiments, that + and electrifications rush together whenever possible. why can we not suppose that a neutral body, like the box at the start, contains an equal amount of both kinds, and that these different electrifications have already rushed together? if you imagine a small army of positive soldiers struggling, "man to man," with the same number of equally strong negative soldiers, you can readily see that one-half of them can hold the other half from running away. a body remains neutral, then, according to this idea, as long as it has an equal quantity of the two opposite kinds of electrification. (see theories, § 145, 146.) as soon as the positively charged e c was brought near t b, it destroyed the neutrality of t b, by pulling at its electrification, and by pushing back its + electrification to the top end and into c t. we say that the charged e c produced a separation of the combined electrifications of t b by _induction_, and not by contact. as soon as the inductive action of e c was removed, t b became neutral again. [illustration: figs. 43-44.] =160. note.= figs. 43 and 44 may aid the student. in fig. 43, t b is supposed to be neutral. the "double sign" means that the + and electrifications are united; and, as there are an equal number of both kinds, none are left free to tell the tale. fig. 44 shows what happens when the + e c is near. what would happen if we could cut into t b at the middle with an insulated knife while it is polarized by e c? =experiment 76. to learn how to charge a body by induction.= _apparatus._ fig. 42, same as in exp. 75. =161. directions.= (a) bring the charged e c within an inch of the bottom of t b, and as soon as c t is repelled, showing that t b is polarized (exp. 75), touch t b with your finger; then remove your finger while you still hold e c in place. (b) withdraw e c and its inductive action. explain the motions of c t during the experiment. is it still repelled by t b after e c is removed? _=162. free and bound electrifications.=_ as explained in exp. 75, and as shown in fig. 44, t b became polarized. the electrification was drawn towards e c; it was held or _bound_ there as long as e c was near. the + was actually repelled by e c, and it was _free_ to escape through your arm as soon as t b was touched, leaving the top end of t b neutral. as soon as e c was removed, the electrification, no longer held by e c, spread all over t b and on to c t. t b was _charged by induction_. it was charged negatively by driving out + electrification. =experiment 77. to show that a neutral body is polarized before it is attracted by a charged one.= _apparatus._ the electrophorus (exp. 68); dry tissue-paper, t p. cut out 2 pieces of t p, each about 1/4 inch square. =163. directions.= (a) place the bits of dry t p upon a board or table, and convince yourself that they are attracted equally by the charged e c. (b) slightly moisten one piece of t p only. see if one is attracted by e c more readily than the other. _=164. polarization precedes attraction.=_ dry tissue-paper is not a good conductor; you have seen (exp. 52) that it can be electrified, which indicates that it is at least a partial insulator. insulators are not easily polarized. (why?) even if the pieces of t p were polarized, the opposite electrifications were so near each other that the attraction of e c for the was nearly overcome by the repulsion for the +; the result being that t p was not strongly attracted by e c until the + had a chance to escape. the moist tissue-paper allowed its + to escape more quickly than the dry piece. a conductor is attracted by a charged body more strongly than an insulator, because the latter is not easily polarized. a neutral body, then, is really no longer neutral when it is in the electric field. _polarization precedes attraction._ =experiment 78. to find whether electric induction will act through an insulator.= _apparatus._ small bits of carbon (exp. 58); bits of moist tissue-paper, t p; one-half of the flat box, t f b (no. 41); sheet of glass, g (no. 38); electrophorus (exp. 68). place the carbon and t p into t f b (fig. 45), and cover with the glass. =165. directions.= (a) charge the electrophorus cover, e c (exp. 68), move it about a little above the glass, and see if the carbon, etc., are attracted. _=166. dielectrics.=_ the carbon must have been polarized and attracted _through_ the glass. you saw, exp. 7, that the lines of magnetic force could penetrate and act through paper, glass, etc.; it is now evident that the electric field is not easily fenced in, even by an insulator. substances, like the glass, which allow this inductive influence to act through them, are called _dielectrics_. [illustration: fig. 45.] [illustration: fig. 46.] =experiment 79. to find whether a polarized conductor can act inductively upon another conductor.= _apparatus._ fig. 46. insulating table, i t (for details see exp. 64); ebonite sheet, e s (no. 27); flat box complete f b (nos. 40, 41); sheet of glass, g (no. 38); small piece of slightly moist tissue-paper, t p; charged electrophorus cover, e c. arrange as shown. =167. directions.= (a) hold e c, charged, near and under i t, then bring your finger, f, near t p. explain the action of t p. _=168. successive induction.=_ the inductive influence of e c first polarized i t; this acted through the dielectric, e s, and polarized f b, which, in turn, polarized t p through the second dielectric, g. this induction after induction is called _successive induction_. _=169. inductive capacity.=_ dielectrics are insulators. two substances may be equally good insulators, that is, they may equally well resist the _spread_ of electrification _over_ their surfaces, or the _flow_ of the electric current _through_ them, while one may be, nevertheless, a better _dielectric_ than the other. the better the dielectric, the easier it is for the electric field to polarize a conductor placed beyond the dielectric. a good dielectric is said to have a high _inductive power or capacity_. glass is about 3 times as good a dielectric as dry air; and as the latter (under certain conditions) is taken as the standard, or as unity, we may say that the _specific inductive capacity_ of glass is about 3. =experiment 80. to study the action of the electrophorus.= _apparatus._ the electrophorus (exp. 68); small bits of moist tissue-paper, t p. =170. directions.= (a) thoroughly electrify e s, fig. 34, and place e c upon it by its handle, e r. (b) touch e c, as directed in exp. 68, and listen for a small spark which should pass from e c to your finger. (c) again, place a little piece of t p upon e c before lowering it upon e s. do not touch e c, but bring your finger near t p. what does t p do? now, touch e c and see, when you bring your finger near it, if t p acts as it did before. (d) again, place several pieces of t p upon e c (e s being thoroughly charged); touch e c, then lift it by its handle. note action of t p, which should be slightly moist. _=171. discussion.=_ the electrification upon the ebonite is negative (exp. 60). although e s and e c (fig. 34) seem quite smooth, there are many little hills, valleys, and air-spaces between them, which keep them from touching each other perfectly. the ebonite has the electric field at the start, and it really acts across these minute air-spaces _by induction_ (exp. 75), and polarizes e c. the air-spaces form the dielectric (exp. 78). the electrification of e c being repelled by the of e s, it is driven to the top of e c, while the + is drawn to the bottom. this + is kept from rushing to the of e s by the air dielectric, and because e s is a non-conductor. by touching e c the free escapes to the earth, leaving e c _positively_ charged when it is lifted. [illustration: fig. 47.] [illustration: fig. 48.] [illustration: fig. 49.] [illustration: fig. 50.] [illustration: fig. 51.] =172. details of action.= the different steps in the action of the electrophorus are shown graphically in figs. 47 to 51. fig. 47 shows e s negatively charged. e c is neutral at first, fig. 48; that is, it is supposed to contain both + and -, as shown by the "double sign" (§ 160). fig. 49 shows that e c has been polarized by the inductive action of e s. the repelled escapes to the finger (this escaping is what gave the small spark to the finger and charged the t p in the last experiment), leaving the top uncharged, while the + is _bound_ (fig. 50). as soon as e c is lifted (fig. 51) the + spreads all over e c, which is then charged. the +, upon going to the top, charged the pieces of t p (exp. 80, d), causing them to be repelled. the charge of upon e s has not been removed, so the operation may be repeated many times before e s must be again electrified. the electrification on the ebonite acts inductively through e s, drawing up + electrification from the earth. to make this action easier a "sole," or metal conductor, is often placed under the ebonite. =experiment 81. to see, hear, and feel the results of inductive influence and polarization.= _apparatus._ ebonite sheet, e s (no. 26); insulating table, i t; flannel cloth, f c. =173. directions.= (a) thoroughly charge e s with f c. with the right hand bring e s near and parallel to the top surface of i t, but do not let them touch each other. (b) remove e s, then touch i t to see if it is charged. (c) repeat (a), and while you hold e s about 1/2 inch from i t, their flat surfaces being parallel, touch i t. watch for any sparks, and note any peculiar actions of e s. (d) remove your finger from i t, then withdraw e s; finally touch i t with your knuckle. _=174. discussion.=_ this apparatus is really the electrophorus upside down. it shows very clearly (1) the escape of the electrification from i t, by the spark; (2) that the attraction between i t and e s is much greater than before, when this is removed; and (3) it shows the different steps of the inducing and charging process, as described in exp. 75, and as shown in figs. 43 and 44. chapter x. condensation of electrification. =experiment 82. to find whether a large surface will hold more electrification than a small one.= _apparatus._ the insulating table (for details, see exp. 64); a large tin basin or pan (not furnished); the electrophorus (exp. 68). =175. directions.= (a) test the electrophorus and be sure that it is working properly. (b) as in exp. 70, see how many good sparks i t will take from e c (which should be recharged at each trial) before the potential of i t is raised so that it equals the potential of e c. (c) carefully set the basin or pan upon i t, then count the number of good sparks you can pass to it from e c (recharged at each trial). compare the number of sparks necessary to raise the potential of the large surface until it equals that of e c, with the number found in part (b). _=176. electrical capacity.=_ it takes more heat to raise the temperature of a gallon of ice-water to the boiling point, than it takes for a quart of ice-water. you have just seen that a large insulated surface will take more sparks from a charged body than a small one, before its potential is raised to that of the small one, and to that of the charging body. we say that a large surface has a greater _capacity_ than a small one, the shape and other conditions being the same. =experiment 83. to find whether the capacity of a given conductor can be increased without increasing its size.= _apparatus._ fig. 52. insulating table. i t (exp. 64); the extra ebonite sheet, e s (no. 27); the complete flat box, f b (no. 40, 41); the charged electrophorus cover, e c (exp. 68). arrange, as shown, i t being insulated from the earth by e s. f b should rest upon a wooden table or other large conductor. =177. directions.= (a) see how many good sparks i t will take from e c. re-charge e c at each count, and note the relative sizes of the sparks. (b) discharge i t by touching it with your knuckle. [illustration: fig. 52.] _=178. condensation; condensers.=_ as i t easily held more sparks than it would take before (exp. 70), we say that its _capacity_ has been increased. its potential didn't increase, because that could not get greater than the potential of e c, the charging body. to describe this state of affairs, we say that the electrification was denser than before, and that it was _condensed_. the _capacity of i t was greatly increased by the presence of another conductor, f b, insulated from i t, but "grounded_." such a combination, 2 conductors, with a dielectric between them, is called a condenser. a condenser can hold much more electrification at a certain potential than an equal amount of surface can hold when not properly arranged. we might call a condenser a storage battery for static electricity. the capacity of a condenser depends, among other things, upon the area of the conducting surfaces, and upon the thickness and nature of the dielectric. among the various forms of condensers may be mentioned the leyden jar, and the fulminating pane. =179. the leyden jar= consists of a wide-mouthed glass jar, with tin-foil pasted upon the inside and outside to within 2 or 3 inches of the top. the inner coat or conductor is connected to a knob or ball at the top by means of a chain. to charge the jar, the outer coat is connected with the earth by holding it in the hand, or by resting it upon a table while the electrification is passed to the knob. a _leyden battery_ consists of 2 or more connected jars, the object being to increase the area of the surface. the jar is discharged by touching one end of a _discharger_ (§ 188) to the outer coat, and swinging its other end over to the knob, when a bright spark will pass between the knob and discharger. (see exp. 86.) =180. fulminating panes=, or franklin's plates, are practically the same as a leyden jar. the tin-foil, however, is pasted upon the opposite sides of a pane of glass, a margin of about an inch being left all around. one side of the pane is charged, and takes the place of the inside coat of the jar. the other side is grounded. the pane is discharged by connecting the two sheets of foil. =181. induction coil condensers= consist of sheets of tin-foil separated by sheets of paraffined paper, which act as the dielectric. (see induction coils.) =182. submarine cables=, with the surrounding water, act like condensers, the result being that the condensing effect slows up the electric current and retards the signals. these make a condenser of enormous capacity. the wires inside form one conductor, and the water the other, while the insulation around the wires forms the dielectric. =experiment 84. to study the condensation of electrification.= _apparatus._ same as in last experiment, but arrange so that f b and i t shall be near each other at one side; that is, so that the edge of e s shall be even with the edges of the two tins. =183. directions.= (a) pass good sparks to i t from the charged e c until something happens. watch the side where i t and f b are near each other. _=184. discussion.=_ we may say that the electrification was condensed, in this experiment, until the charge became so great that the _condenser_ suddenly discharged itself. condensers may be made in many ways, but they all consist of 2 conductors, with a dielectric between them. one conductor is insulated, and receives the charge; the other conductor is grounded. [illustration: fig. 53.] =experiment 85. to study the action of the condenser.= _apparatus._ fig. 53. the insulating table, i t; ebonite sheet, e s (no. 27); flat box, f b, complete (nos. 40, 41); the electrophorus (exp. 68). note that this is really the same apparatus as that just used; both conductors of this condenser, however, are insulated and reversed in position. =185. directions.= (a) see that your electrophorus works properly, then find out how many good sparks you can pass from e c to f b, recharging e c each time. note the relative sizes of the sparks, and compare the result with the number taken by the condenser in the last experiment. (b) when f b seems to be fully charged, touch i t with your knuckle. (from your study of induction what should be the result?) (c) now see if f b will again take good sparks from the charged e c. pass sparks to f b until it seems fully charged. (d) again touch i t, then repeat (a) and (b) several times, until a bright spark passes from f b over the edge of e s to i t. _=186. discussion.=_ the action of the condenser, as clearly shown, depends upon induction. you should now be able to explain and show by diagram the different steps. e c was positively charged (exp. 80). this also charged f b positively by contact. f b acted inductively through the dielectric, e s, drawing up _some_ of the in i t, and repelling _some_ of the +. as i t was insulated, this free + electrification could not escape. before we touched i t, its + and electrifications, although partially separated, were struggling against this inductive action; and, on account of their strong attraction for each other, our efforts to charge the condenser were retarded. upon touching i t the free + escaped to the earth. (this was the cause of the spark.) this left _some_ electrification bound on the underside of e s, and some + bound on the upperside of e s. the capacity of f b was increased by this process, as the + already put into it was very much occupied by the attractions of the induced just under e s. as more + was given to f b, more was drawn up under e s and more + was pushed out of i t. this action went on until the two conductors were strongly and oppositely charged. this action goes on continuously when the lower conductor is grounded. the spark between the tins was due to the rushing together of the + and electrifications; it showed that there was a _momentary current of electricity_. =experiment 86. to study the effect of electrical discharges upon the human body.= _apparatus._ the condenser (fig. 52), with e s centrally placed so that the apparatus cannot discharge itself; the hairpin discharger, h p d (no. 48); the electrophorus. =187. directions.= (a) charge the condenser (exp. 83) with 10 good sparks from e c, then touch i t (fig. 52). (b) recharge the condenser with 10 sparks, then touch f b. discharge it by again touching i t as in (a). (c) recharge with 10 sparks; then place your thumb against f b, and quickly swing the first finger of the same hand over to i t, and get a slight shock. (d) recharge with as many sparks as you think you can stand. (e) instead of using your hand to discharge the condenser, try the bent hairpin. keeping one end against f b, swing the other end over near i t. _=188. shocks; dischargers.=_ the two conductors being oppositely charged in the condenser (exp. 85), it is only necessary to place some conductor between them to allow the charges to rush together. any conductor so used is called a _discharger_. the hand carried the whole current which caused the _shock_. when i t was touched first, the current was obliged to pass through your body, through the floor, and up the table-legs into f b. always touch the "grounded" conductor first with the discharger, so that you will get a good spark and _not_ a shock. =experiments 87-88. to show the strong attraction between the opposite electrifications in the condenser.= _apparatus._ flat box, f b (nos. 40, 41); sheet of glass, g (no. 38); electrophorus (exp. 68). the two parts of f b are used for the conductors of the condenser (fig. 54) for the sake of lightness. the bottoms should be next to the glass, which is used for the dielectric on account of its stiffness. the lower tin should rest upon the table. the glass should be perfectly clean and dry (hot). =189. directions.= (a) charge the condenser with 15 or 20 good sparks from e c. (b) lift the condenser by one corner of g (fig. 54), being careful not to discharge it. explain why the lower conductor follows the glass. [illustration: fig. 54.] =experiment 88.= =190. directions.= (a) charge and lift the condenser as just explained (exp. 87). fig. 54. (b) with your right hand touch the upper tin alone, then the lower tin alone. (c) touch both tins at the same time, and note the action of the lower one. _=191. discussion.=_ this clearly shows how strongly the two electrifications are _bound_ in the condenser. each refuses to escape to the earth, but they instantly rush together at the first opportunity. the dielectric may be shattered in a very heavily-charged condenser by this strong attraction. [illustration: fig. 55.] =experiment 89. to show how the condenser maybe slowly discharged.= _apparatus._ fig. 55. the condenser (exp. 83); the carbon electroscope with support (exp. 58); the electrophorus (exp. 68). =192. directions.= (a) charge the condenser by means of the electrophorus; then hang the carbon so that it can swing between the upper conductor and e c placed as shown. _=193. the electric chime.=_ the charging and discharging of the carbon being rapid, it acts like a _chime_ as it taps against the tins. =experiment 90. to ascertain the location of the charge in the condenser.= _apparatus._ the condenser, consisting of flat box, f b (nos. 40, 41); ebonite sheet, e s (no. 27); insulating table, i t (exp. 64); (when charging, arrange as in fig. 52.); the electrophorus; hairpin discharger, h p d (no. 48). =194. directions.= (a) charge the condenser with 15 or 20 good sparks from e c. (b) lift i t away from e s by its insulating handle, and set it upon the table. (it may be necessary to hold e s down.) (c) lift e s directly up and away from f b. (lift by 2 corners; do not scrape e s along on f b; do not allow e s to touch your clothing.) (d) replace e s and then i t by its handle quickly, making the condenser complete again. (e) with h p d see if the condenser still holds a charge. touch f b first (exp. 86). _=195. discussion.=_ as the _conductors_ were completely discharged, being left for a few moments upon the table, it is evident that the opposite electrifications must reside in and upon the _dielectric_. the conductors allow an even and _rapid_ discharge from all parts of the dielectric at the same time. the dielectric is considerably strained when a condenser is heavily charged. this strain, caused by the attraction of the opposite electrifications, may be great enough to break or puncture the dielectric. =experiment 91. to find whether any electrification remains in the condenser after it has once been discharged.= _apparatus._ the condenser (fig. 52); the electrophorus (exp. 68); hairpin discharger, h p d. =196. directions.= (a) thoroughly charge the condenser. (b) discharge it with h p d, being sure to touch f b first, and to touch i t for an instant while h p d is against f b. (c) after a few moments use h p d again, and see if you get a slight spark. _=197. residual charge.=_ the two electrifications on the opposite sides of the dielectric have such an attraction for each other, when the condenser is charged, that they seem to penetrate, or soak into, the dielectric. these do not completely soak out again at the discharge. the small amount left is called a _residual charge_. [illustration: fig. 56.] =experiment 92. to study successive condensation; the chime cascade.= _apparatus._ fig. 56. this really consists of two condensers, joined by a wire. the upper condenser consists of t f b (no. 41), e s (no. 27), and the insulating table, i t. (see exp. 64.) the lower condenser consists of the cover of the tin box, c t b (no. 47), the sheet of glass g (no. 38), and b f b (no. 40). the tin box, t b (no. 47), is placed under this to raise it, simply. a wire or hairpin, h p, is hung upon the edge of t f b, its lower end being inside of c t b and not quite touching it. this acts like a pendulum, which is to swing to c t b at the proper time. the source of electrification is e c. =note.= you have learned that in charging the condenser with the positively charged e c, + electrification is driven from f b into the earth. can we use this to charge a second condenser? =198. directions.= (a) pass 15 or 20 good sparks from e c to the under side of i t (fig. 56), noting the action of h p. (b) hold e c in the hand, and, with its insulating handle, poke h p away from the condensers. do not discharge them. (c) with h p d test the lower condenser for a charge, touching t b first. (d) with h p d touch t f b first (why?), and discharge the upper condenser. _=199. discussion.=_ a long row of condensers may be charged in this way. there is no advantage in it, as the electrification is merely divided between them. how can two condensers be joined to get the advantages of a large surface? chapter xi. electroscopes. _=200. electroscopes=_ are instruments to show the presence, relative amount, or kind of electrification on a body. (see apparatus book, chap. xviii, for home-made electroscopes.) the _carbon electroscope_ has been described (exp. 58). the _pith-ball electroscope_ is made by using pith from elder, corn-stalk, or milk-weed, in place of the carbon. the _gold-leaf electroscope_ is a very delicate instrument. the gold-leaf is supported, as suggested in fig. 57, at the lower end of a wire conductor which sticks through and hangs from the cork of a glass jar or flask. to the top end of the wire is soldered a ball or disk. the glass jar insulates the gold-leaf, and keeps it dry and free from dust. [illustration: fig. 57.] =201. our leaf electroscope= (fig. 57) is made with aluminum-leaf. gold-leaf is too delicate for unskilful handling, and aluminum will do for all ordinary experiments. to cut it into any desired shape, place it between two sheets of paper, then cut through paper and all. =202. construction.= bend one leg of a hairpin, h p, as in fig. 57, and slide it onto i t. hang a wire, w, or another hair pin straightened, then bent, from the horizontal leg of h p. this is to support the "leaves," l, which are made from a strip of aluminum-leaf about 4 in. long and 3/4 in. wide. moisten the under side of the horizontal part of w with paste or mucilage; press it upon the middle of the strip laid flat upon the table, and then lift w. the leaves should cling to w. each leaf should be, then, 2 in. long. they should hang close together when not in use. a large chimney, or fruit-jar, may be used to surround the leaves, and to keep currents of air from them. the leaves should not touch the side of the jar when spread. =experiment 93. to study the leaf electroscope; charging by conduction.= _apparatus._ the leaf electroscope (fig. 57, § 201, 202); ebonite rod, e r (no. 28); flannel cloth, f c (no. 30). =203. directions.= (a) thoroughly charge e r, then scrape it along upon i t, noting the action of the leaves, l. (b) see if the leaves will remain spread for some time. (c) touch i t to discharge it, and note the action of l. _=204. discussion.=_ no explanation should be necessary for this. are the leaves charged alike? as they were charged by contact, is the electrification on them + or -? =experiment 94. to charge the leaf electroscope by induction.= _apparatus._ our electroscope (fig. 57, § 202); ebonite sheet, e s (no. 27); flannel cloth, f c (no. 30). =205. directions.= (a) charge e s with f c, then hold e s above i t (fig. 57), their surfaces being kept parallel and about 2 or 3 inches apart. watch the leaves. (b) withdraw e s. do the leaves remain spread? (c) repeat (a), and before removing e s, touch i t. (d) remove your finger from i t, then withdraw e s. do the leaves now remain spread? _=206. discussion.=_ the permanent divergence of l was due to a charge given by induction. (exp. 76.) as e s was -, what was the kind of a charge in l? did any electrification go to the electroscope from e s? in (c) what became of the charge in l? explain why the leaves again diverged in (d). the electroscope was charged with + electrification by taking out of it. =experiment 95. to learn some uses of the electroscope.= _apparatus._ our electroscope (fig. 57, § 202); ebonite rod, e r (no. 28); ebonite sheet, e s (no. 27); glass, g (no. 38); flannel cloth, f c (no. 30). =207. directions.= (a) with the charged e r charge the electroscope negatively by conduction (exp. 93). note the amount of permanent divergence of the leaves. (b) electrify the glass, which will be +, (or use the + e c), and _slowly_ lower it over i t, noting the effect upon l. raise and lower g or e c several times. does g, which has an opposite charge to the electroscope, make l diverge more or less? (c) discharge the electroscope and recharge as in (a). (d) slowly lower the charged e s over i t. (e) slowly lower the palm of your hand over i t. =note.= if the + g is brought too near the -ly charged electroscope, l will first collapse and then instantly diverge again with a + charge by contact. the _first_ motions should be observed. _=208. discussion.=_ as a neutral body causes a slight _collapse_ of the leaves, as well as a body charged positively (when the charge in the leaves is -), an increase of divergence is really the only sure test to tell how a body is charged. the leaves collapse when a + body is brought near i t, because the in them is drawn up towards the body. the leaves diverge more when a body is brought near, because the in i t is repelled into them. _=209. the proof-plane.=_ since charges of static electricity reside upon the outside of conductors, it is an easy matter to take samples of the electrification. this may be done with a little instrument called a carrier, or proof-plane. it consists of a small conductor with an insulating handle. a ring or coin may be used for the conductor, and a silk thread for the handle. by touching the carrier to any charged body, it, also, becomes charged; and the nature of the charge may be determined by the use of a previously charged leaf electroscope (exp. 95). a delicate gold-leaf electroscope would be ruined by coming in contact with a heavily charged body. the carrier allows a small sample to be tested. chapter xii. miscellaneous experiments. [illustration: fig. 58.] =experiment 96. to show that friction always produces two kinds of electrifications.= _apparatus._ fig. 58. the carbon electroscope (exp. 58); flannel cloth, f c, doubled twice to make 4 thicknesses (see fig. 58); ebonite sheet, e s (no. 26); ebonite rod, e r (no. 28); charged electrophorus cover, e c. =210. directions.= (a) vigorously rub e s with f c (folded as in fig. 58). see if you can discover any attraction between them. (b) rub e s again, but do not lift f c from it with the hand alone. slip e r under the top fold in f c (fig. 58), and lift f c straight up from e s. do not let f c touch the table or your hand. (c) see if f c is charged, using 2 or 3 different tests. (d) charge the electroscope with f c until the carbon is strongly repelled. (e) bring the positively charged e c slowly near the carbon, and note the result. (f) slowly bring the negatively charged e s near the carbon that has been charged by contact with f c. _=211. discussion.=_ this experiment showed that while the ebonite was negatively charged, the flannel was positively charged. one kind of electrification is never produced without the other. it can also be shown that the two kinds are equal in amount. =experiment 97. to show "successive sparks."= _apparatus._ fig. 59. the electrophorus (exp. 68); the extra ebonite sheet, e s (no. 27); three coins (marked a, b, c, in fig. 59). the coins should nearly touch each other, and rest upon e s. a part, only, of the electrophorus cover is shown. =212. directions.= (a) thoroughly charge the electrophorus cover. (b) place your finger upon the coin marked a, to "ground" it, then quickly touch the coin c with the charged cover, at the same time watching for sparks between the coins. if you cannot see the sparks, darken the room a little, and look at the center coin, b, while doing the experiment. [illustration: fig. 59.] [illustration: fig. 60.] =experiment 98. to show to the eye the strong attraction between a charged and a neutral body.= _apparatus._ the flat box, f b (nos. 40, 41); the electrophorus (see exp. 68). =213. directions.= (a) stand f b upon its edge upon a level table, then bring the charged electrophorus cover near it. (b) instead of the above, use light hoops made of paper, eggshells, feathers, sawdust, etc. =experiment 99. to feel the strong attraction between a charged and a neutral body.= _apparatus._ fig. 60. the flat box f b (nos. 40, 41); the electrophorus (exp. 68). =214. directions.= (a) hold f b in the left hand, as shown, then _slowly_ bring near it the charged cover, at the same time looking between them so that you can keep them the same distance apart all the way round. (b) bring them near enough to allow a spark to pass from e c to f b. =experiment 100. the human body a frictional electric machine.= _apparatus._ yourself; a carpet; a room with dry air, easily had on a cold winter's day. =215. directions.= (a) scrape your feet along upon the carpet, then quickly touch your finger to some conductor, as, for example, a friend's nose. (b) it is possible to light the gas by the above process. have a friend turn on the gas just before you bring your finger to the jet, and be sure that the spark from your finger passes through the gas on its way to the conductor, the jet. (c) bring your finger quickly near a small piece of tissue paper after you have scraped your feet along to charge your body. _=216. static electric machines=_ are used to produce large quantities of static electricity. in the early forms, the electrification was produced by friction. modern machines depend upon the principle of induction. the electrophorus (exp. 68) is really a very simple form of induction machine. the potential of these machines is very great, as the spark may jump many inches. thousands of galvanic cells would be needed to make a spark an inch long. when the spark passes through the air it meets with an extremely high resistance, as air practically insulates ordinary electricity. this high resistance in the circuit reduces the strength of the current. while the potential is very high, the strength of the current is very low. (see ohm's law.) chapter xiii. atmospheric electricity. _=217. atmospheric electricity.=_ the air is generally electrified, even in clear weather. its charge is usually +. clouds are sometimes +, and sometimes -. the cause of atmospheric electricity is not thoroughly understood. it is thought, by some, to be due to the friction of the particles of vapor upon each other. it is also thought that the evaporation of sea water, and the friction of winds, produce it. _=218. lightning.=_ benjamin franklin, in 1752, proved by his famous kite experiment that atmospheric and frictional electricities were of the same nature. by means of a kite, the string being wet by the rain, he succeeded, during a thunder-storm, in drawing sparks, charging condensers, etc. lightning may be produced by the passage of electricity between clouds, or between the cloud and the earth, which, with the intervening air, have the effect of a condenser. if one cloud is charged, it acts inductively upon another, producing in it the opposite kind of electrification. when the attraction between the two electrifications becomes great enough, it overcomes the resistance of the air, and lightning is produced. the flash is practically instantaneous. the direction taken seems to depend upon the conditions of the surrounding air. it has generally a zigzag motion, and is then called _chain lightning_. the air in the path of the electricity becomes intensely heated; it is this effect, and not the electricity which we see. in hot weather flashes are often seen which light up whole clouds, no thunder being heard. this is called _heat lightning_, and is generally considered to be due to distant discharges, the light of which is reflected by the clouds. the _potential_ of the lightning spark is beyond all calculation. the spark jumps through miles of air, which is, really, an insulator. this spark represents billions and billions of volts. _=219. thunder=_ is caused by the violent disturbances produced in the atmosphere by lightning. the nature of the sound depends, among other things, upon the distance of the observer from the discharge, and upon the length and shape of the path taken. clouds, hills, and other objects produce echoes, which also modify the original sound. it takes nearly five seconds for the sound to travel one mile. _=220. lightning-rods=_, when well constructed, often prevent violent discharges of atmospheric electricity. they have pointed prongs at the top, which allow the negative of the earth (which is being attracted by the cloud when it is positively charged) to pass quietly into the air above; this neutralizes the cloud. in case of a discharge, the rods aid in conducting the electricity to the earth. _=221. causes of atmospheric electricity.=_ there are several theories about this. some think that it is due to the rotation of the earth, different parts being acted upon differently by the heat of the sun. some claim that the evaporation of the water in the ocean produces it, while others say that the electrification is produced in the clouds by the friction of their particles upon each other. the matter has not been settled. _=222. st. elmo's fire=_ electrification from the earth is often drawn up through the masts of ships to neutralize that in the clouds (see § 220), and, as it escapes from the points of the masts, light is produced. this may be clearly shown by repeating exp. 71 in the dark; the head of the pin (fig. 39) will represent the end of a mast, and the charged electrophorus cover will be the charged cloud. _=223. aurora borealis=_, also called northern lights, are luminous effects often seen in the north. they often occur at the same time with magnetic storms, at which times telegraph and telephone work may be disturbed. the exact cause of this light is not known, but it is thought by many to be due to disturbances in the earth's magnetism, caused by the action of the sun. current electricity. part iii.--current electricity. chapter xiv. construction and use of apparatus. =note.=--before taking up the study of cells and the electric current, let us perform a few experiments in order to understand the construction and use of some of the apparatus needed for such study. a dry cell will be used as the source of the electricity for these first experiments, because it is convenient. you will understand its action later. use this cell only as directed; improper use of it might spoil it. [illustration: fig. 61.] =experiment 101. to study the effect of the electric current upon the magnetic needle.= _apparatus._ a compass (no. 18); a dry cell, d c (no. 51); wires with spring connectors attached (§ 226) for making connections. fig. 66 shows a plan or top view of the arrangement. any other form of cell will do in place of d c. =226. electrical connections.= one must constantly join wires, connect wires with apparatus, or connect one piece of apparatus to another, to make the proper electrical connections. a very simple method of connections has been used in all the apparatus described in these experiments. a little arrangement which we shall call a spring connector, s c, (fig. 61), gives us a means of quickly making connections; that is, it does away with expensive binding-posts. it is made of brass, nickel plated, and may be used anywhere without affecting the magnetic needle. six or eight wires, about no. 24 gauge, each about 1-1/2 ft. long, should be prepared with a connector at each end. you may use wire furnished (no. 53). scrape the insulation from the ends of the wires for about 1-1/2 inches, then twist the bare ends around the connectors as shown in fig. 61. the wire should pass around tightly at least 4 or 5 times and then be twisted a little, as shown, to help tighten it. do not put it on so poorly or in such quantity that the part, b, will spread. =227.= fig. 62 shows how the connector should be slipped upon a thin piece of metal, m, like that on the galvanoscope, for example. the wire, w, from the apparatus itself is permanently fastened under the head of the screw, s, while the wire from any other apparatus is one of those kept on hand as above mentioned and connected with s c. [illustration: fig. 62.] [illustration: fig. 63.] [illustration: fig. 64.] =228.= fig. 63 shows how several wires may be quickly joined, electrically, by slipping the connectors at their ends upon a thin metal plate, m p, which may be a piece of tin, zinc, copper, etc. m p should not be too thick. in case the connectors become too much spread to pinch the plate, squeeze the part, a, a little more together. =229.= fig. 64 shows the method of connecting with the special form of binding-post used, for example, upon the resistance coil, r c. the end, c, of s c, is pressed down into the tube, t, until you feel, by moving it, that it springs firmly against the sides of the tube. in case you wish s c to fit very tightly in t, one of the legs may be slightly bent outwards. [illustration: fig. 65.] =230.= the connector may be used in still another way; that is, by pushing the part, a, into the hole of an ordinary binding-post, (fig. 65), and using it just the same as a thick wire. =231. directions.= (a) stand the compass and d c near each other (fig. 66). attach one end of an insulated copper wire, c w, to the binding-post, c, which is on the carbon plate of the cell. do _not_ join the other end to the other binding-post, zn, of the zinc plate. (b) with the left hand hold c w above and near the compass-needle, and in the n and s line, so that it will extend over the entire length of the needle. (c) take the free end of c w in the right hand and touch binding-post, zn, for an instant only, watching the needle. repeat. _=232. current detectors.=_ we know that a magnet can act, by induction, through the air upon a piece of iron or upon another magnet. the deflection of the needle in this experiment shows that there must be a magnetic field around a wire carrying a current. this fact is of the greatest possible importance. the simple magnetic needle, when used as above, becomes a detector of electricity. [illustration: fig. 66.] [illustration: fig. 67.] =experiment 102. to study the construction and use of a simple "key."= _apparatus._ a key, k (no. 55) (§ 233); a dry cell, d c, (no. 51); a compass, o c (no. 18). _arrange_ as shown in fig. 67, which is a top view or plan. connect the pieces of apparatus with wires and spring connectors (§ 226). binding-post, c, is joined to i (in) of the key; o (out) of key is joined to binding-post, zn, the wire, c w, passing directly over and near o c, which is to be used as a detector. the current cannot pass until the lever, l, is pressed. a metal plate, m p, is used to connect two short wires (§ 228) in case c w is not long enough. [illustration: fig. 68.] =233. a key= is merely a piece of apparatus by which the circuit can be conveniently and rapidly opened and closed at the will of the operator; that is, by it the electricity can be quickly turned on or off. fig. 68 shows a simple form of key. to the base, b, are fastened two metal pieces or straps, the upper one, l, being the lever or key proper. the front end of l is raised above o, so that the two do not touch each other unless l is firmly pressed down. a screw, s, keeps l from springing too far above o. for convenience we shall suppose that the wire leading to the key joins it at i (in); the wire _from_ the key is joined to o (out), by means of connectors (§ 226). the key may be put into any circuit by first cutting a wire and then joining the ends to i and o. spring connectors make the best connections with this form of key. (for home-made keys see apparatus book.) =234. directions.= (a) the magnetic needle being directly under the wire, press l down for an _instant only_ and note the action of the needle. (b) press l again, hold it down for 3 seconds, not over that, and watch the needle. _=discussion.=_ the key allows us to easily regulate the length of time during which the current passes. this experiment shows, also, that the magnetic field about the wire disappears as soon as the current ceases to pass. [illustration: fig. 69.] =experiment 103. to study the construction and use of a simple "current reverser."= _apparatus._ a dry cell, d c (no. 51); a compass, o c (no. 18); a current reverser, c r (no. 57) (see § 235); an insulated copper wire, c w, 2 or 3 feet long, with spring connectors joined to its ends (§ 226). _arrange_ as in fig. 70. the wire, c w, leading from x should be held by the left hand so that it will be just above (or below) and parallel to the magnetic needle. the current cannot pass through c w until one of the straps or levers on c r is pressed. (see apparatus book for home-made reversers.) =235. the current reverser.= (no. 57.) to the wooden base (fig. 69) are fastened four metal straps, each turned up at the end so that spring connectors (§ 227) can be slipped on to make electric connections with other pieces of apparatus. suppose that at c and z connections are made with the carbon and zinc of the cell, by means of wires and spring connectors (§ 226). the current comes from the cell to c. as the two straps, 2 and 3, press firmly up against strap 4, and do not touch 1, it is evident that no current can pass from 1 to 2 or to 3 until they are pressed down upon 1. two wires are joined by spring connectors to 2 and 3 at their turned up ends, x and y, and these wires lead to any desired instrument. [illustration: fig. 70.] =236. directions.= (a) press down lever 2 (fig. 70), for an instant only, at the same time noting carefully in which direction the n pole of the needle is deflected. (b) after allowing lever 2 to spring up again, and after the needle comes to rest, press down lever 3 for an instant, watching the needle. is the n pole of the needle deflected in the same direction as it was in (a)? _=237. discussion.=_ the reverser gives us a quick and easy means of reversing the current which is to pass through any desired instrument, first in one direction and then in the opposite direction. suppose (fig. 69) that the current enters c r at c, as it does when c is joined to the carbon of the cell; the current can go no farther until one lever is lowered. if lever 2 (fig. 69) be now pressed down, as in part (a), the current will pass along 2, which does not now touch 4, out through x to a coil of wire or any instrument, and back to the reverser by the wire joined to y. it will then pass from 3 onto 4, to z, and back to the cell; that is, the current enters c w at x. when lever 3 is pressed, the current still entering c r at c, the electricity will pass onto 3 and out at y, and back through x, 4 and z to the cell. the current, then, can be made to pass out of x or y at will by pressing the proper lever. this experiment also teaches something about currents, but these will be discussed later. [illustration: fig. 71.] =experiment 104. to study the simple current detector.= _apparatus._ the compass (no. 18); dry cell, d c (no. 51); current reverser, c r (no. 57); copper wire, c w, a few feet long, with spring connectors on its ends. (see apparatus book, chapter xiii, for home-made detectors.) =238. directions.= (a) join the ends of the wire to x and y of the reverser, c r, as in the last experiment. coil up c w so that you can hold the coil with your left hand, as shown in fig. 71, the magnetic needle being inside of it and parallel to it. (b) press lever 2 of the reverser for an instant only. is the needle deflected more or less than it was when the wire simply passed over or under it once? (c) reverse the current through c w by pressing lever 3, and note the result. (d) get clearly in mind which way the n pole of the needle is deflected when the current enters c w at x, also when it enters at y. _=239. discussion.=_ the current passed _over_ the needle in one direction, and _under_ it in the opposite direction; that is, the part of the wire above _helps_ that below. each turn of the wire increases the strength of the magnetic field about the coil, and helps to deflect the needle. in this way, by increasing the number of turns, detectors may be made that will show the presence of very weak currents. the magnetic fields about wires and coils will be studied in a later chapter. [illustration: fig. 72.] =experiment 105. to study the construction and use of the simple galvanoscope.= _apparatus._ the galvanoscope, g v, complete (no. 58), described in § 240-246; dry cell, d c (no. 51); current reverser, c r (no. 57) (§ 235); wires, with spring connectors, to join the different pieces of apparatus (§226). (see apparatus book, chapter xiii, for home-made galvanoscopes.) =240. the galvanoscope= (fig. 72) is more than a mere detector of electricity. with it we shall be able to study, more fully, cells, currents, etc., etc. we must first understand its construction. =241. the coil-support=, c s, is fastened to the cross-piece, c p, on which are the 3 binding-posts or coil-ends, l, m and r (left, middle, right). the legs, g l, are screwed to c p in such a way that c p is held a little above the table: this allows c s to be tipped to the front or rear to adjust it vertically. on account of the peculiar arrangement of the legs, the galvanoscope can be made to stand firmly, even upon uneven surfaces. the screws holding g l should not be put in far enough to tear the threads in the wood, c p. =242. the galvanoscope coils=, g c, are two in number, both being fastened to the coil-support, c s. the first coil has five turns of wire, its ends being fastened to l and m; the other coil has _ten_ turns, with ends at m and r. the current can, at will, be made to pass through 5, 10 or 15 turns of wire by making the proper connections. suppose that we have two wires direct from a cell, or from the current reverser, with spring connectors on them so that we can slip them onto l, m or r, which stand for left, middle or right. when the wires are joined to l and m the current can pass through but 5 turns; when joined to m and r it will go through 10 turns; and when to l and r it will pass through the entire 15 turns. when the current enters the galvanoscope at l and passes out at m or r, it will pass through the turns of wire from left to right, at the top; that is, it will pass in a "clockwise" direction. =243. the compass-needle=, furnished with o c (no. 18), will do also for this galvanoscope. it should be placed upon the pin-point after fixing on the pointers (§ 246). the length of the needle should be parallel to the plane of the coil when no current passes; that is, the coil and coil-support should be in the n and s line. the needle can be centered in regard to right and left, and in regard to up and down, by properly adjusting the position of the pin-point support, p p s; this is held firmly to c s by two spring-connectors. by removing s c, the support, p p s, may be raised or lowered. =244. to place the coil= in the n and s line, simply swing the galvanoscope bodily around, at the same time looking down upon the needle, until the length of the needle becomes parallel to the coil-support. when once carefully adjusted n and s, a line may be drawn upon the table as a guide for its position in future experiments. the coil should stand in a vertical plane, and this straight up and down position can be easily adjusted. to place the coil in the e and w line, turn it until the pointers are at the 90° (90 degree) marks,--the 0° (zero degree) marks remaining, of course, as described above. =245. the degree-card, g d c= (fig. 72) has a dot at its center, to show where to make a pin-hole for the pin that supports the compass-needle. with this you can tell how many degrees the needle is deflected when the current passes. this card, g d c, should be pressed down over the pin-point. the zero points of g d c should be n and s, also, when the coil is in that position; that is, they should be in the plane of the coil. the pointers on the needle (§ 246) will then be at o, when the needle is at rest, no current passing through the coils. (see apparatus book § 272 for home-made degree-card.) g d c may be held permanently in position after it is adjusted, by sticking a short pin through it into p p s. do not let this pin interfere, however, with the swinging of the needle. [illustration: fig. 73.] =246. pointers= (fig. 73) should be fastened to the needle, in order to make the readings of degrees accurate. fasten to the compass-needle a piece of no. 30 insulated copper wire, as shown. it may be cut to the proper length after it is wound around the needle. see that the wire does not touch the pin when needle is in place; balance needle by cutting a little from the heavier end of wire with shears; bend the ends of wire so that they are at opposite sides of the degree-card, both pointing at o, for example. the needle must swing freely, be nicely balanced, and the wire must not touch pin or degree-card. [illustration: fig. 74.] =247. directions.= (a) arrange as in fig. 74, the coil being n and s (§ 244). join the ends of the wires, 2 and 3, with the 5-turn coil of g v as shown. wire, 2, is connected to l (fig. 72). press lever 2 of c r (fig. 69) for an instant, watching the compass-needle and noting how many degrees it swings the first time. get thoroughly in mind the direction in which the n pole of the needle is deflected when the current passes around g c in a "clockwise" direction. there must be no magnets, iron, or pieces of steel within 3 feet of a g. (b) press lever, 3, for an instant, watching the needle. the current will now pass in an "anti-clockwise" direction. is the needle deflected about the same number of degrees as in (a)? (c) change the ends of the wires, 2 and 3, to the 10-turn coil (§ 242) and repeat (a) and (b). (d) change 2 and 3 to l and r (fig. 72), thus allowing the current to pass around 15 turns; then repeat (a) and (b). _=248. discussion; true readings.=_ is not possible to get the magnetic needle, m, exactly in the center of g c; the pointers will not exactly be in the axis of m; the coils will not be exactly n and s: hence, if you pass a certain current through the coil and the pointer reads 20 degrees, you will find, if you reverse the current, that the pointer may read 24 degrees on the other side of the zero mark. to get the _true reading_, average the two, in this case the average being 22 degrees. the galvanoscope gives us an instrument with which we can study, more fully, cells, currents, etc. =249. note of caution.= it has already been stated that the compass-needle should be in the center of the coil (§ 243), and that the coil should be in the n and s line (§ 244). in addition to the above, see that there are no magnets near g v, when using it; tap g v occasionally to be sure that the needle swings freely, hold the eye directly over the pointers when reading degrees; the pointers should be at zero when no current passes through g v; be sure that the electrical connections are good. there are several sources of error in taking readings, and in all the quantitative experiments given. the author takes it for granted that such errors will be looked out for by the teacher. [illustration: fig. 75.] =experiment 106. to study the construction and use of a simple astatic needle.= _apparatus._ two unmagnetized sewing-needles (no. 1); horseshoe magnet, h m (no. 16); piece of stiff paper doubled and cut as in fig. 75; a pin-point on which to support the paper. the pin may be stuck through a cork, or that of o c (no. 18) may be used. =250. directions.= (a) draw each needle across the n pole of h m five times from point to head (exp. 9). this should make them of nearly equal strength, both points being n poles. (b) stick the needles through the paper as shown, the n poles being at the same end of the paper. balance the paper upon the pin-point. has this combination a strong or weak pointing-power? (c) turn one of the needles end for end. again test the pointing-power. _=251. discussion; astatic needles.=_ by arranging the needles so that their poles oppose each other, the pointing-power becomes almost nothing. this sort of a needle is needed in some experiments in electricity. their magnetic fields are still retained. the combination is called an _astatic needle_; it is used to detect very feeble currents. the more nearly equal the magnets are in strength, the better. they are usually arranged with one above the other (fig. 76). [illustration: fig. 76.] [illustration: fig. 77.] =experiment 107. to study the construction and use of a simple astatic galvanoscope.= _apparatus._ an astatic galvanoscope, a g (no. 59) (§ 252-254); dry cell, d c (no. 51); current reverser, c r (no. 57) (§ 235); wires for connections (§ 226). _arrange_ as shown in fig. 80, which is a top view. the wires from c r are connected to the binding-posts of a g at the back, the spring connectors being slipped into them (§ 229). =252. construction of the astatic galvanoscope.= when not to be used for a long time, or for shipping, the legs, a (fig. 77) may be removed, and the whole packed inside of the box, b. the _coil_, c, has a resistance of about 5 ohms, and is fastened to the coil-support, c s. the ends of the coil are permanently fastened to the binding-posts, l and r (left and right). the ends are so arranged that when the current enters at l it will pass around the coil in a clockwise direction. =253. the astatic needle= (exp. 106) is supported by a small thread, t, which is tied to the thread-wire, t w. this t w springs into an eyelet, e, which, in turn, rests in a hole made in the end of b. e should turn easily in the hole, but it should not wabble. fig. 78 shows a sectional view of the coil and needle. the wire, w, should be bent, as shown, so that the magnets can be as near the center-line of c as possible. fig. 79 shows a front view of the needle. as a matter of convenience it will be best to arrange the poles of the needles, as shown, to agree with the descriptions of the experiments. to keep the needle from being affected by air currents, the glass plate (no. 38) may be placed in front of the box, b. stand it upon the legs, a, and tie a string around it, and b, to hold it in place. [illustration: fig. 78.] [illustration: fig. 79.] =254. adjusting the needle.= as t is tied to t w, the needle may be swung completely around by turning t w. this should be done until the length of the needle is parallel to the turns of c. the up and down position of the needle should be fixed as nearly as possible when fastening t to t w, the exact place being finally fixed by raising or lowering t w through e. the spring in t w should hold it firmly in e after adjustment. the wire, w, joining the needle-magnets should not touch the coil. it may be made to just swing free from c by tilting the box forward or backward a little. the construction of the legs, etc., makes it possible to tilt the box, and to make it stand firmly upon an irregular surface. [illustration: fig. 80.] =255. directions.= (a) see that there are no magnets within 3 feet of a g. test the astatic needle, after you have it properly suspended, to convince yourself that it does not try to swing around in a n and s line. in case the needle-magnets have been in contact with other magnets, or are not equally magnetized, remagnetize them as directed in exp. 106. they must remain in any position given them by turning t w. finally, bring them parallel to the turns of the coil. (see § 254.) arrange as in fig. 80. (b) press lever 2 of c r (§ 235) for an instant only. this allows the current to enter a g at l. repeat several times until you thoroughly fix in your mind the direction in which the right-hand end of the needle is deflected. does the needle jump suddenly when the current passes? (c) press lever 3 for an instant only. study the result. _=256. astatic galvanoscopes.=_ it is evident that in the ordinary current detector (exp. 104), the pointing power of the needle has to be overcome by the magnetic field about the coil, before the needle can be forced from its n and s line. very weak currents will not visibly move the needle in ordinary detectors. to make a sensitive instrument we must have strong fields about both the needle and coil, and we must, at the same time, decrease the pointing power of the needle. both of these things are accomplished by using an _astatic needle_ in connection with a coil containing considerable wire. the uses of the astatic galvanoscope will be studied more fully in later experiments. chapter xv. galvanic cells and batteries. =experiment 108. to study the effect of dilute sulphuric acid upon carbon and various metals.= _apparatus._ a piece each of copper and iron wire 4 in., (10 cm.) long; two narrow strips of sheet zinc (no. 60), one being amalgamated (§ 257); a carbon rod (no. 64); a tumbler (no. 65), partly filled with dilute sulphuric acid, (§ 258); mercury (no. 52). =257. to amalgamate= one of the above zinc strips is to coat it with mercury. remove all jewelry from the hands before proceeding. wash the zinc with water, and with a cloth remove all dirt from its surface. amalgamated zinc is very brittle, so lay it flat upon a piece of board or upon a plate, after dipping it for an instant in the dilute acid. place a small drop or two of mercury upon the strip, and rub the mercury about upon both sides of the zinc with a cloth made wet with the dilute acid. mercury clings strongly to zinc or tin, so you may use a narrow piece of either as a spoon to carry a small drop from the supply to the zinc. tap it upon the zinc to dislodge the drops. do not get on too much mercury, just enough to coat it, or, at least, that part of it that will be under the acid. be careful not to break the thin zinc when amalgamating it, as it gets very brittle. it should look bright. (see apparatus book § 32, 33.) _note._ should any mercury get upon copper plates it may be removed by heating them in a flame. =258. dilute sulphuric acid=, for these experiments, should be made by mixing 1 part, by volume, of concentrated acid, with 20 parts of water. do not let the acid get upon clothes or carpets. do not add water to acid. mix by _slowly_ adding the acid to the water in a glass or earthen dish, stirring at the same time. mix over a sink or out of doors. (for fuller details see app. book; § 21, 22, 23, 24, 25.) to save time, make at least a quart of the mixture, bottle, and label it for use. =259. directions.= (a) bend over one end of each of the wires and metal strips, and hang them upon the edge of the tumbler (fig. 81), so that their lower ends shall be in the acid. do not let them touch each other. stand the carbon rod in the acid. if there is no visible action upon any of the above substances, add a few drops of concentrated acid to the tumbler. note carefully what takes place in the tumbler, and state which of the substances are dissolved, which simply made brighter, and which not acted upon at all. _=260. discussion.=_ the bubbles of gas that arise from the zinc when it dissolves are hydrogen, and they indicate that a vigorous chemical action is going on in the tumbler, and that the zinc is being eaten away. [illustration: fig. 81.] [illustration: fig. 82.] =experiment 109. to study the effect of dilute sulphuric acid upon various combinations of metals.= _apparatus._ the same as in the last experiment. a small piece of amalgamated zinc, however, will be better than the whole strip. =261. directions.= (a) twist one end of the clean copper wire around the small piece of amalgamated zinc (fig. 82). hold one end of the wire in the hand and dip the combination into the acid. what takes place? watch the surface of the copper, remembering that each, alone, was not acted upon by the acid (exp. 108). (b) use the clean iron wire in place of the copper wire, and repeat (a). watch the surface of the iron. (c) with a string or thread tie a small piece of well amalgamated zinc to the carbon rod (fig. 82), then dip the combination into the acid. watch the surface of the carbon. _=262. discussion.=_ while amalgamated zinc is not rapidly dissolved by dilute sulphuric acid, a vigorous action of some kind takes place when it is in contact with another metal or with carbon in the acid. the bubbles of hydrogen that are liberated do not seem to come from the zinc; they appear to grow, in the fluid, directly at the surface of the copper, iron, or other metal used with the zinc. this shows that something besides the mere dissolving of a metal takes place. can we arrange our apparatus so that we can get some useful results from this action? =experiment 110. to study the construction of a simple voltaic or galvanic cell.= _apparatus._ a narrow strip of zinc (no. 60), amalgamated as directed in § 257. (an amalgamated zinc rod (no. 74) may be used in place of the strip); a narrow strip of sheet copper (no. 67); the tumbler of dilute acid of exp. 108; a flexible copper wire about 2 feet long, with spring connectors (no. 54) attached to its ends. (see electrical connections, § 226.) [illustration: fig. 83.] =263. directions.= (a) holding the amalgamated zinc strip in one hand and the copper strip in the other (fig. 83), dip them into the acid, but do not let them touch each other. note any chemical action. (b) touch the copper and zinc together, _below_ the surface of the acid. watch the copper. (c) separate the lower ends of the strips, then touch them together _above_ the acid. anything still happen to the copper? (d) slip one spring connector with the attached wire upon the zinc strip, then stand the strips in the tumbler, so that they can not touch each other. now touch the copper strip with the free end of the wire, at the same time watching the copper. (e) raise the wire from cu, touch it to cu again, and repeat several times until you are sure that something takes place every time the wire touches cu. _=264. the electric current.=_ something must happen in or through the wire, and it can only happen when the two metals are joined in some way. this peculiar, invisible action in the wire is called the _electric current_, and such an arrangement is called a _galvanic cell_. _=265. source of the electrification.=_ when two different metals are placed in acid they are electrified unequally by chemical action. each has a higher potential than the acid, but their potentials are not the same. this electrification tends to pass from the place of higher to the place of lower potential, and the conducting wire allows this transfer to take place. as the difference of potential is kept up by the continued chemical action, the current is continuous, and not simply instantaneous, as in discharges of frictional electricity. as heat is produced by the burning of coal, so electrification is produced by the chemical burning of zinc. chemical energy is the source of electrification in the galvanic cell, just as muscular energy was the source of the electrification in the experiments with frictional electricity. _=266. the electric circuit; open and closed circuits.=_ the simple galvanic cell just used, together with the wire which joined the metal strips, is called an _electric circuit_. if the current should pass through a telegraph instrument, for example, on its way from one strip to the other, the telegraph instrument would also be in the circuit. when the wire is cut or removed from one metal strip, the circuit is said to be _open_--that is, we have an _open circuit_. when the current passes, the circuit is _closed_. we also say _make_ and _break_ the circuit, and that the circuit has been _broken_. _=267. plates or elements.=_ the copper and zinc strips are called the _plates or elements_ of the cell. the zinc, zn, fig. 84, is dissolved by the acid, and is called the positive plate (+ plate). the copper, cu, is the negative plate (plate). the copper is also called the _cathode_, and the zinc the _anode_. _=268. direction of current.=_ it has been agreed, for convenience, that _in_ the cell the current passes from the zinc through the liquid to the copper, where the hydrogen bubbles are deposited. it then passes through the wire, or other conductor furnished, back to the zinc, through the liquid to cu again, and so on around and around thousands of times per second. the current really starts at the surface of the zinc, where the chemical action is. when carbon and zinc are used, the action and direction of the current are the same, carbon being the plate. [illustration: fig. 84.] _=269. poles or electrodes.=_ if the wire were cut, the electricity coming from the + plate would be stopped at the end of the wire marked +, fig. 84, after passing through the acid and up cu. this end of the wire is called the + _pole or electrode_ (positive). the end of the wire joined to zn is called the _pole_ or _electrode_; that is, the + electrode is the end of the wire attached to the plate. the tops of cu and zn may be considered electrodes. the top of cu is the + _pole_ of the cell, while cu is the _plate_. =270. chemical action in the simple galvanic cell.= the chemical formula of sulphuric acid is h_{2}so_{4} (read h, 2, s, o, 4). this means that it is a compound of hydrogen (h), sulphur (s), and oxygen (o). the h_{2}so_{4} stands for _molecule_ of acid, and the small figures show that the molecule is made up of 2 _atoms_ of hydrogen (h_{2}), one of sulphur (s), and 4 of oxygen (o_{4}). the atoms are held together by _chemical attraction_ or _affinity_. there is a stronger chemical affinity between zinc (zn) and so_{4} than between h_{2} and so_{4}; so, as soon as the zn gets a chance, as it does in the cell, it drives out the h_{2}, and it takes its place in the molecule. this chemical _reaction_ may be shown by the following chemical _equation_: zn + h_{2}so_4 = znso_4 + h_2. zinc and sulphuric acid produce zinc sulphate and hydrogen. the zinc sulphate produced weakens the effect of the acid; in fact, the acid has to be renewed occasionally, as it is changed to the sulphate which remains in solution. =271. action in cell using impure zinc.= the above action takes place in the cell when impure zinc is used, even when no current passes, heat being produced by the reaction instead of useful electricity. (see local currents.) =action in cell using pure zinc.= when pure zinc (or impure zinc that has been properly amalgamated) is used in the cell, it dissolves, or is eaten away, only when the current passes. it should be noted that the bubbles of hydrogen do not even then appear at the zinc; they are not seen throughout the body of the liquid. there seems to be an unseen transfer of hydrogen from the zinc, through the liquid, to the copper (or other plate used), and it appears there in the shape of bubbles. the larger the quantity of pure zinc dissolved, the stronger the current, and the larger the amount of hydrogen produced. as the zinc dissolves it parts with its latent energy, and this energy forces the electric current through the circuit. while the hydrogen of the decomposed acid makes its way towards the plate, the so_4 part of it travels towards the zn plate, where the znso_4 is formed. (see § 270.) =experiment 111. to see what is meant by "local currents" in the cell.= _apparatus._ tumbler of dilute sulphuric acid. (§ 258); strip of unamalgamated zinc; crystal of copper sulphate (blue vitriol) (no. 86); a galvanized iron nail (no. 69), this being iron covered with zinc. =272. directions.= (a) hold the nail in the acid for a few seconds, and note result. (b) rub the copper sulphate upon the zinc simply in one spot, then place the zinc in the acid, noting the result at the spot. _=273. local action; local currents.=_ ordinary commercial zinc contains such impurities as carbon, iron, lead, etc., in small quantities. it was seen, exp. 109, that when different metals were in contact with the zinc, the zinc was rapidly dissolved by the acid. the impurities in the zinc act like the copper plate in the simple cell, thus producing _local currents_ in the zinc, which rapidly destroy it without doing any good. these currents pass from zinc to impurities, and back to the zinc, without going out into the main wire. this local action takes place even when the main circuit is open. _=274. reasons for amalgamating zinc plates.=_ pure zinc is not affected by dilute sulphuric acid, but it is too expensive to use in cells; so amalgamated zinc is used instead, because it is cheaper, and acts the same as pure zinc. the impurities are removed from the surface of the zinc, as the zinc alone is dissolved by the mercury. there is, then, a liquid layer of pure zinc with mercury upon the surface of the amalgamated plate. this is not acted upon by the acid when the circuit is open. a stronger and more regular current is produced with amalgamated zinc than with the impure unamalgamated zinc. =experiment 112. to study the "single-fluid" galvanic cell.= _apparatus._ the galvanoscope g v (no. 58), (see § 240, etc.); the simple cell arranged as described in § 275, the zinc being amalgamated. =275. the simple cell= should be arranged so that the plates will be held firmly in position. the zinc, zn (no. 60), and copper, cu (no. 67), should be fastened to the wooden cross-piece, w c p (no. 70), as shown in fig. 85. care should be taken not to use longer screws than those provided for (no. 72). if the screws touch each other they will short circuit the cell. partly fill the tumbler (no. 65) with dilute sulphuric acid (§ 258), join wires with connectors to the plates. the free ends of the wires are then ready to join to apparatus. the ends of wires _may_ be fastened under the screw-heads instead of using connectors on the plates. do not put the plates into the acid until you read the "directions." =276. directions.= (a) arrange as in fig. 86. place the coil of g v, n and s (§ 244). _before_ putting the plates in the acid join them to the 15-turn coil of g v (§ 242). the compass-needle should point to zero. see that the needle swings freely. (b) place the plates in the acid, and _quickly_ bring the needle to rest with the aid of the hand, so that you can take the reading at once before the hydrogen bubbles entirely cover the copper plate. watch the action of the needle for a few minutes. make a note of the reading, in degrees, at the beginning of the experiment and at the end of five minutes. (see note.) [illustration: fig. 85.] [illustration: fig. 86.] =note.= if no change takes place in the position of the needle, the change beginning inside of 10 seconds after the plates are let down into the acid, withdraw the plates, then clean and thoroughly dry the copper to remove all traces of hydrogen. this may be done by heating the copper over a gas flame. let the copper remain in the air 15 minutes, then try again. in taking the first reading you must work quickly. catch the needle during its _first_ swing. if you allow it to swing back and forth until it comes to rest, your first reading will not be what it should be. (c) after the needle has remained in one position, without change, for 2 or 3 minutes, take hold of the wooden cross-piece, move the plates back and forth in the acid to dislodge the hydrogen bubbles, and note carefully the action of the needle. does the current seem stronger when the plates are moved? can you get the needle back to the first reading? (d) remove the plates from the acid, dry and clean the copper, let them stand in the air for 15 minutes, then take another quick reading and compare it with the first. _=278. polarization of cells.=_ the acid gets a little weaker, of course, as it is decomposed by the zinc (§ 270), but the chief cause of the weakening of the current is hydrogen, which forms a filmy coating upon the copper plate. this coating even seems to soak into the copper, and it takes some time for it to be thoroughly removed. the zinc plate is kept comparatively free from hydrogen by amalgamation. _=279. effects of polarization.=_ the hydrogen bubbles weaken the current in at least two ways. in the _first_ place, hydrogen is not a conductor of electricity; so it holds the current back, as any other resistance would. _secondly_, acid acts upon hydrogen as it would upon another metal. when the copper plate becomes well covered with hydrogen, the acid cannot touch it; so we really have a _hydrogen plate_ in the cell. hydrogen acts very much like zinc in the acid; we say that it is more electro-positive than copper. the result is, then, that a new current starts up, and as this is towards the zinc, in the acid, it partially destroys or neutralizes the main zinc-to-copper current. practical use is made of the principles of polarization (see secondary batteries). _=280. remedies for polarization; depolarizers.=_ any scheme by which the hydrogen may be destroyed and kept from the inactive, or negative plate, will prevent polarization. _mechanical_ means have been employed to brush away the hydrogen by keeping up a constant circulation of the liquid. _chemical action_ is another means by which the hydrogen may be side-tracked before it gets to the plate in single-fluid cells. substances like nitric acid and bichromate of potash, called _depolarizers_, contain large quantities of oxygen, and, during the chemical changes that take place, this oxygen unites with the hydrogen. these substances are used in zinc-carbon cells. (see § 286, etc. for various forms of cells.) there is another form of cell, the _two-fluid_ type, in which _electro-chemical_ means are employed, and in which a metal is deposited upon the plate instead of hydrogen. the plate is usually copper, copper being deposited upon it. =experiment 113. to study the "two-fluid" galvanic cell.= _apparatus._ the glass tumbler, g t, (no. 65); porous cup, p c, (no. 73); the strip of zinc (no. 60), well amalgamated (§ 257), or the amalgamated zinc rod (no. 74); piece of sheet copper (no. 75), bent so that it will surround p c; copper wires, c w, with connectors; a saturated solution of copper sulphate, commonly called blue vitriol or blue stone (see § 283); dilute sulphuric acid (see § 258). with the above, set up the two-fluid cell (see § 281). the galvanoscope, g v, complete, is also needed, and if quantitative work is to be done, a pair of scales weighing to 0.1 gram is necessary. (see app. book, chapter i, for home-made two-fluid cells.) [illustration: fig. 87.] =281. setting up the two-fluid cell.= fig. 87. stand the amalgamated zinc rod, zn, in p c, then place p c in the tumbler, g t; put in the copper plate as shown. pour diluted acid (§ 258) into p c until it stands about 2-1/2 in. deep; then at once pour the copper solution (§ 283) into g t, on the outside of p c, until it stands at the same height as the acid _in_ p c. as soon as the liquids have soaked into p c the cell will be ready for use; but it is better to connect it with the galvanoscope at once and note the increase of current during the first few minutes while the liquids soak through p c. a crystal of copper sulphate should be put outside of p c to keep the solution full strength. this is a form of the well-known daniell cell. fig. 87 shows a form of home-made two-fluid cell as described in apparatus book. if you have the one furnished, use the rod instead of sheet zinc, and use connectors on the plates. =282. care of two-fluid cell.= this experimental cell should be taken apart when not in use. it should not be left in open circuit, even for half an hour. even after the plates are removed, copper may be deposited upon p c in case there are any metallic impurities on it. remove the plates and p c, and thoroughly wash them. the copper solution should be put into a bottle to prevent evaporation; the dilute acid may be thrown away to be replaced by fresh acid for the next experiment. =283. copper sulphate solution= is made by adding the blue crystals to water until no more will dissolve--that is, the solution should be "saturated," extra crystals always being left in the stock bottle. an ounce of the crystals to half a tumbler of water will be about right, but a pint or so should be made at a time and be kept bottled to save time. =284. directions.= (a) in case you have access to a pair of scales that weigh to within 0.1 gram, carefully weigh both copper and zinc before proceeding. they should be washed and dried with a cloth. see that there are no drops of mercury upon the zinc that may fall off during the experiment. (b) replace the plates in the cell, and connect them with the 15-turn coil of g v, placed n and s. allow the circuit to remain closed for half an hour, and record the position of the needle every 5 minutes. (c) again wash, dry with a cloth without rubbing, and weigh both the zinc and copper. compare the new weights with those found in (a). _=285. chemical action in the two-fluid cell.=_ in this form of cell the hydrogen is not allowed to collect upon the copper plate. the action inside of p c is like that explained in § 270, hydrogen being set free. as soon as this hydrogen (h_{2}) comes in contact with the copper sulphate (cuso_{4}), and it begins to do this in the walls of p c, a new chemical reaction takes place. hydrogen has a stronger attraction for so_{4} than cu has, so it unites with the so_{4}, forming h_{2}so_{4} (sulphuric acid), and this at the same time throws out the cu bodily. this cu is then free, instead of hydrogen, to be deposited upon the copper plate. the current is constant, as there is no polarization. _=286. various galvanic cells; open and closed circuit cells.=_ there is no one form of cell that is best for all kinds of work. if momentary currents only are wanted, such as for bells, telephones, etc., in which the cell has plenty of time to rest, _open circuit_ cells are used. these cells polarize, however, when the circuit has to be closed for any length of time. this form of cell is always ready for use, and may not need attention for months at a time. the most common forms of the open circuit cells are the _leclanché_ (§ 287) and _dry_ cell (§ 288). open circuit cells polarize quickly, because the depolarizer (§ 280) is slow in destroying the hydrogen. when a strong current is needed for a considerable time, such as for telegraph lines, motors, etc., a _closed circuit_ cell is necessary. the depolarization must be rapid and constant. the _bichromate_ (§ 289) and the _daniell_ cell (§ 290) are very common forms of closed circuit cells. (see, also, storage cells.) =287. the leclanché cell= is an open circuit cell in which carbon and zinc are the plates. the carbon is surrounded with dioxide of manganese, a depolarizer; the two are either packed together in a porous cup, or the latter is compressed into blocks, which are fastened to the carbon. the porous cup stands in a jar containing a solution of sal ammoniac (ammonium chloride), which acts as the exciting fluid, and in which stands a zinc rod. the zinc is not acted upon when the circuit is open. the hydrogen given off by the decomposition of the ammonium chloride is destroyed by the oxygen contained in the manganese dioxide. the e. m. f. is nearly 1.5 volts. =288. dry cells= are for open circuit work. sheet zinc forms at the same time the active plate and the outside cylinder or case. a carbon plate acts as the inactive or plate. the exciting fluid is kept from spilling by its being absorbed by one of the various substances used for that purpose. =289. the bichromate of potash cell= is a very common one for laboratory use. it gives a strong current, and although a single fluid cell, it does not readily polarize. zinc and carbon plates are used. in the sulphuric acid, which is the exciting fluid, is dissolved bichromate of potash. this cell is used for running small motors, induction coils, etc. it has, with fresh solutions, an e. m. f. of about 2 volts. (see apparatus book, chapter i., for home-made batteries.) =290. the daniell cell=, of which the two-fluid cell used in exp. 112 is a form, is noted for its constant current. the e. m. f. is a little over 1 volt, and it should be kept working through a resistance when not in regular use; it should not be left in open circuit. the porous cup keeps the two fluids from mixing, but it does not stop the current. =291. the gravity cell= is a form of the above. as one of the fluids is heavier than the other, no porous cup is needed. gravity, together with the action of the current, tends to keep the fluids separated. a copper plate is placed in the bottom of the jar, and upon this is put the copper sulphate solution. the zinc plate is supported by the top of the jar and rests in a solution of zinc sulphate, which is lighter than the blue solution below. an insulated wire extends from the copper through the liquids. this cell is used for telegraph and similar work. (see apparatus book for home-made gravity cell, its regulation, etc.) chapter xvi. the electric circuit. =experiment 114. to see what is meant by "divided circuits" or "shunts."= _apparatus._ the galvanoscope, g v (no. 58); astatic galvanoscope, a g (no. 59); two-fluid cell, 2-f c (see § 281); 6 wires with connectors; small thin pieces of tin or other metal, m p, for rapidly making connections (§ 226). _arrange_ as in fig. 88. the wires, 1 and 4, from 2-f c, lead to the metal plates m p-a and m p-b, for convenience. the wires, 2 and 3, from g v, are also connected with these plates. the wires, 5 and 6 (dotted lines), lead from a g, to be used as directed in part (b) of the experiment. see that g v is properly placed. see that a g is adjusted. [illustration: fig. 88.] =292. directions.= (a) without a g in place, take the reading of g v. the current now passes from cu through 1, m p-b, 2, g v, 3, m p-a, 4 to zn. (b) connect wires 5 and 6 to the plates, as shown by the dotted lines. again take reading of g v, and compare it with the first reading. does some of the current pass through a g? _=293. divided circuits; shunts.=_ the current divides at m p-b into two parts; one part may be called a _shunt_ of the other. the circuit is said to be _divided_; it has two branches. if the two ends of a wire be fastened to another as in fig. 101, the circuit is also divided. when two or more conductors lead side by side from one point to another, they are called _parallel_ circuits; that is, the conductors are joined in parallel. as strong currents would injure delicate galvanometers, a small part only of the current may be allowed to pass through the galvanometer by using a shunt. fig. 89 shows such an arrangement, in which most of the current passes through the shunt, s. there are many practical uses of shunts. [illustration: fig. 89.] =experiment 115. to see what is meant by "short circuits."= _apparatus._ about the same as in exp. 114, fig. 88. the astatic galvanoscope is not needed; in place of it provide a short piece of metal, such as a battery-plate, or even a jack-knife. _arrange_ as in fig. 88, but without a g. =294. directions.= (a) with the current passing as described in exp. 114 (a), take the reading of g v. (b) lay the ends of the metal, or other thick conductor, upon m p-a and m p-b. compare the new reading of g v with that in part (a). (c) remove the conductor used to short circuit g v, take the reading in degrees, then touch m p-a to m p-b; watch g v. _=295. short circuits=_ are very apt to occur unless care is taken. do not allow uninsulated wires to touch each other. as shown by the above experiment, practically the whole of the current may be side-tracked by a _shunt of low resistance_. a galvanic cell is short-circuited by connecting the plates directly by a wire or other conductor. chapter xvii. electromotive force. _=296. electromotive force.=_ it has been stated that a galvanic cell has the _power_ to charge one of its plates positively and the other negatively; this power is called _electromotive force_, and, for short, e. m. f. is written. the e. m. f. of a cell depends upon the kinds of plates used and their condition, the chemicals used in the exciting fluids, etc. the greater the e. m. f. of a cell the greater its power to force the current through wires, etc. the e. m. f. of a cell does not depend upon the size of its plates, as will be seen by later experiments. _=297. unit of e. m. f.; the volt.=_ a certain amount of e. m. f. has been taken as the standard, and, in honor of volta, it has been called the volt. the e. m. f. of the two-fluid cell used in exp. 113 is not far from 1 volt. if a certain cell has the power to keep up twice the difference of potential between its terminals that the daniell cell has, we say that it has an e. m. f. of about 2 volts. _=voltmeters=_ are instruments to measure e. m. f. =experiment 116. to see if the e. m. f. of a cell depends upon the materials used in its construction.= _apparatus._ tumbler two-thirds full of dilute sulphuric acid (258); strips of zinc, zn (no. 60); copper strips, cu (no. 67); iron strip, i (no. 76); lead strip, l (no. 77); carbon rod (no. 64); the galvanoscope, g v (no. 58); 2 wires with connectors (§ 226), so that the plates can be changed quickly; the wooden cross-piece, w c p (no. 70). _arrange_ as in fig. 90. the metal strips are all of the same size; they may be held with the hand firmly against w c p, in order to have them the same distance apart in each trial. they should be lowered to the bottom of the tumbler in each case, in order to have them acted upon by the same amount of acid. place g v properly. [illustration: fig. 90.] =298. directions.= (a) with zn and cu connected to g v as shown (fig. 90), take the reading in degrees, and note in which direction (east or west) the n end of the needle is deflected. tabulate results, as shown in fig. 91, filling in each column of your table made out on paper. (b) in like manner try the following combinations in the order given, in each case connecting the first-mentioned plate with the left-hand binding-post, l, of g v. for (b) use zinc-iron. (c) use zinc-lead; (d) iron-copper; (e) iron-lead; (f) lead-copper; (g) copper-carbon. [illustration: +------+---------------+------------+-------------+------------+ | part | plates. | liquid. | deflection. | current in | | | | | | cell from | +------+-------+-------+------------+-------------+------------+ | (a) | zinc. |copper.| dil. sulp. | 65° west. | cu to zn | | | | | acid. | | | | (b) | | | | | | | | | | | | | | (c) | | | | | | fig. 91.] =299. note.= some of the combinations produce but slight currents. in case g v is not delicate enough to show clearly which way the current passes, use the astatic galvanoscope in its place for such combinations. _=300. discussion.=_ exp. 116 clearly showed that different combinations of metals in the acid have different powers of pushing electricity through the galvanoscope. although some of the pairs of metals furnished so weak a current that it was necessary to use the astatic galvanoscope to study the current, all produced _some_ current, and from the results can be formed an electromotive series (§ 301). the strength of acid, condition of plates, etc., affect the e. m. f. of a cell. =301. electromotive series.= all metals are not acted upon to the same degree by dilute acid. from the results of exp. 116 it is seen, part (b), that iron is electronegative to zinc; that is, the current in the cell flows from zinc to iron. part (d) showed that iron is electropositive to copper, as the current flowed from iron to copper in the cell. it is possible to arrange the metals in a series, one below the other, in such a way that any one will be electronegative to those above it and electropositive to those below it; that is, the list should have the most electropositive metal at the top, and the one least acted upon by the acid at the bottom. make such a list from your results. the farther the metals used are apart in the _list_, the greater will be the e. m. f. of the cell. good carbon is acted upon the least of all, so zinc and carbon are better than zinc and copper. =experiment 117. to see whether the electromotive force of a cell depends upon its size.= _apparatus._ galvanoscope; two glass tumblers; dilute acid; two wooden cross-pieces; two copper and two zinc strips, the same size as those used for exp. 112. (see § 275). these materials will form two simple cells like fig. 85. have about 3 in. of acid in one tumbler, and but 1 in. in the other. the plates of one cell will then be about 2-1/2 in. in acid, and those of the other cell only 1/2 in. in acid. this gives us the same effect as a large and a small cell. =302. directions.= (a) join the large and small cells with g v so that their currents will oppose each other. to do this, join the two zinc plates by means of a wire and connectors. with two other wires connect the two copper plates with the galvanoscope binding-posts, and watch for any indication of current. does one cell oppose the other? _=303. discussion.=_ the e. m. f. of a cell, then, does not depend upon the size of its plates. the small piece of zinc--that is, the one in but little acid--had the same potential as the large piece; they must have had, as they were joined. the large cell will give a stronger current, under certain conditions, than the small one; but this depends upon other things than e. m. f. (see experiments under current strength.) a zinc-copper cell, like the one just used (exp. 117), has the same _voltage_ as one of the same kind would have, even though it were made as large as a barrel. chapter xviii. electrical resistance. _=305. resistance.=_ it is harder for a horse to draw a wagon through deep sand than over a smooth pavement. we may say that the sand holds the horse back--that is, it offers a resistance. the electric current does not pass through all sorts of substances with the same ease, and when it succeeds in pushing its way through a circuit of considerable resistance, we cannot expect it to arrive at the end of its journey without being weaker than when it started. do we expect this of a man or horse? we shall soon see that there is a definite relation between resistance and the strength of the current at the end of its journey. =experiment 118. to study the general effect of "resistance" upon a current.= _apparatus._ galvanoscope, g v (no. 58); resistance coil, r c (no. 79) (§ 310); two-fluid cell, 2-f c (§ 281); 4 wires with connectors (§ 226). _arrange_ as in fig. 92. the current passes as shown by the arrow, and the circuit may be opened and closed at the metal plate, m p, or by using a key in its place. properly place g v. =306. directions.= (a) take the reading of g v in degrees, the current passing through the entire length of r c. (see § 310.) (b) change the end of wire 4 from binding-post r to m, on r c, so that the current will pass through one-half only of r c. note the reading of g v. (c) remove r c entirely and connect wires 3 and 4 by means of a metal plate. compare the readings of (a), (b) and (c). what do they show? [illustration: fig. 92.] _=307. external resistance; internal resistance.=_ when we consider a circuit like that shown in fig. 92 we see that it is composed of two parts, and that we have two kinds of resistances. the wires, instruments, etc., make up what is called the _external resistance_ of the circuit; that is, the part that is external to the cell. the liquids in the cell offer a resistance to the current; this is called _internal resistance_. (see § 314.) the strength of the current depends upon the relation between these two resistances, as will be seen by future experiments, as well as upon the e. m. f. of the cell. as liquids are not as good conductors as metals, the internal resistance of cells may be quite high. _=308. unit of resistance; the ohm.=_ whenever anything is to be measured, a standard, or unit, is necessary. the unit of resistance is called the ohm, in honor of ohm, who made careful investigations upon this subject. a column of mercury having a length of a little over 3 feet has been taken as a unit. (the column taken is 106.3 cm. with a weight of 14.4521 grams; it has a cross-section of about 1 sq. mm., at a temperature of 0°c.) mercury is a liquid, and has no "grain" to affect the resistance. for the use of students, 9 ft. 9 in. of no. 30 copper wire, or 39 ft. 1 in. of no. 24 copper wire will make a fairly good ohm. we might, of course, take any other length as _our_ standard; the above, however, will give results that are approximately correct. (see wire tables at the end of this book.) _=309. resistance coils; resistance boxes.=_ coils of wire, having carefully-measured resistances, are called _resistance coils_. the wire for any coil is doubled at the center before it is wound into coils or upon spools (fig. 93) to avoid the magnetic effect. the ends of the coils are attached to binding-posts, or to brass blocks, in regular instruments, so that one or more coils can be used at a time; that is, so that they may be handled in a manner similar to that in which the different coils on the galvanoscope are used. if we have 4 coils of 1, 2, 2, and 5 ohms resistance, we shall be able to use any number of ohms from 1 to 10 by making the proper connections. (see apparatus book, chapter xvii, for home-made resistance coils.) for protection and convenience, coils are usually placed in a box, the whole being called a _resistance box_. the ends of the coils are joined to brass blocks, placed near each other on the top of the box, and between which may be pressed plugs when it is desired to short circuit the coils. by removing a plug, the coil, whose ends are joined to the blocks touching it, is brought into the circuit. [illustration: fig. 93.] [illustration: fig. 94.] =310. simple resistance coil.= fig. 94 shows a simple form of coil, r c (no. 79). the total resistance is 2 ohms, l (left) and r (right) being binding-posts to which the ends of the coil, c, are joined. m (middle) connects with the middle of the wire, at which point the wire is doubled. the coil is fastened to a stiff pasteboard base, b. =connections.= when 2 ohms resistance are wanted, let the current enter at l and leave at r (or the reverse). when 1 ohm is wanted, let the current leave or enter at m, the other wire being joined to l or to r. connections should be made with spring connectors. see § 229. =experiment 119. to test the power of various substances to conduct galvanic electricity.= _apparatus._ galvanoscope, g v (no. 58); dry cell, d c, or two-fluid cell, 2-f c; pieces of different metals; wood, dry and damp; tumbler of pure water; rubber; ebonite; silk; glass, etc., etc. _arrange_ as in fig. 92, leaving out r c, and instead of having m p between wires 1 and 2, use their free ends to press firmly upon the ends of the substance to be tested; that is, the body under test should take the place of m p in the fig. g v will show a deflection, of course, when the particular thing under test is a conductor. =311. directions.= (a) make tests with the above substances, and with any others at hand, and note which are conductors and which are not. _=312. conductors and nonconductors.=_ it is evident, from the experiments, that bodies which conduct static electricity do not necessarily conduct galvanic electricity. the greater the e. m. f. of a current, the greater its power to overcome resistance. some bodies, like dry wood, that readily conduct the high potential static electricity, make fairly good insulators for the low potential galvanic currents. for convenience, substances may be divided into _good conductors_, _partial conductors_, and _insulators_, or nonconductors. _=good conductors.=_ metals, charcoal, graphite, acids, etc. _=partial conductors.=_ dry wood, paper, cotton, etc. _=insulators.=_ oils, porcelain, silk, resin, shellac, ebonite, paraffine, glass, dry air. [illustration: fig. 95.] =experiment 120. to find the effect of sulphuric acid upon the conductivity of water.= _apparatus._ galvanoscope, g v; cell; 2-f c; connecting wires; saucer or tumbler, s; a little sulphuric acid. _arrange_ as in fig. 95. =313. directions.= (a) put a little pure water in s, and see if enough current can pass through it to deflect the needle of g v. the ends of the wires, 1 and 2, should be gradually moved toward each other, the needle being watched. (b) put 4 or 5 drops of concentrated acid into the water; stir it, then repeat the test. what effect has the acid? _=314. internal resistance.=_ as found in exp. 120, pure water is not a good conductor of galvanic electricity. the acid in the simple cell, and in other single-fluid cells, acts upon the zinc and at the same time makes it possible for the current to pass, as it reduces the internal resistance. as seen later, this resistance in cells is greatly diminished by bringing the plates near each other, and by increasing the surface of the plates that are in contact with the acid. the larger the plates the less the internal resistance, other things remaining the same. the internal resistance of a _battery_ can be changed by connecting the cells differently. (see chap. on arrangement of cells.) [illustration: fig. 96.] =experiment 121. to find what effect the length of a wire has upon its electrical resistance.= _apparatus._ a no. 30 german-silver wire, g-s w, a little over two meters long, un-insulated (no. 81); the two-fluid cell, 2-f c (exp. 113); galvanoscope, g v (no. 58); plate binding-posts, x, y and z (no. 83-84-85); copper washers (no. 87). _arrange_ as in fig. 96, so that the current will flow, at first, as shown by the arrow. the metal plates, m p 1 and m p 2, are used so that the connections may be changed without disturbing g v. the binding-posts may be fastened directly to the top of the table; but it will be more convenient to permanently fix them to a board, b, as shown, so that the same arrangement can be used for future experiments. the binding-posts, x and y, should be about 1/8 in. apart, just far enough so that their edges do not touch each other. the binding-post, z, should be fastened to b with its inside end 1 meter(100 centimeters, cm.) from the ends of x and y. marks should be made upon b, 10 centimeters apart, as indicated by the cross lines. this distance may be taken from the scale on the rule (no. 88). fasten one end of the no. 30 wire, g-s w, to x. to do this twist its end around the screw, s, between x and the copper washer, then turn the screw in with a screw-driver until it firmly holds x to the board. pass the wire around the screw in z, and bring its free end to the other binding-post, y, to be fastened (fig. 96). two meters of wire then form a path for the current from x to y. have the board wide enough so that another set of binding-posts can be put by the side of y. it will be best to permanently leave the no. 30 wire upon the board, and to fasten the no. 28 wire (next experiment) to another set of binding-posts, placed in the same manner as those in fig. 96. make holes in the wood with an awl before forcing in the screws. =315. note.= this experiment is usually done with a reverser in the circuit, first taking readings with the current passing in one direction, and then in the opposite direction. considerable time will be saved by taking all the readings for one direction of the current at a time, simply using different lengths of german-silver wire, and allowing the current to flow constantly during each part. this obviates all danger of poor contacts in the reverser, etc.; it saves the trouble of handling the reverser, and much of the time needed for the needle to come to rest. [illustration: +--------------------+----+----+----+---+---+---+---+---+----+---+ |length of circ., cm.|200 |180 |160 |140|120|100| 80| 60|200 | o | +--------------------+----+----+----+---+---+---+---+---+----+---+ |deflection; west |26° |28° | 30°| | | | | | 26°|67°| +--------------------+----+----+----+---+---+---+---+---+----+---+ |deflection; east |25° |27° | 30°| | | | | | 25°|67°| +--------------------+----+----+----+---+---+---+---+---+----+---+ | average |25.5|27.5| 30 | | | | | |25.5|67 | +--------------------+----+----+----+---+---+---+---+---+----+---+ fig. 97.] =316. directions.= (a) with the circuit arranged as in fig. 96, and with g v properly placed, take the reading of g v, the current passing through 200 cm. of no. 30 g-s w. record your results in a diagram made like fig. 97. the row of figures across the top shows the length of the circuit. the table is started with results from one experiment. your results will probably be different from these. (b) get the deflection with the current passing through 180 cm. of wire. to do this press a piece of copper (o, fig. 96) upon the wire at the mark 10 cm. from z, another thin piece of metal, u, having been slipped under the wire. this will allow the current to pass across from one wire to the other. record the deflection in the col. marked 180. (c) record the deflections for the lengths, 160 cm., 140, 120, 100, 80, and 60; then repeat (a) to be sure that the cell has been working uniformly. this deflection should agree with that in (a). (d) change the direction of the current through g v; to do this, change wire, 1, from m p 2 to m p 1, and wire 5 to m p 2. this must be done without disturbing g v. (e) repeat (a), (b), and (c), and record the deflections for the different lengths. (f) get the average deflections. (g) take, for future use, the deflection produced without g-s w being in the circuit. swing the end of wire, 3, that is joined to y, around to m p 2. the current will then pass simply through g v. record deflection in col. marked o. =note.= it is best to do the next experiment at once with the same cell, so that the results of the two experiments can be compared. in case this is impossible, get your cell to produce the same deflection when you use it again, as shown in col. o, fig. 97. you can regulate the deflection of the needle of g v by varying the strength and quantity of the acid in p c. _=317. discussion.=_ the resistance of a wire evidently depends (exp. 121) upon its length. the _exact_ relation between resistance and length cannot be seen from these results, however, which are used in the next experiment. it will be shown later that in a wire, other things remaining the same, the resistance varies directly as its length. =experiment 122. to find what effect the size (area of cross-section) of a wire has upon its electrical resistance.= _apparatus._ same as in last experiment, with one change, however. replace the no. 30 g-silver wire with a no. 28 g-silver wire (no. 82), or, what is better still, fasten it to another set of binding-posts on the board and leave the no. 30 for future use. the two should be stretched side by side for constant use. =318. directions.= (a) see that your cell is in the same condition as for exp. 121; that is, it should produce the same deflection of the needle of g v as before, when the two, only, are in the circuit. (see exp. 121, g.) the deflection may be changed by changing the strength and quantity of the dilute acid and copper solution. (b) find the average deflection of the needle with the 2 meters of no. 28 g-s wire in the circuit, arranged as in fig. 96. (c) compare this average deflection with the results obtained in exp. 121, in order to find what length of the no. 30 wire has the same resistance as 2 meters of no. 28 wire. to find how many times greater one length is than another, we divide the larger length by the smaller; hence, to find the relation between the two lengths of wire that gave the same deflection,--lengths of equal resistance,--we divide the 200 centimeters (the length of the no. 28) by the length of no. 30 found as directed. (d) from the wire tables it will be found that the area of cross-section of no. 28 wire is about 1.59 times that of no. 30 wire. how does this quotient, or ratio, compare with that found in part (c)? what is the relation between the area of cross-section of a wire and its resistance? (see § 319, also exp. 136.) _=319. discussion.=_ if we find that a certain wire, x, which is 576 feet long, has the same resistance as a shorter one, y, 360 feet long, we see (576 divided by 360) that the ratio of their lengths is 1.6. this means that the longer one, x, is 1.6 times as good a _conductor_ as y; or, in other words, that the _resistance_ of y is 1.6 times that of x. it is easier for water to flow through a large pipe than it is through a small one. the same general principle is true of electricity. a large wire offers less resistance to the current than a small one of the same material. if one wire is twice the size of another of equal length, it will be twice as good a conductor as the other; that is, it will have one-half the resistance of the smaller, provided they are of the same material. (see laws.) =experiment 123. to compare the resistance of a divided circuit with the resistance of one of its branches.= _apparatus._ same as in last experiment. arrange as in fig. 98. =320. directions.= (a) note the deflection of the needle when the current passes through 1 meter of g-s wire, as shown. this will be considered as one branch of the divided circuit. (b) still allowing the current to pass as in part (a), press a piece of copper firmly across the binding-posts x and y, to electrically connect them, and note the reading of the needle. in this case the current divides at z through the two branches. what is learned from the results of (a) and (b)? (c) see if you can show the same results with apparatus arranged as in fig. 99. [illustration: fig. 98.] [illustration: fig. 99.] _=321. discussion.=_ two wires placed side by side as in (b), exp. 123, really form a conductor having twice the size (area of cross section) of one of the branches. the more paths a current has in going from one place to another, the less the resistance. (see exp. 135.) the wires are said to be in "parallel" or in "multiple arc." [illustration: fig. 100.] [illustration: fig. 101.] =experiment 124. to study the effect of decreasing the resistance in one branch of a divided circuit.= _apparatus._ galvanoscope, g v (no. 58); resistance coil, r c (no. 79); two-fluid cell, 2-f c (§ 281), or a dry cell; 6 connecting wires; metal plates, m p. _arrange_ as in fig. 100, so that the current divides into two branches at m p 1. the branches unite at m p 2. =322. directions.= (a) take the reading of g v with 2 ohms resistance in the lower branch; that is, with the whole of r c in circuit. (b) take the reading of g v with one ohm in circuit; that is, with the end of wire, 5, connected to m instead of to r. (c) cut out r c from the lower branch by replacing it with a metal plate, thus joining wires 3 and 5. compare the results from (a), (b), and (c), and explain. _=323. current in divided circuits.=_ let us consider a circuit like that shown in fig. 101. if the points, c and z, were at the same potential, no current would pass from c to z. as the current does pass, z must be at a lower potential than c; there is a _fall of potential_ from c to z. if the branch, a b, has the same resistance as r x, the same amount of current will pass through each. exp. 124 has shown that when the branches have unequal resistances, most of the current passes through the one of small resistance. if r x has a greater resistance than a b, most of the current will pass through a b. chapter xix. measurement of resistance. [illustration: fig. 102.] =experiment 125. to study the construction and use of a simple "wheatstone's bridge."= _apparatus._ fig. 102. a wheatstone's bridge, w b (no. 80), (§ 324); astatic galvanoscope, a g (no. 59); dry cell, d c (no. 51); key, k (no. 55); 7 wires with spring connectors, two of which, r and x, are equal in length; metal plate, m p, for connecting wires. _arrange_ as in fig. 102. the carbon of d c is joined to k, and this to the point, c, of the bridge. the zinc of d c connects with the point z on w b. the a g is placed between the branches for clearness. wire 3 is joined to the left-hand binding-post of a g, and wire 4 joins m p with the right-hand one. when the end of wire 3 does not touch g-s w, it is evident that as soon as k is pressed, the current divides at c on its way to z, where the branches unite again. k is used so that d c will not be polarized by steady use. [illustration: fig. 103.] =324. the simple wheatstone's bridge= (fig. 103) consists of a wooden base, w, at the ends of which are fastened two aluminum conductors, 1 and 3. at one side of w is fastened another conductor, 2. in fig. 104 are side views of the conductors. these are used merely for convenience in making connections, and take the place of the metal plates used in previous experiments. a german-silver wire, g-s w, is stretched between 1 and 3, and under this is a scale, s, divided into 100 small parts, these being tenths of the larger divisions. the ends of g-s w are held between eyelets, as shown at e, fig. 104. [illustration: fig. 104.] =reading the scale.= the value of part a can be read directly from the scale, using the lower row of figures. the point marked p, for example, would be read 3.7 (three and seven-tenths large divisions); b would be 6.3, found by subtracting 3.7 from 10. the sum of a and b must always equal 10. the 6.3 may also be read directly by using the upper row of figures for the whole numbers, counting the tenths to the left. try to divide the smallest divisions into halves, at least; that is, if a = 3.75, b = 6.25. take the readings carefully. =325. directions.= (a) touch the free end of wire, 3, to the point, c, which has a higher potential than m p. press down k for an instant only. some current should pass through a g, as a shunt. should it pass from c to m p or the reverse? note in which direction the right-hand end of the astatic needle is deflected. (b) swing the end of 3 around and touch it to the point, z, which has a lower potential than m p. press k for an instant, watch the needle, and compare with the results in (a). (c) move the free end of 3 along on g-s w, touching k at intervals, until a point is found at which the needle of a g is not deflected. how does the potential of this point compare with that of m p? _=326. discussion; equipotential points.=_ since one end of the g-s w has a higher, and its other end has a lower potential than m p, there must be, somewhere on it, a point at which the potential is the same as at m p. this place is quickly found by sliding the free end of wire, 3, along, pressing k occasionally, until a g shows that no current tends to pass through it in either direction, when the current passes from c to z through the two branches of the divided circuit. this point and m p are called _equipotential points_. if the resistance of the part, x, be increased, it should be evident that the part of the bridge-wire, b, should be also increased to find a point having the same potential as m p; that is, the end of 3 should be moved towards c. we have, in the bridge-wire, a simple means of varying the resistance of its parts, a and b. =327. use of wheatstone's bridge.= it will be found, upon trial, if we put a resistance of 2 ohms in place of r, fig. 102, and 2 ohms in place of x, that the free end of wire 3 will have to be at the center of the bridge-wire in order to get a "balance"; that is, to find the place where a g is not affected. no matter what the resistance of r and x are, provided they are equal, this will be true. the value of both a and b, on the scale, will be 5 whole spaces, no tenths. from this we see that a: b:: r: x, which reads a _is to_ b _as_ r _is to_ x; this means that a × x = b × r. supplying the values of the letters, we have 5 × 2 = 5 × 2. if we did not know the value of x, that is, if we were measuring the resistance of a coil of wire, using a 2-ohm coil as the standard, or r, we could find the value of x, knowing the other 3 parts of the proportion. 5 × x = 5 × 2, which means that 5 times the value of x is 10; hence the value of x is 10 ÷ 5 = 2 ohms. suppose that we have r = 2 ohms, which is the standard resistance coil (no. 79), and are trying to find the resistance of a coil, x. we slide the end of wire, 3, along on the bridge-wire until the correct place is found. (see exp. 125, 126, for details.) take the values of a and b (§ 324), supply them in the equation given, and work out the value of x. =328. example.= r = 2 ohms; a = 3.7; b = 6.3; to find the value of x in ohms. a: b:: r: x, which means that a × x = b × r, or 3.7 × x = 6.3 × 2. x must equal, then (6.3 × 2) ÷ 3.7 = 3.405 ohms. =note.= in practice it is most convenient to make connections as shown in fig. 105 when measuring resistances (exp. 126). the arrangement given in fig. 102 is simply for explanation. it will be seen that the smaller a is, compared with b, the larger the unknown resistance compared with your standard. [illustration: fig. 105.] =experiment 126. to measure the resistance of a wire by means of wheatstone's bridge; the "bridge method."= _apparatus._ same as in exp. 125; the two-ohm resistance coil, r c (no. 79); a coil of wire, x, as, for example, the 15-turn coil on the galvanoscope, g v (no. 58). _arrange_ as in fig. 105. you will observe that the central conductor of the bridge (2, fig. 104) takes the place of m p in previous explanations. we still have the same kind of a divided circuit as explained in exp. 125, a g being connected with points of equal potential. it will be found convenient to have d c at the right, and a g facing you at the left, the key being in front. (see exp. 107 in regard to adjusting a g.) notice that you have a standard resistance (2 ohms) in place of r, fig. 102, and an unknown resistance (galvanoscope coil) in place of x. (see § 330.) =329. directions.= (a) touch the free end of wire, 3, to the left-hand side of the bridge-wire, press the key for an instant, only, and note the direction taken by the right-hand end of the needle. move the end of wire, 3, to the right-hand side of the bridge-wire, touch key, watching needle. does the needle move more or less than before? in the same or opposite direction? if the deflections are opposite, the point that has the same potential as binding-post, 2, must be _between_ the two points touched. (b) be sure that all connections are good. find the point on g-s w, at which there is no deflection, as directed in exp. 125 (c). note the readings on the scale, as explained in § 324. (c) make the proper calculation, § 327, 328, and find the resistance of the coil of g v, the resistances of the wires joining r c and g v to the bridge being neglected. (d) make proper allowances for the resistances of the wires just mentioned (see § 330), and compare them with the results found in part (c). =330. allowances for connections.= it should be remembered that the wires joining r c and g v to the bridge also have some resistance. such connections, in regular instruments, are made by heavy copper straps or by thick, short wires, so that their resistances can be neglected. in case you use the ordinary no. 24 copper wire, as directed, the resistances of the pieces can be measured by means of the bridge, or you can calculate their resistances from the wire tables. the resistances should be allowed for. it is evident that your standard resistance is 2 ohms _plus_ the resistance of the connecting wires, and that the resistance of the coil, x, is found by deducting the resistance of its connecting wires from that found from the proportion previously used. _example._ we see from the table that the resistance of about 39 ft. 1 in. of no. 24, b and s copper wire is 1 ohm. this equals 469 in. if 469 in. have a r (resistance) of 1 ohm, 1 in. will have a r of one-469th of an ohm; that is 1 divided by 469, which equals a little over .002 ohm. for every inch of no. 24 wire used, then, for connections, we may allow .002 ohm. this will be near enough for our purposes. suppose that each connection is 18 in. long, the regular wires with connectors being used. the r of the 36 in. joined to r c will then be 36 times .002 = .072 ohm. our standard r must then be considered as 2.072 ohm. if we substitute this in the example, as stated in § 328, we have 3.7 × x = 6.3 × 2.072. x must equal (6.3 × 2.072)/3.7 = 3.528 ohm, which includes the unknown resistance and 36 in. of connections, the r of which is .002 ohm; 3.528 .072 = 3.456, the resistance of x alone. compare this with the answer to example, § 328. make allowances according to length of connectors used. _=note.=_--carefully keep all the results of these experiments in a note book for future reference. be sure that connections are good. =experiments 127-137. to measure the resistances of various wires, coils, etc., by the "bridge method."= _apparatus._ the coils of wire, etc., as stated in the "directions" of each experiment. the details of each piece of apparatus may be found by referring, from the numbers given, to the "apparatus list," and to descriptions in the paragraphs mentioned. also all the apparatus of exp. 126. =note.= make proper allowances for connections (§ 330) in all experiments in measuring resistances. =experiment 127.= =331. directions.= (a) as explained in exp. 126, measure the resistance of the 10-turn coil of g v, allowing for connections (§ 330). read the bridge-scale carefully. (b) use one-half of the 2-ohm coil as standard and repeat. =experiment 128.= =332. directions.= (a) measure the resistance of the 5-turn coil of g v (see exp. 126, etc.), using 2 ohms as standard. (b) use 1 ohm as standard, repeat, and compare results. (c) add the resistances of the 5 and 10-turn coils, and compare the sum with the resistance of the 15-turn coil, as found in exp. 126, d. the difference should be but a few hundredths of an ohm. =experiment 129.= =333. directions.= (a) measure the resistance of the coil of no. 24 copper wire (no. 89). this coil is used for later experiments. spring connectors are fastened to the ends of this coil, allowing it to be directly connected to the conductor on the bridge, so no allowance should be made for its connecting wires. (see exp. 126 for details.) mark the resistance upon the coil for future use. (see note.) =note.= the student will be surprised, perhaps, to find that different results are obtained for the resistance of a given wire in case he uses different standard resistances in the various tests; that is, he will probably get a different result in exp. 127 (a) from the result of exp. 127 (b). the difference here, however, may not be large. the best results are obtained by making the standard resistance as nearly equal as possible to the resistance to be measured, so that a balance can be found when the end of wire 3 (fig. 105) is near the center of the bridge-wire. if r, fig. 105, is much larger or smaller than x, the point desired on g-s w will be near one of its ends, and large errors thereby produced. the approximate resistance of x can be found by trial, then more or less resistance can be used for r to suit. the student should make several coils as explained in apparatus book, chapter xvii. the resistance of the different coils furnished should be measured and marked. these can be used to vary the value of r. =experiment 130.= =334. directions.= (a) measure the resistance of the coil of no. 25 copper wire (no. 90). (see exp. 126 for details and the note, exp. 129.) =experiment 131.= =335. directions.= (a) measure the combined resistance of the two coils used in exps. 129 and 130, when they are joined in "series"; that is, when one end of one coil is joined to one end of the other by means of a metal plate, the free ends being connected to the bridge (exp. 126). the current has to travel through the entire length of both coils. (b) compare this result with the sum of their separate resistances found in exps. 129 and 130. (see exp. 129, note.) =experiment 132.= =336. directions.= (a) measure the resistance of the two coils (exp. 131) when they are joined "in parallel." (see § 293.) they may be joined in parallel by connecting them both to the bridge at the same time, one end of each being slipped onto 2 (fig. 103), the other end of each being joined to 3. in this way the current has two paths, side-by-side, to get from 2 to 3. (see exp. 129, note.) (b) compare this resistance with that of exp. 131. =experiment 133.= =337. directions.= (a) measure the resistance of 1 meter of no. 28 german-silver wire. use the wire as arranged on a board, exp. 122 (figs. 96 and 98), making the connections with the bridge from binding-posts, x and z. (see exp. 129, note.) the wires connecting the bridge with the ends of the g-s wire will each have to be about 2 ft. long. in making deductions (§ 330) figure according to the length used. (b) divide the total resistance by 100 to get the resistance of 1 cm. of the wire, and carefully mark off the board into cm. this will give 100 parts between x and z. =experiment 134.= =338. directions.= (a) using the no. 28 g-s wire on the board, as arranged for exp. 122, measure the resistance of the 2 meters in series, the connections being made with the bridge from x and y, fig. 98. (b) compare the result with that of exp. 133. what is the relation between the length of a wire and its resistance? see summary of laws. (see exp. 129, note.) =experiment 135.= =339. directions.= (a) measure the resistance of the above two meters of no. 28 g-s wire when joined in parallel. (§ 293.) the binding-posts, x and y, can be joined by a short wire with connectors on its ends, or by clamping a thin strip across by means of spring connectors. use the 2-ohm coil as the standard, and make proper allowances. (§ 330.) (b) from the results of exps. 132 and 135 what can be said about the resistances of parallel circuits as compared with the resistances of the separate branches? =experiment 136.= =340. directions.= (a) arrange the 2 meters of no. 30 g-s wire on the table or board, again (exp. 121, fig. 96). (b) measure the resistance of one meter. find the value of x approximately, and use a resistance for r that will suit. (see exp. 129, note.) (c) divide the result by 100 to get the resistance of 1 cm. of the wire. (d) compare the resistance of one meter of no. 28 g-s wire, found in exp. 133, with the resistance of 1 meter of no. 30 g-s wire. what is the relation, then, between the size (area of cross-section) of a wire and its resistance? (see the results of exp. 122, and § 319, also summary of laws.) =experiment 137.= =341. directions.= (a) measure the resistance of 2 meters of no. 30 copper wire, arranged on a board as in fig. 96. (see exp. 129, note.) get the resistance of 1 meter. (b) compare the conductivities of copper and german silver by studying the results of exps. 136 and 137. which has the greater resistance? to find out how many times greater one resistance is than the other, divide the larger by the smaller. =experiment 138. to study the effect of heat upon the resistance of metals.= _apparatus._ same as for exp. 126; the coil of no. 24 wire (no. 89); a lamp or other source of heat. arrange as in fig. 105. =342. directions.= (a) measure the resistance of the coil as before, exp. 129. the result should nearly agree with that of exp. 129, provided connections, etc., are the same. (b) remove the coil from the bridge, hold it about a foot above a lamp or stove, to warm it thoroughly, but do not heat it enough to injure the covering. it will take a minute or so to warm it so that the heat will get to the inside also. (c) replace the coil, measure its resistance, and compare the result with its resistance when cold. does heat increase or decrease the resistance of a copper wire? _=343. effect of heat upon resistance.=_ although there was but the fraction of an ohm difference in the resistances of the hot and cold coil, it was evident that changes of temperature affect the conducting power of copper. this is true of all metals; but german silver and other alloys are much less affected than pure metals, so they are used in making standard resistance coils. the resistance of liquids that can be decomposed by the electric current decreases as the temperature rises. carbon acts like the liquids, while the resistance of metals _increases_ as their temperature rises. =experiment 139. to measure the resistance of a wire by the method of "substitution."= _apparatus._ the coil of no. 24 wire (no. 89), the resistance of which has been measured, but which will be considered an unknown resistance, x; g v, 2-f c, m p, connecting wires, etc., previously used; rheostat (§ 344). arrange as in fig. 106 first, then as in fig. 107. _=344. simple rheostat.=_ the no. 28 and no. 30 g-s wires stretched upon the board (fig. 96), make a convenient form of rheostat. the resistance per cm. being known from the results of exp. 133 and 136, the resistance for any number of cm. is easily found. the 10-cm. divisions should be divided into centimeters. these spaces may be marked off from the rule (no. 88). [illustration: fig. 106.] =345. directions.= (a) be sure that 2-f c gives a constant current, shown by the uniform deflection at g v, when arranged as in fig. 106. do not use a cell that quickly polarizes. the coil, x, forms a part of the circuit; it is joined to wires, 1 and 2, by means of metal plates, so that it may be quickly removed without disturbing either g v or 2-f c. carefully read the deflection at g v. (b) remove x from the circuit, and join the free end of wire, 2, to binding-post, x, and the free end of wire, 1, to a small piece of sheet copper, which can be firmly pressed upon the g-s wire to make a contact. move this along on the g-s wire until the deflection produced equals that of part (a), remembering that the longer the g-s wire in the circuit the less the deflection. make two or three trials, as one or two cm. difference in length make but a little difference in the deflection. note the number of cm. of g-s wire used, the resistance of which must equal that of the coil, x. (c) find the resistance of x by multiplying the length just found by the resistance of each cm., and compare the result with the value found by using the bridge method directly. [illustration: fig. 107.] =experiment 140. to measure the e. m. f. of a cell by comparison with the two-fluid cell.= _apparatus._ rheostat (§ 344); the two-fluid cell, 2-f c (exp. 113), the e. m. f. of which may be taken as 1 volt; dry cell, d c; galvanoscope, g v. arrange first as in fig. 107. =346. directions.= (a) be sure that 2-f c gives a constant current. take the reading of g v without the rheostat in the circuit; that is, with wires, 2 and 1, joined directly. the deflection should be 50 or 60 degrees at least, and be constant. (b) attach a small piece of copper to the end of 1, and firmly rub it along upon the g-s wire, thus introducing resistance into the circuit, until the deflection is, say, 60° (50 or 55 degrees will do). note the length of g-s wire used and call it (b). (c) gradually add more resistance by moving the end of 1 along until the deflection is 50°, 10 degrees less than before. (if the original was 50° make the new 40°). call the number of cm. of wire used (c). (d) replace 2-f c with the dry cell d c. add resistance, as before, until g v indicates a deflection of 60°, being careful not to keep the circuit closed long enough to partially polarize d c. make 2 or 3 trials, allowing d c to rest a few minutes between each. call the number of cm. of g-s wire used (d). (e) again add more resistance, as in (c), until the deflection is reduced to 50°. call the length used (e). =347. calculation.= it is known that resistances that are able to reduce the strength of the currents equally are proportional to the electromotive forces; that is, the electromotive forces of the two cells are to each other as the two resistances necessary to produce equal changes in the deflections, which, of course, indicate equal changes in the strength of the currents. since the resistances used in the two cases are directly proportional to the lengths used, we have: length (c-b): length (e-d):: e. m. f. of 2-f c: e. m. f. of d c. substitute the values found and find the e. m. f. of d c. =experiment 141. to measure the internal resistance of a cell by the "method of opposition."= _apparatus._ all the apparatus of exp. 126. two simple cells (§ 275), the plates of which should be of the same size, the same distance apart, and immersed in acid to the same extent in both. the acid in both should be of the same strength. =348. directions.= (a) connect the two cells in opposition, so that no current will be generated by them, and so that the two can be treated as a dead resistance. do this by joining the two zinc plates by a wire with connectors, and use wires to connect the copper plates to the bridge like any other unknown resistance. (b) measure the resistance of the two by the regular bridge method, allowing for wires used for connections. one-half of the resistance found will give the internal resistance of one cell. (see note.) =note.=--the standard resistance will have to be arranged to suit each particular case to make the calculations even approximately correct. (see exp. 129, note.) the standard resistance may be increased by adding the various coils and rheostat wires, their values being known. _=349. summary of laws of resistance.=_ 1. _the resistance of a wire is directly proportional to its length, provided its cross-section, material, etc., are uniform._ =example.= if 39.1 ft. of no. 24 copper wire has a resistance of 1 ohm, 78.2 ft. will have a resistance of 2 ohms, because 78.2 is twice 39.1; 70.38 ft. will have a resistance of 1.8 ohms, as (70.38 ÷ 39.1 = 1.8) it is 1.8 times 39.1. 2. _the resistance of a wire is inversely proportional to its area of cross-section._ the areas of cross-section of round wires vary as the squares of their diameters; so _the resistance of a wire is also inversely proportional to the square of its diameter, other things being equal_. =example.= a no. 30 wire has a diameter of about .01 inch, while the diameter of a no. 24 wire is about .02 in.; that is, the no. 24 has _twice_ the diam. that the no. 30 has. the area of cross-section of the no. 24, however, is four times that of the no. 30, so its resistance is but 1/4 that of the no. 30, the lengths, etc., being the same. (see wire tables.) 3. _the resistance of a wire depends upon its material, as well as upon its length, size, etc._ 4. _the resistance of a wire depends upon its temperature._ (see elementary electrical examples.) chapter xx. current strength. _=350. strength of current.=_ the water in a certain tank may be under great pressure, but if it is obliged to pass through long tubes before it can turn a water-wheel, for example, it is evident that the work done will depend not only upon the pressure in the tank, but upon the resistance to be overcome before the water gets to the wheel. the work that the water can do depends upon its _rate of flow_, and may be used to measure the _strength_ of the current. the strength of a current of electricity is measured also by the _work_ that it can do, and it depends upon its _rate of flow_ at the point measured. the strength may be determined from its magnetic, heating, or chemical effects. _=351. unit of current strength; the ampere.=_ a current having the strength of 1 ampere, when passed through a solution of silver nitrate under proper conditions, will deposit 0.001118 gramme of silver in _one second_; if passed through a solution of copper sulphate, copper plates being used for the electrodes, in the solution, 0.0003277 gramme of copper will be deposited in _one second_. (see chemical effects of the current.) the thousandth of an ampere is called the milliampere. the strength of a current is proportional to the amount of chemical work that it can do per second. (see § 357.) _=352. measurement of current strength.=_ the _galvanoscope_ previously described simply shows the presence of a current, or whether one current is larger or smaller than another. when the degree-card is used to get the relative deflections, the instrument may be called a _galvanometer_. _=the tangent galvanometer=_ is made on the same general idea as our galvanoscope, the diameter of the coil being twenty times, or more, the length of the needle. in these the strengths of the two currents compared are proportional to the tangents of the angles of deflection produced. (see elementary electrical examples.) there are several varieties of galvanometers, each designed for its special work. they are often calibrated or standardized so that the amperes of current passing through them can be read off directly from the scale. _=353. the ammeter=_ is really a galvanometer from which may be read directly the strength of a current. the coil has a low resistance so that it will not greatly reduce the strength of the current to be tested. _=the voltameter=_ measures the strength of a current by chemical means. _=354. unit of quantity; the coulomb.=_ a current having a strength of 1 ampere will do more chemical work by flowing one hour than it can do in 1 second. in speaking of the _quantity_ of electricity we introduce the element of _time_. the unit of quantity is called the _coulomb_, just as a cubic foot of water may be taken as a unit of quantity for water. a coulomb is the quantity of electricity given, in one second, by a current having a strength of 1 ampere. coulombs are found by multiplying amperes by seconds; thus, a current of 5 amperes will give 20 coulombs in 4 seconds. _=355. electrical horse-power; the watt.=_ the electric current has power to do work, and we speak of the horse-power of an electric motor in the same way as for a steam-engine. a current with the strength of 1 ampere and an e. m. f. of 1 volt has a unit of power called the watt. 746 watts make an electrical horse-power. watts = amperes × volts. watts ÷ 746 = the number of horse-power. (see transformers, also elementary electrical examples.) _=356. ohm's law.=_ it was first shown by ohm that the strength of a current is equal to its e. m. f. divided by the resistance in the circuit; that is, strength of current (amperes) = e. m. f. (volts). / resistance (ohms). if we let c stand for the strength in amperes, e for the e. m. f. in volts, and r for the resistance in ohms, we have the short formula, easily remembered, c = e/r _=357. an ampere=_ would be produced by a current of 1 volt pushing its way through a resistance of 1 ohm. knowing any two of the three, c, e, or, r, the other may be found. the resistance, r, it must be remembered, is the total resistance in the circuit, and is composed of the total internal and external resistances. (see elementary electrical examples.) _=358. internal resistance and current strength.=_ it is evident that the internal resistance of a cell varies with the position and size of the plates. we shall now study the effects of these changes upon the strength of the current. [illustration: fig. 108.] =experiment 142. having a cell with large plates, to find how the strength of the current is affected by changes in the position of the plates, the external resistance being small.= _apparatus._ galvanoscope, g v; materials for simple cell (exp. 110); connecting wires. arrange as in figure 108, omitting the wooden cross-piece. =359. directions.= (a) connect the wires with the 5-turn coil of g v, which has but little resistance. have the tumbler nearly full of dilute acid to get the effect of large plates; that is, the current has a large liquid conductor to pass through in the cell, and the _internal_ resistance will be small. g v should be properly placed n and s. (b) place the copper and zinc plates as far apart as possible in the acid, and press them against the bottom of the tumbler. note the reading of g v. it is not necessary to take readings with reversed current. (c) still pressing them against the bottom of the glass, to keep the same amount of surface under acid, slowly bring them near each other and watch the needle. (d) hold the plates about an inch apart, and against the bottom, and note the reading of g v. slowly raise the plates, keeping them the same distance apart until they are out of the acid. watch the action of the needle. make a note of your readings in degrees and write your conclusions. does a change in internal resistance affect the strength of the current? =experiment 143. having a cell with small plates to find how the strength of the current is affected by changes in the position of the plates, the external resistance being small.= _apparatus._ same as in exp. 142, the acid, however, being but 1 in. deep in the tumbler; that is, we have the effect of a cell with small plates, each being about 1 in. by 1/2 in. =360. directions.= (a) repeat (b) and (c) of exp. 142, recording the reading of g v in each case. (b) compare the results with those of exp. 142, remembering that the _internal_ resistance is larger than before. is the current as strong with small plates as with large plates when the external resistance is small? when the external resistance is small (the 5-turn coil, for example), should the cell have a high or low internal resistance to produce the greatest effect upon the needle? [illustration: fig. 109.] =experiment 144. to find whether the changes in current strength, due to changes in internal resistance, are as great when the external resistance is large, as they are when the external resistance is small.= _apparatus._ same as for exp. 142, 143, also the rheostat containing the two meters of g-s wire (exp. 121). =361. directions.= (a) arrange as in fig. 109, the external resistance being 2 meters of no. 30 g-s wire in series with g v. the 2-f c in the fig. is replaced, however, by the simple cell as in exp. 143. (b) find the effect upon the strength of the current of moving the plates about when but 1 in. of acid is in the tumbler. (c) nearly fill the tumbler with acid and repeat (b), taking readings with plates near each other and as far apart as possible. lift them nearly out of the acid and take the reading. (d) still increase the external resistance of the circuit by adding coils of wire or the meter of no. 28 g-s wire and repeat. is the strength of the current greatly affected by _slight_ changes in the internal resistance when the external resistance is large? _=362. discussion.=_ we shall study, by means of figures, how changes in internal resistance affect the strength of the current. let r stand for the total external resistance of a circuit, and r for the total internal resistance of the cell or cells; ohm's law, then, will be expressed by c = e / (r + r) =example.= let us take a circuit (a) when the external resistance, r, is small, and (b) when r is large compared with r, e being taken as 1 volt in both cases. (a) let r = 1, and r = 2; substituting these values in the formula above, we have: c = 1 / (1 + 2) = 1 / 3 = .33+ ampere. now let the internal resistance, r, be slightly increased from 2 to 3 ohms; the value of c then becomes 1/4 ampere, as r + r = 4. the change in c, then, is the difference between 1/3 and 1/4; and this expressed in decimals becomes .33 .25 = .08 ampere. (b) let r = 200 ohms, and r = 2 ohms as in (a). substituting these values we have, c = 1 / (200 + 2) = 1 / 202 = .00495 ampere. increasing r from 2 to 3, as before, etc., we find that c = 1 divided by 203 = .00492 ampere. the above shows clearly (a) that the value of c is changed considerably by changes in r when r is _small_, and (b) that changes in r produce very slight changes in c when r is _large_. review your results of exps. 142-144. (see elementary electrical examples.) _=363. arrangement of cells and current strength.=_ we have seen that internal resistance affects current strength. in joining cells, then, attention must be given to the internal resistance as well as to the e. m. f. of the combination. _=364. cells in series.=_ it has been shown by careful experiments that the e. m. f. of two cells joined in series (fig. 110) is equal to the sum of the e. m. f. of each. ten cells, joined in series, have ten times the e. m. f. of one cell, provided they have the same e. m. f. as the zn of one is joined to the cu of the other, the current is obliged to pass through one solution after the other; that is, the internal resistance of the two in series is equal to the sum of their internal resistances. ten cells, joined in series, have ten times the internal resistance of one cell, provided they have equal internal resistances. [illustration: fig. 110.] [illustration: fig. 111.] _=365. cells abreast.=_ when the positive plates are joined together and the negative plates are also joined together (fig. 111), the cells are said to be _abreast_, _in parallel_, or in _multiple arc_. it has been shown that two cells of equal strength, joined abreast, have the same e. m. f. as one cell. the two cu plates, being joined, must have the same potential; all the zn plates have the same potential, so the difference of potential at the terminals of the combination is the same as that at the terminals of a single cell. in two cells abreast (fig. 111) the current has two liquid paths, side by side, to get from cu to zn; this makes the internal resistance one-half that of one cell, provided their internal resistances are equal. ten cells, of equal internal resistance, when joined abreast, have one-tenth the internal resistance of one cell. =experiment 145. to find the best way to join two similar cells when the external resistance is small.= _apparatus._ two simple cells using dilute sulphuric acid, with copper and zinc elements, as in exp. 112; galvanoscope, g v; connecting wires, etc. have the zincs well amalgamated. remove them from the acid as soon as readings are taken. =366. directions.= (a) partly fill the tumblers with the acid. join the cells in series (fig. 110), then connect wire 1 (fig. 110) with the left-hand binding-post of g v, and wire 2 with the middle one, thus putting the 5-turn coil into the circuit. take the reading of g v. (b) join the cells in multiple arc (fig. 111), connecting them as in (a) with g v. write down the reading, and compare it with that found in (a). (c) take the reading with but 1 cell joined to g v. =experiment 146. to find the best way to join two similar cells when the external resistance is large.= _apparatus._ same as for exp. 145, also the rheostat containing 2 metres of no. 28 or 30 g-s wire. arrange the g-s wire in series with the 15-turn coil of g v, as shown in fig. 109, two simple cells being used, however, instead of 2-f c as shown. =367. directions.= (a) take the reading of g v when the two cells are in series (exp. 145), the external resistance being the 15-turn coil and g-s wire. (b) join the cells in parallel and take the reading, using the same external resistance as in (a). (c) increase the external resistance by adding coils of wire or 2 metres of no. 28 g-s wire and repeat (a) and (b). what does the experiment show? (d) take the reading with 1 cell and large external resistance. _=368. best arrangement of cells.=_ it will be seen by experiments that with a given number of cells the strongest current is produced when they are arranged so that the internal resistance of the battery nearly equals the external resistance of the circuit. when the external resistance is small, the internal resistance may be kept down by joining the cells in parallel; and, although the e. m. f. is also kept small, the value of c will be larger than it would be with a larger internal resistance and a larger e. m. f. when the external resistance is large, the internal resistance can be made large by joining the cells in series. the advantage comes, however, from having a large value of e. a large resistance can not hold back a current of large e. m. f. by joining the cells in series the value of e is made large, and the value of c becomes large even though there is an increased internal resistance. (see elementary electrical examples.) chapter xxi. chemical effects of the electric current. _=369. chemical action and electricity.=_ we have learned that the electric current is produced, in the cell, by chemical action. there is a definite relation between the chemical action and the current produced. we are now to study the changing of electrical energy back, again, to chemical energy. [illustration: fig. 112.] _=370. electrolysis=_ is the name given to the process of decomposing chemical compounds by passing the electric current through them. the compound decomposed is the _electrolyte_. fig. 112 shows a tumbler of liquid (electrolyte) through which the current is to pass in the direction of the arrow. two carbon plates, a and c, are in the liquid, and are joined to the source of electricity. the current enters at a (_anode_) and leaves at c (_cathode_). [illustration: fig. 113.] =experiment 147. to study the electrolysis of water.= _apparatus._ the two simple cells (§ 275) joined in series (§ 364), although two daniell or two dry cells will be better. a tumbler of water containing a few drops of sulphuric acid to make the water a conductor. two pieces of sheet copper will serve as the electrodes. the galvanoscope may also be put into the circuit as in fig. 113. =371. directions.= (a) allow the current to pass, and note (1) whether gas is set free at both electrodes, a and c, and (2) at which the quantity of gas is the greater. if very little gas is produced use more cells. (b) remove a and c from the liquid, to remove the gas, then watch the action of the needle of g v as the water is again decomposed. _=372. composition of water.=_ the two gases liberated in exp. 147 were hydrogen (h) and oxygen (o). the chemical formula for water is h_{2}o, which means that it is composed of two parts, by volume, of h and one part of o. with proper apparatus these gases may be collected, tested, and the amounts measured. _=373. electromotive force of polarization.=_ we know that h and o have a strong chemical attraction, or affinity, for each other. in order, then, for the current to decompose water, this attraction between the gases must be overcome; and as soon as the current ceases, these gases try to rush together again to form water. this sets up an electromotive force of almost 1.5 volts; in fact, a current is produced if the h and o be allowed to form water again (see storage cells). to decompose water the current must have an e. m. f. of over 1.5 volts to overcome this e. m. f. of polarization. it was seen in the study of simple cells that the current became rapidly weaker as hydrogen was deposited upon the copper plate, on account of this opposing electromotive force. in decomposing other compounds, the anode is made of the metal which is to be deposited at the cathode. if copper is to be deposited from a solution of copper sulphate the anode should be a copper plate; this keeps the solution at same strength, and avoids the opposing e. m. f. of polarization; that is, a very weak current will do the work (see exp. 149), because the electrodes are of the same metal. =experiment 148. to coat iron with copper.= _apparatus._ iron nail, solution of copper sulphate (§ 283). =374. directions.= (a) clean the nail with sandpaper, then hold it in the copper solution for a few seconds. machinists often cover iron or steel tools with a thin coating of copper in this way. [illustration: fig. 114.] =experiment 149. to study the electrolysis of a solution of copper sulphate.= _apparatus._ galvanoscope, g v; two-fluid cell, 2-f c; a tumbler, t, containing about an inch of copper sulphate solution (§ 283); a wooden cross-piece to which is fastened a copper strip; carbon rod, c; wire 2 is held to c by a rubber band. _arrange_ as in fig. 114, so that cu will be the _anode_ (§ 370), the current passing as shown by arrow. a dry cell may be used for short experiments instead of the 2-f c. =375. directions.= (a) the carbon being clean, allow the current to pass, c and cu being kept about 1/2 in. apart. watch the surface of c, and note the beautiful color of the deposited copper. save the coated rod for the next experiment. has the cu plate been acted upon? _=376. electroplating=_ is the name given to the process of coating substances with metal with the aid of the electric current. the copper sulphate, cuso_{4}, is broken up into cu and so_{4} by the current. the cu goes to the cathode, and the so_{4} attacks the anode, gradually dissolving it if it be copper; that is, the _metal_ part of cuso_{4} is carried in the direction of the current. most metals are coated with copper before they are silver or gold plated. a solution of silver is used for silver plating, silver being used as the anode. =experiment 150. to study the chemistry of electroplating.= _apparatus._ same as in last experiment, but use two carbon rods for the electrodes. arrange as in fig. 114, with the cu replaced by another carbon. two simple cells (§ 275) are also needed. =377. directions.= (a) allow the current to pass as before. is copper still deposited? does anything occur now at the surface of the anode? is the copper deposited as rapidly as before? (b) try the effect of the two simple cells joined in series, instead of the two-fluid cell. (c) after a fair coating of copper has been deposited upon the carbon cathode, reverse the direction of the current through the copper solution; that is, use the coated rod for the anode. allow the current to pass until a change takes place in the anode. _=378. discussion.=_ ions are the names given to the parts into which an electrolyte is decomposed by the electric current. in the case of cuso_{4}, the ions are cu and so_{4}, which is called an acid radical. this so_{4} can not dissolve carbon or platinum, so these are used when water is to be electrolyzed. where copper is used as the anode for copper plating, the so_{4} attacks it, forming cuso_{4} again, and this keeps the solution strong. if carbon were used instead, the so_{4} would take h_{2} from the water around the anode and h_{2}so_{4} (sulphuric acid) would be formed, the oxygen of the water being set free at the anode. the amount of cu dissolved from the copper anode equals nearly the amount deposited upon the cathode. exp. 150 shows that the metal is carried in the direction of the current. as hydrogen is produced at the cathode it is chemically considered a metal. _=379. electrotyping=_ consists in making a copy in metal, of a woodcut, page of type, etc. a mould or impression of the type is first made in wax, or other suitable material (the pages of this book, for example, as set up by the printer). these moulds are, of course, the reverse of the type. they are coated with graphite to make them conduct electricity, and hung as the cathode, in a bath of copper sulphate. after a thin coat of copper has been deposited by an electric current, the wax is removed and the thin copper backed with soft metal. the metal surface next to the wax will be just like the type, only made of copper. these plates or _electrotypes_ can be printed from, the original type being used to set up another page. (see "things a boy should know about electricity.") _=380. voltameters=_ are cells used to measure the strength of an electric current. in the _water voltameter_ the hydrogen and oxygen produced are measured. the h acts like a metal and goes to the cathode, two parts of h being formed to one of o. _copper voltameter._ this cell measures the amount of copper deposited in a given time by a current. the copper cathode is weighed before and after the current flows. the weight of cu deposited is then divided by the number of seconds during which the current passed, and this result, in turn, by .000328, which will give the average strength of the current in amperes. (see § 351.) other forms of voltameters are also used. in all voltameters the quantity of metal deposited is proportional to the time that the current flows, and to its strength. [illustration: fig. 115.] =experiment 151. to study the construction and action of a simple "storage" cell.= _apparatus._ two lead plates, l p, (nos. 77, 78) fastened to a wooden cross-piece (§ 275). the spring-connectors should not be forced upon the thick lead. fasten one end of the wire under the screw-head. a tumbler two-thirds full of dilute sulphuric acid (§ 258); the astatic galvanoscope, a g; wires to form connections; the two simple cells joined in series. _arrange_ as in fig. 115. one l p is joined to binding-post, l, of a g by the wire marked 1; wire 2 connects the other l p to the copper cu. wire 3 joins the zinc to any thin metal plate, m p, which is used for convenience, so that the spring connectors can be quickly slipped on or off. wire 4 joins m p with binding-post r of a g. =381. directions.= (a) get clearly in mind the direction in which the right-hand end of the astatic needle is deflected when the current passes, remembering that it passes into a g at l and leaves at r. allow the current to flow for 10 or 15 minutes through the circuit, at the same time watching the needle to see whether the strength of the current remains constant. (b) remove the connector from cu, swing it over into the position of the dotted line (fig. 115), slip the connector upon m p and watch the needle. this cuts the cells out of the circuit; but, if you desire, also remove wire 3 from m p. does the storage cell, s c, produce any current? does it pass through a g in the same direction as that which came directly from the two cells? (c) try the dry cell in place of the two simple cells. try 2 other cells in series if you have them. _=382. secondary or storage cells=_ must be charged by a current before they can give out a current. _electricity_ is not really stored. chemical changes are produced in the storage cell by the charging current, as in the voltameter or electroplating bath; and it is, then, potential chemical energy that is stored. when the new compounds are allowed to go back to their original condition by joining the electrodes of the charged cell a current is produced. in other words, an electric current produces chemical changes in the cell by electrolysis, and these new compounds have an e. m. f. of polarization because they are constantly willing and anxious to get back to their old state. the plates are lead and are usually coated with compounds of lead. hydrogen and oxygen are given out at the electrodes. the current from a dynamo is used to charge secondary batteries. (see "things a boy should know about electricity.") chapter xxii. electromagnetism. _=383. electromagnetism=_ is the name given to magnetism that is developed by electricity. you have already seen that if a magnetic needle be placed in the magnetic field of a _magnet_, its n pole will point in the direction in which the lines of force pass on their way from the n to the s pole of the magnet. you have also seen that in the galvanoscope, etc., a coil of wire acts like a magnet when a current passes through it. can we not, then, use the needle to study the lines of force about wires and coils? [illustration: fig. 116.] [illustration: fig. 117.] =experiment 152. to study the lines of magnetic force about a straight wire carrying a current.= _apparatus._ the compass, o c; key, k; dry cell, d c. arrange as in fig. 116. =384. directions.= (a) arrange the wire so that the current will flow through it from n to s over the compass-needle as soon as the circuit is closed (fig. 117, a). press k for an instant only, and note the direction in which the n pole is deflected. repeat two or three times until you get clearly in mind the direction taken by the needle. sketch the result in your note-book, and compare with fig. 118, a. the arrow shows the direction of the current. (b) let the current pass for an instant from n to s and _under_ the needle, as shown in fig. 117, b. sketch result. (c) let the current pass for an instant from s to n _above_ the needle (fig. 117, c). sketch result. (d) let it pass from s to n _under_ the needle (fig. 117, d). sketch result. (e) let it pass through the wire from east to west (fig. 117, f) above the needle, then under it, and note result. compare the results with those indicated in fig. 118. [illustration: fig. 118.] [illustration: fig. 119.] _=385. lines of force about a wire.=_ when a current passes through a wire, the needle, over or under it, tends to take a position at right angles to the wire. this shows that the lines of force pass _around_ the wire and not in the direction of its length. the needle does not swing entirely perpendicular to the wire; that is, to the e and w line, because the earth is at the same time pulling its n pole towards the n. if the needle had no pointing power, and at the same time retained its magnetic field, it would point exactly at right angles to the wire as soon as the current passed. if you look along the wire, fig. 119, from the point, c, towards the positions, a and b, you will see (a) that _under_ the wire the lines of force pass to the left, and that _above_ the wire (b) they pass towards the right. this is because the n pole points in the directions mentioned. (see fig. 118.) looking along the wire from z towards position, d and c, you will see just the opposite to the above, as the current comes _towards_ you. _rule._--when the current goes from you, the lines of force pass around the wire in a clockwise direction, and when the current comes toward you they pass around it in an anti-clockwise direction. _=386. ampere's rule=_ may be used to remember what has been learned in exp. 152. _if you imagine yourself swimming in the wire with the current, always facing the needle, the n-seeking pole of the needle will always be deflected towards your left hand._ when the needle is above the wire you must imagine that you swim upon your back, in order to _face_ the needle. _another rule._--hold the right hand with the thumb extended and with the fingers pointing in the direction of the current, the palm being towards the needle and on the opposite side of the wire from the needle. the n-seeking pole will then be deflected in the direction in which the thumb points. _=387.=_ if a wire carrying a strong current be dipped in iron filings, the magnetic field about the wire acts by induction upon the particles of filings, making magnets of them. these cling to each other simply because they are little magnets. _=388. lines of force about parallel wires.=_ when a current passes in the same direction in two parallel wires the lines of force pass around the wires in the same direction in both, and the magnetic fields attract each other. when the currents flow in opposite directions the magnetic fields repel each other. =experiment 153. to study the lines of force about a coil of wire like that upon the galvanoscope.= _apparatus._ galvanoscope, g v; dry cell; key; compass. arrange as in fig. 116, using g v instead of the compass shown. the coil of g v should be placed in the e and w line. the current can pass only when the key is pressed. connect the wires with g v, so that the current will pass through the 15-turn coil from w to e on top of the coil; that is, so that the current will have a "clockwise" motion. fig. 120 represents a front view of the coil. [illustration: fig. 120.] [illustration: fig. 121.] =389. directions.= (a) hold the compass in the various places marked with a dot (fig. 120) and note the directions taken by its n pole. make a circle similar to the one shown to represent the coil, and sketch upon it the way in which the lines of force pass around it according to your observations. (b) make a diagram like fig. 121, which represents a cross-section of the coil through the center. imagine that you have removed the top half of the coil and that you are looking down upon the ends of the wire of the lower half. draw curved arrows about the coil at w and e to show which way the lines of force are passing. compare your results with those in fig. 119, remembering that at e, fig. 121, the current is going away from you. (c) move o c back and forth on the center-line that runs n and s through the coil, and note the positions of the compass-needle. does the coil seem to have poles? (d) reverse the current through the coil and repeat your observations. =experiment 154. to study the magnetic field about a small coil of wire.= _apparatus._ a coil of wire (no. 89), described in § 390; current reverser, c r (no. 57); dry cell; connecting wires, etc. =390. coils= of wire for some of the following experiments should be wound upon wooden spools that have been turned down thin, so that the wire will be as near the central hole as possible. they should be wound with a winder. (see apparatus book, chapter x.) for convenience we shall call the starting end of the coil, that is, the end that comes from the wire that is near the center, the _inside end_, i e. the end of the last layer of the coil we shall call the _outside end_, o e. these letters should be noted in the diagrams. see apparatus list for details of the special coils used in these experiments. [illustration: fig. 122.] =391. directions.= (a) arrange as in fig. 122, so that the axis of the coil will lie in the e and w line. place o c about 2 in. from the e end of the coil. press one lever of c r so that the current will pass around the coil for an instant in a clockwise direction; that is, so that it will enter the coil at o e. note the action of the needle. if the needle is not affected move it nearer the coil and press the lever again. get clearly in mind the connections, the direction in which the n end of the needle is deflected, etc. is the e end of the coil a n or a s pole? (b) reverse the current through the coil. what effect has it upon the polarity of the e end of the coil? (c) place o c at the west end of the coil and repeat (a) and (b). (d) place o c in various positions about the coil and note the action of the needle when the current passes. does this coil act like a magnet, having poles, magnetic field, etc.? [illustration: fig. 123.] _=392. polarity of coils.=_ it is evident from exps. 153 and 154 that a coiled conductor has poles, magnetic field, etc., when a current passes, and that it strongly resembles a magnet, even though no iron enters into its construction. we may say that the coil becomes magnetized by the electric current. fig. 123 shows a right handed coil or helix of wire, the current passing as shown by the small arrows. the left-hand end is a s pole because the current passes around it in a clockwise direction. when you face the right-hand end of the coil the current is seen to pass around it in an anti-clockwise direction; this produces a n pole. as the n pole of the magnetic needle is attracted toward the s pole of the coil, it is clear that the lines of force pass through the inside of the coil as shown by the large arrows. they then curve through the air and return to the s pole as with magnets. =experiment 155. to test the attracting and "sucking" power of a magnetized coil or helix.= _apparatus._ the coil, battery, etc., used in exp. 154, fig. 122; a sewing-needle. [illustration: fig. 124.] =393. directions.= (a) arrange the coil, etc., as described in exp. 154. the coil need not lie in the e and w line, however, and a key may be used instead of the current reverser. (b) magnetize the needle so that its point will be a n pole. (c) tie a thread about the center of the magnetized needle, hold the thread in the hand so that the s pole of the needle will swing freely at the hole at the right-hand end of the coil (fig. 124). if the current passes as directed, the right-hand end of the coil will be a n pole. what happens to the needle when the key is pressed for an instant. (d) change the needle to the left end of the coil and repeat. (e) try a nail, pen, iron, etc., instead of the needle. =experiment 156. to find whether a piece of steel can be permanently magnetized by an electric current.= _apparatus._ same as for last experiment; an unmagnetized sewing-needle; the compass. =394. directions.= (a) be sure that the needle is not magnetized. it should attract both ends of the compass-needle. how can any magnetism in the needle be removed? (b) place the needle inside of the coil with its _point_ to the east; that is, with its point at the n pole of the coil, and its head at the s pole. close the circuit for an instant. test the needle again for poles. is the point a n or a s pole? (c) turn the needle end for end in the coil, and see whether its polarity can be reversed. (d) experiment with iron wire, nails, steel pens, spring steel, etc. [illustration: fig. 125.] =experiment 157. to study the effect of a piece of iron placed inside of a magnetized coil of wire.= _apparatus._ same as in exp. 154; a short rod or iron _core_, i c, of soft iron (no. 92) that will fit inside of the coil. this combination is called an electromagnet. =395. directions.= (a) arrange first as for exp. 154, fig. 122, with the coil in the e and w line, no core being used, and place o c about 6 in. from the right-hand end of the coil. (b) press the lever for an instant to see whether the field of the coil is strong enough to move the compass-needle at that distance. move o c a little nearer or farther from the coil until the needle _just_ moves, when the circuit is closed. (c) place i c inside of the coil (fig. 125), and repeat (b) to see whether the magnetic field of the coil is stronger or weaker than before. (d) study the location of the poles. can they be reversed? chapter xxiii. electromagnets. _=396. electromagnets=_ are important to the student of electricity. they form the principal part of nearly every electrical instrument. you have seen that a wire has a magnetic field about it the instant a current passes through it. a coil, or helix of wire, has a stronger field than a straight wire carrying the same current, because each turn, or convolution, adds its field to the fields of the other turns. by having a _core_ of soft iron instead of air, wood, or other non-magnetic material, the strength of the magnet is greatly increased. the central core may be permanently fixed in the coil, or it may be removable. (see apparatus book, chapter ix, for home-made electromagnets.) _=397. cores of electromagnets.=_ a strong magnet has more lines of force passing from its n pole through the air to its s pole than a weak magnet. by increasing the number of lines of force we increase the strength of a magnet. it has been seen, in experiments with permanent magnets, that lines of force do not pass as readily through air as through soft iron, and that lines of force will go out of their way to pass through iron. it was learned in exp. 154 that inside of a helix (fig. 123) the lines of force pass from the s to the n pole; they then spread out through the air and pass back on all sides of the coil to its s pole, as in the case of permanent magnets. the air around and inside of a helix offers a great resistance to the lines of force, and tends to weaken the magnetic field. when part of the circuit consists of an iron core, which is a splendid conductor of lines of force, the magnetic field is greatly increased in strength. =experiments 158-163. to study straight electromagnets.= _apparatus._ a good dry cell or other source of a fairly strong current; coil with soft iron core; key; wires with connectors, etc.; small nails; iron-filings; compass; large wire nail; tin box (no. 94) to act as a base for the electromagnets. =experiment 158. lifting power.= =398. directions.= (a) join the cell, key, and coil, as explained in exp. 154, so that the current will pass only when the key is pressed. place the core inside of the coil (fig. 125). two good cells in series can be used to advantage. (b) hold the coil in a vertical position near small nails, iron filings, tin boxes, etc.; then press the key and raise coil; carry the clinging iron to another place, break the circuit at the key, and explain the result. why do nails cling more strongly to the core than filings after the circuit is broken? =experiment 159. residual magnetism of core.= =399. directions.= (a) after the current has passed through the coil with the core in place, remove the core and test it for magnetism with the compass. will the small end of the core attract both poles of the compass-needle, or is it slightly magnetized? (b) if there is any residual magnetism, strike the core with a hammer and test again. (c) use a soft steel wire nail for the core, and repeat (a) and (b). why does soft iron make a better core than steel for electromagnets? which should be the more easily magnetized? =experiment 160. magnetic tick.= =400. directions.= (a) join the electromagnet with the cell and key as before (exp. 154). hold one end of the core firmly against the top of a tin box which should stand upon the table and which should act as a sounding-board. the flat boxes used in the experiments on static electricity are good for this, or use the tin box, no. 94, for a base. rapidly open and close the circuit by means of the key and listen for any clicks made by the core. (b) listen for this sound in telegraph sounders, electric bells, etc., if you have them. the armature should be held, of course, so that slight sounds can be heard. _=401. discussion.=_ a bar of iron becomes slightly longer when it is magnetized, the particles of iron being made to point in the same direction. as soon as the current ceases to flow through the coil the particles of the soft core nearly all resume their mixed positions. the click heard is supposed to be due to the changes in the molecules of iron. the core becomes gradually warmer when it is rapidly magnetized and demagnetized by a strong current. [illustration: fig. 126.] =experiment 161. magnetic figures.= =402. directions.= (a) arrange as in fig. 126. the key should be used in case a dry cell acts as the source of the current. two good cells joined in series can be used to advantage. lay the coil flat upon the table and place on it a piece of stiff, smooth paper, or a sheet of glass. (b) sprinkle a few iron filings upon the glass, which may be held in place by books. gently tap the glass with a pencil while you close the circuit at the key. do the filings arrange themselves as in the case of permanent magnets? make a sketch of the field, remembering that you have both n and s poles, and compare it with previous results. [illustration: fig. 127.] =experiment 162. magnetic figures.= =403. directions.= (a) arrange as in fig. 126, but stand the coil on end, using the base as directed in § 407, to hold it firmly in position. join the ends, o e and i e, to the key as before. fig. 127 shows a top view of the coil and base. (b) with books, etc., fix a piece of stiff, smooth paper, or glass just over the top of the core, and proceed as in exp. 161 to study the field. see § 417 for making permanent pictures of magnetic fields. =experiment 163. magnetic field.= =404. directions.= (a) use same arrangement as for exp. 162, except filings and glass, which are replaced by the compass. (b) hold the compass about 2 in. from the top pole of the electromagnet, close the circuit for a second or two and note action of needle. is the top n or s, when the current enters the coil at o e? compare result with § 392. (c) move the compass quickly about the pole, the circuit being closed, and note action of needle. compare result with directions taken by particles of iron filings in exp. 163. (d) reverse the direction of the current through the coil and test the nature of the pole at the top. [illustration: fig. 128.] [illustration: fig. 129.] _=405. horseshoe electromagnets.=_ fig. 128 shows a simple form of electromagnet with two coils which have a bent piece of iron as a core for both. the coils have to be wound on by hand in this form. as this is troublesome, the coils are generally wound on two separate cores which are joined by a _yoke_ (§ 406), which takes the place of the curved part in fig. 128. the separate coils can be quickly made with a "winder" and joined to suit. (see apparatus book, chapter ix, for home-made electromagnets.) fig. 129 shows a top view of a home-made experimental horseshoe electromagnet. the coils are joined by an iron strap, called the _yoke_, which is screwed to a wooden base. a strip of iron placed above the magnets to be attracted by them, when the current passes, is called the _armature_. (see telegraph sounders.) _=406. use of yoke.=_ it has been explained (§ 82) why horseshoe magnets are, in general, better than straight ones. the same is true of electromagnets; there are two poles to attract, and two to induce. the lines of force pass through the yoke on their way from one core to the other, and this reduces the resistance to them. the strength of the horseshoe magnet would be greatly reduced if the lines of force were obliged to pass through two air spaces instead of one; in fact, if there were no yoke we should have simply two straight magnets. the yoke should be made of soft iron. [illustration: fig. 130.] [illustration: fig. 131.] =407. experimental magnets= are quickly joined to a tin base (no. 94), which has 3 holes punched in, through which screws can be put to hold the cores in place. fig. 127 shows plan of tin. fig. 130 shows how removable cores are fastened to the base, the coils being on the spools, and fig. 131 shows how home-made coils on bolts can be used. the coils on bolts should be wound as directed in apparatus book, chapter x. the tin base also serves as the yoke. _removable cores._ fig. 130. these are of soft iron (no. 92, 93). in one end of each is a hole for the screws, s. part of the tin has been cut away in the fig. the copper washer, c w, should be used. (see § 408.) connectors are fastened to the ends of the coils (§ 226-230). _bolt cores._ fig. 131. after winding on the coils, as directed in apparatus book, remove the nut and put on an extra washer, e w, so that the ends of the coils will not be pressed against the tin, but come out between the two washers. push the screw-end of the bolt through holes (about 2 in. apart) punched in the tin, then put on the nut, as shown. do not force the nut on too far,--just far enough to hold the cores in place. the ends of the wires are not shown in figs. 130, 131. connectors are fastened to them (§ 408). [illustration: fig. 132.] =408. method of joining coils.= to produce the best results the poles of the horseshoe electromagnet should be unlike. as the coils are wound alike, their ends must be joined in such a manner that the current will pass around them in opposite directions; that is, if the current enters one coil at the outside end, o e, it must enter the other coil at the inside end, i e. fig. 132 shows a plan of the connections, spring connectors being fastened to the coil-ends, to allow rapid and easy changes in the arrangement. l, m, and r are pieces of metal fastened to a strip of wood (no. 95), used to make connections from cells or other apparatus. they are turned up at each end as in fig. 104, 3. care should be taken not to get short circuits by allowing two wires to touch the tin base. by changing the ends of the coils upon l, m, and r (left, middle, and right), and by changing the direction in which the current enters the "combination connecting plates" (no. 95), it is evident that the nature of the poles can be regulated to suit. =experiments 164-173. to study horseshoe electromagnets.= _apparatus._ coils of wire with cores and yoke like those explained in this chapter. coils fastened to tin base or yoke with wires leading from them to the combination connecting plates (no. 95, fig. 132), are very handy. cells; iron filings; compass; iron strip (no. 76). =experiment 164. to test the poles.= =409. directions.= (a) arrange as in fig. 126, but use the experimental magnets and combination connections (fig. 132) in place of the single coil shown in fig. 126. join o of the key with l, and zn of the cell with r of fig. 132. when the key is pressed the current will enter the magnets from l and leave at r. (b) with the compass test the polarity of the cores as in exp. 163, b, c. make a sketch of the arrangement, and note which pole is n and which s. (c) see which way the current must pass around each coil, by the way it is wound, and compare the results of (b) with exp. 154, fig. 123. =experiment 165. to test the poles.= =410. directions.= (a) arrange as in exp. 164, but reverse the direction of the current through the coils. do this by joining o of the key (fig. 126) with r of fig. 132, and zn of the cell with l. (b) repeat (b) and (c) of exp. 164 and study results. [illustration: fig. 133.] =experiment 166. to test the poles.= =411. directions.= (a) arrange all connections as in exp. 164, then reverse the positions of o e and i e of coil a; that is, join o e to m, and i e to l, fig. 132. this will make unlike ends come together at m; in other words, when the current enters at l and leaves at r it will pass around both coils in the same direction. (b) study the nature of the poles, as in exps. 164, 165, and note results. _note._--fig. 133 shows simply the two cores of a horseshoe electromagnet with arrows to indicate in which direction the current is passing in each coil to produce n and s poles. =experiment 167. to study the inductive action of one core upon the other.= =412. directions.= (a) arrange as for exp. 164, but join the wire from zn of the cell to m (fig. 132). in this way coil b will be cut out of the circuit. place the coils in the e and w line. (b) find about how far the residual magnetism of the core of b can act upon the compass-needle, holding the compass on the side away from coil a, no current passing. (c) press the key for an instant, and note whether the magnetism of coil b has been made stronger or weaker. explain the action of core a on core b. =experiment 168. magnetic figures.= =413. directions.= (a) arrange as in exp. 164. with books, etc., fix a piece of smooth, stiff paper, or a sheet of glass, just above the poles of the electromagnets. (b) sprinkle iron filings upon the glass, and gently tap it while the circuit is closed at the key for a few seconds. make a sketch of the magnetic figure produced. do the lines of force from the opposite poles attract or repel each other? see § 417 for making permanent figures. (see "things a boy should know about electricity" for drawings of magnetic figures.) _note._--if possible, use two or three good cells in series for making magnetic figures, as a fairly strong field is best. =experiment 169. magnetic figures.= =414. directions.= (a) arrange apparatus as for exp. 165, and make the magnetic figure for this combination, as directed in exp. 168. sketch and study the results. =experiment 170. magnetic figures.= =415. directions.= (a) arrange the apparatus and connections as in exp. 166, and make the magnetic figure of this combination as directed in exp. 168. in this case the poles are alike. sketch and study the results. =experiment 171. magnetic figures.= =416. directions.= (a) arrange apparatus and connections as in exp. 167, and make the magnetic figure of the combination as directed in exp. 168. compare the figure produced with that of exp. 168. in this case the current passes through but one coil. =417. permanent magnetic figures= can be made in several ways for future study and comparison. (a) _paraffine paper figures._ make paraffine paper as directed in apparatus book, page 135. for this purpose smooth, stiff, _white_ paper is best, so that the filings will show plainly, and but a thin coating of paraffine should be given. place the magnets upon the table, lay over them a piece of unparaffined paper, and fix the paraffine paper directly over this. this is necessary, as the coated paper sticks when heated. for electromagnets it will be necessary to support the edges of the paper with books, etc. sprinkle on the filings and tap the paper to make them arrange themselves while the circuit is closed. after the lines of force show plainly, the current need not be used again, provided the paper be kept perfectly still. pass the flame of a bunsen burner over the paper to melt the coating. this will, no doubt, make the two pieces of paper stick together, and permanently fix the particles of filings in place. do not heat the paper too much--just enough to melt the paraffine. if you have no gas, hold a fire-shovel, containing hot coals, over the paper. as soon as the paraffine cools, the figures will stand considerable handling. _blue print figures_ are very pretty, and last indefinitely. get some blue-print paper at a photographer's, who will give you directions about "developing" it with water. keep this in the dark, and take out but one sheet at a time for experiments. to make the figures, take your apparatus near a window where bright sunlight comes in. pull down the curtain so that you have but a dim light when you make the magnetic figure, as directed before. after the lines of force show plainly, raise the curtain, and let the bright sunlight shine on it for 5 or 6 minutes, or until the surface of the paper has a rich, bronze color. the paper cannot be acted upon by the light under the particles of filings. quickly shake the filings from the paper, and wash it in 3 changes of water to "develop" it, then pin the paper up to dry. =experiment 172. lifting power.= =418. directions.= (a) arrange the apparatus as in exp. 164. hold an iron strip (no. 76), a screw-driver, or other iron bar directly over and near the poles of the experimental electromagnet. close the circuit at the key, then lift the magnets by the "armature," as the iron strip may be called, the circuit being kept closed for a few seconds. if your cell is good there should be no trouble in lifting the magnets by the armature. open the circuit, and see whether the magnets drop. (b) hold the magnets upside down directly over nails, tin boxes, iron filings, or other pieces of iron. close the circuit, move the attracted iron to another place on the table, and open the circuit. can this principle be used for practical purposes? _note._--some experiments illustrating practical uses of electromagnets will be given in a future chapter. =experiment 173. residual magnetism when magnetic circuit is closed.= =419. directions.= (a) arrange as in exp. 164. you have already seen that each core retains some magnetism after the circuit is closed. place the iron strip firmly across the poles, close the circuit for an instant, open the circuit, then see whether the armature still clings to the cores with some strength. the armature should fit well upon the cores for this experiment. (b) again press the armature upon the cores, no current being used; then lift it as in (a). compare the attraction with that found in (a). _=420. closed magnetic circuits.=_ it was seen in the study of the permanent horseshoe magnet, that the armature clung strongly to the magnet. the armature closed the magnetic circuit, the lines of force having almost no resistance. in the case of electromagnets the magnetic circuit becomes closed when the armature touches both poles at the same time. the armature clings strongly to the poles even after the current ceases to flow. as soon as the magnetic circuit is broken, however, but little residual magnetism remains. the armatures of electromagnets are usually arranged so that they can not quite touch the cores, to avoid this sticking. chapter xxiv. thermoelectricity. [illustration: fig. 134.] =experiment 174. to find whether electricity can be produced by heat.= _apparatus._ the home-made thermopile described in §421; astatic galvanoscope; connecting wires; candle or alcohol lamp. =421. home-made thermopile.= (fig. 134.) for this you need 3 hairpins, copper wire, a piece of wood about 3 in. long and 1 in. square on the ends, 2 pieces of tin, and some small nails. straighten the hairpins and scrape the coating off with sandpaper or a file. scrape the insulation from 4 pieces of copper wire, each about 8 in. long. twist the ends of the copper wire about the ends of the hairpins (fig. 134), and then fasten the hairpins to the block. they may be held firmly by small nails which should be driven partly into the block and bent over. the hairpins at the right-hand side of the fig. are shown to be near but not touching each other. this allows all to be heated at the same time. the tin binding-posts may be nailed or screwed to the block, and if the bare copper wires 1 and 4 be placed under x and y before they are screwed down they will be electrically connected. the ends of 1 and 4 may be held under the screw-heads. the block may be supported upon other blocks to raise it to the proper height, which will depend upon the length of the candle. [illustration: fig. 135.] a thermopile in the form of a circle with several pairs of metals, can easily be made by fastening the hairpins to a piece of cardboard (fig. 135) with a hole at the center. this may be supported by blocks, the heat being applied under the center. =422. directions.= (a) arrange the apparatus as in fig. 134. see that the astatic needle is properly adjusted, no magnets being near it. (b) heat the joints as shown, and watch the needle. can a current be produced by heat? (c) remove the connector on wire 6 from y to m, thus cutting one pair out of the circuit. heat the joints again and compare the strength of the current with that produced in (b). (d) see whether much current is produced by one pair. from results obtained do you see any relation between the strength of the current and the number of pairs? _=423. thermoelectricity=_ is produced by heating the junction between two metals. different pairs of metals produce different results. antimony and bismuth are often used. if the end of a strip of bismuth be soldered to the end of a similar strip of antimony, and the free ends be connected to a galvanometer of low resistance, the presence of a current will be shown when the point of contact becomes hotter than the rest of the circuit. the current will flow from the bismuth to antimony across the joint. by cooling the junction below the temperature of the rest of the circuit a current will be produced in the opposite direction. thermoelectric currents have a low potential. the energy of the current is kept up by the heat absorbed. _=424. peltier effect.=_ the action noted in § 423 can be reversed; that is, if a current from a battery be sent through the metals, the parts at the junction become slightly warmer or cooler than before, depending upon the direction of the current. this is known as the _peltier effect_, the heat not being due to the resistance to the current. _=425. thermopiles.=_ as the e. m. f. of the current produced by a single pair of metals is small, several pairs are usually joined in series in such a way that the different currents help each other and flow in the same direction. such combinations, usually made of antimony and bismuth, are called thermoelectric piles, or simply thermopiles. they are useful in detecting very small differences in temperature. the heat of a match, or the cold of a piece of ice, will produce a current even at some distance, the thermopile being connected with a sensitive short-coil astatic galvanometer. (see "things a boy should know about electricity.") chapter xxv. induced currents. _=426. electromagnetic induction.=_ you have seen, by experiments, that a magnet has the power to induce another piece of iron or steel to become a magnet. you have also seen, in the study of static electricity, that an electrified body has the power to act through space upon another conductor. a body may be polarized and charged with static electricity by induction. several questions now come up. can a _current_ of electricity in a conductor induce a _current_ in another conductor not in any way connected with the first? can current electricity produce effects through space? is there an electromagnetic induction? it has been seen that a current-carrying wire has a magnetic field, and that magnetic fields can act through space. it is evident, then, that a conductor will be surrounded and cut by lines of force when it is placed in a magnetic field, or near a wire or coil through which a current passes. let us study this by experiments. =experiments 175-182. to study induced currents.= _apparatus._ the two coils of wire (nos. 89, 90); two short, soft iron cores (nos. 92, 93); long iron core (no. 96); bar magnet (no. 97); astatic galvanoscope (no. 59); dry cell (no. 51); key (no. 55); horseshoe magnet; connecting wires with spring connectors (no. 54) on the ends (§ 226-230); coil of wire (no. 98) wound on an iron core; compass. [illustration: fig. 136.] =experiment 175. to find whether a current can be generated with a bar magnet and a hollowed coil of wire.= =427. directions.= (a) arrange as in fig. 136. the coil (no. 90) of fine wire is joined to a g (no. 59) as shown. small pieces of tin or copper, 1 and 2, are used to make connections between the coil ends and wires, 3 and 4, which are attached to the galvanoscope. it is best to use the wires, 3 and 4, so that the coil will be 2 feet at least, from a g; otherwise the needle of a g might be affected by the magnet, m (no. 97). (b) get clearly in mind in which direction the right-hand end of the needle is deflected when a current enters a g at l, the left-hand binding-post. if you have forgotten the results of previous experiments, use the cell for an instant, touching the wire from the carbon to l and that from the zinc to r. if any currents come from the coil, later, you should be able to tell in which direction they flow, the coil and a g forming a closed circuit. (c) hold the magnet, m, as shown, and quickly push it into the coil until it has the place of a core, at the same time watching the needle. if a current is produced, in which direction does it flow from the coil? does the needle remain deflected? is the current constant or temporary? (d) after the magnet, m, has been placed in the coil, as in (c), and the needle has come to rest, quickly pull m from the coil, watching the needle. if a current is produced, does it pass from the coil in the same direction as before, in (c)? (e) turn m end for end, repeat (c) and (d), and study the results. are lines of force made to cut the turns of the coil? (f) repeat (c) and (d), moving m slowly. _=428. discussion.=_ an induced current, produced as in the above experiment, is a momentary one. no current passes when the magnet and coil are still; at least one of them has to be in motion. when the magnet is inserted, the induced current is said to be an _inverse_ one, as it passes in a direction opposite to that which would be necessary to give the magnet its poles, it being considered a core magnetized by the current. a _direct_ current is produced when the magnet is withdrawn from the coil. rapid movements produce stronger currents than slow ones. (see § 439.) _=429. induced currents and work.=_ it takes force to move a magnet through the center of a coil, and it is this work that is the source of the induced current. when the coil is pushed on to the magnet, or when it is moved through a magnetic field, force is also required. we have, in this simple experiment, the key to the action of the dynamo and other important electrical machines. these will be discussed later. =experiment 176. to find whether a current can be generated with a bar magnet and a coil of wire having an iron core.= =430. directions.= (a) arrange as in exp. 175, fig. 136, and, in addition, place an iron core (no. 92) inside of the coil (no. 90). (b) hold the bar magnet (no. 97) as in fig. 136, and quickly lower it until it touches the core, at the same time watching the needle. study results, direction of current, etc., as before. (c) suddenly withdraw m from the core. is the current produced in the same direction as that from (b)? (d) turn m end for end and repeat (b) and (c). (e) repeat (c) and (d), moving magnet slowly. how does the strength of the current compare with that of exp. 175? are lines of force made to cut the turns of the coil? [illustration: fig. 137.] =experiment 177. to find whether a current can be generated with a horseshoe magnet and a coil of wire having an iron core.= =431. directions.= (a) arrange the apparatus as in exp. 176, but use the horseshoe magnet, h m, instead of the bar magnet. fig. 137 shows the coil (no. 90) with one pole of h m held over the core. (b) study the effect of quickly lowering and raising first one pole and then the other over the core, as with the bar magnet. get clearly in mind the direction in which the induced current flows in each case. _=432. induced currents and lines of force.=_ in the experiments just given, it should be remembered that the permanent magnets are sending out thousands of lines of force from their n poles, and receiving them again at their s poles. as the magnet is pushed into the coil (exp. 175), the lines of force not only cut through the turns of the coil, but the number of lines of force that cut the coil at any instant varies rapidly as the magnet is moved. motion is necessary, with this arrangement, to make a change in the number of cutting lines of force. the current passes only while the magnet moves; and the direction of the current at any moment depends upon whether the number of lines of force is increasing or decreasing at that moment. (see § 438, 439.) [illustration: fig. 138.] =experiment 178. to find whether a current can be generated with an electromagnet and a hollow coil of wire.= =433. directions.= (a) the hollow coil (no. 90) should be joined to the astatic galvanoscope, as shown in fig. 136. instead of the bar magnet in fig. 136, an electromagnet is to be used, and this should be joined in series with a cell and key, as shown in fig. 138. the current from the cell will pass only when k is pressed. (b) note from the winding which way the current must pass around the coil when the circuit is closed at k, and determine whether the lower end of the long iron core, l i c (no. 96) should be n or s. with the compass test the poles of the core to be sure you are right. (c) quickly lower the end of l i c into the hollow coil (h, fig. 136), the circuit being kept closed long enough to allow the needle to partially come to rest again. withdraw l i c before you open the circuit. explain action of needle. (d) reverse the direction of the current through the electromagnet, by changing the connections, and repeat (c). does any induced current pass through a g when the core is held still in the coil h, even though a current passes through coil e? [illustration: fig. 139.] =experiment 179. to find whether a current can be generated with an electromagnet and a coil of wire having an iron core.= =434. directions.= (a) fig. 139 shows simply the arrangement of coils. coil h (no. 90) with core, is joined to the galvanoscope as in fig. 136. coil e, with short core, should be joined to key and cell as shown in fig. 138. (b) keeping in mind the polarity of the lower end of core e, quickly lower it to the core of h, the circuit being kept closed for a few seconds. does the needle remain deflected after the motion ceases? (c) quickly raise e, the circuit being still closed, then open the circuit. compare the directions taken by the induced currents in (b) and (c). _=435. discussion of exps. 178, 179.=_ this motion in straight lines is not suitable for producing currents strong enough for commercial purposes. in order to produce currents of considerable strength, the coils of wire have to be pushed past magnets with great speed. special machines (see dynamos) are constructed in which the coils are wound so that they can be given a rapid _rotary motion_ as they fly past strong electromagnets. in this way the coil can keep on passing the same magnets, in the same direction, as long as force is applied to the shaft that carries them. [illustration: fig. 140.] =experiment 180. to study the effect of starting or stopping a current near a coil of wire or other closed circuit.= =436. directions.= (a) arrange as in fig. 140. place the two coils, h and e, on the same core, l i c. connect e with the key and cell as before (fig. 138). connect h with the astatic galvanoscope, a g, as in fig. 136. keep the coils 2 or 3 feet from a g, so that the needle will not be affected by them. (b) close the circuit at the key, watching the needle, then as soon as the needle regains its former position, open the circuit again. compare the direction of the induced current in h with that of the current in e, (1) when the main circuit is closed, and (2) when it is opened. is any current induced in h by a steady current in e? (see transformers.) [illustration: fig. 141.] =experiment 181. to study the effect of starting or stopping a current in a coil placed inside of another coil.= =437. directions.= (a) arrange as in fig. 141. join coil h with the astatic galvanoscope, a g. place the small coil p (no. 98) with core, inside of h, and connect the ends of p with the key and cell, as shown. (b) close the circuit at k; watch the needle, and as soon as it regains its position, open the circuit again. compare the direction of the induced current in h with that of the inducing current in p, (1) when the inducing circuit is closed, and (2) when it is broken. (see induction coils.) _=438. discussion of exps. 180, 181.=_ when a current suddenly begins to flow through a coil, the effect upon a neighboring coil is the same as that produced by suddenly bringing a magnet near it; and when the current stops, the opposite effect is produced. we may consider that when the inducing circuit is closed, the lines of force shoot out through the turns of the outside coil. upon opening the circuit the lines of force cease to exist; that is, we may imagine them drawn in again. [illustration: fig. 142.] _=439. direction of induced current.=_ fig. 142 shows the magnet on its way into the coil; the number of lines of force is increasing in the coil, and the induced current passes in an anti-clockwise direction when looking down into the coil along the lines of force. this produces an _indirect_ current. if a current from a cell were passed through the coil in the direction of this indirect current, the lower end of a bar of iron would become a s pole. (see § 428.) _=440. laws of induction.=_ (1) an increase in the number of lines of force that pass through a closed circuit produces an indirect induced current; while a decrease produces a direct one. (see § 428.) (2) the e. m. f. of the induced current is equal to the rate of increase or decrease in the number of lines of force that pass through the circuit. (3) a constant current produces no induced current, provided there is no motion. (4) closing a circuit produces an indirect current. (5) opening a circuit produces a direct current. (6) _lenz's law._ induced currents have a direction that tends to stop the motion that produces them. _=441. primary and secondary currents.=_ in the preceding experiments in induction, it must be kept in mind that the current from the cell did not pass through the galvanoscope. there were two entirely separate circuits, in no way connected. the _primary_ current comes from the cell, while the _secondary_ current is an induced one. [illustration: fig. 143.] =experiment 182. to see what is meant by alternating currents.= =442. directions.= (a) arrange as in fig. 143. connect coil h with a g, as before. place one pole of h m against the end of the core i c, hold h with one hand, and with the other quickly push the other pole of h m onto the core. this should produce a momentary current through a g, first in one direction, and then in the other. let the needle come to rest. (b) move h m back and forth upon the end of i c, changing its polarity rapidly. a minute's practice will enable you to slide the core from one pole of h m to the other and back again rapidly--3 complete vibrations per second being about right. the needle should be parallel to the coil of a g, and if properly done, the needle will be made to vibrate back and forth slightly at each change in the polarity of i c. _=443. direct and alternating currents.=_ a current that flows steadily in one direction is said to be a _direct_ current. a cell gives a direct current when the circuit is closed. when the current passes in one direction for an instant, and then reverses immediately and flows in the opposite direction, it is said to _alternate_. the induced current which flowed through the galvanoscope in exp. 182 was an alternating one. currents of this class have great practical uses. _=444. self-induction; extra currents.=_ it has been shown that a magnetized coil can act through space and induce a current in a neighboring coil. the lines of force which reach out from an electromagnet will generate a current in any conductor which happens to be in the field, or which is moved across the lines. it is evident, then, since the lines of force from each turn of a coil cut all the other turns of the same coil, that each turn acts as a conductor placed in the field of every other turn. the instant a current begins to flow through a coil, there is an inverse current of self-induction started in the coil, which opposes the current in the cell. when the circuit is broken, this _extra current_, as it is also called, is a direct one and adds its strength to that of the current from the cell; as this takes place at the instant the circuit is broken, a bright spark is seen at the key, and this shows that the e. m. f. of this extra current is high. practical uses are made of it. chapter xxvi. the production of motion by currents. _=445. currents and motion.=_ we have seen, in the experiments on induced currents, that a current of electricity can be generated by properly moving magnets near coils of wire. (see dynamo-electric machines.) can we reverse this process? can motion be produced by the electric current? =experiments 183-190. to study the production of motion by means of the electric current.= _apparatus._ the support, including base, rod, and support wire, s w (fig. 144.) coils of wire (no. 89, 90); iron cores for coils; cell; key; connecting wires; compass; current reverser; bar magnet; horseshoe magnet. [illustration: fig. 144.] =experiment 183. motion produced with a hollow coil and a piece of iron.= =446. directions.= (a) arrange as in fig. 144. coil h (no. 90) is to be used as a pendulum, and can be supported by fastening a string to it, the upper end of which should be tied to s w. connect the ends of h with k and d c. there will be a slight magnetic field about h as soon as the circuit is closed. (b) hold i c near the end of the coil. close the circuit for an instant. is there any motion produced in h? while the motion will be slight, there should be enough to be noticed if the cell is strong. (c) swing the suspended coil back and forth like a pendulum for a minute, until you get in mind the rapidity of its vibrations. stop it, then repeat (b), closing and opening the circuit at regular intervals, so that the little impulses given by the attraction for i c will gradually cause h to vibrate. the wires leading from h should not drag upon the table. =experiment 184. motion with hollow coil and bar magnet.= =447. directions.= (a) substitute the bar magnet m (no. 97) for the iron of exp. 183 (fig. 144). get clearly in mind the polarity of the coil from the way the current flows through it, then test it with the compass to find whether you are right. (b) hold the n pole of m near the left-hand end of the coil, close the circuit for an instant and study results. (c) reverse the magnet and repeat (b). compare the results with those of exp. 183. try to make the coil vibrate. =experiment 185. motion with electromagnet and piece of iron.= =448. directions.= (a) arrange as described in exp. 183, fig. 144. place a short core inside of the coil and repeat. (see § 446 for directions.) why is the motion produced much larger than that given by a hollow coil? (b) the coil can gradually be made to swing through quite a little space by closing and opening the circuit regularly (§ 446, c). could any use be made of such a motion, if it were on a large scale? could it be made to run a machine? [illustration: fig. 145.] =experiment 186. motion with electromagnet and bar magnet.= =449. directions.= (a) arrange as in fig. 145, the coil being suspended and connected as in exp. 183 (fig. 144). (b) study the effect of closing the circuit when the n pole of m is held near the core of h. reverse m, and repeat. [illustration: fig. 146.] =experiment 187. motion with electromagnet and horseshoe magnet.= =450. directions.= (a) arrange as in fig. 146. the ends of h (no. 89) are joined to x and y of the current reverser c r (no. 57). it is evident, then, that the direction of the current through h can be easily and rapidly reversed by c r. (see exp. 103.) either pole of the horseshoe magnet h m will attract i c when it is not magnetized. (b) place the end of i c near the n pole of h m so that it will be attracted to it. you have learned that like poles repel each other, so press the lever of c r that will produce a n pole at the left-hand end of i c. the core i c should be repelled by the n pole of h m and be instantly attracted by its s pole. (c) rapidly reverse the current and make i c jump back and forth from one pole to the other. the results of this experiment should be remembered, as they will aid in understanding motors. a core 1/4 in. in diameter can be placed in between the poles and be made to vibrate rapidly as the current is reversed. [illustration: fig. 147.] =experiment 188. motion with two electromagnets.= =451. directions.= (a) arrange as in fig. 147. join the two coils, h and e, in parallel. connect their two outside ends o e to a metal plate a, and their inside ends i e to b. join wires 1 and 6 to k, d c, a and b, as shown. when the circuit is closed at k, the current will pass along wire 1 and divide at a, entering e and h at the same time by wires 2 and 4 and returning through 3 and 5 to b, and thence to d c. (b) close the circuit for an instant with wires arranged as in fig. 147. do the electromagnets attract or repel each other? study out the direction in which the current passes around the coils, and see whether they _should_ attract or repel. (c) change wire 4 to b, and wire 5 to a. the polarity of h, only, will be changed when this circuit is closed. press the key for an instant and study the results. _=452. discussion of exps. 183-188.=_ from the results it is evident that motion can be produced with the aid of the electric current in many different ways. it can be produced at the ends of wires which simply reach across the room, or which reach miles from the source of the current. to get practical results for commercial purposes we require a proper source of current, proper conductors, and proper apparatus to convert the motions into useful work. the motions given to the parts of the apparatus in the previous experiments are not suitable for commercial purposes, as they are in straight lines. a rotary motion is needed to do good work; and when this is applied to a shaft, belts can be used to run all sorts of machinery. (see electric motors.) [illustration: fig. 148.] =experiment 189. rotary motion with a hollow coil of wire and a permanent magnet.= =453. directions.= (a) arrange as in fig. 148. a key can be used instead of the reverser. the coil of the galvanoscope, g v, has a magnetic field about it when the circuit is closed. the needle has a permanent field. (b) close the circuit for an instant, let the needle swing back past the zero mark, close the circuit again, etc., until the added impulses give the needle a complete turn. (c) keep the needle turning on its axis by opening and closing the circuit at the proper time. with a little practice you can make it turn rapidly. (d) reverse the motion of the needle. (see § 455.) [illustration: fig. 149.] =experiment 190. rotary motion with an electromagnet and a permanent magnet.= =454. directions.= (a) arrange as in fig. 149. place the compass a short distance from the end of the core of the coil h (no. 89). close the circuit, and as soon as the needle gets part way around open it again, closing it at the proper time to give the needle a new impulse. the speed can be regulated, somewhat, by changing its distance from the core. a key may be used in place of a reverser. (b) reverse the direction of rotation. _=455. discussion of exps. 189-190.=_ we have, in these experiments, the key to the action of electric motors. by properly opening and closing the circuit, the rotary motion can be kept up as long as current is supplied. if a small pulley were attached to the top of the compass-needle in exp. 190, a tiny belt could be attached, and we should have a machine that could do, perhaps, a fly-power of work. (see electric motors.) chapter xxvii. applications of electricity. _=456. things electricity can do.=_ among the almost countless things that electricity can do are the following: it signals without wires. it drills rock, coal, and teeth. it cures diseases and kills criminals. it protects, heats, and ventilates houses. it photographs the bones of the human body. it rings church bells and plays church organs. it lights streets, cars, boats, mines, houses, etc. it pumps water, cooks food, and fans you while eating. it runs all sorts of machinery, elevators, cars, boats, and wagons. it sends messages with the telegraph, telephone, and search-light. it cuts cloth, irons clothes, washes dishes, blackens boots, welds metals, prints books, etc., etc. as this book deals almost exclusively with experiments, to be performed with simple, home-made apparatus, space cannot be given for a discussion of the many instruments and machines which make electricity a practical every-day thing. (see "things a boy should know about electricity.") the principles upon which a few important instruments depend, however, will be given. [illustration: fig. 150.] =experiment 191. to study the action of a simple "telegraph sounder."= =457. directions.= (a) arrange as in fig. 150. the electromagnet is supported upon its base, as directed in § 407. coil h, k, and d c are joined in series. the iron strip, i, can be held by the left hand, while k is worked with the right. (b) press the key, closing the circuit for different lengths of time, and note that the _armature_, i, responds exactly to the motions at k. _=458. discussion.=_ the downward click makes a distinct sound, and in regular instruments the armature is allowed to make an upward click, also. the time between the two clicks can be short or long to represent _dots_ or _dashes_, which, together with _spaces_, represent letters. (for telegraph alphabet, and complete directions for making and connecting a home-made telegraph line, see apparatus book.) [illustration: fig. 151.] _=459. telegraph line; connections.=_ fig. 151 shows complete connections for a home-made telegraph line. the capital letters are used for the right side, r, and small letters for the left side, l. gravity cells, b and b, are used. the _sounders_ s and s, and the _keys_, k and k, are shown by a top view, or plan. the broad black lines of s and s represent the armatures, which are directly over the electromagnets. the keys have switches, e and e. the two stations, r and l, may be near each other or in different houses. the _return wire_, r w, passes from the copper of b to the zinc of b. this is important, as the cells must help each other; that is, they are in series. the _line wire_, l w, passes from one station to the other, and the return may be through a wire, r w, or through the earth; but for short lines a return wire is best. _=460. operation of line.=_ suppose r (right) and l (left) have a line. fig. 151 shows that r's switch, e, is open, while e is closed. the entire circuit, then, is broken at but one point. as soon as r presses his key, the circuit is closed, and the current from both cells rushes around from b through k, s, l w, s, k, b, r w and back to b. this makes the armatures of s and s come down with a click at the same time. (see exp. 191.) as soon as the key is raised, the armatures raise, making the up-click. (see § 458.) as soon as r has finished, he closes his switch, e. l then opens e and answers r. both e and e are closed when the line is not in use, so that either can open his switch at any time and call up the other. closed circuit cells are used for such lines. on large lines the current from a dynamo is used. [illustration: fig. 152.] =experiment 192. to study the action and use of the "relay" on telegraph lines.= =461. directions.= (a) arrange as in fig. 152. place k and d c at one end of the table to represent the sending station. at the other end of the table place e, which is the electromagnet of the relay, and h, the electromagnet of the sounder. connect the ends of e with k and d c, l w being the line wire, and r w the return. in practice, the return is through the earth. the relay armature, r a, should vibrate towards e every time k is pressed. c is a piece of copper against which r a presses each time it is attracted by e, and this closes what is called the local circuit. connect the poles of another battery, l b, with c and h, and the other end of coil h with r a. the sounder armature, s a, should be arranged as in exp. 191. small springs are shown on the two armatures, and these keep them away from the cores when the circuits are open. (b) fasten the parts to a board, and study the connections and action of this home-made outfit. =462. the relay= replaces the sounder in the line wire circuit, and its coils are usually wound with many turns of fine wire, so that a feeble current will move its nicely adjusted armature. owing to the large resistance of long telegraph lines, the current is weak when it reaches a distant station, and not strong enough to work an ordinary sounder. the current passes back from the relay to the sending station through the earth. the relay armature acts as an automatic key to open and close the local circuit, which includes also a battery and sounder. the line current does not enter the sounder. (see "things a boy should know about electricity.") [illustration: fig. 153.] =experiment 193. to study the action of a two-pole telegraph instrument.= =463. directions.= (a) arrange as in fig. 153. connect the two coils to the connecting plates, as described in § 408. join a strip of copper cu with wire 2 leading from d c, and join the zinc of d c to m. the ends of wires 1 and 3 should be near cu but they must not touch it. if cu be slightly curved so that its ends are raised above the table, the ends of wires 1 and 3 may be put directly under the ends of cu; each half of cu can then be used as a key. two armatures, a and b, should be held as shown. d c can be placed at one side, of course, its terminals being joined to m and cu. (b) press first one end and then the other of cu, so that the current will pass through h or e at will. (c) paste pieces of paper to the armatures, the left one being marked with a dot, and the other with a dash. the one who sends the message can make dots or dashes at the instrument by pressing the proper key. this form of instrument can be easily made by boys, and the messages are more easily read by the eye than by the ear, as in regular sounders. [illustration: fig. 154.] =experiment 194. to study the action of a simple "single needle telegraph instrument."= =464. directions.= (a) arrange as in fig. 154. stick a pin on each side of the n pole of the galvanoscope-needle through the degree-card, so that the needle can make but part of a turn when the circuit is closed. (b) touch one lever of the reverser c r, then the other, to see whether connections are right. the needle should be forced against one pin and then against the other. if motions to the left represent _dots_, and those to the right _dashes_, combinations of dots and dashes can be used for letters as in the "sounder" (exp. 191). (c) arrange the apparatus shown in fig. 122 so that messages can be sent. [illustration: fig. 155.] =experiment 195. to study the action of a simple automatic "contact breaker," or "current interrupter."= =465. directions.= (a) arrange as in fig. 155. slip a spring connector attached to wire 1 upon the iron strip i, a short distance from its end. hold the left-hand end of i firmly in one hand, and with the other hold the connector on wire 2 just above that on 1. the right-hand end of i should be just above the core of h. (b) allow the current to pass through the circuit by touching the two connectors together gently. does the armature make one click, as in the telegraph sounder, or does it vibrate rapidly? (c) try the connectors in various positions on i. _=466. automatic current interrupters=_ are used on bells, buzzers, induction coils, etc. the principle upon which they work is shown in the above experiment (fig. 155). the current, as it comes from the carbon of d c, is obliged to stop when it reaches i, unless the two connectors touch. as soon as the current passes, i is pulled down and away from the upper connector, and this breaks the circuit. i, being held firmly in the hand, immediately springs back to its former position, closing the circuit. the rapidity of the vibrations depends somewhat upon the position of the connectors upon i. in regular instruments, a platinum point is used where the circuit is broken; this stands the constant sparking at that point. [illustration: fig. 156.] =experiment 196. to study the action of a simple "electric bell," or a "buzzer."= =467. directions.= (a) fig. 156 shows the circuit explained in exp. 195, with a key or push-button put in, so that the circuit can be closed at a distance from the vibrating armature. (b) have a friend work the key while you hold i and wires 1 and 2 as directed in exp. 195. the circuit must not be broken at two places, of course, so begin by holding the two connectors together. the armature should vibrate rapidly each time k is pressed. _=468. electric bells and buzzers=_ are very nearly alike in construction; in fact, you will have a buzzer by removing the bell from an ordinary electric bell. buzzers are used in places where the loud sound of a bell would be objectionable. by placing a bell near the end of the vibrating armature (fig. 156), so that the bell would be struck by it at each vibration, we should have an electric bell. by making the wires 1 and 3 long, the bell or buzzer can be worked at a distance. (see apparatus book, chapter xv, for home-made bells and buzzers.) [illustration: fig. 157.] =experiment 197. to study the action of a simple telegraph "recorder."= =469. directions.= (a) cut from a tin box, or can, a piece of tin about 4 in. long and 1-1/2 in. wide. bend this double to make two thicknesses. this will serve as an armature i (fig. 157). nail to one end of i a small spool, s, and into this put a short length of lead-pencil, p, which may be held firmly in s by wrapping a little paper around it. connect the ends of coil h to a key and cell as in fig. 156. (b) hold or fasten i in place, and have a friend make dots and dashes at the key, while you draw a piece of paper past the end of p. a little adjusting will be necessary to get the pencil to write only while the circuit is closed. in regular machines all the parts are automatic. [illustration: fig. 158.] =experiment 198. to study the action of a simple "annunciator."= =470. directions.= (a) arrange as in fig. 158. fasten the two electromagnets, h and e, to a board or a piece of stiff cardboard. they may be held in place by passing strings over them and through the board, tying on the other side. the ends of coils h and e should be joined to pieces of tin, a, b, c, by means of connectors. k and k are keys or push-buttons, which in real instruments are in different rooms. two steel pens may be swung on pins a short distance from the ends of the cores, so that their lower ends will be attracted to the cores the instant the current passes through them. the residual magnetism should hold them against the cores until removed. hairpins, nails, or needles can be used instead of pens. (b) press first one k and then the other to see whether your connections are correct. _=471. annunciators.=_ there are many forms of annunciators in use to indicate, in a hotel for example, a certain room when a bell rings at the office. if a bell be included in the circuit between d c and a in fig. 158, it will ring each time a key is pushed. this will call attention to the fact that some one has rung, and the annunciator will show the location of the special call. large instruments are made with hundreds of electromagnets, each one answering to a special room. the instrument should be set, of course, after each call. a nail or screw wound with insulated wire can be used for the electromagnets of a home-made annunciator. =experiment 199. to study the shocking effects of the "extra current."= =472. directions.= (a) use the two electromagnets joined to the connecting plates (fig. 132), to generate a self-induced or extra current. connect r of fig. 132 with the zinc of a dry cell, and between l and the carbon of the cell place a key; in other words, join the electromagnets, cell, and key in series. two good cells in series can be used to advantage. (b) wet the ends of two fingers of the left hand, press one upon l and the other on r, thus making a shunt with your hand. with the right hand work the key rapidly. if the current is strong enough you should feel a slight shock in the fingers each time the circuit is broken. the extra current (§ 444) causes the shock as it shoots through the fingers. (c) if you have electric bells or telegraph sounders use them for this experiment. _=473. induction coils=_ are instruments for producing induced currents of high e. m. f. the apparatus shown in fig. 141 forms a simple induction coil. the _primary_ coil is made of coarser wire and has less turns of wire than the _secondary_ coil. the current in the primary circuit is usually interrupted by an _automatic interrupter_ (exp. 195), thus producing an alternating current in the secondary coil, the voltage of which depends upon the relative number of turns in the two coils. induction coils are used in telephone work, for medical purposes, for x-ray work, etc., etc. (for home-made induction coils see apparatus book, chapter xi.) [illustration: fig. 159.] =474. action of induction coils.= fig. 159 shows a top view of one of the home-made induction coils described, in full, in the apparatus book. wires 5 and 6 are the ends of the primary coil, while wires 7 and 8 are the terminals of the secondary coil. the battery wires should be joined to binding-posts w and x, and the handles to y and z. fig. 160 shows the details of the automatic interrupter which is placed in the primary circuit. [illustration: fig. 160.] if the current enters at w, it will pass through the primary coil and out at x, after going through 5, r, f, s i, b, e and c. the instant the current passes, the bolt becomes magnetized; this attracts a, which pulls b away from the end of s i, thus automatically opening the circuit. b at once springs back to its former position against s i, as a is no longer attracted; the circuit being closed, the operation is rapidly repeated. (for commercial forms and uses of induction coils see "things a boy should know about electricity.") _=475. transformers=_, like induction coils, are instruments for changing the e. m. f. and strength of currents. there is very little loss of energy in well-made transformers. they consist of two coils of wire on the same core; in fact, an induction coil may be considered a transformer. if the secondary coil has 100 times as many turns of wire as the primary, a current with an e. m. f. of 100 volts can be taken from the secondary coil, when the e. m. f. of the current passing through the primary is 1 volt; but the _strength_ (amperes) of the secondary current will be but one-hundredth that of the primary current. by using the coil of fine wire as the primary, the e. m. f. of the current that comes from the other coil will be but one-hundredth that in the fine coil. it will have 100 times its strength, however. continuous currents from cells or dynamos must be interrupted, as in induction coils, to be transformed from one e. m. f. to another. transformers are now largely used in lighting and power circuits, etc. (see "things a boy should know about electricity.") _=476. the dynamo.=_ we saw in the exps. of chapter xxv. that currents of electricity can be generated in a coil of wire (closed circuit) by rapidly moving it through the field of a magnet. as shown by the experiments, this can be accomplished in many ways. the dynamo is a machine for doing this on a large scale, the coils being given a rotary motion in a very strong magnetic field; and as the number of lines of force that cut the coil is constantly changing, there is a current in the coil as long as power is applied, and this current is led from the machine by proper devices. _the dynamo is a machine for converting mechanical energy into an electric current, through electromagnetic induction._ if a loop of wire (fig. 161) be so arranged on bearings at its ends that it can be made to revolve, a current will flow through it in one direction during one-half of the revolution, and in the opposite direction during the other half, it being insulated from all external conductors. such a current inside of the machine would be of no value; it must be led out to external conductors. some sort of sliding contact is necessary to connect a revolving conductor with a stationary one. [illustration: fig. 161.] [illustration: fig. 162.] fig. 162 shows the ends of a coil joined to two rings, x, y, which are insulated from each other, and which rotate with the coil. two stationary pieces of carbon, a, b, called _brushes_, press against the rings, and to these are joined wires which complete the circuit, and which lead out where the current can do work. the arrows show the direction of the current during one-half of a revolution. the rings form a _collector_, and this arrangement gives an alternating current. [illustration: fig. 163.] in fig. 163 the ends of the coil are joined to the two halves of a cylinder. these halves, x and y, are insulated from each other and from the axis. the current flows from x onto the brush a, through some external circuit where it does work, and thence back through brush b onto y. by the time that y gets around to a the direction of the current in the loop has reversed, so that it passes towards y; but it still enters the outside circuit through a because y is then in contact with a. this device is called a _commutator_, and it allows a constant or direct current to leave the machine. in regular machines there are many loops of wire and several segments to the commutator. the rotating coils are wound upon an iron core, so that the lines of force, in passing from one pole to the other, will meet with as little resistance as possible. the coils, core, and commutator, taken together, are called the _armature_. the magnets which furnish the field are called the _field-magnets_. these are electromagnets, the current from the dynamo, or a part of it, being used to excite them. there are many forms of dynamos, and many ways of winding the armature and field-magnets, but space will not permit a discussion of them here. (see "things a boy should know about electricity.") _=477. the electric motor.=_ experiments have shown that motion can be produced by the electric current in many ways. the galvanoscope may be considered a tiny motor. _an electric motor is a machine for transforming electric energy into mechanical power._ while the electric motor is similar in construction to the dynamo, it is opposite to it in action. motors receive current and produce motion. the motion is a rotary one, the power being applied to other machines by means of belts or gears. [illustration: fig. 164.] =experiment 200. to study the action of the telephone.= =478. directions.= (a) join the ends of coil h (fig. 164) to the astatic galvanoscope. move magnet m back and forth in front of the soft iron core, while h is held in position. watch the needle. imagine that vibrations in the air caused by the voice are strong enough to give m a slight motion to and fro, and you can see how a current would be sent through the galvanoscope by speaking against m. _=479. the telephone=_ is an instrument for reproducing sounds at a distance, and electricity is the agent by which this is generally accomplished. the part spoken to is called the _transmitter_, and the part which gives the sound out again is called the _receiver_. sound itself does not pass over the line. although the same apparatus may be used for both transmitter and receiver, they are generally different in construction. [illustration: fig. 165.] _=480. the bell or magneto-transmitter=_ generates its own current, and is, strictly speaking, a dynamo that is run by the voice. you have seen, by experiments, that a current can be generated in a coil of wire by moving a magnet back and forth in front of its soft iron core. in the telephone this process is reversed, soft iron in the shape of a thin disc (d, fig. 165) being made to vibrate by the voice immediately in front of a coil having a permanent magnet, m, for a core. the soft iron diaphragm is fixed near, but it does not touch the magnet. the coil consists of many turns of fine insulated wire. the current generated is an alternating one and exceedingly feeble; in fact, it can not be detected by a galvanoscope. _=481. the receiver=_ has the same construction as the bell transmitter, and receives the currents from the line. as the diaphragm is always attracted by the magnet, it is under a constant strain. this strain is increased when a current passes through the coil in a direction that adds strength to the magnet, and decreased when the current weakens the magnet. when the current through the coil is always in the same direction, but varies in strength, the diaphragm will vibrate on account of the varying pull upon it. [illustration: fig. 166.] when the current through the coil is an alternating one, the same result is obtained, as the magnet gets weaker and stronger many times per minute. fig. 166 shows two bell instruments joined, either being used as the transmitter and the other as the receiver. _=482. the carbon transmitter=_ does not in itself generate a current like the magneto-transmitter; it merely produces changes in the strength of a current that flows through it, and that comes from some outside source. in fig. 167, x and y are two carbon buttons, x being attached to the diaphragm, d. button y presses gently against x. when d is caused to vibrate by the voice, x is made to press more or less against y, and this allows more or less current to pass through the circuit, in which also is the receiver, r. this direct undulating current changes the pull upon the diaphragm of r, causing it to vibrate and reproduce the original sounds spoken into the transmitter. [illustration: fig. 167.] _=483. induction coils in telephone work.=_ as the resistance of telephone lines is large, a current with a fairly high e. m. f. is desired. while the current from one or two cells is sufficient to work the transmitter, it is not strong enough to force its way over a long line. to get around this difficulty an induction coil is used to transform the battery current, that flows through the transmitter and primary coil, into a current with a high e. m. f. that can go into the main line and force its way to a distant receiver. the battery current in the primary coil is undulating, but always in the same direction, the magnetic field around the core getting weaker and stronger. this causes an alternating current in the secondary coil and main line. [illustration: fig. 168.] fig. 168 shows the two coils, p, s, of the induction coil. the primary, p, is joined in series with a cell and transmitter. the secondary coil, s, is joined to the receiver. one end of s can be grounded, the current completing the circuit through the earth and into the receiver through another wire entering the earth. there are many forms of transmitters. (see "things a boy should know about electricity.") _=484. electric lighting and heating.=_ whenever resistance is offered to the electric current, heat is produced. by proper appliances, the heat of resistance can be applied just where it is needed, and many commercial processes depend upon electricity for their success. dynamos are used to generate currents for lighting and heating purposes. there are two great systems of lighting, the one by _arc_ lamps and the other by _incandescent_ lamps. (see "things a boy should know about electricity.") _=485. arc lamps=_ produce a light when a current passes from one carbon rod to the other across an air-space. as the current starts through the lamp, the ends of the carbons touch, and the imperfect contact causes resistance enough to heat the ends red-hot. they are then automatically separated, and the current passes from one to the other, causing the "arc." the resistance of the air-space is reduced by the intensely heated vapor and flying particles of carbon. _=486. the incandescent lamp=_ consists of a glass bulb, in which is a vacuum, and the light is caused by the passage of a current through a thin fibre of vegetable carbon, enclosed in the vacuum. the fibre would burn instantly if allowed to come in contact with the air. the fibres have a high resistance, and are easily heated to incandescence. chapter xxviii. wire tables. _copper wire tables_ are very convenient, and a necessity when working electrical examples. the tables here given are taken from a dealer's catalogue, and will be found sufficiently accurate for ordinary work. _explanation of tables._ in the _first_ column are given the sizes of wires by numbers. the b & s or american gauge is used. in the table below is given a comparison between the b & s and the birmingham gauges. the _second column_ gives the diameters of wires. the diameter of no. 36 wire is 5 thousandths of an inch; the diameter of no. 24 wire is a little over 20 thousandths or 2 hundredths of an inch. the _third column_ contains what is called circular mils, a mil being a thousandth of an inch. the figures in this column are obtained by squaring those in the second; thus, for no. 36 wire, 5 × 5 = 25. this column is useful when working examples where the squares of the diameters are wanted. the rest of the table explains itself. the table at the bottom gives a comparison between the fractional and decimal parts of an inch. space can not be given here for a series of examples showing the many uses of this table. (see "elementary electrical examples.") copper wire tables. (based on the b. a. unit.) =====+=======+=========+=======+===================================+ gauge| diam|sectional|capac| ohms | | eter. | area | ity. | | -----+-------+---------+-------+-----------+----------+------------+ b.&s.| in | in |in amp-| per | per | per | no. |1000ths|circular | eres. | 1,000 | mile. | pound. | | | mils. | | feet. | | | -----+-------+---------+-------+-----------+----------+------------+ 0000|.460 |211600. | 312. | .04906| .25903| .000077| 000|.40964 |167805. | 262. | .06186| .32664| .00012 | 00|.3648 |133079. | 220. | .07801| .41187| .00019 | 0|.32486 |105534. | 185. | .09831| .51909| .00031 | 1|.2893 | 83694. | 156. | .12404| .65490| .00049 | 2|.25763 | 66373. | 131. | .15640| .8258 | .00078 | 3|.22942 | 52634. | 110. | .19723| 1.0414 | .00125 | 4|.20431 | 41743. | 92.3 | .24869| 1.313 | .00198 | 5|.18194 | 33102. | 77.6 | .31361| 1.655 | .00314 | 6|.16202 | 26251. | 65.2 | .39546| 2.088 | .00499 | 7|.14428 | 20817. | 54.8 | .49871| 2.633 | .00792 | 8|.12849 | 16510. | 46.1 | .6529 | 3.3 | .0125 | 9|.11443 | 13094. | 38.7 | .7892 | 4.1 | .0197 | 10|.10189 | 10382. | 32.5 | .8441 | 4.4 | .0270 | 11|.090742| 8234. | 27.3 | 1.254 | 6.4 | .0501 | 12|.080808| 6530. | 23. | 1.580 | 8.3 | .079 | 13|.071961| 5178. | 19.3 | 1.995 | 10.4 | .127 | 14|.064084| 4107. | 16.2 | 2.504 | 13.2 | .200 | 15|.057068| 3257. | 13.6 | 3.172 | 16.7 | .320 | 16|.05082 | 2583. | 11.5 | 4.001 | 23. | .512 | 17|.045257| 2048. | 9.6 | 5.04 | 26. | .811 | 18|.040303| 1624. | 8.1 | 6.36 | 33. | 1.29 | 19|.03589 | 1288. | .... | 8.25 | 43. | 2.11 | 20|.031961| 1021. | .... | 10.12 | 53. | 3.27 | 21|.028462| 810. | .... | 12.76 | 68. | 5.20 | 22|.025347| 642. | .... | 16.25 | 85. | 8.35 | 23|.022571| 509. | .... | 20.30 | 108. | 13.3 | 24|.0201 | 404. | .... | 25.60 | 135. | 20.9 | 25|.0179 | 320. | .... | 32.2 | 170. | 33.2 | 26|.01594 | 254. | .... | 40.7 | 214. | 52.9 | 27|.014195| 201. | .... | 51.3 | 270. | 84.2 | 28|.012641| 159.8 | .... | 64.8 | 343. | 134. | 29|.011257| 126.7 | .... | 81.6 | 482. | 213. | 30|.010025| 100.5 | .... | 103. | 538. | 338. | 31|.008928| 79.7 | .... | 130. | 685. | 539. | 32|.00795 | 63. | .... | 164. | 865. | 856. | 33|.00708 | 50.1 | .... | 206. |1033. | 1357. | 34|.006304| 39.74| .... | 260. |1389. | 2166. | 35|.005614| 31.5 | .... | 328. |1820. | 3521. | 36|.005 | 25. | .... | 414. |2200. | 5469. | 37|.004453| 19.8 | .... | 523. |2765. | 8742. | 38|.003965| 15.72| .... | 660. |3486. |13772. | 39|.003531| 12.47| .... | 832. |4395. |21896. | 40|.003144| 9.88| .... | 1049 |5542. |34823. | -----+-------+---------+-------+-----------+----------+------------+ =====+=======================+======================== gauge| feet. | pounds. | | -----+-----------+-----------+-----------+----------- b.&s.| per | per | per | per no. | pound. | ohm. |1,000 feet.| ohm. -----+-----------+-----------+-----------+----------- 0000| 1.56122|20497.7 | 640.51 |12987. 000| 1.9687 |16255.27 | 507.95 | 8333. 00| 2.4824 |12891.37 | 402.83 | 5263. 0| 3.1303 |10223.08 | 319.45 | 3225. 1| 3.94714| 8107.49 | 253.34 | 2041. 2| 4.97722| 6429.58 | 200.91 | 1282. 3| 6.2765 | 5098.61 | 159.32 | 800. 4| 7.9141 | 4043.6 | 126.35 | 505. 5| 9.97983| 3206.61 | 100.20 | 318. 6| 12.5847 | 2542.89 | 79.462 | 200. 7| 15.8696 | 2015.51 | 63.013 | 126. 8| 20.0097 | 1599.3 | 49.976 | 80. 9| 25.229 | 1268.44 | 39.636 | 50. 10| 31.8212 | 1055.66 | 31.426 | 37. 11| 40.1202 | 797.649 | 24.924 | 20. 12| 50.5906 | 632.555 | 19.766 | 12.65 13| 63.7948 | 501.63 | 15.674 | 7.87 14| 80.4415 | 397.822 | 12.435 | 5.00 15| 101.4365 | 315.482 | 9.859 | 3.12 16| 127.12 | 250.184 | 7.819 | 1.95 17| 161.29 | 198.409 | 6.199 | 1.23 18| 203.374 | 157.35 | 4.916 | .775 19| 256.468 | 124.777 | 3.899 | .473 20| 323.399 | 98.9533 | 3.094 | .305 21| 407.815 | 78.473 | 2.452 | .192 22| 514.193 | 62.236 | 1.945 | .119 23| 648.452 | 49.3504 | 1.542 | .075 24| 817.688 | 39.1365 | 1.223 | .047 25| 1031.038 | 31.0381 | .9699 | .030 26| 1300.180 | 24.6131 | .7692 | .0187 27| 1639.49 | 19.5191 | .6099 | .0118 28| 2067.364 | 15.4793 | .4837 | .0074 29| 2606.959 | 12.2854 | .3835 | .0047 30| 3287.084 | 9.7355 | .3002 | .0029 31| 4414.49 | 7.72143| .2413 | .0018 32| 5226.915 | 6.12243| .1913 | .0011 33| 6590.41 | 4.85575| .1517 | .00076 34| 8312.8 | 3.84966| .1204 | .00046 35|10481.77 | 3.05305| .0956 | .00028 36|13214.16 | 2.4217 | .0757 | .00018 37|16659.97 | 1.92086| .06003| .00011 38|21013.25 | 1.52292| .04758| .00007 39|26496.237 | 1.20777| .03755| .00004 40|33420.63 | 0.97984| .02992| .000029 -----+-----------+-----------+-----------+-----------comparative table of the fractional and decimal parts of an inch. +-----------------+ | 1/64 = .015625 | | 1/32 = .031250 | | 3/64 = .046875 | | 1/16 = .062500 | | 5/64 = .078125 | | 3/32 = .093750 | | 7/64 = .109375 | | 1/8 = .125000 | | 9/64 = .140625 | | 5/32 = .156250 | | 11/64 = .171875 | | 3/16 = .187500 | | 13/64 = .203125 | | 7/32 = .218750 | | 15/64 = .234375 | | 1/4 = .250000 | | 17/64 = .265625 | | 9/32 = .281250 | | 19/64 = .296875 | | 5/16 = .312500 | | 21/64 = .328125 | | 11/32 = .343750 | | 23/64 = .359375 | | 3/8 = .375000 | | 25/64 = .390625 | | 13/32 = .406250 | | 27/64 = .421875 | | 7/16 = .437500 | | 29/64 = .453125 | | 15/32 = .468750 | | 31/64 = .484375 | | 1/2 = .500000 | +-----------------+ comparative table of b. and s. and b. w. gauges in decimal parts of an inch. +------------+--------------+-------------+ |birmingham | american | no. of | |wire gauge. | (b. and s.) | wire gauge. | | | wire gauge. | | +------------+--------------+-------------+ | 0000 | .46 | .454 | | 000 | .40964 | .425 | | 00 | .3648 | .38 | | 0 | .32486 | .34 | | 1 | .2893 | .3 | | 2 | .25763 | .284 | | 3 | .22942 | .259 | | 4 | .20431 | .238 | | 5 | .18194 | .22 | | 6 | .16202 | .203 | | 7 | .14428 | .18 | | 8 | .12849 | .165 | | 9 | .11443 | .148 | | 10 | .10189 | .134 | | 11 | .090742 | .12 | | 12 | .080808 | .109 | | 13 | .071961 | .095 | | 14 | .064084 | .083 | | 15 | .057068 | .072 | | 16 | .05082 | .065 | | 17 | .045257 | .058 | | 18 | .040303 | .049 | | 19 | .03589 | .042 | | 20 | .031961 | .035 | | 21 | .028468 | .032 | | 22 | .025347 | .028 | | 23 | .022571 | .025 | | 24 | .0201 | .022 | | 25 | .0179 | .02 | | 26 | .01594 | .018 | | 27 | .014195 | .016 | | 28 | .012641 | .014 | | 29 | .011257 | .013 | | 30 | .010025 | .012 | | 31 | .008928 | .01 | | 32 | .00795 | .009 | | 33 | .00708 | .008 | | 34 | .006304 | .007 | | 35 | .005614 | .005 | | 36 | .005 | .004 | | 37 | .004453 | | | 38 | .003965 | | | 39 | .003531 | | | 40 | .003114 | | +------------+--------------+-------------+ list of apparatus for the study of elementary electricity and magnetism by experiment. the =100= pieces of apparatus in the following list are referred to, by number, in the experiments contained in "the study of elementary electricity and magnetism by experiment." this list is furnished to give those who wish to make their own apparatus an idea of the approximate size, etc., of the various articles used. the author is preparing a price catalogue of the articles included in this list, and of odds and ends needed in the construction of simple, home-made apparatus. =no. 1.= a package of 25 steel sewing-needles. to be suitable for experiments in magnetism, these should be of good, hard steel, and not too thick. =no. 2.= a flat cork, about 1 in. in diameter and 3/8 in. thick. =no. 3.= a candle for annealing steel. =no. 4-15.= one dozen assorted annealed iron wires, from 1 in. to 6 in. in length. the iron should be very soft. =no. 16.= one english horseshoe magnet, 2-1/2 in. long, best quality. =no. 17.= a small box of iron filings from soft iron. =no. 18.= a compass (fig. 5). the needle swings very freely; it is enclosed in a wooden pill box, the cover of which forms the support. =no. 19, 20.= two soft steel wire nails, 2 in. long. =no. 21, 22.= two pieces of spring steel, about 3 in. long and 3/8 in. wide, to be magnetized by the student and used as bar magnets. =no. 23.= an iron ring, or washer, about 7/8 in. in diameter. =no. 24.= a sifter for iron filings. this consists of a pasteboard pill box: prick holes through the bottom with a pin. =no. 25.= a thin, flexible piece of spring steel, about 3 in. long and 1/8 in. wide. =no. 26, 27.= two ebonite sheets (e s, fig. 34), each 4 in. square. these are made with a special surface. they are very much better than the ordinary smooth ebonite. =no. 28.= one ebonite rod (e r, fig. 34), 3-1/2 in. long, with special surface. =no. 29.= one ebonite rod, 1-3/4 in. long, with special surface, used to support the insulating table, no. 43 (i t, fig. 32). =no. 30.= one piece of flannel cloth, 7 in. square. =no. 31.= six sheets of tissue-paper, each 4 in. square. =no. 32.= a few feet of white cotton thread. =no. 33.= a few feet of black silk thread. =no. 34.= one support base (s b, fig. 56). this is of thin wood, about 3-3/4 in. by 6-1/2 in., to one end of which is fastened a spool for holding the support rod (no. 35). =no. 35.= one support rod (s r, fig. 56), 7 in. long and 5/16 in. in diameter. this rod has a hole in each end. the small hole is for holding the support wire (no. 36); the large hole is for the ebonite rod (no. 29). =no. 36.= one support wire (s w, fig. 144). =no. 37.= one wire swing (w s, fig. 29). =no. 38.= one sheet of glass, 4 in. square. =no. 39.= one bent hairpin (h p, fig. 32). =no. 40.= bottom of flat box (b f b, fig. 32), 3-5/8 in. in diameter. =no. 41.= top of flat box (t f b, fig. 33). =no. 42.= one electrophorus cover (e c, fig. 34), 3-5/8 in. in diameter. this has rounded edges, and a small tube is riveted into the top of it to hold the insulating handle, e r. =no. 43.= one insulating table (i t, fig. 32). this is made the same as no. 42, and is supported by no. 29. =no. 44.= one insulated copper wire, 2-1/2 feet long. =no. 45.= one rubber band (r b, fig. 33). =no. 46.= six bent wire clamps (b c, fig. 37). =no. 47.= one tin box conductor (t b, fig. 42). this cylindrical conductor is about the size of an ordinary baking powder box. =no. 48.= one hairpin discharger for the condenser. =no. 49.= two sheets of aluminum-leaf for the leaf electroscope (fig. 57) and other experiments. =no. 50.= one bent wire (h p, fig. 57) used in connection with the leaf electroscope. =no. 51.= a dry cell, ordinary size about 7 in. high and 2-1/2 in. in diameter. =no. 52.= enough mercury to amalgamate battery zincs. a wooden pill box containing about half a thimbleful will do. =no. 53.= a coil containing 25 feet of no. 24 insulated copper wire for connections. =no. 54.= one dozen spring connectors (fig. 61) for making connections. these are made of brass, nickel plated, and do not affect the compass-needle. =no. 55.= a telegraph key (fig. 68) without switch. the metal straps are made of aluminum; they are 1/2 in. wide, and are fastened to a neat wooden base. =no. 56.= three metal plates, each about 2 in. by 3/4 in., on which spring connectors (no. 54) are to be pushed in order to join two wires. =no. 57.= a current reverser (fig. 69). the straps are made of aluminum and are fastened to a neat wooden base. =no. 58.= a galvanoscope (fig. 72) including a degree-card (no. 99). the cardboard coil-support, c s, is 5 × 6-1/4 in., and the hole in it is 3-3/8 in. in diameter. the coil is 4-1/4 in. in diameter, made of no. 24 insulated copper wire. =no. 59.= an astatic galvanoscope (fig. 77). the whole may be taken apart and mailed in the containing box, b, which is 4-3/8 × 3-1/8 × 1 in. the coil is made of no. 31 wire, and has a resistance of about 5 ohms. spring connectors are used to join a wire to the apparatus by pushing the connectors into the tubular binding-posts, l and r. =no. 60-63.= four strips of sheet zinc, 4 in. by 1/2 in., not amalgamated. =no. 64.= a carbon rod, 4 in. long (fig. 81). =no. 65, 66.= two glass tumblers (fig. 81). =no. 67, 68.= two strips of sheet copper, 4 in. by 1/2 in. (fig. 85). =no. 69.= one galvanized iron nail. =no. 70, 71.= two wooden cross-pieces (fig. 85). =no. 72.= one dozen brass screws, 5/8 in. long, size no. 5, with round heads. =no. 73.= a porous cup (p c, fig. 87) that will stand inside of the tumblers (no. 65). =no. 74.= a zinc rod, about 3/8 in. in diameter, like those used in leclanché cells. =no. 75.= a sheet copper plate for the two-fluid cell (c, fig. 87). this is 2 in. wide; it nearly surrounds the porous cup, and is supported upon the edge of the tumbler by a narrow strip, a, with which connections are made by spring connectors (no. 54). =no. 76.= one strip of sheet iron, 4 in. by 1/2 in. =no. 77, 78.= two strips of sheet lead, 4 in. by 1/2 in. =no. 79.= a resistance coil (fig. 94). the coil is made of no. 24 insulated copper wire; it has a resistance of 2 ohms (nearly) and is fastened to a cardboard base. it is so arranged that either one or two ohms can be used at will. =no. 80.= a wheatstone's bridge (fig. 103), including a scale (no. 100). the aluminum straps, 1, 2, 3, are fastened to a neat wooden base, 10 in. long by 2 in. wide. a no. 28 german-silver wire is used for the bridge. =no. 81.= a piece of no. 30 uncovered german-silver wire, 2.1 meters long, used for resistance (fig. 96). =no. 82.= a piece of no. 28 uncovered german-silver wire, 2.1 meters long. =no. 83-85.= three plate binding-posts, consisting of bent straps of sheet aluminum (x, y, z, fig. 96). =no. 86.= two ounces of copper sulphate, commonly called bluestone. the crystals may be kept in a large wooden pill box. =no. 87.= one dozen copper washers. =no. 88.= one combination rule, 1 ft. long, marked with english and metric systems. =no. 89.= a hollow coil of no. 24 insulated copper wire (fig. 130). the spool, on which the wire is wound, has a hole for a five-sixteenths inch core. it is turned down thin, so that the wire is near the core. the coil is about 1-1/8 in. long and 1 in. in diameter. spring connectors are joined to the ends of the coil. =no. 90.= a hollow coil of no. 25 insulated copper wire, similar to no. 89, with spring connectors attached to its ends. =no. 91.= carbon rod for electroplating. =no. 92, 93.= two soft iron cores, with screws (i c, fig. 130). these cores are 5/16 in. in diameter, and have a threaded hole in one end for fastening them to no. 94. =no. 94.= a tin box with three holes punched in its top (fig. 132). this serves as a base, as well as a yoke, for the two electromagnets, a, b, shown in plan. =no. 95.= combination connecting plates (fig. 132). three aluminum straps are fastened to a wooden base. they are turned up at their ends so that spring connectors can be easily pushed upon them. =no. 96.= one long iron core (l i c, fig. 140). this is of soft iron, 5/16 in. in diameter, and long enough to pass through both coils (no. 89, 90). =no. 97.= bar magnet, about 4 in. long and 5/16 in. in diameter. =no. 98.= coil of insulated wire wound on a soft iron core, to act as a primary coil for induction experiments. this coil fits inside of the hollow coils (nos. 89, 90). =no. 99.= a printed degree-card for the galvanoscope (no. 58). this is printed on stiff cardboard, about 3 in. in diameter. =no. 100.= a printed scale for the wheatstone's bridge (no. 80). this is printed on stiff paper. the scale is 8 in. long, and is divided into 10 large divisions, each of which is subdivided into 10 parts, thus making 100 parts in all. index. numbers refer to paragraphs. see table of contents for the various experiments. abreast, arrangement of cells, 365. accumulators. (see storage cells.) action, local, 273. air, as insulator, 144, _a_. alternating currents, 443. amalgamating, 257, 274. amber, 107. ammeter, 353. ampere, the, 351, 357. ampere's rule, 386. annealing, 6. annunciators, 471. anode, 373, 378. applications of electricity, chap. xxvii. arc lamp, 485. arrangement, of cells, 363 to 368. armature, the, 11, 78, 476. astatic needles, 251, 253, 254; galvanoscope, 252, 256. atmospheric electricity, chap. xiii., 217; causes of, 221. attraction, mutual, 111; and repulsion, laws of magnetic, 29; electric, laws of, 121. aurora borealis, 223. batteries, chap. xv.; storage, 382. bell, electric, 468. bell telephone, 480. bichromate cell, 289. bound electrification, 162, 191. breaking a magnet, 51. bridge, wheatstone's, 324 to 330. brushes, 476. buzzers, electric, 468. cable, submarine, as condenser, 182. capacity, inductive, 169; electrical, 176, 178. carbon, transmitter, 482; electroscope, 114. cathode, 373. cell, galvanic, chap. xv.; arrangement of, 363, 364, 365, 368; chemical action in, 270, 271; direction of current in, 268; local action in, 273; open and closed circuit, 286; polarization of, 278; poles of, 269; simple, 275; secondary, 382; single-fluid, 275; two-fluid, 281, 285; various galvanic, 286 to 291. charge, in condenser, 195; residual of condensers, 197. charging conductors, chap. viii. chemical action, 369. chemical effects of current, chap. xxi. circuit, electric, 266; divided, 293; short, 295. coercive force, 44, 46. coils, 390; induction, 473, 474; method of joining, 408; polarity of, 392; resistance, 309; simple resistance, 310. commutator, 476. compass, 26; our, 32; needle, 243, 249. compound magnets, 73. condensation of electrification, chap. x., 178. condensers, 178; action of, 186, 191; induction coil, 181; submarine cables, 182. conductive discharge, 149, 184. conductors, 126, 129, 133; hollow and solid, 153; and insulators, relation between, 133; and non-conductors, 312. connections, electrical, 226 to 230. contact breaker, exp. 195; § 466. convective discharge, 149. copper sulphate solution, 283. cores, of electromagnets, 397. coulomb, the, 354. current electricity, part iii. current, 144, _a_, 264; detectors, 232, 239; direction of in cell, 268; direct and alternating, 443; extra, 444; interrupters, 466; primary and secondary, 441; measurement of, 352; reverser, 235, 237; strength of, chap. xx., 350, 358, 362 to 365; unit of, 351. daniell cell, 290. declination, 84. depolarizers, 280, 282. detectors, current, 232, 239. diamagnetic bodies, 15. dielectric, 184, 191, 195. dielectrics, 166. dip, 86. direct currents, 428, 443. dischargers, 188. discharges, kinds of, 149. divided circuits, 293, 323. dry cells, 288. dynamo, 435, 476. earth's magnetism, 83, 92, 93. electric, bells, 468; chime, 193; circuit, 266, chap. xvi.; current, 144, _a_, 264; density, 155; field, 156; horse-power, 355; lighting, 484; machines, static, 216; motor, 477; polarization, 159; resistance, chap. xviii.; wind, 155. electricity, static, part ii.; current, part iii.; applications of, chap. xxvii., 456; kinds of, 100; derivation of name, 107; atmospheric, chap. xiii., 217. electrification, chap. vi., 103, 116, 132, 134; and heat, 104; condensation of, chap. x.; escape of, 155; free and bound, 162; induced, chap. ix.; kinds of, 120; of earth, 222; source of in cells, 265; theories about, 145; two kinds of, 120, 211. electrics and non-electrics, 134. electrified bodies, 102, 107. electrodes, 269. electromagnetism, chap. xxii., 383. electromagnets, chap. xxiii., 396; cores of, 397; horseshoe, 405. electromotive force, 144, chap. xvii., 296, 300, 303; measurement of, exp. 140; of polarization, 373, 382; series, 301; unit of, 297. electrophorus, 138; action of, 171, 172; our, 139. electrolysis, 370. electrolyte, 370. electroplating, 376, 378. electroscope, action of, 206, 208; carbon, 114; pith-ball, 200; our leaf, 201, 202. electroscopes, chap. xi. electrotyping, 379. equator of magnet, 13. equipotential points, 326. external resistance, 307, 368. extra current, 444; exp. 199. field, electric, 156; magnetic, chap. iv., 62, 80; magnets, 476. figures, magnetic, 64; permanent, 417. force, 103; lines of magnetic, 64, 73, 80, 156; lines of electric, 156; lines of about a wire, 385. franklin, benjamin, 218. free electrification, 162. frictional electricity, part ii. fulminating panes, 180. galvanic cells, chap. xv., 265; chemical action in, 270; various kinds of, 286 to 291. galvanoscope, 240 to 249. glass, as insulator, 136. gold-leaf electroscope, 200, 209. gravity cell, 291. hardening steel, 8, 10. heat, effect on resistance, 343; effect on magnet, 49. horse-power, electric, 355. horseshoe magnet, 11; advantages of, 82; electromagnets, 405. hydrogen, 260, 262, 271, 278, 279, 373. inclination of needle, 86. induced currents, chap. xxv.; and work, 429; and lines of force, 432, 435, 438; direction of, 439. induced magnetism, chap. iii. induction coils, 473; action of, 474; condensers of, 181; with telephone, 483. induction, electromagnetic, 426; laws of, 440; static, theory of, 159; successive, 168. inductive capacity, 169. insulators, chap. vii., 125. internal resistance, 307, 314, 358, 362, 368. iron and steel, chap. i. iron, hardening properties of, exp. 4; impurities of, 1; kinds of, 2; soft, 10. jar, leyden, 179. key, 233, 234. lamp, arc, 485; incandescent, 486. laws, of electrification, 121; of induction, 440; of magnetism, 29; of resistance, 349. leclanché cell, 287. leyden jar, 179. lighting, 484, 485, 486. lightning, 144, _a_; 218; rods, 220. lines of force, about a wire, 385, 388; electric, 156; and induced currents, 432, 438; magnetic, 64, 73, 74, 80, 156; resistance to, 78, 397. local action, 273. local currents, 273. lodestone, 93. magnetic, bodies, 15; circuits, closed, 420; field, 62, 80; figures, permanent, 417; figures, 64, exp. 161, 162, exps. 168 to 171; force, lines of, 64, 80, 156; induction of the earth, 92; needle, 26; needles, balancing of, 88; needle, dip of, 86; problems, 33; saturation, 42; screens, 18; tick, exp. 160; transparency, 18. magnetism, part i.; induced, chap. iii., 53; residual, 44, 53; temporary, 53; terrestrial, chap. v.; theory of, 42; of earth, 83; laws of, 29. magnets, bar, 21; compound, 73; effect of breaking, 51; equator of, 13, 51; experimental, 407; kinds of, 11; natural, 93; poles of, 13, 25; practical uses of, 16. mercury, 274. motion, production of, chap. xxvi., 445, 452, 455. motors, electric, 477. mutual attractions, 111. natural magnets, 93. needle, astatic, 251, 253, 254; magnetic, 26, 32. negative electrification, 120. neutral bodies, 102. non-conductors, 312. non-electrics, 134. north-seeking poles, 25. ohm, the, 308. ohm's law, 356. one-fluid theory, 145. open and closed circuits, 266; cells, 286. oxygen, 372, 373, 382. peltier effect, 424. pith-ball electroscope, 200. plates or elements, 267. polarization of cells, 278; effects of, 279; electric, 159, 164; electromotive force of, 373; magnetic, 56; remedies for, 280. poles, 13, 25, 64, 92; consequent, 39; of coils, 392; of electrodes, 269; reversal of, 35; rule for, 31. pole pieces, 56. positive electrification, 120. potential, 133,144; energy, 103. primary current, 441. proof-plane, 209. quantity, unit of, 354. recorder, exp. 197. relay, telegraph, 462. repulsion, laws of electrostatic, 121; laws of magnetic, 29. residual, charge in condenser, 197; magnetism, 44; magnetism of core, exp. 159. resistance, coils, 309; effect of heat on, 343; electrical, chap. xviii., 305, 319, 321; external and internal, 307, 362, 368; internal, 314, 358; laws of, 349; to lines of force, 78; measurement of, chap. xix.; unit of, 308. retentivity, 44, 46. reverser, current, 235, 237. rheostat, simple, 344. saturation, magnetic, 42. secondary cells, 382; current, 441. self-induction, 444. series arrangement of cells, 364. shocks, 188. short circuits, 295. shunts, 293. silk, as insulator, 136. single-fluid cell, 275. single needle telegraph, exp. 194. sounder, telegraph, 458. spark, 144, _a_. static electricity, part ii. static electric machines, 216. steel, chap. i.; kinds of, 2; magnetism of, 42, 46, 49. st. elmo's fire, 222. storage cells, 382. successive, induction, 168; condensation, 199. sulphuric acid, 258, 262, 314. tangent galvanometer, 352. telegraph, line, 459, 460; relay, 462; single needle instrument, exp. 194; sounder, 458; static, 130. telephone, the, 479; bell, 480; carbon transmitter, 482; with induction coils, 483; receiver, 481. tempering steel, 8. temporary magnetism, 53. terrestrial magnetism, chap. v. thermoelectricity, chap. xxiv., 423. thermopile, 425; home-made, 421. thunder, 219. transformers, 475. transmitters, 480, 482. two-fluid cell, 280, 281; care of, 282; chemical action in, 285. two-fluid theory of electrification, 146. unit of, current strength, 351; e. m. f., 297; of power, 355; quantity, 354; resistance, 308. variation, angle of, 84. varieties of electricity, 100. volt, the, 297. voltameters, 297, 353, 380. water, composition of, 372. watt, the, 355. wheatstone's bridge, 324 to 330. wind, electric, 155. wire tables, chap. xxviii. yoke, use of, 406. zero, potential, 144, _a_. zinc, chemical action with, 271; with commercial, 273. zinc plates, reasons for amalgamating, 274. notes. notes. electrical books electrical apparatus games puzzles educational amusements [illustration] thomas m. st. john, met. e. a word to parents about games and educational amusements. systematic play is as important as systematic work. the best games and home amusements are as valuable to a child as school-studies; in fact, they bring out and stimulate qualities in a child, which no school-study can. fascinating home amusements are as necessary as school-books. boys and girls like to be busy. their amusements should be entered into as heartily, chosen as carefully, and purchased as willingly as school-books. =games.=--jingo and hustle-ball are good games. they are interesting and full of action. they arouse a child's common-sense. they cultivate an ability to think rapidly, judge correctly, and decide quickly. they educate the eye and hand at the same time. they are very simple, and may be played at once. =educational amusements.=--there is a peculiar fascination about electricity and magnetism, which makes these subjects appeal to every boy and girl. there is nothing better than science studies, to teach children to observe and to see what they look at; besides, it is _fun_ to experiment. "fun with electricity" and "fun with magnetism" are educational amusements. they contain fascinating experiments and are systematically arranged. juvenile work in electricity. _from the electrical engineer, may 19, 1898._ the position that young america is now taking in the electric and magnetic field is very clearly shown at the electrical show now being held at madison square garden, by an exhibit of simple experimental apparatus made by young boys from the browning school, of this city. the models shown cover every variety of apparatus that is dear to the heart of a boy, and yet, along the whole line from push-buttons to motors, one is struck by the extreme simplicity of design and the ingenious uses made of old tin tomato cans, cracker boxes, bolts, screws, wire, and the wood that a boy can get from a soap box. the apparatus in this exhibit was made by boys 13, 14 and 15 years of age, from designs made by mr. thomas m. st. john, of the browning school. it clearly shows that good, practical apparatus can be made from cheap materials by an average boy. the whole exhibit is wired and in working order, and it attracts the attention of a large number of parents and boys who hover around to see, in operation, the telegraph instruments, buzzers, shocking coils, current detectors, motors, etc. mr. st. john deserves the thanks of every boy who wants to build his own electrical apparatus for amusement or for experimental purposes, as he has made the designs extremely simple, and has kept constantly in mind the fact that the average boy has but a limited supply of pocket money, and an equally limited supply of tools. how two boys made their own electrical apparatus. =contents:= _chapter_ i. cells and batteries.--ii. battery fluids and solutions.--iii. miscellaneous apparatus and methods of construction.--iv. switches and cut-outs.--v. binding-posts and connectors.--vi. permanent magnets.--vii. magnetic needles and compasses.--viii. yokes and armatures.--ix. electro-magnets.--x. wire-winding apparatus.--xi. induction coils and their attachments.--xii. contact breakers and current interrupters.--xiii. current detectors and galvanometers.--xiv. telegraph keys and sounders.--xv. electric bells and buzzers.--xvi. commutators and current reversers.--xvii. resistance coils.--xviii. apparatus for static electricity.--xix. electric motors.--xx. odds and ends.--xxi. tools and materials. "the author of this book is a teacher and writer of great ingenuity, and we imagine that the effect of such a book as this falling into juvenile hands must be highly stimulating and beneficial. it is full of explicit details and instructions in regard to a great variety of apparatus, and the materials required are all within the compass of very modest pocket-money. moreover, it is systematic and entirely without rhetorical frills, so that the student can go right along without being diverted from good helpful work that will lead him to build useful apparatus and make him understand what he is about. the drawings are plain and excellent. we heartily commend the book."--_electrical engineer._ "those who visited the electrical exhibition last may cannot have failed to notice on the south gallery a very interesting exhibit, consisting, as it did, of electrical apparatus made by boys. the various devices there shown, comprising electro-magnets, telegraph keys and sounders, resistance coils, etc., were turned out by boys following the instructions given in the book with the above title, which is unquestionably one of the most practical little works yet written that treat of similar subjects, for with but a limited amount of mechanical knowledge, and by closely following the instructions given, almost any electrical device may be made at very small expense. that such a book fills a long-felt want may be inferred from the number of inquiries we are constantly receiving from persons desiring to make their own induction coils and other apparatus."--_electricity._ "at the electrical show in new york last may one of the most interesting exhibits was that of simple electrical apparatus made by the boys in one of the private schools in the city. this apparatus, made by boys of thirteen to fifteen years of age, was from designs by the author of this clever little book, and it was remarkable to see what an ingenious use had been made of old tin tomato-cans, cracker-boxes, bolts, screws, wire, and wood. with these simple materials telegraph instruments, coils, buzzers, current detectors, motors, switches, armatures, and an almost endless variety of apparatus were made. in his book mr. st. john has given directions in simple language for making and using these devices, and has illustrated these directions with admirable diagrams and cuts. the little volume is unique, and will prove exceedingly helpful to those of our young readers who are fortunate enough to possess themselves of a copy. for schools where a course of elementary science is taught, no better text-book in the first-steps in electricity is obtainable."--_the great round world._ exhibit of experimental electrical apparatus at the electrical show, madison square garden, new york. while only 40 pieces of simple apparatus were shown in this exhibit, it gave visitors something of an idea of what young boys can do if given proper designs. [illustration: "how two boys made their own electrical apparatus" gives proper designs--designs for over 150 things.] just published. how two boys made their own electrical apparatus. containing complete directions for making all kinds of simple electrical apparatus for the study of elementary electricity. by professor thomas m. st. john, new york city. the book measures 5 × 7-1/2 in., and is beautifully bound in cloth. it contains 141 pages and 125 illustrations. complete directions are given for making 152 different pieces of apparatus for the practical use of students, teachers, and others who wish to experiment. price, post-paid, $1.00. the shocking coils, telegraph instruments, batteries, electromagnets, motors, etc., etc., are so simple in construction that any boy of average ability can make them; in fact, the illustrations have been made directly from apparatus constructed by young boys. the author has been working along this line for several years, and he has been able, _with the help of boys_, to devise a complete line of simple electrical apparatus. _the apparatus is simple because the designs and methods of construction have been worked out practically in the school-room, absolutely no machine-work being required._ _the apparatus is practical because it has been designed for real use in the experimental study of elementary electricity._ _the apparatus is cheap because most of the parts can be made of old tin cans and cracker boxes, bolts, screws, wires and wood._ address, thomas m. st. john, 407 west 51st street, new york. fun with magnetism. book and complete outfit for sixty-one experiments in magnetism.... [illustration] children like to do experiments; and in this way, better than in any other, _a practical knowledge of the elements of magnetism_ may be obtained. these experiments, although arranged to amuse boys and girls, have been found to be very _useful in the class-room_ to supplement the ordinary exercises given in text-books of science. to secure the best _possible quality of apparatus_, the horseshoe magnets were made at sheffield, england, especially for these sets. they are new and strong. other parts of the apparatus have also been selected and made with great care, to adapt them particularly to these experiments.--_from the author's preface._ =contents.=--experiments with horseshoe magnet.--experiments with magnetized needles.--experiments with needles, corks, wires, nails, etc.--experiments with bar magnets.--experiments with floating magnets.--miscellaneous experiments.--miscellaneous illustrations showing what very small children can do with the apparatus.--diagrams showing how magnetized needles may be used by little children to make hundreds of pretty designs upon paper. =amusing experiments.=--something for nervous people to try.--the jersey mosquito.--the stampede.--the runaway.--the dog-fight.--the whirligig.--the naval battle.--a string of fish.--a magnetic gun.--a top upsidedown.--a magnetic windmill.--a compass upsidedown.--the magnetic acrobat.--the busy ant-hill.--the magnetic bridge.--the merry-go-round.--the tight-rope walker.--a magnetic motor using attractions and repulsions. _the book and complete outfit will be sent, post-paid, upon receipt of 35 cents, by_ thomas m. st. john, 407 w. 51st st., new york. a few off-hand statements that have been made about "fun with magnetism" and "fun with electricity" in letters of inquiry to the author. (these statements were absolutely unsolicited.) "my little boy has your 'fun with magnetism' and enjoys it so much that if the 'fun with electricity' is ready i would like to have it for him. please let me know," etc. "i have had much fun with 'fun with magnetism.'" "my boy has 'fun with magnetism' and has enjoyed it very much and would like the other. will you," etc. "please let me know when 'fun with electricity' is upon the market, for if it is as good as this, i shall certainly want it." "i have just received 'fun with magnetism' and am delighted with it. please send me 12 sets," etc. "i have 'fun with magnetism' and 'fun with electricity' and have enjoyed them very much. please send," etc. "i am much pleased with 'fun with electricity' and would like to have," etc. "'fun with electricity' is fine and i have had lots of fun with it. please send," etc. "having experimented with both of your apparatus 'fun with magnetism' and 'fun with electricity,' and having found them both amusing and instructive, i wish to ask," etc. "i have purchased your outfits 'fun with electricity' and 'fun with magnetism,' and though they are designed for amusement, i find them a great help in my studies. will you please," etc. "i have one of your outfits of 'fun with electricity,' and i enjoy it very much, some of the experiments being very astonishing. will you please," etc. "i have enjoyed 'fun with magnetism' and 'fun with electricity' very much." "my little boy has your book 'fun with electricity,' which has given him much amusement. he would like to have," etc. "i am very much pleased with both outfits. i am very much in favor of such things for boys; it keeps them occupied with something that is both amusing and instructive. send me," etc. fun with electricity. book and complete outfit for sixty experiments in electricity.... [illustration] enough of the principles of electricity are brought out to make the book instructive as well as amusing. the experiments are systematically arranged, and make a fascinating science course. no chemicals, no danger. the book is conversational and not at all "schooly," harry and ned being two boys who perform the experiments and talk over the results as they go along. "the book reads like a story."--"an appropriate present for a boy or girl."--"intelligent parents will appreciate 'fun with electricity.'"--"very complete, because it contains both book and apparatus."--"there is no end to the fun which a boy or girl can have with this fascinating amusement." =there is fun in these experiments.=--chain lightning.--an electric whirligig.--the baby thunderstorm.--a race with electricity.--an electric frog pond.--an electric ding-dong.--the magic finger.--daddy long-legs.--jumping sally.--an electric kite.--very shocking.--condensed lightning.--an electric fly-trap.--the merry pendulum.--an electric ferry-boat.--a funny piece of paper.--a joke on the family cat.--electricity plays leap-frog.--lightning goes over a bridge.--electricity carries a lantern.--and _=40 others=_. the _=outfit=_ contains 20 different articles. the _=book of instruction=_ measures 5 × 7-1/2 inches, and has 38 illustrations, 55 pages, good paper and clear type. _the book and complete outfit will be sent, by mail or express, charges prepaid, upon receipt of 65 cents, by_ thomas m. st. john, 407 w. 51st st., new york. fun with puzzles. book, key, and complete outfit for four hundred puzzles.... the book measures 5 × 7-1/2 inches. it is well printed, nicely bound, and contains 15 chapters, 80 pages, and 128 illustrations. the key is illustrated. it is bound with the book, and contains the solution of every puzzle. the complete outfit is placed in a neat box with the book. it consists of numbers, counters, figures, pictures, etc., for doing the puzzles. =contents=: _chapter_ (1) secret writing. (2) magic triangles, squares, rectangles, hexagons, crosses, circles, etc. (3) dropped letter and dropped word puzzles. (4) mixed proverbs, prose and rhyme. (5) word diamonds, squares, triangles, and rhomboids. (6) numerical enigmas. (7) jumbled writing and magic proverbs. (8) dissected puzzles. (9) hidden and concealed words. (10) divided cakes, pies, gardens, farms, etc. (11) bicycle and boat puzzles. (12) various word and letter puzzles. (13) puzzles with counters. (14) combination puzzles. (15) mazes and labyrinths. "fun with puzzles" is a book that every boy and girl should have. it is amusing, instructive,--educational. it is just the thing to wake up boys and girls and make them think. they like it, because it is real fun. this sort of educational play should be given in every school-room and in every home. "fun with puzzles" will puzzle your friends, as well as yourself; it contains some real brain-splitters. over 300 new and original puzzles are given, besides many that are hundreds of years old. =secret writing.= among the many things that "f. w. p." contains, is the key to _secret writing_. it shows you a very simple way to write letters to your friends, and it is simply impossible for others to read what you have written, unless they know the secret. this, alone is a valuable thing for any boy or girl who wants to have some fun. _the book, key, and complete outfit will be sent, postpaid, upon receipt of 35 cents, by_ thomas m. st. john, 407 west 51st st., new york city. fun with soap-bubbles. book and complete outfit for fancy bubbles and films.... [illustration] =the outfit= contains everything necessary for thousands of beautiful bubbles and films. all highly colored articles have been carefully avoided, as cheap paints and dyes are positively dangerous in children's mouths. the outfit contains the following articles: one book of instructions, called "fun with soap-bubbles," 1 metal base for bubble stand, 1 wooden rod for bubble stand, 8 large wire rings for bubble stand, 1 small wire ring, 3 straws, 1 package of prepared soap, 1 bubble pipe, 1 water-proof bubble horn. the complete outfit is placed in a neat box with the book. (extra horns, soap, etc., furnished at slight cost.) =contents of book.=--twenty-one illustrations.--introduction.--the colors of soap-bubbles.--the outfit.--soap mixture.--useful hints.--bubbles blown with pipes.--bubbles blown with straws.--bubbles blown with the horn.--floating bubbles.--baby bubbles.--smoke bubbles.--bombshell bubbles.--dancing bubbles.--bubble games.--supported bubbles.--bubble cluster.--suspended bubbles.--bubble lamp chimney.--bubble lenses.--bubble basket.--bubble bellows.--to draw a bubble through a ring.--bubble acorn.--bubble bottle.--a bubble within a bubble.--another way.--bubble shade.--bubble hammock.--wrestling bubbles.--a smoking bubble.--soap films.--the tennis racket film.--fish-net film.--pan-shaped film.--bow and arrow film.--bubble dome.--double bubble dome.--pyramid bubbles.--turtle-back bubbles.--soap-bubbles and frictional electricity. "there is nothing more beautiful than the airy-fairy soap-bubble with its everchanging colors." _=the best possible amusement for old and young.=_ _the book and complete outfit will be sent, post-paid, upon receipt of 35 cents, by_ thomas m. st. john, 407 west 51st st., new york city. things a boy should know about electricity. (in preparation.) this book explains, in simple, straightforward language, many things about electricity; things in which the american boy is intensely interested; things he wants to know; things he should know. it is free from technical language and rhetorical frills, but it tells how things work, and why they work. it is brimful of illustrations--the best that can be had--illustrations that are taken directly from apparatus and machinery, and that show what they are intended to show. this book does not contain experiments, or tell how to make apparatus; our other books do that. after explaining the simple principles of electricity, it shows how these principles are used and combined to make electricity do every-day work. the following are _some of the things electricity can do:_ it signals without wires. it drills rock, coal, and teeth. it cures diseases and kills criminals. it protects, heats, and ventilates houses. it photographs the bones of the human body. it rings church bells and plays church organs. it lights streets, cars, boats, mines, houses, etc. it pumps water, cooks food, and fans you while eating. it runs all sorts of machinery, elevators, cars, boats, and wagons. it sends messages with the telegraph, telephone, telautograph, and search-light. it cuts cloth, irons clothes, washes dishes, blackens boots, welds metals, prints books, etc., etc. _everyone should know about electricity._ =things a boy should know about electricity= will interest _you_. we shall be glad to send you complete information as soon as it is ready. send us your address now. dewey flag poles =are little models of real flag poles....= [illustration] they are appropriate for any occasion, and suitable for any kind of decoration. they should stand on tables, mantels, pianos, etc.; in fact, there is no better ornament for general use. "they should be in every home and in every school-room in the united states." "no toy fort complete without a dewey flag pole." "the children can fasten them on the windowsill and watch them flutter by the hour." "they hoist like big flags, at half-mast, etc." "invaluable for store-window decoration." [illustration] prices small size: height 18 inches, fitted with united states or cuban silk flag (4×6 in.) post-paid, 30c. large size: height 24 inches, fitted with united states silk flag (7 × 10 in.), post-paid, 40c. large size: fitted with cuban or british silk flag (8×12 in.), post-paid, 50c. _dewey flag poles are beautifully made of hard wood, and fitted with best silk flags_. games. hustle=ball. a quick, sharp, decisive game that is thoroughly american. played by means of magic wands, and polished balls of steel. _=needed:= "a quick eye and a nimble hand."_--_shakespeare_. _the rule: just keep cool--and hustle._ four games with one outfit: "hustle ball," "leap-frog," "cross-country race," "magnetic potato-race." the game-board is new and original, as well as the methods of playing. the game is put up in a strong box having a beautifully lithographed cover, and measures 8 × 15-1/2 inches. with the game-board are furnished, magic wands, polished steel balls, an "extra strength" horseshoe magnet, and a complete set of illustrated rules and directions for playing. "unlike all other games." "any one can play hustle-ball." "just the thing for progressive parties." "hustle-ball games are intensely exciting." "no waiting for some one to play." "you win or lose a point in a few seconds." "by handicapping the best players, all games are made equally interesting and exciting." "a game for grandparents, as well as for grandchildren." a brand-new idea in games. [illustration] [illustration] '_a hustle from the word go._' _=this exciting game=_ will be sent, _=charges prepaid=_, by mail or express, upon receipt of 65 cents. address thomas m. st. john, 407 west 51st street, new york city. jingo the great war game social exciting interesting simple. a thorough war game:--infantry against infantry, cavalry against cavalry, etc. jingo is really a great war contest between england and america. upon the game-board are 14 beautiful war scenes, each lithographed in 8 colors. american and english flags, coats of arms, cannon, torpedoes, etc., aid in making this game artistic, handsome and attractive. the following companies, ships, etc., are shown:--_american_, 12th u. s. infantry,--6th u. s. cavalry,--2d u. s. light artillery,--u. s. mortar battery,--u. s. monitor "miantonomoh,"--u. s. ram "katahdin,"--u. s. battleship "indiana,"--u. s. torpedo boat "cushing,"--u. s dynamite cruiser "vesuvius." _english_, 30th east lancashire,--1st royal dragoons,--royal horse artillery,--royal artillery,--h. m. s. "thunderer,"--h. m. s. "seagull,"--h. m. s. "nile,"--h. m. s. "australia,"--h. m. s. "dart." the game board is over 16 inches square when opened. jingo is made and finished in a manner which makes it the most beautiful, artistic, and practical game ever published. "just what every boy likes." "a good idea well carried out." "the game-board is a work of art." "any child can play jingo at once." "it is the handsomest game on the market." jingo junior is the greatest game ever invented for little folks. it is played upon the jingo board with the extra ammunition furnished. these two great games make a most complete and beautiful outfit for home amusement. jingo and jingo junior. two fascinating and entirely different games, played with one outfit, and complete in one box. [illustration] _this handsome outfit_ for playing the _two great war games_ will be sent _charges prepaid_ upon receipt of _=$1.00=_. address thomas m. st. john, 407 west 51st street, new york city. transcriber's notes in the text version, italic text is denoted by _underscores_ and bold text by =equal signs=. obvious punctuation errors have been repaired. the book contains some inconsistent hyphenation which has been left as printed. p. xi. (toc) "constructiou" changed to "construction" p. xiv. (toc) "the prodution of motion" changed to "the production of motion" p. 27. para. 73. "thick permament magnets" changed to "thick permanent magnets" p. 99. para 253. "wabble" may be a typo for wobble but has been left on the off chance that this could be what was intended. p. 118. fig 91. the final column has been scored through but appears to read "cu to zn" p. 131. para. 324, 325. german-silver wire, g-s w used here but previously g s w used. p. 164. para 395. "circuit in closed" changed to "circuit is closed" p. 166. para 398. "core inside of the c l" changed to "core inside of the coil" after checking original scans. p. 169-170. it appears that a word has been omitted across the page break. "the copper washer, c w, be used." has been changed to "the copper washer, c w, should be used.". (alternative words are possible!) p. 211. no. 35. 5-16 in. changed to 5/16 in. p. 213. no. 92, 93. 5-16 in. changed to 5/16 in. p. 214. no. 96. and no. 97. 5-16 in. changed to 5/16 in. p. 216. entry for coulomb moved from end of "c" to above current. the world masters _ready shortly_ _by the same author_ sidelights on convict life _with numerous illustrations taken from life_ crown 8vo, cloth gilt, 6s. john long, publisher london the world masters by george griffith author of "_the angel of the revolution_," "_brothers of the chain_," "_the justice of revenge_," "_a honeymoon in space_," "_captain johnnie_," _etc. etc._ london john long 13 and 14 norris street, haymarket 1903 [_all rights reserved_] the world masters prologue the moment of triumph high above the night-shrouded street, whose silence was only broken by the occasional tramp of the military patrol or the gruff challenges of the sentries on the fortifications, a man was walking, with jerky, uneven strides, up and down a vast attic in an ancient house overlooking the old fisher's gate, close by where the river ill leaves the famous city of strassburg. the room, practically destitute of ordinary furniture, was fitted up as a chemical and physical laboratory, and the man was doctor emil fargeau, the most distinguished scientific investigator that the lost province of alsace had produced--a tall, spare man of about sixty, with sloping, stooping shoulders and forward-thrown head, thinly covered with straggling iron-grey hair. it was plain that he was in the habit of shaving clean, but just now there was a short white stubble both on his upper lip and on the lean wrinkled cheeks which showed the nervous workings of the muscles so plainly. in fact, his whole appearance was that of a man too completely absorbed by an over-mastering idea to pay any attention to the small details of life. and such was the exact truth--for these few mid-night minutes which were being ticked off by an ancient wooden clock in the corner were the most anxious of his life. in fact, a few more of them would decide whether the great experiment, for which he had sacrificed everything, even to his home and his great professional position, was to be a success or a failure. on the long, bare, pine table, beside which he was pacing up and down, stood a strange fabric about three feet high. it was round, and about the size of a four-gallon ale jar. it was covered completely by a closed glass cylinder, and rested on four strong glass supports. from the floor on either side of the table a number of twisted, silk-covered wires rose from two sets of storage batteries. within the four supports was a wooden dish, and on this lay a piece of bright steel some four inches square and about an inch thick, just under a circle of needles which hung down in a circle from the bottom of the machine. a very faint humming sound filled the room, and made a somewhat uncanny accompaniment to the leisurely tick of the clock and the irregular shuffling of the doctor's slippered feet. every now and then he stopped, and put his ear near to the machine, and then looked at the piece of steel with a gleam of longing anticipation in his keen, deep-set, grey eyes. then he began his walk again, and his lips went on working, as though he were holding an inaudible conversation with himself. at last there came a faint whirr from the clock, a little window opened, and a wooden bird bobbed out and said "cuckoo" once. the doctor stopped instantly, took out his watch and compared it with the clock. "now, let us see!" he said, quietly, in his somewhat guttural alsatian french, for in this supreme moment of his life he had gone back to the patois of his boyhood, which he had spoken in the days before the teuton's iron hand had snatched his well-loved native land from france and begun to rule it according to the pitiless doctrine of blood and iron. he pulled the platter out from under the machine, picked up a little wooden mallet from the table, and, with a trembling hand, struck the steel plate in the centre. it splintered instantly to fragments, as though it had only been a thin sheet of glass. the doctor dropped the mallet, lifted his hand to the window that looked out over the river towards the citadel, and said: "it is done! and so, germany, stealer of our land and oppressor of my people, will i break the great fabric of your power with one touch of this weak old hand of mine!" then he threw open one of the old-fashioned dormer windows that looked out over the northern part of the city towards france, and began to speak again in a low, intense tone which rose and fell slightly as his deep breaths came and went. "but france, my beautiful mother france, thou shalt know soon that i have done more than given thee the power to turn on thy conqueror and crush him. i can make thee queen and mistress of the world, and i will do it. the other nations shall live and prosper only at thy bidding, and they shall pay thee tribute for the privilege of being something more than the savages from which they came. "those who will not pay thee tribute shall go back to the stone age, for i will show thee how to make their metals useless. only with thy permission shall their steam-engines work for them, or their telegraphs record their words; for i have found the soul of the world, the living principle of material things, and i will draw it out of the fabric of nature as i have done out of that block of steel. and i will give it into thy hands, and the nations shall live or die according to thy pleasure. "and you, adelaide, daughter of our ancient line of kings, descendant of the grand monarch, you shall join hands with my victor after he has flung off the livery of his servitude, and together you shall raise up the throne of saint louis in the place where these usurpers and republican canaille have reigned over ruined france. the prince of condé shall sit in the seat of his ancestors, and after him adelaide de montpensier--and victor, my son, shall stand beside her, ruler of the world! "a miracle, and yet 'tis true! possible, for i have made it possible. it is only for france to believe me and spend her millions--millions that will buy her the empire of the earth, and it is done--done as easily as i worked that seeming miracle just now. i have risked much--all--for i have hazarded even honour itself; but my faith is justified, and i have won--and now, let me see how i stand before the world for the present." he went and sat down before the only piece of ordinary furniture that the laboratory contained, an old oak bureau, on which stood a little shaded reading-lamp. he unlocked a drawer, and took out a little wash-leather bag. he undid it and emptied it into his hand. there were ten twenty-mark pieces--just ten pounds and a few pence in english money. in his pocket he had perhaps twenty-five marks more. "it is not much," he whispered, as he looked at the gold in his hand; "not much at the end of a life's work, as the world would call it. but the world knows nothing of that!" he went on, half-turning his head towards the machine on the table. "as the world takes wealth, this is all that is left of fortune, lands, and savings. everything is gone but this, and that--ay, and more also. yes, it was a hard fate that forced me to do that. still, science showed me how to alter the figures so that not even the filthy jew weinthal himself could tell if he had the draft in his hand. that he will never have; for it has a month to run, and before that france will have made me rich. it was not right, but the scoundrel only gave me half what the last farm was worth, and i had to have more to finish my work. yet, is it not honourable even to sin in such a cause! well, well, it is over now. i have triumphed, and that atones for all; and so to bed and good dreams, and to-morrow to paris!" chapter i it was the 27th of january, the kaiser's birthday, and the reception-rooms of the german embassy, on the nevski prospekt, overlooking the snow-covered quays and ice-bound waters of the neva, were filled with as brilliant a throng as could have been found between the ourals and the english channel. it has been said that petersburg in the winter season contains more beautiful women than any other capital in europe; and certainly the fair guests of his excellency the german ambassador to the court of the white czar went far towards proving the truth of the saying. the dresses were as ideal as they were indescribable, and the jewels which blazed round the softly moulded throats and on the fair white breasts, and gleamed on dainty coiffures of every hue, from ebony black to the purest flaxen, would have been bad to match even among the treasures of oriental princes. the men, too, were splendid in every variety of uniform, from the gold-laced broadcloth of diplomacy to the white and gold of the imperial guard. not a man was present whose left breast was not glittering with stars and medals, and, in most cases, crossed with the ribbon of some distinguished order. the windless, frosty air outside was still vocal with the jingling of the sleigh-bells as the vehicles sped swiftly and noiselessly up to the open doors, for it was only a little after ten, and all the guests had not yet arrived. precisely at half-past a sleigh drawn by three perfectly black orloff horses swept into the courtyard, and a few minutes later the major-domo passed through the open folding-doors and said, in loud but well-trained tones: "his highness the prince de condé, duc de montpensier! mademoiselle la marquise de montpensier!" at the same moment two lacqueys held aside the heavy curtains which hung on the inside of the doorway, and the latest arrivals entered. the announcement of the once most noble names in europe instantly hushed the hum of conversation, and all eyes were turned towards the doorway. they saw a tall, straight, well-set-up man of about fifty, with dark moustache and imperial, and iron-grey hair still thick and strong. a single glance at his features showed that they bore the indelible stamp of the old bourbon race. the high, somewhat narrow, forehead was continued in a straight line to the end of the long thin nose. the somewhat high cheek-bones, the delicate ears, the thin, sensitive nostrils, and the strong, slightly protruding chin, might have belonged to the grande monarque himself. he was in ordinary court dress, the broad red ribbon of the order of st vladimir crossed his breast, the collar and jewel of the golden fleece hung from his neck, and the stars of half-a-dozen other orders glittered on the left breast of his coat; but, though he bore the greatest name in france, there was not a french order among them, for louis xavier de condé was a voluntary exile from the land over which his ancestors had once ruled so splendidly and so ruinously. for three generations his branch of the great family had refused to recognise any ruler in france, from the first consul to the president of the third republic. in his eyes they were one and all usurpers and plebeian upstarts, who ruled only by the suffrages of an ignorant and deluded mob. in short, his creed and the rule of his daily life were hatred and contempt of the french democracy. on this subject he was almost a fanatic, and in days soon to come this fanaticism of his was destined to influence events, of which only three people in all that crowded assembly were even dreaming. the girl at his side--for she was not yet twenty-one--might well have been taken for a twentieth-century replica of marie antoinette, and to say that, is to say that among all the beautiful and stately women in that brilliant concourse, none were quite so beautiful and stately as adelaide de condé, marquise de montpensier. of all the hundred eyes which were turned upon this peerless daughter of the line of st louis, the most eager were those of a splendidly-built young fellow of about twenty-eight, dressed in the blue and white uniform of the uhlan regiment of the german army. captain victor fargeau, military attaché to the german embassy in petersburg, was perhaps the handsomest, and, at the same time, manliest-looking man in all that company of soldiers and diplomats. at least, so certainly thought adelaide de condé, as she saw his dark blue eyes light up with a swift gleam of admiration, and the bronze on his cheeks grow deeper as the quick blood flushed beneath it. it was a strange bond that united the daughter of the bourbons with the soldier and subject of the german kaiser, and yet it must have been a close one. for, after the first formal presentations were over, her eyes sent a quick signal to his, which brought him instantly to her side, and when their hands met the clasp was closer, and lasted just a moment longer than mere acquaintance or even friendship would have warranted. "can you tell me, captain, whether the gentleman who calls himself the french ambassador has honoured us with his presence to-night?" said the prince, as he shook hands with the young soldier. "no, prince, he has not," he replied. "i hear that, almost at the last moment, he sent an attaché with his regrets and excuses. of course, as you know, there is a little friction between the governments just now, and naturally, too, he would know that your highness and mam'selle la marquise would honour us with your presence--so, on the whole, i suppose he thought it more convenient to discover some important diplomatic matter which would deprive him of the pleasure of joining us." "ah," said the marquise, looking up at him with a glance and a smile that set his pulses jumping, "then perhaps sophie valdemar was right when she told me this afternoon that his excellency had really a good excuse for not coming--an interview with count lansdorf, and afterwards with no less a personage than the little father himself! and, you know, sophie knows everything." "ah yes," said the prince; "i had forgotten that. you told me of it. i should not wonder if the subject of their conversation were not unconnected with an increase of the french fleet in chinese waters. and then morocco is----" "chut, papa!" said the marquise, in a low tone, "we must not talk politics here. in petersburg ceilings have eyes and walls have ears." "that is true," laughed victor; "not even embassies here are neutral ground." at this moment a lacquey approached and bowed to captain fargeau. "pardon me a moment," he said to his companions; "i am wanted for something, and i can see a good many envious eyes looking this way. ah, there goes the music! they will be dancing presently, and there will be many candidates for mam'selle's hand. but you will keep me a waltz or two, won't you? and may i hope also for supper?" "my dear victor," she replied, with a bewildering smile, "have i not already told you that you may hope for everything? meanwhile, _au revoir_! when you have done your business you will find us in the salon." as he moved away, the curtains were again drawn aside, and the major-domo announced: "his excellency count valdemar! the countess sophie valdemar!" the count was a big, strongly-built man in diplomatic uniform. his face was of the higher russian type, and heavily bearded. his daughter, the countess sophie, was a strange contrast to him, slight and fair, with perfectly cut features, almost grecian in their regularity, golden-bronze hair, dark, straight eyebrows, and big, wide-set, pansy-blue eyes. the only russian trait that she possessed was her mouth--full-lipped and sensuous, almost sensular, in fact; and yet it was small enough, and the lips were so daintily shaped that it added to, rather than detracted from her beauty. they were lips whose kisses had lured more than one bearer of a well-known name to destruction. some they had sent to the scaffold, and others were still dreaming of their fatal sweetness in prison or in hopeless exile; for sophie valdemar, daughter of count leo valdemar, chief of the third section of the ministry of the interior, had been trained up from girlhood by her father in every art of intrigue, until even he was fully justified in calling her the most skilful diplomatic detective in europe. to her friends and acquaintances she was just a charming and brilliantly-accomplished girl of nineteen, who had reigned as undisputed queen of beauty in moscow and petersburg until adelaide de condé had come from vienna with her father, and, by some mysterious means, unknown even to her, had been received into instant favour at court, and in the most exclusive circles in the most exclusive city in the world. in fact, the enigma which it was the present object of her life to solve was how this could be possible--granted the tacit alliance between the russian empire and the french republic, and the prince's openly expressed contempt for all modern things french and republican. there were, indeed, only three people in europe who could have solved that riddle, and she was not one of them. as she entered she saw victor coming towards her. instantly her eyes brightened, and the faintest of flushes showed through the pallor of her silken skin. he stopped for a moment to greet them, but his clasp on her hand was nothing more than the formal pressure which friendship expects, and she looked in vain for any gleam in his eyes answering that in her own. when he had passed in towards the door she flung a swift glance round the room, and as the soft pansy eyes rested on the exquisite shape and lovely face of adelaide de condé they seemed to harden and blacken for just the fraction of a second. the next moment she and her father were greeting the prince and the marquise with a cordiality that was only tempered by the almost indefinable reserve which the place and the situation made indispensable. "my dear marquise," she said, in that soft, pure french which, outside france, is only heard in russia, "if possible, you have excelled yourself to-night; you are a perfect vision----" "my dear sophie," laughed the marquise, "what is the matter? you seem as formal as you wish to be flattering; but really, if it is a matter of compliments, it is not you, but i who should be paying them." "quite a waste of time, my dear children," laughed the count, gruffly. "imagine you two paying each other compliments when there are a couple of hundred men here with thousands of them crowding up to their lips. still, prince," he went on, "it is better so than rivalry, for rival beauty has always worked more harm in the world than rival ambitions." "there can be no question of rivalry, my dear count," replied the prince. "why should the evening envy the morning, or the lily be jealous of the rose?" "put like a frenchman and a statesman, prince: that was said as only one of the old regime could say it," said sophie, with a little backward movement of her head. "how is it that the men of this generation never say things like that--or, if they try to, bungle over it." "perhaps they are too busy to revive the lost art of politeness," laughed adelaide. "but come, papa; they are playing a lovely waltz, and i am dying for a dance, and so is sophie, i daresay." "and, by their looks, many of these young men are dying of the same complaint; so suppose we go into the salon," said the prince, offering his arm to sophie. it was nearly half-an-hour before victor found adelaide disengaged in the ball-room. the first waltz that she had saved for him was just beginning, and, as he slipped his arm round her waist, he whispered under cover of the music: "if you please, we will just take a couple of turns, and then you will give me a few precious minutes of your company in the winter garden." she glanced up swiftly at him with a look of keen inquiry, and whispered in reply: "of course, my victor, if you wish it; especially as it is getting a little warm here--and no doubt you have something more interesting for me than dancing." "i think you will find it so," he said, as they glided away into the shining, smoothly-swirling throng which filled the great salon. after two or three turns they stopped at the curtained entrance of the vast conservatory, whose tropical trees and flowers and warm scented air formed a delicious contrast to the cold, black, russian winter's night. almost at the same moment sophie valdemar said to her partner, a smart young officer of the imperial guard: "i think that will do for the present, if you don't mind; i don't feel very vigorous to-night, somehow: suppose you find me a seat in the garden, and then go and tell one of the men to bring me an ice." they stopped just as victor and adelaide passed through the curtains. they followed a couple of yards behind them, and sophie quickened her step a little, her teeth came together with a little snap, and her eyes darkened again as she saw adelaide look up at her companion and heard her say softly: "well, what is your news--for i am sure you have some?" "yes, i have," he replied; "and the greatest of good news; you know from whom?" "ah," said adelaide, with a little catch in her voice, "from him; and has he----" "succeeded? yes; and to the fullest of his expectations. he goes to paris to-morrow, and then----" the rest of the sentence was lost to sophie as they turned away into the garden. her companion found her a seat under a tree-fern, and left her leaning back in her long-cushioned chair of russian wicker, looking across the winter garden, through the palms and ferns, at victor and adelaide, as they moved along, obviously looking for a secluded corner. during those few moments her whole nature had, for the time being, completely changed. the jealous, passionate woman had vanished, and in her place remained the cold, clear-headed, highly-trained intriguer, with incarnate and unemotional intellect, thinking swiftly and logically, trying to find some meaning in the words that she had just heard, words which, if she had only known their import, she would have found pregnant with the fate of europe. "i wonder who has succeeded beyond his best expectations? someone closely connected with both of them, of course! and paris--why should his success take him to paris? victor fargeau, alsatian though he is, is one of the most brilliant of the younger generation of german officers, a favourite of the emperor, a member of the staff, and attaché here in petersburg. and she, my dear friend and enemy, is a bourbon, an aristocrat of the first water, the daughter of an open enemy of our very good and convenient ally the french republic. paris--he who has succeeded is going to paris. well, i would give a good deal to know who he is and why he is going to paris." chapter ii "and so, monsieur le ministre, i am to take that as your final word? i have given you every proof that i can--saving the impossible--the bringing of my apparatus from strassburg to paris, which, of course, you know is an impossibility, since it would have to cross the frontier, which was once a french high road. i have shown you the facts, the figures, the drawings--everything. can you not see that i am honest, that i love my country, from which i have been torn away--i who come from a family that has lived in alsace since it was first french territory--i who am a frenchman through five generations--i who have sold my son to the prussians--i who have masqueraded for years in the prussian university of strassburg, once the queen of the rhine province--i who have discovered a secret which has lain buried since the days of the great faraday--i who have discovered, or i should say re-discovered, after him the true theory, and, what is more, the actual working of the magnetic tides which flow north and south through the two hemispheres to the pole--i who can give you, monsieur le ministre, and through you france, the control of those tides, so that you may make them ebb and flow as the tides of the sea do--prosperity with the flow, adversity with the ebb, that is what it comes to--ah, it is incredible! "once more, not as a scientist, not as an inventor, but only as a loyal son of france, let me implore you, monsieur le ministre, not to regard what i have told you as the dream of an enthusiast who has only dreamt and not done." "if you have done as much as you say, monsieur," replied the french minister of war, leaning back in his chair and twisting up the left point of his moustache as he looked coldly and incredulously across his desk at doctor emil fargeau, late professor of physical science at the university of strassburg, "how comes it that you have not been able to bring actual, tangible proofs to me here in paris? why, for instance, could you not have performed the miracle that you have just been telling me about in one of our laboratories in paris? if you had done that--well, we might have investigated the miracle, and, after investigation, might have some conviction--a conviction, if you will pardon me saying so, which might have enabled us to overcome the very natural prejudice that the government of the republic may be expected to have against a man of ancient family, whose ancestors had been french subjects for, as you say, five generations, but who has become himself a german subject, and has permitted his son, his only son, to enter the prussian service, and has endured the shame of seeing him rise year after year, rank upon rank, in the favour of the man who is destined to be to germany what the great napoleon was to france. "no, sir, i cannot believe you; i can understand what you have told me about what you call your invention, but understanding without conviction is like hunger without a good dinner. i am not satisfied. bring your apparatus here; let me see it work. convince me that you can do what you say, and all that you ask for is yours; but without conviction i can guarantee you nothing. "with every consideration that is due to the position that you have occupied in what may be called the enemy's country, the stolen provinces, i must take leave to say that very few days pass without an interview of this kind. i assure you, my dear sir, that saviours of our country and regainers of the lost provinces are to be counted by hundreds, but we have not yet found one whose scheme is capable of sustaining a practical test." "but, monsieur le ministre, i can assure you with equal faith that this is not a scheme, a theory, a something in the air. on the contrary, it is a theory reduced to fact--solid fact; what i have said to you i can do before you. i can convince you----" "exactly, my dear sir, exactly," said the minister; "you will not think me discourteous if i say that within the last six months i have had visits from inventors of air-ships who could create aerial navies which would assume the dominion of the air, annihilate armies and fleets, and make fortifications useless because impotent. others have come to me with plans which, if the theory could only have been translated into practice, would have given us a submarine navy which in six months would have sunk every cruiser and battleship on the ocean. in fact, in one of the drawers of this very bureau i have a most exactly detailed scheme for diverting the gulf stream through the much-lamented panama canal into the pacific, and so reducing the british islands, the home of our ancient enemies, to the conditions--i mean, of course, the climatic conditions, of labrador. that is to say, that nine months in the year london, southampton, plymouth, liverpool, glasgow, to say nothing of the ports on the east and the south, would be frozen up. the british navy--that curse of the world--could not operate; britain's shipping trade would be paralysed, and after that her industries. they are free-traders, and so they don't believe it; but it would be if it could be done. but it could not be done, monsieur; and that is the objection which i have to this most splendidly promising scheme of yours." "but, monsieur le ministre, i assure that it is only a question of--well, i will say a few thousand francs to convince you that i am not one of those scientific adventurers who have perhaps imposed on the credulity of the government before. what i have described to you is the truth--the truth as i have wrought it by my own labour, as i have seen it with my own eyes, as i have finished it with my own hand." "tres bien, monsieur! then all you have to do is, as i said before, to bring your apparatus here, perform the same experiment before a committee of experts, and if you break the piece of steel as you would a piece of glass--voila, c'est fini! we are convinced, and what you ask for will be granted." "but, monsieur le ministre, nothing could be fairer than that; only you have not remembered what i told you during our last interview. i have spent hundreds of thousands of francs to bring this idea of mine to perfection. i have spent every centime----" "pfennige i think you should call them, professor," interrupted the minister, with a perceptible sneer. "i am afraid you are forgetting your new nationality; and, since you are a german subject, living in german territory, as it now is, it is permissible for me to ask why this wonderful invention of yours was not offered first to germany--that is to say, if it has not already been offered and refused." as the minister of war spoke these few momentous words, accentuating them with his pen on the blotting-pad in front of him, doctor fargeau arose from his seat on the other side of the desk, and said, in a voice which would have been stronger had it not been broken by an uncontrollable emotion: "monsieur le ministre, you have spoken, and, officially, the matter is finished. through you i have offered france the empire of the world. through you france has refused it. you ask me to bring my apparatus here to paris, to prove that it is a question of practice, not of theory. i cannot do it, and why?--because, as i told you, i have spent every centime, or pfennige, if you like, in making this thing possible. "everything is gone: the farms and vineyards that have been ours since the days of st louis are mortgaged. we are homeless. i have no home to go back to. i have borrowed more than i can pay; i trusted everything to you, to the intelligence and patriotism of france. i have not even enough money to take me back to the home that i have ruined for the sake of france and her lost provinces. it was impossible to think that you would disbelieve me. a thousand francs, monsieur le ministre, would be enough--enough to save me from ruin, and to make france the mistress of the world. even out of your own pocket, it would not be very much. think, i implore you, of all that i have suffered and sacrificed; of all the hours that i have spent in making this great ideal a reality----" "and which, if you will excuse me saying so, monsieur," replied the minister, rising rather sharply from his seat, "has yet to be proved to our satisfaction, to be a concrete reality instead of a dream--the dream of an enthusiast who does not even possess the credit of having remained a frenchman. if, indeed, your personal necessities are so pressing, and a fifty-franc note would be of any use to you--well, seeing that you were once a frenchman----" as he said this the minister took his pocket-book out, and, as he did so, doctor fargeau sprang from his seat, and said, in quick, husky tones: "mais, non, monsieur le ministre! i came here not to ask for charity, but to give france the dominion of the world. those whom she has chosen as her advisers have treated me either as a lunatic or a quack. very well, let it be so. through you i have offered to france a priceless gift; you have refused it for the sake of a paltry thousand francs or so. very well, you will see the end of this, though i shall not. i have devoted my life to this ideal. i have dreamt the dream of france the mistress of the world, as she was in the days of la grande monarque. i have found the means of realising the ideal. you and those who with you rule the destinies of france have refused to accept my statements as true. on your heads be it, as the moslems say. i have done. if this dream of mine should ever be heard of again, if it should ever be realised, france may some day learn how much she has lost through her official incredulity." emil fargeau left the minister of war a broken man--broken in mind and heart as well as in means. in youth it is easy, in early manhood it is possible, to survive the sudden destruction of a life's ideal; but when the threescore years have been counted, and the dream and the labours of half a lifetime are suddenly brought to nought, it is another matter. it is ruin--utter and hopeless; and so it was with emil fargeau. he had risked everything on what he had honestly believed to be the certainty of his marvellous discovery being taken up and developed by the french government. in fact, he was so certain of it, that, before leaving his laboratory at strassburg, he had taken the precaution to destroy the essential parts of his accumulator, lest, during his absence, his sanctum might be invaded and some one stumble by accident on his discovery. in a word, he had staked everything and lost everything. to go back was impossible. everything he had was sold or mortgaged. he had been kept by official delays more than a fortnight in paris, and he had barely a hundred francs left, and even of this more than half would be necessary to pay his modest hotel bill for the week. and then, worse than all, there was that fatal indiscretion into which he had permitted his enthusiasm to betray him--an indiscretion which placed him absolutely at the mercy of a german jew money-lender, who, under the rigid laws of germany, could send him to penal servitude for the rest of his life. no, there was no help for it; there was only one way out of the terrible impasse into which his enthusiasm, and that moral weakness which is so often associated with great intellectual power, had led him, and that way he took. he went back to his hotel, and spent about an hour in writing letters. one of these was directed to captain victor fargeau, german embassy, petersburg. another was directed to reuss weinthal, judenstrasse, strassburg. the third, without date or signature, he placed in a little air-tight tin case, with the complete specifications of his discovery. he took off his coat and waistcoat, and fastened this to his body so that it just came in the small of his back. then, when he had dressed himself and put on a light overcoat, he took a small handbag, for appearance's sake, walked to the nord station, and took a second-class ticket to southampton, _via_ le havre. at midnight the steamer was in mid-channel, and emil fargeau was taking his last look on sea and sky from the fore-deck. for a moment he looked back eastward over the dark waters towards the land of his ruined hopes, and murmured brokenly: "my beautiful france, i have offered you the empire of the world, but the dolts and idiots you have chosen to govern you have refused it. 'tant pis pour toi'! now i will give the secret to the fates--to reveal it or to keep it hidden for ever, as they please. for me it is the end!" as the last words left his lips he took a rapid glance round the deserted deck, and slipped over the rail into the creaming water that was swirling past the vessel's side. in another moment one of the whirling screws had caught him and smashed him out of human shape, and what was left of him, with the little tin box containing the secrets of a world-empire lashed to it, went floating away in the broad wake that the steamer left behind it. chapter iii it was a lovely may morning on the english channel, and the steam yacht _nadine_ was travelling under easy steam at about eight knots an hour midway between guernsey and southampton. her owner, ernest shafto hardress, viscount branston, eldest son of the earl of orrel, was taking his early coffee on the bridge with his college chum and guest, frank lamson, m.a. of cambridge, and doctor of science of london, the youngest man save one who had won the gold medal in the examination for that distinguished degree. in fact, he was only thirty-two, and the medal had already been in his possession nearly a year. the morning was so exquisitely mild, that sea and sky looked rather as though they were in the mediterranean instead of the channel. they were sitting in their pyjamas, with their bare feet in grass slippers. "well, i suppose it's time to go below and shave and dress; miss chrysie and lady olive will be up soon, and we'll have to make ourselves presentable," said lamson, getting out of his deck-chair and throwing the end of his cigarette overboard. "hello, what's that? here, hardress, get up! there's a body there in the water, horribly mangled." "what!" exclaimed hardress, springing from his seat and going to the end of the bridge where lamson was standing. "so it is! poor chap, what can have made such a mess of him as that?" "fallen overboard from a steamer, i should say, and got mopped by the screw," said lamson, in his cold, bloodless voice. "it's a way screws have, you know, especially twin screws." "that's just like you, lamson," said hardress; "you talk about the poor chap just as if he was an empty barrel. still, he's been a man once, and it's only fair that he should have christian burial, anyhow." as he said this he caught the handle of the engine telegraph and pulled it over. "stop." the yacht slowed down immediately, and he went on: "lamson, you might go and send the stewardess to tell the ladies not to get up for half-an-hour or so. this isn't exactly the sort of job a woman wants to see. mr jackson, will you kindly lower away the quarter-boat?" the young viscount was right--for the object that was hauled in from the sea could hardly even be called a human corpse, so frightfully was it mangled out of all mortal shape. when it was brought on board, a careful search was made through the tattered remnants of clothing that were still attached to it for some marks of identification; but nothing was found. a couple of pockets, one in the waistcoat and one in the trousers which were left intact, contained nothing. there was no mark on what was left of the linen. the upper half of the head was gone, and so there was no use in photographing the remains. in short, the ghastly spectacle was the only revelation of a secret of the sea which might never be further revealed. "i'm afraid it's no good," said lamson; "there's nothing that anybody could recognise the poor chap by. in fact, it looks to me like a case of deliberate suicide by someone who didn't want to be identified. he's evidently fallen overboard from a steamer, and people don't do that by accident with empty pockets. for instance, that inside coat pocket was made to button, and would probably have had a pocket-book and tickets in it. from what's left of them i should say the clothes were french, and, judging by the locality, i should say he might have been a french passenger from le havre--perhaps to southampton on one of the south-western boats. hello, what's this? perhaps this is a clue to the mystery." as he spoke he put his hand on the back of the body, where the sodden clothes outlined an oblong shape, a few moments after it had been turned over. "it feels like a box, or something of that sort. at any rate, we'd better see what it is," he went on, taking a sheath-knife from one of the sailors and ripping the cloth open. "tied to the body. by jove! why, this is mystery on mystery! nothing in his pockets, no mark on his linen or clothes, and this thing tied to his body! well, i suppose we may as well see what there is in it; and as you're the owner of the yacht and deputy-lieutenant of your county, i suppose i'd better hand it over to you." as he said this he cut the cords and handed the tin box to viscount branston, who said as he took it: "of course, we shall have to open it, and we'll do it together after breakfast. now, mr jackson, oblige me by having the body sewn up in a bit of canvas. i don't want the ladies to see it in that horrible state. and you may as well put on full speed; we don't want it on board any longer than we can help. now, lamson, come along and dress." when they came out of their state-rooms they found the ladies already on deck, taking an ante-prandial stroll arm-in-arm. lady olive was a tall, perfectly-proportioned young woman of about twenty-five, not exactly pretty, but with a dark, strong, aristocratic face, which showed breeding in every line, and which was lighted up and relieved most pleasantly by a pair of soft, and yet brilliant, irish eyes. when her features were in repose, some people would have called her handsome; when she smiled, others would have called her, not pretty, but charming--and they would have been about right. her companion, miss chrysie vandel, daughter of clifford k. vandel, president of the american electrical storage trust of buffalo, n.y., was an absolute contrast to her. she was about an inch shorter, exquisitely fair, and yet possessed of a pair of deep blue eyes, which in some lights looked almost black. her brows were several shades darker than her hair, which was golden in the sun and brown in the shade. she was not what a connoisseur would call beautiful, for her features were just a trifle irregular, and her mouth was just ever so little too large. still, taken as a whole, her face had that distracting and indescribable piquancy which seems to be the peculiar property of the well-bred american girl at her best. both were dressed in grey serge, short-skirted yachting suits, and each had a white duck yachting cap pinned to her hair. "well, shafto," said lady olive, as the two men took their caps off, "and what is all this mystery about? chrysie and i have been speculating all sorts of things." "why, yes, lord branston," chimed in miss chrysie. "i got out of my bath and fixed myself double quick, half expecting to come on deck and find ourselves held up by a french torpedo-boat, after all that talk we heard in jersey about the trouble between you and france and russia over china." "i am happy to say it is not quite so serious as that, miss vandel," said hardress, "and i hope we shall be able to get you safe to southampton before the war starts. the fact is, about an hour ago, while lamson and i were having our coffee on the bridge, he saw--well, the body of a man, terribly mangled, floating in the water. so we stopped to pick it up. it was frightfully mutilated, and, of course, it was nothing for eyes like yours to look upon, so we've had it sewn up in canvas, and we're taking it to southampton to give it a decent burial." "now, i call that real good of you, viscount. i guess you british have finer feelings in that way than we have. i don't believe poppa would have stopped his yacht if he'd struck a whole burying lot afloat." "well," laughed hardress; "that is what a busy man like your father might be expected to do. in fact, i suppose most englishmen would have done so; but, as it happens, in this case virtue was rewarded--for we have discovered what may be a mystery." "a mystery! oh, do say, viscount. that's just too lovely for words--a yacht, dead body at sea, and a mystery----" "yes," said lamson; "and in a tin box, attached firmly by cords to corpse aforesaid." "don't, mr lamson; please don't," interrupted lady olive, somewhat severely. then she went on, with a little shiver, "i hope, shafto, you will get us to southampton as quickly as you can. i don't want to be shipmates any longer than i can help with--with--ah--remains. it isn't lucky at sea, you know." "my dear olive," replied her brother, "about the first thing i thought of was that very idea; that is why we are now steaming full speed--twenty knots instead of eight--so that you and miss vandel may be relieved of this disquieting presence on board as soon as possible. and now, by way of passing the inconvenient hours that our new passenger will be with us, suppose we go to breakfast." "a nice appetising sort of remark that, i must say, viscount," said miss chrysie; "still i suppose we may as well go. this morning air at sea does make living people feel alive; i guess that's why i'm so hungry." "and after breakfast, shafto," said lady olive, "i presume that you will tell us all about the mystery of the tin box." "my dear olive," replied her brother, "it may be anything or nothing; and, as lamson found it and gave it to me, instead of having it buried with the unknown deceased, i've agreed with him that we shall go through the contents, whatever they are, together; and, of course, if there's anything really interesting in them, then we shall tell you all about it." "now, that's real kind," said miss chrysie. "i guess if we don't have quite an interesting conversation over lunch it'll be the fault of our new passenger." "my dear chrysie," said lady olive, frigidly, "how can you! really, you remind me rather strongly of what kipling says about the americans." "and what might that be, lady olive?" she replied, looking up, with the flicker of a smile round her lips, and the twinkle of a challenge in her eyes. "i don't think i remember the exact words just now, but i've got the 'seven seas' downstairs," replied lady olive; "but i think it's something about the cynic devil in his blood that bids him mock his hurrying soul." "thanks!" replied miss chrysie, with a toss of her shapely head, and an unmistakable sniff; "i think i've read that poem, too. isn't there a verse in it that runs something this way?- "'inopportune, shrill-accented, the acrid asiatic mirth that leaves him careless 'mid his dead, the scandal of the elder earth.'" she repeated the lines with such an exquisite exaggeration of the "shrill accent" that the two men burst out laughing, and lady olive first flushed up to her brows, and then also broke into a saving fit of laughter. "that's a distinct score for miss vandel, olive," said hardress. "if you knew the whole poem a bit better, i don't think you'd have made that last remark of yours. but, of course, miss vandel will be generous and allow you to take the only way there is out of the difficulty--the way to breakfast." "why, certainly," said miss chrysie, who was trying hard not to laugh at her little triumph. "kipling's good, but breakfast's better, in an air like this." and so, as she would have put it, they "let it go at that," and went down into the saloon to breakfast. chapter iv during breakfast it had been agreed that lamson, as the discoverer of the mysterious tin box, should open it by himself, and, after examining its contents, report on them to hardress. this was a speculative suggestion, made by lady olive, seconded by miss chrysie, and so, perforce, agreed to. and thus it came about that all the essentials of doctor emil fargeau's great discovery fell into the hands of a man who, by virtue of imagination, intellect, and scientific training, was the one man in europe, perhaps in the world, who could either use it or abuse it to the best or worst advantage. he took the box into his cabin, and opened it as carelessly as though it might have contained a few old love letters, or the story of some obsolete anarchist conspiracy. but as soon as he had read the first page of the closely-written manuscript, he got up from his chair and locked the cabin door. as he went back to his seat, he caught a glimpse of his face in the mirror. it looked almost strange to him; so he stopped and looked at it again. "good lord!" he muttered, "is that me?" and then he said aloud: "you infernal scoundrel!" he didn't go back to the little table on which the manuscript was lying. he looked at the pages as a man might look at a cheque that he has just forged. his hand, which had never trembled before, trembled as he took his cigar-case out of his pocket; and as he lit the cigar he could hardly hold the match steadily. he dropped full length on the sofa, looked sideways at the fatal sheets of paper on the table, blew a long stream of smoke up towards the port-hole, and began to talk with his own soul. "the empire of the world. i've read enough to see that it comes to that. yes, faraday was right; and so was this poor wretch that we fished out of the water this morning. a frenchman, an alsatian, who has made the biggest discovery that ever was made, who has practically achieved a miracle, offers the result to his country and gets refused, and then, for some reason or other, commits it and his body to the deep! "curious, very curious, from anything like a scientific point of view. what an infinite mercy it is for us, who have reason to believe that we possess a little brains, that the majority of men are fools, and that the official person is usually a bigger fool than the man in the street. now, suppose our unknown and deceased genius had put even that first page that i have read before our good friend clifford k. vandel instead of, i suppose, the french minister of war. jump--why, he'd have got into it with both feet, as they say in the states. a man worth millions. oh, millions be hanged! how many millions could buy that? of course, that's one way of looking at it--but frank lamson, as i said before, you're in the way of becoming an infernal scoundrel. perhaps i'd better interrupt this little monologue, and read the rest of what our deceased genius has to say." he reached out and took the papers off the table, and for an hour there was silence in the cabin. he read the sheets over and over again, making rapid mental calculations all the time. then, after a long look at the open port-hole over the sofa, he folded the sheets up, and stuffed them into the hip-pocket of his trousers. then he got up, and looked at himself in the glass again. "you scoundrel!" he whispered at the ghastly image of himself. "you thief--you utter sweep--who would accept the hospitality of an old college chum, and then, when the possibility of illimitable millions, when the empire of the earth, the means of enslaving the whole human race, the absolute control of every civilised power on earth, gets fished up by accident out of the waters of the english channel, you think about robbing him of it. you are not fit to live, much less to----" he flung himself down on the sofa again, with his hands clasped hard over his brow, and there he remained, without moving a limb, until he was called out of his waking dream by a rap on the cabin door and the sound of hardress's voice saying: "come now, lamson, buck up! are you going to be all the morning getting through that tin box? the women folk are on the point of mutiny with curiosity to know what there is in it. hurry up!" and then, with a sudden drop in the tone, "you're not ill, old man, are you?" "all right, hardress," he replied, in a voice which, by a supreme effort of will, he managed to keep steady. "i have had a bit of a shock--heart, i think. i wish you'd tell evans to bring me a brandy-and-soda, will you?" as he said this, he unlocked the cabin door, and as his host saw him he exclaimed: "my dear fellow, you do look bad; sit down, and i'll get you the b.-and-s. myself in a moment." he disappeared, and lamson sat down again on the sofa. again he looked up at the open port-hole. there were only a few moments left him now to decide what might really be the fate of the human race. no man had ever been face to face with such a tremendous responsibility before. no mortal had ever passed through such a terrible temptation as he had done during the last hour. should he fling the priceless papers, the warrant for the mastery of the world, into the sea and be done with it? should he keep them in his pocket and make untold millions out of the power that they placed in his hands? after all, he had discovered this priceless treasure-trove. but for him it would have been buried with the hideous relics of humanity lying in the forward hold sewn up in a canvas sack. was it not his by right? did any human law compel him to share it with anyone? but, again, ought he or anyone else to be entrusted with such a tremendous power for good or evil as this?--the power, literally, to reduce mankind to slavery. he was a man of average morals himself; he had lived a clean, hard, studious life, and no man could say that he had done him a mean action. hardress, too, was well up to the high standard of the british aristocracy--but his partner had married an american girl--the daughter of a man who had made millions out of railway developments after the civil war. he was either in love or falling in love with the daughter of another american millionaire who had made his millions out of electrical storage. the first thing hardress would do would be to take the papers over to america and put them before him. clifford vandel would grasp their gigantic possibilities instantly, a trust, commanding millions of capital, would be formed, and the world would become an american dependency. "here you are, old man," said hardress, coming into the cabin with a long glass in his hand, "i've made it pretty stiff, because you look as if you wanted it. why, what's the matter?" lamson took the glass, and as he put it to his lips hardress saw his hand tremble and heard the glass rattle against his teeth. he drained it in two gulps, put it down on the table beside the sofa, threw himself back on the cushions at the end, looked once more at the open port-hole with the fate of a world on his soul, and said in a shaking voice: "lock the door, hardress, and sit down. i've something to say to you." "why, my dear chap, what's up? you look positively ghastly," said the viscount, as he closed the door and locked it. "i don't suppose you'd look much better if you'd spent an hour in hell, as i have." "an hour in--oh, come now, old fellow," hardress interrupted, with a look which lamson instantly interpreted as a query as to his sanity. "don't you think you'd better turn in for a bit? you really do look ill; just as if something had shaken you up very badly. is it anything to do with that infernal tin box?" he went on, pointing to it on the table. "yes," said lamson, pulling himself together with a struggle, and sitting up on the sofa. "i wish to heaven i hadn't got up just at that moment on the bridge and we'd left our unknown deceased to the mercy of the waves. but, even then, somebody else might have discovered it." "discovered what? the corpse?" "yes; and----look here, hardress, i've been horribly tempted--tempted, perhaps, as no other man ever was; but my father was a gentleman, and i'll do the straight thing. how would you like to be master of the world?" "master of the--oh, look here, lamson, this won't do at all, you know. you're as pale as a ghost; your eyes are burning, and your hands are shaking. you must have got a touch of fever, or something of that sort. take a dose of quinine and turn in. we'll be at southampton in two or three hours, and then you can see a doctor." lamson laughed. it was a laugh that wouldn't have done anybody much good to hear, and hardress shivered a little as he heard it. "i see what you mean. you think i'm a bit off my head. to tell you the truth, i almost wish i were, or that this infernal thing were only a dream--nightmare, i should say." "what thing?" "this," replied lamson, putting his hand into his hip-pocket and pulling out some crumpled sheets of paper. "you thought i was mad when i asked you if you'd like to be master of the world. when you've read that you'll see that you can be. they're what i found in that tin box. there's no name or address or any mark of identification on them, but they were written by a man, a frenchman, who has discovered a means, as one might say, of soaking up all the electricity of the earth in one huge storage system, and then doling it out to the peoples of the earth like gas or water or electric light." "great scott, what a gorgeous idea!" exclaimed hardress, jumping from his seat and holding out his hand for the papers. "why do you want to get ill over a thing like that, man? don't you see there are millions in it if it's true, and of course you'll come in on the ground-floor? great caesar's ghost! it'll be the very thing for old vandel. the morgan steel trust won't be in it with this." "i thought you'd say that," said lamson. "that's the american blood talking in you. now, i'll tell you candidly that i've only given you those papers from a sense of honour and friendship. i admit that my first impulse was to throw them out of the port-hole; and my second," he went on, after a little pause, "was to keep them to myself, and tell you some lie about the box being empty." "you might have done the first, old man, but you couldn't have done the second," replied hardress, putting the papers into his hand. "there, take them back; i don't suppose i should understand them. anyhow, you can make a better use of them than i can; and if there's anything in it we'll share alike. in fact, after all, the whole thing really belongs to you, for if you hadn't discovered the body, it might have drifted around till it went down to feed the fishes. really, i don't see what there is to be so upset about in it." "my dear fellow, hasn't it struck you yet," said lamson, "that if this discovery works out all right, as i'm certain it will, it will really mean, as i said just now, the mastery of the world? for instance, to put the thing into a nut-shell: here we are, on this seven-hundred-ton yacht of yours, steaming at a speed of eighteen or twenty knots, engines working smoothly, and so on. now, if this man's scheme were put into practice, the _nadine_ would be, as i might say, for want of a better word, electrolised. that is to say, every atom of metal in her would lose its tone; the boilers would burst, the engines fly to pieces, and even the hull would splinter up into a thousand fragments, just as though she were made of glass, and she got hit with a hundred sledge-hammers at the same minute." "is that really so, lamson? are you quite serious?" said hardress, gravely, for he was just beginning to grasp the enormous possibilities of the discovery. "do you really mean to say that that is actually feasible? of course, i know what a swell you are at these subjects, and i don't suppose for a moment that you would say it if you didn't believe it; but are you quite sure that your--well, that this scientific imagination that i've heard you talk about hasn't run away with you?" "my dear hardress," replied lamson, getting up from the couch, "there is no imagination whatever about this. i can assure you it is just a matter of hard facts and figures. whoever that poor fellow was that we're going to bury at southampton, it's quite certain that the world has lost one of its most brilliant physical scholars. the man who discovered this scheme and worked it out in these papers was a second newton or faraday. in short, i can tell you in all seriousness--i will pledge my reputation, such as it is--that, granted the necessary capital, which would certainly run to a million or two, i could work this scheme out myself. i could construct works that would mop up the electricity out of the earth as a sponge takes water. i could change climates as i pleased. i could hurl my thunders where i chose like a very jove. i could make myself arbiter of life and death on earth. in fact, i could be everything that a mortal ought not to be." "there; i can't say that i quite agree with you," said hardress. "personally, i can't see why a man shouldn't be all that he can be, and there's no reason why you and i and the governor and chrysie's dad shouldn't syndicate this business and run the earth. you say it's possible. that's good enough for me. we'll find the millions and you'll find the brains, so we'll consider that settled. fancy picking a thing like that up out of the sea on a pleasure cruise! talk about luck! well, come along; let's go and break it as gently as we can to the girls." chapter v the _nadine_ had been lying for a fortnight in southampton water, and all that was mortal of the man who might have been master of the world was resting in a nameless grave in the cemetery. in the oak-panelled dining-room of orrel court, an old rambling mansion, dating partly from reformation times, and standing on the lower slopes of the south downs overlooking the distant solent, there was a little dinner-party in the process of eating, drinking, and chatting, which was a good deal more pregnant with the fate of nations than many a cabinet meeting. at the head of the long, massive table sat a man of a little over fifty, tall and rather squarely built, and still erect. a man, still handsome and capable of attracting the attention and even the admiration of many fair ladies, who would have been only too glad to occupy the place at the other end of the table which was now occupied by the owner of the _nadine_, for harry shafto hardress, eighth earl of orrel, came of one of the oldest and proudest stocks in the country, and, thanks to the millions which his dead american wife had brought him, the broad, fat acres that he owned in half-a-dozen counties were absolutely unencumbered, and he possessed a personal fortune that yielded more than twice his goodly rent-roll. miss chrysie vandel sat at his right hand, and, next to her, doctor lamson, faced by lady olive and a tall, angular, square-headed, keen-featured man of about the earl's own age, with a heavy, well-trained, iron-grey, moustache, and an equally well-ordered, little tuft of hair on the square chin. this was clifford k. vandel, president of the empire state electric storage and transmission trust of new york and buffalo. he was commonly known throughout the states and europe as the lightning king; and he controlled not only the power distribution, but also the whole system of etherography or wireless telegraphy throughout the continent of north america. he had come over post-haste from new york in response to an urgent cable from lord orrel. he was an uncle of the late lady orrel, and he and the earl had already done a good deal of business together on both sides of the atlantic. the cablegram had contained the words "urgent business," so he had taken the first available steamer and arrived in southampton that afternoon. during dinner only ordinary topics had been touched upon, but when the cloth was removed and the butler, with a ceremonious care that was almost reverential, had placed the ancient decanters and jugs containing the port and claret and madeira, for which the cellars of orrel court had long been famous, his lordship told him that they were not to be disturbed until he rang; and, when the door had closed behind him, he said: "well, now, vandel, we can talk. miss chrysie, a glass of port--allow me--and, if you will, pass the decanter. mr lamson, this is the same seal as before. olive, you will make the coffee later on, won't you, in that patent concern of yours? you certainly do it much better than they do downstairs; and i don't see why for once we shouldn't have our smoke here, since our--what is it they say?--revolting daughters both indulge." "revolted, if you don't mind, my lord," remarked miss chrysie across her wine-glass. "though i don't see much what olive and i want to revolt for; and i guess if two girls ever had more easily managed poppas they'd be curiosities. what do you say poppa? you haven't tried to run me much, have you?" the iron-faced man of millions, the commander-in-chief of armies of hand and brain workers, the ruthless wrecker of industries which stood in the way of the realisation of his gigantic schemes, looked smilingly at the living likeness of his dead wife, and said, with that soft intonation and hardly perceptible accent which evidenced his old southern descent: "well, chrysie, i don't know that either of you ever wanted very much running; and as for smoking, well, your mothers and grandmothers did it down south two generations ago, and i guess what was good enough for the south in those days is good enough for anywhere else." from which speech it may be gathered that clifford kingsley vandel was one of those americans who, although he had come in with the union, and made many millions out of it, still cherished the traditions of the old southern aristocracy. in fact, in his heart of hearts, no man, saving only perhaps louis xavier de condé and his present host, had a greater contempt for all democratic institutions than he had; a contempt which is amply shared by nine out of ten of the dollar despots of the great republic. he helped himself to a glass of the pale ruby-coloured port, and passed the decanter to hardress. lady olive was taking claret. "and now," said lord orrel, raising his glass, "suppose we begin in the good old-fashioned way. here's success to the storage trust and all its future developments." "which, from what i've heard of them, will be big and go far," said the lightning king. "even unto the running of the earth, and all that therein is. is that good american, chrysie?" "not quite," she laughed, in reply. "i must say that your ladyship seems to have considerable difficulty in picking up the american language. however, the sentiment's all right, so we'll let it go at that. what do you say, doctor? somehow you don't seem quite as enthusiastic about this as a man who knows everything might be." "if a man knew everything, miss vandel," replied lamson, rather gravely, "he would probably be enthusiastic about nothing. still, i confess that, as i said at first on board the yacht, i do look upon this scheme, splendid and all as it is, and perfectly feasible from the scientific point of view, as something just a little too splendid for human responsibility. after all, you know, to make oneself the arbiter of human destiny, supreme lord of earth and air, dispenser of life and death, health and sickness, is what is popularly described as a somewhat large order." "well," chimed in miss chrysie, "i guess if it enables you to reform the british climate, by way of a start, and give this unhappy country some weather instead of just a lot of ragged-edged samples, you'll not begin badly." "and if we can also do something with the furious, untamed, american blizzard," laughed hardress, nodding at her over his glass, "we shall also confer a certain amount of blessing upon a not inconsiderable proportion of the anglo-saxon race. what's your idea, mr vandel?" "we could do about as well without them as london could do without fog, or the british farmer do without a week of january shifted on into may," replied the lightning king. "i've often thought that a syndicate which could control the british climate, and educate your farmers and railroads into something like commonsense, would make quite big money. maybe that's what we'll do later on." "an excellent idea," laughed lord orrel. "i have suffered from both of them--as well as from our free-trading amateur politicians who make it as expensive for me to bring a ton of my own wheat from yorkshire to london as to import a ton of yours from chicago. however, we shall be able to alter that later on. and now, suppose olive brews the coffee, and we have a cigar, and then, perhaps, mr lamson will oblige us by shedding the light of his knowledge on the subject before the meeting. i suppose, mr lamson, you have not found, on more mature study of the question, that there are any serious objections to the scheme, saving, of course, the one which your modesty has created?" "no, lord orrel," he replied, with one of his grave smiles. "during the last week or so i have worked out, i think, every possible development of the scheme, and i am bound to say that the unknown genius whom we buried the other day has left nothing to chance. there is not even a speculation. everything is fact, figure, and demonstration. given the capital, and the concessions from the canadian government, there does not appear to me the remotest chance of failure. the ultimate consequences of putting the scheme into practice are, of course, quite another affair--but on that subject you already have my opinion." "my dear lamson," said hardress, "that, if you will pardon me saying so, is merely one of the characteristic failings of the scientific intellect. it has too much imagination, and therefore looks too far ahead." "i'm with you there, viscount," said the lightning king. "this is just a question of dollars first, last, and all the time. of course, we've got to see the other side of it; but we're not concerned much with what there is beyond--or back of beyond, for that matter. so, as practical men, we'll just respect the doctor's scruples all they deserve, and take all the help he can give us." "exactly," said lord orrel; "you put the case with your usual terseness, vandel. and now, if you won't have any more wine, olive will give us some coffee, and we may light up and get to business." "and, lamson, you will consider yourself on deck for the present," added hardress. "i can see that mr vandel is just dying to know the details, in spite of that cast-iron self-control of his." "my dear viscount," laughed the multi-millionaire, "i'm among friends, and i'm not controlling any just now. still, i'll admit that i'm just about as anxious to know the details of this scheme as chrysie was to try on her first ball-dress, and that was no small circumstance, i tell you." "i should think not," laughed lady olive. "there's only one thing more important in life than that, and that's a wedding-dress. but if these people are going to immerse themselves in facts and figures, chrysie, suppose we have our coffee up in my room. i want to have a good talk with you about the presentation dresses." "an even more weighty subject," laughed hardress, "than the wedding-dress--which may never be worn. i mean, of course----" "i guess i wouldn't try and explain, viscount," said miss chrysie, as she got up and went towards the door. "wasn't it your lord beaconsfield who said that the most dreary duty of humanity was explanation? reckon you'll find it pretty dreary work explaining that remark away." hardress looked distinctly uncomfortable, for there was a flush on miss chrysie's cheeks, and a glint in her eyes which, although they made her look distractingly pretty, were not of great promise to him. "i'm awfully sorry----" he began. "my dear shafto," laughed lady olive, as lamson opened the door for them, "don't attempt it. a man who could make a remark like that could not possibly improve the situation by an apology." with that they disappeared, and lamson shut the door. when he got back to his seat he took a lot of papers out of the breast-pocket of his coat, put his plate aside, laid them on the table, and said: "well, then, since i am in the chair, i may as well get to business. as mr vandel has not yet been made fully acquainted with the details of the scheme, perhaps it will be as well if i begin at the beginning." "quite so," said lord orrel, with a nod; "and your kindness will have the additional effect of refreshing my own memory, which, i must admit, is not a particularly good one for technicalities." then doctor lamson began, and for a couple of hours or so expounded with every possible exactness of detail the discovery made by the man whose mangled remains had been picked up by the _nadine_ in mid-channel, and which might have made france mistress of the world. when he had finished, they went into the library, where they were joined by lady olive and miss chrysie, and the conversation gradually drifted away into topics more socially interesting, but of less imperial importance. but when clifford kingsley vandel went to bed that night he spent half-an-hour or more walking up and down his big, thickly-carpeted bedroom, with his hands clasped behind his back, his eyes fixed on the floor, and his lips shaping inarticulate words which would have been worth millions to anyone who could have heard them. then he stopped his promenade, undressed, and got into bed, and just before he dismissed the whole subject from his perfectly-trained intellect and addressed himself to the necessary business of sleep, he said: "well, that's just about the biggest scheme that mortal man ever had a chance of bringing to a head; and i guess we'll do it. masters of the world, givers of life or death, lords of the nations, makers of peace or war as we please! that's so, and now, clifford vandel, i have the honour to wish you a very good night--a very good night indeed--about the best night you've ever had." and then the masterful brain ceased working, like an engine from which the steam had been shut off, and he fell asleep as quickly and as peacefully as a little child. chapter vi miss chrysie's european visit had come to an end, and she and her father had accepted hardress's invitation to take a trip home in the _nadine_. doctor lamson was also a guest on board, and during the trip many of the details of the great scheme were exhaustively discussed. each of the three men was going on a special mission. clifford vandel had definitely accepted the position of president and general financial and business manager of the international magnetic control syndicate, as the newly-formed company had been provisionally named. he was going to the states to do the necessary financial part of the work, buy up rights and patents which might be necessary to the furtherance of the scheme, and to perfect the organisation of the great combine of which he was president--a combine whose influence was now to extend not only over the united states, but over the whole world. doctor lamson was going to make a personal study of the electrical machinery to be found in the states, so that he might be in a position to design the great storage works to the best advantage and with the greatest possible economy of time and money. hardress, armed with introductions from the highest official sources in england, was going northward, after leaving his guests at new york, to montreal, to obtain a lease of a few square miles of the desolate, ice-covered wilderness of boothia felix, which, as a glance at the map will show you, is the most northerly portion of the mainland of the american continent. further, in its scanty history, you may read that there sir john ross discovered the magnetic pole of the earth, and named the wilderness after his friend sir felix booth, who had furnished most of the funds for his expedition. his ostensible object in obtaining the lease was the foundation of an observatory for the examination of magnetic and electrical phenomena; one of which was the possible solution of the so far unsolved riddle of the northern lights. he also stated to the dominion authorities, by way of giving something like a practical air to his mission, that a remoter possibility of the scheme was the establishment of a magnetic centre for a world-wide system of wireless telegraphy. the few square miles of ice and snow and rock were absolutely worthless, and so the dominion government had not the slightest hesitation in accepting his offer of a thousand a year for ten years for the exclusive use and possession of the peninsula, with right to import materials, construct works, and do whatever might be necessary for the development of the scheme. if he had not been the heir to an ancient peerage and the son of one of the wealthiest men in england, he would probably have been looked upon as a harmless crank who was wanting to lose his money in a vain attempt to harness the electrical energy displayed in the _aurora borealis_ and make thunderstorms to order out of it. as it was, he was treated indulgently as a man who had big ideas, and who was conducting at his own expense a great scientific experiment which he could very well afford to pay for. thus, after very brief negotiations, consisting of one or two interviews, two or three dinners, and the handing over of a cheque, the canadian government in all innocence parted with what was soon to prove the most precious piece of land, not only on the american continent, but in the whole world. but this was not the only concession that shafto hardress took back to england with him. for when he returned to new york and took a run up to buffalo on the empire state express, with the lease of boothia land in his pocket, to talk matters over with president vandel, he had a brief but momentously interesting interview with miss chrysie, at the close of which she said, as her hand rested in his: "well, viscount, i'm not going to say 'yes' right away. you're a gentleman, and i like you. you're going to be a peer of england some day, and, if this scheme of yours works out all right, one of the masters of the world. as my father's daughter i have no natural objection to being a peeress of england and mistress of the world, but i am also a natural-born woman, and i want a little more than that--i mean something that a man could not give me if he owned the solar system. i want to know for certain that you love me as a man should love a woman, and that i can love you as a woman should love a man if she is going to marry him. i like you; yes, i like you better than any other man i've ever seen. i tell you quite honestly it hasn't been a case of love at first sight with me, and i guess i haven't known you quite long enough to give you something that i can never take back. go to your work and do it, and while you're doing it we shall get to know each other better, and meanwhile you may consider that you have the option of another piece of half-discovered territory." before releasing her hand he stooped and kissed it, saying, with a laugh that bespoke a certain amount of satisfaction: "that, you know, is--well, we will call it the seal on the contract. this is my act and deed, you understand--as people say when they conclude a contract with an option. a definition of kissing which i once read describes it as equivalent to syllabus." "syllabus!" she said, releasing her hand and raising it to her brow, pushing a fold of hair back by the motion and smiling up at him in a somewhat disconcerted fashion. "and what might that mean in your dictionary of kisses?" "it was defined as kissing the hand of the girl you want very badly instead of----" her red lips smiled an irresistible challenge at him, and the next instant his arm was round her waist, and he said: "after all, i don't think that contract was properly signed, sealed, and delivered; at least, the seal was in the wrong place, and the delivery was not quite complete." "now i call that real mean, viscount," she said, a moment afterwards. "i only gave you an option on the territory, and you're starting to occupy it right away." "well, then," he said, taking her hand again, "suppose, instead of the territory, we call it a reserve. how will that do?" "not quite," she said, drawing back a bit. "to some extent i've been taken by assault, but i've not surrendered at discretion yet. that sounds a bit mixed, i know--but it's pretty near the truth." "and at that," he said, gravely smiling, "i am quite content to leave it." and so, with the magical touch of her lips still thrilling through his blood, he left her, more than ever determined to fulfil to the utmost the tremendous destiny which chance had cast in his way. to him there could have been no more delightfully satisfactory ending to his mission. in blood he was himself half-american, and in him the old-world aristocrat was strangely blended with the keen, far-seeing, quick-witted, hard-headed, and perhaps, in one sense, hard-hearted man of business. it was to this side of his nature that the physical charms, the keen wit, and sprightly spirit of miss chrysie had first appealed; but later on the aristocrat in him had recognised that she too was a patrician of the new world, whose ancestry stretched back into the history of the old, and so gradually interest and admiration had grown into a love which completely satisfied all his instincts. the very way in which she had received his proposal had increased both his love and his respect. if she had surrendered at discretion there might have remained the possibility of a suspicion that, after all, she had been tempted to take hold of a magnificent opportunity, not only for placing herself in the front rank of european society, but also of wielding through her husband a power such as no woman had ever exercised before. but she had given him frankly to understand that these things were as nothing in her eyes, great and splendid as they were, without that certainty of mutual love which could alone induce her to give herself, body and soul, into the hands of any man, however powerful or nobly born; for chrysie vandel was a woman in the best sense of that much-meaning word, and she knew that for her there was no choice, save between the complete independence of thought and action which she had so far enjoyed, and an equally complete surrender to the man to whom she could render, whole-hearted and unreserved, the sweet service of love. after dinner that night he had an equally satisfactory interview with the president, who, when he had heard his story, just got up from his chair and said: "viscount, we'll shake on that. my girl's free to choose where she likes, or not to choose at all, and you are not going to have any help from me in the way of persuasion; but if she does choose, why, i'd sooner she chose you than any other man i know." "i ask for nothing better, i can assure you," said hardress. "thank you a thousand times." and so they shook. the next day by noon the _nadine_ was steaming out past sandy hook. allowing for difference in longitude, it was almost at the same moment that the night mail pulled out of the petersburg station. two of the sleeping-compartments were occupied by prince xavier de condé and his daughter; and so, from the ends of the earth, both travelling towards an obscure little watering-place hidden away in the depths of the german forest land, were approaching each other the man and the woman whose destinies had been, all unknown to themselves, so strangely linked together by the last despairing act of the man whose country had refused to permit him to make her the mistress of the world. chapter vii the village of elsenau, which has hardly yet risen to the dignity of a town, lies somewhere midway between the hartz mountains and the thuringia wald, which, as everyone knows, stretches away in undulations of wooded uplands and valleys southward to the black forest. its most recent possession is the fine hôtel wilhelmshof--an entirely admirable creation of the german instinct for catering, facing south-west, and sheltered north and east by uplands crowned with stately pines. southward it has smooth, new-made lawns, dotted with clumps of firs and parterres of flowers, shielded by curves of flowering bushes. the lawns slope down to the edge of a long narrow lake, which, on the evening of the day after the prince and the marquise left petersburg, lay smooth and blue-black beneath the cloudless azure of the summer heaven. but the principal attraction of elsenau, which, indeed, had given the luxurious hotel its reason for existence, and which had raised the little village of charcoal-burners and woodcutters to the dignity of a kur-anstalt, was a spring, accidentally discovered by an enterprising engineer who was looking among the mountains for a water-supply for the city of ilmosheim, some three miles away to the south. the waters had a curious taste and a most unpleasant smell. learned chemists and doctors analysed them, and reported that they contained ingredients which formed a sovereign remedy for gout and rheumatism--especially the hereditary form of the first. they were bottled and sent far and wide, and soon after their qualities had been duly appreciated and commented on by the medical press of europe and america, the hôtel wilhelmshof rose, as it were, with the wave of the contractor's magic wand, hard by the little limestone grotto in which the spring had been discovered. about eight o'clock on a lovely evening in july, lord orrel and lady olive, under the broad verandah of the wilhelmshof, sat drinking their after-dinner coffee and watching the full moon sailing slowly up over the black ridges of the pine-crowned hills which stretched away to the southward. "i suppose the prince must have missed his train, or else the train was behind time and missed the coach," said lord orrel, taking out his watch. "it is rather curious that i should have met him regularly every year at homburg or spa or aix, and that somehow you have never met him; and now it seems from his letter that we have both discovered this new little place of evil-smelling waters together. i am glad that he is bringing his daughter with him." "ah, yes; his daughter--she is the second marie antoinette, isn't she?" said lady olive, putting her cup down and taking up her cigarette. "the most beautiful woman in europe, the last daughter of the old house of bourbon--i mean the elder branch, of course. and the prince?" "the first gentleman in europe, in my opinion," replied the earl, flicking the ash off his cigar. "a man who, granted the possibility of circumstances which, of course, are not now possible, might mount the throne of louis xiv., and receive the homage of all his courtiers without their knowing the difference. a great man, my dear olive, born four generations out of his time. if he had succeeded the grand monarque--there would have been no french revolution, no napoleon----" "and therefore, my dear papa," laughed lady olive, "no peninsular war, no wellington, no waterloo, no nelson, no nile and trafalgar, and so none of that expiring british supremacy which you were arguing about so eloquently the other day in the house of lords." while she was speaking, the double doors giving on to the verandah were thrown open, a lacquey, gorgeously uniformed in blue and silver, came out, with his body inclined at an angle of thirty degrees, and his arms hanging straight down, and said, in thick swiss french: "your excellency and madame la marquise will find milord and miladi on the verandah here." as lady olive looked round she heard a rustle of frilled skirts on the planks of the verandah, and saw a tall, stately gentleman and the most beautiful woman she had ever seen coming towards her. the gentleman's eyes brightened and his brows lifted as he raised his hat. the woman's face might have been a mask, and her eyes looked out upon nothingness. "ah, my dear prince," said the earl, rising and going towards him with outstretched hands. "delighted to renew our acquaintance in a new and yet a very charming place. i was hoping that you would get here for dinner; but, of course, once off the main line, you can never trust a german train to get anywhere in time. and this is mam'selle la marquise, i presume. this is fortunate. you see i have my daughter olive taking care of me, so perhaps they may help to entertain each other in this out-of-the-way place." "yes," replied the prince, as they shook hands, "this is my daughter of whom i have spoken to you so often; and this is yours, the lady olive. mam'selle, i have the honour to salute you. adelaide, this is the daughter of lord orrel--an old friend, and one of the ancienne noblesse." olive had risen while he was speaking; the mask melted away from the marquise's lovely face, her lips softened into a smile, and a swift gleam of scrutiny took the place of vacancy in her eyes. lady olive's met hers with a frank though involuntary look of challenge. she certainly was what the gossip of half-a-dozen countries called her--the most beautiful woman in europe. she possessed an exquisite grace of form and face and manner which made her indescribable. when one woman honestly admires another it is always with a half-conceived sense either of envy or hostility. lady olive was herself one of the best types of an english patrician, and the blood in her veins had flowed through ten generations of the proudest lineage in britain; but in adelaide de condé, the daughter of the most ancient aristocracies of france and austria, she instinctively recognised her equal, perhaps her superior. she put out her hand in a frank, english way, and said, in the most perfectly accented french: "my father has told me so much about yours, and they are such good friends, that i hope it isn't possible that we can be anything else." "quite impossible!" smiled the marquise, taking the hand of the new-made friend who in days to come was to be an enemy. "since our fathers are such old and good friends, why should we not be new friends and good ones too?" and then, turning round to her father, she said: "voila, papa, since we find ourselves in such good company, and we have missed the dinner, and cannot eat till they get something ready, why do you not have your vermouth and a cigarette? in fact, as we are so entirely 'chez nous' here in this delightful retreat, you may order one for me too, i think." the prince lifted his eyelids, and the lacquey approached and took his order, and then the party proceeded to make friends. a little after tea the same evening, when lady olive and the marquise had retired to lady olive's sitting-room for a chat on things feminine and european, lord orrel and the prince were strolling up and down the moonlit lawn, smoking their cigars and exchanging the experiences that they had had since their last meeting at homburg the year before. their friendship had begun by a chance acquaintance some six years before at aix-les-bains. both of them aristocrats to their finger-tips, it was not long before they struck a note of common sympathy. the once splendid name which the prince bore appealed instantly to the englishman, who could trace his descent back to the days of the first plantagenet, and it was not long before they found a closer bond than that of ancient ancestry. one night, when the beach at trouville was lit up by just such a moon as was now floating high over the pines on the hills round elsenau, he had told the prince the story of his life--the story of an elder scion of an ancient line devoted rather to literature and the byways of science than to the political and social duties of his position, and, moreover, a man who had never found a woman whom his heart could call to his side to share it with him. he had devoted his after-college days to study and travel. his younger brother, a splendid specimen of english chivalry, had found his mate in the daughter of his father's oldest friend. he was a soldier, and when the franco-german war broke out, nothing, not even the longing, half-reproachful looks of his betrothed, could keep him from volunteering in the french service. he had fought through the war with brilliant distinction, a private at saarbruck and a captain during the siege of paris. then, captured, badly wounded, by the germans after a brilliant sortie, he was cured and released, only to be murdered by the communards on the eve of his return to england. a year or two after, the earl abjured his vows of celibacy under the fascinations of a brilliant american beauty, and so had accepted the responsibility of perpetuating his race. so these two men had met on common ground, and nothing was more natural than that they should have become such friends as they were. to a very great extent they stood apart from the traditions of their times. they were aristocrats in an age of almost universal democracy. both of them firmly believed that democracy spelt degeneration, national and individual. both of them were, in fact, incarnations of an age that was past, and which might or might not be renewed. this was, indeed, the subject of their conversation as they strolled up and down the smoothly-shaven lawn under the sheltering pines, chatting easily and comparing in well-selected phrases the things of their own youth with those of the present swiftly moving and even a trifle blatant generations of to-day. "i quite agree with you, my dear lord orrel," said the prince, as they turned at the end of their walk. "democracy is tending now, just as it did in the days of greece and carthage and rome, and to-day in my own unhappy france, to degeneration, and the worst of it is that there is no visible possibility of salvation. our rulers have armed the mob with a weapon more potent than the thunders of jove. the loafer of the café and the pot-house has a vote, and, therefore, the same voice in choosing the rulers of nations as the student and the man of science, or the traveller who is familiar with many lands and many races. i often think that it is a pity that some means cannot be found for placing--well, i will call it a despotic power--in the hands of a few men--men, for instance, if i may say so without flattery or vanity, like ourselves--men of wide experience and broad sympathies, and yet possessing what you and i know to be the essentials of despotism--that something that can only be inherited, not acquired." "my dear prince, i agree with you entirely," replied lord orrel. "our present civilisation is suffering from a sort of dry-rot. sentiment has degenerated into sentimentalism, courage into a reckless gambling for honours, statesmanship into politics, oratory into verbosity. in short, the nineteenth century has degenerated into the twentieth. everything seems going wrong. the world is ruled by the big man who shots his quotations on the stock exchange and the little one who serves behind his counter. it is all buying and selling. honour and faith, and the old social creed which we used to call noblesse oblige, are getting quite out of date." "not that yet, my friend, surely," the prince interrupted, quickly gripping his companion's arm; "not that, at least, for us. i confess that we and those like us are, as one might say, derelicts on the ocean of society--we, who one day were stately admirals, to use the old phrase. and yet, as you said just now, if only some power could be placed in the hands of a few like ourselves, a power which would over-ride the blind, irresponsible, shifting will of the mutable mob which changes its vote and its opinions with the seasons, the world might be brought again into order, and the proletariat might be saved from its own suicide. "and," he went on, turning at the other end of their promenade, "perhaps you will not believe me, but only a few weeks ago there was such a power in the hands of a frenchman--of an alsatian, perhaps i should say, but a man who had preserved his loyalty to france--a scientist of european reputation--a man who had discovered that this earth had a spirit, a living soul, and who could gain control of it--so complete a control, that he could draw it out and leave the earth dead--a man who--but there, i am wearying you; i am sure you must think that i am telling you some fairy tale." "by no means, my dear prince," said lord orrel, doing his best to keep his voice steady, and not quite succeeding. "in the first place, i am quite sure that you would not speak so seriously on a subject that was not serious; and, in the second place, i can assure you that i am most deeply interested." "a thousand pardons, my lord," said the prince. "of course you would not think that of me. we have both of us lived too long to indulge in romance, and yet, if i could tell you the whole story, you would say that you have never heard such a romance as this." "and, if it is not trespassing too far upon your confidence, my dear prince, i should be only too happy to hear you tell the whole story," said his lordship, with an unmistakable note of curiosity in his tone. "i can tell you part of the story," replied the prince; "but not here. it is so strange, and it might have meant so much, not only to france, but to the world, that i can only tell it to you where no other ears than ours can hear it, and even then only under your solemn pledge of secrecy." "as for the first condition, my dear prince," replied lord orrel, "i will ask you to take a glass of wine with me in my sitting-room. as for the second, you have my word." "and, therefore, both conditions are amply satisfied. let us go, and i will tell you the strangest story you have ever heard." chapter viii by the time the prince had ceased speaking there was not the slightest doubt in lord orrel's mind that, in some most mysterious manner, he was connected with the discovery which hardress had made when he took the mutilated body out of the waters of the channel. perhaps even the unknown dead might have been someone near and dear to him. it seemed to him utterly impossible either to doubt the prince's word or to believe that two such discoveries could have been made by two men at the same time, or even that there could exist at the same time on earth two men whose genius, once put into practice, could make them rival masters of the world. and supposing that he knew part of the story which the prince was going to tell him--the sequel, and, from a practical point of view, the all-important portion--ought he to tell him what he knew too? he was under no actual pledge of secrecy to his associates in the great trust, but still he felt that he was under an honourable obligation to keep the story of the discovery to himself. on the other hand, granted that the prince knew the first half, would it be right--would it be honourable, according to his own exact code of honour, to keep the sequel from him? perhaps the prince even had a definite personal interest in the scheme; and, in that case, to keep silence would be to rob him of his prior rights. what was he to do? he had been a minister of the crown for a short term of office, and by the time they reached his sitting-room, and he had locked the door, after the wine had been placed on the table, diplomacy had come to his aid, and he had made up his mind. when he had filled the glasses he took out his cigar-case, selected the best it contained, and said: "prince, i'm going to ask you to allow me to take a very great liberty." "my dear lord orrel, there is nothing that you could do that i should consider a liberty. thank you, i will; i know that your cigars are always most excellent, and now we will make ourselves comfortable, and you shall take your liberty." he took the proffered cigar as he spoke, snipped the end, and lit it. lord orrel did the same, and when they had saluted each other over their wine, in the old-fashioned, courtly style, he began: "my dear prince, the liberty that i am going to ask your permission to take is a very great one, because it is a liberty of anticipation; and few men, even the most chivalrous, care to be anticipated, especially when they have an interesting story to tell. in other words, i, too, have a very strange story to tell you. in fact, the strangest that ever came within my experience. and there are reasons, which i will explain to you afterwards, why i am asking the favour of your permission to tell it before yours." the prince looked puzzled, and his dark brows approached each other for just the fraction of a second. he took a sip at his wine, leant back in his chair, and blew a long whiff of smoke up towards the gaudily-painted ceiling. then he said, with a barely perceptible shrug of his shoulders: "my dear lord orrel, you are not asking me any favour. on the contrary, you are merely requesting that you shall entertain me before i try to do the same by you. moreover, as it is quite impossible that there can be any connection between our stories, there can be no question of anticipation; so, pray, proceed. i am all attention." "as i said," began lord orrel, settling himself in his chair, and taking a long pull at his cigar, "the story is a very strange one, and it is also one which could not well be told from the housetops, because it involves--well, what may be something almost as wonderful as what you hinted at in the garden just now." "ah," interrupted the prince, with a visible start and a sudden lifting of the eyebrows, "then, in truth, it must be strange indeed; and so i am more than ever anxious to hear it; and if, as i divine, you wish me to treat it in confidence, you, of course, have my word, as a gentleman of france, that no detail of it shall ever pass my lips." his host felt not a little relieved at being released from the necessity of binding him to secrecy, as, for the sake of his colleagues, he would have felt obliged to do; so he said: "that, my dear prince, it would be quite impossible to imagine; and now, as it is getting a little late, i will get to my story." he began with the finding of the mutilated body by the _nadine_, and the discovery of the tin box containing the momentous papers, and had just given a sketch of their contents and the use that was about to be made of the dead man's discovery when the prince, whose face had been growing greyer and greyer during the recital, at length lost his hold upon the stern control under which he had just placed himself. he sprang to his feet, flung his arms apart, and cried, in a high-pitched, half-choked voice: "mon dieu! mon dieu! it is the same!--what miracle has happened? my lord, you have been telling me the end of the story of which i was going to tell you the beginning. and so france, poor france, through the stupidity of the ministerial puppets that the mob has placed in the seats of their ancient rulers, has refused the sceptre of the world; and i--i, the heir of her ancient royal house, have lost not only the throne of my ancestors, but the power to make her the mistress of the nations. truly, the mills of god grind slowly, but they grind exceeding small. her kings misruled her, and she took other rulers, who have cheated and swindled her, and humbled her before those who once did her bidding; and now, when the hand of fate holds out the means of regaining all that she has lost, and more, infinitely more, she puts it aside with the sneering laugh of contemptuous ignorance. truly it is a judgment that judges even unto the third and fourth generation. ah, yes; and on me, too!--i, who am innocent! mon dieu, mon dieu, it is cruel!" as the last words came from his trembling lips his hands came together on his forehead, and he dropped back into his chair. for a moment of speechless astonishment lord orrel stared across the room at him. then, dropping his cigar on the tray, he got up and went and laid his hand on the prince's shoulder. "my dear prince, my dear friend," he said, in a voice moved by emotion, "i am most deeply distressed that my story should have affected you so painfully. believe me, i had no intention, no thought even----" the prince dropped his hands from his head, and stood and faced him, his face white and set and his eyes burning; but with a perfectly steady voice, he said: "my lord, i thank you. so much emotion, though perhaps it was natural, ought not to have been shown. i should not have permitted it to myself, save in solitude. it was impossible that i should know that your lordship's story was the same as mine, and so, naturally, the shock was greater. and now, may i ask your lordship one question?" "i will answer it, prince, before you ask it," interrupted lord orrel. "but first, let me beg of you to drink your wine; really, you do not look well." the prince took the glass from him and drained it in silence, his hand shaking ever so little as he held it to his lips, and the other went on: "knowing what i did, i felt certain that two such miracles could not have happened at the same time; moreover, some inspiration told me that the discovery you spoke of in the garden was the same that my son made under such terrible circumstances in the channel. now, sit down, pray, do, and let us talk this matter over as men of the world." "men of the world!" echoed the prince, sadly, as he sat down again; "nay, of two worlds. i of the old, you and your son and your great business syndicate of the new; i of the past, you of the present and the future; i who would have revived the glories of an ancient race, the despotism, if you will, of a bygone dynasty, you who would found a new one--despotism a thousand times harder, a dynasty of money, not of blood, the most soulless and brutal of all dynasties. ah, well, it is fate, and who shall question that? no; if you will pardon me, my dear orrel, we will not talk further upon this subject, to-night, at any rate. i confess that what you have told me has affected me deeply. if you will permit me, i will go to bed. the russians, you know, have a saying, 'take thy thoughts to bed with thee, for the morning is wiser than the evening.' to-morrow, perhaps, i shall be able to converse with you on this momentous matter more calmly than i could do to-night." "by all means, my dear prince," was the reply; "and, no doubt, such a course would be better for me too, for i admit that this extraordinary coincidence has upset me not a little as well. and so, good-night, and sound sleep." "ah, yes," replied the prince, as they shook hands at the door; "sound sleep. i hope so. good-night, my lord, and pleasant dreams of the world-empire." he turned away to his bedroom, which was the next but two to his daughter's. the intervening rooms were occupied by his valet and her maid. the valet's door was ajar, and there was a light in the room. he stopped, and said: "i shall not want anything to-night, felix, so you may go to bed. if i require you in the night i will knock on the wall, as usual." "bien, monseigneur," replied the valet, opening the door and bowing. "j'ai l'honneur de vous sous haiter le bon soir, monseigneur." "bon soir," replied the prince, as he passed on to his room. "le chocolat a huit heures." but xavier de condé, prince of bourbon, would never drink another cup of chocolate. as soon as his door closed behind him, a sternly-repressed flood of passion broke out, and he spent half the remainder of the night walking, in his stockinged feet, up and down his big bedchamber, with clenched teeth and tight-gripped hands, his brain seething with a thousand thoughts of passion, and his white, twitching lips shaping unspoken words of rage, bitterness, and despair. it was a cruel irony that fate had wrought on him and his ancient house. the possible sceptre of the world had been offered to his hereditary enemies, the republicans of france, and, if fargeau had held to his compact, the compact for which he had given his daughter to his son, he would have been master of france; and fargeau would have kept it, for he was a loyal frenchman; and his son would have married a future queen of france! and now not only had france refused the sceptre and snatched the crown from him, but the sceptre had passed by some bitter caprice of fate into the hands of france's hereditary enemies. what could he say or do? nothing. it was maddening--worse than maddening. he had pledged his honour, and could tell no one--but even if he could, what then? the secret was out--worse--it was in the hands of men who could make the ideal a reality. they could not even give him back the power if they would, for the knowledge was theirs already, and they could act on it while he could not. the more he thought the faster the fever that was burning in his blood increased. his lips and tongue grew parched. his steps grew irregular and faltering. the veins in his head were beating on his brain like sledge-hammers. the lights began to waver before his eyes. he felt instinctively that madness--that long-inherited curse of his race--was coming. what if he should really go mad and babble not only of this great secret, but also of all the plots and intrigues of which he had been the centre! how many devoted friends and adherents would be consigned to prison and exile--perhaps even to the scaffold! the very thought chilled him back into sanity for the time being. he rapped sharply at the wall, and presently felix appeared, half-dressed, and doing his best to stifle a yawn. "felix," said the prince, who was now sitting in his arm-chair with his head between his hands, "bid marie arouse mam'selle immediately, and request her to dress and come to me. i am unwell--another of my attacks, i fear--and she only knows what to do for me. quick--i need her at once." felix vanished, and within ten minutes the marquise was in her father's room; but by this time the blood was beating on his brain again, and the fierce light of insanity was beginning to dawn in his eyes. with the valet's help she partly undressed him and got him to bed. then she locked the door and braced herself for what she instinctively knew must be a terrible ordeal. she saw at a glance that some terrible shock had thrown his brain off its balance. she had plotted with him and for him, and she knew why it was her duty to lock the door. but what was this? whence had come this blow which had struck him down so swiftly? she soon learnt, as the disjointed words and fragmentary sentences were shaped in the struggle between sanity and delirium for the command of his brain. hour after hour it went on, a piteous jumble of the memories of a long, busy life; but in the end, out of the mental tangle she was able to unravel one clear thread of thought. emil fargeau had given his secret to the sea, and the sea had given it into the hands of the english, the ancient enemies of her country and her race; and it was the son of this lord orrel, the brother of the haughty english beauty sleeping here, under the same roof, who had re-discovered it, and they were even worse than english, they were half-american; and england and america would between them share that empire of the world, that mastery of the human race, which should have been her father's and hers. she had even permitted her troth to be sold to a simple officer in the german army, a spy in the enemy's camp, in order to purchase this new sovereignty for her house. the prince was rapidly sinking; she could see that, and yet she was helpless to save him, for she had promised that no one, not even a doctor, should be admitted into the room. she gave him a dose of an opiate which he always carried with him, and about dawn he was sleeping, but every now and then talking in his sleep more coherently. at sunrise the effect of the drug wore off, and delirium resumed its sway for a few moments. his eyes opened, and with a sudden jerk he sat up in bed, his eyes glaring at the opposite wall, and his fingers clutching and tearing at the bedclothes. his lips worked convulsively for a while, then, with a hoarse, croaking scream he died. "france! o ma belle france, maitresse du monde--et moi ton roi, ton--ah----!" his voice dropped suddenly in a low, soft sigh, his eyelids fell, and his arms shrank to his sides, and he rolled back into his daughter's arms. the fresh rush of blood to his head had broken a vessel on the brain. adelaide knew instinctively that the dead weight in her arms was not that of a living man. she laid him back on the pillows, called up felix and sent him for the resident physician. when he had made his examination, he said, in his guttural french: "mam'selle la marquise, there is no hope. the prince is dead. if i had been called earlier i might have done something. i will make an examination afterwards and certify the cause of death, according to law. accept my most respectful condolences." that evening shafto hardress arrived from paris at the hôtel wilhelmshof. chapter ix in the midst of the desolation which had so swiftly and unexpectedly fallen upon her, the help and solace even of those whom she now knew to be her enemies--enemies perhaps to the death--were very welcome to adelaide de montpensier. every sort of trouble that could be taken off her hands they relieved her of. hardress travelled to vienna, which the prince had made his headquarters, to interview his man of business and to escort back the prince's sister, madame de condé, princess of bourbon, who was now, save adelaide, the only representative of the older branch of the ancient line. the younger had bowed the knee to the republican baal in france, and they were not even notified of the prince's death. lord orrel undertook the arrangement of the funeral and all the legal formalities connected with it, and lady olive was so sweet and tender in her help and sympathy that, in the midst of her grief, adelaide began to love her in spite of herself. the funeral was without any display that might have signalised the rank of the dead man, and louis xavier de condé, prince of bourbon, was laid to rest in an ordinary brick grave on the hillside under the pines of elsenau. both adelaide and her aunt would have applied to the french authorities to permit his interment in the resting-place of his ancestors, but the old prince had given special instructions that while the republican banner waved over france not even his dead body should rest in her soil, and so his wishes were, perforce, respected. the night after the funeral the marquise was sitting at her writing-table before the window of her private sitting-room. the window looked put over a vast expanse of undulating forest land, broken here and there by broad grassy valleys through which ran little tributaries of the weser, shining like tiny threads of silver under the full moon riding high in the heavens. she had drawn the blind up, and for nearly half-an-hour she had been gazing dreamily out over the sombre, almost ghostly landscape. the deep gloom of the far-spreading pine forest harmonised exactly with her own mood, and yet the twinkle of the streams amidst the glades, and the glitter of the stars on the far-off horizon, were to her as symbols of a light shining over and beyond the present darkness of her soul. the night had fallen swiftly and darkly upon her. first the vanishing into impenetrable mystery of the man upon whom rested her hopes and dreams of one day queening it over france as her ancestress marie antoinette had done, and not only over france as a kingdom, but as mistress of the world. and now the veil of mystery had been rudely torn aside, and showed her these english and americans, the hated hereditary enemies of her house and country, in possession of the power which should have been hers. then, last and worst of all, her father and her friend, the only real friend she had ever had, the only human being she had ever really loved--for she barely remembered the mother who had died when she was scarcely out of her cradle--had been stricken down by the same blow that had fallen upon her, and lay yonder on the hillside under the pines, all his high hopes and splendid ambitions brought to nothing by the swift agony of a single night. there was an open book on the table before her--a square volume, daintily bound in padded russia-leather, and closed with a silver spring lock. a gold-mounted stylographic pen lay beside it, and she held between her fingers a little cunningly contrived silver key which she had just detached from her watch-chain. "shall i write it," she murmured, in a soft, low tone, "or shall i keep it hidden where no human eyes can read it? but who can ever read this?" she went on after a little pause, letting her hand fall on the square volume. "after all, are not all my secrets here? and is not this the only friend and confidant that i have now left to me? yes, i am a woman, when all is said; and i must open my heart to someone, if only to myself." she turned the little shaded lamp by her side so that the light fell on the volume, and she put the key in the lock and opened it. about half the pages were filled with writing--not in words, but in a kind of shorthand which could only be read by her father, herself, and three of the most trusted adherents of their lost cause. her eyes ran rapidly over the last few pages. they contained the last chapters in the book of her life which was now closed. before she reached the end a mist of tears was gathering in her long, dark lashes. she wiped it away with a little lace-edged handkerchief, and took up her pen. she scored two heavy lines across the bottom of the last written page, turned over a fresh one, and began to write. "my father is dead, and with him the dreams which for years we have dreamt together. was there ever a more cruel irony of fate than this? was fate itself ever more unkind to man or woman? only a few weeks ago, and i had sold myself, with his consent, so far did our devotion go to serve the sacred cause of our house, to this big, handsome alsatian--a servant of the german emperor, the arch-enemy of our country, the owner of the two provinces which my ancestor louis tore from germany. i did it because in high politics it is necessary sometimes to sacrifice oneself, partly too because no other man had appealed to me as he did. i knew that he was running tremendous risks; i believed--yes, and i still believe, that he was risking everything--rank, honour, liberty, even life itself, by wearing the uniform of his country's enemy so that he might learn his enemy's secrets. "he loves me--yes, if ever man loved woman, he loves me--me, adelaide de condé, marquise de montpensier; and i--ah, mon dieu, is it possible that the daughter of marie antoinette has sunk so low?--i allowed him to believe that i loved him too. he believes it now. i suppose he would still believe it, even if he knew what i know now--that his father is dead, that the secret of the world-empire which he could have given us, that power for which i promised myself to him, so that i might share it with him, has gone, that it is worse than lost, since the fates have given it into the hands of the enemies of our house. "and so it is gone--worse than gone--and so, my friend victor, i am afraid you will have to find out in the course of circumstances that a woman's smiles do not always mean a reflection of the light in her lover's eyes, and that her kisses do not always mean love. it is a pity, because, after all, i believe you are a true frenchman, even if you wear a german uniform; and if that dream had become a reality, and you and i had shared the throne of france, perhaps i should have loved you as well and as truly as most queens have loved their consorts. "but, alas, my poor victor, the sceptre has passed away--for the time being, at least--from the house of bourbon. it is given into the hands of our enemies, and so you, by force of fate, must stand aside. i shall not tell you this yet, because afterwards, perhaps, you may be useful. i wonder what you would think of me--even you, a man who in the old days would only have been a sort of slave, living or dying socially as the great louis smiled or frowned upon you--i wonder what you would think if you could look over my shoulder and read this writing and see a woman's soul laid naked on this page. perhaps you might think me utterly mean and contemptible--you would if you didn't understand; but if you did, if you could see all and understand all--well, then, you might hate me, but i think you would be man enough to respect me. "at least you are diplomatist enough to know, after all, in the great game of politics, a game that is played for the mastery of kingdoms and peoples, to say nothing of the empire of the world, women have to count themselves as pawns. even the cleverest, the most brilliant, the most beautiful of us--that is all we are. sometimes our beauty or the charm of our subtle wit may win the outer senses of the rulers of the world; they may admire us physically or mentally, or both, but even at the best, it is only the man that we enslave. the man goes to sleep for a night, he dreams perhaps of our beauty and the delight of our society, but in the morning it is the statesman that wakes, and he looks back on the little weakness of the night before, and thinks of us as an ordinary man might think of the one extra liqueur which he ought not to have taken after a good dinner. "and now these english--these people into whose hands fate has given my heritage! ah, cruel fate; why did you not make them hateful, vulgar, common--something that i could hate and tread under foot--something that i could think as far beneath me as the bourgeois canaille of republican france? but you have made them aristocratic! lord orrel's lineage goes back past the days of st louis. his ancestors fought side by side with mine in the first crusade. true, they have mixed their blood with that american froth, the skimming of the pot-bouillé of the nations, but still, after all, the old blood tells. "lady olive--how i wish that she were either vulgar or ugly, so that i could hate her!--is a daughter of the plantagenets fit to mate with a prince of bourbon, if there were one worthy of her. lord orrel might have been one of those who went with the eighth henry to meet francis on the field of the cloth of gold, patrician in every turn of voice and manner and movement. and shafto hardress, who will be earl of orrel some day, and master of the world: yes, he is a patrician too; but with him there is something a little different--the american blood perhaps--keen, quick, alert, one moment indolently smoking his cigar and sipping his coffee, the next on his feet, ready to assume the destinies of nations. a man, too, strong and kindly--a man who would risk his life to save a drowning dog, and yet strike down an enemy in his path, so that he might rise a foot or so on the ladder of fame or power. but he is more than that, he wants far more than the empty fame of applause. the fame he wants is that which comes from acknowledged power. you can see the dreamer in his eyes and on his forehead, and you can see the doer on that beautiful, pitiless mouth of his and the square, strong jaw which is under it. "what a man to love and to be loved by! what would he think, i wonder, if he could read what i am writing here! and yet, are not all things possible? is it not the unexpected that comes to pass? why not? behold, i am left desolate, the garden that i called my heart is a wilderness--a wilderness ploughed up by the ploughshare of sorrow and bitterness, and so it lies fallow. would it be possible for him to sow the seed for which it is waiting?--and then the harvest would be the empire of the world shared between us! well, after all, i am not only adelaide de condé, daughter of a lost dynasty. i am a woman, with all the passions and ambitions of our race burning hot within me. if i cannot sit on the throne of the bourbons, why should i not be empress-consort on the throne of a world-wide empire?--why not? it would be a magnificent destiny!" when she had written this she laid her pen down, put her elbows on the table, and, with her chin between her hands, looked up in silence for some minutes at the moon sailing through rank after rank of fleecy clouds. then she took up her pen again, and wrote: "i wonder if there is another woman?" she looked at the last words for a moment or two, then put down her pen, closed the book and locked it, and, as she put it away into a drawer of her writing-table, she murmured: "ah, well, if there is--if there is----" she caught a sight of herself in the long glass of one of the wardrobes, and she saw a tall, exquisitely-shaped figure of a beautiful woman clad in the plainest of mourning. she looked at herself with eyes of unsparing criticism, and found no fault, and she turned away from the glass, saying: "ah, well, if there is--we shall see--and, if there really is, i wonder what she's like." chapter x within a week after the funeral adelaide and madame de condé returned to the late prince's hotel on the ringstrasse in vienna. they had taken most cordial leave of lord orrel and his son and daughter, and, in spite of all their prejudices of race and nation, adelaide de condé had brought something more away with her than the memory of a great sorrow tempered by the kindness of those whom a strange freak of fortune had made friends as well as enemies. even the two or three days that she had spent in his society had sufficed to show her that shafto hardress possessed in an infinitely greater degree those qualities which go to make the rulers of humanity than her big handsome alsatian, whose utmost ambition was the command of an army corps. he had the hard, keen, unemotional common-sense which enabled him to see even the tremendous possibilities of emil fargeau's discovery in a purely practical and even commercial light, but at the same time he possessed sufficient imagination to enable him to see how far-reaching the moral and social effects of the working-out of the scheme would be on the peoples of the world. she had herself said nothing of what had passed during that terrible night. for all they knew, the prince had taken the secret with him to the grave. once lord orrel had very delicately led the conversation up as near to the edge of this supremely important subject as his instincts would let him go, but he had learnt nothing, and an hour or so later he said to his son: "my dear shafto, it is perfectly certain that my dear old friend the prince died without giving her any inkling of the great secret which he took to the grave with him." "either that, dad," he replied, "or she is the most perfect diplomatist in europe. i think i have heard you say that the first essential of diplomacy is the ability to assume a perfect counterfeit of innocence and ignorance--in other words, to convey the impression that you know nothing when you know everything." "well, if that is so in this case," replied his father, "the mask which mam'selle wears is as impenetrable as it is beautiful. really, shafto, i think that rumour did not exaggerate when it called her the most beautiful woman in europe." "yes," said hardress, slowly; "she certainly is very lovely, and, from the little i've seen of her, she seems as gifted as she is beautiful." "then, my dear boy, if you really think that," said lord orrel, "how would it be if you were to repair this involuntary injustice which the fates have wrought upon her? the most beautiful woman in europe, and perhaps the most nobly born, and you one of the masters of the world! why not? there is the realisation of a dream even greater than the prince's; and if i have any skill in reading a woman's face or woman's eyes, it is a dream not very difficult for you to realise." hardress laughed, and shook his head, and said: "no, dad; i'm afraid that's not difficult. it's impossible." the earl looked up sharply, and said: "oh, then, of course, there is someone else in the case; and that can hardly be anyone but----" "you're quite right, dad; it's chrysie vandel. i meant to tell you before, but such a lot of things have happened since i got here, and i didn't really think it was of very much consequence for the present--because, after all, she's only accepted me conditionally--but, lovely and all as the marquise is, i think i would rather rule over the orrel estates with chrysie than over the world with her." "then that, of course, settles it," said the earl, with a certain note of displeasure in his voice. "miss vandel is a most charming and fascinating girl, but you will perhaps pardon me, shafto, if i say that she no more compares with the daughter of the royal line of france than----" "you needn't go on, dad," said hardress, interrupting him with a laugh; "comparisons are always more or less unpleasant; and then, you see, you're not in love with either of them, and i'm pretty badly in love with one." "well, well," said his father, "of course, if that's the case, there's an end of it, and there's nothing more to be said. still, for more reasons than one, i must say that i wish you had met the marquise first. the plantagenets and the bourbons would have made a splendid stock." on the same day that this conversation took place in the gardens of the hôtel wilhelmshof in elsenau, a very different one was taking place in the prince's hotel at vienna between adelaide de condé and victor fargeau, who, on receipt of the news of the prince's death, had obtained a few days' leave, and travelled post-haste from petersburg to vienna. it was after dinner, and madame de condé had retired to her own room with a slight attack of nerves. the marquise and victor fargeau were sitting on either side of the open fireplace, with a little table, holding coffee and liqueurs, between them. adelaide had accepted a cigarette from his case, and he had lit one too. for several minutes after her aunt had left the room she puffed daintily at her cigarette, and looked across at him with intricately-mingled feelings. at length victor broke the silence by saying, with a note of impatience in his tone: "and now, mam'selle la marquise, or, if you like it better, my most beautiful adelaide, i have possessed my soul in patience for nearly two hours. when are you going to tell me this wonderful news of yours?" "wonderful, my dear victor? alas, it is not only that; it is most sorrowful as well." then, bracing herself with a visible effort, she threw her half-smoked cigarette into the fireplace, and, gripping the arms of the big chair in which she was sitting, she went on, staring straight into his eyes: "it is nothing less than the story of how your father met his end, and what became of his great secret." "nom de dieu!" he cried, springing to his feet; "you know that, and from whom?" "from these english and americans--or anglo-americans, as i suppose i ought to call them," she replied; "the people to whom the fates gave the secret with your father's dead and mutilated body; the people who buried him--the man who might have been the saviour of france--in a nameless english grave." she kept her voice as steady as she could while she was saying this; she even tried to speak coldly and pitilessly, for she had made up her mind that the reasons of state for her betrothal to this man no longer existed. she had an even higher stake to play for now, and, in spite of all her pride of blood and racial prejudice, this would not be a sacrifice; on the contrary, it would be rather a victory--and so she hardened her voice, as she had done her heart. "dead! mutilated!" he exclaimed again. "yes; i knew he was dead, for he told me in his letter from paris that he would not, and could not, survive the failure of all his hopes. there were reasons why he should not, but they are of no consequence now. he staked everything, and lost everything, and that is enough. it is not for me to be his judge, now that he has gone to the presence of the highest judge of all." "that was said like a good son and a true man, victor," replied the marquise, with a swift glance of something like admiration at his flushed and handsome face. "but there is something more serious than even the death of one whom you have loved and i have most deeply respected. i heard enough from my own father, during the night he died, to convince me that these people have not only got the secret, but that they are already devoting millions to convert your father's theory into a terrible reality. "this viscount branston, lord orrel's son, has already been across to america, and has leased the land about the magnetic pole from the canadian government. a syndicate has been formed, and even at this very moment the preliminaries of the work are being pushed forward as rapidly as possible. within a few months they will have begun the storage station itself, and then nothing can save the world from the irresistible power which will be theirs." while she was speaking, victor was striding up and down the dining-room, his hands clasped behind his back, and his frowning eyes bent on the thick carpet. suddenly he stopped and faced her, and said, in sharp, almost passionate accents: "perhaps it is not too late after all. my father left me those papers in duplicate. i am weary--sick to death of playing this double game. in a few months war between france and germany will be inevitable. russia will side with us, and the prize of the victors will be--for france, the restoration of the lost provinces, and a good fat slice of china, and for russia the whole of northern china and korea. germany hasn't a friend on earth. the english hate her because she is beating them in trade rivalry; austria has no more forgotten sadowa than we have forgotten sedan. italy is crippled for lack of money, and so is spain. the rest don't matter; and england and america will be only too glad to stand aside and see europe tear itself to pieces. so france and russia will win, and we shall crush our conqueror into the dust." "but how can that be?" she interrupted, "if your father's calculations were correct--as these people have evidently found them to be--for if they had not done so they would not have risked their millions on them. from what you and he have told me of his discovery, once these works are set in operation round the magnetic pole, fighting will be impossible, save with the permission of those who own them. metals, as he proved in his last experiment, will become brittle as glass, cannons and rifles will burst at the first shot, even swords and bayonets will be no more use than icicles; steam-engines will cease to work, and the world will go back to the age of wood and stone. "picture to yourself, my dear victor, the armed millions of europe facing each other, unable to fire a shot, or even to make a bayonet charge. fancy the fleets of russia and france and germany laid up like so many worn-out hulks. no, no, my friend; there can be no talk of serious war while these people possess the power of preventing it at their will." "but war there must and shall be!" he exclaimed. "i have not been a traitor to my country even in appearance, i have not worn this german uniform--this livery of slavery--for nothing. i have not wormed my way into the confidence of my superiors, i have not risked something worse than death to discover the details of germany's next campaign against france, to have all my work brought to nothing at the eleventh hour by these english-americans. no, there may be time even yet; i have risked much, and i will risk more; and you, adelaide, will you help me? will you keep the compact which your father made with mine?" she had been growing paler all the time he had been speaking, knowing instinctively what was coming. she rose slowly from her chair, and said, almost falteringly: "what do you mean, victor? how can i help you, when these people already have the secret in their hands, and have been spending their millions for weeks? what can we do against them?" "we can do this," he replied, stopping again in his walk; "my father pledged his honour as well as everything else he had in the world to insure the success of this scheme. i, his son, can do no less; i will pledge mine in the same cause. i am on leave, and i can wear plain clothes. to-morrow i will start for paris and see if i cannot bring that pig-headed minister of war to something like reason. i think i have a suggestion which he will find worth working out, and certainly he will be interested in other things that i shall put before him. germany i have done with. i have worn the livery of shame too long. henceforth i am what i was born--a frenchman. i will resign my commission to-morrow, even if france lets me starve for it. i can easily do that, for the son of a disgraced man cannot remain in the german army, and my poor father disgraced himself to make france the mistress of the world. a miserable jew in strassburg holds the honour of our family in his hand. i have no money to redeem it, and so it must go." she had almost said, "victor, i am rich; let me redeem it," when she remembered that she was no longer more loyal to him than he was to germany. all the while that he had been talking she had been thinking, almost against her will, of shafto hardress, and comparing him only too favourably with this man, who, however honourable his motives might seem to himself, was still a traitor and a spy. instead of this, she said, rising and holding out her hand, "well, victor, so far as i can help you i will. we are going to paris ourselves in a few days, and, by the way, that reminds me i had a letter from sophie valdemar only this morning, telling me that she and the count are going there too." "ah yes," replied victor; "a mixture of diplomacy and pleasure, i've no doubt. i wonder what the fair sophie would give to know what you and i know, adelaide?" "a good deal, no doubt," smiled adelaide, as they shook hands. "of one thing i'm quite certain; if russia had the knowledge that you are going to give to france, russia would find some means of making those storage works an impossibility." "and that is exactly what i propose to persuade france to do, if possible; but we can talk that over better when we meet in paris. and now, my adelaide, good-night." he clasped her hand and drew her towards him; for the fraction of a second she drew back, and then she yielded and submitted to his kiss; but when the door had closed behind him, she drew the palm of her hand across her lips with a gesture almost of disgust, and said: "no, my victor; that must be the last. you cannot afford a princess of bourbon now. i sold myself for statecraft which is craft no longer; and, besides, there is another now. ah, well, i wonder what will happen in paris? and sophie valdemar, too, and the count! altogether, i think we shall make quite an interesting little party when we meet in la ville lumière." chapter xi ten days had passed since victor fargeau's conversation with adelaide de condé in vienna. he had adhered to the decision that he had come to so suddenly under the spell of her wonderful eyes. he had no family ties now. his mother had died several years before. his two sisters had married frenchmen, and migrated with their husbands into normandy. the estate in alsace, which should have been his own patrimony, was lost, and the german jew, weinthal, held not only that but the honour of his family, the good name of his dead father, in his hands. so he had decided to cut himself adrift from his native land until it had become once more a part of france. he had written to petersburg and resigned his position on the diplomatic staff, and he had also written to headquarters resigning his commission, and telling enough of his father's story to show that, since it was impossible for him now, as a man with a tarnished name, to hold his head up amongst his brother officers, there was nothing left for him but retirement into civil life. a reply had come back, to the effect that the circumstances of his very painful case were under consideration, and that he need not report himself for duty until the general of the division to which he was attached had given his decision. he knew that this was equivalent to an acceptance of his resignation. even though he had asked for it, his dismissal galled him. he knew perfectly well that he had only entered the german army for the purposes of revenge, that in honest language he could only be described as a traitor and a spy--a man who had deliberately abused his position and the confidence of his superiors to get possession of plans of fortresses, details of manoeuvres, lines of communication, available rolling-stock, and points of entry which had been selected for possible invasion. he had, in fact, done more than even dreyfus was ever accused of, and now, since everything else was lost, he was determined to take the last step. he would throw off his enforced allegiance to germany; he would take the wreck of his fortunes with him to france, and he would offer her his services and his information. he knew well enough that they would not be rejected, as his father's priceless discovery had been. what he possessed would be bought eagerly by any of the chancelleries of europe. the french ministry of war would not refuse his services as it had refused his father's. even now some means might be found to checkmate these english-americans. already a scheme, daring and yet practicable, was shaping itself in his mind, and if that succeeded he might still achieve the one desire of his life and call adelaide de condé his own. for the present, although she had said nothing at that last interview, he felt that a change had come into their relationship. her words had been more formal and more measured, and her last kiss colder than before. he felt that he was on his trial; that if he did not achieve something great she was lost to him. and then there was the other--this english-american--who had not only got the great secret, but the millions to put it into practice. he knew her high ambitions. he knew that if she had to choose between love for a man, and the fulfilment of a great project, the man would have but little chance. but he had loved her since he knew the meaning of the word, and he had resolved to risk everything that was left to him to win back what had once been within his grasp. if in the end he failed and the other man won--well, so much the worse for the other man. and then there was sophie valdemar. even if this english-american did take adelaide from him----but that was another matter, the fragment of a possible destiny which still lay upon the knees of the gods. if the worst came to the worst, what would russia not give to know all that he knew and all that was contained in the only legacy that his father had left him. so thinking, he travelled to paris, leaving his uniform behind him, and dressed just as an ordinary man about town, quietly, but with exquisite care and neatness. as soon as he had settled himself in a modest hotel in one of the streets of the avenue de l'opé, he wrote a discreetly-worded note to one of the secretaries of the ministry of war, a former schoolfellow of his, with whom he had had previous communications of a confidential sort, asking him to arrange a private interview for him with the minister at the earliest possible date, and, if possible, to dine with him the next evening. the next morning he called to pay his respects to madame de bourbon and the marquise at the hotel they had taken in the avenue neuilly. he met the marquise alone in the salon. she received him quietly and almost coldly--but this he had expected. "so you have finally decided," she said. "i thought from your letter that you would do so. how very different you look _en civile_! really, although we naturally hate the sight of them, still, it must be admitted that those german uniforms do make a good-looking man look his best." "yes," replied victor, choking down his chagrin as best he might; "to a certain extent it is true, after all, that the feathers make the bird, and so, of course, the clothes make the man. still, i'm afraid i shall have to ask you to tolerate me for the future without my german plumage. as you say, i have made my decision. i have broken with germany for ever. henceforth, i am a son of france--and, adelaide, i have come to ask a daughter of france to help me to serve her." "of france!" she echoed, drawing herself up, and looking at him with a half-angry glint in her eyes, "of what france? of this nation of snobs and shopkeepers, ruled by a combination of stockbrokers, heavy-witted bourgeoisie and political adventurers? or the old france--my france--the france of my ancestors, as it was in the days when the great louis said: 'l'état c'est moi'? the one is not worth saving; the other might be worth restoring." "but this france of the bourgeoisie must first be saved, so that we may make out of it the foundation for the throne of the great louis. if we succeed, adelaide, as it is still possible that we may do, we shall be strong enough to abolish the salic law and to enthrone you as empress of the french." "of france, if you please! my ancestors were kings of france. even the corsican dared only style himself emperor of the french. you seem to forget that i am a daughter of the bourbons, a scion of the older line, and that therefore france is my personal heritage. but come," she went on, with a swift change of tone and manner, "it will be time enough to talk about that when i am nearer to my inheritance than i am now. you said that you wanted my help--how? what can i do now, left alone as i am?" "not quite alone, adelaide," he said, half reproachfully. "have i not given up everything, even, as some would say, sacrificed honour itself, to help you to win back that which is your own by every right? and you can help me as no one else can. i have a friend in the ministry of war--gaston leraulx, one of the secretaries. we were school-fellows and college friends. he is to dine with me to-night, and he will arrange an interview with the minister of war. i shall ask you to come with me to that interview." "what do you say, victor? you wish me, a princess of the house of bourbons to enter the bureau of one of these ministers--these politicians who are ruling in the place of the old noblesse--men whom we might perhaps have employed as lacqueys?" "that is true," he replied; "but remember, adelaide, that time brings its differences. my ancestors were nobles when yours were kings. if the old order of things is to be restored we must use these people as means to an end. i ask you to come with me to the minister of war, so that you may help me to convince him, from your own knowledge, of the terrible mistake that he made when he refused to entertain the project that my father placed before him. "you can tell him that strange story of how my father in his despair committed his body and his secret to the sea; how the sea gave it up into the hands of our worst enemies--the enemies of yesterday, to-day, and to-morrow--england and america; and how, even now, they are spending their millions upon that upon which france would not even risk a few paltry thousands. "when i place my papers before him he will see that they are identical with my father's, and i shall give him others which will make it impossible for him to doubt my faith; and you, you will be there to help me with your knowledge, with the prestige of your name, and with your beauty. the general may be all that you think him, but do not forget that he is a frenchman, and that all frenchmen who are not quite mad respect and admire at least two things----" "and those are--what?" she said, taking a couple of steps towards him, and speaking in a low, earnest tone. "am i to understand you to mean that this man--i know that he is one of the most able men that france can boast of--might perhaps be made an instrument of?" "i mean," said victor, taking her hand unresistingly, "that general ducros is himself an aristocrat, a man whose forefathers served yours well; that he is a frenchman whose spirit will recognise yours as being of similar lineage, whose eyes will not be blind, and whose ears will not be deaf. surely, adelaide, you see by this time what i mean: you see how, with you, i may succeed in everything, and, without you, i may fail. and, remember, if i fail there is an end of everything. this is our last hope. if it is not realised, these accursed english and americans will be masters of the situation, masters of the world, indeed. surely, adelaide, for the sake of all that is past and all that may be to come you will not say no?" "no, victor; i will not," she replied, still allowing her hand to rest in his, and yet thinking the while of that other man, whose face was ever present to her eyes, and whose voice was ever echoing in her ears. "i will visit this minister of yours with you. his name is good, and perhaps he may not be unworthy of it. at any rate, he is not disgraced by one of those new titles of the first or second empire. if i can help you i will; trust me for that. when it is arranged send me a telegram and our carriage is at your disposal. ah, who is this?" at this moment the door opened, and the lacquey announced: "monsieur le comte de valdemar; ma'm'selle la comtesse de valdemar." victor fargeau saw at a glance that the count and sophie were dressed in half-mourning, and instantly divined that their visit was one of condolence. this, of course, gave him a most excellent excuse to make his adieux. there was just a glimmer of taunting mockery in sophie's brilliant eyes as she recognised the dashing young cavalry officer in the sober garb of civil life, but it passed like a flash, and as they shook hands she said: "a most unexpected meeting, captain!" and then, with a look of frank challenge, "no doubt it is most important business that has brought you to paris _en civile_." "it is not without importance, countess, at least to my own poor and presently insignificant self. whether," he went on, with a swift involuntary glance at adelaide, who was receiving the condolences of the count, "it will ever be of importance to others is one of the secrets of fate; and, if so, you, who are no doubt justly credited with knowing half the secrets of europe, will probably be one of the first to discover the fact." "i wonder whether that is intended for a compliment or the reverse," said sophie, with a look of challenge coming back into her eyes. "you see, captain, there are two sorts of people who are supposed to know everything--diplomatists and spies." her voice dropped almost to a whisper as she spoke the last word. victor did his best to preserve his composure, but sophie's watchful eyes saw that the shot had gone home; still, the next moment he replied, with the stiff wooden-doll bow of the german officer, and without a tremor in his voice: "it would be quite impossible that mam'selle could be anything but one of the two." as he raised his head she looked into his eyes again, and laughed outright. "well hit, captain! that was very nicely put. i think you and i would make better friends than enemies, and in proof of my belief, let me tell you a secret which is not of europe. an anglo-american syndicate has for some reason or other leased several square miles round the magnetic pole in boothia land, british north america." "really! and might i ask why? it doesn't seem to be a very profitable investment in landed property." "who knows?" said sophie, with a little shrug of her shapely shoulders. "these english and americans, you know, are always doing the maddest things. i shouldn't wonder if they intended to turn the _aurora borealis_ into electric light for chicago." "nor i," said victor. "and now, if you will permit me, i must say au revoir." "i wonder how much our ex-captain really knows, and if my dear friend adelaide here knows anything or not," said sophie, in her soul, when victor had made his adieux and the door closed behind him. chapter xii it was not until four days later that victor's friend in the ministry of war was able to procure an appointment for him with general ducros. pressure of business was captain gaston leraulx' explanation, and it was an honest one. what he did not know was that on the evening of the day when count valdemar and his daughter paid their visit of condolence to adelaide de condé, general ducros dined with them. they had no other guest, for the best of reasons. countess sophie, the omniscient, by means of a happy accident, had got a fairly clear idea of the outlines of the great storage scheme. the servants of the white tzar are everywhere, known or unknown, generally the latter. a russian trapper happened to meet a french-canadian voyageur in montreal when shafto hardress was making his negotiations with the canadian government. they had a few drinks and a talk over the extraordinary deal that he had made with the canadian government, a deal which had been reported and commented on by the canadian and american journals with the usual luxuriance of speculative imagination. the same night the voyageur and the trapper, both men who were living on the products of their season's hunting and trapping, cabled practically the same details to paris and petersburg. the voyageur's telegram had gone to general ducros; and he, with the instinct of a soldier and a statesman, had instantly connected it with the greatest mistake that he had made in his life, his refusal to entertain the proposal which doctor emil fargeau had laid before him. he saw that he had refused even to examine a scheme which this anglo-american syndicate had somehow got hold of and thought it worth their while to spend thousands of pounds even in preliminary development. as he said to himself when the unwelcome news came to him, "i have committed a crime--for i have made a mistake, and for statesmen mistakes are something worse than crimes." as soon as the russian trapper's message had reached count valdemar, he immediately discussed it with his daughter, who over and over again had given proof of an almost clairvoyant insight into the most difficult and intricate concerns of international diplomacy. the moment she saw it her instinct led her back to the reception at the german embassy in petersburg. "it was all very easy, after all, general," she said, when the dinner was over, and the coffee and liqueurs were on the table. "if you will pardon me saying so, it is in cases like this that the intuition of the woman outstrips the logical faculty of the man. you have asked me how i discovered the connection between the interview between yourself and doctor fargeau, which, as you say, ended somewhat unhappily for france, and this extraordinary purchase of a seemingly worthless landed property by viscount hardress." "ah yes," said the general, knocking the ash off his cigarette. "statesmen are not supposed to make mistakes, but to you, ma'm'selle, and monsieur le comte, i must confess, to my most intense chagrin, the man was an alsatian, and had accepted the new order of things in the provinces, he was a german subject, and his son was a german officer on the general staff. what could i think?" "my dear general," replied sophie, after a long whiff at her yellow russian cigarette, "your conclusions were perfectly just under the circumstances. but when you have had your interview with captain fargeau and my dear friend the marquise, i think you will find that, after all, they were erroneous. do you not think so, papa?" "i fancy," replied the count, slowly, "that when you have made your explanations to the general, he will agree with you." "very well, then, general, i will spin my little thread before you, and you shall see whether it holds together or not. first, there was that snatch of a conversation that i heard at the german embassy reception in petersburg. captain fargeau was talking with the late prince de condé, and he was called away by one of the servants. from another source i knew afterwards that he had received a telegram from strassburg. he came back, and made a pretence of dancing with my very dear friend, adelaide de condé. they went out into the winter garden, just in front of myself and my partner. i heard him tell her that 'he' had succeeded, and gone to paris. "you have told me of his father's visit to you. the chief part of his scheme was the building of these works round the magnetic pole in boothia land. the prince and adelaide go to a little out-of-the-way place in germany, called elsenau. the fashionable papers told us that. they also told us that lord orrel and his daughter were there; and almost the same day arrives this viscount branston, lord orrel's son. the prince suddenly and mysteriously dies--as they say, from the bursting of a blood-vessel on the brain. of course, all the papers tell us of that, and also that viscount branston goes to vienna and brings back madame de bourbon, who is here now, in paris, with adelaide. "before this, you and my father have the telegrams from our good friends out yonder in canada. then the canadian and american papers confirm this, and tell us that this same viscount branston has leased this very spot of seemingly worthless land, which was, as you tell us, essential to the carrying out of emil fargeau's scheme, and that a great anglo-american syndicate has been formed to build an observatory there, or a central station for the control of wireless telegraphy throughout the world; and so on. no doubt the newspaper stories are as familiar to you as they are to us. now, general, do you see the connection between that scrap of conversation i heard in petersburg, and the purchase of that patch of snow-covered rock in boothia land?" "ma'm'selle," replied the general, "it is not a thread, but a chain, and there is not a weak link in it. it is perfectly plain now that there is a connection between this german officer, at present on leave in paris, and these english and americans who have somehow become possessed of the details of the scheme which i so unfortunately rejected. still, until we have heard what captain fargeau and your friend the marquise de montpensier, whom i am to have the honour of receiving to-morrow, have to say, it would not, i think, be wise to conclude that they have entered into a conspiracy with those whom i may describe as our common enemies." "that, general, i do not believe for a moment," said the count. "all their interests lie the other way. they have as much reason to dislike england and america as we have; and, until i know to the contrary, i shall prefer to believe that the marquise de montpensier, a daughter of the bourbons, is a friend to france, and therefore, through france, to russia." "and i believe that too," said sophie. "as far as england and america are concerned, the interests of france and russia are identical. if these arrogant anglo-saxons are ever to be put into their proper place, russia and france must do it: and, to begin with, by some means or other, this scheme must be frustrated. and now, general, i have given you a little information to-night, and i am going to ask a little favour in return." "it shall be granted, if possible. ma'm'selle has only to ask it." "there is, i believe," said sophie, putting her arms on the table, "a little apartment leading out of your own bureau at the ministry of war?" general ducros could not help raising his eyelids a little, for he knew that neither sophie nor her father had ever been in that room, but he dropped them again instantly, and said: "that is perfectly true, ma'm'selle; it is a little apartment, devoted to my own private use. in fact, to tell you the truth, i am sometimes there when it is convenient for my secretary to prove by ocular demonstration to some more or less important personage that i am not at home, and that, in consequence of my unavoidable absence, an undesirable interview has to be postponed." "exactly," laughed sophie. "such things are not unknown elsewhere; and i am going to ask you, general, for the use of that room during your interview to-morrow with the marquise de montpensier and captain fargeau. in other words, i wish to be present at the interview without doing anything to interrupt the smooth course of the proceedings." "ma'm'selle knows so much already that there is no reason why she should not know more," replied the general, not very cordially; "but, of course, it is understood, as a matter of honour between ourselves, that in this matter we are allies, as our countries are." "undoubtedly," replied the count. "it would, indeed, be mutually impossible for it to be otherwise." "then," said sophie, "we will consider that a bargain. my father and i will call shortly before the captain and adelaide reach the ministry, and afterwards----" "and afterwards, my dear general, if you will allow me to interrupt you," said the count, "i would suggest that we should have a little dinner here, to which sophie will invite madame de bourbon and the marquise, as well as captain fargeau; a dinner which, if you will permit me to say so, may possibly be of historic interest; an occasion upon which, perhaps, the alliance between france and russia will be cemented by a mutual agreement and arrangement to outwit these english-americans, and secure the world-empire for france and russia." general ducros assented. he saw that, owing to the fatal mistake he had made when he rejected emil fargeau's scheme, he was now, thanks to the subtle intellect of sophie valdemar, forced to share the possibility of obtaining that world-empire with russia, the ally whose friendship had already cost france so dearly, an ally to whom france had paid millions for a few empty assurances and one or two brilliant scenes in the international spectacular drama. no one knew better than he did how worthless this alliance really was to france, and that night he reproached himself bitterly for letting slip the chance of making france independent of her blood-sucking ally. still, by an extraordinary combination of chance and skill, sophie valdemar had got the necessary knowledge of the great secret, and, perforce, he had to share it with her and russia. punctually at eleven o'clock the next morning adelaide de condé and victor fargeau were admitted to the bureau of the minister of war. the interview was very different from the one that he had granted to the man whom his scepticism had practically driven to his death, and so placed the great secret in the hands of his country's enemies. it was also much shorter. when, at the outset, the general had addressed victor as captain fargeau, he replied: "pardon, general, i am captain no longer, nor am i any longer a german. i have resigned. henceforth i am a frenchman in fact, as i have always been in heart. you would not believe that of my father, but i will prove it to you of myself." "my dear sir," replied the general, "no one could be more delighted to hear such news as that than i; and i can promise you that, in that case, an appointment--not, of course, an acknowledged one, since you are not now legally a frenchman--shall be placed at your disposal." adelaide turned her head away as he spoke, and her lips curled into a smile which made her look almost ugly. "so now he is to become a paid spy," she thought. "and he still considers that i am pledged to him. but what can i do till we have either succeeded or failed? ah, if it were only the other one! if he were a frenchman, or if only i could make him love me as i could--well, we shall see. after all, patriotism has its limits. france has broken its allegiance to my house. what do i owe it?" general ducros saw at a glance that the specifications which victor handed to him were the duplicates of those which he had so unwisely and so unfortunately for himself and for france refused to accept from his father. if anything had been needed to convince him of the terrible error that he had made, adelaide's story of the last night of her father's life would have done it. "monsieur," he said, laying his hand upon the papers, "i will confess that i have made a great mistake, even that i have committed a crime against france and your father. alas, as we know now from the story that ma'm'selle la marquise has told us, he is dead; and it is i who, innocently and unknowingly, sent him to his death. i can do no more than admit my error, and promise you that every force at my command shall be used to repair it, if possible. these other documents, which you have been good enough to hand to me, i take, of course, as an earnest of your good faith and your devotion to france." "i wonder what they are," said sophie valdemar, in her soul, as the minister's words reached her ear through the closed door of the little private room. "an alsatian, a german officer, military attaché at petersburg, he resigns his commission, goes back to his french allegiance, and gives the general something which proves his good faith! ah, perhaps a scheme of campaign--sketches of routes--details of mobilisation--plans of fortresses! we must fight germany soon. i wonder whether i could persuade the good general to let me have a look at them, if they are anything of that sort." while these thoughts were flashing through sophie's mind, the general was saying: "and now, monsieur, you mentioned a short time ago that you had a scheme for repairing the error which i have confessed. may i ask for an outline of it? i need hardly say that, if it is only feasible, france will spare neither money nor men to accomplish the object, and to regain what i have so deplorably lost." "my scheme, general," said victor, "is exceedingly simple. these english-americans are going to erect storage works round the magnetic pole, which, as of course you know, is situated in the far north, in a sort of no-man's land, untrodden by human feet once in half-a-century. let france fit out an arctic expedition of two ships. let them be old warships--as the _alert_ and _discovery_ were in the english expedition. their mission will, of course, be a peaceful one, and their departure will cause no comment save in the scientific papers, but in their holds the ships will carry the most powerful guns they can mount, ammunition, and----" "excellent!" interrupted the general, rising from his seat. "my dear monsieur, i congratulate you upon a brilliant idea. yes, the expedition shall be prepared with all speed; the newspapers shall describe the ships as old ones, but the minister of marine and myself will arrange that they shall carry the best guns and the most powerful explosives that we have. they shall be manned by picked crews, commanded by our best officers; they shall sail for the north pole, or thereabouts, as all these expeditions do, and they shall make a friendly call at boothia land. it will not be possible now before next summer because of the ice; but the same cause will delay our friends in building the storage works; and when our ships call and the works are well in progress--well, then, we will see whether or not our friends will yield to logic; and, if not, to force majeure. is that your idea?" "exactly," replied victor. "we will wait till the works are finished, say this time next year, or two years or three years, it matters nothing, and then we will take them. the expedition will carry men trained to do the work under my orders. i have the whole working of the apparatus in those papers. once we possess the works we are masters of the world, because we shall be possessors of its very life. but before that there may be war--the nations of europe fighting for the limbs of the yellow giant in the east. germany, as you will see from those papers, is nearly ready. it is only a matter of a few months, and then she will make her first rush on france. england and america can be rendered helpless if we once seize the works, and russia can, i presume, be trusted?" "without doubt," said the general. "russia is our true and faithful ally." "yes," said sophie again, in her soul; "provided she has a share in that polar expedition, as she shall have." chapter xiii nearly a year had passed since general ducros had dined with count valdemar and ma'm'selle sophie in paris. it was cowes week, and there was quite a cosmopolitan party at orrel court. adelaide de condé and madame de bourbon were the best of friends with count valdemar and sophie. clifford vandel and miss chrysie were good friends with everybody, the latter especially good friends with hardress, whose work was now rapidly approaching completion. in short, it was as charming a cosmopolitan party as you could have found on the hampshire shore, or anywhere else; and none of the other guests of lord orrel, and there were several of them not unskilled in diplomacy, ever dreamt that under the surface of the smooth-flowing conversation, whether round the dinner-table at the court, on the _nadine_, which ran down the southampton water every day that there was a good race on, or at clifford vandel's bungalow at cowes, whose smoothly shaven lawn sloped down almost to the water's edge, lay undercurrents of plot and counterplot, the issue of which was the question whether the dominion of the world was to be committed to anglo-saxon or franco-slav hands. one night--it was the evening after the great regatta--three conversations took place under the roof of orrel court, which the greatest newspapers of the two hemispheres would have given any amount of money to be able to report, since each of them was possibly pregnant with the fate of the world. when clifford vandel came up from the smoking-room a little after eleven he found miss chrysie waiting for him in the sitting-room of the suite of apartments that had been given to them in the eastern wing of the old mansion. "don't you think you ought to be in bed, chrysie, instead of sitting there smoking a cigarette, and--why, what's the matter with you, girl?" he had begun with something like a note of reproach in his voice, but the last words were spoken in a tone of tender concern. she got up from her chair, went to the door, and shut it and locked it, and then, with her half-smoked cigarette poised between her fingers, her face pale, and her eyes aflame, she faced him and said, in low, quick-flowing tones: "poppa, can't you see what's the matter?--you, who can see things months before they happen, and make millions by gambling on them?--you who did up morgan himself over that wireless telegraphy combine--can't you see what's going on right here just under your nose?" "my dear chrysie, what are you talking about? i've not noticed anything particular happening, except what's happened in the right way. what's the trouble?" "the trouble's that frenchwoman--that second edition of marie antoinette. can't you see what she's doing every hour and day of her life? can't you see that she's as beautiful as an angel, and--well, as clever as the other thing, and that she's just playing her hand for all she's worth to get the man i want--the man i half-promised myself to a year ago!" "perhaps i've been too busy about other matters, and perhaps i never expected anything of the sort," replied her father; "and anyhow, men are fools at seeing this kind of thing; but if that's so, and you really do want him, why not promise yourself altogether and fix things up? there's no man i'd sooner have for a son-in-law; and if you want him, and he wants you, why----" "it's just there, poppa, that i'm feeling bad about it," she said, coming nearer to him, and speaking with a little break in her voice. "i'm not so sure that he does want me now--at least, not quite as badly as he did that time when he asked me first in buffalo. don't you see that frenchwoman's bewitched him? and who could blame him, after all? what do all the society papers say about her? the most beautiful woman in europe--the great-great-grand-daughter of louis the magnificent himself, with the noblest blood of france in her veins! how could any man with eyes in his head and blood in his heart resist her? why, i could no more compare with her than----" "than a wild rose in one of these beautiful english lanes could compare with a special variety of an orchid in a hothouse; and i guess, chrysie, that if i haven't made a great mistake about shafto hardress--if he does get a bit intoxicated with the scent of the orchid, if it comes to winning and wearing the flower, he'll take the wild rose. if he doesn't--well, i guess you'll do pretty well without him." "but i just can't do without him, poppa. you are the only one i'd tell it to, but that's so; and before that frenchwoman gets him i'd have her out and shoot her. women in her country fight duels. and there's more to it than that," she went on, after a little pause. "and what might that be, miss fire-eater?" said her father, half-laughing, half-seriously. "i believe that she and that russian girl, who goes languishing around shafto when the marquise or myself isn't around, know more than they should do about this storage scheme. i don't say i've been listening--i wouldn't do it--no, not even for them; but sometimes you can't help hearing; and only the day before yesterday, out in the grounds there, i heard both of them, not to each other, but at different times to count valdemar, mention the name of victor fargeau; and you know who he is--son of the man whose remains shafto picked up at sea--creator of this great scheme of yours--a frenchman who was an officer in the german army. now listen: both these women are friends of general ducros, the french war minister. france is sending out the polar expedition this year that she has been preparing for months--you know that; so has russia. do you see what i mean now?" "i guess you've got me on my own ground there, chrysie," said her father, laying his hand across her shoulders, and drawing her towards him. "you were dead right when you said that a woman's intuition can sometimes see quicker and farther than a man's reason; but on that kind of ground i guess i can see as well as anyone. i admit that i have been wondering a bit why just this particular year france and russia should be sending two polar expeditions out; but it's pretty well sure that if you hadn't seen that this french marquise and the russian countess were after the man you want--and the man you're going to get, too, if he's the man i think he is--i shouldn't have seen what i see now." "and what's that, poppa?" "they're not polar expeditions at all, chrysie; those ships are no more trying to go to the north pole than they're trying to find the source of the amazon. you got the key that opens the whole show when you heard them talking about victor fargeau. they're going to boothia land, that's where they're going to, and they're not going on what the russians generally call a voyage of scientific discovery. i'd bet every dollar we've got in the trust that those ships have guns on them, and there's going to be a fight for that magnetic pole after all. anyhow, there's a cable going across to doctor lamson the first thing to-morrow morning. if there's anything like that going on, he can't be on guard any too soon. and now, little girl," he went on, raising his hand and putting it on her head, "you go to bed, and don't you worry about frenchwomen or russians. shafto hardress comes of good old english and american stock, and he's just as clever as he can be without being altogether american. don't you worry about him. there's not going to be any trouble in his mind when he has to choose between a clean-blooded, healthy american girl and anyone else, even if she has got all the blood of all the bourbons in her veins, or even if she is the daughter of count valdemar of russia, whose ancestors, i guess, were half savages when yours were gentlemen. don't you worry about that, little girl; you just go to bed, and dream about the time when you'll be sitting on a throne that marie antoinette's wasn't a circumstance to. now, i have told you, and that's so. good-night. i'll have a talk with lord orrel to-morrow morning, and see to the business part of the affair." as chrysie crossed the long corridor to her own room she caught a glimpse of a tall, graceful figure which she had come to know only too well, and the sweep of a long, trailing skirt, vanishing through a door which she knew led into count valdemar's dressing-room. "that's sophie," she said. "i wonder if she saw me. she's been with the marquise, i suppose; and now she's going to have a talk with her father, something like mine with poppa. it's mean to listen, and i couldn't do it if i wanted to, but i'd like to give some of those dollars that poppa's going to make out of this scheme to hear what she's going to say, or what she's been saying to the marquise. i reckon i could make some history out of it if i knew; but anyhow, there's going to be trouble with that frenchwoman. i don't think so much about the russian. i believe she wants to marry either lord orrel or poppa; she's just about as mean as she is pretty and clever. i'd just like to say that english swear-word about her." miss chrysie said that, and many other things, in her soul that night after she had laid her head on her pillow; and, even after the demands of physical fatigue upon a perfectly healthy physique had compelled slumber, she dreamt of herself as a modern juno, usurping the throne of jove, and wielding his lightnings, with the especial object of destroying utterly from the face of the earth two young ladies, with whom she was living on apparent terms of the most perfect friendship, and who were even then resting their pretty heads on pillows just like hers under the same roof. chapter xiv sophie opened the door in answer to her father's murmured "entrez," and closed it very gently behind her. she had not noticed chrysie as she slipped into her own room, for her back was towards her, and, happily, she had no suspicion whatever of the conclusions which chrysie's love-sharpened eyes had enabled her to reach. if she had, some skilfully-devised accident would probably have happened. for though but two people among the guests at orrel court knew it, there were spies both inside and around the great house, unscrupulous agents of an unscrupulous government, who would have carried out their orders at all hazards. in fact, they had been brought there by count valdemar, at his daughter's suggestion, to assist in working out the most daring conspiracy that had ever been hatched at an english country house. "well, papa," said sophie, in her soft russian, as she took a cigarette, and dropped into an easy-chair with a motion that was almost voluptuous in its gracefulness, "now that these good people have gone to bed, we shall be able to have a little quiet talk. are you still of opinion that the scheme that i sketched out is feasible?" "everything is feasible, my dear sophie," replied her father, "provided only you have people of sufficient genius and boldness to carry it out. no doubt it would be possible with our own people, and those of the english sailors whom we have been able to bribe, to carry out that brilliant plan of yours, especially as you appear to have wrought such a magical transformation in the allegiance of this impressionable young engineer of yours on the _nadine_. are you quite sure of him?" "sure of him!" said sophie, in a voice that was little above a whisper, and leaning forward and looking at her father with a smile which made even him think her beauty almost repulsive for the moment. "edward williams is as much in love as boris bernovitch was, and is--although he is where he is. i have promised, as usual. he has believed me, as usual, just like any other fool of his sex. day after day i have met him and talked with him in what he calls my adorable foreign english. i have given him rendezvous which would have startled my lord orrel and all his belongings out of that abominable, habitual calm of theirs, and perhaps procured me a request to leave the house immediately. i have fooled him out of his seven senses, and to-night i have performed the supreme sacrifice for russia, and let him kiss me." the cruelly smiling lips changed into an expression of contemptuous disgust as she said this, and the count replied, coldly: "not a pleasant duty, sophie; but for holy russia her servants must do everything. that, as i have tried to teach you almost as soon as you could speak, is our duty, almost our religion. our fortune, our lives, our everything must be devoted to the emperor and to holy russia--soon now, i hope, to be mistress of the world. you as a woman, and a beautiful woman, have your weapons; i as a man, and a diplomatist, have mine. it is your duty to use yours with as little scruple as i use mine. "and so you really think," he went on, after a little pause, "that it will be possible to capture the _nadine_, with all her noble and gallant company on board, and compel her to join our russian expedition to boothia land. certainly, it would be a brilliant triumph if we could. we should have all the heads of the great trust at our mercy--lord orrel, his son, and this most objectionably straightforward clifford vandel, who, it would appear, has so vastly improved upon the original scheme. then we should have the womankind too--lady olive, miss vandel, and the beautiful marquise herself, always dangerous power that might work against us. by the way, sophie, has it struck you that the young viscount is wavering in his allegiance to the fair american under the influence of the beautiful daughter of the condés?" "as well ask me whether i am a woman, father," she replied, with a low, wicked-sounding laugh. "have i no eyes in my head? did not this fair american interfere with my plan for securing the noble shafto to ourselves by making him fall in love with her before i saw him, and have i not done everything, all the thousand and one little things that a woman can do, to help my dear friend the marquise to the attainment of her very evident desires? in other words, have i forgotten the lessons that you have been teaching me since you began to train me to think myself not a girl with a heart and a soul, and living blood in her veins, but only a human machine, fair to look upon, animated by a brain which knows no other duty than the service of our holy russia? you know that if i had loved this man myself it would have been just the same. i should have done exactly as i have done,--at least, i believe so." "ah," laughed the count, softly, "that is the problem, my dear sophie; and that, i tell you frankly, has always been my fear for you. you are young, brilliant, and beautiful; and i've always been a little afraid that out of some of all your admirers whom your smiles have brought to your feet there might be one whom you might love; and when a woman loves she pities, and pity and diplomacy have as much to do with each other as charity and business. still, i am not without hopes that some day you will meet some worthy son of russia; and remember, my sophie, that, if we succeed in this, if we place the control of the elixir vitæ of the world in the hand of russia, you might look even near the throne itself." "and i most certainly should," said sophie, throwing her head back. "i tell you frankly, papa, i'm not doing all this for nothing. i am not forgetting that i am a woman, with all a woman's natural feelings and inspirations, all her possible loves and hopes and pities, only for the sake of serving even russia. if i succeed i shall have my reward, and it shall be a splendid one." "and you will have well deserved it," said the count, looking with something more than fatherly pride on the beautiful daughter who had learnt the lessons of what he was pleased to call diplomacy so well. "still, i cannot disguise from myself that this last scheme of yours is, to say the least of it, a desperate one; for it amounts to nothing less than a kidnapping of one of the best-known noblemen and statesmen in england, his son and daughter, one of the wealthiest and best-known american financiers in the world and his daughter; to say nothing of one of the ministers of the tsar and his daughter. i need hardly remind you, of course, that the failure of such a venture would never be forgiven in petersburg. i need not tell you that the little father never pardons mistakes, and, besides, my dear sophie, have you quite satisfied yourself that such a very extreme measure is absolutely necessary?" "my dear papa," said sophie, getting up from her chair, and raising her voice ever so little, "in the first place, there will be--there can be no mistake about it; and, in the second place, i assure you that it is absolutely necessary if russia is to have undisputed control of the storage works. you see, the outside world knows absolutely nothing about these works. there have been all sorts of stories circulated about them, but no one who has actually seen them has said or written a word about them. in fact, as far as we know, only two men have been there and come back--viscount branston and mr vandel; dr lamson is there still. how do we know what means of defence they've got? they might be able even now, from what victor fargeau and general ducros told us, to demagnetise our ships, stop our engines from working and our guns from shooting; or, on the other hand, what would be almost as bad, this lamson might blow up the works and shatter every plan we've got--perhaps ruin all prospects of the invasion, too, unless we have some means of persuading him not to use his power. what better means could we have than the possession of the heads of the concern? "i have heard hints, too, that he is not without hopes of winning the fair lady olive some day, when he becomes one of the masters of the world. granted now that it is within our power to do what we please with all of them, or, if you like to put it diplomatically, with the heads of this gigantic conspiracy against the peace and security of the world, and plot to destroy the independence of the nations and the freedom of humanity, for it is nothing else, should we not be justified in using any and every means--yes," she went on, her voice hardening, "even to the very last means of all, to snatch this tremendous power out of the hands of these sordid english and americans and give it into those of holy russia. it is kidnapping, piracy, invasion of friendly territory--everything, i grant you, that is criminal under the law of nations; but remember it is also a struggle for the command of the life-force of the world--which means practically the control of the world itself and all that therein is." "and," said the count, smiling, "i suppose you would say that, as these people are our natural enemies, with whom we shall very soon be at war--'à la guerre comme à la guerre'--i suppose you mean that when we have got the _nadine_ and her noble company we shall use them as hostages to prevent any accidents happening to our little polar expedition. really, my dear sophie, your methods have suddenly become almost mediæval; still, if they are only successful, they will be none the less effective for that. let me see now," he went on, leaning back in his chair and putting the tips of his fingers together, "i wonder if i can find any flaw in the arrangements. you know, it is quite essential, my dear sophie, that there should not be any." "my dear papa," she replied, smiling, and leaning her back against the old carved mantelpiece, "try, by all means. if you cannot find one, i don't think there can be much chance of its being anything but practically perfect." "very well," said the count, lighting a fresh cigarette. "in two or three days' time, when the regattas are over, the house-party at orrel court will break up, and a few days after that, say a week in all, lord orrel, with his son and daughter, and the american and his daughter, and ma'm'selle la marquise as lady olive's guest, are taking a trip across the atlantic in the _nadine_, partly in the course of business and partly on pleasure bent; madame de bourbon and her maids return to paris; the _vlodoya_ puts into southampton the day the _nadine_ sails, to take us on our trip to the mediterranean. your good friend the lieutenant has informed you that, although the _nadine_ can make twenty knots on an emergency, she will only take a leisurely summer trip across the atlantic to boston, at about twelve or fifteen. he has given you a chart of the course which she will take. he has also promised you that at a certain spot in mid-atlantic there shall be a little accident to her engines which enable the _vlodoya_ to overtake her. the _vlodoya_, commanded and well manned by good servants of the empire, with a couple of three-pounders and a maxim in case of accident, will overhaul her and give her the alternative of surrender or sinking. that is where the piracy will begin, i suppose." sophie nodded, and, laughing, replied in english: "yes, right there--as our american beauty, as lord hardress thinks her, would say. the _nadine_ is unarmed, and, of course, resistance will be useless; in fact, it would simply be the merest folly. his lordship will accept us and a portion of the _vlodoya's_ crew as self-invited guests; we shall then steam away together, not to boston, but to the rendezvous with our little expedition, and once we join forces--well, the thing is practically done." "i agree so far," said her father; "still, there are one or two accidents that we have not yet taken into account. suppose, for instance, one of these detestable british cruisers, which seem to be everywhere, should happen to be there just then; or that even one of the big liners should come in sight at the critical moment. it seems to me that, for the present at least, secrecy is above all things essential, for if the news of--well, such an outrage, did get back to europe, you know perfectly well that russia would of necessity disown us, and that we and all on board the _vlodoya_ would simply be treated as common pirates." "so i suppose," said sophie, coolly; "but i have provided for that, because the day and place of rendezvous have been arranged so as to avoid the possibility of meeting any of the regular liners, and i have been careful to ascertain that no british warship will just then be under orders to cross the atlantic, either from the north american station or from england. as for the piracy, i don't think we need trouble ourselves about that. before many weeks france must forestall germany's attack; russia will, as we say, maintain the attitude of benevolent neutrality until she hears that we have got the works, then she will demand the surrender of the british concessions in china which conflict with her interests, and there will be war, and our actions, however drastic, will become legal under the law of war. in fact, my dear papa, as far as i can see, there is really only one possibility that i have not reckoned with, and that, as far as i can see, is an impossibility." "and what is that? it is just as well we should see them all." "it is the possibility that these english or americans--you know how quick they are at all practical methods, pig-headed and all as they are at diplomacy--have, by some means or other, guessed that the french and russian polar expeditions have started at rather a suspicious time; i mean just when the storage works--these wonderful works, which are to light the world by electricity for a few pence an hour, and give us displays of the _aurora borealis_, just as we have fireworks at public fêtes, and all the rest of it--have been completed. now that, if you like, would be dangerous; for in such delicate work as ours success depends on surprise. still, as i say, it is hardly possible." "practically impossible, i should agree with you, my dear sophie," said the count, making the greatest mistake of his diplomatic career; "practically impossible. what do they know? what can they suspect?" "unless--unless," said sophie, suddenly, clenching her hands, "our good friend adelaide de condé, who, i tell you, papa, is in love with shafto hardress, if woman ever was in love with man, unless she has hinted at the real meaning of these expeditions. yes; that is a danger which, i admit, i have not counted." "yes, yes; i think i see what you mean," replied the count; "she is a frenchwoman, but her only interest in the destiny of france consists in the restoration of the house of bourbon to power; still, being a frenchwoman, and in love, as you believe, she would also do anything for the sake of the man she loves, even to the ruin of her own hopes. finally, being on this supposition the rival of miss vandel, she would stop at nothing to prove her devotion to him; and, if she did as you suggest, sophie, it would be a very formidable condition of affairs indeed." "then, papa," she replied, coming and laying her hand on his shoulder, "do you not see that that is all the greater reason why this scheme of ours must be carried through? you see that adelaide de condé may herself become a source of the greatest danger; but when we have not only her, but miss vandel and the man they are both in love with, as well as the two papas and lady olive, completely in our power, when, for example, we could land them all on one of those drifting ice-floes, to float away to somewhere where no one but the seals and bears would know what had become of them, the game would be in our hands to play as we please." "my dear sophie," said the count, laying his hand upon hers, "i am delighted to see that you have the courage of your convictions. and now, it is very late, or, rather, early, and i think you may as well go to bed and dream of success, for you have convinced me that failure is, to all intents and purposes, impossible." as sophie valdemar stole quietly away to bed clifford vandel was finishing a long cable dispatch in cipher to doctor lamson, giving him a complete account, so far as he knew, of all that had been taking place in europe during the last few weeks, and concluding with the words: "i have good reason to believe that the supposed french and russian polar expeditions, which will be in your latitude in a few weeks, are really intended for the capture or destruction of the storage works; so take every possible precaution against attack or surprise." chapter xv while all this plotting and counter-plotting had been going on in england and europe, and france, thanks to what some might call the patriotic treachery of victor fargeau, was rapidly preparing for an invasion of germany, which a magnificently-equipped army of nearly four million men meant to make a very different affair to the last one; while russia was swiftly and secretly massing her huge military and very formidable naval forces in the near and far east, and england had, as usual, been muddling along, chattering over reforms on land and sea without getting them done; and while germany, for once about to be taken unawares, was quietly getting ready for the inevitable struggle, a quiet, broad-browed, deep-eyed man had been at the head of an army of workmen, building up what was intended to be the real capital and governing centre of the world. in the midst of a broad, barren plain, broken by great masses of rock, many of them snow-capped and ice-crowned even in the middle of the northern summer, there rose the walls and chimneys of what looked like a commonplace collection of factories, such as might be found in any of the manufacturing districts of europe and america. about four miles to the west, under a rocky promontory which the discoverer of this desolate land had named cape adelaide, little thinking what a connection it would have with another adelaide, there was a small natural harbour, navigable for about five months in the year, constantly crowded with colliers. for over a year it had been packed with them. before the previous winter set in they had been laden with coal and machinery and building materials, and throughout the long winter doctor lamson had relentlessly pushed the work on under rows of electric lights, which rivalled the _aurora_ itself. the men were well housed and fed and lavishly paid, and so, in spite of the cold and darkness, they had worked well and cheerfully, well knowing that it was impossible for them to get back, save in the steamers that brought them. by the time the ice broke and the vessels were released another long line of them was already making its way up through the still half-frozen waters of davis strait and lancaster sound, laden with more coal, materials, and machinery. a telegraph line had been taken from port nelson across hudson bay over rae isthmus, and then through the gulf of boothia to the works, and this put dr lamson in direct communication with winnipeg and the rest of the world. at intervals of two hundred miles, across the icy desert of the north, groups of huge steel masts, three hundred feet high, had been erected, and these had been continued singly or in pairs over all the principal elevations of the north american continent, and also over greenland and iceland to the north of scotland, and thence to the rest of the british islands. it was a miracle that could only have been wrought by millions, but the millions were spent without stint, in the full knowledge that they would be repaid in the days when it was possible to tax the world for the privilege of living. the storage works were in the form of a square, measuring four hundred feet each way. in the exact centre of an interior square measuring fifty feet each way was that mysterious spot of earth where the needle of the compass points neither to north nor south nor east nor west, but straight down to the centre of the globe; and over it was built a great circular tower, forty feet in diameter and a hundred feet in height, which contained a gigantic reproduction of the instrument which had stood on doctor emil fargeau's table in his laboratory at strassburg on that memorable night when he had completed the work which was destined to lead to his own ruin and death and to the revolutionising of the world. from this tower ran underground, in all directions, thousands of copper cables leading to the gigantic storage batteries with which the greater part of the buildings were filled. in the middle of each side of the great square a two thousand horse-power engine was ready to furnish the necessary electrical force in the absorber, as the great apparatus in the centre was called. everything was in order to commence work; in fact, doctor lamson had just decided that he would try his engines together for the first time, when clifford vandel's telegram reached him from southampton. his agent in winnipeg had kept him well informed of the principal events going on in the world during his long isolation, and the sailing of the french and russian polar expeditions _via_ davis straits had not escaped him. for a few minutes after he had read the dispatch he walked up and down the telegraph room, into which no one but himself and austin vandel, clifford's nephew and his own general manager, could under any circumstances gain admission, since none but they knew the combinations of the lock which opened the steel door. austin was sitting at the table where he had received the message, and he broke the silence by saying: "i guess, doctor, that looks a bit ugly. i suppose it's that alsatian frenchman and that pretty frenchwoman you were telling me about that's fixed this up." "there's not the slightest doubt about that," said lamson, whose enthusiasm for the great scheme had quite overcome his earlier scruples. "if we had only known of that other set of specifications, and managed to get hold of them somehow--still that wouldn't have done much good, because even then the frenchwoman, this beautiful daughter of the bourbons as they call her, would have given it away as soon as she guessed what we were doing; and if she hadn't done so--well, fargeau would have done so; so i suppose after all it's inevitable." "then you think we'll have to fight for it?" said austin. "if those expeditions are really armed forces, and their object is to take these works by hook or by crook, of course we must," replied lamson. "poor devils! i wonder what they'll feel like when we turn the disintegrators on them?" "don't talk about those," said austin. "time enough for that when we have to use them to save ourselves--which the lord forbid. i sha'n't forget that experiment of yours on poor hudson's body; but to see it turned on to a living man! great scott!" "yes; it won't be very pleasant," said lamson, whose rather gentle and retiring nature had become completely transformed under the influence of the gigantic possibilities which were now at his disposal. "but suppose they get their ships up to port adelaide?--it's rather curious, by the way, that it should have the same name as that frenchwoman, who, i suppose, is by this time about our most dangerous and determined enemy--but suppose they get them there, and begin knocking the works about with big guns. suppose," he went on, with something like a shudder, "a shell bursts in the absorber, where are we? and, mind you, if they come they'll bring fargeau with them; and if they took us prisoners or killed us, he would have material enough here to make another one--and he would know how to do it. no, no, vandel; if i have to defend the works i'll do it. my whole life and soul are here now, and no frenchman or russian sets foot inside here while i'm alive, unless he comes as a prisoner." "but look here," said austin; "couldn't you paralyse 'em? why not set the engines to work, and mop up this world's soul, or whatever you call it, right away, so that their engines should break down long before they got here, and just freeze them out." "that, my dear austin," replied the doctor, "is a rather more hasty remark than i should have expected you to make. don't you see that if we were to start the engines, and cut off our american communications, as would be necessary, we should not only paralyse the expedition, we should also paralyse the whole of canada and the united states, cut off our communications with england, and make it impossible for our friends to communicate with us, or for them to come here--as they are doing this month." "guess i spoke a bit too soon," said austin. "that's so; and, of course, we couldn't do it." the doctor continued his walk up and down the room for a few moments longer, then stopped and said suddenly, "no; but i'll tell you what we can and will do if there's going to be any of this sort of foul play about. the president and all our friends will be much safer here than in any other part of the world, for if we have to starve the world out they'll be all right here. wire to your uncle; say that we have received his message and are acting upon it, and tell him to bring the whole party here with the utmost speed; call it a pleasure-trip or a tour of inspection, or what they please, but they must come at once, and, above all, they must get here before these so-called polar expeditions." "that's the talk, doctor," exclaimed austin; "you've got right down on to it this time. i'll fix that up in the code and send it right away." there is, of course, neither day nor night during june in boothia land, only a little deepening of the twilight towards midnight, but the message was despatched _via_ winnipeg a little after nine in the evening, according to conventional time, and so clifford vandel was able to decipher it in his sitting-room at orrel court before breakfast the next morning. the carriages were already waiting to take the party down to the _nadine's_ berth at southampton water as soon as possible after an early breakfast, for there was to be a race round the isle of wight for cruising yachts that day, and some of the finest yachts in the two hemispheres were going to compete, the _nadine_ and several other steam-yachts, including the _vlodova_, belonging to the grand duke ruric, were to follow the race, and the day was to wind up with supper at clifford vandel's bungalow at cowes. therefore the moment he had finished translating the cipher, without waiting even for breakfast, he sent his man to ask lord orrel and his son for the favour of a few minutes' private conversation in his lordship's library. this man was the brother of the countess sophie's french maid--deaf, handy, silent, and wonderfully well up to his work. he had engaged him on the count's recommendation, after dismissing his english valet on the instant for, as he thought, trying to learn more than he ought to know from his correspondence. it is scarcely necessary to add that ma'm'selle sophie knew as much about the one as she did about the other; and, as a matter of fact, she had procured both appointments. this being so, it was only natural that within a very few minutes count valdemar and his daughter should have heard of the receipt of the telegram, and clifford vandel's request for an interview with lord orrel and his son. the immediate result was two interviews before breakfast instead of one. "what can it mean, papa?" said sophie, when she had softly locked her father's door. "jules says that the dispatch was brought up from southampton this morning. before he gave it to mr vandel he, of course, steamed the envelope and looked at it. it was in cipher, as one might expect; but it came from winnipeg, and winnipeg is the one point of communication between boothia and the rest of the world. mr vandel translated it at once, and immediately went to talk to lord orrel and the viscount about it. i wonder whether--but no, that's impossible. we couldn't have been overheard, and no one that knows anything of our plans could have any possible inducement to betray us. the marquise told me that she had a letter from fargeau yesterday: i wonder if she has said anything." "my dear sophie," replied her father, "as i told you the night before last, a woman in love is a woman lost to all purposes of diplomacy, unless her interests and those of the man she is in love with are identical. here they are diametrically opposed; a word from her to the viscount would ruin everything--at least, so far as the expeditions are concerned." "all the more reason then," said sophie, clenching her hands, "that we--i mean that the _vlodoya_ should capture the _nadine_ with all these people on board her. if we have them at our mercy we have everything. i would give a good deal to know what there was in that dispatch that clifford vandel had this morning." "and so would i," replied her father; "a great deal. do you think that if your maid were to promise her brother, say, £500, for the transcription which vandel must have made of it, there would be any chance of getting it?" "we can only try," replied sophie. "the old gentleman is very careful about his papers, they tell me; still, we will try." * * * * * "well, gentlemen," said clifford vandel, about the same moment in lord orrel's library, "i think you will agree with me that the doctor would not have sent a dispatch like this without pretty good reason; and if these people mean pushing matters to extremity, why, of course, it might be necessary for him to, as he says here, freeze them out, in which case they couldn't get there. and if they couldn't we couldn't; wherefore it seems good reasoning to say that we ought to be there first--if we're going to get there at all." "my dear vandel," replied his lordship, "it is the best of reasoning; and i am quite sure that doctor lamson would not have dreamt of sending such a dispatch without good reasons, and i think i am justified in telling you that this morning i received a confidential letter from an old colleague of mine in the foreign office, in which he says that, according to reports of our agents, both in france and germany, an outbreak of hostilities may occur at any moment within the next few weeks, without warning--just as it did in 1870." "then," said hardress, sharply, "if that is so, there simply must be some connection between that and the dispatch of these two expeditions. i don't often jump to conclusions, mr vandel, but i think now that miss chrysie was perfectly right. they're not going to try and get to the pole at all. it's the magnetic pole they want, and they'll be there this summer if we don't find some way to stop them; and i quite agree that we ought to get there first. it may be necessary to show europe that they can't get on without us, even in the matter of fighting." "very well, then," said lord orrel, "we'll call that settled; we'll make it a summer arctic trip. how soon can you get us across the atlantic, hardress?" "i can land you in halifax in six days. we'll coal up there; and, if we're not too much crowded with ice, i'll get you to rae isthmus in six days more. meanwhile i will telegraph to lamson to have one of his steamers waiting for us on the other side of the isthmus, and in another week, including the land travel, which may be difficult, we will be at the works. or, if we find the sea fairly clear, we'll steam straight up to fox channel, kury's strait, and take you straight to boothia land. at any rate, the expeditions are only just starting, one from havre and the other one from riga, and, at that rate, we should certainly be there a clear month before them, even if they really are going." "then," said clifford vandel, slowly but gravely, "if that's so, i guess the best thing we can do is to get there as quickly as possible and start the circus as soon as we can. if europe means fighting--well, we can't have a better way of proving our power, and showing france and germany and the rest of them that it will pay them to deal with the great storage trust, than by just making their own war impossible. when they find they can't even fight without our permission, i guess they'll pretty soon come to terms." "i agree with you entirely, my dear vandel," said lord orrel. chapter xvi that same morning, as it happened, adelaide received a letter from victor fargeau, dated from paris, telling her, among other things, that the two alleged polar expeditions would be ready to start in a fortnight's time, and that he had been appointed to, as he put it, the scientific command of the french one. there had been a considerable amount of veiled friction between the french and russian governments as soon as they had both been compelled to admit to each other the true object of the expeditions, and it was even suspected that the russian government was secretly preparing a much more formidable scientific expedition of four vessels--including their celebrated ice-breaker _ivan the terrible_, a vessel built in an english yard for the purpose of breaking up the baltic ice in winter, in order to keep the ports free and the russian baltic squadron always serviceable. with such a vessel to lead it the russian expedition would be quite certain of reaching boothia land whatever the condition of the ice might be, because she would be able to clear a course for her consorts through it. all the probabilities were, therefore, in favour of the russian squadron getting to boothia land first. if they did that, and were successful in getting possession of the works, it was not very likely that russia would be inclined to share the dominion of the world with the ally she had already bled so freely, and in this case france would be once more robbed of the fruits of his father's discovery. soon after afternoon tea on the lawn of clifford vandel's bungalow, adelaide said to sophie, as they sat in their deck-chairs beside each other: "i am given to understand that russia is quite determined to reach the pole, if possible, in this next expedition." "the pole?" laughed sophie, with a swift glance under her half-lowered eyelids. "my dear marquise, surely you are joking with me a little unnecessarily. which pole?" "really, my dear countess, i am speaking quite seriously," she replied, turning her head on her cushion, and looking at her companion with somewhat languid eyes. "i presume, of course, it must be the north pole--because i hear from a quite reliable source that your government is sending out the big ice-breaker--the _ivan the terrible_, you know; and that would hardly be necessary to get to the other pole, the one that you perhaps mean, unless, of course, they wished to make certain of getting there as quickly as possible." sophie would have given a great deal to know the source of this information, which had only reached her father a day or so before, but it was, of course, impossible for her to ask, so she contented herself with saying, in slow, careless tones: "really, that is quite interesting. but then, of course, you know, when russia takes anything like this in hand she generally does it thoroughly, and, of course, the ice may be late this year, as they call it, crowded up in the narrow places i suppose; and in that case, of course, the french expedition will find it accommodating to have a ship like that to break the way in advance--and out again if necessary. i suppose you have quite decided to take the trip across the atlantic on the _nadine_?" "oh yes; that is quite arranged. it will be my first visit to america--that wonderful land." "america--wonderful? well, i should say!" said miss chrysie, coming behind them at this instant, and putting her hands on the backs of their chairs, "it's a pity you can't come too, countess. i guess i could promise you both a pretty interesting time from niagara right away to----" "suppose we say the magnetic pole?" murmured sophie, turning her head back, and looking up at her with a glance that was lazy and yet full of challenge. "well, yes, that might be interesting, too," replied miss chrysie, looking steadily down into her eyes. "those works that the viscount and poppa are getting fixed up there, whatever they mean them for, must be something pretty wonderful, for they're spending quite a lot of money on them. it might not be impossible that we'll be going up to see them some day, and if you'd come across, countess, i dare say i might be able to show you round." "really, that's more than kind of you, miss vandel; but i'm sorry to say that my father's official duties demand his presence at petersburg, and we absolutely must leave when the house-party at orrel court breaks up; but excuse me, i see my father beckoning to me. i will leave you my seat, miss vandel." she got up, and walked away forward to where her father was standing near the verandah. miss chrysie took possession of her seat, clasped her hands behind her head, stretched out her legs till a pair of dainty pointed toes peeped from under the hem of her dress, and said, with a sidelong glance at adelaide, and in a slow drawl: "nice girl the countess, marquise, and very good-looking--very; but, somehow--well, perhaps you haven't noticed it, but i have--she seems to have a sort of way of talking at you instead of to you, and always meaning just something a bit different to what she says." "it is quite possible," said adelaide, slightly coldly, for chrysie's words were just a little too frank to please her taste; "but, you see, she's a russian; and the daughter of a diplomat. all russians of good family are born diplomatists, and diplomacy, you know----" "why yes," laughed chrysie; "diplomacy is the whole art and science of saying one thing and meaning another, and getting the other fellow to believe that you're telling the ironclad truth when you are lying like ananias; and i guess the countess hasn't learnt her lessons very badly." "in other words, miss vandel," said adelaide, with a laugh that had a note of harshness in it, "you think the countess valdemar is, to put it into quite brutal english, a liar." "why no," replied chrysie, looking straight down at her shapely toes; "just a diplomatist, or, i should say, the daughter of one. but we don't want to pull each other to pieces like this. what's the matter with changing the subject? what's your idea, marquise, about these two polar expeditions being started off this year? doesn't it strike you as just a bit curious that they should be going north up davis straits just when our storage works are getting finished? shouldn't wonder if the countess gave herself away a bit when she spoke just now about the magnetic pole." this was a kind of diplomacy that was entirely strange to adelaide, and for a moment or two she hardly knew what to say; then she replied, rather languidly: "really, miss vandel, it is a matter that interests me very little. i believe this is the proper time for setting out on polar expeditions, and you know the russians are very fond of making these journeys in the interests of science and exploration." "mostly exploration of what's going to be new russian territory," replied miss chrysie, with a snap of her eyes. "ah, here's his lordship junior. well, viscount, i've got to thank you for yet one more just entirely delightful day!" before hardress could reply she turned another sidelong glance on adelaide. in spite of all her self-control, adelaide's cheeks flushed ever so slightly and her eyes lighted up as hardress pulled a chair towards them. and she hated her frankly and cordially for it; for she was a girl of absolutely honest feelings, and just as straightforward and thorough-going in her hates as in her loves. "my dear miss vandel," replied hardress, "it is quite the other way about; it is i who have to thank you for the pleasure of giving you pleasure." "after that," laughed the marquise, turning her lovely eyes full on his, "let it never be said that an englishman cannot turn a compliment." chrysie noticed that hardress flushed a little and dropped his eyes slightly under that bewildering glance, and she hated the marquise more intensely than ever. "it was no compliment, i can assure you," he said, looking up at chrysie, "though what the marquise just said may have been. but, by the way, i came to tell you a rather serious piece of news, marquise; and something that may perhaps influence your aunt's plans." "ah, what is that?" said adelaide. "well, from the telegram my father has just received, which will probably be in the papers to-night, there is going to be a tremendous military scandal in germany, which may have very grave results indeed, even to the extent of an european war. the detectives of the military staff at berlin have discovered a sort of teutonic dreyfus--a young fellow holding the rank of lieutenant, and employed as a sort of military under-secretary in the bureau of the minister of war. to a certain extent it's the old story. he had ruined himself with gambling and horse-racing, and, not content with that, had got involved with a very pretty and equally unscrupulous french variety actress, who bled him with apparently more consistency than she loved him. the agents of the french secret service in germany got hold of him and he sold himself. "so far the story is commonplace--that sort of thing happens every week in all countries--but the extraordinary thing about this is that when this young fellow was confronted with proofs, he not only made a clean breast of what he had done, but he told his chiefs that the man who had been mostly instrumental in getting him into trouble, and had, in fact, introduced him to the woman who ruined him, was a brother officer--a staff-captain and military attaché of a foreign court. this man, he confessed, had obtained, partly through him and partly through his own knowledge and other sources, a complete sketch of the german plans, both for invading france and resisting a french invasion, together with all the necessary details as to men, guns, transports, etc. stranger still, a german staff-officer answering exactly to the description, resigned his commission nearly a year ago, and retired into private life. he was not a german, but an alsatian. the german secret agents in paris took up the scent, and found that this very man had been in close communication with the minister of war and appeared to be holding some confidential position in the service of the ministry. now germany, it is rumoured, has demanded his extradition on a charge of treason and desertion; for it seems that his resignation was never officially accepted, although he was allowed to go in consequence of some family trouble which brought disgrace upon his name. france has refused it, and--well, the situation may be described as distinctly strained." "well," said miss chrysie to herself, while he was speaking, "if that's not a pretty good sample of diplomacy, i've got a wrong idea of the word altogether." she had turned her head lazily on the cushion again, every now and then glancing at adelaide's face. hardress had, of course, done the same repeatedly during his narrative, which he had told just as though he were telling some absolutely fresh piece of news to a couple of listeners who would only take an outside interest in it. since her father's death adelaide had given no sign that he had told her anything on his deathbed, or that she was aware of the true nature of the great storage scheme. now she kept her composure admirably under the double scrutiny. chrysie fancied that she changed colour ever so little at the mention of the german staff-officer who had resigned, and of the visits to the french minister of war, but otherwise she gave no sign, she just sat and listened, every now and then drawing the point of her parasol across the grass at her feet, and occasionally looking out over the water dotted with a multitude of crafts coming to an anchor after the day's racing. certainly neither of them found any reason so far to believe that the story had anything more than a general interest for her. when she spoke her voice was just as low and sweetly quiet as ever it was. "certainly that is very serious news," she said, looking straight at hardress. "we know, of course, that there has been great tension between the two countries for some time, and if france refuses to give this man up there can hardly be anything but war; and yet if it is true that france possesses all the german plans, germany would be at a terrible disadvantage, for it would be impossible to change them at the last minute. at any rate, i am very much obliged to you for your early information, viscount. certainly i think it would be better for my aunt to remain in england for the present; and in that case, i am afraid it will be my duty to remain with her." "not at all, my dear marquise," said hardress, with an eagerness which chrysie did not at all appreciate. "you know your aunt was a great yachtswoman some years ago; she's a splendid sailor, and there's lots of room on board the _nadine_. let her come to canada with us. the voyage would do her all the good in the world. we can land you with miss vandel and olive at halifax, and you can have a delightful run through canada and the states under my father's protection, while the president and i pay our visit to the storage works." "a thousand thanks, my dear viscount," replied the marquise; "but that, of course, will be a matter for my aunt alone to decide. for my part, i can only say that i shall be delighted if she says yes." "i sha'n't," said miss chrysie, with great emphasis, in her soul. meanwhile another conversation on the same subject was going on in another part of the lawn. a messenger-boy had about half-an-hour before brought the count an envelope containing a lengthy telegram; and it was when he had read this that he had beckoned to sophie, and she had scarcely joined him when one of the servants brought her a note which had been left by a man at the gate of the grounds. they left the verandah where the count had been standing, and strolled down towards the water. "well, papa," said sophie, "i saw you had a telegram just now. any news?" "news? yes," said the count; "and very serious, too. briefly, the german government has discovered everything about fargeau--that is to say, his treason and his connection with ducros--and has demanded his extradition from the french government. france, having got the plans, will, of course, refuse, and then there will be war--probably in a week or two." "and russia?" queried sophie, looking up at him. "russia, my dear, as you understand, will act as circumstances direct." at this moment the note was put into sophie's hands. she opened it, read it, dismissed the servant, and said in a low voice: "papa, here is even more serious news than yours. this is from my friend the engineer. he tells me that the viscount has suddenly altered his plans; that the _nadine_ is to be filled with coal to her utmost capacity, and all preparations made for crossing the atlantic at full speed, instead of about twelve knots." "and she can steam twenty knots," said the count. "i'm afraid, my dear sophie, that completely upsets your nicely-arranged plan for a rendezvous in mid-ocean. the _nadine_ will be across the atlantic before the _vlodoya_ can get there, for her best is only about sixteen." "no, papa," said sophie, "i've not failed yet. if my engineer is only faithful, and that accident to the machinery happens, we shall get them all the same. i will promise him anything and everything, and he will be faithful. and then i have another plan." "ah! and that?" "the marquise--she will be on board--she's a frenchwoman, she loves this hardress, and hates this american girl. sooner or later she knows that it must be war to the knife between them, and better sooner than later, for they say that he is already half-betrothed to miss vandel. at the same time, hardress is by no means indifferent to her own fascinations. i will make her an ally--for the present, at least. she knows well enough that were the american conveniently disposed of she could soon console the viscount for his loss. i will show her how she may be got rid of, and how she, adelaide de condé, may marry the man who may, as she believes, soon be master of the world. a clever woman with a great end to gain will be of infinite service to us on board the yacht. at present she is half-hostile to us--for she has a suspicion that our expedition is meant to forestall the french one. now i will make her wholly our friend by showing her how she may not only gain the desire of her heart, but also ensure the success of the french expedition; for, after all, you must remember that we are bound to co-operate with them to a certain extent, for they at least have been clever enough to keep the specification of the works to themselves, and till we get possession of them we can do nothing without fargeau, even if we were masters of the works. yes; i think, after all, adelaide, since she must be either friend or enemy, will be a better friend than enemy: and friend she shall be before she sails on the _nadine_." chapter xvii "and so, ma'm'selle la comtesse, it comes to this: you would have me reward hospitality with treachery? you would have me betray my host, my father's friend, and his son, into the hands of russia?--for that is what it would come to. no; i thank you for your kindness and condescension in taking me into your confidence, but i cannot consent to become your accomplice." adelaide de condé had just been listening, in her own sitting-room at orrel court, to sophie's cunningly-worded suggestion that she should go on board the _nadine_ as her friend and ally, and assist in the capture of the vessel by certain means which she pointed out, one of which was a liberal use of drugs on the passengers and crew when the critical moment was drawing near. a few months before she would have entered with repugnance, but without hesitation, into any scheme which bade fair to recover what she considered to be an inheritance which the fates had robbed her off; but since then she had learnt to love shafto hardress as she had never believed she could love any man; and love had wrought its usual miracle. she hated chrysie vandel with the whole-hearted hatred of her impetuous and masterful bourbon spirit; she looked upon her as one of her ancestors would have looked upon an usurper or an invader--something to be abolished or suppressed, at any price and by any means. her father, too, she thoroughly hated--not only through personal antipathy, but as one of those who possessed something that should have been hers. to lord orrel and lady olive she was practically indifferent; and, so far as they were concerned, she would have entered even willingly into any scheme which promised to take from them what they had taken from her. for the franco-russian alliance she cared little, yet she would infinitely prefer to see france sharing the control of the world with russia than that it should be in the hands of an anglo-american business syndicate. moreover, was there not that promise made to her father long ago by an exalted personage, that, since russia would prefer a monarchy to a republic as a friend and ally, she would not look unfavourably on the restoration of the house of bourbon in the person of the prince, should circumstances--such, for instance, as a victorious war fought with russia's aid--make such an event possible. many a time, indeed, she had even been ready to curse this unfortunate love which had come into her life to shake her resolution and spoil her purpose. but for that how easy it would all be, especially with an ally--brilliant, daring, and unscrupulous--like sophie valdemar; and yet, how could she help to betray the man she loved, even to destroy her rival and get him for herself? so, after a long pause of thought, she repeated again, aloud: "no, no; i couldn't do it. it would be too base." "my dear adelaide," replied sophie, familiarly, and almost affectionately, "i hope you will forgive me if i suggest that the attitude you have taken up, dignified and virtuous as i admit it looks at first sight, is really a trifle absurd." "really, countess," replied adelaide, frigidly, "if you are going to forget your manners, i think the conversation may as well end. you have sought to tempt me to an act of treachery, and because i refuse, you begin to forget your manners. you seem to have forgotten, also, that you have put it into my power to warn the viscount and his friends of the danger you have prepared for them." this was, of course, a danger which sophie had foreseen. it was a grave one; but she was accustomed to run risks, and she was ready for this one. "my dear adelaide," she replied, still with the most perfect good humour, "please don't get angry with me. we have always been very good friends, and i think this is the first time you have called me countess for years. don't take the trouble to be formal any more, but just be sensible and listen. i am not tempting you at all. i am simply trying to help you against our common enemy, and i am asking you to help france and russia in the great and good work of wresting the command of the world from these upstart anglo-saxons, and reducing them once for all to their proper place. you are not a friend to the republic; neither am i, nor any of us, for the matter of that. but you are a frenchwoman, who ought to be queen of france, and, if all goes well with us, may be." "what," exclaimed adelaide, taken off her guard for a moment, "do you mean that, sophie? do you believe that russia----" "would not rather have as an ally a monarchy--the old monarchy of france, ruled over by your most gracious majesty, than a republic, managed by a plebeian pack of stockjobbers and shopkeepers? do you know why your lamented father the prince was such a welcome guest at the court of petersburg?" "ah, then you know----" "yes," replied sophie, taking the venture; "i do know, and i can assure you that your majesty, when the day comes, will find no stronger partisan than i shall be. my father, too, is one of your most devoted adherents, though, of course, he can say nothing about it now, and, as you know, there are other personages far more exalted." "yes, yes, i know," said adelaide. "it was almost a promise." "help us, and you shall find that it was a promise," half guessing what the promise was. then, pushing her advantage, she continued: "and, after all, you know, my dear adelaide, is it not a little inconsistent for you to talk of treason or betrayal. do you really think that you would now be a guest in lord orrel's house any more than i should if he knew of your connection with a certain ex-captain of uhlans, or of that visit you paid with him to general ducros? really, you will forgive me if i say that your suggestion as to warning the viscount about my little scheme is a trifle illogical, even if you wished to betray us, which i don't suppose you would seriously dream of. how could you do it without betraying yourself? you would have to accuse me and papa, and, through us, russia, of an act of contemplated piracy. we should be compelled, in self-defence, to prove that you know just as much of the true nature of the storage works as we do, and that you and your ex-captain are the real authors of the french expedition--in short, that you are every whit as bitter an enemy of the trust, and all concerned in it, as we are. i fully admit that you will spoil our scheme for the time being; but, instead of being a guest of the _nadine_, the guest of the man you love, with the power in your hand of abolishing the woman who will certainly marry him, if you don't, you would suffer the indignity of being ordered out of his house as a spy and a traitress." the logic was as exact as it was pitiless, and adelaide de condé saw that sophie valdemar was, for the time being at least, mistress of the situation. she had come to orrel court as a guest, with the full intention of playing a double part. she had played it until one day she had chanced to overhear a few half-tender, half-chaffing words pass between chrysie vandel and hardress. then she had awakened to the full certainty of what, in her inmost soul, she had long suspected--that she loved this man with all the strength of a strong and imperious nature; and since then she had been living in constant dread that he should by some means come to know her as she was. now the crisis had come. sophie valdemar had woven toils round her from which there was no escape; she must play the double part she had chosen to the end. it was the only possible chance of gratifying at once her love and her hate, and of perhaps attaining the object of her ambitions after all. she moved slowly once or twice across the room, with her hands clasped behind her back. sophie waited and watched her with a half-smile on her lips and a gleam of triumph in her eyes. she knew that she had won, for she could read every thought that was passing in adelaide de condé's soul. then adelaide stopped in the middle of the room and faced her, with her head slightly thrown back, and said slowly: "yes, sophie; i see, after all, that you are right. i should be no more a traitor on board the yacht than i have been here, and one should help one's friends and allies rather than one's enemies. it will, of course, be an enormous advantage to our cause if this yacht can be seized. no doubt, too, there will be ciphers on board, which will enable us to communicate with the works, and if there are, that will be an immense gain to us. it shall be part of my business to find that out. yes; i will go, and i will help you as far as i can; but there is one compact, sophie, that you must make with me." "my dear adelaide," replied sophie, warmly, and coming forward with both hands outstretched, "after what you have said i will make any compact you please that does not injure the cause of holy russia. she is the only god, and her service is the only religion i have, and if i make the compact, i swear to you by holy russia that i will keep it. what is it?" "then you must swear to me," said adelaide, taking her hand, "that, whatever happens, whether we succeed or fail, no evil shall come to the viscount or his father and sister, either in person or property. if we get possession of the works, and the alliance conquers england and america after it has disposed of germany, they shall be considered and treated as friends, not enemies; for you must remember that until i reign as queen in paris i propose to reign as mistress at orrel court. as for the american woman and her father, and all the rest of them, the sooner you get them out of the way the better pleased i shall be." "my dear adelaide," replied sophie, "you looked adorable as you said those last words. yes; of course, it shall be so; not a hair of their heads, not a centime of their property shall be touched. they shall be yours, and, as yours, sacred against all ills. that i swear and promise you in the name of holy russia." "then," replied adelaide, looking straight into her eyes, now brilliant with the light of triumph, "i am with you to the end, whether it be good or bad, success or failure, life or death." "and for holy russia and the old régime of france!" added sophie, almost solemnly. "and now, suppose we go and join these good people on the lawn?" as they went out, arm-in-arm, laughing and chatting as though they hadn't a care on their minds, no one would have dreamt that these two beautiful women had been a moment before plotting the ruin, not only of those whose hospitality they were enjoying, but of their country and people as well; but as miss chrysie saw them, her pretty brows came together for an instant, she turned aside, and said to her father in a low tone: "that frenchwoman and the russian girl have been together ever since breakfast--hatching some mischief, i'll bet. i don't like it, poppa--any more than i like the frenchwoman coming across on the yacht. she's coming for no good, i'm sure; but the viscount's about as blind as a wall-eyed mule where that woman's concerned. anyhow, i'll watch her pretty closely; she can bet all her titles and ancient lineage on that." "that's right, chrysie; and i reckon i sha'n't be sleeping much while she's around," replied her father. chapter xviii cowes week was over, and the house party at orrel court had broken up. madame de bourbon had yielded to her niece's earnest persuasions, and consented to become a guest on the _nadine_. count valdemar and sophie had sailed on board the _vlodoya_, _en route_ for the baltic and petersburg. the news which hardress had told to the marquise and chrysie on the lawn at cowes had duly leaked out into the channels of the press, and had been condensed and expanded, embroidered and commented upon with the usual luxuriant facility of the journalistic imagination. meanwhile the _times_ had published a lengthy and weighty communication from m. de blowitz, which, while proving many wrong and some right, pointed unmistakably to a very grave state of affairs in western and central europe. the communication also hinted, indirectly but unmistakably, at other developments which might possibly produce results as astounding as they would be unexpected. "de blowitz has somehow managed to get on to the secret of those two so-called polar expeditions," said hardress to his father at breakfast on the morning before the _nadine_ was to sail. the marquise and madame de bourbon were having breakfast in their own room that morning else he would not have said this. only chrysie and her father were at the table. "he's a wonderful fellow for getting hold of news. that allusion to events proceeding in a far-distant portion of the globe is distinctly significant." "that's so," said clifford vandel, "and i reckon that, under the circumstances, the sooner we respond personally to doctor lamson's telegram the better it will be for all immediately concerned. to tell you the square truth, lord orrel," he went on, looking up from his plate, "i don't quite like the turn things seem to be taking generally." "why, what do you mean, my dear vandel?" asked his lordship; "you've not heard anything unpleasant, have you?" "i've heard something, and i've seen a bit more," he replied. "i don't want to speak disrespectfully of any of your guests, but i'm bound to say i don't altogether like the cordiality that's seemed to work up during the last few days between our russian friends and the distinguished lady who is going to honour us by her company across the atlantic." "oh, come now, mr vandel," interrupted hardress, in a tone which miss chrysie did not exactly appreciate, "surely you're not going to accuse the marquise, the daughter of my father's old friend, of anything like plotting and scheming with russia." "i'm not making any accusations, viscount; i'm just trying to put two and two together and make four of them. we know that if doctor fargeau's discovery had not fallen into our hands, or, i should say that if it had not been thrown into our hands by the stupidity of the french government, this young lady's father would most likely have become king of france instead of dying, of what we will call mental shock, down at elsenau; and we haven't yet got on to whether she knows anything or nothing about the scheme yet." "anyhow, she was in paris at the time when this fargeau, the son of the man whose remains we picked up, had his interviews with general ducros, and these russians were there at the same time. i guess that makes about two. right after that france and russia decide to send two polar expeditions, both by the same route--the only one on this side that leads to the storage works--and both about timed to get there when we are ready to spring our little scheme on the world. i reckon that makes two more; and if you put them together you'll get about four." "i should say five, poppa," exclaimed miss chrysie, putting her fish-knife down somewhat sharply on her plate. "it strikes me the whole thing's timed to fix in with this war that they're talking about. france and russia want to get hold of the works when the war starts. if they do they'll just run creation and halve the world between them; and i reckon that makes five. what do you think, viscount?" she went on, raising her eyes and looking straight at him across the table. "i agree entirely with mr vandel that we ought to get across the atlantic as quickly as we can," he replied, rather more deliberately than she liked. "i hope, and still believe, that your suspicions are without foundation, but, at the same time, of course, we can't afford to take any risks in a matter like this; and as everything is ready, and as it is always wise to do the unexpected in matters like this, the _nadine_ shall start to-night instead of to-morrow morning. that will give us thirteen to fifteen hours' start; and if, as you seem to think, our friends are the enemy, it may help somewhat to disconcert their plans. but, under any circumstances, it won't do any harm." "i think, shafto, that's a very good idea," said lord orrel. "in view of what is taking place in europe and of doctor lamson's telegram, i really don't think we ought to lose an hour in getting across the atlantic as quickly as possible. of course, it is impossible for me to entertain suspicions of the character of people who have been my guests without the most absolute proof, but at any rate it is impossible that anything could happen between here and halifax, where we shall land madame de bourbon and the marquise. there we shall get more definite news from lamson, and the telegram will give us good excuse for leaving them there; but that, of course, will depend upon the nature of the news that we get there. if there is anything really serious--well, we shall have to commit them to the care of the universal cook, who will, of course, provide a special courier for them, and say good-bye as politely as possible." at this moment the door opened and adelaide came in. lord orrel had a somewhat high-pitched voice, and as she was opening the door, in the slow, silent way which society approves, she distinctly heard his last sentence. "ah," he continued, "here is the marquise herself. ma'm'selle, we find that the yacht is ready, and that there is no objection, unless you and madame de bourbon have any, to starting this afternoon instead of to-morrow morning. both mr vandel and myself have somewhat urgent affairs on the other side of the atlantic." "my dear lord orrel," replied adelaide, with a radiant smile, "pray say nothing more; the arrangement will suit my aunt and myself perfectly--and, after all, we are at your service. it is you who are accommodating us. for my part, i think it is always pleasant the first night at sea, especially in summer. one wakes up the next morning to find the sun shining, and the water dancing, and the strong salt breeze ready to give one a most glorious appetite for breakfast. what more would you? the packing, as you call it, is done. for us it is only a question of putting our hats on and going on board--and, voila, c'est fait." she said this with such a delightful air of insouciance, and with such a radiant smile, that miss chrysie felt that she could have shot her there and then. under the circumstances, she just finished her coffee and said: "well, olive, if that's so, i reckon we'd better go and get fixed up too. i quite agree with the marquise that it's better to start out at night on a voyage and wake up nice and fresh next morning, especially if you don't eat too liberal a dinner before you start." "oh yes," said lady olive; "i can be quite ready by this afternoon if you can, and if it's anything like the lovely moonlight night it was last night, we shall have a perfectly delicious run through the solent and past the needles." "and along the coast," added hardress; "the moonlight will last us a bit farther than that. we shall be well away to portland before you want to go to bed i expect. the _nadine's_ got to do her best this time, and we've coaled up for a run across the atlantic at twenty knots. that will be somewhat of an experience for you, marquise, will it not?" "yes, viscount," she said, with one of those smiles which miss chrysie hated so; "it is a very wonderful speed that, and of course it will be an experience." "then that's settled," said lady olive, rising, "we shall start this evening. now let us go and pack." the _nadine_, spick and span, and clean as a new pin, was lying alongside the ocean quay at southampton, her bunkers and half her hold crammed with the finest steaming coal that money could buy, and the steam whistling softly in her pipes. her second engineer, an exceedingly clever young fellow of twenty-five, whose good-looking face was marred by a pair of too-closely-set greenish-blue eyes, was leaning on the rail a little forward of the foremast, smoking a pipe and gazing down the water with eyes that saw nothing material. edward williams was as good a marine engineer as ever went afloat, but unfortunately he was possessed by the idea, too common among his class, that he possessed a creative and inventive genius as well as real cleverness in his profession. he had invented what he considered to be improvement after improvement in marine machinery, and lord orrel had at first helped him generously to put them into practical form; but as he did not possess the genius, he believed he had, they had one after another failed to stand the test of practice, and at length both lord orrel and his son had closed their pockets and given him to understand that he had better devote himself to his profession and leave inventing alone. this produced the usual effect on such a mind as his. he forgot all that they had done for him, and looked upon them as wealthy men whose selfishness deliberately barred his way to the fame and fortune which ought to be his. only a month before he had gone to hardress with the plans of a new type of submarine boat, which he, of course, firmly believed would revolutionise naval warfare. it would only have cost a few hundred pounds to build a model and demonstrate the truth of his theory, but hardress had kindly but firmly refused to do it. this refusal had soured him utterly, and put him in exactly the frame of mind readiest to succumb to the temptation to commit the only crime of his life. sophie had heard something of this in conversations at the court and on board the yacht, and she instantly divined that if she was to find an instrument to work out her scheme she would find it in the disappointed inventor--and she was right. like every man who believes himself to be a genius, and is not, edward williams was intensely vain, and when the beautiful and brilliant countess one day asked him to show her over the engines and explain their working he naturally felt intensely flattered. then sophie had skilfully led the conversation to his own inventions, sympathised with him very sweetly, and assured him that in russia such genius as his would certainly not go unrecognised. "but these english," she said, "are always the last to accept new ideas or properly reward their clever men." after that he had been as wax in her skilful hands. she had even led him to believe she was not indifferent to him personally. after this she had infatuated him still further by giving him appointments in secluded parts of the court grounds; and so she had gradually led up to the proposal which he had now definitely accepted. for reasons of state, it was all-important that the _nadine_ should never reach america. not the slightest harm was to come to anyone on board her: they would simply be brought back and landed in france, free to get home as they pleased. all that was wanted was a delay of a couple of days or so. therefore, if the engines of the _nadine_ broke down at a certain spot in the atlantic, and remained helpless until the _vlodoya_ overtook her, he was to receive five thousand pounds in gold and a lucrative dockyard appointment in russia, which would give him every opportunity of working out his inventions. to such a man, embittered by disappointment and soured by a sense of imaginary wrongs, such a dazzling temptation was irresistible; and that was why edward williams was leaning over the rail of the _nadine_ a couple of hours before she was to start, dreaming dreams of revenge on those who had wronged him, and of fortune and fame among his country's enemies. the party from orrel court drove down to southampton immediately after lunch to enable the ladies to do a little final shopping before going on board. in the course of the afternoon chrysie and lady olive went into the telegraph office to send off a few farewell wires to friends. as they entered, miss chrysie's quick eyes at once caught sight of felice, the marquise's maid, leaning over one of the compartments. she touched lady olive's hand and nodded towards her, and said: "i guess i'd like to see that telegram." and then, in the most unprincipled fashion, she strolled along the compartments as though she were looking for a form, stopped a moment and looked over the maid's shoulder. then she came back and did it again. meanwhile the other compartments had been occupied; so she just stood about until felice had finished, and then took her place. as it happened, felice had been compelled to use one of those adamantine post-office pencils which you have to almost dig through the paper before you can get a legible impression; consequently on the next form on the pad there was a distinct tracing of several words. this miss chrysie tore off and appropriated. then she wrote her own message and went to the counter with it. when they got out into the street lady olive said, a trifle frigidly: "my dear chrysie, don't you think you did a rather improper thing in there? i distinctly saw you look over felice's shoulder. you know, here, we consider a telegram as sacred as a letter." "why, certainly!" replied chrysie, flushing a little at the rebuke: "and so we do over our side: but still, all's fair in--well--in love and war, and i guess you won't think me quite so wicked when i tell you who that telegram's addressed to." "really, chrysie, i don't wish to know, and i don't think you ought to know," said lady olive, still more stiffly. "well," replied chrysie, defiantly, "i am sorry i riled you, but i do know it; and honestly, olive, it's what's you and i and all of us ought to know." at this lady olive's curiosity appealed very strongly to her sense of the proprieties, and she said more amiably: "do you really mean, chrysie, that there's something serious in it--that, for instance, it has anything to do with the works?" "i don't know yet," said chrysie, "but i've got a pretty good copy of it in my satchel, thanks to those awful pencils they give you to use in british telegraph offices. anyhow, it was addressed to count valdemar, _yacht vlodoya_, cherbourg; and cherbourg's not on the way to the baltic, is it? let's go and have an ice and some cakes somewhere, so that i can read what is written." "that's very strange," said lady olive, "and the count professed to be in such a hurry to get back to petersburg. what on earth can he be doing at cherbourg?" "i reckon poppa and the viscount would give something to know that, too," said chrysie, as they turned into a confectioner's. they ordered ices, and chrysie took the telegram form out of her satchel and unfolded it gingerly. her pretty brows puckered over it for a few moments, as she slanted it this way and that to get the light on it. then she put her elbows on the little marble table, and said in a low tone: "it's in french, and it tells the count that the _nadine_ starts this evening instead of to-morrow morning. the last word is 'dépêchez,' and that's french for 'make haste,' isn't it? now, do you think i was right in doing a very improper thing--which, of course, it was?" "i'm afraid you were, chrysie," said lady olive. "it's certainly very mysterious. how is the telegram signed?" "there isn't any signature," replied chrysie. "our friend's a bit too cute for that." "what on earth do you mean, chrysie?" said lady olive, with a note of alarm in her voice. "what friend?" chrysie looked up and said, with a snap of her eyes: "what other friend than m'am'selle felice's mistress--the noble adelaide de condé?" lady olive started. to her straightforward english sense of honour it seemed impossible that a woman so gently bred as adelaide de condé could accept her father's hospitality, and yet send such a message as this to those who might before long be the enemies of his country. "chrysie," she said, "i could not believe that for a moment. it is utterly incredible that the marquise could be guilty of anything of the sort. i admit that it is very suspicious that the _vlodoya_ should be at cherbourg instead of on her way to the baltic, and that adelaide's maid should send such a message; but it seems to me much more likely that felice is in the pay of these russians, and that her mistress knows nothing about it." "well," said chrysie, rising, "we shall see. now i guess we'd better be getting down on board. i shall give this to the viscount, and he can have a council of war on it." "the viscount!" smiled lady olive, as they went out into the street. "how very formal we are, chrysie. why don't you call him shafto?" "because i won't let him call me chrysie--yet," was the reply. chapter xix when the _nadine_ left her moorings, at about four o'clock on a lovely june afternoon, she sauntered easily down to the needles at about twelve knots. for reasons of his own her owner had never put her to full speed in crowded waters, or, in fact, where any other craft was near enough to see what she could do. on deck the principal actors in the tragedy that was to come were sitting in deck-chairs or strolling about, chatting in the most friendly fashion possible, just as though the graceful little vessel was not practically carrying the fate of the world as she slipped so smoothly and swiftly through the swirling water that ran along her white sides. until nightfall she continued at the same speed; but when dinner was over, and the lights were up, hardress lit a cigar and went on to the bridge, and said to the commander: "captain burgess, i think you can let her go now. full speed ahead, right away to halifax. as i have told you, it is most urgent that we should be there in between five and six days. of course, everything depends on the engines, and i think it would be well to work the engine-room staff in treble shifts, just to see that nothing goes wrong. any accident in the engine-room would mean a good deal to me. so you may tell the stokers and engineers that if everything goes smoothly, and we get to halifax by the 15th--that's giving you five days and a bit from now--there will be a hundred pounds extra to be divided among them when we've coaled up again at halifax. you understand, i want those engines looked after as though they were a lady's watch." "certainly, my lord," replied the captain. "i hope, sir, you don't think that anything of that sort is necessary for the working of the _nadine_; but, of course, the engine-room staff will be very glad to accept your lordship's generosity." the captain blew his whistle, and the head and shoulders of a quartermaster appeared on the ladder, looking up to the bridge. "quartermaster, who is on duty in the engine-room?" "mr williams, sir," replied the quartermaster, touching his cap. "ask him to be good enough to step up here for a moment." "ay, ay, sir," and the head and shoulders disappeared. a few moments later edward williams came up on to the bridge. apart from the work of his profession he was an intensely nervous man, and his imagination had instantly construed the sudden and unwonted summons into a suspicion of his contemplated guilt, and his close-set, greenish-blue eyes shifted anxiously from the captain to hardress in a way that at once inspired hardress with vague undefined suspicions, which somehow brought him back to one or two interviews on the subject of williams's patents--which had ended in a way which would have prompted a less generous man to have dismissed him on the spot. it was only a suspicion. still, in another sense, it was the intuition of a keen and highly-trained intellect, and somehow, by some process which hardress himself could not have explained, williams's manner as he came on the bridge, and that sudden shifty glance, inspired him with the thought that this was a man to be watched. "mr williams," said the captain, "his lordship has just informed me that it is most important we should get to halifax in the quickest possible time; and, as you have most of the routine work to do, under mr m'niven, and are, perhaps, more in touch with the men than he is, i wish you to tell the men that from here to halifax the engineers and stokers will work in treble shifts. it'll be a bit harder work, but not for long. and his lordship has kindly promised a hundred pounds to be divided among the engineer's staff at halifax. now, that's not bad extra pay for five or six days work, and i hope you'll see that it's earned." "very well, sir," replied the engineer, doing his best to keep his voice steady, and not quite succeeding. "it is, i am sure, most generous of his lordship, and i am quite certain that the men will do everything in their power to deserve it." "and," said hardress, noting the break in his voice, "you understand, mr williams, i shall expect the officers to do the same. we can take no risks this trip, and there must be no accidents or breakdowns. time is too precious; you understand me, of course. i will see mr m'niven later on. that will do, thank you." mr williams touched the peak of his cap, and disappeared down the ladder, feeling, in his inmost soul as though his contemplated treachery had already been discovered. and yet, if he had seen the matter from another point of view, he might have known that the precautions which hardress had taken were, under the circumstances, just what any man carrying such enormous responsibilities as he did would have taken, for, as he had said, everything depended on the _nadine's_ engines. it was, therefore, the most natural thing in the world that everything possible should be done to ensure their perfect working. in fact, if he had not had the burden of a contemplated treachery on his soul, he would have considered the orders to be not only natural, but necessary. as he reached the deck, it happened that the marquise was strolling forward towards the bridge. williams raised his cap, and by the light of one of the electric deck-lamps, hardress saw from the bridge that she looked hard at him for a moment, and that he replied with an almost imperceptible shake of the head. his brows came together for a moment, and he shut his teeth. his keen intellect saw what his half-intoxicated senses would not have seen. under any normal circumstances, it was impossible that his guest, adelaide de condé, could have even the remotest relations with his second engineer, and yet there was no mistaking what he had seen as she passed under the electric light. "captain burgess," he said, suddenly, in a low voice, "i don't quite like the look of mr williams. i have nothing against him, but i know he has a bit of a grudge against me about those patents of his, and----" "surely you don't think, my lord, that he would do anything?" "no," interrupted hardress; "i say nothing, except that we're taking no risks this voyage; but i shall ask mr m'niven to have a very sharp watch kept on the engines." "may i come up on to the sacred territory?" said a sweet, pleading voice from half-way up the bridge stairs. "and may we too?" said the voice of miss chrysie just behind. "by all means, marquise," said hardress; "and you too, olive, and miss chrysie, certainly; only i hope you've got your caps pinned on securely, because we're going to quicken up." "ah," said adelaide, coming up on to the bridge with her head half-enveloped in a fleecy shawl, "quicken up. does that mean what you call full speed?" "something like it, i reckon," said miss chrysie, coming up close behind her, followed by lady olive, both with white yachting caps pinned more or less securely on to their abundant tresses. "yes," said hardress, with a note in his voice that adelaide had not heard before; "it is full speed. now, hold on to your headgear and you'll see." as he spoke he put his hand on the handle of the engine telegraph and pulled it over from half to full speed. they heard a tinkle in the engine-room, and presently the bridge began to throb and thump under their feet. the sharp prow of the _nadine_ had so far been cleaving the water with scarcely a ripple. now it seemed to leap forward into it, and raised a long creased swirl to left and right. a sudden blast of wind struck their faces, hands instinctively went up to heads, and lady olive exclaimed: "what is that, shafto? it hasn't suddenly come on to blow, has it?" "oh no," he laughed. "we're making it blow. that's only the difference between about ten or eleven knots and twenty--and there's a bit of a breeze against us, about five miles an hour--so that makes it twenty-five miles an hour--in fact, even thirty--for knots are longer than miles." "now isn't that just gorgeous!" said miss chrysie, and she opened her mouth and filled her lungs with the strong salt breath of the sea--"and there goes my cap," she said, when she got her breath again. the breeze had got under the peak of her yachting cap, and sent it flying aft. the pin dislocated the arrangement of her hair, and the next moment she was standing with the loosened shining coils streaming out behind her, unravelling into a shower of golden glory. adelaide, with the instinct of a frenchwoman, had drawn her shawl tight round her head. hardress looked round at the moment, and, if his heart had ever wavered, in that moment the old allegiance was confirmed. there was no more comparison between the tall, deep-chested american girl, with her cheeks glowing, her eyes shining in the sheer joy of physical life, and her long gold-brown hair streaming away behind her, and the slight, shrinking figure of the daughter of the bourbons, cowering behind the canvas of the bridge and gripping the shawl that covered her head, than there might have been between a sea-nymph of the old grecian legends and a fine lady of to-day caught in an unexpected gust of wind. miss chrysie looked natural and magnificent, breasting the gale and breathing it in as though she loved it. adelaide de condé, the exotic of the drawing-room, cowered before it, and looked pinched, and shivered. lady olive, with one hand on the top of her cap and the other holding the wrap she had thrown round her shoulders, gasped for a moment, and said: "yes, chrysie; this is glorious. twenty knots!--that's about twenty-four miles an hour, isn't it, a little bit faster than a south-eastern express train?" "i hope so," laughed hardress; "if it wasn't we should be some time in getting to halifax. and now, i suppose, you've got some coffee ready for us down in the saloon?" "oh yes, it will be quite ready now," said lady olive. "mr vandel and papa have started their chess already; madame de bourbon is still making lace with those wonderful eyes and fingers of hers; and so, if you want to exchange the storm for the calm, come along." a little after eleven that night, when the _nadine_, thrilling in every plate and plank, was tearing through the smooth water of the atlantic at nearly twenty-one knots an hour, a council of three was being held in the smoking-room on deck. the doors and windows were closed, and a quarter-master was patrolling the deck on each side. below in the saloon, miss chrysie, with a dainty little revolver in the pocket of her yachting skirt, was playing poker for beans with madame de bourbon, lady olive, and the marquise. in short, as miss chrysie herself would have expressed it, things were rapidly coming to a head on board the _nadine_. "it seems to me," said the president, "that, all things considered--thank you, viscount, i think i will take just one more peg--we have just got to take every possible precaution. i don't say that i am suspecting or accusing anybody; but, considering that we've got about the biggest thing on earth right here aboard this yacht, i don't think we should calculate on taking any risks. take that telegram to start with. there can't be any doubt about that; and it doesn't matter whether the marquise or ma'm'selle felice sent it, there it is. get it down to plain figures. this boat does twenty knots, and she started fifteen hours before her time. a telegram goes from southampton to cherbourg, as chrysie's duplicate showed, clearly telling count valdemar, on the _vlodoya_ at cherbourg, where he had no business to be, according to his programme, that we were sailing in the afternoon instead of the next morning, and it ended by telling him to make haste. now, what does haste mean? we steam twenty knots, and the _vlodoya_, we know, steams about sixteen. she started from cherbourg, and we started from southampton. the french and russian polar expeditions are perhaps under weigh now, and, from what we know, i reckon that they have a fairly good idea of what we're going across the atlantic for. now, how's a sixteen-knot boat going to catch a twenty-knot yacht anywhere between southampton and halifax?" "and why should count valdemar receive that telegram at cherbourg, as i suppose he did," said lord orrel, "instead of going on to the baltic, when he said he was in such a hurry to get to petersburg?" "that, i think," said hardress, "is the most suspicious fact in the whole business. of course, i don't like to suspect our late or our present guests, but i must confess that i feel there's something wrong. what it is i can't exactly say; but still i do feel that everything is not as it ought to be." "and that," said the president, "i think i can explain in a few words--not my own ideas altogether, because chrysie has given me a good many points. you know, gentlemen, there are some things that a woman's eyes can see through a lot farther than a man's can, and chrysie doesn't always keep her eyes down." he lit a fresh cigar, took a sip of his whisky and soda, and went on: "why should a telegram be sent to the owner of a sixteen-knot boat, informing him of a change of sailing a twenty-knot boat, when the sixteen-knotter is supposed to be going up the baltic, and the twenty-knotter is going across the atlantic? it seems ridiculous, doesn't it? it would, even if they were both going across the atlantic, as they might be. now, those are hard facts; and there's a dead contradiction between them, just as you might say there is between positive and negative in electricity. now, where's the spark that's going to connect them?" there was silence at the table for a few moments, while the president blew two or three long whiffs of blue smoke from his lips; and then hardress, remembering his thoughts on the bridge, and what he had seen from it, blurted out, almost involuntarily: "something wrong with the engines, i suppose?" "you've got it in once, viscount," said the president, flicking the ash off his cigar. "is there any other way that a sixteen-knotter could overtake a twenty-knotter? i don't want to say anything against anyone, but, you know, accidents to engines are easily managed, and we just can't afford to have any right here." "i've seen to that already," said hardress. "i don't think there's any fear of a mishap, accidental or otherwise." "but," said the president, lighting another cigar, "if it should happen that the sixteen-knotter did overhaul the twenty-knotter, wouldn't it be just as well to get that gun mounted? they may have guns on that russian boat, and they probably have; but i don't think they'll have anything that's a circumstance to our twelve-pounder vandelite gun." "well, in case of accidents," said lord orrel, "i think, shafto, that it wouldn't be a bad idea to get the gun mounted at once. if, in spite of any precautions, there is going to be an accident in the engine-room, it might as well be mounted as soon as possible." "i quite agree with you, sir," said hardress. "we will have it out of the hold, and mount it first thing to-morrow morning." chapter xx on the morning of the second day out, when adelaide came on deck, she was astonished, and not a little disquieted, to see nearly the whole of the yacht's crew, under the command of mr m'niven, the chief engineer, engaged in mounting a long, light, slender gun, with a very massive breech, on the flush deck just forward of the foremast. happening to look up at the bridge, she also saw that a light maxim had been mounted at either end of it. what did it mean? guns were not mounted on a gentleman's private yacht, as a rule, unless she was making some dangerous expedition in perilous waters. as for doing such a thing on the most frequented ocean path in the world, it was utterly ridiculous, unless there was some very grave reason for it--and what reason could there be, save one? had sophie's scheme been betrayed? had felice told about the telegram, under the temptation of such a bribe as these millionaires could offer? had williams wavered at the last, and confessed? she knew, of course, that the _vlodoya_ carried guns, to compel surrender, if necessary. was that a reason why these guns were being mounted?--and what would happen if the _nadine_ met force with force, and won? everything would come out; the whole conspiracy, and her own share in it; and then, what would he think of her? she had entered into the plot mainly for the purpose of getting rid of this american rival of hers, so that she might pursue the advantage which she believed she had already gained, without opposition. the discovery would mean utter ruin for herself and all her hopes. while these sinister thoughts were passing swiftly through her brain she heard a light step behind her, and a gay voice, saying: "my, that looks good, doesn't it! seems as if the viscount thought we were going to have a bit of a scrap before we got across. yes, that's poppa's own dynamite gun; the viscount calls it his pocket-pistol. oh, good-morning, marquise; you seem to be interested in the operations!" "good-morning, ma'm'selle chrysie," replied the marquise, sweetly. "how delightfully fresh you english and american girls always look after you've tubbed. yes; i assure you i am very interested; indeed, i am astonished. i was not aware that it was customary to mount guns on a nobleman's yacht in times of peace." "well, no," laughed miss chrysie; "but then, you see, marquise, there is peace and peace. we are at peace with all the world, nearly, but, the fact is, this is a pretty important voyage, and, from what poppa tells me, it hasn't got to be interrupted under any circumstances." "but surely there can be no fear of that," replied adelaide, with a laugh which seemed to chrysie a trifle artificial and uneasy; "the days of piracy are past." "that's no reason why they shouldn't be revived on occasion," said chrysie, turning round and looking her straight in the eyes; "in fact, it seems to me, from one or two hints that poppa let drop, that someone is going to try and stop us getting across this time, and that's why these guns are here. that's a pretty-looking weapon, isn't it?" "really, miss vandel," replied the marquise, rather languidly, "i can assure you i know nothing about such things; and i take, if possible, even less interest in them." "well, marquise, i can assure you that that's a most interesting weapon. poppa invented it. it's loaded with liquid gas instead of gunpowder, and a shell that holds twelve pounds of an improved sort of dynamite--vandelite he calls it. now, of course, you know that when liquid gas is allowed to become gasey gas, it makes things mighty cold round it. well, this freezes the vandelite so that it shan't explode in the gun. then when the projectile hits anything, that develops heat and sets it off. simple, isn't it? and yet that's a thing that inventors have been puzzling about for years. that gun will put twelve pounds of concentrated earthquake into a ship four miles away, and that would knock anything but an armour-clad into splinters. so i guess there'll be trouble for anything that tries to stop us this journey." "still, that could hardly be in these times," said the marquise, with excellently simulated nonchalance. "but, really, your knowledge of gunnery appears to be wonderful, miss vandel. i suppose you take a great interest in weapons of warfare?" "yes, i do," said chrysie; "you see, we make all the best of them over our side. for instance," she went on, pulling an exquisitely-finished little smith & wesson five-shooter out of her pocket, "there's a dainty little bit of bric-a-brac. no, don't touch it, if you're not accustomed to shooters, because it's loaded. doesn't look very dangerous, does it? but i can pick all the spots off a card at twenty paces with it." "dear me, how very wonderful! and how very interesting you young ladies of the new world are. really, the fact of your carrying a loaded revolver in your skirt pocket seems to me quite as singular as mounting guns on a gentleman's yacht. so entirely unnecessary, i should have thought." all adelaide's powers of self-control did not suffice to keep a note of petulance and insincerity out of her voice. miss chrysie's quick ears caught it instantly. she slipped her arm through adelaide's, and drew her away out of hearing of the men who were mounting the guns, and said in a low voice, which thrilled with something very like passion: "i'm carrying this shooter, marquise, for the same reason that they're putting those guns up. i don't know what it is, but there's trouble ahead, and we're outside the law just now, the same as others may be soon; but the man i love is on board this ship, and if there's any harm waiting for him, and quick and straight shooting will save him, i'm going to do my little level best." it was impossible for adelaide not to recognise the frank, direct challenge of her words. for the moment a passing impulse impelled her to snatch the weapon out of chrysie's hand and shoot her; but another moment's thought showed her that such an act would have meant worse than ruin to all her hopes. after what chrysie had said, she would dearly have loved to have done it. it was the first distinct avowal of her love for the man for whom she herself had deliberately engaged to sacrifice the honour of her stainless name, and there was a ring of deadly earnestness in chrysie's tone as she handled the deadly toy, which meant even more than her words did; and so she exclaimed, with an innocent seeming archness which astonished chrysie quite as much as her own words had astonished the marquise: "ah, so, ma'm'selle, then my suspicions were correct. well, well, accept my best wishes for the most delightful ending possible for your romance. nothing could be better, or what the english call more suitable--yes, in every way. and as for me, though i do not know what i have done to deserve so great a confidence----" "i don't know that i ought to let you thank me for it," said chrysie, flushing a little; "i guess i told you more for your good than mine, and i thought it was only right that you should know just how matters stood, in case any mistakes were made later on that couldn't be rectified--and i think that's about all that need be said just here. there is the bell: and there is lady olive come to tell us that tea is ready. suppose we go below, and change the subject." adelaide followed her down the companion way, her face radiant and smiling, and her heart hot and bitter with many thoughts which at present she dared not translate either into words or actions. if only the _vlodoya_ succeeded in her mission--if only the plot to which she had lent herself succeeded--ah, then there would be a difference! if not, well, the sea was deep and clear and cool, and life would have nothing left in it for her. a little before midnight another council of war was being held in the smoking-room, guarded as usual by a quartermaster on either side of the deck, and captain burgess came out of his own cabin under the bridge and went to the starboard door. the quartermaster stopped and touched his cap. "robertson," he said, "tell his lordship that i want to speak to him at once." "ay, ay, sir," said the man, knocking at the door. there was a "click click" of the key turning in the lock, the door opened, and hardress looked out. "oh, captain," he said, "that you? any--do you wish to speak to me? come in." the captain went in, and the door was at once locked behind him. "sit down, captain," said hardress, pointing to a seat. "what's the matter? you can speak quite freely. you know that there are some rather funny things going on; but you, of course, we trust absolutely." "i hope so, my lord," said the skipper, with a touch of dignity in his tone. "i am sorry to say that just before seven bells, when we changed watch unexpectedly, as we are doing in the engine-room, one of the extra men we've put on watch detected mr williams in the act of sanding the driving rod of the low-pressure cylinder of the port engine." "and what would have been the effect of that?" said hardress, quite coolly, as though he expected the news. the words had hardly left his lips before a slight jarring shudder ran along the port side of the ship, and they felt a distinct swerve as though she had swung suddenly out of her course. "the scoundrel, he has gritted the shaft as well!" exclaimed the captain, jumping to his feet and running to the door. "pardon, my lord," he cried, as he opened it. then he said to the quartermaster: "robertson, skip up to the bridge and stop her. mr m'niven's there." then as the quartermaster vanished in the direction of the bridge he locked the door, and came back and said: "my lord, i'm afraid it's worse than i thought. you know what grit means in the bearings of a screw shaft. it means stopping one engine for twenty-four hours, unbolting the bearings and the thrust-blocks, and cleaning the grit out." "and i guess that's just about what was calculated upon by our friends the enemy," said president vandel. "a delay like that would just send us waddling across the water like a duck with a lame foot; and that's how a sixteen-knotter's expected to overtake a twenty-knotter. what's happening to mr williams just now captain?" "under arrest in his room, sir," replied the captain; "he's a good sailor and a good officer, but i'm afraid he's guilty. i never saw a man look more miserable than he did when i sent for him to my room. i don't know who's been working on him, or what the reason of it is at all, but there it is. he didn't confess, but he might just as well have done, for his face did it for him." "then we are to understand, captain burgess," said lord orrel, "that, at the best, we shall be delayed at least twenty-four hours. that will make a serious difference to us, shafto, under the circumstances." "and it may be more than that, my lord," said the captain, "because we don't know yet how much harm's done. mr m'niven will, of course, examine the cylinder and the shafting at once and report to me, and if the worst comes to the worst, why, we may have to go to halifax with one engine. if we hadn't twin screws we'd be disabled altogether. yes, you see he's stopped the port engine, and that means we've dropped down to about eight knots." "yes, of course," said hardress, "that's about what it comes to, father. now, captain burgess, you will kindly keep mr williams in his cabin. let him have no communication with anyone. you can let robertson give him his food, and mount guard over him generally. we can trust him, if we can trust anyone. i don't want to see him, or accuse him of anything. just keep him quiet, and isolated. tell mr m'niven we'll run along as well as we can with the starboard engine, and put all available hands on to repairing the damage to the other. i'll give the engine-room staff another hundred pounds among them if they get it fixed up in twenty-four hours." "very well, my lord," said the captain, as he got up and went towards the door. "we shall, of course, do everything possible; and i hope that the damage is not so bad as it seems." "it appears to me," said the president, as the captain closed the door and hardress locked it, "that our deductions from those few facts are coming pretty correct. this job's going to keep us back twenty-four hours at least, if not thirty-six; and so, granted that the russian yacht started pretty soon after that telegram got to cherbourg, she won't be very far behind us to-morrow evening, and she'll probably overhaul us about by dawn the next day. seems to me the question is now, what we're going to do if she does?" "i say fight," said hardress, between his teeth. "we can smash her into scrap-iron with that gun of yours before she can touch us, if she has guns; and if they do really mean foul play, as it seems they do, i fancy myself it would be better for all of us, women and all, to risk going down with the _nadine_ than to fall into the hands of a pack of russian pirates, for that's about all they will be, if they try anything of that sort on." "how would it be, shafto," said lord orrel, "if, granted we could get the engines repaired, we were to play the lame duck, and turn the tables on them----" "thunder! you've just got it, lord orrel!" exclaimed the president, bringing his hand down on the table. "whether the count and that pretty daughter of his are on board or not, i reckon they'll be a mightily dangerous crew to deal with, and i reckon they'll be safer as compulsory guests on board this boat than if they were free to knock around in their own ship. i feel pretty certain that they know a lot more about this scheme of ours than they would like to say; and if that's so, as i think it is, the less they run around loose about the earth the better for us." "i quite agree with you, president," said hardress. "that's the very thing to do, if we can do it: if it really is the _vlodoya_ that's on our track and she means taking or sinking us; well, we'll play 'possum. we'll have to let her fire on us first, i'm afraid; but i daresay she'll miss, for russians are about the worst gunners in the world. then we'll cripple her, take her distinguished passengers out of her, and make them our compulsory guests. after that we'll play pirate to pirate--empty her coal bunkers into ours, strip her of everything we want, and put the crew into the boats with plenty of water and provisions. they'll be certain to be picked up within a couple of days or so if they go south towards the steamer tracks. then we'll smash his excellency's yacht into scrap-iron, and go straight to boothia land without stopping at halifax at all." "but, my dear shafto," said the earl, "that would be a most flagrant act of piracy on the high seas, wouldn't it?" "my dear dad," he replied, "you must remember that once we are in boothia we are beyond and above the law, and if we like to indulge in a little piracy we can do so. the point really is to catch these people and take them there with us; so that we can be quite certain they're not going to do any more harm." "that, viscount," said the president, "is right on the spot; and your idea of taking the coal out of the _vlodoya_ isn't any too bad. i reckon that's just what we've got to do. a little surprise party for our russian friends right here in mid-ocean, and then straight away to the works. we'll show them some of the wonders from inside that they wanted to see from outside; and i guess we shall also be able to show them something pretty interesting if those two expeditions do happen to discover the magnetic pole instead of the north pole. i reckon it'll be just about one of the most wonderful discoveries that frenchmen or russians ever did make." chapter xxi another two days had passed, during which the _nadine_, instead of swirling through the water at twenty knots, had been waddling through it like a lame duck at eight. adelaide had professed the utmost wonder and concern at the accident, and miss chrysie, who now knew rather more than she did, watched her with unwinking steadiness from the time she came on deck in the morning till the time she retired with her aunt at night. madame de bourbon herself was completely in the dark as to everything that was taking place, and simply looked upon the breakdown of the port engine as one of the ordinary accidents of seafaring. adelaide had not slept for an hour continuously since she had seen the guns being mounted. that had convinced her that hardress, whose suspicion she dreaded more than anything else, already suspected something. williams had kept faith, and had been detected, thanks to the extraordinary precautions that had been taken in the engine-room, precautions which, so her instinct told her, could not possibly have been taken unless some design against the safety of the yacht had been either discovered or very strongly suspected. still, as she told herself when she was lying awake in her berth the night after the breakdown, to a certain extent, the plot had succeeded. williams had done the work he was paid to do, and the _nadine_ had come down from her greyhound speed to the limping crawl of a wounded hare. the _vlodoya_ would certainly overtake her now--but, then, those guns! she knew that the _vlodoya_ was prepared to fight if necessary, and so was the _nadine_, and, now that the question of speed had been disposed of, it would be a question of guns. but, after all, guns would not be of much use without men to fire them or officers to direct the operations. manifestly the time had come for her to play her part in the great game whose prize was to be, for her the man she loved, and for her allies the lordship of earth. the next day just before lunch she was strolling up and down the deck with hardress and lady olive, talking about all that they were going to do when they got to halifax, and she had turned the conversation upon canadian and american hotels and the difference between american and european cooking, when she said: "ah, monsieur le viscomte, that reminds me. will you allow me to give you and also your poor men who have been working so hard at the broken engine a little treat?" "with the greatest of pleasure, my dear marquise," said hardress. "and what is it to be?" "oh, it is nothing very much," replied adelaide, in her lightest and gayest tone; "it is only that my aunt happened to mention last night that she had found in her secretaire the authentic recipe of a punch--what do you call it?--a punch of wines and liqueurs which they used to drink at the suppers at versailles and the trianon in the days of the grand monarque. louis himself drank it, and so did that other unhappy ancestor and his queen----" "who," laughed lady olive, "is at present reincarnate on board the _nadine_. i suppose you mean then to make up a punch some night after this recipe; that would be delightful, if we only have the proper ingredients on board." "oh, they are very simple," replied adelaide; "it is certain that you will have them, indeed it seems from the recipe that the excellence of the punch does not depend so much on the variety of the ingredients as the proportions and the skill in making it." "very well," said hardress, "as long as we've got the things on board, that is settled; and both ends of the ship shall drink to-night in the punch _à le grand monarque_, to the health of his latest and fairest descendant. m'niven and his men really have been working like so many niggers at that engine, and they've done splendidly. in fact, captain burgess tells me we shall be ready for full speed ahead by daybreak to-morrow." "ah," said adelaide in her soul, "then it is all the more necessary that we should have the punch _à le grand monarque_," and she went on aloud, "well then, monsieur le viscomte, that is arranged. if you will tell your steward, your maître d'hôtel, as we call him on french ships, to provide me with the ingredients, i will make it this afternoon, and we will take it after dinner, eh?" "yes," said lady olive, "and i think, shafto, under the circumstances, you might invite captain burgess and mr m'niven to dine with us." "certainly," replied her brother, "that's a capital idea, olive. we will--in fact, we'll have mr vernon, too: he's worked just as hard as anyone else, and it can be arranged for the second officer to take charge of the bridge during dinner. and so, ma'm'selle," he went on, turning to the marquise, "if you will take the trouble, you may brew us two bowls, one for the cabin and a bigger one for the other end of the ship, and the steward shall put the whole of the ship's liquid stores at your disposal." "monsieur le viscomte, i could desire nothing better," she replied, with her most dazzling smile, and more meanings than one. the subject of the punch was mentioned during lunch, and during the afternoon miss chrysie got her father up into the bows, and, after a swift look round to see if anyone was within hearing distance, said: "poppa, are you going to take any of that punch to-night?" "why, certainly, chrysie. why not? what's the matter?" "it may be matter or no matter," she replied, "but i'm not, and i guess it would be healthier for you not to. i'm more than ever certain that that frenchwoman is in it. yes; it's all very well looking like that, poppa, but--you think i hate this woman because she's in love with the viscount. well, i suppose i do; and there'll most likely be trouble between us sometime soon; but i haven't quite lost all my senses because i happen to be in love with a man that another woman wants to get. don't you see, we're going to have that punch just a few hours before we get the engines right and that other boat is to catch us?" "but, great sakes, chrysie, you don't mean the marquise is going to poison us?" "it won't be poison," answered chrysie, very curtly, "because she knows that he'll drink it. i guess some drug's a good deal more likely--something that'll make everybody at both ends of the ship pretty sleepy and stupid when the time for a fight comes around. you see, that's just the natural sequence to the plot to cripple the engine. anyhow, that's what i think it is." "well, if it's as bad as that," said her father, "why not warn the viscount?" "that wouldn't do much good," she replied, more curtly than before. "you see, i'd have to make a definite accusation against her, and i've nothing to go on except what he'd call mere suspicion and we call logical deduction. i'd give her a tremendous handle against me, especially with him; and if she had any suspicion that i suspected her--why, she might call me down pretty badly by not putting anything in the stuff at all. no, poppa, under the circumstances, we can't do anything except not drink that punch. i'm going to have a headache to-night and stop in my berth. you have some of your gastric trouble and drink hot milk or something of that sort: and if you get a show i think you might, as matters are coming to a head pretty quickly, just give a hint to captain burgess and mr m'niven to drink as little of that punch as they politely can." "well, chrysie," replied her father, "you've been right so far, but i do hope you're wrong this time. it's a pretty large order, you know, drugging the whole ship's company." "yes; and a frenchwoman with a lot to win is playing a game for pretty big dollars. of course, there may be nothing in it at all, and i may be quite wrong, but i think this punch of hers has come along at the wrong time, and we can't take any risks. there's one thing, she'll have to drink some of it herself, and that old aunt of hers too. still, she's pretty useless, and doesn't matter; but if anything does really happen, poppa, you'd better go straight and shake the viscount up. i'll have the steward make some pretty strong coffee to-night for me, and i'll keep it hot and you can give it him; and if the doctor isn't dead, too, with the stuff, get a drop of prussic acid from him. that'll bring him round." "it strikes me, chrysie," said her father, looking down admiringly on her flushed and animated face, "as though you're getting ready to run this ship in case of trouble." "it's just that, poppa," she said, with an impatient little tap of her foot on the deck; "that is, of course, with you. i don't say it's altogether disinterested, because it isn't; but i'd do that and a lot more to keep to windward of that frenchwoman, and she knows it. you can work your gun and i can work a maxim, so if there's only the two of us, we can do something with that russian ship. and now i guess we'd better go to the other end and show how friendly we can be with our enemies." "chrysie," said her father, with a very tender note in a voice which could be as hard as the ring of steel, "i don't want you to be a bit different to what you are, but if you'd been a man you'd have been a great one." "i'd sooner be a good woman and get what i want than be the biggest man on earth," laughed chrysie. "when a woman gets all she wants she doesn't want to envy big men anything." and with that they went aft and subsided into deck-chairs in a sort of irregular circle, in which lord orrel was fast asleep, madame de bourbon rapidly subsiding, and the marquise and lady olive making a pretence of reading with drooping eyelids. the punch _á le grand monarque_ was a great success that evening after dinner. it was delicious; and every one regretted that the president's attack of gastritis and miss chrysie's headache prevented them from sharing in its delights. the marquise brewed a little pot of her aunt's special russian tea for them, which the president declined with many apologies, and which miss chrysie, after accepting a cup from the hands of felice, emptied out of the port-hole as soon as her ladyship's lady had left the cabin. captain burgess and the chief had taken the president's hint almost as though they expected it, and the scotsman had said significantly: "i'm obliged to you, mr vandel, though i hope there's nothing in your suspicions; still, this is no time for us to be drinking foreign mixed drinks when i've got to keep my eyes open, looking, as you may say, out of both sides of my head. a drop of good old scotch whisky is as good nourishment as a man can need. what i'm thinking about is the men. we can't forbid them to take it without either insulting his lordship or telling him all the suspicions, which, you say, can't be told him." "no," added the captain; "but i'll see they have a pretty good shaking up at four o'clock, and the cook shall have plenty of strong coffee ready in case of accidents." but for all that, the accident happened, almost, if not quite as well as the originator of it could have hoped. by eleven o'clock everyone who had drunk even a single glass of the marquise's punch, including herself and madame de bourbon, were dead asleep. even the captain and the chief engineer, who had taken somewhat drastic measures to counteract the possible effects, did not wake until daybreak, and even then, strong as they were, they were both mentally and physically incapable for the time being of attending to the work of the ship. the sailors and engine-room hands, who had indulged rather more freely, were all sleeping like logs when the watch was called at four in the morning, and nothing could wake them until mr vernon, the chief officer, who never under any circumstances drank anything stronger than coffee, and who therefore escaped the general paralysis, with the help of the president and the two quartermasters, who had been forbidden to touch anything in the way of liquor during the night, brought them up on deck and turned the hose on them. this revived the majority of them sufficiently to enable them to drink a copious allowance of strong coffee, after which they were very ill, and then much better. the captain and the chief engineer were then carried to bathrooms and treated in somewhat the same fashion, after which they were taken back to their rooms and given a good stiff brandy-and-soda. "ay, man!" said the chief engineer, as he began to get back his grip on things, "whatever was in that stuff it was deadly. no more of your foreign drinks for me. after that, good scotch whisky is going to be good enough for me. it's a mercy she didn't poison the whole ship's crew. captain, if there's any of the men anything like fit for duty you might give them a good strong tot, and let's get to work on that shaft. there's just the bearings and the thrust-blocks to adjust and oil, and then we'll be ready for full speed ahead in three hours." "i'm afraid that would be a bit too late, sir," said miss chrysie, who had been sweeping the eastern horizon with her glasses. "look yonder," she went on; "there's a steamer down yonder steaming for all she's worth, and i reckon she's a lot more likely to be the _vlodoya_ than an east-bound liner." the chief took the glasses she offered him, and had a long look at the cloud of smoke that was rising from the ship. "i'm afraid you're right, miss," he said, handing the glasses back. "that's no liner; she's not half big enough; she's a yacht. still, her stern chase is a long one, even if we are like a seal with one flipper, and we may be ready for her even yet." "i think we shall be able to dodge him, miss vandel," said the captain, who had just come out of his room, still looking pale and somewhat dazed. "put every possible hand on to the shaft, m'niven. steam's up, and we can start the moment you're ready." "and," added the president, "i'll see to the guns. if that's the _vlodoya_ they're not going to overtake us before we are ready." chapter xxii while the captain and the chief engineer were mustering such men as were in any way fit to work the ship, or to help in getting the port engine into running order, chrysie and her father paid a visit to the staterooms. hardress and lord orrel were both sleeping as deeply as ever and breathing heavily. the president tried to rouse them, without avail. their pulses were beating regularly, and, apart from their heavy breathing, there was nothing to show that they were not in a healthy sleep; but they were absolutely insensible to any outside influence; and chrysie found lady olive, adelaide, and madame de bourbon in exactly the same condition. ma'm'selle felice was in great distress about her two mistresses, but chrysie cut her lamentations very short by saying: "you look after your ladies, felice, and don't worry about anything else; your place is down here, and don't you come on deck, whatever happens. there's a boat coming up that may be the same one you telegraphed to at cherbourg from southampton. if it is, you see this?" she went on, taking her revolver out of her pocket. "yes, that'll do; i don't want any theatricals, but you go to your cabin and stop there. if you're wanted you'll be sent for." ma'm'selle felice shrank away white and trembling, and miss chrysie went back on deck to get the maxims ready for action. she met her father under the bridge, and said: "i reckon, poppa, they're all pretty dead down there. we'll have to see this thing through on our own hands." the chief and his men worked like heroes on the shaft, and a good head of steam was by some means kept up, but the other yacht crept rapidly up across the eastern horizon, and by breakfast time it was perfectly plain that she was the _vlodoya_. moreover, both miss chrysie and the captain from the bridge had been able to make out with their glasses that she was carrying a maxim-nordenfelt gun on her forecastle, and two others which looked like one-pound quick-firers on either side, a little forward of the bridge. she was flying no flags, not even the pennant of the imperial yacht squadron, to which she belonged. the _nadine_ was flying the blue ensign and the pennant of the royal yacht squadron. when the _vlodoya_ was within about eight miles, heading directly for the _nadine_, the president sent down to ask mr m'niven how long it would be before the port engine could be used, and the answer came back, "a good hour yet, but everything is going all right." just at this moment the captain was overtaken with another fit of sickness and dizziness, and had to go down to his room; and mr vernon remained in charge of the bridge with miss chrysie, who was walking up and down, with a strange look of almost masculine sternness on her pretty face, and the gleam of a distinctly wicked light in her eyes. for her the minutes of that hour passed with terrible slowness as she watched the _vlodoya_ coming up mile after mile, with torrents of smoke pouring out of her funnels. she was evidently steaming every yard she could make. a quarter, half, and three-quarters of an hour passed, and still she kept on, looming up larger and larger astern, and miss chrysie looked more and more anxiously at the long gun on deck and the two maxims on the bridge. again a message went down to the engine-room, and the answer came back--"another twenty minutes." just then a line of signal flags ran up to the _vlodoya's_ main truck. the chief officer's glasses instantly went up to his eyes, but after a long look he shook his head and said to the president: "that's no regular signal, mr vandel; it's evidently a private one, arranged beforehand, i should say." "then we won't answer it," said the president, "and we'll see what he'll do next. i guess, if he's what we think him, he'll have to declare himself right away." they hadn't very long to wait, for about five minutes afterwards a puff of smoke rose from the _vlodoya's_ forecastle, and a seven-pound shell came screaming and whistling across the water. it was the first time that miss chrysie had ever been shot at, but she took it without a shiver. the chief officer begged her to go below at once. but she only shut her teeth tighter, and said: "no, thanks, mr vernon, i'm going to have a hand in this. i'm the only one on deck just now that knows how to run a maxim, and i can shoot as straight with it as i can with my own little pepper-box; so if you just let mr robertson come and see to the serving of the ammunition, i think we'll be able to give our russian friends just about as good as we get." "say, poppa," she went on, leaning over the front of the bridge, "i reckon that shot broke the law of nations, didn't it? how would it be if you raised his bluff? go him a few pounds of vandelite better?" "there's no hurry about that, chrysie," said the president, who had got his gun loaded, and was squinting every now and then along the sights. "i guess he doesn't want to hit us; we've got too much precious cargo on board. you see, that was a seven-pound shell, and if it got under our water-line--well, we'd just go right down. if our friends are on board, they just want to scare us into surrender, that's all; so i think it would be better for us to wait further developments, and let mr m'niven get his work in on that shaft. i can make scrap-iron out of the _vlodoya_ just as soon as ever we want to do it; so don't worry about that." at this moment another puff of steamy smoke rose from the deck of the russian yacht, and this time a shell came screaming away over the _nadine's_ masts. miss chrysie shut her teeth a bit harder, and walked towards the maxim on the port side, the one which she could at any time have brought to bear on the _vlodoya_. the chief officer meanwhile stood anxiously by the engine-room telegraph. it was also his first experience of being shot at. he was just as cool as miss chrysie or her father, but he didn't like it. he had the englishman's natural longing to be able to shoot back, but he recognised that, trying as it was, the president's strategy was the best. about ten more minutes passed, during which the _vlodoya_ drew up closer and closer, until chrysie, after a good look through her glasses, was able to say: "why, yes; there's the count and sophie on the bridge. poppa, why don't you let 'em have just one little hint that we're not quite harmless?" the last word had scarcely left her lips before another puff of steamy smoke rose from the fore-quarter of the russian yacht, and a second or so after, a bright flash of flame blazed out, about fifty yards on the port side of the _nadine_. "that's a time shell," said vernon. "they evidently mean business: i fancy they could hit us if they liked. don't you think, mr vandel, that we might slow round and give them one from that gun of yours?" "no, sir," said the president, looking up from his gun: "not till we've the legs on her. when mr m'niven----" at this moment the chief came up on to the bridge, black and grimed from head to foot. "all right, mr vernon, you can go full steam ahead now. we've got every bit of grit out, and she'll work as easy as ever she did." "then," said the president, "i reckon that's about all that we want. full steam ahead, if you please, mr vernon; you can let her go both engines." the chief officer pulled the telegraph handle over to full speed. the next moment two columns of boiling foam leapt out from under the _nadine's_ counters as she sprang forward from eight knots to sixteen, and then to twenty. almost at the same instant the maxim-nordenfeldt from the _vlodoya_ forecastle spoke again, and a seven-pound shell, aimed low this time, came hurtling across the water, and missed the _nadine's_ stern by about ten yards. "i reckon that means business," said the president. "full speed ahead, if you please, mr vernon, and hard aport." the _nadine_ made a splendid swerve through an arc of about a hundred and eighty degrees, and then began the naval duel, on the issue of which the future course of human history was to depend. the _vlodoya_ fired three more shots in as many minutes, but they went wide, for she was steaming nearly seventeen knots and the _nadine_ twenty. then as the _nadine_ swung round so that her bow pointed towards the _vlodoya_, the president signed to the two men who were working the gun, a wheel was whirled round, and the muzzle swung slowly until he put his hand up and said: "stop her, if you please, mr vernon, and screw her round as hard as you can." the engine telegraph rang, a sharp shudder ran through the fabric of the _nadine_, the water which had been swirling astern mounted up ahead as her engines backed, and her bow came up, till the president raised his hand again to stop her. at the same moment another shell from the _vlodoya_ whistled over the deck at an elevation of only a few feet. in fact, it passed so near to miss chrysie that she involuntarily put her hand up to keep her hat on her head. clifford vandel saw it. he didn't say anything, but he set his teeth, squinted along the sights of his gun, and touched a button in the breech. five seconds later a mountain of boiling foam rose up under the stern of the _vlodoya_. she stopped like a stricken animal, and lay motionless on the water, lurching slowly down by the stern. "well hit, poppa!" cried miss chrysie, from the bridge. "i guess that's got him on a tender spot. the count won't have much screws to work with after that. oh, they're going to shoot again. suppose you gave them one forward this time." while she was speaking, the quick-firer had already been reloaded, the president moved the long barrel a couple of degrees, and touched the button again. the sharp hiss of the released air was followed by an intensely brilliant flash of light on the forecastle of the _vlodoya_, and when the smoke had cleared away the maxim-nordenfeldt had vanished. "i guess there's not much wrong with that automatic sighting arrangement of mine," said the president; "hits every time." "couldn't be better, poppa! i reckon they're pretty tired by this. suppose mr vernon gives her full speed again, and we go along and have a talk with ma'm'selle sophie and the count. shouldn't wonder if they knew by now that we've raised their bluff, and are ready to see them for all they've got." the president re-charged his gun, and then, leaning his back up against the bridge, said: "well, yes, chrysie, i think we can see them now, if mr vernon will give us full speed ahead for a few minutes." the chief officer nodded, and pulled the handle of the telegraph over. the answering tinkle came back from the engine-room, in which the chief had retired after he had given his message, and the _nadine_ again sprang forward towards the crippled vessel that was now her prey. she described another magnificent curve, and as she rushed up alongside the russian yacht at a distance of about two hundred yards, miss chrysie sat herself down on a camp-stool behind the maxim, and sent half-a-dozen shots rattling through the rigging of the _vlodoya_. then, as the _nadine_ swung in closer, she depressed the barrel of the gun on to the bridge, on which she could now recognise the count and his daughter, and sang out, in a clear soprano: "hands up, please, or i'll shoot. my dear countess sophie, i never expected this of you." countess sophie looked at her father, and bit a russian curse in two between her tightly-clenched teeth, and said to her father who was standing beside her on the bridge: "she has failed--she and the engineer too--and these accursed americans have done it, i suppose. they have broken our propellers and disabled our gun. what are we to do? it is exasperating, just when we thought that everything was going so well. what has happened to adelaide?--has she turned traitor too? surely that would be impossible." "impossible or not, my dear sophie," replied the count, "there is now no choice between sinking and surrender. you see, that gun, one of these diabolical american inventions, i have no doubt, would sink us like a shot, and then----" "and then we shall have to surrender, i suppose," said sophie. "but it is still possible that i shall have a chance to shoot that american girl before this little international comedy is played out, and if i do----" "hands up, please, everyone on board, or i _will_ shoot this time," came in clear tones across about fifty yards of water. sophie looked round and saw miss chrysie looking along the sights of the maxim, with her hand on the spring. her face was hard set, and her eyes were burning. there was no mistaking her intention. in another moment a storm of bullets would be raining along the decks of the _vlodoya_. "we are beaten, papa, for the present," she said, as she got up from her chair, and put her hands over her head. the count looked at the grinning muzzle of the maxim and did the same. "yes," he said, "we are beaten this time, and it is hardly good policy to be sunk in the middle of the atlantic. later on, perhaps, we may retrieve something; but it is strange how these anglo-saxons, stupid and all as they are to begin with, always seem to get the best of us at the end. yes; we must surrender or sink, and, personally, i have no taste for the bottom of the atlantic at present. chapter xxiii the _nadine_ ranged alongside, miss chrysie still sitting at her maxim, with robertson beside her ready to see to the ammunition feed, and the president, leaning over the forward rail, said, as laconically as though he had been putting the most ordinary business proposition: "good-morning, excellency; i guess you and the countess had better come on board as soon as possible. if you'll lower the gangway i'll send a boat; but if there's any more shooting i shall sink you. i don't want to do anything unpleasant, you understand; but that high-toned friend of yours the marquise has half-poisoned most of us, and so the rest have to take charge. are you badly hurt?" count valdemar held a hurried consultation with the captain of the _vlodoya_, and replied, as politely as he could: "the fortune of war is with you, mr vandel, and there is no need for any further concealment. we are crippled, but the watertight compartments have been closed and we shall float. meanwhile, we are helpless and entirely at your service. what do you wish us to do?" in the meantime the _nadine's_ boat had been lowered, and was pulling round her stern to the gangway of the _vlodoya_, which had been lowered, and the president replied: "we'll have to ask your excellency and the countess to be our guests for a bit; so if you'll just come right on board and tell your people to get your baggage fixed up, we'll be able to save you a certain amount of unpleasantness. you will be a lot more comfortable on board here than you will there, because we're going to take what coal you've got and then sink you." as the president said this the captain of the russian yacht nodded towards a man standing by one of the one-pounders on the fore deck. he pulled the lanyard, there was a sharp bang, and a shell bored its way through the plates of the _nadine_ amidships, just missing the engines. the next moment miss chrysie's maxim began to thud, spitting flame and smoke and lead, sweeping the decks of the _vlodoya_ from stem to stern. only those on the bridge were spared. for a full three minutes the deadly hail continued, and there was not a man on deck who was not killed or maimed. the president had jumped back to the breech of his gun, the muzzle swung round till it bore directly on the part of the _vlodoya_ which contained her boilers. he held up his hand and chrysie stopped the maxim. then she swung it on to the bridge, glanced along the sights and touched the spring. there was a crack and a puff of smoke and flame, and the captain of the _vlodoya_, who was standing about a couple of feet away from count valdemar and sophie, reeled half round and dropped with a bullet through his heart. "i guess your excellency and the countess had better come on board right away," said the president, still looking along the sights of his gun. "that's a pretty unhealthy place you're in, and my daughter's only got the patience of an ordinary woman, you know." sophie looked across at the _nadine's_ bridge, and saw chrysie's white face and burning eyes looking over the barrel of the maxim. her thumb was on the spring and there was death in her eyes. she took her father by the arm, and said: "come, papa, it's no use. that she-devil will shoot us like dogs if we don't go. come." and so they went down to the deck, strewn with corpses and splashed with blood, to the gangway ladder, at the bottom of which the _nadine's_ boat was waiting. miss chrysie at once left the gun with which she had done such terrible execution, and went with the chief officer to receive them. to the utter astonishment of both the count and sophie, she held out her hand as cordially as though the meeting had taken place on the terrace of orrel court, and said with a somewhat exaggerated drawl: "well, countess, and your excellency, i am real glad to see you. we sort of thought we should meet you somewhere about here, and i am sure his lordship and the viscount and lady olive, when they get better, will do all they can to make you comfortable. now, here's the stewardess. as she didn't have any of the marquise's punch last night, she's ready to show you to your room. mr vernon, perhaps you'll be kind enough to attend to his excellency. good-bye for the present: i guess we shall meet at lunch." "really, after the unpleasantness that has happened," said the count, "your kindness, and your hospitality are quite overwhelming." "and," added sophie, as the two prisoners of war passed into the charge of their respective custodians, "i must say that to me it is as mysterious as it is charming. if the conditions had been reversed, i should certainly have shot you." "it wouldn't have been quite fair," replied miss chrysie, sweetly. "you see i had a gun, and you hadn't." she watched them disappear down the companion way to the saloon, then she put her hands up to her eyes, groped her way half-blindly to a long wicker chair, dropped into it and incontinently fainted. just then the chief, washed, shaved, new-clad and thoroughly contented with the really splendid piece of work that had been done on one of his beloved engines, came on deck, looking as though nothing very particular had happened. he saw instantly what was the matter. "the lassie has a wonderful nerve," he said to himself. "ay, what a man she'd have made! but she's only a lassie after all, and we'd better get her below. i'll just take her down to mrs evans without troubling the president. he's got plenty to think about. yes; vernon's on the bridge, and he'll see to things." then he picked her up in his arms and carried her down to her own cabin and laid her in her berth, and gave her into the charge of the stewardess. then he went up to the captain's room, and found him just recovering consciousness. "what's the matter, m'niven?" he said. "that infernal punch last night seems to have poisoned me. i seem to have been having nightmare after nightmare, with guns firing and----" "that's all right, captain," replied the scotsman; "if you'd taken less of that infernal punch and more honest whisky, as i did, you wouldn't have such an awful head on you as i suppose you have. still, there's nothing much to trouble about. we've got the engine to rights again; we've met the russian yacht, and fought her, and beaten her. mr vandel smashed her up with his gun, and miss vandel--a wonderful girl that, sir, a wonderful girl--she sat at her maxim as if it had been a sewing-machine, and seemed to think no more of shots than stitches, and then, woman-like, she fainted, and i've just taken her below and handed her over to mrs evans. "and now, captain, don't you think that a wee peg would do you good? mr vernon's on the bridge, the president's holding up the russians with his gun, and the engines are working all right, but half the crew and all the company are still something like dead, with that frenchwoman's drugs, whatever they were." captain burgess took the chief engineer's hint, and a stiff brandy and soda. then he dressed and went on deck, and had a brief conversation with the president, after which he took charge of the operations of clearing all the coal and stores out of the _vlodoya_ before she was sent to the bottom. the president and miss chrysie had to entertain their involuntary guests at lunch, for although the rest of the _nadine's_ company were recovering consciousness, they were still under the doctor's care and unable to leave their berths; but at dinner that evening lady olive, the earl, and hardress were able to welcome them, and they did so with a sardonic cordiality which compelled both his excellency and sophie to admit that these anglo-saxons were, after all, not such bad diplomatists as europeans were wont to think. madame de bourbon was still prostrate, and the marquise had the best of reasons for remaining in her own cabin. it was perhaps as strange a dinner party as ever sat down afloat or ashore, and it was rendered doubly strange by the fact that the last time they had all sat together most of them suspected, and some of them knew, that this very conflict, which had ended in spite of all disadvantages so completely in favour of the _nadine_ and her company, was certain to take place, yet very few references were made to the state of active hostilities which had now been practically proclaimed. count valdemar and sophie were treated on board the _nadine_ exactly as they had been at orrel court. lord orrel and lady olive were just as they had been at cowes, and in the solent. hardress, who had taken a somewhat perilously large dose of the fair adelaide's punch, looked pale and seemed rather sleepy, until he had had two or three glasses of champagne, and then he seemed to brighten up, and began discussing international politics with a frankness and an intimate knowledge which simply astounded their involuntary guests. so far as the party was concerned, there was now no further need for anything like concealment, and not only were the storage works discussed, in their full nature and purpose, but even the advent of the french and russian expeditions at boothia land was anticipated with what the count afterwards described to sophie as brutally disgusting frankness. miss chrysie, eating her strawberries at dessert as daintily as though her hands had never been within a mile of a maxim gun, chatted and chaffed just as she had been wont to do at orrel court, and the president talked gunnery and machinery with the captain and mr m'niven, who had been invited to join the party; and finally, when even the marquise came into dessert on lady olive's pressing invitation, all that she heard about her deliberate attempt to drug the whole ship's company was from lord orrel, who rose as she entered, and said in just such a tone as he might have used in the drawing-room at orrel court: "my dear marquise, i am delighted to see that you have recovered from the same mysterious indisposition that has affected all of us. i am really afraid that there must have been something wrong with the recipe for the punch _à le grand monarque_, or perhaps it was not intended for general use. however, as we are all happily recovered, we need not trouble ourselves any further about that." adelaide entered instantly into the spirit of the comedy that was being played, and she replied: "ah, my lord, it is so kind of you not to blame me! believe me, i am desolated, and have been very nearly killed, and my poor aunt believes too that she is going to die. it is my last performance at punch-making, for i have torn the horrible recipe up and thrown it into the sea." "i am rather sorry to hear that, marquise," said hardress, looking at her with a cold, steady stare, which at once enraged and infinitely saddened her; for it proved that the empire, which until a few hours ago she had hoped to gain over him, and through him the world, was now only a dream never to be realised. still, she kept herself under command marvellously, and greeted the count and sophie just as though the _nadine_ had been lying off cowes instead of being lashed to the _vlodoya_ in mid-atlantic, with the steam winches rattling and roaring over their heads, emptying the russian yacht's bunkers into the _nadine's_ as fast as her own crew and what was left of her enemy's could do it. in short, a most unexpectedly pleasant evening was spent by everybody. coffee and cigars and cigarettes were taken up into the smoking-room, which was well to windward of the coal dust. adelaide went to the piano and played brilliantly. then she accompanied sophie in quaint and tenderly-touching russian folk-songs. then miss chrysie sang coon songs and accompanied herself; and hardress, on her suggestion, made with a wicked humour in her dancing eyes, recite kipling's "rhyme of the three sealers" to her own piano accompaniment. they both did it very well, and more than one person in the cosy little smoking-room could have killed them for it. nothing occurred to give the count and sophie or adelaide and the innocent madame de bourbon any idea that they were really prisoners until they retired for the night. then the chief steward knocked at the count's door and asked if he wanted anything more. mrs evans did the same for sophie and the marquise, and then the doors of the staterooms were locked. they were unlocked again at seven the next morning, and, after baths and early coffee, hardress invited his guests on to the bridge to watch the end of the _vlodoya_. during the night she had been completely stripped of everything that could be useful to her captor. every pound of coal was taken out of her bunkers. the two little quick-firers had been transferred with all their ammunition to the _nadine_. her four boats, amply provisioned and watered, were comfortably filled with such of her officers and crew as chrysie's maxim volley had left alive. there was a southward breeze, and in forty-eight hours at the outside they were certain to be picked up, either by a liner or a cargo boat, and plenty of money had been given them to pay their passages either to europe or america. when they had hoisted their sails and began to bear away towards the steamer-track, the _nadine_ cast off from the _vlodoya_, her screws began to revolve, and the president got his gun loaded. "i reckon we might have a little gun practice, and see how far this pea-shooter really will carry," he said, looking up at the bridge, with a smile in which neither sophie nor her father found very much humour. "will you make it five miles, captain?" the captain rang for full speed. the _nadine_ sprang forward with a readiness which showed how utterly futile the plot to cripple her had been, and in a few minutes the motionless hull of the _vlodoya_ was a white speck on the water. then she stopped and swung round. the president adjusted his automatic sights, waited till she rose on the swell, and let go. there was a hiss and a whizz, and then, where the speck was a bright flash blazed out. two more shells followed in quick succession, and as the last flash blazed out, count valdemar took his glasses down from his eyes and looked at hardress, and said, with a touch of bitterness in his tone: "she has gone! that is a wonderful gun, viscount." "yes," replied hardress, dryly. "that is a twelve-pounder. we have some hundred-pounders at the works, as well as a new weapon which may interest your excellency very much. it destroys without striking. if the french and russian north polar expedition should chance to pay us a visit, you may perhaps see them both in action." "and now, president," he went on, "i suppose we may as well shape our course for boothia land." "there is nothing more to wait for that i know of, viscount," he replied. and so the _nadine's_ head was swung round to the north-west, her engines were put to their full power, and so she began her voyage to that desolate spot of earth which was soon to become the seat of the world-empire. chapter xxiv within ten days of the sinking of the _vlodoya_ europe was electrified by the news, published far and wide through the english and continental press, of what amounted to a pitched battle between two armed private yachts in mid-atlantic. as may well be imagined, the strange narrative of the officers and sailors of the _vlodoya_ lost nothing either in the telling to the interviewers or in the reproduction in the newspapers. the boats' crews had been picked up, about thirty-six hours after the sinking of the russian yacht, by a french liner, which took them to le havre. the officers had taken the greatest precautions to prevent the men from speaking too freely, but it was no use. there were two journalists, one an englishman and the other an american, on board the boat, and they agreed to divide the sensation between themselves and their two countries. both were in the service of wealthy journals, and they bribed as freely as they did unscrupulously, with the result that, in addition to the general gossip of the ship, which was more or less accurate, they each possessed a fairly comprehensive narrative of what had happened on the high seas between the _nadine_ and the _vlodoya_, both of which were speeding over the wires to america and canada within half-an-hour of the liner's arrival at le havre. but the englishman did even better than this, for he practically kidnapped the third engineer of the _vlodoya_, who could speak very good french, chartered a special steamer to southampton, pumped him absolutely dry on the passage, and turned up at midnight at the office of his paper with a column and a half of vividly-written description of the most sensational event that had taken place on the high seas since the affair of the _trent_ during the american war. the presses were stopped, the matter was set up with lightning speed, and by the next morning that journalist had achieved the biggest scoop of the twentieth century. the news agencies immediately wired extracts all over the continent, and meanwhile the news had been leaking out through other sources in france, for passengers will talk, and the captain was bound to make his formal report as to the picking up of the castaways; wherefore, within twenty-four hours the whole continental press was teeming with interviews, more or less authentic, leading articles, and notes on the subject of this astounding occurrence. two russian newspapers published a few meagre details, and were promptly suppressed. the _globe_, in a leader on what it termed the "astonishing intelligence published by a morning contemporary," put the matter very concisely, and with its usual clearness and insight into foreign affairs. "we have here," said the writer, "not only one of the most astonishing, but one of the most significant incidents of modern times--an incident which, almost incredible as it is, is nevertheless the more significant when taken in conjunction with other contemporary events, of which our readers have been kept constantly informed. it is not customary for either russian or english private yachts to carry guns, and it is somewhat unusual for a russian yacht, owned by a well-known russian ex-minister of state, to start, as we know the _vlodoya_ did, from southampton on a cruise to the baltic, stop at cherbourg, and then turn up in the middle of the atlantic. but what is the world to think when this yacht, the property of a nobleman high in favour at the court of st petersburg, deliberately opens fire on a yacht owned by an english nobleman, whose guest the owner of the _vlodoya_ had been but a few days before? perhaps even more amazing is the fact that the english yacht replied in kind; crippled her opponent, took the owner and his daughter prisoners, set the crew adrift, sank her adversary, and vanished. viscount branston's yacht was, we understand, bound for halifax, with two distinguished french ladies on board. a cable just to hand informs us that nothing has been heard of her, although she should have arrived there nearly a week ago. with some reluctance we feel compelled to ask whether there is any connection between this extraordinary occurrence and the mysterious electrical works which, as is well known, are being constructed, at enormous expense, by a syndicate of which both viscount branston and his father, the earl of orrel, are prominent members. there have been many strange and wild rumours current about this enterprise within the last few months, and we confess that this almost incredible incident appears to lend some countenance to them. "in the same connection, it is necessary to call attention to the fact that, just as this enterprise was approaching completion, france and russia both equipped a so-called scientific expedition for the purpose of once more attempting to force a passage to the north pole. we do not profess to have any inside knowledge as to these mysterious proceedings, but we confess that we should not be greatly surprised if it would not be more correct to read 'magnetic pole' for 'north pole'. it is impossible to see anything other than an international significance. noblemen of different nationalities do not nowadays go out on to the high seas to fight naval duels to arrange their private differences; wherefore it appears that either the _vlodoya_ was a common pirate outside the law of nations, and yet owned by a russian ex-minister, who was on board when the act of piracy was committed, or she was a privateer acting under the licence of the russian government. we, in common with the whole civilised world, shall await with the utmost anxiety the immediate development of this wholly unparalleled state of affairs." the world waited for about a week, and heard nothing. the british foreign office made its usual timid and tentative representation, and received the usual snub, to the effect that the russian government was investigating the matter as fully as possible, but had so far only arrived at the fact that the english yacht fired first. but the plots and counterplots and the steady preparations which had been going on for the working out or the defeating of the great scheme were now about to bear fruit, and the world was not to be lacking in sensations such as it had never experienced before. no sooner did the german government learn the story of the duel between the _nadine_ and the _vlodoya_ than its secret agents began to put two and two together, and make their representations accordingly. ex-captain victor fargeau was known to have been an intimate friend of adelaide de condé, who was a guest on board the _nadine_, and, further, to have been in close communication with count valdemar, the owner of the _vlodoya_. he had left his country, taken up his residence in paris, and had been proved to be in close touch with general ducros. all this was significant enough, but when the cleverest of all the german agents in paris found out that ex-captain victor fargeau, late of the german army, had been appointed to the scientific command of the french polar expedition, darkness became light, and a peremptory demand was sent from berlin to paris for his immediate extradition on the previous charge of high treason. to this paris returned a polite but uncompromising refusal, and berlin promptly said that if the expedition sailed with ex-captain fargeau on board, a german squadron would stop it and take him off. to this france replied by mobilising the northern squadron and ordering the admiral in command to escort the expedition to sea and protect it against assault at all hazards. paris also sent berlin a curt note intimating that if the threat were carried out it would be taken as a declaration of war. another note arrived at berlin about the same time from petersburg, informing the german kaiser that these french and russian polar expeditions formed a joint enterprise on the part of the two countries, and that any act hostile to the one would be considered hostile to the other. the note also plainly hinted that, considering the tremendous nature of the issues involved by a breach of the international peace, such a trivial matter as the extradition of a person accused of treason could not possibly under the circumstances afford a valid reason for what would be to all intents and purposes an act of war. within twenty-four hours a powerful french squadron was manoeuvring off the mouth of the kiel canal, just out of range of the forts; the french polar expedition, with victor fargeau on board, was making its way at full speed down the english channel; the russian expedition, headed by the _ivan the terrible_, passed the north cape on its way to the coast of greenland; and four millions of russians and frenchmen of all arms were massed on the eastern and western frontier of germany. at the same moment kaiser wilhelm called upon his brother sovereigns of austria and italy, and the triple alliance stood to arms by land and sea. in a word, the european powder-magazine was lying wide open, and the firing of a single shot would have turned it into a volcano. still the weeks dragged on, till the tension became almost unendurable. according to an old north of england saying, "one was afraid and t'other daren't start," the risks were so colossal. great britain meanwhile kept her own counsel, and went on sweeping up the remnant of the rebel boers in south africa. the only precaution she had taken was to place every effective ship in the navy in commission. it was at this juncture that europe experienced a new sensation. in one memorable week english, american, french, german, austrian, and italian liners from american ports brought packages of the strangest proclamation that ever was issued, and in the mail-bags of the same boats there were similar communications addressed to all the chancelleries of europe, and these were of a character to shake the official mind to its very foundations, as in fact they ultimately did. the communications, both public and private, took the form of a modest circular dated from the offices of the international electrical power and storage trust, buffalo, n.y. those which were addressed to the crowned heads of europe were accompanied by autograph letters respectfully requesting the personal attention of the monarch to the contents of the circular. the circular ran as follows:- the secretary of the international electrical power and storage trust is directed by his board of managers to inform the ruling sovereigns and peoples of europe of the following facts, and to request their most serious attention to the same:- _a._ the directors of the trust view with great concern the formidable military and naval preparations which have lately been made by the powers of europe. in their opinion, these preparations point to a near outbreak of hostilities on such an immense scale that not only must a vast expenditure of blood and money be inevitable, but the commerce of the world will be most injuriously affected. _b._ this trust is a business concern. its directors have no international sympathies whatever, and they don't want war. at the same time, if the powers of europe are determined to fight, the trust will permit them to do so on payment of a capitation fee of the equivalent in the money of each respective country of one dollar per head of effective fighting men in the field per week--fees to be paid into the bank of england within seven days after the commencement of hostilities. a liberal allowance will be made for killed and wounded if official returns are promptly sent to the london office of the trust, 56_b_ old broad street, london, e.c. _c._ prompt attention to the foregoing paragraphs is earnestly requested for the following reasons:--(1) the trust has acquired control of the electrical forces of the northern hemisphere, and is, therefore, in a position to make all the operations of civilised life, including warfare, possible or impossible, as its commercial arrangements may demand. (2) one week from the date above will be given for the powers of europe to settle their differences without fighting or to accede to the terms offered by the trust. failing this, the northern hemisphere, with certain exceptions, will be deprived of its electrical force. the consequences of this will be that cables and telegraphs will cease to work, and all machinery constructed of iron or steel will break down if operated. railroads will become useless, and bridges of metallic construction will collapse as soon as any considerable weight is placed upon them. _d._ finally, i am directed to state that, in addition to these results, it is unhappily probable that the withdrawal of electrical force will very seriously affect the health of the populations of the northern hemisphere. death-rates will very largely increase, and it is probable that a new disease unknown to medical science will make its appearance. it is expected to be fatal in every case, if the terms of the trust are not complied with, but it will first affect the young and the weakly. it is, therefore, to be hoped that considerations of humanity, if not of policy, will induce the peoples and the governments of europe to accede without delay to the conditions which i have the honour to submit. as may well be imagined, this seemingly preposterous circular was received either with derision or contemptuous silence in every capital of europe save paris. there its import was only too well-known, but at the same time it was impossible for france alone among the nations to acknowledge herself the vassal of the trust. in petersburg something of the truth was known; but the government, confident of the success of the two expeditions, just dropped the communication into the official waste-paper basket and went on with its naval and military preparations. everything depended upon the six vessels which were steaming towards boothia land reaching their goal and accomplishing their mission. if they succeeded, europe would be plunged into the bloodiest war that had been fought since the days of napoleon. if they failed, the war would be stopped by an invisible, but irresistible, force, and humanity would be astounded by the accomplishment of such a miracle of science as it had never seen before. chapter xxv every day after the issue of the circular the wire which connected the storage works with winnipeg was kept hot with the news of what was going on in the far-away civilised world, but for some time all that was heard in that land of unsetting suns only amounted to this: everywhere the press of europe had received the pronouncement of the trust with incredulous derision. it had, in fact, provided professional humourists and caricaturists with quite a new field of industry. the governments, as had been expected, took not the slightest notice of it, and general ducros and the french president, who alone knew what a terrible meaning lay in the plain business-like language of the circular, awaited more and more anxiously as the days went by the execution of the dread fiat of the world masters. the sinking of the _vlodoya_ and the disappearance of the _nadine_ had convinced the minister for war and also the russian government that the plot to capture the controllers of the storage trust had failed, but they could do nothing without admitting that they knew and believed in the power of the trust to do as it threatened. moreover, they could not submit to the terms unless all the other powers did, and they had not even deigned to notice the existence of the trust. meanwhile, the preparations for war went on, and on the day before the expiration of the time given by the general ultimatum to france, the french troops crossed the border at verdun, nancy, and mulhausen, and the northern squadron, strongly reinforced, blockaded the mouth of the elbe and the kiel canal. the russian baltic squadron, which had been going through its summer manoeuvres, blocked the exits from the inland seas and threatened the northern coast of germany, while the russian army was concentrating in enormous numbers at several points along the polish frontier. when austin vandel took the dispatch containing this last news into the department at the works which was commonly called the board-room, the president passed it to lord orrel and hardress, who were having a smoke and afternoon chat with him, and said: "well, i reckon the powers mean business, and so, as they haven't had the politeness to answer that communication of ours, i reckon it's about time we showed them that we mean it, too. they'll be fighting by this time." "i suppose so," replied lord orrel; "and of course it's no use waiting any longer under the circumstances." "not a bit," added hardress; "in fact, as you know, my idea was to start a fortnight ago. if we'd done that they might have found it a bit difficult even to start." "but after all, shafto," said his father, "a fortnight matters nothing to us; and the object-lesson will be very much more striking if we allow hostilities to get into full swing, and then bring them to a dead stop. still, we will begin at once, and i propose, president, that when everything is ready your daughter shall do us the honour of starting the engines." "and if that wants any seconding," added hardress, "i'll do it." "i reckon that'll be about the proudest moment of chrysie's life," laughed the president. "and seeing that our guests have pretty good reason to take an interest in the engines, perhaps it would only be polite to ask them to come and assist at the ceremony." "oh, certainly," said lord orrel. "there can't be any objection to that. shafto, suppose you go and invite them. and it wouldn't be a bad idea if we had a little dinner together afterwards, just to celebrate the occasion. you might see miss chrysie also and request the honour of her services." as hardress left the room the president said to his nephew: "austin, you can go and wire to our people here and over in england that the experiment begins to-night. ask them to let us have all the news they can send, and especially to let us know whether any electric disturbances take place in our territories; and you might ask doctor lamson to come over for a few minutes." from this conversation it will be seen that the momentous voyage of the _nadine_ had ended without any further mishap. davis straits and the northern waters had been singularly clear of ice, and she had been able to steer the whole way to port adelaide without difficulty. doctor lamson had received them in the midst of his marvellous creation as quietly as though he had been receiving them in his own house at hampstead. they had all admired and wondered at the sombre magnificence of what was certainly the most extraordinary structure on the face of the globe. but those who are permitted to see them have marvelled still more at the huge engines and the maze of intricately complicated apparatus which the magic of money and science had called into being in the midst of this desolate wilderness. so far, the involuntary guests of the trust had not been permitted to see anything more than the outsides of the engine-rooms and the apartments which they occupied. they had been politely but unmistakably given to understand that, after what had happened, it would be necessary to consider them as prisoners. they would be treated with every consideration--in fact, as guests. but at the same time, they would be closely watched, and any attempt to communicate with any officer or workman employed on the works would be immediately punished by close confinement for all of them. for their part, they had accepted the strange situation with perfect philosophy, and awaited the coming of the expeditions with a great deal more confidence than they would have felt had they known the terrible nature of the defences with which doctor lamson had armed this fortress in the wilderness. within an hour after the president had pronounced the fiat which was to alter the history of the world, everything was in readiness for the making of the great experiment, and, for the first time since their arrival in boothia, count valdemar, sophie, and the marquise were admitted into the great engine-rooms which stood in the middle of each side of the quadrangle. they stared in frank astonishment at the colossal machinery, and the count said to the president as they entered no. 1, or the northern engine-room: "our aims may not be the same, but i am compelled to confess that you have wrought a most astounding miracle in the midst of the ghastly desert." "it's pretty good," he replied; "but, after all, it's just the sort of miracle that dollars and brains can work all the time. this is not the miracle, this is only what is going to work it. the real miracle will be what our friends in europe see and feel. well, now, doctor, are we ready?" "quite," replied lamson. "lady olive, you will send the signal to the other rooms? a man is stationed in each of them, and if you touch that button when miss vandel pulls the lever you will start the other three engines." miss chrysie, looking just a trifle pale and nervous, took hold of the lever and stood ready to perform the most momentous act ever done by the hand of woman. it had been decided to start the engines precisely at six, and the minute hand of the engine-room clock was getting very near the perpendicular. "it seems a pretty awful thing to do, you know, poppa," she said, "just to pull this thing and set half the world dying." "no; i think you are wrong there, chrysie," said hardress, who was standing beside her, and adelaide's teeth gritted together as she heard the name for the first time from his lips. "when you pull that lever you will save life, not destroy it. without us the war might go on for months or years and cost millions of lives: but ten days after you have pulled that lever the european war will be impossible." "then," said miss chrysie, tightening her grip on the handle, "i guess i'll pull!" at this moment the clock struck the first note of six, and at the third she drew the lever towards her. the starting-engine gave a few short puffs and pants. lady olive touched the button, and the bells tinkled in the other engine-rooms. the huge cranks of the steel giants began to revolve. the mighty cylinders gasped and hissed, and the huge fly-wheels began to move, at first almost imperceptibly, and then faster and faster, till each was a whirling circle of bright steel. the hiss of the steam ceased, and the four giants settled down to their momentous work in silence, save for a low, purring hum, which was not to cease day or night until armed europe had acknowledged their all-compelling power. "it is very wonderful, but very weird," said adelaide to chrysie as they left the room, "if only it is all true. to think that you, by just bending your arm should set those mighty monsters to work--and such work! to steal the soul out of the world, to paralyse armies and fleets, perhaps to make governments impossible--perhaps to reduce civilisation to chaos!" "i reckon those engines will cause less chaos than your friends in europe, marquise," she replied, shortly, but not unkindly; "but, anyhow, they should have taken poppa's terms; and if they will fight, they must pay for the luxury. anyhow, we'd better not talk about that; it's no use getting unfriendly over subjects we can't agree upon. what do you say, countess?" "i entirely agree with you," said sophie, frankly. "you know, adelaide, that for prisoners of war we are being treated exceedingly well. and for the present, at least, until our hosts are able to terminate their invitation, i think we might be as nearly friends as we can be." "that's so," said miss chrysie, heartily, yet well knowing that they were both awaiting the moment when, as they believed, the arrival of the expeditions would make the present owners of the works prisoners of france and russia, and that either of them would poison her or put a bullet through her without the slightest hesitation. "yes; that's so. we've got to live here together for a bit, and i reckon we may as well do it as pleasantly as possible. and now, suppose we go to dinner." all things considered, the dinner was really a most agreeable function. the principal topic of conversation was, of course, the effect which the starting of the works would produce on the northern hemisphere in general and the fleets and armies of europe in particular. international politics, too, were discussed, not only with freedom, but with a knowledge which would have astonished many a european minister; but one subject was tabooed by mutual consent, and that was the french and russian polar expeditions, which, if they were really making for boothia land, ought to arrive in about a week's time. the three involuntary guests knew perfectly well that their hosts were expecting them. their hosts knew that they knew this, and, therefore, as a matter of politeness and mutual convenience, the words "polar expedition" were absolutely banished from their conversation. meanwhile, port adelaide had been fast emptying for the time when the colliers and cargo boats could get back, for the time was limited. only the _nadine_ and the _washington_, a passenger boat capable of about sixteen knots, which had brought the staff up from halifax, were kept, in addition to a couple of steam launches and a powerful tug sheathed and fitted as an icebreaker. the _nadine_ and the _washington_ constantly patrolled the coast for twenty miles in each direction, on the lookout for the expeditions. around and inside the works life went on as quietly as though nothing out of the common was happening. the unsetting sun rose and dipped on the southern horizon, and the great engines purred unceasingly, working out the dream of the man whose mangled body lay in a nameless grave on an alien soil. they had been working for six days when europe awoke to an uneasy suspicion that, after all, there must have been something in that preposterous circular which the electrical power and storage trust, of buffalo, n.y., had sent out some five weeks before. on the evening of the fifth day after miss chrysie had pulled the lever over in no. 1 engine-room a series of unaccountable accidents happened in the engine-rooms of the french northern squadron, which was blockading the mouth of the elbe. do what they would, the engineers could not keep the engines working smoothly. little accidents kept on happening with such frequency that the efforts of the whole staff could scarcely keep the engines in working order; and about the same time the officers on the bridges, noticed that the compasses were beginning to behave in a most extraordinary fashion. even when the ships were quite stationary, they wavered two or three degrees on either side of north, and as the night wore on the variation increased. the next morning there happened what, up to then, was the strangest incident in warfare. the _charles martel_, one of the most powerful ironclads in the french fleet, was cruising under easy steam, just out of range of the heavy guns on the canal forts, when the admiral commanding the squadron, who was on the bridge, heard a muffled grinding noise, and felt a shudder run through the vast fabric. the next moment an officer came up from the lower deck, saluted, and gasped: "admiral, the port shaft has broken, and we are only going quarter speed!" he had hardly got the last words out of his mouth before there was another grinding shock, and a dull rattle away down in the vitals of the ship. "ah, there is something more!" cried the officer. "they tell me that the engines have been mad all night." "go and see what it is," said the admiral; "we must put out to sea with one engine." at that moment the chief engineer came up, looking white and scared, and said, in a low, shaking voice: "monsieur, the crank shaft of the starboard engine has splintered as though it had been made of glass. we are disabled!" "nom de dieu!" exclaimed the admiral. "what is that you say?--disabled? and the tide setting in. then we are lost. a few minutes will take us within range of the guns on the canal and at cuxhaven, and in an hour we may be ashore. there is no hope of repairs, i suppose?" "impossible, monsieur l'amiral. it would take weeks in the best dockyard in france to repair the damage." "then," said the admiral, turning to the commander, who was standing beside him, "we must do what we can. we will not be lost for nothing. let everything be ready to return the fire of the forts as soon as we are within range." by this time the german officers on the forts had noted with amazement, not unmixed with satisfaction, that some unaccountable accident had happened to the great french battleship. she was not under steam, she was not steering, she was simply drifting in with the tide as helplessly as a barrel. the tide was setting dead in towards the mouth of the canal, and the commander of the great fort at brunsbüttel, making certain of her surrender or destruction, ordered three of his heaviest guns, monsters capable of throwing a nine-hundred-pound shell to a distance of nearly fourteen miles, to prepare for action. they were mounted on disappearing carriages worked by hydraulic machinery. the guns were already loaded, the mechanism was set in motion, and the giants rose slowly till their muzzles grinned over the glacis of the fort. then, without any warning, the framework of one of the carriages cracked and splintered in all directions, the huge gun came back with a terrific crash on to the concrete floor of the emplacement, and, to the amazement of officers and gunners, broke into three pieces as if it had been made of glass instead of the finest steel that krupp could produce. officers and men stared at each other in silent amazement. were even the guns and their machinery affected by this strange languor which had been afflicting both men and animals for the last day or two? instinctively they drew away from the other gun; but the _charles martel_ was now well within range, and colonel von altenau saw that it was his duty not to allow her to come any closer. in fact, he was almost surprised to see that she had not already opened fire upon the fort, so he ordered the centre gun to be trained on her and fired. as the lanyard was pulled, those on board the battleship saw a vivid burst of flame, and the roar of an explosion came dully across the water, but no shell followed it. the admiral immediately came to the conclusion that some accident had happened in the fort, and he ordered his two forward 13-inch guns to send a couple of shells into it. he went into the conning-tower, and as soon as he received the signal that the guns were ready and laid, he pressed the electric button which should have sent the sparks through the charges. nothing happened, and the guns remained silent. then he called down the speaking-tube connecting the conning-tower with the barbette: "the wire does not act. let the guns be fired by hand." he was obeyed, and the next moment the blast of a frightful explosion shook the whole fabric of the ship. barbette and guns disappeared in a blinding blaze of flame. the solid steel crumbled to dust, the decks cracked like starred glass in all directions, and some forty brave fellows were blown over the edge of eternity without even knowing what had happened to them. both guns had burst into thousands of fragments, just as the great german gun in the fort had done, killing every man within twenty yards of it. the guns had, in fact, behaved much as that little square of steel had done when doctor emil fargeau hit it with a wooden mallet. thus the first shots of the war had resulted only in the slaying of those who had fired them. as the helpless _charles martel_ drifted slowly towards the other forts, they attempted to open fire on her, but after two more big guns had blown themselves to atoms, and killed or maimed a hundred men, she was allowed to drift on until she found a resting-place on the elbe mud. on the other ships of the french squadron disaster after disaster had been happening meanwhile. engine after engine broke down, electric signals, as well as the electrical ammunition lifts, ceased to work. the compass cards swung about as aimlessly as though there was no such thing as a magnetic pole in existence, and as ship after ship became disabled with broken shafts, cracked cylinders, or splintered piston-rods, a score of the finest warships that france had ever put to sea drifted helplessly up with the tide under the eyes of an enemy that could not fire a shot at them. the commander-in-chief of the brunsbüttel station telegraphed to his colleague at kiel to report the unaccountable disaster, but no answer was received. the message was repeated, and a lieutenant came in a few minutes later, clicked his heels together, and said: "herr commandant, it is impossible to communicate with kiel, the instruments have ceased to work. i have telephoned as well, but the wires are dead." "but it is ridiculous--unaccountable!" exclaimed the commandant. "we must communicate. have an engine made ready at once, lieutenant, and go yourself. i will send a letter." the lieutenant found a locomotive with steam up. he took the commandant's letter and started. within fifty yards the engine broke down as completely as the machinery of the _charles martel_ had done. chapter xxvi eight days out of the ten calculated by the president and doctor lamson for the progress of the great experiment had expired, and europe presented the extraordinary spectacle of a continent armed to the teeth, possessing the mightiest weapons of destruction that human science and skill could invent and construct--and divided into two hostile camps which were practically unable to hurt each other. away in the far northern wilderness the giant engines purred on remorselessly, continually drawing away more and more of the vital earth-spirit from europe and asia. in great britain and north america nothing had happened, except a succession of abnormally violent thunderstorms, and certain other minor electrical disturbances which were only detected by instruments at the observatories; but all cables had ceased to work, and the only sea communication possible was by means of wooden sailing ships, for every steamer, whether warship, liner, or tramp, broke down when she got about fifteen miles from the english or american coasts. what was happening in the southern hemisphere no one knew till long afterwards. throughout europe and asia a most extraordinary condition of things was coming to pass. what had happened at kiel happened also at all the great fortresses along the german frontier which were invested by the french and russians. guns of all calibres on both sides burst, killing those who used them, but doing no damage to the enemy. quick-firing guns jammed or burst and became useless. if a man tried to fire a rifle, the breech-lock blew out and killed or maimed him, until french and germans, russians, austrians, and italians alike refused to fire a shot, and even on the rare occasions when bodies of men got near enough to each other for a cavalry or bayonet charge, lance-points, sabres, and bayonets cracked and splintered like so many icicles. by the tenth day every officer and man in europe had recognised that if the war was to go on at all it would have to be fought out with fists and feet. all modern weapons of warfare had suddenly become useless. moreover, communication had become so difficult, that the feeding of the vast armies in the field was rapidly approaching impossibility, and the helpless, hostile battalions were beginning to starve in sight of each other. locomotives broke down or blew up, bridges collapsed under the weight of the trains, and now horses and men had become afflicted with a deadly languor which made severe exertion an impossibility. from the war lords of the nations to the raw conscripts and the camp-followers it was the same. neither mind nor body would do its work. the soul of the world was leaving it--drawn out by those remorseless engines into the vast receivers of the storage works--and men were beginning to find that without it they could neither think nor work any more than they could fight. there was not a cable or a telegraph line in europe or asia that could be operated, not a stationary or locomotive engine that would work without breaking down or blowing up. electric lighting and traction had for two or three days been things of the past. throughout two continents industries and commerce, like war, were at a standstill; a sort of creeping paralysis had spread from the straits of dover to the sea of japan. there were no exceptions, from the rulers of the highest civilisations down to the sampan men of canton and the fur-clad samoyeds of the northern wilderness. great fleets and squadrons were either drifting about the ocean or lying helpless on rock or sand or mud-bank, like the silenced forts full of guns and ammunition and yet unable to fire a single shot either in attack or defence. on the morning of the eleventh day the french president, who had been drawn along the useless railway from paris to calais by relays of horses harnessed to a light truck running on wheels of papier-maché, embarked for dover on board a fishing-lugger. twelve hours before the german emperor had sailed from cuxhaven, which he had reached by rail with infinite difficulty, and after a dozen breakdowns, for harwich in a fast wood-built schooner-yacht. during the last four or five days there had been very little communication between the continent and england. all english steamers, including warships, had been forbidden to pass the three-mile limit. by a happy accident the channel fleet and the home defence squadron had anchored in british waters after the manoeuvres just before miss chrysie pulled that fatal lever. the mediterranean fleet was at malta, powerless to move an engine or fire a gun. communication across the narrow seas was still possible by wooden sailing craft, and it was the news which these had brought from england that had induced the kaiser and the president to go and see the miracle for themselves. the moment that they set foot on english soil, which they did almost about the same time, the growing lassitude of the last few days vanished. "these are truly the fortunate isles just now," exclaimed the kaiser, as he drew his first breath of the cool english air. "a few moments and i am a man again. then that circular which we all laughed at so was true!" he went on, to himself. "yes, everything seems going on as usual. they seem to be caring as little about the state of europe as they did about the african war. why, there's a train running as easily as though the railways of europe were not strewn with wrecks." then he turned to the aide-de-camp who had accompanied him, and said: "von kritzener, see if you can get me a special to london--but no, we had better keep incognito. be good enough to go and see when there is a fast train to london, and then we will get something to eat." the emperor and his aide were both in ordinary yachting costume, and the points of the famous moustache had been drooped downwards. the aide came back to the yacht in a few minutes, saying that there was a fast train to london in forty minutes; so his majesty dined briefly but well at the great eastern hotel, and presently found himself speeding swiftly and smoothly and with an unwonted sense of security towards london. the french president experienced practically the same sensations when he landed at dover and took the train to charing cross. everything was going on just as usual. they were even doing target practice with the big guns from dover castle; and as he heard the boom of the cannon, he thought with a shudder of what had happened only a day or two before to the great french siege-guns before metz and strassburg. all he noticed out of the common was what the kaiser noticed too--lines of great steel masts along the coast and clumps of them on every elevation inland. from what he had already learnt from general ducros, he half-guessed that these were the means through which the earth received the vast volumes of electricity given off from the works in boothia land, and that it was thus that the magnetic equilibrium was kept undisturbed. in london nothing seemed altered. everybody was going about his daily business as though no such continent as europe existed; so the president and the kaiser, wondering greatly, both went and put up at claridge's, and there, to their mutual astonishment, recognised each other. both were strictly incognito, both recognised that the state of affairs in europe had reached the limits of the possible, and both guessed that they had come practically on the same errand. wherefore kaiser bowed to president and president bowed to kaiser, after which they shook hands, took wine together, and, like a couple of good sportsmen, proceeded a little later on to discuss the situation in the kaiser's private sitting-room. the result of an interesting and momentous conversation was that the kaiser sent his aide with an autograph letter to marlborough house requesting the honour of an interview with king edward for himself and the president. the answer was a royal brougham and pair, and a cordial invitation to the two potentates whom fate and the great storage trust had brought so strangely together to sleep at marlborough house. nearly the whole of the next day was occupied in interviews between the three rulers, and also with the ministers of the great powers who were still in london. the american minister and the english manager of the great storage trust were present at most of them. at the end of a lengthy discussion on the _status quo_, the kaiser confessed, in his usual frank, manly fashion, that not only germany, but europe, was helpless in face of the invisible but tremendous force which the trust had shown itself capable of exercising. "we are beaten," he said, "and it would be only foolishness to hide the fact. our ships are helpless hulks, most of them wrecks, our trains will not run, our machinery will not work, our guns will not shoot. within three days we have gone back to the middle ages, or beyond them, for, even if we had armour, you could break it with your fist, and you would not even want a mailed one," he added, with a laugh at his own expense. "there are over ten millions of men carrying arms they cannot use, and hundreds of thousands of these men are starving because the railways are useless and no food can be got to them. it would be absurd were it not so great a tragedy; but since we cannot fight, we must arrange our differences some other way. what do you say, monsieur le president?" "i say as your majesty does," replied monsieur loubet, in his blunt, common-sense fashion; "and since these gentlemen of the trust have shown us how helpless fleets and armies may be rendered, perhaps europe may be induced to seek for some more reasonable method of arranging disputes than by the shedding of blood." "i most sincerely hope so," said king edward; "and if these gentlemen are prepared to endorse these sentiments on behalf of their august masters, i think there will be little difficulty in arranging matters satisfactorily and putting an end to what may be justly described as an intolerable and impossible condition of affairs. what do you say, gentlemen?" he went on, turning to the ministers. "i fear, your majesty, it would be necessary for me to communicate with my imperial master before i could pledge him to any course resembling surrender." "my dear count," said the kaiser, turning towards him with a laugh, "i am afraid you hardly realise the position. it would take you at the very least three weeks, possibly six, to reach petersburg. you forget that all the mechanical triumphs of civilisation are for the present things of the past. there are no cables, no telegraphs, no railways. neither horses nor men are capable of any great exertion, and their strength is becoming less every hour. petersburg is farther from london to-day than pekin was a month ago." "and even from paris," added the president when the emperor had finished, "i have been four days travelling. i came to calais in a truck drawn by horses along the railway, and from calais in a fishing boat. gentlemen, if i may venture to advise, i would suggest that the best, nay, the only thing that europe, in your persons, can do, is to place itself in the hands of his majesty king edward. we have been enemies, but he is the friend of all of us, and if any man on earth can and will do right it is he." "i entirely agree with monsieur le president," said the kaiser. "we are helpless, and he can help us. for my own part, i place the interests of germany unreservedly in his hands." after this it was impossible for the ministers of the other powers to hold back, and so a joint-note was drawn up there and then, praying king edward to accept the office of mediator between the signatory powers and those uncrowned monarchs who, from their citadel in the midst of the far-off northern wilderness, had proved their title to sovereignty by demonstrating their power to render the nation helpless at their will. the only communication that was now possible with canada, and therefore with boothia land, was by means of aërographic messages transmitted from one station to another _via_ the north of scotland, the faroes, iceland, greenland, and newfoundland, where the cable was working as usual. it took nearly twelve hours for the messages to reach the works, and the president had scarcely communicated its contents to his colleagues when the _nadine_ came rushing full speed into adelaide bay with the news that the great russian ice-breaker, with three other vessels in her wake, was steaming down from the northward about twenty miles away. chapter xxvii the news of the coming of the expeditions was allowed to spread without comment through the works, and, to the intense surprise of the three involuntary guests of the trust, no apparent precautions were taken to protect the works or the harbour in which the _nadine_ and the _washington_ were now lying against the coming of what everyone knew could be nothing but a hostile force. the two vessels having made their report, filled their bunkers and steamed out of the harbour again to the southward and westward. the great engines purred on, still draining europe and asia of their vital essence. an aërograph message was sent to king edward and the president of the united states. the one to king edward informed his majesty that the president and board of trust, while insisting upon the terms of the circular they had addressed to the powers of europe, and giving fair warning of what would happen if those terms were ignored, were perfectly content to leave everything else in his majesty's hands. the message to the president gave him all the news that there was to give, and informed him that as soon as the king's decision was announced the engines would be stopped, the insulators removed, and the electrical and magnetic currents allowed to flow back over their natural courses, the result of which would be that, in from twenty-four to thirty-six hours, normal conditions would be re-established, and the business of the world could go on as usual. all fighting, however, save under a war-tax of a dollar per head per week of men engaged in armies and fleets would be prohibited. if this condition, which the london manager of the trust had been instructed to lay before his majesty and the foreign ministers in london, were violated, the engines would be started again, with the same results as before. it was about eight o'clock in the evening of the same day, to put it in conventional terms, for the long summer twilight of boothia land knew no morning and no evening, that the huge shape of the russian ice-breaker, followed by her three consorts, one a genuine wooden-built exploring ship and the others, to a nautical eye, unmistakably steel cruisers disguised with wooden sheathings, rounded cape adelaide into the bay. a couple of miles behind them came the three ships of the french expedition, an antiquated cruiser fitted with the best modern guns, and two obsolete coast-defence ships, slow but strong, and also armed with formidable guns. "so your friends have come at last," said miss chrysie to adelaide and sophie as they were taking their evening promenade along one of the broad parapeted walls which formed the quadrangle of the works. "somehow i always thought it was this pole they were going to look for, not the other one. i reckon they allowed there was a lot more to be found here than up north yonder." "of course they did," said adelaide, with a low laugh that had a wicked ring in it. "there is no need for diplomacy now. here is the world-throne, the seat of such power as man never wielded before. here, within these four great walls, are contained the destinies of all the nations on earth. here is everything; anywhere else nothing. pah! is it not worth fighting for?" "my dear marquise," said sophie, "do you not think that you are letting your feelings run away with you? i grant you they are natural, but----" "but i guess that's what she means all the same," said chrysie; "and i don't like her any the less for saying it. those scientific expeditions of yours have just come out here to take the works by storm, if they can, and run the show on their own. well, that's war, and we're not going to grumble at it. we've made war on europe, and europe's feeling pretty sick over it; but i'll tell you honestly that the sickness of europe just now isn't a circumstance to what those expeditions are going to experience if they try to rush these works by force, and they won't get them any other way. well, now i see that some of the people are going down to the steam launch. shouldn't wonder if lord orrel and poppa were sending your friends an invitation to supper, or breakfast, or whatever you'd call it in this everlasting daylight. i reckon that would be quite an interesting little surprise-party, wouldn't it?" "delightful!" said sophie, her quick wits already at work on the problem of how to turn such a surprise-party to the advantage of russia. after all, when the supreme moment came, it might be possible. victor fargeau would be there on the french expedition, with all the information required to keep the works in operation, or to give the soul which they had stolen from the world back to it. even at the last moment it was still possible to triumph. almost at the same instant similar thoughts were passing through adelaide's brain. here were both expeditions. they had arrived at the psychological moment. she knew that the ships were armed with the finest weapons that modern science could create. there were hundreds of trained sailors, gunners, and marines on board. the works were within easy range of the bay, where the russian ships were even now coming to an anchor. surely in the face of such a force--a force which could wreck even these tremendous works--the masters of the world could do nothing but surrender. at the same time, she would have given a good deal to have had in her pocket the dainty little revolver which she knew miss chrysie had in hers. while they were talking, the french expedition, of which one of the ships had broken down and been compelled to refit at halifax, delaying both expeditions over a week, in addition to the coaling, rounded cape adelaide and proceeded to anchor. there were now six armed vessels in the bay, at a distance of about four miles from the works. a glance through a pair of field-glasses from the walls made it plain that all disguise had now been thrown aside. the joint polar expeditions were now frankly hostile squadrons. the great ice-breaker mounted two six-inch guns forward, one aft, and six twelve-pound quick-firers on each broadside. the wooden exploring ship carried no heavy metal, but the disguised cruisers had mounted all their guns; the french vessels, too, frankly bristled with weapons, from guns capable of throwing a 100-lb. shell down to one-pound quick-firers and maxims. in short, if the works had been a hostile fortress no more unmistakable demonstration could have been made against them by a beleaguering squadron. but although there was no mistaking the errand of the ships, and though it was plain that they had been expected, the guest-prisoners were astounded to find that, so far as they could see, not the slightest preparations were taken for defence. there was not a gun visible, and everyone, chiefs and workmen, went about their business without the slightest show of concern. the vast quadrangle stood amidst the rocks and sand of the wilderness, dark, silent, and inscrutable, and the huge engines purred on unceasingly, and austin vandel sat at his instruments in the telegraph-room, awaiting the word from the king of england, which alone could stop them. "they are inscrutable, these people," said sophie to adelaide when chrysie had left them on the wall to answer a message from her father. "they know that the guns on those ships could level even these huge walls with the ground in a few hours, wreck their machinery--though our friend victor would scarcely allow them to do that if he could help it--and bring them to the choice between surrender and death; but here they are, going on with their work as usual, and not even taking any notice of the arrival of the fleet. mr vandel told papa that they have 100-lb. dynamite guns, but where are they?--there's not a weapon of any kind to be seen." "that doesn't say that they are not here, my dear sophie," replied adelaide. "in fact, i confess that this very silence and apparent carelessness may hide some terrible possibilities. you know what an easy prey we thought we should find the _nadine_, and you saw what happened to the _vlodoya_. frankly, i tell you i do not think that the success of the expeditions is at all certain. you never know what these diabolical people with their new inventions are going to do next. look how that hateful american girl has outwitted us all along; and yet she's as friendly as possible all the time." "except when she was firing on the _vlodoya_ with that horrible gun of hers," added sophie. "don't you wish you had that revolver of hers?" "i would give my soul for it," replied adelaide, between her clenched teeth. "and if you had it, what would you do with it?" "kill her first, and then him," came from between the marquise's clenched teeth. "what!" said sophie, with a vicious little laugh, "kill the man for whose sake you were willing to betray all our plans and perhaps lose us the control of the world? why, your first condition was that no harm should come to him." "i had hopes then, i have none now," she replied, in a tone that sounded like a snarl. "he has found me out, and i have lost him; and when you have lost a man, why should he go on living? i have loved him; yes, perhaps i love him still in some strange way; but you are woman enough and russian enough, sophie, to know that i would rather be a mourner at their funeral than a bridesmaid at their wedding." "my dear adelaide," said sophie, slipping her arm through hers, "that is an excellent sentiment excellently expressed. now i see that you are with us entirely. we are really true allies now, and it rests with us and papa to make the success of the expedition a certainty. will you promise me that if matters come to an extremity, as they certainly will do in a few hours, you really will shoot ma'm'selle chrysie and this absurd englishman who has preferred an american hoyden to the most beautiful woman in europe?" "yes; if i could, i would do it. i would swear that to you on a crucifix," replied adelaide de condé, in a low tone that had a hiss running through it. "then come down to my room and i will show you something," said sophie. "i dare not do it here, for you never know what eyes are watching you." when they reached sophie's apartment she put her hand into the side-pocket of a long fur-trimmed cloak that she was wearing, and took out miss chrysie's revolver. "there it is," she said, handing it to the marquise. "you have told me that you are a good shot, so you can use it better that i can. i hope you will use it at the right time and won't miss." "but how?" exclaimed adelaide, staring at her in amazement as she put out her hand for the dainty little weapon. "how!" laughed sophie. "my dearest adelaide, we have to learn many things in such a service as ours. miss chrysie did not know that she was walking and talking just now with one of the most expert pickpockets in europe. why, i once stole an ambassador's letter-case while i was waltzing with him. he was terribly upset, poor man, and of course i sympathised with him; but it was never found, and the contents proved very useful." "you are wonderful, sophie!" exclaimed adelaide, as she put the revolver into her pocket. "and, of course, all things are fair in love, war, and diplomacy. well, you have no need to fear that i shall not use this." at this moment there was a knock at the door, and the count came in. "well, papa," said sophie, "have you any news? what are these people going to do? have you been able to persuade them to surrender to the expedition?" "on the contrary, my dear sophie," he replied, "they are more inexplicable than ever. would you believe it that lord orrel has actually asked me to go down with him to the port and ask the french and russian leaders of the expedition to dinner, the invitation to include our excellent friend victor fargeau?" "that is only a plot!" exclaimed the marquise; "a shallow plot to get them into the works and make them prisoners. of course they will not be so idiotic as to come." "it is difficult," said the count, "to see how they could refuse such a hospitable offer without at once declaring hostilities. we do not know how the works are defended, or what unknown means of destruction these people may possess, and, to be quite candid, i do not think that our hosts would be guilty of an act of treachery. you know these anglo-saxons are always chivalrous to the verge of imbecility. for instance, if the tables had been turned, should we have treated them as they have treated us? i think you will agree with me that we should not. no; i have no fears whatever on that score, and i shall support lord orrel's invitation with the most perfect confidence." chapter xxviii lord orrel and the count started from the little station just outside the western gate of the works in the private car used by the directors and drawn by a neat little electric engine, which was accustomed to do the four miles in ten minutes. meanwhile, lady olive had what might, by a stretch of imagination, be called afternoon tea, in that land where it was never quite afternoon or morning, on the western wall looking down towards the harbour. when miss chrysie sat down and threw back her afternoon wrap adelaide and sophie were disconcerted, if not altogether surprised, to see that she had a light, long-barrelled, wicked-looking pistol hanging by a couple of silver chains from her waist-band. "my dear chrysie," said lady olive, "what are you carrying that terrible-looking weapon for? you don't expect that you will have to use it, surely," she went on, with just a touch of sarcasm in her tone, "considering what very good friends we have all managed to keep so far?" "well, i hope not," said miss chrysie, looking round the tables with eyes which had both a laugh and a menace in them. "of course, it is to be hoped that everything will go off smoothly, but poppa had a friend in the old times who said something that means a lot. he said, 'you don't want a gun often, but when you do want it you want it badly.' isn't that so, poppa?" "just his words, chrysie," said the president, "just his words; and he knew what he was talking about when he used them. i never met a man who could hold his temper longer or shoot quicker; and when he used a gun someone usually wanted a funeral pretty soon." "but surely," said sophie, "you don't suppose for a moment that our expected guests from the expedition will----" "i don't know what they'll do, although i think i know what they'll want to do," she replied, quickly. "but somehow i managed to lose my other little pepper-box this morning. where it's gone to or who's got it i don't know, so i got this instead. it's a pretty thing," she went on, playing with it as a woman might toy with a jewel, "seven-shooter and magazine action. if you hold the trigger back after you've fired the first shot, it shoots the other six in about three seconds." "a very handy thing in a tight corner, i should say," said hardress, smiling at her over the top of his tea-cup, "and in such hands i should think a very ugly thing to face." adelaide's fingers were itching to take out the revolver and shoot both of them when she saw the all-meaning glance which passed between them while he spoke, but instead of that she raised her tea-cup and touched it with her pretty lips, and as she put the cup down she said, with the sweetest of smiles, to the president: "i think it is quite charming of you, mr president, to ask the leaders of the expedition to dinner in such a friendly way. surely it is not always usual to ask the enemy within the gates?" "we have no enemies, marquise," he replied, gravely, "except those who stand in the way of our commercial undertaking, and with them, of course, business is business, and there is no sentiment in that. of course we have a pretty good idea why these two expeditions have come to the magnetic pole instead of trying to get to the north pole, but we've not been lying awake at nights worrying about that, and there's no particular reason why we shouldn't ask the scientific explorers to dinner. all the same, if they happen to have come with the idea that they have a better right to these works than we have, and they want any trouble--why, they can have it." "and," added hardress, still looking across at chrysie, "i think they will find it the most extraordinary kind of trouble that mortal man ever ran up against." "it's to be hoped," said doctor lamson, speaking for the first time since the little tea-party had begun, for he had been thinking hard, and every now and then raising his eyes as though to seek inspiration from lady olive's calm, patrician face, as calm now, on the eve of a struggle which could scarcely end without bloodshed, and might end in ruin, as it would have been in a london drawing-room--"i most sincerely hope that it will not come to actual hostilities; it would be really too awful." "i wonder if it would be permissible for a prisoner of war to ask what would be too awful, doctor," said sophie, looking at him with a smile which somehow made him think of a beautiful tigress he had seen in the thiergarten in berlin. "the means that we should be compelled to employ in such a case to reduce those two squadrons, or expeditions, or whatever they call themselves, to something about as unsubstantial as that," replied the doctor, blowing a puff of cigarette smoke into the air. at this moment austin vandel came up on to the wall, and handed a piece of paper to his father. "just come through, dad," he said. "i reckon we've frozen that war clean out." the president opened the paper and read aloud: "'powers agree to stop war and settle matters of dispute by arbitration if you will restore electric equilibrium in europe. terms between you and powers to be arranged at a council of sovereigns and ministers presided over by myself. if this is satisfactory, please reply, and stop your machinery. conditions becoming very serious in europe.--(signed) edward r.i.'" "well," continued the president, "that means they've climbed down. doctor, i reckon we can switch off the engines now, couple up the connections, and use the power for something else if it's wanted. what do you think, viscount?" "certainly," replied hardress. "if the powers have accepted king edward's arbitration we can do nothing else; and, besides, if our not entirely unexpected visitors allow themselves to be tempted to commit any hostile act after that they will place themselves outside the law of nations, and we shall be at liberty to deal with them as we please." "that's so," replied the president, looking lazily across the table at sophie and adelaide. "austin, you can go and telegraph to st john's that we put ourselves entirely in king edward's hands, and that the engines have stopped. they'll have a few thunderstorms most likely, but in twenty-four hours everything will be as it was before. you might also mention that the french and russian expeditions are here, and that to-night we hope to have the leaders to dinner." the dinner-party in the board-room of the works to which the guests sat down at 8 p.m. was quite the strangest that had ever been given in the northern hemisphere. it was a dinner given by the holders of a citadel which had been proved to be the veritable throne of the world-empire to four men who had come to the wilderness of boothia land with the now practically avowed object of taking it from them by force of arms. for no other possible reason could these two peaceful expeditions have sailed from riga and le havre to go to the north pole, or as near to it as might be, and arrive at the magnetic pole, bristling with weapons, and obviously prepared to attack the works, situated as they were on the territory of a friendly nation, as though they were a fortress on hostile soil. yet vice-admiral alexis nazanoff, in command of the russian expedition, came with professor josef karnina in just such friendly style as did vice-admiral dumont and ex-captain victor fargeau, late of the german staff-corps. they were all far too well versed in the ways of war or diplomacy not to be considerably surprised at the nature of their reception, even as they were at the colossal dimensions of the buildings which at the bidding of the magic of millions had arisen in the midst of this inhospitable wilderness. they had expected a fleet of guardships protecting the entrance to the harbour, and they would not have been surprised if their passage through the narrow lankester sound had been prevented by torpedos, or opposed by privateers equipped by the trust; and for that reason they had mounted their guns and felt their way for days at the rate of two or three knots an hour through the narrow passages which led southward to port adelaide, but all they had seen was the fleeting shape of a white-painted yacht, the now world-famous _nadine_, scouting on the horizon and then vanishing into the grey twilight of the long northern day. not only had they been permitted to anchor in the natural harbour which formed the only approach by sea to the works without the slightest notice being taken of them, but, most wonderful of all, lord orrel, the english nobleman who was one of the three directors of the trust, had come down with count valdemar, who, with his daughter, had organised the russian expedition, to invite them to dinner in just as friendly a fashion as they might have done if boothia land had been paris, and the great storage works the hotel bristol. the situation was distinctly mystifying, and therefore not without its elements of uneasiness--even perhaps of something keener, and the uneasiness and the fear were amply shared by the friends whom they met so unexpectedly within the four walls of the great world-citadel. but astonishment became wonder when the two admirals, clad in their full-dress uniforms, found themselves and their scientific colleagues ushered into first a luxuriously-appointed reception-room lighted by softly-shaded electric lamps, where the president of the trust, the multi-millionaire magnate, the king of commerce, who played with millions as boys play with counters, dispensed cocktails from a bar which might have been spirited away from the waldorf-astoria, and the men and women, friends and enemies, received them in costumes which might have come straight from poole's or worth's. then, when the cocktails had been duly concocted and consumed, and lord orrel's own butler announced that dinner was served, lady olive, as châtelaine of the castle, took the russian admiral's arm and led the way through the curtained archway into the softly-lighted dining-room, so perfectly appointed that it might well have been spirited from london or paris or petersburg to the wilderness of boothia. the french admiral followed with countess sophie, count valdemar with the marquise, and lord orrel with miss chrysie, the rest of the men bringing up the rear. the dinner, as admiral dumont said afterwards to admiral nazanoff, was a gastronomic miracle. wines, soup, fish, and so on, were perfect; it was a wonder in the wilderness. but even more wonderful still was the conversation which flowed so easily around the table. no one listening to it would have dreamt that the greatest war of modern times had been brought to a state of utter paralysis by the quiet-spoken men who were so lavishly entertaining enemies who had come to dispossess them of the throne of the world, any more than they would have dreamt that the elements of a possible revolution, greater than any that had yet shaken the foundations of the world, were gathered round that glittering, daintily-adorned dinner-table. but when lady olive rose and led the way back to the drawing-room lord orrel began the serious business of the evening by asking hardress and doctor lamson to pass a couple of decanters of '47 port, from the cellars of orrel court, to their guests. when the decanters had gone round and the glasses were filled, lord orrel raised his own glass, and said: "well, gentlemen, the time has come for me to formally and yet not the less cordially bid you welcome to boothia land. we understood before we left england that you were bound on a voyage of discovery to the north pole; to that goal which so many brave men have tried to reach, and which has so far been unattainable." then his voice dropped to a sterner tone, and he went on: "i wish to ask you, on behalf of my colleagues and myself, those who are working with me in the enterprise which you have to-day seen in concrete form, whether your visit is one of peace or war. those, i am well aware, are grave words to use, yet, under the strange circumstances which have brought us together, i must ask you to believe me that it is necessary, even inevitable, that they should be used. if you have paid a visit to boothia land and the storage works only in the interests of science, i can assure you that we and our staff will spare no pains to show you everything that can be seen. "considering the slow rate at which you have been compelled by circumstances to travel from halifax, it may not be within your knowledge that since you left europe we have happily been able to stop a great european war. we have paralysed the fleets and armies of a continent, and the warships of europe are now resting motionless in dockyards or lying as wrecks on the sands and rocks of the coasts. the great powers have, in short, found it impossible to prosecute the war without our consent--for, as a matter of fact, their armies were starving to death in face of each other--and have consented to place their difference in the hands of king edward. the german emperor, the president of the french republic, and the ministers of all the powers engaged have assented to this. here is a transcript of a dispatch received from london to-day, which will, i hope, convince you that the world is, happily, once more at peace. therefore it is, of course, impossible that your mission can be anything but a peaceful one." the two admirals and victor fargeau had been looking at each other somewhat uneasily while lord orrel was speaking. they had no idea of the events which had been taking place in europe during the last fortnight. what lord orrel had said might be true or simply a deliberate attempt to frighten them out of their purpose; but whether he was telling the truth or not, there were still the sealed orders with which both expeditions had sailed, and obedience is the first duty of a sailor. so when lord orrel continued: "and, that being so, gentlemen, i hope you will be able to join me in a glass of wine and drink to continued peace to europe, and prosperity to the enterprise which has so far been successfully carried through by those who have the honour to be your hosts to-night." "my lord," said the russian admiral, rising to his feet, but not taking his glass, "you have been honest with us, and we--i speak for my colleague, admiral dumont, as well--cannot be less than honest with you. it is not necessary for me to remind you that scientific polar expeditions do not carry such guns as we do--guns which, great and all as these buildings are, could wreck them in a few hours. you have been frank with us, we will be frank with you. we know nothing of this mysterious power by which, as your lordship says, you have stopped the war in europe. as servants of our countries, we know only the orders we have received, and those are either to compel the surrender of these works into our hands, or destroy them. we accepted your hospitality in the hope that we might be able to make terms for a peaceable surrender." "and that, sir," said hardress, starting to his feet, "i may as well tell you at once, is impossible. you can no more take or destroy these works than the european armies could fight each other three days ago. you are our guests now, and therefore safe from all harm. you are at liberty to rejoin your ships at any time you please. if you choose to leave us in peace and take your way back you may go, and there will be an end of the matter. but it is only my duty to tell you that if a shot is fired with intent to injure any portion of these works, you and your ships will not only be destroyed, you will be annihilated." chapter xxix a dead silence of some moments' duration--during which hosts and guests looked at each other as men might before the outburst of a storm--then victor fargeau, after an exchange of glances with the french admiral, said, in a voice which trembled with angry emotion: "milords, i think i am speaking for my comrades as well as myself if i say that we have come too far to be frightened from the accomplishment of our purpose. for my own part, i may say that nothing, not even the fear of that annihilation which the viscount has just threatened, would turn me from my purpose, because i have come to take back that which is mine and france's. these works may be your property, gentlemen, because you have built them with your money and your labour, but the soul which animates them, which makes them a living organism instead of a lifeless mass of brick and stone, the power which you say has enabled you to paralyse the fleets and armies of europe, that is mine: for i am the son of the man who created it. he left it to me as his last legacy. i have returned to my allegiance to france after doing her what service i could elsewhere. though france at first rejected the fruit of my father's genius she has now accepted it, and in our persons she and her ally are here to demand restitution of that which has been stolen from her." "i think you can hardly say stolen, monsieur fargeau," said hardress, without rising. "the french ministry of war very foolishly refused to have anything to do with your father's invention, and he may have given you one set of specifications, but he also threw himself into the sea with the other, and we picked him up. you can call it chance or fate or anything you please, but it certainly wasn't theft. you see, we got this land and built these works while the french government was thinking about it; and i must also remind you that they are built on british soil, and held under lease from a british colonial government. "russia, france, and great britain are at peace. the war in europe is over, and therefore you will excuse me if i remind you and your colleagues that any attempt to attain your end by force would put you outside the pale of civilisation. in other words despite your uniforms and your commissions, you would simply be common pirates, with no claim to any of the rights of regular belligerents." "but," said victor fargeau, speaking with a distinct snarl in his voice, "you forget, monsieur le vicomte, that we are in a position to compel surrender, and that, once masters of the works, we shall be, as you are, above the law. granted all you say, it comes to this: nothing can justify our mission but success, and we shall succeed." "in that case," said the president, in his somewhat halting french, "it doesn't seem worth while to discuss the matter any further. we won't surrender the works, and the last man left alive in them would fire the mines and die in their ruins. these gentlemen think they can take them. we think they can't. it's no use talking about a proposition like that. it's got to be argued with guns and other things. it seems to me that the only question we've got to ask is, whether all these gentlemen are unanimous in their determination to take the works by force, if they can?" admiral dumont exchanged a whispered word with his russian colleague, and then he rose and said: "milords, i regret to say our orders leave us no other alternative, and our duty to our countries will compel us to take that action, most reluctantly as we shall do so. as monsieur fargeau has said, we believe that the vital principle of this system belongs to him and to france. we have been sent here to regain what was lost to us through an unfortunate mistake, and we must do so. yet we do not wish to be precipitate. we will ask you to take until six o'clock to-morrow morning, that is to say, eight hours from now, to reconsider your decision as to surrender. and there is just one more point. "you have certain guests, not entirely voluntary ones, in the works. if it should, unhappily, come to a struggle between us, it would, of course, be impossible for such chivalrous gentlemen to retain two ladies and a russian nobleman and ex-minister. we request that, in the unfortunate case of hostilities becoming inevitable, they shall be permitted to come on board one of our ships." as the french admiral sat down, lord orrel got up and said: "gentlemen, i am exceedingly sorry that matters have come to such a pass as this. there can be no question of surrender, but our guests will be free to join your squadrons when they please. therefore, for their convenience, and in order not to bring our little dinner to too abrupt a close, we will accept the truce till six o'clock. perhaps by that time other and, i think, better counsels may have prevailed with you. "i sincerely hope that they will; for i can assure you that my son was not speaking idly when he said that you would not only be destroyed, but annihilated. we have here means of destruction which have never yet been used in war. for your sakes, and for those of the brave men under your command, i trust that they never will be. and now, as further discussion would seem to be unprofitable, suppose we join the ladies. we may be friends, at anyrate, till six o'clock." in the reception-room the mystified guests of the trust found coffee and liqueurs, music and song and pleasant conversation, which touched on every possible subject, save battle, murder, and sudden death. then came a stroll on the walls by the light of a brilliant _aurora_, which made the sun, which was just touching the southern horizon, look like a pallid and exaggerated moon, and during this stroll victor fargeau managed to pass a small lebel revolver and some cartridges to sophie and the count in case of accidents. they had decided to go on board the _ivan the terrible_ when the guests left the works, and ma'm'selle felice and the count's servant were already putting their baggage together. the train was to wait for them at midnight. meanwhile, doctor lamson, who had left the party immediately after dinner, had been getting the defences of the works in order. the huge engines, disconnected now from the absorbers and storage batteries, from which the captured world-soul was now being released back into the earth, were still purring softly, and working as mightily as ever, but now their force was being used to a different end. on each of the four towers at the corners of the quadrangle there had been mounted an apparatus which looked something like a huge searchlight, and underneath it were two real searchlights. on eight platforms, one on each side of the towers, but hidden by a circular wall of twelve-inch hardened steel, were mounted, on disappearing carriages, the president's big guns, enlarged copies of the one he had used so effectually on board the _nadine_. each would throw a shell containing a hundred pounds of vandelite to a distance of eight miles. the great engines worked continuously, storing up liquid air in chambers under the gun platforms, but they were also doing other and, for the present, much more deadly work. the huge copper tubes above the searchlights on the towers were turned above the harbour. they made neither light nor sound, but all the while they were accumulating destruction such as no mortal hand had yet dealt out to an enemy. the evening passed, apparently in the most friendly and peaceful fashion, and no one suddenly introduced into the reception-room would have dreamt that the members of lord orrel's dinner-party were not on the very best of terms with themselves and each other. not even adelaide or sophie, sitting there with their revolvers in the pockets of their dinner dresses, and thoughts of murder in their souls, had the remotest idea of how terribly it was destined to end. miss chrysie had sung "the old folks at home," and adelaide one of the old chansons which had delighted the grand monarque in the trianon. then sophie sat down at the piano, and the slow solemn strains of the russian national hymn wailed up in majestic chords from the instrument. there was something of defiance both in her touch and in her voice, but international courtesies were respected, and everyone in the room stood up. for sophie valdemar it was her swan-song--since she was never to sing another--and she sang it splendidly, with her whole soul in it. as the last line, "give to us peace in our time, o lord," left her lips, lord orrel went to her side, and said: "thank you, countess. a splendid hymn splendidly sung!" and then he turned to the french and russian admirals, and said: "gentlemen, is it not possible for you to answer, as you could answer, that prayer for peace? i can assure you, on my word of honour as an english gentleman, that this building in which you are now is impregnable to all forms of attack known to modern warfare. at a distance of five thousand miles we have paralysed the fleets and armies of europe. your ships are less than five miles from our walls: you are not courting defeat, you are courting annihilation. can you not leave us in peace?" "i was under the impression, milord," said admiral nazanoff, "that that subject was closed for the present. we have yet to be convinced as to these terrible powers which you claim to possess: but our orders are real, so too are our ships and guns; and since you have refused the terms we have offered we have no alternative but to put these boasted powers of yours to the test of war. i regret it most exceedingly, as i am sure my colleague, admiral dumont, does also, but that must be our last word." the french admiral and victor fargeau both bowed assent as he spoke. and lord orrel answered: "well, gentlemen, since you are resolved, so be it. we will not discuss the matter further." while he was speaking lady olive had gone to the piano, and, as he ceased, the opening chords of "auld lang syne," floated through the room, and she began to sing the old scotch song. the words had a strangely satirical meaning for count valdemar and his daughter and adelaide, who had heard them several times at orrel court, and lady olive put such expression into them that both sophie and adelaide felt inclined to be a little ashamed of themselves. then in the midst of the song the clock began to chime twelve, and lady olive, with a frank look of defiance in her eyes, switched off suddenly into "god save the king," and began to sing the opening lines. at the end of the first verse she stopped and rose from the piano, and said to her father, who had been looking a little uneasy, as though he thought it was hardly good taste: "i am very sorry, papa, if i have offended, but really i could not help it; it seemed inevitable." "and why not?" said adelaide. "was not the same song sung in honour of the grand monarque by the ladies of versailles? well, now, lady olive, i suppose it is good-night and good-bye. a thousand thanks for all your kindness and hospitality." "and a thousand thanks from me, too," said sophie. they held out their hands, but lady olive put hers behind her, and drew back. "thank you," she said, frigidly. "you are quite welcome to any kindness that i have been able to show you; but, really, i must ask you to pardon me if i decline to shake hands with you after you have definitely joined the enemies of my family." "perhaps you are right, lady olive," laughed sophie. "still, i hope that, at no very distant time, we shall have an opportunity of returning some, at least, of your kindness." a few minutes later hosts and guests were standing outside the western gate, beside which the electric engine and the saloon carriage were waiting to take them to the harbour. the departing guests' luggage had been put on a little truck at the back. "ah, well, this is the end, i suppose," said adelaide to sophie as they stood in the dim twilight of the northern midnight, exchanging their last formal salutations. "to-night peace; to-morrow war." "but why not war now?" whispered sophie. "look! what a chance! shall we ever have another like it? à la guerre; comme à la guerre!" "yes," whispered adelaide in reply. "ah, sacré! look there!" as she spoke, chrysie left lady olive's side, went to hardress, and slipped her arm through his, and looked up at him with an expression that there was no mistaking. then adelaide de condé's long pent-up passion broke loose, and the hot blood of hate began to sing in her head and burn in her eyes. everything, so far, had failed. she had made herself a criminal, and had been punished by a silent, but humiliating, pardon. she had disgraced herself in the eyes of the man she would have sold her soul to get, and now--well, what did it matter? to-morrow--nay, within six hours, it would be war to the death, why not begin now, as sophie had whispered? for the moment she was mad, or she would not have done what she did. but she was mad--mad with failure, hopeless love, and the hatred which only the "woman scorned" can feel. she pulled chrysie's revolver out of her pocket, and snarled between her teeth: "you have got him, but you shall not keep him!" the revolver went up at the same moment, and she pulled the trigger. three shots cracked in quick succession. hardress went down with a broken thigh; chrysie, in the act of drawing her own revolver, received a bullet in her arm, which was intended for her heart; and the third one went through the hood of her cloak, just touching the skin above the ear. she tried to get out the revolver with her left hand; but, before she could do so, sophie and fargeau had opened fire, and at sophie's first shot, she clasped her hand to her side, and went down beside hardress. lord orrel had a bit of his left ear snipped off, and the president got a flesh wound just below the left shoulder. the two admirals, who had already taken their seats in the car, with madame de bourbon and the russian professor, sprang to their feet; but, before they could leave the car, a strange and awful thing happened. a blinding glare of light shone out from the southern tower, where doctor lamson had been watching the departure through his night-glasses. the thin ray wavered about until it fell on sophie valdemar and adelaide de condé, still standing close together, with victor fargeau just in front of them. for a moment their faces showed white and ghastly in the blazing radiance; and then, to the amazement and horror of those who saw the strangest sight that human eye had ever gazed upon, down the ray of light, invisible, but all-destroying, flowed the terrible energy of the disintegrator on the top of the tower. their hair crinkled up and disappeared, the flesh melted from their faces and hands. for an instant, two of the most beautiful countenances in europe were transformed into living skulls, which grinned out in unspeakable hideousness. then their clothing shrivelled up into tinder, and all three dropped together in an indistinguishable heap of crumbling bones. chapter xxx almost at the moment that the man and the two women who, but a few moments ago, had been standing in the full pride of their youth and health and beauty, had dropped to the earth in little heaps of crumbling bones, whistles sounded inside the works, and a number of men came out of the western gate, some of them armed with rifles and revolvers, and others carrying stretchers. hardress and chrysie were lifted on to two of these, and lady olive went back into the works with them. lord orrel and the president, after having their wounds hastily bandaged for the time being, went to the door of the saloon carriage, and lord orrel said, shortly and sternly: "madame de bourbon, as you have seen, your niece has ceased to exist. count valdemar, the same is true of your daughter. and as for you, gentlemen," he went on, turning to the two admirals, "you have seen something of those means of defence of which i spoke to you after dinner. "there," he went on, pointing to the little heap of mingled bones lying on the sand, "is the proof of it. every human thing that tries to pass the limits of those rays will share the same fate. these people were enemies, but they were worse--they were traitors; and, as you have seen, they wished to be murderers. they have justly earned their fate. there is no reason why you should share it. take my advice, i pray you, advice which i give from the bottom of my heart. weigh anchor to-night, go back to europe, and you will find that everything that we have told you is true." "that, my lord orrel, is impossible," said admiral nazanoff, coming to the door of the car. "by what devilish means you have slain captain fargeau and those two ladies we know not, save that it must have been done through some material mechanism. to-morrow our guns shall try conclusions with it, whatever it is. yes, even though you turned that murderous ray on us and killed us, as you did them, for our men have their orders. and now, i suppose, we had better get out and walk. we can hardly expect the use of your train after what has happened." "you needn't worry about that, admiral," said the president; "we've promised you safe conduct to your ships, and you shall have it. but look here, count," he went on, pulling a heavy six-shooter out of his pocket, "don't you get fingering about that pocket as if you had a gun in it, or it'll be the last shooting-iron you ever did touch. we don't want any more shooting than we've had till we begin business in the morning." count valdemar saw that he was covered, and he didn't like the look of the hard, steady, grey eyes behind the barrel of the long repeating pistol. he took his hand empty out of his pocket, clasped it with the left over his knees, and shrugged his shoulders. there was nothing to be said, and so he kept something of his dignity by holding his tongue, and the president went on: "well, that's better. you keep your hands where they are, and no harm will happen to you just now. but don't you think, gentlemen, that it would be better if madame de bourbon came back with us into the works, where she will be safe, anyhow safer than she would be on one of your ships, if you are still determined to fight it out." "i am much obliged to you, monsieur le president," replied the old lady, in her most autocratic manner; "but after what has happened, and what i have seen, i prefer to return with my own people." "and," added admiral dumont, "you may be quite certain, monsieur, that before this most regrettable battle begins at six o'clock, one of the ships will have taken madame de bourbon beyond the reach of harm." "with that, of course, we must be content," said lord orrel, coming back to the president's side. "and now, gentlemen, since, as you say, it is to be war between us, i have one more favour to ask: here is the man," he went on, pointing to the second engineer of the _nadine_, who had been brought out of the gate by a couple of stalwart quartermasters, "here is the man who allowed himself to be bribed by the late countess sophie valdemar and the marquise de montpensier to wreck the engines of the _nadine_, and so, as they thought, turn the course of fate in their favour. we have not punished him, but we have no further use for his services. he is a good engineer, whatever else he may be, and so perhaps you will be able to find him some employment on board one of your ships. now, robertson and thompson, help mr williams into the car, please. these gentlemen want to get down to the harbour." the two quartermasters picked up the handcuffed williams, and flung him in through the open door of the saloon. then the president said to the man at the engine, "right away, driver, and come back when these gentlemen are safe on board. salud, señores," he went on to the two admirals, raising his hat with his unwounded arm. "take my advice--clear out, and don't let us have any shooting in the morning. i reckon we've had quite trouble enough already." at this moment the driver of the electric motor sounded his bell, the two admirals and the count raised their hats and stared out through the window with grim, immovable faces, and so went back to the ships, marvelling greatly at the wonderful horror they had beheld. madame de bourbon was already in hysterics, succoured by ma'm'selle felice. count valdemar, though stricken to the heart by the frightful fate of the only human being that he had loved since his wife had died nearly twenty years before, was yet determined to use all his influence to compel the admirals to take the amplest possible revenge for her slaying. certainly if the works were not battered into ruins within twelve hours, it would not be his fault; and then, as the little train drew out, he fell to wondering whether hardress and chrysie vandel were killed or not. "and are you still decided to fight, gentlemen?" he said to the admirals a few moments later, when the car was rattling over the narrow rails, "and, if so, what are you going to do with this thing?" he touched mr williams's still prostrate body with his toe as he said this. "i need not tell you, count," replied admiral nazanoff, "as a russian to a russian, that orders are orders, and mine are to take those works or destroy them. i admit that what we saw to-night was very wonderful and very terrible, but when holy russia says 'go and do,' then we must go and do, or die. the little father has no forgiveness for failure. that, in russia, is the one unpardonable fault. our guns will open at six in the morning. that man will take his chance with the rest of our men." "and," said admiral dumont, "even if we cannot take the works and use them, we may destroy them, and so rid the world of this detestable commercial tyranny which would make war a matter of poll-tax. we shall open fire at six. ah, here we are at the wharf. now let us go and see that everything is ready. admiral nazanoff, i believe you are my senior in service; it will therefore be yours to fire the first shot. the _caiman_ shall fire the second." "and i shall ask you, admiral," said the count to nazanoff, "as a personal favour, and also, as i will say frankly, a matter of personal vengeance, to be allowed to fire that first gun." "my dear count," replied the admiral, "with the greatest pleasure. it shall be laid by the best gunner on board the _ivan_, and your hand shall send the shot, i hope, into the vitals of these accursed works. if we could only manage to drop a hundred-pound melinite shell into the right place, it would do a great deal." chapter xxxi until five o'clock there was silence both in the works and on the ships in the harbour. then, as the southern sun began to climb on its upward curve, the eight searchlights on the towers blazed out, looking ghostly white in the twilight. they were arranged so that they formed two intersecting triangles on each face of the works. from the top of the western gate flamed a huge star. it was a ten-million-candle-power light, and its radiance, cast directly upon the harbour, was so intense that while the ships were flooded with light, the dim, watery rays of the sun made twilight in comparison with it. "that is well managed," said admiral nazanoff to the count as they were taking their early coffee on the bridge of the ice-breaker. "i suppose that devil-ray, or whatever they call it, is running along those lights, and so making a barrier that no living thing can pass without destruction. it is an amazing invention, whatever it is; but it is murder, not war. still, if it comes to an assault, we must rush it. meanwhile it is to be hoped that our guns will have destroyed their infernal apparatus. "you see, we have six ships here in line abreast, and twelve guns, each throwing a melinite shell of not less than a hundred pounds, are trained on the face of the building. when your excellency has fired the first shot they will open, and, at the same time, fifty smaller quick-firers will sweep the walls in such a fashion that no living thing will exist for a moment, either on top of them or in front. in fact, once let us destroy the apparatus which generates that horrible devil-ray, i can give it no other name, and the works are ours." "but the shooting will not be all on our side, admiral, i fear," said the count. "that is a very terrible little gun that they have on the _nadine_. it was only a twelve-pounder, but a couple of shots sent the _vlodoya_ to the bottom, and this man vandel--if the light had been better he would not have been living now--told me himself that they had guns ten times as powerful on the works." "most probably a little yankee bluff, my dear count," said the admiral. "i dislike those searchlights much more than i fear the guns. you see, it is almost impossible to take an accurate aim against a searchlight, while it is perfectly easy to shoot from behind or below them. still, all our guns are fortunately laid already. yours, which is the starboard one down yonder, is trained on the gate in the centre. the shell will pierce that, and if it strikes the engine-house or whatever it is in the middle of the square it will probably disable the works. that, i believe, is the heart and centre of the whole system." "it is very probable," said the count, who had already described what he had seen of the works to the admiral, "and i hope my shot will find it, for then my poor sophie will be partly, at least, avenged. it was a terrible end for two such beautiful women, was it not, admiral? fargeau did not matter so much; for, after all, he was only a half-turned traitor and spy." "it was the most awful sight i have ever beheld," replied the admiral; "indeed i cannot think that human eyes could look upon anything more horrible. but by mid-day i hope our guns will have avenged them as completely as good shot and shell can do. and now, excellency, with your permission we must have our last council of war; i must see my captains and arrange the last details with admiral dumont, as it is getting near six. i took the trouble of setting my watch by the clock in the reception-room." "and mine," said the count, taking out his repeater, "has been going with it for days. when this chimes six we may begin." within a few minutes the two admirals and the captains of the different vessels went, by appointment, to the cabin of the _ivan_, and the last details were arranged. as the clock struck six every available gun was to open on the western face of the works, and the fire of the heaviest guns was to be concentrated on the towers and the central gate until the searchlights were extinguished and the deadly rays rendered impotent. meanwhile boats and steam-pinnaces were to be ready to land the sailors and marines with their machine-guns, and as soon as there was reason to believe that the rays were no longer operative, a general advance in force was to be made on the western gate. no quarter was to be given; no prisoners taken. victor fargeau had left his father's legacy and all necessary directions for operating the works with admiral dumont, and so there would be no necessity for any assistance from the prisoners, and therefore no need to take any. at five minutes to six count valdemar and admiral nazanoff went down on to the fore-deck. at the same moment that they were making their last examination of the guns, a thin ray of electric light shone out from the top of a little rocky promontory to the north of the harbour, where there was a little white tower which the invaders had taken for a harmless and necessary lighthouse. the ray fell directly on the fore-deck of the _ivan_. "ah," said the admiral, stepping back under the protection of the top works, "take care, your excellency, that is only about a hundred metres off, and they may have one of those infernal rays there." "it is six o'clock," said the count, taking his watch in his left hand and the lanyard of the gun in his right. the beam of ghostly light wavered and fell on him as he stepped back to pull. the next instant the flesh of his uplifted hand melted away from the bones, the lanyard fell away. with a cry of agony he dropped his hand, and then the terrible ray fell on his face. the horror-stricken officers and men saw it change from a face to a skull, watched his fur cap shrivel up and vanish, the hair and flesh on his scalp disappear. then he dropped, and the bare skull struck the steel deck with a queer sharp click. a sudden paralysis of horror fell upon officers and men alike, until the admiral roared out an order to turn the port gun on to the lighthouse. he was obeyed, and the gun was fired hurriedly; the shell struck the rock just below the lighthouse and exploded with a terrific report, but the living rock held good, and the deadly ray shone on. the gunner who had fired it was blasted to a skeleton in a moment, and the rest of the officers and men ran for shelter like so many frightened hares. they were ready to face any ordinary danger, but this was too awful for mortal courage. then the ray wandered over the fore-decks and bridges of the other ships till it reached the _caiman_, on the bridge of which admiral dumont was standing, a horrified spectator of what had happened on the _ivan_. he had a pistol in his hand; a shot was to be the signal for the french vessels to open fire. the ray fell on his hand as he raised it to fire, the hand shrivelled to bone before he could pull the trigger. but the gunners had seen the signal, and the guns roared out. over fifty guns of all calibres roared and crackled for a minute or so, and a brief hurricane of shell swept across the stony plain between the harbour and the works. then it stopped. every gun was silent, for not a man dared go near it. every officer and man who had shown himself in the open had been reduced to a heap of bones before he could get back under shelter. then those who were out of reach of the terrible death-rays saw six long guns rise from the masked batteries beside the two towers and over the central gate. there was no flash or report, but the next moment six hundred-pound shells, charged with vandelite, had struck the french and russian vessels, and, as a fighting force, the expeditions had practically ceased to exist. every ship was hit either in her hull or her top works. the steel structures crumpled up and collapsed under the terrible energy of the explosion. the steel-walled casemates were cracked and ripped open as though they had been built of common deal, and every man on deck within twenty yards of the explosion dropped dead or insensible. both admirals were killed almost at the same moment. the guns sank back and rose again, and again the explosions crashed out on board the doomed ships. the death-ray played continuously over their decks and every man who showed himself fell dead with the flesh withered from his face and skull. the terrible bombardment lasted for about a quarter of an hour, and then when only the _caiman_ and _ivan_ were left afloat, and the crews of the other vessels had either gone down with them or had swum or scrambled ashore in the boats, the guns ceased, and the rays were shut off. this ended the fight, if, indeed, fight it could be called. several of the shells had struck the walls and blown out large portions of the facings, but no vital spot had been touched, thanks to the difficulty of taking aim in the blinding glare of the searchlights. the little lighthouse on the north point, which had proved such a veritable tower of strength, was still unharmed, although the rocks about it were splintered and pulverised by shell-fire. only about a dozen petty officers and a couple of hundred sailors and stokers escaped, and most of them were half-mad with fear. they were ordered back on board the _ivan_, which, thanks to her enormously strong construction, had stood the terrible bombardment better than the _caiman_. her topworks were smashed out of all shape, and her decks were ripped and rent in all directions, but her hull was still sound, and a few days' work at her engines would make them serviceable. and in her the survivors of the ill-fated expedition ultimately went back to europe with a formal message from the directors of the trust to the governments of france and russia, expressing their regret that so much damage and loss of life had resulted from the act of piracy committed by those who had mistaken the magnetic for the north pole. the _corneille_, the old wooden ship which had conveyed madame de bourbon out of the range of the guns and the death-ray, was brought back the next morning by the _nadine_ and the _washington_, whose business it had been to stop the escape of any french or russian vessel from the waters of boothia, and as she was immediately available for the service, she carried madame de bourbon back to france. with her she took a small box of oak, which contained all that the death-ray had left of adelaide de condé, marquise de montpensier, the last, save herself, of the daughters of the old line of the bourbons. a similar casket containing the bones of sophie valdemar and her father were sent under her care to the count's brother, whose place in petersburg was less than a hundred yards distant from the german embassy, the scene of the reception where what was now but dry bones, dust, and ashes, had been life and beauty and subtly working brains, plotting for the possession of the world-empire, whose throne was not now in any of the splendid capitals of europe, or of the east, or west, but within the four-square limits--measuring four hundred feet each way--within which the world masters reigned impregnable and supreme. epilogue the short northern summer was drawing rapidly to its close when chrysie and hardress were pronounced fit to travel. hardress had had a very narrow shave, for one of the count's bullets had grazed the right lung, and the wound had brought on an acute attack of pleural inflammation. chrysie's wounds had healed within a fortnight, and as soon as she was able to get about she did her best to supplant lady olive as nurse in the sickroom. "you may be his sister," she said, in answer to a strong protest from lady olive, "and you're just as good a sister as a man wants to have; but i hope i'm going to be something more than a sister; and so, if he's going to be mine and i'm going to be his, i want to do the rest. after all, you see it's only a sort of looking after one's own property." just at this moment hardress woke up and turned a languid head and a pair of weary and yet eager eyes upon the two girls. "chrysie," he said, in a thick, hoarse whisper, and yet through smiling lips, "in the speech of your own country, you've got it in once. there's just one thing i want now to make me well. you know what it is. come and give it me." "why, you mean thing!" said chrysie, going towards the bed, "i believe you've heard everything we've been saying." "some of it," he whispered. "what about that reserve--that territory, you know, that i was supposed to have an option on in buffalo?" "buffalo's not boothia, shafto," she replied, using his christian name for the first time since they had known each other; "but the reserve's all right. i guess you've only got to take up your option when you want it." "then i'll take it now," he whispered again, looking weariedly and yet with an infinite longing into her eyes. "and so you shall," she said, leaning down over the bed. "you have done the work--you and lord orrel and poppa. you've done everything that you said you would; you're masters of the world, and, as far as mortals can be, controllers of human destiny--you and doctor lamson. he began it, didn't he? if it hadn't been for him and his knowledge you'd have done nothing at all. and he's got his reward too. that's so; isn't it, olive? yes; you can tell the story afterwards, but you and i are going to marry two of the world masters, and we're each of us going to have a world master for father, and--well, i guess that's about all there is in it. and now i'm going to seal the contract." she bent her head and kissed hardress's pale but still smiling lips, and just at that moment there was a knock at the door. lady olive almost involuntarily said, "come in," and doctor lamson, who had, next to emil fargeau, been the working genius of the whole vast scheme which the dead savant had worked out in his laboratory at strassburg, came in. miss chrysie, flushing and bright-eyed, straightened herself up, looking most innocently guilty. doctor lamson looked at her for a moment and then at lady olive. his own clear, deep-set grey eyes lit up with a flash, and his clean-cut lips curved into a smile, as he said: "i hope i'm not intruding, as a much more distinguished person than myself once said; but, as hardress is so much better, having apparently found a most potent, though unqualified, physician, i thought you would like to hear the latest news from europe. the powers have surrendered at discretion. as they can't fight, they are willing to make peace. they have accepted king edward as arbitrator, and he, like the good sportsman that he is, has decided that in future, if a country wants to fight another, it shall submit the _casus belli_ to a committee of the powers not concerned in the quarrel. if they are all concerned in it, the tribunal is to consist of the pope, the archbishop of canterbury, and the archimandrite of the greek church. if either of the belligerents refuse arbitration after the dispute has been thoroughly gone through, or begins fighting before the decision is delivered, it will have the same experiences as europe had in the late war--which, of course, was no war." "because we stopped it," said lady olive, looking straight across the room into doctor lamson's eyes. "well, yes, _we_," said chrysie, standing up beside the bed. "i reckon, all things considered, we four have had about as much to do with stopping this war and teaching the nations to behave decently as anybody else on earth. we are here on the throne of the world, kings and queens from pole to pole!" "but, my dear chrysie," exclaimed lady olive, flushing from her shapely chin to her temples, and making a move towards the door, "surely you don't mean----" "i don't mean any more than we all mean in our hearts," interrupted chrysie, taking hardress's hand in hers. "what's the use of world masters and world mistresses trying to hide things from each other? we four people here in this room run the world. i want to run this man, and you want to run that one; and they, of course, think they'll run us, which they won't! anyhow, we're all willing to try that, and i think the best thing we can do is to sign, seal, and deliver the contract of the offensive and defensive alliance right here and now. you kiss, and we'll kiss, and that's all there is to it." and they kissed. _the riverside press limited edinburgh_ a catalogue of the books published by mr. john long 13 & 14 norris street haymarket, london (late of 6 chandos street, strand) march, 1903 telegrams and cables "longing, london" new and forthcoming books pages 2 to 8. _march, 1903_ mr. john long's new and forthcoming books for the spring and summer 1903 new novels by the best authors crown 8vo, cloth gilt, price 6s. each fugitive anne by mrs. campbell praed, author of "nadine," "dwellers by the river," etc. an outsider's year by florence warden, author of "the house on the marsh," "something in the city," etc. crimson lilies by may crommelin, author of "a daughter of england," "a woman-derelict," etc. the world masters by george griffith, author of the "angel of the revolution," "brothers of the chain," etc. the shutters of silence by g. b. burgin, author of "the way out," "a wilful woman," etc. by thames and tiber by mrs. avlmer gowing, author of "as cæsar's wife," "a touch of the sun," etc. the arcadians by j. s. fletcher, author of "when charles the first was king," "the three days' terror," etc. with eight full page illustrations on art paper, by g. p. rhodes. an unwise virgin by mrs. coulson kernahan, author of "trewinnot of guy's," "no vindication," etc. the parish doctor by alec cook. vivid impressions of life in a contemporary suburban parish. beneath the veil by adeline sergeant, author of "the story of a penitent soul," "the future of phyllis," etc. the car of phoebus by robert james lees, author of "through the mists," "the heretic," etc. the last foray by r. h. forster. (a thrilling tale of the border raiders of the sixteenth century.) the machinations of janet by sarah tytler, author of "citoyenne jacqueline," "the courtship of sarah," etc. thraldom by helen prothero-lewis (mrs. james j. g. pugh), author of "hooks of steel," "her heart's desire," "a lady of my own," etc. the jade eye by fergus hume, author of "the mystery of a hansom cab," "the silent house in pimlico," etc. remembrance by mrs. lovett cameron, author of "midsummer madness," "a woman's 'no,'" etc. sweet "doll" of haddon hall by j. e. muddock, author of "fair rosalind," "a woman's checkmate," etc. his master purpose by harold bindloss, author of "ainslie's ju-ju," "the concession hunters," etc. a woman in the city by helen bayliss. an original novel of pathos and power by a new writer. in the days of goldsmith by m. mcd. bodkin, k.c., author of "lord edward fitz-gerald," "white magic," "paul beck," "a stolen life," "the rebels," etc. the indiscretion of gladys by lucas cleeve, author of "his italian wife," "plato's handmaiden," etc. the magnetic girl by richard marsh, author of "the beetle," "the twickenham peerage," etc. this is one long novel and the most important and amusing the author has written since the publication of his famous book, "the beetle." the trust trappers by hume nisbet, author of "bail up," "mistletoe manor," etc. with frontispiece and vignette title page by the author. the burden of her youth by mrs. l. t. meade, author of "confessions of a court milliner," etc. the bâton sinister by george gilbert, author of "in the shadow of the purple." the other mrs. jacobs by mrs. campbell praed, author of "nadine," "dwellers by the river," etc. no. 3, the square by florence warden, author of "the house on the marsh," "the lovely mrs. pemberton," etc. partners three by may crommelin, author of "a daughter of england," "a woman-derelict," etc. all the winners by nathaniel gubbins, author of "pick-me-ups," "dead certainties," etc. up to-morrow by w. carter platts, author of "papa limited," etc. with about 60 illustrations by the author. [a book of humour.] _long's new sixpenny library_ of copyright novels by the most popular writers of the day _new volumes. 1903_ the sin of hagar. helen mathers. the lovely mrs. pemberton. florence warden. an ill wind. mrs. lovett cameron. woman--the sphinx. fergus hume. a beautiful rebel. ernest glanville. the juggler and the soul. helen mathers. for complete list of the series, see pages 27 & 28. general literature sidelights on convict life. by george griffith, author of "in an unknown prison land," etc. with numerous illustrations. crown 8vo, cloth gilt, 6s. how to take care of a consumptive. by mrs. m. forrest williams, fcap. 8vo, paper cover, 1s. net. john long, 13 & 14 norris street, haymarket, london and at all the libraries and booksellers under official sanction [illustration] [now ready _printed on hand-made paper, with twenty plates in photogravure, limited to 300 copies. royal 4to. price £3 3s. net._ also a special edition, imperial 4to, on japanese vellum, limited to 50 copies, the plates on india paper, one hand-coloured, with a duplicate set of plates in handsome portfolio for framing. each copy numbered and signed by the author. price £10 10s. net. the king's race-horses a history of the connection of his majesty king edward vii. with the national sport by edward spencer with additional notes by lord marcus beresford. the times.--"no more appropriate time could have been selected for the publication of a book such as this, which relates with much wealth of detail and in a very spirited style the history of the king's connection with the turf. mr. spencer is fully justified in his claim that this volume will be 'a record for all time of the important part which his majesty has taken in racing affairs'. the volume has been most sumptuously got up, being illustrated with 20 plates in photogravure from photographs by mr. clarence hailey, of newmarket, who has the sole right of photographing the king's horses--these plates, with a special one of his majesty as a frontispiece, presenting the king's principal racehorses, his two trainers (first john porter and subsequently richard marsh), and his jockeys. yet all the money lavished upon the exterior of this fine book would be thrown away were the contents deficient in interest or lacking in accuracy; but the text is by no means the least attractive part of the volume, while the author appears to have thoroughly mastered his subject." the morning post.--"this handsome and beautifully printed volume not only includes a record of his majesty's horses and their performances, but it gathers up a considerable amount of information concerning the connection of royalty with the turf, and the state of the sport of racing at different periods. the text, which is equalled in interest by the pictures, which include portraits of the king, lord marcus beresford--to whom the proofs of the text were submitted, and who has furnished additional notes--john porter, and richard marsh, whilst the most famous of the horses are also represented. the work is luxuriously produced, and will be highly welcome to a large number of those who are devoted to 'the sport of kings.'" john long, 13 & 14 norris street, haymarket, london john long, 13 & 14 norris street, haymarket, london and at all the libraries and booksellers mr. john longs's list of publications _popular six shilling novels_ in handsome cloth binding, crown 8vo. remembrance. mrs. lovett cameron. [_shortly._ midsummer madness. mrs. lovett cameron. a difficult matter. mrs. lovett cameron. a fair fraud. mrs. lovett cameron. the craze of christina. mrs. lovett cameron. a passing fancy. mrs. lovett cameron. bitter fruit. mrs. lovett cameron. an ill wind. mrs. lovett cameron. a woman's no. mrs. lovett cameron. partners three. may crommelin. [_shortly._ crimson lilies. may crommelin. kinsah. may crommelin. bettina. may crommelin. the luck of a lowland laddie. may crommelin. a woman-derelict. may crommelin. a daughter of england. may crommelin. the jade eye. fergus hume. [_shortly._ the turnpike house. fergus hume. a traitor in london. fergus hume. the golden wang-ho. fergus hume. woman--the sphinx. fergus hume. trewinnot of guy's. mrs. coulson kernahan. frank redland, recruit. mrs. coulson kernahan. the avenging of ruthanna. mrs. c. kernahan. no vindication. mrs. coulson kernahan. an unwise virgin. mrs. coulson kernahan. pursued by the law. j. maclaren cobban. an african treasure. j. maclaren cobban. i'd crowns resign. j. maclaren cobban. the green turbans. j. maclaren cobban. the machinations of janet. sarah tytler. [_shortly._ logan's loyalty. sarah tytler. jean keir of craigneil. sarah tytler. women must weep. sarah tytler. the courtship of sarah. sarah tytler. no. 3, the square. florence warden. [_shortly._ an outsider's year. florence warden. once too often. florence warden. the lovely mrs. pemberton. florence warden. something in the city. florence warden. paul le maistre. frederic carrel. the progress of pauline kessler. fred. carrel. the realization of justus moran. fred. carrel. houses of ignorance. frederic carrel. sent to coventry. esmè stuart. in the dark. esmè stuart. the strength of straw. esmè stuart. nobler than revenge. esmè stuart. native born. william s. walker ("coo-ee"). virgin gold. william s. walker ("coo-ee"). [_sixteen illustrations._ in the blood. william s. walker ("coo-ee"). [_sixteen illustrations._ zealandia's guerdon. william s. walker ("coo-ee"). a cabinet secret (5/-). guy boothby. (_illustrated._) anna lombard. (27th edition.) victoria cross. the bread of tears. g. b. burgin. the shutters of silence. g. b. burgin. the way out. g. b. burgin. a son of mammon. g. b. burgin. a wilful woman. g. b. burgin. the arcadians. (_illustrated._) j. s. fletcher. [_shortly._ the harvesters. j. s. fletcher. the three days' terror. j. s. fletcher. the golden spur. j. s. fletcher. the investigators. j. s. fletcher. the indiscretion of gladys. lucas cleeve. [_shortly._ the purple of the orient. lucas cleeve. yolande the parisienne. lucas cleeve. plato's handmaiden. lucas cleeve. the real christian. lucas cleeve. his italian wife. lucas cleeve. wicked rosamond. mina sandeman. charming miss kyrle. mina sandeman. veronica verdant. mina sandeman. fugitive anne. mrs. campbell praed. dwellers by the river. mrs. campbell praed. the other mrs. jacobs. mrs. campbell praed. [_in preparation._ the angel of chance. g. g. chatterton. straight shoes. g. g. chatterton. the court of destiny. g. g. chatterton. the royal sisters. frank mathew. irish holidays. robert thynne. the story of a campaign estate. robert thynne. boffin's find. (_frontispiece._) robert thynne. the curse of eden. author of "the master sinner." barbara west. keighley snowden. the parish doctor. alec cook. the diva. annie thomas (mrs. pender cudlip) in the shadow of the purple. george gilbert. the bâton sinister. george gilbert. [_shortly._ the mill of silence. bernard capes. by thames and tiber. mrs. aylmer gowing. as cæsar's wife. mrs. aylmer gowing. a beautiful rebel. ernest glanville. the diamond of evil. fred whishaw. the magnetic girl. richard marsh. (_a long novel._) [_shortly._ curios. richard marsh. (_eight illustrations._) ada vernham, actress. richard marsh. [_frontispiece._ beneath the veil. adeline sergeant. [_shortly._ the future of phyllis. adeline sergeant. the mission of margaret. adeline sergeant. sweet "doll" of haddon hall. j. e. muddock. [_shortly._ a woman's checkmate. j. e. muddock. fair rosalind. j. e. muddock. a social pretender. winifred graham. men of marlowe's. mrs. henry dudeney. all they went through. f. w. robinson. the shadow of allah. morley roberts. the lords of life. bessie dill. miss pauncefort's peril. mrs. charles martin. malice of grace wentworth. r. h. heppenstall. friendship and folly. maria louise pool. glimpses from wonderland. john ingold. [_five illustrations._ blue bonnets up. thomas pinkerton. the ivory bride. thomas pinkerton. father anthony. robert buchanan. the scarlet seal. dick donovan. the world masters. george griffith. the story of lois. katharine s. macquoid. a ward of the king. katharine s. macquoid. his master purpose. harold bindloss. [_shortly._ a woman in the city. helen bayliss. [_shortly._ the car of phoebus. robert james lees. the heretic. robert james lees. through the mists. robert james lees. in the days of goldsmith. m. mcd. bodkin, k.c. [_shortly._ cicely vaughan. philip davenant. wise in his generation. philip davenant. for a god dishonoured. anonymous. merciless love. author of "for a god dishonoured." the girl with feet of clay. edgar turner. [_frontispiece._ the experiment of dr. nevill. e. h. beaman. paul the optimist. w. p. dothie. his 'prentice hand. sydney phelps. the crowning of gloria. richard reardon. the house of hardale. rose perkins. the trust trappers. hume nisbet. [_shortly._ mistletoe manor. hume nisbet. (_illustrated by author._) the burden of her youth. l. t. meade. [_shortly._ confessions of a court milliner. l. t. meade. in summer shade. mary e. mann. the last foray. r. h. forster. george and son. edward h. cooper. the fooling of don jaime. w. terrell garnett. the sin of hagar. helen mathers. thraldom. helen prothero-lewis. [_shortly._ when love is kind. h. a. hinkson. wounded pride. isabel howard. the kingdom of mammon. violet tweedale. the hospital secret. james compton. castle oriol. charles hannan. a weaver of runes. w. dutton burrard. the love of a former life. c. j. h. halcombe. oswald steele. eibbon berkley. a man of iron. j. morgan-de-groot. mr. john long's list of publications popular three-and-sixpenny novels in handsome cloth binding, crown 8vo. the silent house in pimlico. fergus hume. the bishop's secret. fergus hume. the crimson cryptogram. fergus hume. when the mopoke calls. w. s. walker ("coo-ee"). [_twenty-two illustrations._ from the land of the wombat. william s. walker ("coo-ee"). [_thirteen illustrations._ mrs. musgrave and her husband. richd. marsh. the love affairs of a curate. marcus reay. forbidden paths. marcus reay. the crime in the wood. t. w. speight. juggling fortune. t. w. speight. letters to dolly. keble howard. [_eighty-two illustrations by_ tom browne, r.i. the master sinner. by a well-known author. the sport of circumstance. g. g. chatterton. father anthony. robert buchanan. [_sixteen illustrations._ papa, limited. w. carter platts. [_forty illustrations by the author._ up to-morrow. w. carter platts. [_seventy illustrations by the author._ [_shortly._ a difficult matter. mrs. lovett cameron. trewinnot of guy's. mrs. coulson kernahan. transplanted. nicholas p. murphy. [_profusely illustrated._ a corner in ballybeg. nicholas p. murphy. an island interlude. john amity. the desired haven. anonymous. (_frontispiece._) mary bray, x her mark. jenner tayler. on parole. mina doyle. paths of the dead. hume nisbet. (_frontispiece._) a fighter in khaki. ralph rodd. infelix. lady duntze. didums. jean macpherson. a dream of fame. jean delaire. by jumna's banks. paul markham. all the winners. nathaniel gubbins. [_shortly._ pick-me-ups. nathaniel gubbins. dead certainties. nathaniel gubbins. a man of to-day. helen mathers. the juggler and the soul. helen mathers. with bought swords. harry fowler. his little bill of sale. ellis j. davis. youth at the prow. e. rentoul esler. miss nanse. sara tytler. second lieutenant celia. l. campbell davidson. the dame of the fine green kirtle. torquil macleod. the sea of love. (1/6.) walter phelps dodge. john long, 13 & 14 norris street, haymarket, london and at all the libraries and booksellers mr. john long's list of publications general literature dedicated by special permission to field-marshal lord wolseley, k.p., &c. social life in the british army by capt. w. e. cairnes. author of "an absent-minded war." crown 8vo, special cover design, 6s. with 16 full-page illustrations on art paper by r. caton woodville. [_third edition._ pall mall gazette.--"brightly written by the military expert of the _westminster gazette_, and neatly illustrated by mr. caton woodville; this is a most interesting and instructive volume. it is just what was wanted now that the question of the cost of life in the army and the impossibility for an officer of living upon his pay has been brought into such prominence. the question is emphatically one of those which must not be allowed to slip away again should a long peace follow on the present war, as questions have a way of doing. "a british officer" makes some very shrewd points in the matter. he performs a useful service in clearing the ground of vulgar exaggerations, the french and russian myths of the british officer's wild luxuriousness, the agitator's "gilded popinjay" superficialities, the duties and recreations of the officer, sketches life at sandhurst and the staff college, and devotes a chapter to tommy and to mrs. tommy in the married quarters." army and navy gazette.--"no volume has appeared dealing so thoroughly and so competently with the inner life of the army. it is not merely descriptive, but will be welcomed by all those who contemplate putting their sons in the service, for they will realise better than otherwise they might do what the conditions of military life are." australia at the front a colonial view of the great boer war by frank wilkinson (special correspondent of the _sydney daily telegraph_). with portrait, map, and 20 illustrations on art paper by norman h. hardy from sketches on the spot, and photos by the author. crown 8vo, special cover design, 6s. [_second edition._ the times.--"mr. wilkinson's book is uniformly interesting, and has a direct bearing upon one of the great lessons of the war." the daily mail.--"it may safely be said that no war correspondent's work is more deserving of attention than mr. frank wilkinson's. he gives facts in a bright, humorous, unaffected way, and some of these facts require careful study by the nation. this is certainly a book to be read and studied. it is convincing in its moderation and truthfulness, excellently illustrated, and furnished with a good map." the daily news.--"we think we have never read a war correspondent's story on which scrupulous honesty was more clearly written. it is a book which deserves to be read by any student of the war, and will certainly be welcomed by all australians who shared in the campaign." the athenæum.--"the book should be studied by all those who have the condition of our army at heart." on the war path a lady's letters from the front by mrs. j. d. leather-culley. with 16 full-page illustrations on art paper from photographs taken by the author. crown 8vo, special cover design, 3s. 6d. the globe.--"we can recommend it heartily for perusal, for it is so obviously frank, fresh, and free in its general atmosphere and tone. it is quite delightful to read passages so full of vivacity, so devoid of affectation, so thoroughly to the point. it is in such informal narratives as these that we get at the 'true inwardness' of the war and its surroundings. we could quote many an instructive and suggestive passage. this is undoubtedly a book to be read." the spectator.--"the book generally is full of interest. it should be read and judged as a whole. we might make a very startling column by choosing extracts." the daily mail.--"mrs. culley witnessed major white's superb defence of ladybrand, of which feat she gives a very interesting account. altogether a bright little book, illustrated with some good photographs." the outlook.--"as far as it goes the book is one of the best we have seen." the king's race-horses a history of the connection of his majesty king edward vii. with the national sport by edward spencer, author of "the great game," &c. printed on hand-made paper, with twenty plates in photogravure, limited to 300 copies. royal 4to. price £3 3s. net. * * _also a special edition, imperial 4to, on japanese vellum, * limited to 50 copies, the plates on india paper, one hand coloured, with a duplicate set of plates in handsome portfolio for framing. each copy numbered and signed by the author. price £10 10s. net._ a four-page 4to prospectus, giving a full description of the work, post free from the leading booksellers and libraries, or from the publisher. _see_ page 8 of this catalogue. rural life: its humour and pathos by caroline gearey. crown 8vo, special cover design, 6s. the academy.--"a pleasant 'pot-pourri' of observations and anecdotes relating to village life. well chosen and pleasantly knit together." the daily news.--"the book is amusing." the spectator.--"a sufficiently readable book." to-day.--"a pleasantly written book." the leeds mercury.--"in her very entertaining book miss gearey is happy in her illustrations of village courtship." the glasgow herald.--"the sketches are as good-natured as they are entertaining." the house of commons by the right hon. sir richard temple, bart., g.c.s.i., &c. crown 8vo, cloth gilt, 3s. 6d. [_second edition._ the daily news.--"we heartily congratulate sir richard temple on producing a particularly pleasing book about parliament." the pall mall gazette.--"every parliamentarian and every politician will find this book of deep interest." the athenæum.--"we can strongly recommend sir richard temple's book." the globe.--"a manual whose utility is equalled only by its brightness and general readability." the last of the climbing boys by george elson. with a preface by the dean of hereford. crown 8vo, cover design, 6s. the standard.--"a singularly interesting book ... the narrative becomes remarkably interesting--the life of a sweep, such as it was in those days, being told with a freshness and reality on a par with the novelty and originality of the events recorded." the guardian.--"a remarkable life-sketch, which is as interesting as it is curious. the book is very readable and amusing as well as interesting. it is impossible to close it without a feeling of thankfulness that one deep blot that rests upon the past has been thoroughly wiped away." the pall mall gazette.--"the book, which is enormously interesting, whether viewed as a human document or as a romance, is the autobiography of mr. george elson, who began his career in the first year of queen victoria's reign as a 'climbing boy.'" happiness: its pursuit and attainment by rev. w. j. kelly. crown 8vo, cloth gilt, 3s. 6d. [_second edition._ the tablet.--"the author has combined a systematic treatment which reflects the training of the schools with a freshness and originality of exposition which is all his own, while the whole work has a literary flavour which bespeaks the scholar and--in the best sense of the term--the man of letters.... with much fervour and force of language the author shows how in the beatific vision the desires of those whose natural inclinations lead them to seek for riches, honours, power, beauty of form or harmony of sound, wisdom, peace, love, joy, will severally and collectively be satisfied. we most cordially recommend this excellent work to the notice and the use of clergy and laity alike." the daily express.--"the work of a ripe scholar and thinker. dignity and restraint are marked features of a book that is eloquent and lofty and full of freshness, suggestion and truth." appearances how to keep them up on a limited income by mrs. alfred praga, author of "dinners of the day," "starting housekeeping," &c. crown 8vo, cloth, 1s. [_new edition._ the queen.--"her teaching possesses a distinct value; her counsels are distinctly counsels of perfection. 'appearances' is both suggestive and valuable; one welcomes the book as an attempt to prove that a limited income does not necessarily entail slipshod housekeeping or coarse cookery." dramatic criticism (1899) by j. t. grein. crown 8vo, cloth gilt, 3s. 6d. net. the dally telegraph.--"a series of careful, intelligent articles, distinguished by the soundness of their criticism and the determined but broad-minded views of the author. this volume may be read with profit by the playwright, the critic, and the playgoer alike." the history of "the temple" with special reference to that of the middle temple; also facsimiles of the ancient seals. by g. pitt-lewis, k.c., a master of the bench of the middle temple. crown 8vo, paper cover, 1s. 6d. the daily telegraph.--"the subject, always an attractive one, is handled in a fashion which is as skilful as it is interesting." literature.--"an excellent account of one of the most illustrious of our inns of court." the boer in peace and war with 16 full-page copyright photographic illustrations on art paper. crown 8vo, picture paper cover, price 1s. the westminster gazette.--"an interesting description of the characteristics of the boer." the operatic problem by william johnson galloway, m.p. fcap. 4to. 1s. net. * * a short account of the systems under which opera is conducted * on the continent, with a scheme for the establishment of a system of national opera in this country. in heaven's porch by hugh clement. long 12mo, artistic paper cover, 6d. _new edition, revised._ the notts guardian.--"is a visit which the writer pays in imagination to the threshold of paradise, and granted his theological postulates, it is very admirably and beautifully written." sidelights on convict life by george griffith, author of "in an unknown prison land," etc. with numerous illustrations. crown 8vo, cloth gilt, 6s. the unconquerable colony some episodes of ulster in the seventeenth century. by james henry cochrane, m.a., late vicar of liscard, liverpool, formerly scholar trinity college, dublin, and chancellor's prizeman in poetry. author of "episodes in the war," etc. crown 8vo, cloth gilt, 3s. 6d. net. etiquette and entertaining by mrs. l. heaton armstrong, author of "etiquette for girls," "good form," "letters to a bride," etc. long 12mo, rounded edges, cloth, 1s. how to take care of a consumptive by mrs. m. forrest williams. fcap. 8vo, paper cover, 1s. net. poetry the demon of the wind, and other poems. by g. hunt jackson. crown 8vo, cloth gilt and gilt top, 3s. 6d. net. the scotsman.--"the book has no lack of pleasant reading. all are picturesque, fluent and gracefully turned: and the volume ought not to lack readers." the manchester guardian.--"mr. jackson's muse is pleasant company enough, and in her lighter vein touches a genuine chord." the manchester courier.--"this collection of poems contains many of unusual merit, while all are well above the average." nightshade and poppies: verses of a country doctor. by dugald moore, m.b. crown 8vo, cloth gilt, 3s. 6d. net. the newcastle daily chronicle.--"he can swing a stirring rhythm, and can handle even a professional subject in verse of vivid and vigorous idea and genuinely fine feeling. genuine powers and remarkable range. dr. dugald moore's verses have all a human pulse, and a picturesque energy." the bookman.--"decidedly above the average." the message of the masters. by f. hugh o'donnell. crown 8vo, cloth gilt and gilt top, 2s. 6d. net. "very near to genius."--newcastle chronicle. "a striking and melodious poem."--bookman. "poetry of a high order and a powerful philippic in verse."--new ireland review. "we can recommend this poem to patriots who have cut their teeth."--outlook. "strong and musical verse. this is a book to make one think."--leeds mercury. "verses which macaulay might have been proud to have penned."--punch. life's little comedies. by hugh bedwell. crown 8vo, cloth gilt and gilt top, 3s. 6d. net. the boer ride. by frank short. crown 8vo, paper cover, 6d. net. st. paul's.--"a story of considerable and human interest." john long, 13 & 14 norris street, haymarket, london and at all the libraries and booksellers john long's new sixpenny library of copyright novels the size of these volumes is medium 8vo, 8-3/4 in. by 5-3/4 in. they are set in a new clear type, double columns, and are printed on good english-made paper. each volume is attractively bound in a striking picture cover. _the following are now ready_- father anthony. by robert buchanan. the silent house in pimlico. by fergus hume. the bishop's secret. by fergus hume. the crimson cryptogram. by fergus hume. a traitor in london. by fergus hume. a difficult matter. by mrs. lovett cameron. the craze of christina. by mrs. lovett cameron. a passing fancy. by mrs. lovett cameron. the mystery of dudley horne. by florence warden. the bohemian girls. by florence warden. kitty's engagement. by florence warden. our widow. by florence warden. curios: some strange adventures of two bachelors. by richard marsh. mrs. musgrave and her husband. by richard marsh. the eye of istar. by william le queux. the veiled man. by william le queux. the wooing of monica. by mrs. l. t. meade. the sin of jasper standish. by rita. a cabinet secret. by guy boothby. a man of to-day. by helen mathers. robert orange. by john oliver hobbes. the progress of pauline kessler. by frederic carrel. bitter fruit. by mrs. lovett cameron. the three days' terror. by j. s. fletcher. --> _other novels by the most popular authors of the day will be added to the series in due course._ _the following are in preparation_- the sin of hagar. by helen mathers. the lovely mrs. pemberton. by florence warden. an ill wind. by mrs. lovett cameron. woman--the sphinx. by fergus hume. a beautiful rebel. by ernest glanville. the juggler and the soul. by helen mathers. john long, 13 & 14 norris street, haymarket, london and at all the libraries and booksellers index to titles of books page ada vernham, 14 african treasure, an, 10 all the winners, 6, 19 all they went through, 14 angel of chance, the, 13 anna lombard, 11 appearances, how to keep them up, 23 arcadians, the, 3, 12 as cæsar's wife, 13 australia at the front, 21 avenging of ruthanna, the, 10 barbara west, 13 bâton sinister, the, 6, 13 beautiful rebel, a, 13, 28 beneath the veil, 4, 14 bettina, 9 bishop's secret, the, 17, 27 bitter fruit, 9, 27 blue bonnets up, 14 boer in peace and war, 24 boer ride, the, 26 boffin's find, 13 bohemian girls, the, 27 bread of tears, the, 12 burden of her youth, the, 6, 16 by jumna's banks, 18 by thames and tiber, 3, 13 cabinet secret, a, 11, 27 car of phoebus, the, 4, 15 castle oriol, 16 charming miss kyrle, the, 12 cicely vaughan, 15 confessions of a court milliner, 16 consumptive, care of a, 7, 25 corner in ballybeg, a, 18 court of destiny, the, 13 courtship of sarah, the, 10 craze of christina, the, 9, 27 crime in the wood, the, 17 crimson cryptogram, the, 17, 27 crimson lilies, 2, 9 crowning of gloria, the, 15 curios, 14, 27 curse of eden, the, 13 dame of the fine green kirtle, the, 19 daughter of england, a, 9 dead certainties, 19 demon of the wind, the, 26 desired haven, the, 18 diamond of evil, the, 13 didums, 18 difficult matter, a, 9, 18, 27 diva, the, 13 dramatic criticism, 24 dream of fame, a, 18 dwellers by the river, 13 etiquette and entertaining, 25 experiment of dr. nevill, the, 15 eye of istar, the, 27 father anthony, 15, 18, 27 fair fraud, a, 9 fair rosalind, 14 fighter in khaki, a, 18 fooling of don jaime, the, 16 for a god dishonoured, 15 forbidden paths, 17 frank redland, recruit, 10 friendship and folly, 14 from the land of the wombat, 17 fugitive anne, 2, 13 future of phyllis, the, 14 george and son, 16 girl with feet of clay, the, 15 glimpses from wonderland, 14 golden spur, the, 12 golden wang-ho, the, 10 green turbans, the, 10 happiness: its pursuit and attainment, 23 harvesters, the, 2 heretic, the, 15 his little bill of sale, 19 his master purpose, 5, 15 his 'prentice hand, 15 history of the temple, 24 hospital secret, the, 16 house of commons, the, 22 house of hardale, the, 15 houses of ignorance, 11 i'd crowns resign, 10 ill wind, an, 9, 28 indiscretion of gladys, the, 5, 12 infelix, 18 in heaven's porch, 24 in summer shade, 16 in the blood, 11 in the dark, 11 in the days of goldsmith, 5, 15 in the shadow of the purple, 13 investigators, the, 12 irish holidays, 13 island interlude, an, 18 italian wife, his, 12 ivory bride, the, 14 jade eye, the, 4, 10 jean keir of craigneil, 10 juggler and the soul, the, 19, 28 juggling fortune, 17 kingdom of mammon, the, 16 king's race-horses, the, 8, 22 kinsah, 9 kitty's engagement, 27 last foray, the, 4, 16 last of the climbing boys, 23 letters to dolly, 17 life's little comedies, 26 logan's loyalty, 10 lords of life, the, 14 love affairs of a curate, the, 17 lovely mrs. pemberton, the, 11, 28 love of a former life, the, 16 luck of a lowland laddie, the, 9 machinations of janet, the, 4, 10 magnetic girl, the, 5, 14 malice of grace wentworth, the, 14 man of iron, a, 16 man of to-day, a, 19, 27 mary bray, x her mark, 18 master sinner, the, 17 men of marlowe's, 14 merciless love, 15 message of the masters, the, 26 midsummer madness, 9 mill of silence, the, 13 mission of margaret, the, 14 miss nanse, 19 miss pauncefort's peril, 14 mistletoe manor, 16 mrs. musgrave and her husband, 17, 27 mystery of dudley horne, the, 27 native born, 11 nightshade and poppies, 26 nobler than revenge, 11 no. 3, the square, 6, 11 no vindication, 10 once too often, 11 on parole, 18 on the war path, 21 operatic problem, the, 24 oswald steele, 6 other mrs. jacobs, the, 6, 13 our widow, 27 outsider's year, an, 2, 11 papa limited, 18 parish doctor, the, 3, 13 partners three, 6, 9 passing fancy, a, 9, 27 paths of the dead, 18 paul le maistre, 1 paul the optimist, 15 pick-me-ups, 19 plato's hand-maiden, 12 progress of pauline kessler, the, 11, 27 purple of the orient, the, 12 pursued by the law, 10 real christian, the, 12 realization of justus moran, 11 remembrance, 5, 9 robert orange, 27 royal sisters, the, 13 rural life, 22 scarlet seal, the, 15 sea of love, the, 19 second lieutenant celia, 19 sent to coventry, 11 shadow of allah, the, 14 shutters of silence, the, 3, 12 side lights on convict life, 7, 25 silent house of pimlico, the, 17, 27 sin of hagar, the, 16, 28 sin of jasper standish, the, 27 social life in the british army, 20 social pretender, a, 14 something in the city, 11 son of mammon, a, 12 sport of circumstance, the, 17 story of a campaign estate, 13 story of lois, the, 15 straight shoes, 13 strength of straw, the, 11 sweet "doll" of haddon hall, 5, 14 thraldom, 4, 16 three days' terror, the, 12, 27 through the mists, 15 traitor in london, a, 10, 27 transplanted, 18 trewinnot of guy's, 10, 18 trust trappers, the, 6, 16 turnpike house, the, 10 unconquerable colony, the, 25 unwise virgin, an, 3, 10 up to-morrow, 6, 18 veiled man, the, 27 veronica verdant, 12 virgin gold, 11 ward of the king, a, 15 way out, the, 12 weaver of runes, a, 16 when love is kind, 16 when the mopoke calls, 17 wicked rosamond, 12 wilful woman, a, 12 wise in his generation, 15 with bought swords, 19 woman-derelict, a, 9 woman in the city, a, 5, 15 woman's checkmate, a, 14 woman's no, a, 9 woman--the sphinx, 10, 28 women must weep, 10 wooing of monica, the, 7 world masters, the, 3, 15 wounded pride, 16 yolande the parisienne, 12 youth at the prow, 19 zealandia's guerdon, 11 index of names of authors page amity, john, 18 armstrong, mrs. l. heaton, 25 bayliss, helen, 5, 15 beaman, emeric hulme, 15 bedwell, hugh, 26 berkley, eibbon, 16 bindloss, harold, 5, 15 bodkin, m. mcd., k.c., 5, 15 boothby, guy, 11, 27 buchanan, robert, 15, 18, 27 burgin, g. b., 3, 12 burrard, w. dutton, 16 cairnes, capt. w. e., 20 cameron, mrs. lovett, 5, 7, 9, 18, 27, 28 capes, bernard, 13 carrel, frederic, 11, 27 chatterton, g. g., 13, 17 cleeve, lucas, 5, 12 clement, hugh, 24 cobban, j. maclaren, 10 cocbrane, james henry, 25 compton, james, 16 cook, alec, 3, 13 cooper, edward h., 16 crommelin, may, 2, 9 cross, victoria, 11 culley, j. d. leather-, mrs., 21 davenant, philip, 15 davidson, campbell l., 19 delaire, jean, 18 dill, bessie, 14 dodge, walter phelps, 19 donovan, dick, 15 dothie, w. p., 15 doyle, mina, 18 dudeney, mrs. henry, 14 duntze, lady, 18 elson, george, 23 esler, e. rentoul, 19 fletcher, j. s., 3, 12, 27 forster, r. h., 4, 16 fowler, harry, 19 galloway, william johnson, 24 garnett, william terrel 16 gearey, caroline, 22 gilbert, george, 6, 13 gowing, mrs. aylmer, 3, 13 glanville, ernest, 13, 28 graham, winifred, 14 grein, j. t., 24 griffith, george, 3, 7, 15, 25 groot, j. morgan de, 16 gubbins, nathaniel, 6, 19 halcombe, c. j. h., 16 hannan, charles, 16 heppenstall, r. h., 14 hinkson, h. a., 16 hobbes, john oliver, 27 howard, isabel, 16 howard, keble, 17 hume, fergus, 4, 7, 10, 17, 27, 28 ingold, john, 14 jackson, g. hunt, 26 kelly, w. j., the revd., 23 kernahan, mrs. coulson, 3, 10 lees, robert james, 4, 15 lewis, g. pitt, k.c., 24 lewis, helen prothero, 4, 16 macleod, torquil, 19 macpherson, jean, 18 macquoid, katherine s., 15 mann, mary e., 16 markham, paul, 18 marsh, richard, 5, 14, 17, 27 martin, mrs. charles, 14 mathers, helen, 7, 16, 19, 27, 28 mathew, frank, 13 meade, l. t., 6, 16, 27 moore, dugald, 26 muddock, j. e., 5, 14 murphy, nicholas p., 18 nisbet, hume, 6, 16, 18 o'donnell, f. hugh, 26 perkins, rose, 15 phelps, sydney, 15 pinkerton, thomas, 14 platts, w. carter, 6, 18 pool, maria louise, 14 praed, mrs. campbell, 2, 6, 13 praga, mrs. alfred, 23 queux, william le, 27 reardon, richard, 15 reay, marcus, 17 rita, 27 roberts, morley, 14 robinson, f. w., 14 rodd, ralph, 18 sandeman, mina, 12 sergeant, adeline, 4, 14 short, frank, 26 snowden, keighley, 13 speight, t. w., 17 spencer, edward, 8, 22 stuart, esmè, 11 tayler, jenner, 18 temple, sir richard, bart., 22 thomas, annie (mrs. pender cudlip), 13 thynne, robert, 13 turner, edgar, 15 tweedale, violet, 16 tytler, sarah, 4, 10, 19 walker, william s. ("coo-ee"), 11, 17 warden, florence, 2, 6, 7, 11, 27, 28 whishaw, fred, 6, 11 wilkinson, frank, 21 williams, mrs. m. forrest, 7, 25 mrs. lovett cameron's popular novels crown 8vo, cloth, gilt. 6s. each. remembrance [_spring, 1903_ midsummer madness an ill wind bitter fruit a woman's "no." a fair fraud a passing fancy a difficult matter the craze of christina morning post.--"mrs. lovett cameron is one of the best story-tellers of the day, and her pages are so full of life and movement that not one of them is willingly skipped." daily news.--"mrs. lovett cameron's stories are always bright, vivacious, and entertaining. they are very pleasantly human, and have, withal, a charming freshness and vigour." daily telegraph.--"mrs. lovett cameron is a fertile and fluent story-teller, and an uncommonly clever woman." guardian.--"mrs. lovett cameron's novels are among the most readable of the day. she has a wonderful eye for a situation, so her stories move with a swing that is all their own." pall mall gazette.--"mrs. lovett cameron, in her novels, is always readable and always fresh." speaker.--"mrs. lovett cameron possesses the invaluable gift of never allowing her readers to become bored." black and white.--"we have a few writers whose books arouse in us certain expectations which are always fulfilled. such a writer is mrs. lovett cameron." academy.--"mrs. lovett cameron exhibits power, writes with vivacity, and elaborates her plots skilfully." bookman.--"mrs. lovett cameron has gained for herself a circle of admirers, who take up any new book of hers with a certain eagerness and confidence." vanity fair.--"mrs. lovett cameron needs no introduction to the novel reader, and, indeed, has her public ready to her hand as soon as her books come out." john long, 13 & 14 norris street, haymarket, london and at all the libraries and booksellers woodfall and kinder, printers, long acre, london. the battery and the boiler, by r.m. ballantyne. chapter one. in which the hero makes his first flash and explosion. somewhere about the middle of this nineteenth century, a baby boy was born on the raging sea in the midst of a howling tempest. that boy was the hero of this tale. he was cradled in squalls, and nourished in squalor--a week of dirty weather having converted the fore-cabin of the emigrant ship into something like a pig-sty. appreciating the situation, no doubt, the baby boy began his career with a squall that harmonised with the weather, and, as the steward remarked to the ship's cook, "continued for to squall straight on end all that day and night without so much as ever takin' breath!" it is but right to add that the steward was prone to exaggeration. "stooard," said the ship's cook in reply, as he raised his eyes from the contemplation of his bubbling coppers, "take my word for it, that there babby what has just bin launched ain't agoin' to shovel off his mortal coil--as the play-actor said--without makin' his mark some'ow an' somew'eres." "what makes you think so, johnson?" asked the steward. "what makes me think so, stooard?" replied the cook, who was a huge good-natured young man. "well, i'll tell 'ee. i was standin' close to the fore hatch at the time, a-talkin' to jim brag, an' the father o' the babby, poor feller, he was standin' by the foretops'l halyards holdin' on to a belayin'-pin, an' lookin' as white as a sheet--for i got a glance at 'im two or three times doorin' the flashes o' lightnin'. well, stooard, there was lightnin' playin' round the mizzen truck, an' the main truck, an' the fore truck, an' at the end o' the flyin' jib-boom, an' the spanker boom; then there came a flash that seemed to set afire the entire univarse; then a burst o' thunder like fifty great guns gone off all at once in a hurry. at that identical moment, stooard, there came up from the fore-cabin a yell that beat--well, i can't rightly say what it beat, but it minded me o' that unfortnit pig as got his tail jammed in the capstan off cape horn. the father gave a gasp. `it's born,' says he. `more like's if it's basted,' growled jim brag. `you're a unfeelin' monster, brag,' says i; `an' though you _are_ the ship's carpenter, i _will_ say it, you 'aven't got no more sympathy than the fluke of an anchor!' hows'ever the poor father didn't hear the remark, for he went down below all of a heap--head, legs, and arms-anyhow. then there came another yell, an' another, an' half a dozen more, which was followed by another flash o' lightnin' an' drownded in another roar o' thunder; but the yells from below kep' on, an' came out strong between times, makin' no account whatever o' the whistlin' wind an' rattlin' ropes, which they riz above--easy.--now, stooard, do you mean for to tell me that all that signifies nothink? do you suppose that that babby could go through life like an or'nary babby? no, it couldn't--not even if it was to try--w'ich it _won't_!" having uttered this prophecy the cook resumed the contemplation of his bubbling coppers. "well, i suppose you're right, john johnson," said the steward. "yes, i'm right, tom thomson," returned the cook, with the nod and air of a man who is never wrong. and the cook _was_ right, as the reader who continues to read shall find out in course of time. the gale in which little robin wright was thus launched upon the sea of time blew the sails of that emigrant ship--the seahorse--to ribbons. it also blew the masts out of her, leaving her a helpless wreck on the breast of the palpitating sea. then it blew a friendly sail in sight, by which passengers and crew were rescued and carried safe back to old england. there they separated--some to re-embark in other emigrant ships; some to renew the battle of life at home--thenceforward and for ever after to vilify the sea in all its aspects, except when viewed at a safe distance from the solid land! little robin's parents were among the latter. his father, a poor gentleman, procured a situation as accountant in a mercantile house. his mother busied herself--and she was a very busy little creature--with the economics of home. she clothed robin's body and stored his mind. among other things, she early taught him to read from the bible. as robin grew he waxed strong and bold and lively, becoming a source of much anxiety, mingled with delight, to his mother, and of considerable alarm, mixed with admiration and surprise, to his father. he possessed an inquisitive mind. he inquired into everything--including the antique barometer and the household clock, both of which were heirlooms, and were not improved by his inquiries. strange to say, robin's chief delight in those early days was a thunderstorm. the rolling of heaven's artillery seemed to afford inexpressible satisfaction to his little heart, but it was the lightning that affected him most. it filled him with a species of awful joy. no matter how it came--whether in the forked flashes of the storm, or the lambent gleamings of the summer sky--he would sit and gaze at it in solemn wonder. even in his earliest years he began to make inquiries into that remarkable and mysterious agent. "musser," he said one day, during a thunderstorm, raising his large eyes to his mother's face with intense gravity,--"musser, what is lightenin'?" mrs wright, who was a soft little unscientific lady with gorgeous eyes, sat before her son, perplexed. "well, child, it is--it--really, i don't know what it is!" "don't know?" echoed robin, with surprise, "i sought you know'd everysing." "no, not everything, dear," replied mrs wright, with a deprecatory smile; "but here comes your father, who will tell you." "does _he_ know everysing?" asked the child. "n-no, not exactly; but he knows many things--oh, _ever_ so many things," answered the cautious wife and mother. the accountant had barely crossed his humble threshold and sat down, when robin clambered on his knee and put the puzzling question.--"fasser, what is lightenin'?" "lightning, my boy?--why, it's--it's--let me see--it's fire, of course, of some sort, that comes out o' the clouds and goes slap into the earth--there, don't you see it?" robin did see it, and was so awestruck by the crash which followed the blinding flash that he forgot at the moment to push his inquiries further, much to his father's satisfaction, who internally resolved to hunt up the _encyclopaedia britannica_ that very evening--letter l--and study it. in process of time robin increased in size. as he expanded in body he developed in mind and in heart, for his little mother, although profoundly ignorant of electricity and its effects, was deeply learned in the scriptures. but robin did not hunger in vain after scientific knowledge. by good fortune he had a cousin--cousin sam shipton--who was fourteen years older than himself, and a clerk at a neighbouring railway station, where there was a telegraphic instrument. now, sam, being himself possessed of strongly scientific tendencies, took a great fancy to little robin, and sought to enlighten his young mind on many subjects where "musser's" knowledge failed. of course he could not explain all that he himself knew about electricity--the child was too young for that,--but he did what he could, and introduced him one day to the interior of the station, where he filled his youthful mind with amazement and admiration by his rapid, and apparently meaningless, manipulation of the telegraph instrument. cousin sam, however, did a good deal more for him than that in the course of time; but before proceeding further, we must turn aside for a few minutes to comment on that wonderful subject which is essentially connected with the development of this tale. chapter two. refers to a notable character. sparks, as a rule, are looked upon as a race of useless and disreputable fellows. their course is usually erratic. they fly upward, downward, forward, and backward--here, there, and everywhere. you never know when you have them, or what will be their next flight. they often create a good deal of alarm, sometimes much surprise; they seldom do any good, and frequently cause irreparable damage. only when caught and restrained, or directed, do sparks become harmless and helpful. but there is one spark in this world--a grand, glowing, gushing fellow-who has not his equal anywhere. he is old as the hills--perhaps older-and wide as the world--perchance wider. similar to ordinary sparks in some respects, he differs from them in several important particulars. like many, he is "fast," but immeasurably faster than all other sparks put together. unlike them, however, he submits to be led by master minds. stronger than hercules, he can rend the mountains. fleeter than mercury, he can outstrip the light. gentler than zephyr, he can assume the condition of a current, and enter our very marrow without causing pain. his name is electricity. no one knows what he is. some philosophers have said that he is a fluid, because he flows. as well might they call him a wild horse because he bolts, or a thief because he lurks! we prefer to call him a spark, because in that form only is he visible--at least when handled by man. talking of that, it was not until the last century that master minds found out how to catch and handle our spark. in all the previous centuries he had been roaming gaily about the world in perfect freedom; sometimes gliding silently to and fro like an angel of light; sometimes leaping forth with frightful energy in the midst of raging tempest, like a destructive demon--ripping, rending, shattering all that attempted to arrest his course. men have feared and shunned him since the beginning of time, and with good reason, for he has killed many of the human race. but although uncaught and untamed by them, our spark was not altogether unknown to the ancients. so far back as the year 600 before the christian era, thales, one of the greek sages, discovered that he hid himself in amber, a substance which in greek is named _electron_--hence his name electricity; but the ancients knew little about his character, though thales found that he could draw him from his hiding-place by rubbing him with silk and some other substances. when thus rubbed he became attractive, and drew light creatures towards him--not unlike human sparks! he also showed himself to be fickle, for, after holding these light creatures tight for a brief space, he let them go and repelled them. it was not till the days of good queen bess, towards the end of the sixteenth century, that a dr gilbert discovered that the wild fellow lay lurking in other substances besides amber--such as sulphur, wax, glass, etcetera. it is now known that electricity permeates all substances more or less, and only waits to be roused in order to exhibit his amazing powers. he is fond of shocking people's feelings, and has surprised his pursuers rather frequently in that way. some of them, indeed, he has actually shocked to death! it would take a huge volume to give a detailed account of all the qualities, powers, and peculiarities of this wild spark. we will just touch on a few facts which are necessary to the elucidation of our tale. a great event in the world's history happened in the year 1745. it was nothing less than the capture and imprisonment of wild, daring, dashing electricity. to the dutch philosophers belongs the honour of catching him. they caught him--they even bottled him, like ordinary spirits, and called his prison a _leyden jar_. from that date our spark became the useful and obedient slave of man. yet is he ever ready, when the smallest conceivable door, hole, or chink is left open, to dash out of the prison-house man has made for him, and escape into his native earth. he has no hope now, however, of escaping altogether, for he cannot resist the allurement of rubbing, by which, as well as by chemical action and other means, we can summon him, like the genii of aladdin's lamp, at any moment, from the "vasty deep," and compel him to do our work. and what sort of work, it may be asked, can this volatile fellow perform? we cannot tell all--the list is too long. let us consider a few of them. if we fabricate tea-pots, sugar-basins, spoons, or anything else of base metal, he can and will, at our bidding, cover the same with silver or yellow gold. if we grow dissatisfied with our candles and gas, he will, on being summoned, and properly directed by the master minds to whom he owns allegiance, kindle our lamps and fill our streets and mansions with a blaze of noonday splendour. if we grow weary of steam, and give him orders, he will drive our tram-cars and locomotives with railway speed, _minus_ railway smoke and fuss. he is a very giant in the chemist's laboratory, and, above all, a swift messenger to carry the world's news. even when out and raging to and fro in a wild state, more than half-disposed to rend our mansions, and split our steeples, and wreck our ships, we have only to provide him with a tiny metal stair-case, down which he will instantly glide from the upper regions to the earth without noise or damage. shakespeare never imagined, and mercury never accomplished, the speed at which he travels; and he will not only carry our news, or express our sentiments and wishes far and wide over the land, but he will rush with them, over rock, sand, mud, and ooze, along the bottom of the deep deep sea! and this brings us to a point. some of the master minds before mentioned, having conceived the idea that telegraphic communication might be carried on under water, set about experimenting. between the years 1839 and 1851 enterprising men in the old world and the new suggested, pondered, planned, and placed wires under water, along which our spark ran more or less successfully. one of the difficulties of these experiments consisted in this, that, while the spark runs readily along one class of substances, he cannot, or will not, run along others. substances of the first class, comprising the metals, are called conductors; those of the second class, embracing, among other things, all resinous substances, are styled non-conductors. now, water is a good conductor. so that although the spark will stick to his wires when insulated on telegraph-posts on land, he will bolt from them at once and take to flight the moment he gets under water. this difficulty was overcome by coating the wires with gutta-percha, which, being a non-conductor, imprisoned the spark, and kept him, as it were, on the line. a copper wire covered in this manner was successfully laid between england and france in 1850. when tested, this cable did not work well. minute imperfections, in the form of air-holes in the gutta-percha, afforded our spark an opportunity to bolt; and he did bolt, as a matter of course--for electricity has no sense of honour, and cannot be trusted near the smallest loop-hole. the imperfections were remedied; the door was effectually locked, after which the first submarine cable of importance was actually laid down, and worked well. french and english believers turned up hands and eyes in delighted amazement, as they held converse across the sea, while unbelievers were silenced and confounded. this happy state of things, however, lasted for only a few hours. suddenly the intercourse ceased. the telegraphists at both ends energised with their handles and needles, but without any result. the cable was dumb. our spark had evidently escaped! there is no effect without a cause. the cause of that interruption was soon discovered. early that morning a french fisherman had sauntered down to the port of boulogne and embarked in his boat. a british seaman, having nothing to do but smoke and meditate, was seated on a coil of rope at the time, enjoying himself and the smells with which that port is not unfamiliar. he chanced to be a friend of that french fisherman. "you're early afloat, mounseer," he said. "oui, monsieur. vill you com'? i go for feesh." "well, _wee_; i go for fun." they went accordingly and bore away to the northward along the coast before a light breeze,--past the ruined towers which france had built to guard her port in days gone by; past the steep cliffs beyond boulogne; past the lovely beach of wimereux, with its cottages nestled among the sand-hills, and its silted-up harbour, whence napoleon the first had intended to issue forth and descend on perfidious albion--but didn't; past cliffs, and bays, and villages further on, until they brought up off cape grisnez. here the frenchman let down his trawl, and fished up, among other curiosities of the deep, the submarine cable! "behold! fat is dis?" he exclaimed, with glaring eyes, uplifted brows, shoulders shrugged, hands spread out, and fingers expanded. "the sea-sarpint grow'd thin," suggested the englishman. "non; c'est seaveed--veed de most 'strordinair in de vorld. oui, donnez-moi de hache, de hax, mon ami." his friend handed him the axe, wherewith lie cut off a small portion of the cable and let the end go. little did that fisherman know that he had also let our spark go free, and cruelly dashed, for a time at least, the budding hopes of two nations--but so it was. he bore his prize in triumph to boulogne, where he exhibited it as a specimen of rare seaweed with its centre filled with gold, while the telegraph clerks at both ends sat gazing in dismay at their useless instruments. thus was the first submarine electric cable destroyed. and with the details of its destruction little robin was intimately acquainted, for cousin sam had been a member of the staff that had worked that telegraph--at least he had been a boy in the office,--and in after years he so filled his cousin's mind with the importance of that cable, and the grandeur and difficulty of the enterprise, that robin became powerfully sympathetic--so much so that when sam, in telling the story, came to the point where the frenchman accomplished its destruction, robin used to grieve over it as though he had lost a brother, or a kitten, or his latest toy! we need scarcely add that submarine cable telegraphy had not received its death-blow on that occasion. its possibility had been demonstrated. the very next year (1851) mr t.r. crampton, with messrs. wollaston, kuper, and others, made and laid an improved cable between dover and calais, and ere long many other parts of the world were connected by means of snaky submarine electric cables. chapter three. early aspirations. one pleasant summer afternoon, mr wright, coming in from the office, seated himself beside his composed little wife, who was patching a pair of miniature pantaloons. "nan," said the husband, with a perplexed look, "what _are_ we to do with our robin when he grows up?" "george," answered the composed wife, "don't you think it is rather soon to trouble ourselves with that question? robin is a mere child yet. we must first give him a good education." "of course, i know that," returned the perplexed husband, "still, i can't help thinking about what is to be done after he has had the good education. you know i have no relation in the world except brother richard, who is as poor as myself. we have no influential friends to help him into the army or the navy or the indian civil service; and the church, you know, is not suitable for an imp. just look at him _now_!" mrs wright looked through the window, over one of those sunny landscapes which are usually described as "smiling," across a winding rivulet, and at last fixed her gorgeous eyes on a tall post, up which a small black object was seen to be struggling. "what can he be up to?" said the father. "he seems to be up the telegraph-post," said the mother, "investigating the wires, no doubt. i heard him talking about telegraphy to madge this morning--retailing what cousin sam tries to teach him,--and i shouldn't wonder if he were now endeavouring to make sure that what he told her was correct, for you know he is a thorough investigator." "yes, i know it," murmured the father, with a grim pursing of his lips; "he investigated the inside of my watch last week, to find out, as he said, what made the noise in its `stummick,' and it has had intermittent fever ever since. two days ago he investigated my razor,--it is now equal to a cross-cut saw; and as to my drawers and papers, excepting those which i lock up, there is but one word which fully describes the result of his investigations, and that is--chaos." there was, in truth, some ground for that father's emotions, for master robin displayed investigative, not to say destructive, capacities far in advance of his years. "never mind, george," said mrs wright soothingly, "we must put up with his little ways as best we may, consoling ourselves with the reflection that robin has genius and perseverance, with which qualities he is sure to make his way in the world." "he has at all events made his way up the telegraph-post," said mr wright, his smile expanding and the grimness of it departing; "see! the rascal is actually stretching out his hand to grasp one of the wires. ha! hallo!" the composed wife became suddenly discomposed, and gave vent to a scream, for at that moment the small black object which they had been watching with so much interest was seen to fall backward, make a wild grasp at nothing with both hands, and fall promptly to the ground. his father threw up the window, leaped out, dashed across the four-feet-wide lawn, cleared the winding rivulet, and cut, like a hunted hare, over the smiling landscape towards the telegraph-post, at the foot of which he picked up his unconscious though not much injured son. "what made you climb the post, robin?" asked his cousin madge that evening as she nursed the adventurous boy on her knee--and madge was a very motherly nurse, although a full year younger than robin. "i kimed it to see if i could hear the 'trissity," replied the injured one. "the lek-trissity," said madge, correcting. "you must learn to p'onounce your words popperly, dear. you'll never be a great man if you are so careless." "i don't want to be a g'eat man," retorted robin. "i on'y want t'understand things whats puzzlesum." "well, does the telegraph puzzle you?" "oh! mos' awfully," returned robin, with a solemn gaze of his earnest eyes, one of which was rendered fantastic by a yellow-green ring round it and a swelling underneath. "i's kite sure i's stood for hours beside dat post listin' to it hummin' an hummin' like our olianarp--" "now, robin, _do_ be careful. you know mamma calls it an olian _harp_." "yes, well, like our olian _h_arp, only a deal louder, an' far nicer. an' i's often said to myself, is that the 'trissity--?" "lek, robin, lek!" "well, yes, _lek_-trissity. so i thought i'd kime up an' see, for, you know, papa says the 'trissity--lek, i mean--runs along the wires--" "but papa also says," interrupted madge, "that the sounds you want to know about are made by the vi--the vi--" "bratin'," suggested the invalid. "yes, vibratin' of the wires." "i wonder what vi-bratin' means," murmured robin, turning his lustrous though damaged eyes meditatively on the landscape. "don'no for sure," said madge, "but i think it means tremblin'." it will be seen from the above conversation that robert wright and his precocious cousin marjory were of a decidedly philosophical turn of mind. chapter four. extraordinary result of an attempt at amateur cable-laying. time continued to roll additional years off his reel, and rolled out robin and madge in length and breadth, though we cannot say much for thickness. time also developed their minds, and robin gradually began to understand a little more of the nature of that subtle fluid--if we may venture so to call it--under the influence of which he had been born. "come, madge," he said one day, throwing on his cap, "let us go and play at cables." madge, ever ready to play at anything, put on her sun-bonnet and followed her ambitious leader. "is it to be land-telegraphs to-day, or submarine cables?" inquired madge, with as much gravity and earnestness as if the world's welfare depended on the decision. "cables, of course," answered robin, "why, madge, i have done with land-telegraphs now. there's nothing more to learn about them. cousin sam has put me up to everything, you know. besides, there's no mystery about land-lines. why, you've only got to stick up a lot o' posts with insulators screwed to 'em, fix wires to the insulators, clap on an electric battery and a telegraph instrument, and fire away." "robin, what _are_ insulators?" asked madge, with a puzzled look. "madge," replied robin, with a self-satisfied expression on his pert face, "this is the three-hundred-thousandth time i have explained that to you." "explain it the three-hundred-thousand-and-first time, then, dear robin, and perhaps i'll take it in." "well," began robin, with a hypocritical sigh of despair, "you must know that everything in nature is more or less a conductor of electricity, but some things conduct it so well--such as copper and iron--that they are called _conductors_, and some things--such as glass and earthenware--conduct it so _very_ badly that they scarcely conduct it at all, and are called _non-conductors_. d'ee see?" "oh yes, i see, robin; so does a bat, but he doesn't see well. however, go on." "well, if i were to run my wire through the posts that support it, my electricity would escape down these posts into the earth, especially if the posts were wet with rain, for water is a good conductor, and mister electricity has an irresistible desire to bolt into the earth, like a mole." "naughty fellow!" murmured madge. "but," continued robin impressively, "if i fix little lumps of glass with a hole in them to the posts, and fix my wires to these, electricity cannot bolt, because the glass lumps are non-conductors, and won't let him pass." "how good of them!" said madge. "yes, isn't it? so, you see," continued robin, "the glass lumps are insulators, for they cut the electricity off from the earth as an island is, or, at all events, appears to be, cut off from it by water; and mister electricity _must_ go along the wires and do what i tell him. of course, you know, i must make my electricity first in a battery, which, as i have often and often told you, is a trough containing a mixture of acid and water, with plates or slices of zinc and copper in it, placed one after the other, but not touching each other. now, if i fix a piece of wire to my first copper slice or plate, and the other end of it to my last zinc slice or plate, immediately electricity will begin to be made, and will fly from the copper to the zinc, and so round and round until the plates are worn out or the wire broken. d'ee see?" "no, robin, i don't see; i'm blinder than the blindest mole." "oh, madge, what a wonderful mind you must have!" said robin, laughing. "it is _so_ simple." "of course," said madge, "i understand what you mean by troughs and plates and all that, but what i want to know is _why_ that arrangement is necessary. why would it not do just as well to tempt electricity out of its hiding-hole with plates or slices of cheese and bread, placed one after the other in a trough filled with a mixture of glue and melted butter?" "what stuff you do talk, madge! as well might you ask why it would not do to make a plum-pudding out of nutmegs and coal-tar. there are some things that no fellow can understand, and of course i don't know _everything_!" the astounding modesty of this latter remark seemed to have furnished madge with food for reflection, for she did not reply to it. after a few minutes' walk the amateur electricians reached the scene of their intended game--a sequestered dell in a plantation, through which brawled a rather turbulent stream. at one part, where a willow overhung the water, there was a deep broad pool. the stream entered the pool with a headlong plunge, and issued from it with a riotous upheaval of wavelets and foam among jagged rocks, as if rejoicing in, and rather boastful about, the previous leap. the game was extremely simple. the pool was to be the german ocean, and a piece of stout cord was to serve as a submarine cable. the boy and girl were well-matched playmates, for madge was ignorant and receptive--in reference to science,--robin learned and communicative, while both were intensely earnest. "now, this is the battery," said robin, when he had dug a deep hole close to the pool with a spade brought for the purpose. "yes, and the muddy water in it will do for the mixture of acid and water," said madge. as she spoke, robin's toe caught on a root, and he went headlong into the battery, out of which he emerged scarcely recognisable. it was a severe, though not an electric, shock, and at first robin seemed inclined to whimper, but his manhood triumphed, and he burst into a compound laugh and yell, to the intense relief of madge, who thought at first that he had been seriously injured. "never mind, madge," said robin, as he cleansed his muddy head; "cousin sam has often told me that nothing great was ever done except in the face of difficulties and dangers. i wonder whether this should be counted a difficulty or a danger?" "at first i thought it a danger," said madge, with a laugh, "but the trouble you now have with the mud in your hair looks like a difficulty, doesn't it?" "why, then, it's both," cried robin. "come, that's a good beginning. now, madge, you get away round to the opposite side of the pool, and mind you don't slip in, it's rather steep there." "this is england," cried robin, preparing to throw the line over to his assistant, who stood eager to aid on the other side, "and you are standing on--on--what's on the other side of the german ocean?" "i'm not sure, robin. holland, i think, or denmark." "well, we'll say denmark. look-out now, and be ready to catch. i'm going to connect england and denmark with a submarine cable." "stay!" cried madge, "is that the way submarine cables are laid, by throwing them over the sea?" "n-no, not exactly. they had a steamboat, you know, to carry over the telegraph from england to france; but we haven't got a steamer--not even a plank to make-believe one. cousin sam says that a good workman can do his work with almost any tools that come to hand. as we have no tools at all, we will improve on that and go to work without them. now, catch!" robin made a splendid heave--so splendid indeed that it caused him to stagger backward, and again he stumbled into his own _battery_! this time, however, only one leg was immersed. "another danger!" shouted madge in great glee, "but i've caught the cable." "all right. now make fast the shore-end to a bush, and we'll commence telegraphing. the first must be a message from the queen to the king of denmark--or is it the president?" "king, i think, robin, but i'm not sure." "well, it won't matter. but--i say--" "what's wrong now?" "why, the cable won't sink. it is floating about on the top of the pool, and it can't be a submarine cable, you know, unless it sinks." "another difficulty, robin." "we will face and overcome it, madge. cast off the shore-end and i'll soon settle that." having fastened a number of small stones to the cable, this persevering electrician would certainly have overcome the difficulty if the line had not, when thrown, unfortunately caught on a branch of the willow, where it hung suspended just out of madge's reach. "how provoking!" she said, stretching out her hand to the utmost. "take care--you'll--ha!" the warning came too late. the edge of the bank gave way, and madge went headlong into the pool with a wild shriek and a fearful plunge. robin stood rooted to the spot--heart, breath, blood, brain, paralysed for the moment--gazing at the spot where his playmate had disappeared. another moment and her head and hands appeared. she struggled bravely for life, while the circling current carried her quickly to the lower end of the pool. robin's energies returned, as he afterwards said, like an electric shock, but accompanied with a terrible sinking of the heart, for he knew that he could not swim! his education in this important particular had been neglected. he sprang round to the lower end of the pool just in time to hold out his hand to the drowning girl. he almost touched her outstretched hand as she swept towards the turbulent waters below, but failed to grasp it. for the first time in his life our little hero was called on to face death voluntarily. another moment and madge would have been caught in the boiling stream that rushed towards the fall below. he was equal to the occasion. he sprang right upon madge and caught her in his arms. there was no need to hold on to her. in the agony of fear the poor child clasped the boy in a deadly embrace. they were whirled violently round and hurled against a rock. robin caught it with one hand, but it was instantly torn from his grasp. the waters overwhelmed them, and again sent them violently towards the bank. this time robin caught a rock with both hands and held on. slowly, while almost choked with the water that splashed up into his face, he worked his right knee into a crevice, then made a wild grasp with the left hand at a higher projection of the rock. at the same moment his left foot struck the bottom. another effort and he was out of danger, but it was several minutes ere he succeeded in dragging madge from the hissing water of the shallows to the green sward above, and after this was accomplished he found it almost impossible to tear himself from the grasp of the now unconscious girl. at first poor robin thought that his companion was dead, but by degrees consciousness returned, and at last she was able to rise and walk. drenched, dishevelled, and depressed, these unfortunate electricians returned home. of course they were received with mingled joy and reproof. of course, also, they were forbidden to go near the pool again--though this prohibition was afterwards removed, and our hero ultimately became a first-rate swimmer and diver. thus was frustrated the laying of the first submarine cable between england and denmark! chapter five. prospects of real cable-laying--robin meets with his first electrical acquaintances. circumstances require that we should shift the scene and the date pretty frequently in this tale. we solicit the reader's attendance at an office in london. the office is dingy. many offices are so. two clerks are sitting in it making faces at each other across their desk. they are not lunatics. they are not imbeciles or idlers. on the contrary, they have frequent spells of work that might throw the toils of an arab ass into the shade. they are fine strapping young fellows, with pent-up energies equal to anything, but afflicted with occasional periods of having nothing particular to do. these two have been sitting all morning in busy idleness. their muscular and nervous systems rebelling, have induced much fidgeting and many wry faces. being original, they have turned their sorrows into a game, and their little game at present is to see which can make a face so hideous that the other shall be compelled to laugh! we have deep sympathy with clerks. we have been a clerk, and know what it is to have the fires of vesuvius raging within, while under the necessity of exhibiting the cool aspect of spitzbergen without. but these clerks were not utterly miserable. on the contrary, they were, to use one of their own familiar phrases, rather jolly than otherwise. evening was before them in far-off but attainable perspective. home, lawn-tennis, in connection with bright eyes and pretty faces, would compensate for the labours of the day and let off the steam. they were deep in their game when a rap at the door brought their faces suddenly to a state of nature. "come in," said the _first_ clerk. "and wipe your feet," murmured the second, in a low tone. a gentleman, with an earnest countenance, entered. "is mr lowstoft in his office?" "he is, sir," said the first clerk, descending from his perch with an air of good-will, and requesting the visitor's name and business. the visitor handed his card, on which the name cyrus field was written, and the clerk, observing it, admitted the owner at once to the inner sanctum where mr lowstoft transacted business. "there's _something_ up," murmured the clerk, with a mysterious look at his comrade, on resuming his perch. "time's up, or nearly so," replied the comrade, with an anxious look at the clock: "the witching hour which sets us free to saunter home and have our tea-"approaches." "d'you know that that is cyrus field?" said the first clerk. "and who is cyrus field?" demanded the second clerk. "o ignoramus! thy name is bob, and thou art not worth a `bob'-miserable snob! don't you know that cyrus field is the man who brought about the laying of the great atlantic cable in 1858?" "no, most learned fred, i did not know that, but i am very glad to know it now. moreover, i know nothing whatever about cables--atlantic or otherwise. i am as blind as a bat, as ignorant as a bigot, as empty as a soap-bubble, and as wise as solomon, because i'm willing to be taught." "what a delicious subject to work upon!" said fred. "well then, work away," returned bob; "suppose you give _me_ a discourse on cables. but, i say--be merciful. don't overdo it, frederick. remember that my capacity is feeble." "i'll be careful, bob.--well then, you must know that from the year 1840 submarine cables had been tried and laid, and worked with more or less success, in various parts of the world. sir w. o'shaughnessy, i believe, began it. irishmen are frequently at the root of mischief! anyhow, he, being superintendent of electric telegraphs in india in 1839, hauled an insulated wire across the hooghly at calcutta, and produced what they call `electrical phenomena' at the other side of the river. in 1840 mr wheatstone brought before the house of commons the project of a cable from dover to calais. in 1842 professor morse of america laid a cable in new york harbour, and another across the canal at washington. he also suggested the possibility of laying a cable across the atlantic ocean. in 1846 colonel colt, of revolver notoriety, and mr robinson, laid a wire from new york to brooklyn, and from long island to correy island. in 1849--" "i say, fred," interrupted bob, with an anxious look, "you are a walking dictionary of dates. haydn was nothing to you. but--couldn't you give it me without dates? i've got no head for dates; never could stomach them--except when fresh off the palm-tree. don't you think that a lecture without dates would be pleasantly original as well as instructive?" "no, bob, i don't, and i won't be guilty of any such gross innovation on time-honoured custom. you must swallow my dates whether you like them or not. in 1849, i say, a mr walker--" "any relation to hookey?" "no, sir, none whatever--he laid a wire from folkestone to a steamer two miles off the shore, and sent messages to it. at last, in 1851. mr brett laid down and successfully wrought the cable between dover and calais which had been suggested by wheatstone eleven years before. it is true it did not work long, but this may be said to have been the beginning of submarine telegraphy, which, you see, like your own education, bob, has been a thing of slow growth." "have you done with dates, now, my learned friend?" asked bob, attempting to balance a ruler on the point of his nose. "not quite, my ignorant chum, but nearly. that same year--1851, remember--a mr frederick n. gisborne, an english electrician, made the first attempt to connect newfoundland with the american continent by cable. he also started a company to facilitate intercourse between america and ireland by means of steamers and telegraph-cables. gisborne was very energetic and successful, but got into pecuniary difficulties, and went to new york to raise the wind. there he met with cyrus field, who took the matter up with tremendous enthusiasm. he expanded gisborne's idea, and resolved to get up a company to connect newfoundland with ireland by electric cable. field was rich and influential, and ultimately successful--" "ah! would that you and i were rich, fred," interrupted bob, as he let fall the ruler with a crash on the red-ink bottle, and overturned it; "but go on, fred, i'm getting interested; pardon the interruption, and never mind the ink, i'll swab it up.--he was successful, was he?" "yes, he was; eminently so. he first of all roused his friends in the states, and got up, in 1856, the `new york, newfoundland, and london telegraph company,' which carried a line of telegraph through the british provinces, and across the gulf of saint lawrence to saint john's, newfoundland--more than 1000 miles--at a cost of about 500,000 pounds. then he came over to england and roused the british lion, with whose aid he started the `atlantic telegraph company,' and fairly began the work, backed by such men as brett, bidden, stephenson, brunel, glass, eliot, morse, bright, whitehouse, and a host of others. but all this was not done in a day. cyrus field laboured for years among preliminaries, and it was not until 1857 that a regular attempt was made to lay an atlantic cable. it failed, because the cable broke and was lost. a second attempt was made in 1858, and was successful. in that year, my boy, ireland and newfoundland were married, and on the 5th of august the first electric message passed between the old world and the new, through a small wire, over a distance of above 2000 miles. but the triumph of field and his friends was short-lived, for, soon after, something went wrong with the cable, and on the 6th september it ceased to work." "what a pity!" exclaimed bob; "so it all went off in smoke." "not quite that, bob. before the cable struck work about 400 messages had been sent, which proved its value in a financial point of view, and one of these messages--sent from london in the morning and reaching halifax the same day--directed that `the 62nd regiment was not to return to england,' and it is said that this timely warning saved the country an expenditure of 50,000 pounds. but the failure, instead of damping, has evidently stimulated the energies of mr field, who has been going about between america and england ever since, stirring people up far and near, to raise the funds necessary for another attempt. he gives himself no rest; has embarked his own fortune in the affair, and now, at this moment, in this year of grace 1865, is doing his best, i have no doubt, to induce our governor, mr lowstoft, to embark in the same boat with himself." it would seem as if fred had been suddenly endowed with the gift of second-sight, for at that moment the door of his employer's room opened, and mr lowstoft came out, saying to his visitor, in the most friendly tones, that he had the deepest sympathy with his self-sacrificing efforts, and with the noble work to which he had devoted himself. bob, in a burst of sudden enthusiasm, leaped off his stool, opened the office-door, and muttered something as the distinguished visitor passed him. "i beg pardon," said mr field, checking himself, "what did you say?" "i--i wish you good luck, sir, with--with the new cable," stammered the clerk, blushing deeply. "thank you, lad--thank you," said mr field, with a pleasant smile and nod, as he went away. "mr sime," said mr lowstoft to bob, turning at the door of his room, "send young wright to me." "yes, sir," replied the obedient bob, going to a corner of the room and applying his lips to a speaking-tube. now young wright was none other than our hero robin grown up to the mature age of fifteen. he was perched on the top of a three-legged stool, and, from the slow and intensely earnest manner in which his head turned from side to side as he wrote, it was quite evident that he dotted all his _i's_ and stroked all his _t's_ with conscientious care. as he sat there--a sturdy little broad-shouldered fellow, so deeply engrossed with his work that he was oblivious of all around--he seemed the very _beau-ideal_ of a painstaking, hard-working clerk. so deeply was he engrossed in his subject--the copying of an invoice--that he failed to hear the voice of his fellow-clerk, although the end of the speaking-tube was not far, from where he sat. after listening a few seconds at the other end of the tube, bob sime repeated the summons with such vigour that robin leaped from his stool as though he had received one of his favourite electric shocks. a minute later he stood in the presence of the head of the house. "robert wright," said the head, pushing his spectacles up on his brow, "i shall be sorry to lose your services, but--" he paused and turned over the papers before him, as if searching for something, and robin's heart sank. was he going to be dismissed? had he done anything wrong, or had he unwittingly neglected some duty? "ah! here it is," resumed mr lowstoft, "a letter from a friend who has come by a slight injury to his right hand, and wants a smart amanuensis and general assistant. now i think of sending _you_ to him, if you have no objection." as the head again paused while glancing over the letter, robin ventured timidly to state that he had very strong objections; that he was very much satisfied with his situation and work, and had no desire to change. mr lowstoft did not appear to listen to his remarks, but said suddenly--"you've studied the science of electricity, i believe?" "yes, sir--to some extent," answered the lad, with a look of surprise. "i know you have. your father has told me about your tastes and studies. you've heard of mr cyrus field, i presume?" "indeed i have," said robin, brightening up, "it was through his efforts that the atlantic cable was laid in 1858--which unfortunately went wrong." "well, my boy, it is through his efforts that another cable is to be laid in this year 1865, which we all hope sincerely won't go wrong, and my friend, who wants an assistant, is one of the electricians connected with the new expedition. would you like to go?" robin's eyes blazed, and he could scarcely find breath or words to express his willingness--if his father did not object. "go home at once, then, and ask leave, for the great eastern is almost ready for sea, and you have to hasten your preparations." robin stroked no more _t's_ and dotted no more _i's_ that day. we fear, indeed, that he even left the invoice on his desk unfinished, with the last _i_ imperfect. bursting into his father's house, he found madge--now become a pretty little slip of feminine thread-paper--seated at the piano agonising over a chord which her hand was too small to compass. "madge, madge, cousin madge!" he shouted, seizing both the extended little hands and kissing the musical wrinkles from her brow, "why am i like a magnet? you'll never guess." "because you attract everybody to you," said madge promptly. "pooh! not at all. a magnet doesn't attract _every_ body. it has two poles, don't you know, and repels some bodies. no, madge, it's because i have been electrified." "indeed? and what has electrified you, robin?" "the atlantic cable, madge." "well, that ought to be able to do it powerfully," returned madge, with a laugh; "but tell me all about it, and don't make more bad conundrums. i'm sure something has happened. what is it?" mrs wright, entering at the moment, her son calmed himself as well as he could, and sat down to tell his tale and talk the matter over. "now, what think you, mother? will father consent?" "i think he will, robin, but before going into the matter further, i will lay it before our father in heaven. he must show us the way, if we are to go right." according to invariable custom, robin's mother retired to her own room to consider the proposal. thereafter she had a long talk with her husband, and the result was that on the following day our hero found himself in a train with a small new portmanteau by his side, a new billy-cock hat on his head, a very small new purse in his pocket, with a remarkably small sum of money therein, and a light yet full heart in his breast. he was on his way to the nore, where the great eastern lay, like an antediluvian macaroni-eater, gorging itself with innumerable miles of atlantic cable. to say truth, robin's breast--capacious though it was for his size-could hardly contain his heart that day. the dream of his childhood was about to be realised! he had thirsted for knowledge. he had acquired all that was possible in his father's limited circumstances. he had, moreover, with the valuable assistance of sam shipton, become deeply learned in electrical science. he had longed with all his heart to become an electrician--quite ready, if need were, to commence as sweeper of a telegraph-office, but he had come to regard his desires as too ambitious, and, accepting his lot in life with the quiet contentment taught him by his mother, had entered on a clerkship in a mercantile house, and had perched himself, with a little sigh no doubt, yet cheerfully, on the top of a three-legged stool. to this stool he had been so long attached--physically--that he had begun to regard it almost as part and parcel of himself, and had made up his mind that he would have to stick to it through life. he even sometimes took a quaint view of the matter, and tried to imagine that through long habit it would stick to him at last, and oblige him to carry it about sticking straight out behind him; perhaps even require him to take it to bed with him, in which case he sometimes tried to imagine what would be the precise effect on the bedclothes if he were to turn from one side to the other. thus had his life been projected in grey perspective to his mental eye. but now--he actually was an electrician-elect on his way to join the biggest ship in the world, to aid in laying the greatest telegraph cable in the world, in company with some of the greatest men in the universe! it was almost too much for him. he thirsted for sympathy. he wanted to let off his feelings in a cheer, but life in a lunatic asylum presented itself, and he refrained. there was a rough-looking sailor lad about his own age, but much bigger, on the seat opposite, (it was a third class). he thought of pouring out his feelings on him--but prudence prevented. there is no saying what might have been the result, figuratively speaking, to his boiler if the sailor lad had not of his own accord opened a safety-valve. "you seems pretty bobbish this morning, young feller," he said, after contemplating his _vis-a-vis_, for a long time in critical silence. "bin an' took too much, eh?" "i beg your pardon," said robin, somewhat puzzled. "you're pritty considerable jolly, i say," returned the lad, who had an honest, ugly face; and was somewhat blunt and gruff in manner. "i am indeed very jolly," said robin, with a bland smile, "for i'm going to help to lay the great atlantic cable." "wot's that you say?" demanded the lad, with sudden animation. robin repeated his remark. "well, now, that _is_ a go! why, _i'm_ goin' to help lay the great atlantic cable too. i'm one the stooard's boys. what may _you_ be, young feller?" "me? oh! i'm--i--why, i'm on the electrical staff--i'm--" he thought of the word _secretary_, but a feeling of modesty induced him to say--"assistant to one of the electricians." "which 'un?" demanded the lad curtly. "mr smith." "mr smith, eh? well--it ain't an unusual name--smith ain't. p'r'aps you'll condescend on his first name, for there's no less than three smiths among the electricians." "ebenezer smith, i believe," said robin. "ebbysneezer smith--eh? well, upon my word that's a smith-mixtur that i've never heerd on before. i don't know 'im, but he's all right, i dessay. they're a rum lot altogether." whether this compliment was meant for the great smith family in general, or the electrical branch in particular, robin could not guess, and did not like to ask. having thus far opened his heart, however, he began to pour out its contents, and found that the ugly sailor lad was a much more sympathetic soul than he had been led to expect from his looks. having told his own name, he asked that of his companion in return. "my name--oh! it's slagg--jim slagg; james when you wants to be respeckful--slagg when familiar. i'm the son o' jim slagg, senior. who _he_ was the son of is best known to them as understands the science of jinnylology. but it don't much matter, for we all runs back to adam an' eve somehow. they called me after father, of course; but to make a distinction they calls him jimmy--bein' more respeckful-like,--and me jim. it ain't a name much to boast of, but i wouldn't change it with you, young feller, though robert ain't a bad name neither. it's pretty well-known, you see, an' _that's_ somethin'. then, it's bin bore by great men. let me think--wasn't there a robert the great once?" "i fear not," said robin; "he is yet in the womb of time." "ah, well, no matter; but there should have bin a robert the great before now. anyhow, there was robert the bruce--he was a king, warn't he, an' a skull-cracker? then there was robert stephenson, the great engineer--he's livin' yet; an' there was robert the--the devil, but i raither fear he must have bin a bad 'un, _he_ must, so we won't count him. of course, they gave you another name, for short; ah, robin! i thought so. well, that ain't a bad name neither. there was robin hood, you know, what draw'd the long-bow a deal better than the worst penny-a-liner as ever mended a quill. an' there was a robin goodfellow, though i don't rightly remember who he was exactly." "one of shakespeare's characters," interposed robin. "jus' so--well, he couldn't have bin a bad fellow, you know. then, as to your other name, wright--that's all right, you know, and might have bin writer if you'd taken to the quill or the law. anyhow, as long as you're wright, of course you can't be wrong--eh, young feller?" jim slagg was so tickled with this sudden sally that he laughed, and in so doing shut his little eyes, and opened an enormous mouth, fully furnished with an unbroken set of splendid teeth. thus pleasantly did robin while away the time with his future shipmate until he arrived at the end of his journey, when he parted from jim slagg and was met by ebenezer smith. that energetic electrician, instead of at once taking him on board the great eastern, took him to a small inn, where he gave him his tea and put him through a rather severe electrical examination, out of which our anxious hero emerged with credit. "you'll do, robin," said his examiner, who was a free-and-easy yet kindly electrician, "but you want instruction in many things." "indeed i do, sir," said robin, "for i have had no regular education in the science, but i hope, if you direct me what to study, that i shall improve." "no doubt you will, my boy. meanwhile, as the big ship won't be ready to start for some time, i want you to go to the works of the telegraph construction and maintenance company, see the making of the cable, learn all you can, and write me a careful account of all that you see, and all that you think about it." robin could not repress a smile. "why, boy, what are you laughing at?" demanded mr smith, somewhat sternly. robin blushed deep scarlet as he replied-"pardon me, sir, but you said i am to write down all that i _think_ about it." "well, what then?" "i--i'm afraid, sir," stammered robin, "that if i write down all i _think_ about the atlantic cable, as well as all that i see, i shall require a very long time indeed, and a pretty large volume." mr smith gazed at our hero for some time with uplifted brows, then he shook his head slowly and frowned, then he nodded it slightly and smiled. after that he laughed, or rather chuckled, and said-"well, you may go now, and do what i have told you--only omitting most of what you think. a small portion of that will suffice! don't hurry back. go home and make a fair copy of your observations and thoughts. i'll write when i require you. stay--your address? ah! i have it in my note-book. what's your first name, mister wright?" robin grew two inches taller, or more, on the spot; he had never been called mister before, except in jest! "robert, sir," he replied. "robert--ha! h'm! i'll call you bob. i never could stand ceremony, so you'll accustom yourself to the new name as quickly as you can--but perhaps it's not new to you?" "please, sir, i've been used to robin; if you have no objection, i should--" "no objection--of course not," interrupted mr smith; "robin will do quite as well, though a little longer; but that's no matter. good-bye, robin, and--and--don't think too hard. it sometimes hurts digestion; good-bye." "well, what d'ee think of ebbysneezer smith, my electrical toolip?" asked jim slagg, whom robin encountered again at the station. "he's a wiry subject, i s'pose, like the rest of 'em?" "he's a very pleasant gentleman," answered robin warmly. "oh, of coorse he is. all the smiths are so--more or less. they're a glorious family. i knows at least half a dozen of 'em in what superfine people call the `slums' of london." "and i know _more_ than half a dozen of 'em," retorted robin, somewhat sharply, "in what unrefined people call the _h_aristocracy of london." "whew!" whistled mister slagg, gazing at robin in silent surprise. what the whistle implied was not explained at that time, because the locomotive whistle took up the tune with intense violence, causing a rush to the train, in which the two lads--like many other friends--were abruptly parted for a season. chapter six. tells of our hero's visit to the great cable. robin wright returned home with a bounding heart. since his electrical appointment he had become, figuratively speaking, an indiarubber ball--a sort of human "squash." his heart bounded; his feet bounded; if his head had fallen off, it also would have bounded, no doubt. on arriving he found his father's elder brother--a retired sea-captain of the merchant service--on a visit to the family. there was not a more favourite uncle in the kingdom than uncle rik--thus had his name of richard been abbreviated by the wright family. uncle rik was an old bachelor and as bald as a baby--more so than many babies. he was good-humoured and liberal-hearted, but a settled unbeliever in the world's progress. he idolised the "good old times," and quite pleasantly scorned the present. "so, so, robin," he said, grasping our hero by both hands (and uncle rik's grasp was no joke), "you're goin' in for batteries--galvanic batteries an' wires, are you? well, lad, i always thought you more or less of a fool, but i never thought you such a born idiot as that comes to." "yes, uncle," said robin, with a pleasant laugh, for he was used to the old captain's plain language, "i'm going to be an electrician." "bah! pooh!--an electrician!" exclaimed uncle rik with vehemence, "as well set up for a magician at once." "indeed he won't be far short of that," said mrs wright, who was seated at the tea-table with her husband and madge--"at least," she added, "if all be true that we hear of this wonderful science." "if only half of it be true," interjected mr wright. "but it _ain't_ true," said captain rik firmly. "they talk a deal of stuff about it, more than nine-tenths of which is lies--pure fable. i don't believe in electricity; more than that, i don't believe in steam. batteries and boilers are both bosh!" "but, uncle, you can't deny that they exist," said robin. "of course not," replied the captain. "i know as well as you do--maybe better--that there's a heap o' telegraph-wires rove about the world like great spiders' webs, and that there are steamboats hummin' an' buzzin'-ay, an' bu'stin' too--all over the ocean, like huge wasps, an' a pretty mess they make of it too among them! why, there was a poor old lady the other day that was indooced by a young nephy to send a telegraphic message to her husband in manchester--she bein' in london. she was very unwillin' to do it, bein' half inclined to regard the telegraph as a plant from the lower regions. the message sent was, `your lovin' wife hopes you'll be home to-morrow.' it reached the husband, `your lowerin' wife hopes you'll be hung to-morrow.' bad writin' and a useless flourish at the _e_ turned _home_ into _hung_. the puzzled husband telegraphs in reply, `mistake somewhere--all right--shall be back three o'clock--to-morrow--kind love.' and how d'ye think this reached the old lady?--`mistake somewhere--all night--stabbed in back--through cloak-two more rows--killed, love.' now, d'you call _that_ successful telegraphing?" "not very," admitted robin, with a laugh, "but of the thousands of messages that pass to and fro daily there cannot be many like these, i should think." "but what did the poor wife do?" asked madge anxiously. "do?" repeated rik indignantly, as though the misfortune were his own-for he was a very sympathetic captain--"do? why, she gave a yell that nigh knocked the young nephy out of his reason, and fell flat on the floor. when she came to, she bounced up, bore away for the railway station under full sail, an' shipped for manchester, where she found her husband, alive and hearty, pitchin' into a huge beefsteak, which he very properly said, after recovering from his first surprise, was big enough for two." "but what objection have you to steamers, uncle rik?" asked mrs wright; "i'm sure they are very comfortable and fast-going." "comfortable and fast-goin'!" repeated the old sailor, with a look of supreme contempt, "yes, they're comfortable enough when your berth ain't near the paddles or the boilers; an' they're fast-goin', no doubt, specially when they bu'st. but ain't the nasty things made of iron-like kitchen kettles? and won't that rust? an' if you knock a hole in 'em won't they go down at once? an' if you clap too much on the safety-valves won't they go up at once? bah! pooh!--there's nothin' like the wooden walls of old england. you may take the word of an old salt for it,--them wooden walls will float and plough the ocean when all these new-fangled iron pots are sunk or blowed to atoms. why, look at the great eastern herself, the biggest kettle of 'em all, what a precious mess _she_ made of herself! at first she wouldn't move at all, when they tried to launch her; then they had to shove her off sidewise like a crab; then she lost her rudder in a gale, an' smashed all her cabin furniture like a bad boy with his toys. bah! i only hope i may be there when she bu'sts, for it'll be a grand explosion." "i'm sorry you have so bad an opinion of her, uncle, for i am appointed to serve in the great eastern while layin' the atlantic cable." "sorry to hear it, lad; very sorry to hear it. of course i hope for your sake that she won't blow up on _this_ voyage, though it's nothin' more or less than an absurd ship goin' on a wild-goose chase." "but, uncle, submarine cables have now passed the period of experiment," said robin, coming warmly to the defence of his favourite subject. "just consider, from the time the first one was laid, in 1851, between dover and calais, till now, about fifteen years, many thousands of miles of conducting-wire have been laid along the bottom of the sea to many parts of the world, and they are in full and successful operation at this moment. why, even in 1858, when the first atlantic cable was laid, the gutta-percha company had made forty-four submarine cables." "i know it, lad, but it won't last. it's all sure to bu'st up in course of time." "then, though the attempt to lay the last atlantic cable proved a failure," continued robin, "the first one, the 1858 one, _was_ a success at the beginning, no one can deny that." "ay, but how long did it last?" demanded the skipper, hitting the table with his fist. "oh, please, have pity on the tea-cups, uncle rik," cried the hostess. "beg pardon, sister, but i can't help getting riled when i hear younkers talkin' stuff. why, do you really suppose," said the captain, turning again to robin, "that because they managed in '58 to lay a cable across the atlantic, and exchange a few messages, which refused to travel after a few days, that they'll succeed in layin' down a permanent speakin' trumpet between old england and noof'nland--2000 miles, more or less--in spite o' gales an' currents, an' ships' anchors, an' insects, an' icebergs an' whales, to say nothing o' great sea-sarpints an' such like?" "uncle rik, i do," said robin, with intensely earnest eyes and glowing cheeks. "bravo! robin, you'll do it, i do believe, if it is to be done at all; give us your hand, lad." the old sailor's red countenance beamed with a huge smile of kindness as he shook his enthusiastic nephew's hand. "there," he added, "i'll not say another word against iron kettles or atlantic cables. if you succeed i'll give batteries and boilers full credit, but if you fail i'll not forget to remind you that i _said_ it would all bu'st up in course of time." with note-book and pencil in hand robin went down the very next day to the works of the telegraph construction and maintenance company, where the great cable was being made. presenting his letter of introduction from mr smith, robin was conducted over the premises by a clerk, who, under the impression that he was a very youthful and therefore unusually clever newspaper correspondent, treated him with marked respect. this was a severe trial to robin's modesty; nevertheless he bore up manfully, and pulling out his note-book prepared for action. the reader need not fear that we intend to inflict on him robin's treatise on what he styled the "great atlantic cable," but it would be wrong to leave the subject without recording a few of those points which made a deep impression on him. "the cable when completed, sir," said the clerk, as he conducted his visitor to the factory, "will be 2300 nautical miles in length." "indeed," said robin, recording the statement with solemn gravity and great accuracy; "but i thought," he added, "that the exact distance from ireland to newfoundland was only 1600 miles." "you are right, sir, but we allow 700 miles of `slack' for the inequalities of the bottom. its cost will be 700,000 pounds, and the whole when finished will weigh 7000 tons." poor robin's mind had, of course, been informed about ton-weights at school, but he had not felt that he realised what they actually signified until the thought suddenly occurred that a cart-load of coals weighed one ton, whereupon 7000 carts of coals leaped suddenly into the field of his bewildered fancy. a slightly humorous tendency, inherited from his mother, induced 7000 drivers, with 7000 whips and a like number of smock-frocks, to mount the carts and drive in into the capacious hold of the great eastern. they turned, however, and drove instantly off his brain when he came into the august presence of the cable itself. the central core of the cable--that part by which the electric force or fluid was to pass from the old world to the new, and _vice versa_, was made of copper. it was not a solid, single wire, but a strand composed of seven fine wires, each about the thickness of a small pin. six of these wires were wound spirally round the seventh. this was in order to prevent what is termed a "breach of continuity," for it will be at once perceived that while a single wire of the core might easily break in the process of laying the cable, and thereby prevent the flow of electricity, the probability of the seven small wires all breaking at the same spot was so remote as to be almost impossible, and if even one wire out of the seven held, the continuity would remain. nay, even all the seven might break, but, so long as they did not all break at the same place, continuity would not be lost, because copper would still continue to touch copper all throughout the cable's length. in the process of construction, the central wire of the copper core was first covered with a semi-liquid coating of gutta-percha, mixed with tar--known as "chatterton's compound." this was laid on so thick that when the other wires were wound round it all air was excluded. then a coating of the same compound was laid over the finished conductor, and thus the core was solidified. next, the core was surrounded with a coating of the purest gutta-percha--a splendid non-conductor, impervious to water--which, when pressed to it, while in a plastic state, formed the first insulator or tube to the core. over this tube was laid a thin coat of chatterton's compound for the purpose of closing up any small flaws or minute holes that might have escaped detection. then came a second coating of gutta-percha, followed by another coating of compound, and so on alternately until four coats of compound and four of gutta-percha had been laid on. this core, when completed, was wound in lengths on large reels, and was then submerged in water and subjected to a variety of severe electrical tests, so as to bring it as near as possible to a state of perfection, after which every inch of it was examined by hand while being unwound from the reels and re-wound on the large drums, on which it was to be forwarded to the covering works at east greenwich, there to receive its external protecting sheath. all this, and much more besides, did robin wright carefully note down, and that same evening went home and delivered a long and luminous lecture, over which his mother wondered, madge rejoiced, his father gloried, and uncle rik fell asleep. next day he hastened to the covering works, and, presenting his credentials, was admitted. here he saw the important and delicate core again carefully tested as to its electrical condition, after which it received a new jacket of tanned jute yarn to protect it from the iron top coat yet to come. its jute jacket on, it was then coiled away in tanks full of water, where it was constantly kept submerged and continuously tested for insulation. last of all the top coat was put on. this consisted of ten wires of peculiarly fine and strong iron. each of these ten wires had put on it a special coat of its own, made of tarred manilla yarn, to protect it from rust as well as to lighten its specific gravity. the core being brought from its tank, and passed round several sheaves, which carried it below the factory floor, was drawn up through a hole in the centre of a circular table, around the circumference of which were ten drums of the manilla-covered wire. a stout iron rod, fastened to the circumference of the table, rose from between each drum to the ceiling, converging in a cone which passed through to the floor above. our core rose in the middle of all, and went through the hollow of the cone. when all was put in noisy and bewildering motion, the core which rose from the turning-table and whirling drums as a thin jute-clad line, came out in the floor above a stout iron-clad cable, with a manilla top-dressing, possessing strength sufficient to bear eleven miles of its own length perpendicularly suspended in water--or a margin of strength more than four and a half times that required,--and with a breaking strain of seven tons fifteen hundredweight. when thoroughly charged and primed, robin went off home to write his treatise. then he received the expected summons to repair on board the great eastern, and bade adieu to his early home. it was of no use that robin tried to say good-bye in a facetious way, and told madge and his mother not to cry, saying that he was only going across the atlantic, a mere fish-pond, and that he would be home again in a month or two. ah! these little efforts at deception never avail. himself broke down while urging madge to behave herself, and when his mother gave him a small bible, and said she required no promise, for she _knew_ he would treasure and read it, he was obliged hastily to give her a last fervent hug, and rush from the house without saying good-bye at all. chapter seven. the big ship--first night aboard. when our hero at last reached the great eastern, he soon found himself in what may be termed a lost condition. at first he was disappointed, for he saw her at a distance, and it is well-known that distance lends deception as well as "enchantment to the view." arrived alongside, however, he felt as if he had suddenly come under the walls of a great fortress or city. presently he stood on the deck of the big ship, as its familiars called it, and, from that moment, for several days, was, as we have said, in a lost condition. he was lost in wonder, to begin with, as he gazed at the interminable length and breadth of planking styled the deck, and the forest of funnels, masts, and rigging, and the amazing perspective, which caused men at the further end from where he stood to look like dolls. then he was lost in reality, when he went below and had to ask his way as though he were wandering in the labyrinths of a great city. he felt--or thought he felt--like a mere mite in the mighty vessel. soon he lost his old familiar powers of comparison and contrast, and ere long he lost his understanding altogether, for he fell down one of the hatchways into a dark abyss, where he would probably have ended his career with electric speed if he had not happily fallen into the arms of a human being, with whom he rolled and bumped affectionately, though painfully, to the bottom of the stair. the human being, growled intense disapprobation during the process, and robin fancied that the voice was familiar. "come, i say," said the being, remonstratively, "this is altogether too loving, you know. don't squeeze quite so tight, young 'un, whoever you be." "oh, i _beg_ your pardon," gasped robin, relaxing his grasp when they stopped rolling; "i'm _so_ sorry. i hope i haven't hurt you." "hurt me!" laughed jim slagg, for it was he; "no, you small electrician, you 'aven't got battery-power enough to do _me_ much damage; but what d'ye mean by it? is this the way to meet an old friend? is it right for a wright to go wrong at the wery beginnin' of his career? but come, i forgive you. have you been introdooced to capting anderson yet?" "no! who is he?" "who is he, you ignorant crokidile! why, he's the capting of the great eastern, the commander o' the big ship, the great mogul o' the quarter-deck, the king o' the expedition. but, of course, you 'aven't bin introdooced to him. he don't associate much with small fry like us--more's the pity, for it might do 'im good. but come, i'll take you under my wing for the present, because your partikler owner, ebbysneezer smith, ain't come aboard yet--ashore dissipatin', i suppose,--an' everybody's so busy gettin' ready to start that nobody will care to be bothered with you, so come along." there was same truth in this eccentric youths' remarks, for in the bustle of preparation for an early start every one on board seemed to be so thoroughly engrossed with his own duty that he had no time to attend to anything else, and robin had begun to experience, in the absence of his "partikler owner," an uneasy sensation of being very much in people's way. as he felt strangely attracted by the off-hand good-humoured impudence of his new friend, he consented to follow him, and was led to a small apartment, somewhere in the depths of the mighty ship, in which several youths, not unlike slagg, were romping. they had, indeed, duties to perform like the rest, but the moment chanced to be with them a brief period of relaxation, which they devoted to skylarking. "hallo who have you got here?" demanded a large clumsy youth, knocking off slagg's cap as he asked the question. "come, stumps, don't you be cheeky," said slagg, quietly picking up his cap and putting it on; "this is a friend o' mine--one o' the electricians,--so you needn't try to shock _his_ feelin's, for he can give better than he gets. he's got no berth yet, so i brought 'im here to show him hospitality." "oh, indeed," said mr stumps, bowing with mock respect; then, turning to the comrade with whom he had been skylarking, "here, jeff, supply this _gentleman_ with food." jeff, entering into stumps' humour, immediately brought a plate of broken ship-biscuit with a can of water, and set them on the table before robin. our hero, who had never been accustomed to much jesting, took the gift in earnest, thanked jeff heartily, and, being hungry, set to work with a will upon the simple fare, while stumps and jeff looked at each other and winked. "come, i can add something to improve that feast," said slagg, drawing a piece of cheese from his pocket, and setting it before his friend. robin thanked him, and was about to take the cheese when stumps snatched it up, and ran out of the room with it, laughing coarsely as he went. "the big bully," growled slagg; "it's quite obvious to me that feller will have to be brought to his marrow-bones afore long." "never mind," said jeff, who was of a more amiable spirit than stumps, "here's more o' the same sort." he took another piece of cheese from a shelf as he spoke, and gave it to robin. "now, my young toolip," said slagg, "havin' finished your feed, p'r'aps you'd like to see over the big ship." with great delight robin said that he should like nothing better, and, being led forth, was soon lost a second time in wonderment. of what use was it that slagg told him the great eastern was 692 feet long by 83 feet broad, and 70 feet deep? if he had said yards instead of feet it would have been equally instructive to robin in his then mentally lost condition. neither was it of the slightest use to be told that the weight of the big ship's cargo, including cable, tanks, and coals, was 21,000 tons. but reason began to glimmer again when slagg told him that the two largest vessels afloat could not contain, in a convenient position for passing out, the 2700 miles then coiled in the three tanks of the great eastern. "this is the main tank," said slagg, leading his friend to a small platform that hung over a black and apparently unfathomable gulf. "i see nothing at all," said robin, stretching his head cautiously forward and gazing down into darkness profound, while he held on tight to a rail. "how curious!--when i look down everything in this wonderful ship seems to have no bottom, and when i look up, nothing appears to have any top, while, if i look backward or forward things seem to have no end! ah! i see something now. coming in from the light prevented me at first. why, it's like a huge circus!" "yes, it on'y wants hosses an' clowns to make it all complete," said slagg. "now, that tank is 58 feet 6 inches in diameter, and 20 feet 6 inches deep, an' holds close upon 900 miles of cable. there are two other tanks not much smaller, all choke-full. an' the queer thing is, that they can telegraph through all its length _now_, at this moment as it lies there,--an' they are doing so continually to make sure that all's right." "oh! i understand _that_," said robin quickly; "i have read all about the laying of the first cable in 1858. it is the _appearance_ of things in this great ship that confounds me." "come along then, and i'll confound you a little more," said slagg. he accordingly led his friend from one part of the ship to another, explaining and commenting as he went, and certainly robin's wonder did not decrease. from the grand saloon--which was like a palatial drawing-room, in size as well as in gorgeous furniture--to the mighty cranks and boilers of its engines, everything in and about the ship was calculated to amaze. as slagg justly remarked, "it was stunnin'." when our hero was saturated with the "big ship" till he could hold no more, his friend took him back to his berth, and left him there for a time to his meditations. returning soon after, he sat down on a looker. "i say, robin wright," he began, thrusting his hands into his trousers-pockets, "it looks a'most as if i had smuggled you aboard of this ship like a stowaway. nobody seems to know you are here, an' what's more, nobody seems to care. your partikler owner ain't turned up yet, an' it's my opinion he won't turn up to-night, so i've spoke to the stooard--he's _my_ owner, you know--an' he says you'd better just turn into my berth to-night, an' you'll get showed into your own to-morrow." "but where will _you_ sleep?" asked robin, with some hesitation. "never you mind that, my young electrician. that's _my_ business. what you've got to do is to turn in." jeff and another lad, who were preparing to retire for the night at the time, laughed at this, but robin paid no attention, thanked his friend, and said that as he was rather tired he would accept his kind offer. thereafter, pulling out the small bible which he had kept in his pocket since leaving home, he went into a corner, read a few verses, and then knelt down to pray. the surprise of the other lads was expressed in their eyes, but they said nothing. just then the door opened, and the lad named stumps entered. catching sight of robin on his knees he opened his eyes wide, pursed his mouth, and gave a low whistle. then he went up to robin and gave him a slight kick. supposing that it was an accident, robin did not move, but on receiving another and much more decided kick, he rose and turned round. at the same moment stumps received a resounding and totally unexpected slap on the cheek from jim slagg, who planted himself before him with clenched fists and flashing eyes. "what d'ye mean by interferin' wi' _my_, friend at his dewotions, you monkey-faced polypus?" he demanded fiercely. the monkey-faced polypus replied not a word, but delivered a right-hander that might have felled a small horse. jim slagg however was prepared for that. he turned his head neatly to one side so as to let the blow pass, and at the same moment planted his knuckles on the bridge of his opponent's nose and sent him headlong into jeff's bunk, which lay conveniently behind. jumping furiously out of that, and skinning his shins in the act, stumps rushed at slagg, who, leaping lightly aside, tripped him up and gave him a smack on the left ear as he passed, by way of keeping him lively. unsubdued by this, stumps gathered himself up and made a blind rush at his adversary, but was abruptly stopped by what jeff called a "dab on the nose." repeating the rush, stumps was staggered by a plunging blow on the forehead, and he paused to breathe, gazing the while at his foe, who, though a smaller youth than himself, was quite as strong. "if you've had enough, monkey-face," said slagg, with a bland smile, "don't hesitate to say so, an' i'll shake hands; but if you'd prefer a little more before goin' to bed, just let me know, and--" slagg here performed some neat and highly suggestive motions with his fists by way of finishing the sentence. evidently stumps wanted more, for, after a brief pause, he again rushed at slagg, who, stepping aside like a spanish matador, allowed his foe to expend his wrath on the bulkhead of the cabin. "you'll go through it next time, stumps, if you plunge like that," said jeff, who had watched the fight with lively interest, and had encouraged the combatants with sundry marks of applause, besides giving them much gratuitous advice. regardless alike of encouragement and advice, the angry youth turned round once more and received a buffet that sent him sprawling on the table, off which he fell and rolled under it. there he lay and panted. "now, my sweet polypus," said the victor, going down on one knee and patting the vanquished on his shoulder, "next time you feels tempted to kick a gentleman--specially a electrician--at his dewotions, think of jim slagg an' restrain yourself. i bear you no ill-will however--so, good-night." saying this, robin's champion left the room and stumps retired to his berth growling. before passing from the subject, we may add that, the next night, robin--whose owner was still absent--was again hospitably invited to share the cabin of his friend and protector. when about to retire to rest he considered whether it was advisable to risk the repetition of the scene of the previous, night, and, although not quite easy in his conscience about it, came to the conclusion that it would be well to say his prayers in bed. accordingly, he crept quietly into his berth and lay down, but jim slagg, who was present, no sooner saw what he was about than he jumped up with a roar of indignation. "what are you about?" he cried, "ain't you goin' to say your prayers, you white-livered electrician? come, git up! if _i'm_ to fight, _you_ must pray! d'ye hear? turn out, i say." with that he seized robin, dragged him out of bed, thrust him on his knees, and bade him "do his dooty." at first robin's spirit rose in rebellion, but a sense of shame at his moral cowardice, and a perception of the justice of his friend's remark, subdued him. he did pray forthwith, though what the nature of his prayer was we have never been able to ascertain, and do not care to guess. the lesson, however, was not lost. from that date forward robin wright was no longer ashamed or afraid to be seen in the attitude of prayer. chapter eight. laying the cable--"faults" and fault-finding--anxieties, accidents, and other matters. come with us now, good reader, to another and very different scene--out upon the boundless sea. the great atlantic is asleep, but his breast heaves gently and slowly like that of a profound sleeper. the great eastern looks like an island on the water--steady as a rock, obedient only to the rise and fall of the ocean swell, as she glides along at the rate of six knots an hour. all is going well. the complicated-looking paying-out machinery revolves smoothly; the thread-like cable passes over the stern, and down into the deep with the utmost regularity. the shore-end of the cable--twenty-seven miles in length, and much thicker than the deep-sea portion--had been laid at valentia, on the 22nd of july, amid prayer and praise, speech-making, and much enthusiasm, on the part of operators and spectators. on the 23rd, the end of the shore cable was spliced to that of the main cable, and the voyage had begun. the first night had passed quietly, and upwards of eighty miles of the cable had gone out of the after-tank, over the big ship's stern, and down to its ocean-bed, when robin wright--unable to sleep--quietly slipped into his clothes, and went on deck. it was drawing near to dawn. a knot of electricians and others were chatting in subdued tones about the one subject that filled the minds of all in the ship. "what! unable to sleep, like the rest of us?" said ebenezer smith, accosting robin as he reached the deck. "yes, sir," said robin, with a sleepy smile, "i've been thinking of the cable so much that i took to dreaming about it when i fell asleep, and it suddenly turned into the great sea-serpent, and choked me to such an extent that i awoke, and then thought it better to get up and have a look at it." "ah! my boy, you are not the only one whom the cable won't let sleep. it will be well looked after during the voyage, for there are two sets of electricians aboard--all of them uncommonly wide awake--one set representing the telegraph construction and maintenance company, under monsieur de sauty; the other set representing the atlantic telegraph company, under mr varley and professor thomson. the former are to test the electrical state of the cable, and to keep up signals with the shore every hour, night and day, during the voyage, while the latter are to watch and report as to whether the cable fulfils her conditions, as specified in the contract. so you see the smallest fault or hitch will be observed at once." "do you mean, sir," asked robin in surprise, "that telegraphing with the shore is to be kept up continually _all_ the voyage!" "yes, my boy, i do," answered smith. "the lengths of the cable in the three tanks are joined up into one length, and telegraphing--for the purpose of testing it--has been kept up with the shore without intermission from the moment we left ireland, and began to pay out. it will be continued, if all goes well, until we land the other and in newfoundland. the tests are threefold,--first, for insulation, which, as you know, means the soundness and perfection of the gutta-percha covering that prevents the electricity from escaping from the wires, through the sea, into the earth; secondly, for continuity, or the unbroken condition of the conductor or copper core throughout its whole length; and, thirdly, to determine the resistance of the conductor, by which is meant its objection to carry our messages without vigorous application of the spur in the form of increased electrical power in our batteries. you see, robin, every message sent to us from the shore, as well as every message sent by us in reply, has to travel through the entire length of the cable, namely about 2400 miles, and as every mile of distance increases this unwillingness, or resistance, we have to increase the electrical power in the batteries, in proportion to the distance to which we want to send our message. d'you understand?" "i think i do, sir; but _how_ is the exact amount of resistance tested?" mr smith smiled as he looked at the earnest face of his young questioner. "my boy," said he, "you would require a more fully educated mind to understand the answer to that question. the subtleties of electrical science cannot be explained in a brief conversation. you'll have to study and apply to books for full light on that subject. nevertheless, although i cannot carry you _into_ the subject just now, i can tell you something _about_ it. you remember the testing-room which i showed you yesterday--the darkened room between the captain's state-room and the entrance to the grand saloon?" "yes, sir, i remember it well," responded robin,--"the room into which the conducting-wires from the ends of the cable are led to the testing-tables, on which are the curious-looking galvanometers and other testing machines." "just so," returned smith, pleased with his pupil's aptitude. "well, on that table stands professor thomson's delicate and wonderful galvanometer. on that instrument a ray of light, reflected from a tiny mirror suspended to a magnet, travels along a scale and indicates the resistance to the passage of the current along the cable by the deflection of the magnet, which is marked by the course of this speck of light. now, d'you understand that, robin?" "i--i'm afraid not quite, sir." "well, no matter," rejoined smith, with a laugh. "at all events you can understand that if that speck of light keeps within bounds--on its index--all is going well, but if it travels beyond the index--bolts out of bounds--an escape of the electric current is taking place somewhere in the cable, or what we call a _fault_ has occurred." "ah, indeed," exclaimed robin, casting a serious look at the cable as it rose from the after-tank, ran smoothly over its line of conducting wheels, dropped over the stern of the ship and glided into the sea like an an endless snake of stealthy habits. "and what," he added, with a sudden look of awe, "if the cable should break?" "why, it would go to the bottom, of course," replied smith, "and several hearts would break along with it. you see these two gentlemen conversing near the companion-hatch?" "yes." "one is the chief of the electricians; the other the chief of the engineers. their hearts would probably break, for their position is awfully responsible. then my heart would break, i know, for i feel it swelling at the horrible suggestion; and your heart would break, robin, i think, for you are a sympathetic donkey, and couldn't help yourself. then you see that stout man on the bridge--that's captain anderson-well, _his_ heart would--no--perhaps it wouldn't, for he's a sailor, and you know a sailor's heart is too tough to break, but it would get a pretty stiff wrench. and you see that gentleman looking at the paying-out gear so earnestly?" "what--cyrus field?" said robin. "yes; well, his heart and the atlantic cable are united, so as a matter of course the two would snap together." now, while smith and his young assistant were conversing thus facetio-scientifically, the electricians on duty in the testing-room were watching with silent intensity the indications on their instruments. suddenly, at 3:15 a.m., when exactly eighty-four miles of cable had been laid out, he who observed the galvanometer saw the speck of light glide to the end of the scale, and vanish! if a speck of fire had been seen to glide through the key-hole of the powder-magazine it could scarcely have created greater consternation than did the disappearance of that light! the commotion in the testing-room spread instantly to every part of the ship; the whole staff of electricians was at once roused, and soon afterwards the engines of the great eastern were slowed and stopped, while, with bated breath and anxious looks, men whispered to each other that there was "a fault in the cable." a fault! if the cable had committed a mortal sin they could scarcely have looked more horrified. nevertheless there was ground for anxiety, for this fault, as in moral faults, indicated something that _might_ end in destruction. after testing the cable for some time by signalling to the shore, monsieur de sauty concluded that the fault was of a serious character, and orders were at once given to prepare the picking-up apparatus at the bow for the purpose of drawing the cable back into the ship until the defective portion should be reached and cut out. "o _what_ a pity!" sighed robin, when he understood what was going to be done, and the feeling, if not the words, was shared by every one on board with more or less intelligence and intensity; but there were veterans of submarine telegraphy who spoke encouragingly and treated the incident as a comparatively small matter. two men-of-war, the terrible and the sphinx, had been appointed to accompany and aid the great eastern on her important mission. a gun was fired, and signals were made, to acquaint these with what had occurred while the fires were being got up in the boilers of the picking-up machinery. electricians as well as doctors differ, it would seem, among themselves, for despite their skill and experience there was great difference of opinion in the minds of those on board the big ship as to the place where the fault lay. some thought it was near the shore, and probably at the splice of the shore-end with the main cable. others calculated, from the indications given by the tests, that it was perhaps twenty or forty or sixty miles astern. one of the scientific gentlemen held that it was not very far from the ship, while another gentleman, who was said to be much experienced in "fault"-finding, asserted that it was not more than nine or ten miles astern. while the doctors were thus differing, the practical engineers were busy making the needful preparations for picking-up--an operation involving great risk of breaking the cable, and requiring the utmost delicacy of treatment, as may be easily understood, for, while the cable is being payed out the strain on it is comparatively small, whereas when it is being picked up, there is not only the extra strain caused by stoppage, and afterwards by hauling in, but there is the risk of sudden risings of the ship's stern on the ocean swell, which might at any moment snap the thin line like a piece of packthread. the first difficulty and the great danger was to pass the cable from the stern to the bow, and to turn the ship round, so as to enable them to steam up to the cable while hauling it in. iron chains were lashed firmly to the cable at the stern, and secured to a wire-rope carried round the outside of the ship to the picking-up apparatus at the bows. the cable was down in 400 fathoms of water when the paying-out ceased, and nice management was required to keep the ship steady, as she had now no steerage-way; and oh! with what intense interest and curiosity and wonder did robin wright regard the varied and wonderful mechanical appliances, with which the whole affair was accomplished! then the cable was cut, and, with its shackles and chains, allowed to go plump into the sea. robin's heart and soul seemed to go along with it, for, not expecting the event, he fancied it was lost for ever. "gone!" he exclaimed, with a look of horror. "not quite," said jim slagg, who stood at robin's elbow regarding the operations with a quiet look of intelligence. "don't you see, robin, that a wire-rope fit a'most to hold the big ship herself is holdin' on to it." "of course; how stupid i am!" said robin, with a great sigh of relief; "i see it now, going round to the bows." at first the rope was let run, to ease the strain while the ship swung round; then it was brought in over the pulley at the bow, the paddles moved, and the return towards ireland was begun. the strain, although great, was far from the breaking-point, but the speed was very slow--not more than a mile an hour being considered safe in the process of picking-up. "patience, robin," observed mr smith, as he passed on his way to the cabin, "is a virtue much needed in the laying of cables. we have now commenced a voyage at the rate of one mile an hour, which will not terminate till we get back to owld ireland, unless we find the fault." patience, however, was not destined to be so severely tried. all that day and all night the slow process went on. meanwhile--as the cable was not absolutely unworkable, despite the fault--the chief engineer, mr canning, sent a message to mr glass in ireland, asking him to send out the hawk steamer, in order that he might return in her to search for the defect in the shore-end of the cable, for if that were found he purposed sacrificing the eighty odd miles already laid down, making a new splice with the shore-end, and starting afresh. a reply was received from mr glass, saying that the hawk would be sent out immediately. accordingly, about daybreak of the 25th the hawk appeared, but her services were not required, for, about nine that morning, when the cable was coming slowly in and being carefully examined foot by foot--nay, inch by inch--the fault was discovered, and joy took the place of anxiety. ten and a quarter miles of cable had been picked up when the fault came inboard, and a strange unaccountable fault it turned out to be--namely, a small piece of wire which had been forced through the covering of the cable into the gutta-percha so as to injure, but not quite to destroy, the insulation. how such a piece of wire could have got into the tank was a mystery, but the general impression was that it had been carried there by accident and forced into the coil by the pressure of the paying-out machinery as the cable flew through the jockey-wheels. signals were at once made to the fleet that the enemy had been discovered. congratulatory signals were returned. the fault was cut out and a new splice made. the hawk was sent home again. the big ship's bow was turned once more to the west, and the rattling of the machinery, as the restored and revived cable passed over the stern, went merrily as a marriage bell. the detention had been only about twelve hours; the great work was going on again as favourably as before the mishap occurred, and about half a mile had been payed out, when--blackness of despair--the electric current suddenly ceased, and communication with the shore was ended altogether. chapter nine. in which joys, hopes, alarms, ghosts, and leviathans take part. that man who can appreciate the feelings of one who has become suddenly bankrupt may understand the mental condition of those on board the great eastern when they were thus tossed from the pinnacle of joyous hope to the depths of dark despair. it was not, however, absolute despair. the cable was utterly useless indeed--insensate--but it was not broken. there was still the blessed possibility of picking it up and bringing it to life again. that, however, was scarcely an appreciable comfort at the moment, and little could be seen or heard on board the great eastern save elongated faces and gloomy forebodings. ebenezer smith and his _confreres_ worked in the testing-room like trojans. they connected and disconnected; they put in stops and took them out; they intensified currents to the extent of their anxieties they reduced them to the measure of their despair--nothing would do. the cable was apparently dead. in these circumstances picking-up was the only resource, and the apparatus for that purpose was again rigged up in the bows. in the meantime the splice which had been made to connect the tanks was cut and examined, and the portions coiled in the fore and main tanks were found to be perfect--alive and well--but the part between ship and shore was speechless. so was poor robin wright! after mr field--whose life-hope seemed to be doomed to disappointment--the blow was probably felt most severely by robin. but fortune seemed to be playfully testing the endurance of these cable-layers at that time, for, when the despair was at its worst, the tell-tale light reappeared on the index of the galvanometer, without rhyme or reason, calling forth a shout of joyful surprise, and putting an abrupt stoppage to the labours of the pickers-up! they never found out what was the cause of that fault; but that was a small matter, for, with restored sensation in the cable-nerve, renewed communication with the shore, and resumed progress of the ship towards her goal, they could afford to smile at former troubles. joy and sorrow, shower and sunshine, fair weather and foul, was at first the alternating portion of the cable-layers. "i can't believe my eyes!" said robin to jim slagg, as they stood next day, during a leisure hour, close to the whirling wheels and never-ending cable, about 160 miles of which had been laid by that time. "just look at the terrible and sphinx; the sea is now so heavy that they are thumping into the waves, burying their bows in foam, while we are slipping along as steadily as a thames steamer." "that's true, sir," answered slagg, whose admiration for our hero's enthusiastic and simple character increased as their intimacy was prolonged, and whose manner of address became proportionally more respectful, "she's a steady little duck is the great eastern! she has got the advantage of length, you see, over other ships, an' rides on two waves at a time, instead of wobblin' in between 'em; but i raither think she'd roll a bit if she was to go along in the trough of the seas. don't the cable go out beautiful, too--just like a long-drawn eel with the consumption! did you hear how deep the captain said it was hereabouts?" "yes, i heard him say it was a little short of two miles deep, so it has got a long way to sink before it reaches its oozy bed." "how d'ee know what sort o' bed it's got to lie on?" asked slagg. "because," said robin, "the whole atlantic where the cable is to lie has been carefully sounded long ago, and it is found that the ocean-bed here, which looks so like mud, is composed of millions of beautiful shells, so small that they cannot be distinguished by the naked eye. of course, they have no creatures in them. it would seem that these shell-fish go about the ocean till they die, and then fall to the bottom like rain." see note one. "you _don't_ say so!" returned slagg, who, being utterly uneducated, received suchlike information with charming surprise, and regarded robin as a very mine of knowledge. "well now, that beats cock-fighting. but, i say, how is it that the electricity works through the cable? i heerd one o' your electrical fellers explaining to a landlubber t'other evenin' that electricity could only run along wires when the _circuit was closed_, by which he meant to say that it would fly from a battery and travel along a wire ever so far, if only that wire was to turn right round and run back to the same battery again. now, if that's so, seems to me that when you've got your cable to newfoundland you'll have to run another one back again to ireland before it'll work." "ah, slagg, that would indeed be the case," returned robin, "were it not that we have discovered the important fact that the earth--the round globe on which we stand--itself acts the part of a grand conductor. so we have only to send down _earth-wires_ at the two ends--one into the earth of ireland, the other into the earth of newfoundland, and straightway the circuit is closed, and the electricity generated in our batteries passes through the cable from earth to earth." "robin," said slagg doubtingly, "d'you expect me for to believe _that_?" "indeed i do," said robin simply. "then you're greener than i took you for. no offence meant, but it's my opinion some o' these 'cute electricians has bin tryin' the width of your swallow." "no, you are mistaken," returned robin earnestly; "i have read the fact in many books. the books differ in their opinions as to the causes and nature of the fact, but not as to the fact itself." it was evident that robin looked upon this as an unanswerable argument, and his friend seemed perplexed. "well, i don' know how it is," he said, after a pause, "but i do believe that this here wonderful electricity is fit for a'most anything, an' that we'll have it revoloosionising everything afore long--i do indeed." the intelligent reader who has noted the gigantic strides which we have recently made in electric lighting of late will observe that slagg, unwittingly, had become almost prophetic at this time. "we're going along splendidly now," said mr smith, coming up to robin that evening while he was conversing with slagg, who immediately retired.--"who is that youth? he seems very fond of you; i've observed that he makes up to you whenever you chance to be on deck together." "he is one of the steward's lads, sir; i met him accidentally in the train; but i suspect the fondness is chiefly on my side. he was very kind to me when i first came on board, and i really think he is an intelligent, good fellow--a strange mixture of self-confidence and humility. sometimes, to hear him speak, you would think he knew everything; but at the same time he is always willing--indeed anxious-to listen and learn. he is a capital fighter too." here robin related the battle in the boys' berth, when slagg thrashed stumps, whereat mr smith was much amused. "so he seems a peculiar lad--modest, impudent, teachable, kindly, and warlike! come below now, robin, i have some work for you. did you make the calculations i gave you yesterday?" "yes, sir, and they corresponded exactly with your own." "good. go fetch my little note-book: i left it in the grand saloon on the furthest aft seat, port side." robin found the magnificent saloon of the big ship ringing with music and conversation. joy over the recent restoration to health of the ailing cable, the comfortable stability of the ship in rough weather, and the satisfactory progress then being made, all contributed to raise the spirits of every one connected with the great work, so that, while some were amusing themselves at the piano, others were scattered about in little groups, discussing the profounder mysteries of electric science, or prophesying the speedy completion of the enterprise, while a few were speculating on the probability of sport in newfoundland, or planning out journeys through the united states. "there's lots of game, i'm told, in newfoundland," said one of the youthful electricians, whose ruling passion--next to the subtle fluid-was the gun. "so i've been told," replied an elder and graver comrade. "polar bears are quite common in the woods, and it is said that walrus are fond of roosting in the trees." "yes, i have heard so," returned the youthful sportsman, who, although young, was not to be caught with chaff, "and the fishing, i hear, is also splendid. salmon and cod are found swarming in the rivers by those who care for mild occupation, while really exciting sport is to be had in the great lakes of the interior, where there are plenty of fresh-water whales that take the fly." "the swan, you mean," said another comrade. "the fly that is most killing among newfoundland whales is a swan fastened whole to a shark hook--though a small boat's anchor will do if you haven't the right tackle." "come, don't talk nonsense, but let's have a song!" said a brother electrician to the sporting youth. "i never sing," he replied, "except when hurt, and then i sing out. but see, our best musician has just seated himself at the instrument." "i don't talk shop, nimrod; call it the piano." most of those present drew towards the musical corner, where ebenezer smith, having just entered the saloon in search of robin, had been prevailed on to sit down and enliven the company. robin, who had been delayed by difficulty in finding the note-book, stopped to listen. smith had a fair average voice and a vigorous manner. "you wouldn't object to hear the cook's last?" asked smith, running his fingers lightly over the keys. "of course not--go on," chorused several voices. "i had no idea," lisped a simple youth, who was one of a small party of young gentlemen interested in engineering and science, who had been accommodated with a passage,--"i had no idea that our cook was a poet as well as an admirable _chef de cuisine_." "oh, it's not _our_ cook he means," explained the sporting electrician; "mr smith _refers_ to a certain sea-cook--or his son, i'm not sure which--who is _chef des horse-marines_." "is there a chorus?" asked one. "of course there is," replied smith; "a sea-song without a chorus is like a kite without a tail--it is sure to fall flat, but the chorus is an old and well-known one--it is only the song that is new. now then, clear your throats, gentlemen." song--the loss of the nancy lee. i. 'twas on a friday morning that i went off, an' shipped in the nancy lee, but that ship caught a cold and with one tremendous cough went slap to the bottom of the sea, the sea, the sea, went slap to the bottom of the sea. chorus.--then the raging sea may roar, an' the stormy winds may blow, while we jolly sailor boys rattle up aloft, and the landlubbers lie down below, below, below and the landlubbers lie down below. ii. for wery nigh a century i lived with the crabs, an' danced wi' the mermaids too, an' drove about the ocean in mother o' pearl cabs, an' dwelt in a cavern so blue, so blue, so blue, an' dwelt in a cavern so blue. chorus.--then the raging sea, etcetera. iii. i soon forgot the sorrows o' the world above in the pleasures o' the life below; queer fish they made up to me the want o' human love, as through the world o' waters i did go, did go, did go; as through the world o' waters i did go. chorus.--then the raging sea, etcetera. iv. one day a horrid grampus caught me all by the nose, an' swung me up to the land, an' i never went to sea again, as everybody knows, and as everybody well may understand, 'derstand, 'derstand, and as everybody well may understand. chorus.--then the raging sea, etcetera. the plaudits with which this song was received were, it need scarcely be remarked, due more to the vigour of the chorus and the enthusiasm of the audience than to intrinsic merit. even robin wright was carried off his legs for the moment, and, modest though he was, broke in at the chorus with such effect--his voice being shrill and clear--that, he unintentionally outyelled all the rest, and would have fled in consternation from the saloon if he had not been caught and forcibly detained by the sporting electrician, who demanded what right he had to raise his steam-whistle in that fashion. "but i say, young wright," he added in a lower tone, leading our hero aside, "what's this rumour i hear about a ghost in the steward's cabin?" "oh! it is nothing to speak of," replied robin, with a laugh. "the lad they call stumps got a fright--that's all." "but that's enough. let us hear about it." "well, i suppose you know," said robin, "that there's a ghost in the great eastern." "no, i don't know it from personal experience, but i have heard a report to that effect." "well, i was down in jim slagg's berth, having a chat with him about the nature of electric currents--for he has a very inquiring mind,--and somehow we diverged to ghosts, and began to talk of the ghost of the great eastern. "`i don't believe in the great eastern ghost--no, nor in ghosts of any kind,' said stumps, who was sitting near us eating a bit of cheese. "`but i believe in 'em,' said the boy jeff, who was seated on the other side of the table, and looked at us so earnestly that we could scarce help smiling--though we didn't feel in a smiling humour at the time, for it was getting dark, and we had got to talking in low tones and looking anxiously over our shoulders, you know-"`oh yes, i know,' replied the sportsman, with a laugh; `i have shuddered and grue-oo-ed many a time over ghost-stories. well?' "`_i_ don't believe in 'em, jeff. why do _you_?' asked stumps, in a scoffing tone. "`because i hear one every night a'most when i go down into the dark places below to fetch things. there's one particular spot where the ghost goes tap-tap-tapping continually.' "`fiddlededee,' said stumps. "`come down, and you shall hear it for yourself,' said jeff. "now, they say that stumps is a coward, though he boasts a good deal--" "you may say," interrupted the sportsman, "that stumps is a coward _because_ he boasts a good deal. boasting is often a sign of cowardice--though not always." "well," continued robin, "being ashamed to draw back, i suppose, he agreed to accompany jeff. "`won't you come too, slagg?' said stumps. "`no; i don't care a button for ghosts. besides, i'm too busy, but wright will go. there, don't bother me!' said jim. "i noticed, as i went last out of the room, that slagg rose quickly and pulled a sheet off one of the beds. afterwards, looking back, i saw him slip out and run down the passage in the opposite direction. i suspected he was about some mischief, but said nothing. "it was getting dark, as i have said, though not dark enough for lighting the lamps, and in some corners below it was as dark as midnight. to one of these places jeff led us. "`mind how you go now,' whispered jeff; `it's here somewhere, and there's a hole too--look-out--there it is!' "`what! the ghost?' whispered stumps, beginning to feel uneasy. to say truth, i began to feel uneasy myself without well knowing why. at that moment i fell over something, and came down with a crash that shook stumps's nerves completely out of order. "`i say, let's go back,' he muttered in a tremulous voice. "`no, no,' whispered jeff seizing stumps by the arm with a sudden grip that made him give a short yelp, `we are at the place now. it's in this dark passage. listen!' "we all held our breath and listened. for a few seconds we heard nothing, but presently a slight tapping was heard. "`i've heard,' whispered jeff in a low tone, `that when the big ship was buildin', one o' the plate-riveters disappeared in some hole between the two skins o' the ship hereabouts, and his comrades, not bein' able to find him, were obliged at last to rivet him in, which they did so tight that even his ghost could not get out, so it goes on tappin', as you hear, an' is likely to go on tappin' for ever.' "`bosh!' whispered stumps; thus politely intimating his disbelief, but i felt him trembling all over notwithstanding. "at that moment we saw a dim shadowy whitish object at the other end of the dark passage. `wha'--wha'--what's that?' said i. "stumps gasped. i heard his teeth chattering, and i think his knees were knocking together. jeff made no sound, and it was too dark to see his face. suddenly the object rushed at us. there was no noise of footsteps--only a muffled sound and a faint hissing. i stood still, unable to move. so did jeff. i felt the hair of my head rising. stumps gasped again--then turned and fled. the creature, whatever it was, brushed past us with a hideous laugh. i guessed at once that it was jim slagg, but evidently stumps didn't, for he uttered an awful yell that would have roused the whole ship if she had been of an ordinary size; at the same moment he tripped and fell on the thing that had upset me, and the ghost, leaping over him, vanished from our sight. "to my surprise, on returning to our cabin, we found slagg as we had left him, with both hands on his forehead poring over his book. i was almost as much surprised to see jeff sit down and laugh heartily.--now, what _do_ you think it could have been?" "it was slagg, of course," answered the sporting electrician. "yes, but what causes the tapping?" "oh, that is no doubt some little trifle--a chip of wood, or bit of wire left hanging loose, which shakes about when the ship heaves." a sudden tramping of feet overhead brought this ghostly discussion to an abrupt close, and caused every man in the saloon to rush on deck with a terrible feeling in his heart that something had gone wrong. "not broken?" asked an electrician with a pale face on reaching the deck. "oh no, sir," replied an engineer, with an anxious look, "not quite so bad as that, but a whale has taken a fancy to inspect us, and he is almost _too_ attentive." so it was. a large greenland whale was playing about the big ship, apparently under the impression that she was a giant of his own species, and it had passed perilously close to the cable. a second time it came up, rolling high above the waves. it went close past the stern--rose again and dived with a gentle flop of its great tail, which, if it had touched the cable, would have cut it like a thread. at that trying moment, as they saw its huge back glittering in the moonlight, the hearts of the helpless spectators appeared absolutely to stand still. when the monster dived its side even touched the cable, but did not damage it. being apparently satisfied by that time that the ship was not a friend, the whale finally disappeared in the depths of its ocean home. -----------------------------------------------------------------------those who visited the crystal palace at sydenham during the recent electrical exhibition had an opportunity of seeing the shells here referred to under a powerful microscope. chapter ten. tells of great efforts and failures and grand success. thus happily and smoothly all things went, with little bursts of anxiety and little touches of alarm, just sufficient, as it were, to keep up the spirits of all, till the morning of the 30th july. but on that morning an appearance of excitement in the testing-room told that something had again gone wrong. soon the order was given to slow the engines, then to stop them! the bursting of a thunder-clap, the explosion of a powder-magazine, could not have more effectually awakened the slumberers than this abrupt stoppage of the ship's engines. instantly all the hatchways poured forth anxious inquirers. "another fault," was the reply to such. "o dear!" said some. "horrible!" said others. "not so bad as a break," sighed the hopeful spirits. "it is bad enough," said the chief electrician, "for we have found dead earth." by this the chief meant to say that insulation had been completely destroyed, and that the whole current of electricity was escaping into the sea. about 716 miles had been payed out at the time, and as signals had till then been regularly received from the shore, it was naturally concluded that the fault lay near to the ship. "now then, get along," said an engineer to one of the cable-men; "you'll have to cut, and splice, and test, while we are getting ready the tackle to pick up." "i don't like that cuttin' o' the cable, bill," said one of the sailors, as he went forward, "it seems dangerous, it do." "no more do i, dick," replied his mate; "i feel as if it never could be rightly spliced again." "why, bless you, boys," said a cable-man near them, "cables is used to that now, like eels to bein' skinned; and so are we, for that matter. we think nothin' of it." clearly the cable-man was right, for, while the picking-up apparatus was being got ready, the cable was cut in no fewer than three places, in order to test the coils that lay in the tanks. these being found all right, the picking-up was begun with anxious care. the moment of greatest danger was when the big ship was swinging round. for a few, but apparently endless, moments the cable had to bear the strain, and became rigid like a bar of steel. then it was got in over the bows, where all was bustle, and noise, and smoke, as the picking-up machinery panted and rattled. all day the work went on. night descended, but still the cable was coming in slowly, unwillingly,--now jerkily, as if half inclined to yield, anon painfully, as if changing its mind, until the strain was equal to two and a half tons. a row of lanterns lighted it, and the men employed watched and handled it carefully to detect the "fault," while the clattering wheels played harsh music. "we'll never find it," growled an impatient young electrician. as if to rebuke him for his want of faith, the "fault" came in then and there--at 9:50 p.m., ship's time. "ah!" said mr field, whose chief characteristic was an unwavering faith in ultimate success, "i knew we should find it are long. i have often known cables to stop working for two hours, no one knew why, and then begin again." "well now, mr wright, it floors me altogether, does this here talkin' by electricity." the man who made this remark to our hero was one who could not have been easily "floored" by any other means than electricity. he was a huge blacksmith--a stalwart fellow who had just been heaving the sledge-hammer with the seeming powers of vulcan himself, and who chanced to be near robin when he paused to rest and mop the streaming perspiration from his brow, while a well-matched brother took his place at the anvil. "you see," he continued, "i can't make out nohow what the electricity does when it gits through the cable from ireland to noofun'land. of course it don't actooally speak, you know--no more does it whistle, i suppose; an' even if it did i don't see as we'd be much the wiser. what _do_ it do, mr wright? you seem to be well up in these matters, an' not above explainin' of 'em to the likes o' us as ha'n't got much edication." few things pleased robin more than being asked to impart what knowledge he possessed, or to make plain subjects that were slightly complex. he was not always successful in his attempts at elucidation, partly because some subjects were too complex to simplify, and partly because some intellects were obtuse, but he never failed to try. "you must know," he replied, with that earnest look which was apt to overspread his face when about to explain a difficulty, "that a piece of common iron can be converted into a magnet by electrifying it, and it can be unconverted just as fast by removing the electricity. well, suppose i have a bit of iron in america, with an electric battery in ireland, or _vice versa_--" "w'ot's wicey wersa, mr wright?" "oh, it means the terms being changed--turned the other way, you know-back to the front, as it were--in short, i mean the battery being in america and the bit of iron in ireland." "well, well, who'd a thought there was so much in wicey wersa; but go on, mr wright." "now, you must suppose," continued robin, "that a needle, like the mariner's compass needle, hangs beside my bit of iron, close to it, and that a wire, or conductor of electricity, connects the iron with my electric battery in ireland. well, that makes a magnet of it, and the suspended needle, being attracted, sticks to it. then i disconnect the wire from my battery by touching a handle, the bit of iron ceases to be a magnet, and the needle was free. again i connect the battery, and the needle flies to the remagnetised bit of iron. thus, as fast as i choose, i can make the needle wag, and by a simple arrangement we can make it wag right or left, so many beats right or left, or alternately, representing letters. by varying the beats we vary the letters, and thus spell out our messages. now, do you understand it?" "i ain't quite sure that i does," replied vulcan; "i've got a hazy notion that by touchin' and removin' the touch from a conductor, connecting and disconnecting wires and batteries, you can make electricity flow just as you let on or stop water by turnin' a stopcock--" "not exactly," interrupted robin, "because, you see, electricity does not really flow, not being a substance." "not a substance, sir! w'y, w'ot is it then?" "like light and sound, it is merely an effect, an influence, a result," answered robin. "we only use the word _flow_, and talk of electricity as a fluid, for convenience' sake." "well, w'otever it is or isn't," continued the puzzled vulcan, gazing at vacancy for a few seconds, "when you've set it agoin'--or set agoin' the things as sets it agoin'--you make a suspended needle wag, and when you stop it you make the needle stop waggin', and by the way in which that there needle wags you can spell out the letters o' the alphabit--so many wags to the right bein' one letter, so many wags to the left bein' another letter, an' so on,--so that, what between the number o' wags an' the direction o' the waggin's, you--you come for to--there, i'm lost again, an' i must go in for another spell wi' the sledge, so we'll have to tackle the subject another time, mr wright." thus speaking, vulcan seized the ponderous hammer in his powerful grasp and proceeded to beat form into a mass of glowing metal with much greater ease than he had been able to thump telegraphy into his own brain. in the discovery of the "fault" and the cutting out of the injured part of the cable, twenty-six hours were lost. during all the time captain anderson was obliged to remain on deck, while the minds and bodies of the engineers and electricians were subjected to a severe strain for the same period. they had scarcely begun to breathe freely again, and to congratulate each other on being able to continue the voyage, when they received another shock of alarm by the cable suddenly flying off the drum, while it was being transferred from the picking-up machinery in the bow to the paying-out arrangements in the stern. before the machinery could be stopped, some fathoms of cable had become entangled among the wheels and destroyed. this part having been cut out, however, and new splices made, the paying-out process was resumed. "i'll turn in now and have a snooze, robin," said ebenezer smith, "and you had better do the same; you look tired." this was indeed true, for not a man or boy in the ship took a more anxious interest in the cable than did our little hero; he had begun to regard it as a living creature, and to watch over it, and dream about it, as if it were a dear friend in extreme danger. the enthusiastic boy was actually becoming careworn and thin, for he not only performed all the duties required of him with zealous application, but spent his leisure, and much of the time that should have been devoted to rest, in the careful study of his idol--intensely watching it, and all that was in the remotest way connected with it. "you're a goose," said stumps, in passing, when he heard robin decline to retire as smith had advised him. "it may be so, and if so, stumps, i shall continue to cackle a little longer on deck while they are examining the fault." that examination, when finished, produced a considerable sensation. the process was conducted in private. the condemned portion was cut in junks and tested, until the faulty junk was discovered. this was untwisted until the core was laid bare, and when about a foot of it had been so treated, the cause of evil was discovered, drawing from the onlookers an exclamation of horror rather than surprise, as they stood aghast, for _treachery_ seemed to have been at work! "an enemy in the ship!" murmured one. "what ship without an enemy?" thought another. that mischief had been intended was obvious, for a piece of iron wire, bright as if cut with nippers at one end and broken off short at the other, had been driven right through the centre of the cable, so as to touch the inner wires--thus forming a leak, or conductor, into the sea. there could be no doubt that it had not got there by accident; neither had it been driven there during the making or shipping of the cable, for in that case the testings for continuity would have betrayed its presence before the starting of the expedition. the piece of wire, too, was the same size as that which formed the protecting cover, and it was of the exact diameter of the cable. there was also the mark of a cut on the manilla hemp, where the wire had entered. it could have been done only by one of the men who were at work in the tank at the time the portion went over, and, strange to say, this was the same gang which had been at work there when the previous "fault" occurred. "call all the men aft," was the order that quickly followed this discovery. the piece of cable was handed to them, and they were allowed to examine it in silence. they did so in great surprise, mingled with indignation. "it's bin done a'purpose, an' driven in by a skilful hand," said one. "you're right, joe," said another. "i knows," whispered a third, "that _one_ of the men expressed satisfaction when the last fault occurred, an' i've heard say that we've got enemies to the makers o' the cable aboard." the man thus darkly referred to, whoever he was, of course looked as innocent and as indignant as the most virtuous among them; the guilt, therefore, could not be brought home to him. woe betide him if it had been, for there was a serious talk of lynching some one among the wrathful men, each of whom was now subject to suspicion. in these trying circumstances, the chief engineer accepted an offer made by the gentlemen in the ship, to take turn about in superintending the men at work in the tank paying-out the cable. "it's not pleasant, of course," replied one of the men, speaking for the rest, "but we feel it to be justifiable, as well as necessary, and are very glad the plan has been adopted." once more the big ship went merrily on her way, and the great cable went down to its ocean-bed so smoothly and regularly, that men began to talk of speedy arrival at heart's content--their destination in newfoundland--which was now only about 600 miles distant; but their greatest troubles still lay before them. about eight o'clock in the morning of 2nd august another bad fault was reported, and they had once again to resort to the wearisome process of picking-up. at first all seemed about to go well. a gale was indeed blowing at the time, but that did not much affect the colossal ship. the cable was cut, fastened to its iron rope, passed to the bow, and got in over the pulleys. then, and very slowly, it was drawn on board. when a mile or so had been recovered, the gearing of one of the engines got a little out of order, and the process had to be temporarily stopped; then something went wrong with the boilers, but soon these difficulties were removed. immediately after, the great eastern drifted, so that it was impossible to prevent the cable from chafing against her bows. equally impossible was it to go astern, lest the strain should be too great. then the wind suddenly shifted, making matters worse. suddenly the chain shackle and wire-rope attached to the cable came in over the wheel at the bows with considerable violence. another moment and the cable parted, flew through the stoppers, and, with one bound, flashed into the sea and disappeared! now, at last, the fatal climax so much dreaded had arrived. the days and nights of anxious labour had been spent in vain. the cable was lost, and with it went not only hundreds of thousands of pounds, but the hopes of hundreds of thousands of people, whose sanguine expectations of success were thus rudely dispelled. need it be said that something very like despair reigned for the moment on board the great eastern? most of the gentlemen on board--never dreaming of catastrophe--were at luncheon, when mr canning entered the saloon with a look that caused every one to start. "it is all over!--it is gone!" he said, and hastened to his cabin. mr field, with the composure of faith and courage, though very pale, entered the saloon immediately after, and confirmed the chief engineer's statement. "the cable has parted," he said, "and has gone overboard." from the chiefs down even to stumps and his fraternity all was blank dismay! as for our hero robin wright, he retired to his cabin, flung himself on his bed, and sobbed as though his heart would break. but such a state of things could not last. men's spirits may be stunned and crushed, but they are seldom utterly overwhelmed so long as life endures. recovering from the shock, mr canning set about the process of grappling for the lost cable with persistent energy. but fishing in water two and a half miles deep is no easy matter. nevertheless, it was done. again and again, and over again, were two monster hooks in the shape of grapnels let down to the bottom of the sea, with an iron rope for a line, and the great eastern for a float! the plan, of course, was to go back a few miles on their course and then drag across the known position of the lost treasure. we say known, because good observations had fortunately been obtained by captain anderson just before the accident. two hours did the grapnels descend before they reached the bottom of the sea! all night did the cable-layers fish, with the characteristic patience of fishermen, but did not get a nibble. towards morning, however, there was a decided bite, and the line became taut. "got him!" exclaimed an enthusiast eagerly. "don't be too sure," replied a philosopher cautiously. "it may be a bit of wreck," suggested ebenezer smith, who was a natural doubter. "or a whale, or the great sea-serpent," said the sporting electrician, who was everything by turns and nothing long. "we shall very soon know," remarked a matter-of-fact engineer. "if it is a loose object the strain will decrease as it nears the surface, but if it be the cable the strain will certainly increase, because its weight will be greater the more of it we lift off the bottom." earnestly did every one regard the dynamometer which told the exact amount of strain on the iron fishing-line, and to their joy the strain _increased_ until the object caught had been raised three-quarters of a mile from the bottom. then a swivel gave way, and the cable went back to its ocean-bed. but those plucky engineers were not to be overcome by a first failure. having started with five miles of fishing-line, they proceed at once to make a second attempt. "oh, i _do_ hope they will hook it again!" said robin wright. "and so they will," said ebenezer smith. and so they did. late in the afternoon of the monday following, their fish was again hooked and raised a full mile from the bottom, when another swivel gave way, and down it went a second time! the fishing-line was now getting short. it behoved them to act with more caution. new bolts were put in each shackle and swivel, and the capstan was increased in diameter, being belted with thick plates of iron. to effect these alterations the forges had to be erected on deck, and at night these cast a lurid glare on the busy workers, bringing out every near object in vivid relief against the ebony background of space behind, while they made preparations for a third cast of the fishing-line. the cast was made successfully, it was thought, but one of the grapnels had caught the line with one of its flukes, so that it could not catch anything else, and the result was--nothing. a fourth attempt was then made. it was to be the last. the fishing-line seemed too weak, and its frequent breakings had reduced it so much that other chains had to be attached to it. with this thing of shreds and patches the cable was once more hooked and brought up nearly eight hundred fathoms, when the line gave way once more, and the cable went down for the last time. nothing more could be done. the great eastern turned her large bows to the east and steered grandly though sadly, away for old england. but don't imagine, good reader, that these cable-layers were beaten. they were baffled, indeed, for that year (1865), but not conquered. cyrus field had resolved that the thing should be done--and done it was the following year; for the laying of the cable had been so nearly a success, that great capitalists, such as brassey, gooch, barclay, campbell, pender, and others, at once came forward. among these were the contractors, glass and elliot, who agreed not only to make and lay a new cable, but to pick up and complete the old one. cyrus field himself, besides energising like hercules to push the matter on, was one of ten subscribers who each contributed 10,000 pounds. thus 230,500 pounds were privately subscribed before a prospectus was issued. our little hero was at the laying of that (1866) cable, when the same great ship, with the same captain and most of the engineers and electricians who had gone out on the previous voyage, landed the end of the 1820-mile rope on the shores of newfoundland, on friday, 27th july. he cheered with the rest in wild enthusiasm when the great eastern dropped anchor in "heart's content." he accompanied captain anderson and the officers of the fleet when they went in a body to the little church there, to thank god for the successful completion of the great enterprise. he was present when the big ship, having received from other ships 8000 tons of coal, and some six hundred miles of the old cable, went back to mid-ocean to grapple for the lost cable of 1865. he assisted and watched with the deepest interest the amazing efforts of scientific and mechanical power put forth in the mere matter of dragging for the cable from the bottom, and observed with reverence, amounting almost to awe, the great moving spirit of the whole affair, the indomitable mr field, as he went to the bow and sat on the rope to feel the quiver which told him it was dragging the bottom of the sea two miles below. he was present, with blazing cheeks and eyes and bated breath, when, on the 17th of august, the cable was caught, dragged to the surface, and actually seen, and broke and sank again as deep as ever--though not so deep as the hearts of those who saw it go! he shared in the weary delays that followed, and in the final triumph when the cable was fairly caught and at last brought on board, and carried to the testing-room, amid intense excitement, lest it should prove to have been damaged by its rough treatment; and his voice helped to swell the roar of enthusiastic cheering that greeted the announcement that the old cable was still alive! but all this we must leave, and carry the reader back to old england faster than the great eastern could have rushed--ay, faster than the message on the flashing cable itself could have sped, for mind is more subtle than matter, and thought is swifter than even the atlantic telegraph. chapter eleven. home! "at last!" exclaimed robin, bursting into his old home and seizing his mother in his arms. robin had just returned home after the laying of the 1866 atlantic cable, as briefly narrated in the last chapter. it may be said with some truth that the old home became, during the next few days, a private lunatic asylum, for its inmates went mildly mad with joy. chief among the lunatics was uncle rik, the retired sea-captain. that madman's case, however, was not temporary derangement, like the others'. it was confirmed insanity, somewhat intensified just then by the nephew's return. "so, young man," he said, one evening at supper, when the family traveller was dilating to open-eyed-and-mouthed listeners, "you actually believe that these cables are goin' to work?" "of course i do, uncle. they are working now, and have been working for many years." "well, now, the gullibility o' some people is stupendous!" returned rik. "don't you know, robin, that everything a'most works for a time, and then, sooner or later--usually sooner--the ridiculous thing bursts up?" "but, uncle, you beg the question in classing submarine cables among ridiculous things. besides, have not dozens of cables been working satisfactorily for many years, without showing signs of bursting up as yet?" "pooh! bah! boh!" replied uncle rik, by which he meant to say that though convinced against his will he was of the same opinion still. at that moment cousin sam shipton entered with an eager, excited look. "it's all settled," he said, taking robin by the hand. "what is settled?" asked mrs wright, somewhat anxiously. "mother, don't be angry," said robin, laying his hand on his mother's shoulder, and speaking tenderly, "i meant to have told you the moment i came in to-day, but uncle rik with his argumentative spirit drove it and everything else except cables out of my head--" "well, but what is it?" interrupted madge impatiently; "why do you keep us in suspense?" "i have some prospect, mother, of being appointed to go with a telegraph-laying party to the east, but sam is wrong when he says it is all settled. whatever he may have to tell us, it is by no means settled until i have your and father's opinion." "well, you horribly good but ungrateful boy," returned sam, "it is at least settled as far as i have do with it. i have made application at head-quarters, and they are willing to take you on my recommendation. moreover, i am myself going." "you're joking, sam!" exclaimed robin, with a flush of joy; "i thought you had neither intention nor desire to go far from home." "you thought wrong, robin. i always had desire, and now have intention--and i go as second in command. so, miss mayland," he continued, turning to madge, "i shan't be able to continue those electrical lectures which you were so fond of once, but have lately seemed to grow tired of." madge was at that tender age of budding womanhood when sensitive girls are apt to misunderstand a jest. she blushed, stammered something, then forced a laugh, and turned to speak to robin; but sam perceived that tears rose to her eyes, and he instantly sank in his own estimation to the condition of a loathsome reptile. "well, now, that is good news," cried robin, applying himself to the viands on the table with renewed zest. "you cannot have the smallest objection or anxiety, mother, i should think, when you know i shall be under so able a guide." "i have not yet thought it over, robin." "and you, father?" "go, my boy, and my blessing go with you," said mr wright, all but choking the blessing with a huge oyster. "are any labourers to go with us?" asked robin. "one or two picked ones." "then you must allow me to pick one, sam. my friend jim slagg is at present cast adrift with a considerable part of the great eastern's crew. he will be delighted to go, i know, and is a first-rate, hard-working, willing, conscientious youth." "he ought to be proud of having so warm a friend and advocate," said sam, "but i have no power to choose the men." "o yes, you have, sam. if you could get me appointed, you can get him appointed; and you must, for, if you don't, i won't go." "you are hard on me, robin, but i'll try." "but you have not yet told us where it is that they are going to send you," said mrs wright. "ah! that's not fixed," replied sam; "they are laying down lines in turkey; and egypt is talked of, and telegraph to india itself is even hinted at. all i know is that we shall be sent to the east somewhere." "bah! boo! why does nobody ask for _my_ opinion on the matter?" said uncle rik, as he gazed at the company over a goose drumstick, which was obviously not tender. "your opinion, brother," said mr wright, "is so valuable, that no doubt your nephew has been keeping it to the last as a sort of tit-bit--eh, robin?" "well, uncle; come, let us have it," said robin. "you don't deserve it," returned rik, with a wrench at the drumstick, "but you shall have it all the same, free, gratis. was this bird fed on gutta-percha shavings, sister nan?" "perhaps--or on violin strings, i'm not sure which," replied mrs wright blandly. "well," continued the captain, "you youngsters will go off, i see, right or wrong, and you'll get half-drowned in the sea, roasted in the east, smothered in the desert, eaten alive by cannibals, used-up by the plague, poisoned by serpents, and tee-totally ruined altogether. then you'll come home with the skin of your teeth on--nothing more." "i sincerely hope it will be summer at the time," said sam, laughing; "but we are grateful to you for prophesying that we shall return, even though in such light clothing." "that's what'll happen," continued the captain, regarding the other drumstick with some hesitation; "you may take the word of an old salt for it. i've lived in the good old times, lads, and i know that all these new-fangled notions are goin' to burst up--and _that's_ what'll come of it." whether that was what came of it remains to be seen. chapter twelve. a great dynamo-electric sea-fight. a few weeks after the utterance of captain rik's famous prophecy, robin, sam, stumps, and slagg found themselves on board of a large submarine cable steam-ship, named the triton, ploughing the billows of the southern ocean. a few weeks later and they were drawing near to that great concourse of islands known as the malay archipelago, where nature is exceptionally beautiful, but man is rather vile. at all events, that region of the ocean lying to the south of china has been long infamous for the number and ferocity of its pirates, who, among the numerous islands, with their various channels, creeks, and rivers, have found a suitable field for their bloody and remorseless game. "d'you know, i don't believe in pirates?" said robin to sam, as they stood at the bow of the cable-ship, conversing about these sea-robbers. "they believe in _you_ nevertheless, as you'd find out to your cost if we came across one just now." the voice that replied was not sam's, but that of the captain, who had come forward to get a clearer sweep of the horizon ahead with his glass. "do you think it likely, sir, that we may meet with any of the rascals?" asked sam. "not at all unlikely," replied the captain, fixing his glass and putting it to his eye, "though i don't think it likely that we shall be attacked, as we are large and don't look like a richly freighted merchant-man. however, there is no saying. these scoundrels fear nothing, and when hard up will attack anything but a man-of-war, i half suspect that i am looking at one of them now." this latter announcement, calmly uttered, threw all who heard it into quite a flutter of excitement. the captain was a big, dark-skinned, bearded man, with a quiet, half-humorous, half-sarcastic expression of countenance. "do you really think it is a pirate?" asked robin, eagerly. "i really do," replied the captain, "and i fear we may have to run out of our course to avoid her. you see, i am a man of peace, and abhor bloodshed, therefore i won't fight if i can help it." saying this he gave orders to have the course of the steamer changed. just then there occurred one of those _contretemps_ which don't often happen, but which, when they do, are often prolific of disaster; an important part of the machinery broke down, and the engine, for the moment, was rendered useless. it was most unfortunate, for the suspicious craft lay to windward, and a light breeze was blowing carried it steadily towards them, although all the sail the steamer possessed was crowded on her. "come aft here, mr shipton, and tell your chief to come with you. i want to hold a council of war," said the captain. summoning the first mate and chief engineer, as well as the electricians, the captain went to the after part of the quarter-deck, where, seated on the taffrail, he deliberated with the extemporised council measures for repelling an expected attack. what these deliberations tended to, those not of the council could not tell, but from the energy of the members, and an occasional burst of laughter from the group, it was obvious, as jim slagg remarked, that "mischief o' some sort was in the wind." presently the council broke up, and the members went actively below, as men do who have a purpose to carry out promptly. meanwhile the pirate vessel came within range and fired a shot which missed them. the fire was not repeated. evidently they meant to get within easy range before trying another shot. in a few minutes the electricians came on deck with several large coils of copper wire, which they uncoiled and distributed mysteriously about the sides of the vessel. at the same time several lengths of leathern pump hose were laid along the deck, and fire-branches or nozzles attached to them. "run out our stern-guns now," said the captain, with a grim smile, "and give it 'em hot. it won't do to seem to give in too easy. run up the union jack. don't take aim. i want more noise and smoke than mischief--d'ye understand?" the officer to whom this was addressed, said, "ay, ay, sir," in the usual tone of ready obedience, adding, however, in an undertoned growl, "but i _don't_ understand, for all that!" he obeyed the orders literally, being well disciplined, and the result was a sudden and most furious cannonade, for the pirate replied with vigour, using all the guns he could bring to bear; but no damage was done on either side for some time, until at last a ball from the enemy went crash through the smoke funnel of the triton with a most sonorous bang! "that'll do now," cried the captain, "cease firing and haul down the colours." if the captain had said, "cut away the rudder and heave the boilers overboard," he could scarcely have caused more surprise in his crew, who, by his orders, had assembled on deck, every man being armed with musket, cutlass, and revolver. his orders were strictly and promptly obeyed, however. by this time the light breeze had fallen and a dead calm prevailed, so that the sails of the pirate flapped idly against her masts, and her crew were seen busily lowering her boats. "we could have soon got out of her way if our engines had not broke down," growled the captain, as he went toward the front of the quarter-deck and looked down on the armed men in the waist. "my lads," he said, "the blackguards are malay pirates. they are lowering their boats, and will be alongside in less than half an hour. i don't need to tell you what you'll have to expect if they take us. we must beat 'em off or _die_; for it's better to die sword in hand than to be tortured or strangled. those of you, however, who prefer the latter modes of going under may show the white feather and enjoy yourselves in your own way. now, lads, you know me. i expect obedience to orders to the letter. i hate fighting and bloodshed--so don't kill unless you can't help it. also, take care that you don't touch these copper wires on the sides with either finger or foot. if you do you'll repent it, for electricians don't like their gear handled." turning abruptly round, for the oars of the approaching boats could now be distinctly heard, the captain asked sam if his batteries were well charged. "chock-full, sir," replied sam with a broad grin; "there's not a bit of iron all round the ship that a man could lay hold of without receiving his due!" "good," said the captain, turning to the chief engineer; "are the hose attached and the boilers hot?" "bubblin' up fit to burst, sir. i've weighted the safety-valves to give it force?" without another word the captain stepped to the port gangway, and took off his hat to the advancing pirates. the pirate captain, not to be outdone in civility, took off his fez and bowed as the boat ranged alongside. the captain carefully held out one of the man-ropes to his enemy. he grasped it and seized the other. an instantaneous yell of the most appalling nature issued from his mouth, and never before, since ship-building began, were a couple of man-ropes thrown off with greater violence! the pirate captain fell back into his boat, and the captain of the steamer stepped promptly back to avoid the storm of bullets that were let fly at his devoted head. at the starboard gangway the chief mate performed the same ceremony to another boat with a like result. the pirates were amazed and enraged, but not cowed. with a wild cheer they made a simultaneous dash at the ship's sides all round. with a wilder yell they fell back into their boats,--shocked beyond expression! a few of them, however, chanced to lay hold of ropes or parts of the vessel that were not electrified. these gained the bulwarks. "shove in some more acid," said the chief electrician in suppressed excitement to sam shipton, who stood beside the batteries below. "stir up the fires, lads," cried the chief engineer to his men at the boilers beneath, as he stood holding a fire-nozzle ready. intensified yells all round told that chemical action had not been applied in vain, while the pirates who had gained the bulwarks were met with streams of boiling water in their faces. heroes may and do face shot and shell coolly without flinching, but no hero ever faced boiling water coolly. the pirates turned simultaneously and received the streams in rear. light cotton is but a poor defence in such circumstances. they sloped over the sides like eels, and sought refuge in the sea. blazing with discomfiture and amazement, but not yet dismayed, these ferocious creatures tried the assault a second time. their fury became greater, so did the numbers that gained a footing on the bulwarks, but not one reached the deck! the battery and the boiler played a part that day which it had never before entered into the brain of the wildest scientist to conceive. the hissing of the hot shower and the vigour of the cold shock were only equalled by the unearthly yelling of the foe, whose miraculous bounds and plunges formed a scene that is altogether indescribable. the crew of the steamer stood spell-bound, unable to fight even if there had been occasion for so doing. the dark-skinned captain became indian-red in the face from suppressed laughter. suddenly a tremor ran through the steamer, as if she too were unable to restrain her feelings. during the fight--if we may so call it--the engineers had been toiling might and main in the buried depths of their engine-room; the broken parts of the engine had been repaired or refitted, and a throb of life had returned to the machinery. in its first revolution the screw touched the stern of a pirate-boat and turned it upside down. another boat at the bow was run over. the crews of both swam away like ducks, with their long knives between their teeth. the other boats hauled off. "now, captain," cried robin wright, who, during the whole time, had stood as if transfixed, with a cutlass in one hand, a pistol in the other, and his mouth, not to mention his eyes, wide open; "now, captain, we shall get away without shedding a drop of blood!" "yes," replied the captain, "but not without inflicting punishment. port your helm--hard a port!" "port it is, sir--hard over," replied the man at the wheel, and away went the steamer with a grand circular sweep which speedily brought her, bow-on, close to the pirate vessel. "steady--so!" said the captain, at the same time signalling "full steam" to the engine-room. the space between the two vessels quickly decreased. the part of the pirate crew which had been left on board saw and understood. with a howl of consternation, every man sprang into the sea. next moment their vessel was cut almost in two and sent fathoms down into the deep, whence it rose a limp and miserable remnant, flattened out upon the waves. "now," observed the captain, with a pleasant nod, "we'll leave them to get home the best way they can. a boat voyage in such fine weather in these latitudes will do them good." saying which, he resumed his course, and steamed away into the regions of the far east. chapter thirteen. tells of a sudden and unlooked-for event. how often it has been said, "good for man that he does not know what lies before him." if he did we fear he would face his duty with very different feelings from those which usually animate him. certain it is that if robin wright and sam shipton had known what was before them-when they stood one breezy afternoon on the ship's deck, casting glances of admiration up at the mountain waves of the southern seas, or taking bird's-eye views of the valleys between them--their eyes would not have glistened with such flashes of delight, for the fair prospects they dreamed of were not destined to be realised. what these prospects were was made plain by their conversation. "won't it be a splendid opportunity, sam, to become acquainted with all the outs and ins of telegraphy, this laying of lines from island to island in the china seas?" "it will, indeed, robin,--a sort of compound or alternating land-and-submarine line. at one time we shall be using palm-trees for posts and carrying wires through the habitations of parrots and monkeys, at another we shall be laying them down among the sharks and coral groves." "by the way," said robin, "is it true that monkeys may prove to be more troublesome to us in these regions than sparrows and crows are at home?" "of course it is, my boy. have you never heard that on some of our indian lines, baboons, vultures, and other heavy creatures have sometimes almost broken down the telegraphs by taking exercise and roosting on the wires?" "indeed, i hope it won't be so with us. at all events, sharks won't be much tempted, i should fancy, by submarine cables." "there's no saying, robin. they are not particular when hungry. by the way, i saw you talking with unusual earnestness this morning to jim slagg; what was the matter with him?" "poor fellow! you'd scarcely believe it, to look at him," replied robin, "but the lad is actually home-sick." "home-sick! why, how's that? if we were only a few days out from port, or even a week or two, i could understand it, but seeing that we are now drawing near to the china seas, i should have thought--" "oh, that's easily explained," interrupted robin. "this is his mother's birthday, it seems, a day that has always been kept with much rejoicing, he tells me, by his family, and it has brought back home and home-life with unusual force to him. with all his rough off-handedness, slagg is a tender-hearted, affectionate fellow. somehow he has taken it into his head that this voyage will be disastrous, and that he will never see his mother again. i had great difficulty in showing him the unreasonableness of such a belief." "no doubt you had. it is unreasonable beliefs that people usually hold with greatest tenacity," replied sam, with a touch of sarcasm. "but tell me, have he and stumps never once quarrelled since leaving england?" "never." "i'm amazed--they are so unlike in every way." "you would not be surprised if you knew them as i do," returned robin. "ever since slagg gave him that thrashing on board the great eastern in 1865, stumps has been a changed man. it saved him from himself, and he has taken such a liking to slagg that nothing will part them. it was that made me plead so hard for stumps to be taken with us, because i felt sure slagg would not go without him, and although we might easily have done without stumps, we could not have got on so well without slagg." "i'm not so sure of that, my boy. your opinion of him is too high, though i admit him to be a first-rate youth. indeed, if it were not so, he should not be here.--was that a shark's fin alongside?" "yes, i think so. cook has been throwing scraps overboard, i suppose.-see, there goes an empty meat-tin." as he spoke the article named rose into the air, and fell with a splash in the water. at the same time jim slagg was seen to clamber on the bulwarks and look over. "come here--look alive, stumps!" he shouted. stumps, whose proper name, it is but fair to state, was john shanks, clambered clumsily to his friend's side just in time to see a shark open its horrid jaws and swallow the meat-tin. "well now, i never!" exclaimed slagg. "he didn't even smell it to see if it was to his taste." "p'r'aps he's swallowed so many before," suggested stumps, "that he takes for granted it's all right." "well it's on'y flavour; and he has caught a tartar this time," returned the other, "unless, maybe, tin acts like pie-crust does on human vitals." the low deep voice of the captain was heard at this moment ordering a reef to be taken in the top-sails, and then it began to strike robin and sam that the breeze was freshening into something like a gale, and that there were some ominous-looking clouds rising on the windward horizon. gazing at this cloud-bank for a few minutes, the captain turned and ordered the top-sails to be close-reefed, and most of the other sails either furled or reduced to their smallest size. he was in good time, and the vessel was ready for the gale, when it rushed down on them hissing like a storm-fiend. the good ship bent before the blast like a willow, but rose again, and, under the influence of able seamanship, went bravely on her course, spurning the billows from her swelling bows. "what a thing it is to know that there is a good hand at the helm in times of danger!" remarked sam as he and our hero stood under the shelter of the starboard bulwarks, holding on with both hands to the rigging, while the rushing waves tossed them on high or let them drop in the troughs of the seas; "i should feel safe with our captain in any circumstances." "so should i," said robin with enthusiasm, his eyes glistening with delight as he gazed on the angry ocean. there was no thought of danger in the mind of any one at that moment. a good ship, ably commanded, well manned, and with plenty of sea-room,-what more could be desired? nevertheless, deadly peril was close at hand. that marvellous little creature--which, in the southern seas, builds its little cell, works its little day and dies, leaving to succeeding generations of its kind to build their little cells and die, each using its predecessor's mansion as a foundation for its own, until pile on pile forms a mass, and mass on mass makes a mountain--the coral insect, had reared one of its submarine edifices just where the cable-ship triton had to pass that day. for ages man had traversed that sea without passing exactly over that mountain, and even if he had, it would not have mattered, for the mountain had been always many fathoms below the surface. but now the decree had gone forth. the conjunction of events predestined had come about. the distance between the mountain summit and the ocean surface had been reduced to feet. the triton rose on the top of a mighty billow as she reached the fated spot. the coral peak rose near the bottom of the water-hollow beyond, and down on it the doomed ship went with an awful crash! her speed was checked only an instant, for the top of the rock was knocked off by the force of the blow, and the ship passed swiftly on, but there could be no mistaking the significance of that shock. an involuntary shout of alarm from some,--a gasp, halt of surprise, half of horror, from others,--then a rush of active effort when the captain gave orders to man the pumps. there was urgent need for haste. the mass of coral rock had stuck in the hole it had made, else had they gone down in a few minutes. as it was, the water rushed in furiously, so much so that the captain detailed a party of men to construct a raft, while the rest relieved each other at the pumps. no doubt he was partly urged to this course by the consideration that a vessel weighted with telegraph-cables and other heavy material connected therewith could not float long in a leaky condition. "keep close to me, robin; we must sink or swim together." it was sam who spoke. he was very pale, but his firmly-compressed lips showed no sign of unmanly fear. robin, on the contrary, taken by surprise, and too inexperienced to correctly estimate sudden danger, was flushed with the feeling that now was the time to do and dare whatever should be required of him! they went to the pumps together, where stumps and slagg were already at work with many others. it is surprising how fast and hard men will toil when life depends on the result. there was a cat-like activity about the carpenter and his mates as they cut, sawed, lashed, and bolted together the various spars and planks which formed the raft. in a marvellously short space of time it was ready and launched over the side, and towed astern by the strongest cable on board, for the danger of parting from it in such weather was very great. knowing this they had lashed some casks of pork and other provisions to it before launching. still they laboured with unflagging resolution at the pumps, for many of those on board were picked men, whose sense of honour urged them to strive to the uttermost to save the ship, for it was no ordinary merchant-man, freighted with an ordinary cargo, which could easily be replaced as well as insured, but a vessel freighted with those magic wires which couple continents and unite humanity, whose loss might delay, though it could not ultimately arrest, the benign and rapid intercourse of man with man in all parts of the globe. "keep your eye on sam and me," whispered robin to jim slagg, finding himself alongside that worthy during a spell of rest. "let us keep together, whatever happens." robin did not quite believe that anything serious was going to happen. some spirits find it as difficult to believe in impending disaster as others find it to believe in continued safety. it seemed so impossible to robin, in his inexperience, that the strong and still buoyant vessel which had borne them so long and bravely should sink! nevertheless, like the rest, he laboured with a will. slagg took the opportunity to give a similar caution to his friend stumps. "she's sinking, sir," said the carpenter, who had been sounding the well, to the captain, about an hour later. "i know it; stand by to have the raft hauled alongside. knock off now, lads, there's no use in pumping any more." the men ceased, with a deep sigh, and by that act the death-warrant of the cable-ship was signed. during the next quarter of an hour the crew were busy slipping down the cable that held the raft. a few ran below to fetch small articles that they valued, but by that time the vessel was so low in the water, that there was little time to spare, and the captain began to urge haste. "now then, lads, over the side with you," he said, chancing to look at sam shipton as he spoke! that spirit of heroism which induces men to resolve to be the last to quit a sinking ship, came over sam just then, and he shrank back. he and his chief were in charge of the telegraph apparatus. it would be disgraceful to quit until all on board had left. he laid his hand on the strong cable that held the raft and said, "i'll stay to the last, sir, and cast off the rope, if you'll allow me." "we don't cast off ropes in such circumstances," replied the captain; "we cut 'em." sam was silenced, but not the less resolved to hold to his point, if possible. he still held back, while the captain, being busy with the others, some of whom were rather too eager to go, paid no further attention to him. robin, slagg, and stumps, recognising sam as their leader, fell behind him and kept close. at last all were on the raft except the captain and the four friends. "now, then, come along," said the former, somewhat impatiently. "after you, sir," said sam, with a polite bow. "overboard, sir!" shouted the captain, in a voice that would brook no denial, and sam at once stepped on the bulwark, for he was not naturally rebellious. just as he spoke the rope broke, and the raft fell astern. "jump! jump! it's your only chance," cried the captain, at the same moment springing into the sea. sam was on the point of following, when an exclamation from slagg checked him. looking quickly back, he saw that robin was not there. our hero, while modestly standing behind his comrades, had suddenly remembered that the small bible given him by his mother was lying on the shelf at the side of his berth. he would have lost anything rather than that. there was yet time to fetch it, so, without a word, he turned and sprang below, supposing that he had ample time. "robin! robin!" shouted sam and slagg together, at the top of their voices. "coming! coming!" reached them faintly from below, but robin did not come. the hasty summons induced him to leap over a chest in returning. he struck his head violently against a beam, and fell back stunned. with another wild shout his friends rushed down the companion-hatch to hasten his movements by force. they found him almost insensible. lifting him quickly, they carried, him on deck, and bore him to the stern of the vessel. "robin! robin!" cried sam, in an agony of impatience--for the raft was by that time far astern, besides which the shades of evening were beginning to descend--"_do_ try to rally. we must swim. we're almost too late. can you do it?" "yes, yes, i can swim like a duck," cried robin, rising and staggering towards the bulwarks. "but _i_ can't swim at all!" cried stumps in a voice of horror. sam stopped as if suddenly paralysed. then, laying hold of robin, held him back. he felt, as he looked at the dark heaving sea and the now distant raft, that it was not possible for him and slagg to save both their injured and their helpless comrade. "too late!" he said in a voice of despair, as he sat down and for a moment covered his face with his hands. slagg looked at him with a bewildered rather than a despairing expression. "so, we'll have to sink together since we can't swim together," he said at last, with a touch of reckless vexation, as he gazed at the naturally stupid and by that time imbecile face of his friend stumps. "come, only cowards give way to despair," cried sam, starting up. "we have one chance yet, god be praised, but let's work with a will, boys, for the time is short." chapter fourteen. the raft. sam shipton's one chance did not seem a bright one, but, with characteristic energy, he proceeded to avail himself of it at once. when the raft was launched over the side, as described, the carpenters had embarked upon it with the rest of the ship's crew, dropping their tools on the deck beside the mass of unused material of ropes, spars, planks, etcetera, as they left. four of the spars were pretty equal in length. sam selected them hastily and laid them on the deck in the form of a square, or oblong frame. then he seized an axe. "unravel some of the ropes, robin," he cried. "you two select some planks as near ten feet long as possible. quick--ask no questions, but do what i tell you." sam shipton was one of those who hold the opinion that every man born into the world, whether gentle or simple, should learn a trade. he had acted on his belief and taught himself that of a carpenter, so that he wielded the axe with skill, and gave his orders with the precision of one who knows what he is about. his comrades, although not trained to any special trade, were active handy fellows, with the exception, indeed, of john shanks, whose fingers were usually described as "thumbs," and whose general movements were clumsy; but stumps had a redeeming quality to set against defects--he was willing. with a few powerful well-directed blows, sam cut four deep notches into the two longest of the selected spars, near their ends, at equal distances from each other. into these he laid the ends of the two shorter spars, thus forming a frame-work. "twelve feet by ten, not a bad raft," he muttered, as if to himself, while he snatched a rope from the bundle of those disentangled by robin. "take a rope of same size, you two, and lash the opposite corners as you see me doing. stumps will go on selecting the planks." sam jerked out his words with as much rapidity and force as he applied to the labour of his hands. there was something quite tremendous in his energy, and little wonder--for, as he glanced now and then along the deck he saw that the ship was rapidly settling down to her final dive, and that the closing scene would be sudden. powerfully impressed by his example, the others worked in total silence and with all their might, for sam's conduct, far more than the appearance of things, convinced them of their danger. "the planks now, stumps! drive in as many of these clamps as you can find, slagg--so," (he set the example)--"we've no time to bore holes for bolts. a plank now; that's it! hand some nails--no, the biggest nails and the big hammer. mind your fingers!" down came the heavy hammer on a four-inch nail, which went half through the thick plank. two more such blows and the iron head was buried in the wood. six planks sufficed to cover the frame. they were laid lengthwise with nails just sufficient to hold them. a piece of thick rope passed four times round the entire fabric still further secured them in position. "tie a lot of these nails in a bit of sail-cloth, slagg, and fix 'em to the raft--to one of the spars, not the planks. do the same with a saw, hammer, axe, and cask of biscuit,--water, too; don't forget water. make a belt of a bit of rope, robin, and stick that small axe in it. have it handy." while he spoke sam did not look up, but gave all his attention to the tightening, with a hand-spike, of the knot on the thick rope that bound the raft together; for we may as well inform those who don't know it, that the tying of a knot on a cable is not managed in the same way or with the same ease that a similar operation is performed on a piece of twine. "but how shall we lift it over the side?" asked stumps, becoming suddenly alive to a difficulty. "help me to haul on this rope and you shall see," said sam. he ran to the side, lifted a coil of rope off its belaying-pin, threw it on the deck, cut the rope clear, and hauled it to the raft, to one end of which he made it fast. it was the strong rope, by means of which one of the mizzen yards was braced, and was rove through a block attached to the outward end of the yard. "hoist away now--with a will!" "hold on," cried slagg, stuffing a mass of sail-cloth violently, by means of a hand-spike, underneath the binding rope of the raft. "there now--yo ho! heave ho-o!" up went the end of the little ark of safety, and when one end was raised very little force was required to push it over. "hold on! hold on! hold o-o-on!" yelled stumps, straining to prevent the raft from leaving the ship. "no, no.--let go! let go! let go-o-o!" roared sam. stumps did let go and almost fell from the combined effect of his efforts and despair, as the raft swung off, splashed into the sea far out of reach, and hung half suspended from the yard-arm. "it's all up with us," gasped stumps. "not yet, but it will be all up with us in two minutes," returned sam, unable to repress a smile even at that moment. "what d'ye mean?" said stumps in amazement. "how can we ever git at it _now_?" "why, stoopid," said slagg, "don't you see that we've only to go up the mast, out on the yard-arm, and slip down the rope." while he was speaking, robin, by sam's orders, was performing the feat referred to. "look sharp!" he cried, turning to the others. a heavy lurch of the ship caused their breasts to leap almost as fast as their bodies, for they were all more or less aware of the danger of the ship sinking before they could get clear of her. the darkness, too, was, as we have said, increasing by that time, though it was still light enough to enable them to see what they were about. in a few minutes they all had gained the end of the yard-arm, slipped down the rope, and got upon the raft, but it was difficult to hold on, because at each heave of the ship, the fore-end of the raft was raised quite out of the sea, and then let fall with considerable violence. as soon as sam reached it, he bade robin cut adrift with his axe, so great was the heave; but at the moment the raft hung almost perpendicularly in the air, and robin could do nothing but cling to the rope that bound it. next instant it again fell flat on the sea. "now--cut!" cried sam. the rope was severed with one blow; almost at the same instant the stern of the triton flew up with a degree of violence that no wave could account for. it was her last fling. instantly after she went down head foremost. the masts, by good fortune, leaned away from the raft at the time, else they would have been struck by the yards, or involved in the rigging. as it was they did not escape. the vast whirlpool caused by the sinking ship drew them in with irresistible power. for one moment the horrified youths saw a dark green vortex towards which they rushed. another moment, and they beheld a green funnel whirling round them as they sank into midnight darkness, while an ocean of roaring water filled their ears. who shall attempt to describe, the feelings or sensations of that moment! the one absorbing idea of self-preservation was of course dominant, coupled with an intolerable feeling that the upper air could never be regained. it was reached, however, by all of them. first by sam shipton, who shot waist-high above the sea with a loud gasp, and struck out wildly. then, recovering presence of mind, he swam more gently, and looked eagerly round. he was immediately followed by robin and slagg. last of all by stumps, who came up legs foremost, and, on turning other end up, saluted them with a roar that would not have shamed a monster of the deep. but the roar was cut short by a gurgle, as, in his frantic struggles, he sank himself again. observing this, and seeing that the others were comparatively self-possessed, sam made towards his drowning comrade. the poor fellow, catching sight of him as he came near, made a clutch at him, but sam was well aware of the danger of being grasped by a drowning man. he swerved aside, and stumps sank with a gurgle of despair. twice again did he rise and sink. once more he rose. with a rapid stroke sam swam behind him and caught him under the armpits. violently did the poor fellow strive to turn round and clasp his preserver, but sam, treading water, held him easily at arm's-length with his head just above the surface. as long as he struggled nothing more could be done for him; sam therefore put his mouth as near to his ear as possible and shouted:-"stop struggling!--else i'll let you go!" it was probably as much the tone of sam's voice as the sense of these words that calmed stumps. at all events he instantly lay, or rather hung, perfectly limp and still. "now," continued sam, "you are quite safe if you do what i tell you. if you don't you're a dead man! d'you understand?" "yes," gasped stumps. "let your hands and arms lie flat on the water! don't try to raise your head farther than i let you! keep your feet _still_! let yourself hang helpless while i hold you and look round for the raft." it was obvious that stumps had regained self-command, for as each of these orders was shouted in his ear, in the tones of a sergeant-major, he obeyed with eager, almost ludicrous, promptitude. "the raft is here, close at hand," said a voice close to sam's ear. it was robin who had discovered him at that moment. "is slagg safe?" asked sam. "here he is, all right," said the worthy referred to, puffing and choking as he swam up. "keep off--don't get in front of him," said sam, in a warning voice. "he mayn't have recovered self-restraint enough yet to refrain from grasping you. guide me to the raft, robin, while i swim on my back, and see that you don't let it hit me on the head when i come close. you and slagg help each other on, and then help me with stumps." nothing could have calmed stumps more than the cool, firm way in which these orders were given, so that he allowed himself to lie like a log while his deliverer drew him gently backwards until the back of his head rested on his bosom. sam then struck out gently with his legs; robin turned him with a push in the right direction, and thus, swimming on his back, he reached the raft. slagg and robin having already helped each other upon it, grasped his hair. at once he freed one hand and caught the rope that bound the raft. stumps naturally slewed round, so that his mouth and nose went for a moment under water. fancying that he was forsaken, he caught sam round the neck, drew himself up, and gave a terrific yell. "ha! you may choke me now, if you can," muttered sam, as he grasped the rope with both hands, "only, the longer you hold on to me the longer you will be of getting out of the water." the terrified lad still retained sufficient sense to appreciate the force of the remark. looking up as well as he could through his dishevelled hair, he held out one hand to slagg, who grasped it firmly. releasing sam, with some hesitation he made a convulsive grasp at robin with the other hand. robin met him half-way. a loud "heave ho!" and a mighty pull brought him out of the sea, and sent him with a squash on the boards of the raft, where he lay gripping the ropes with his hands as with a vice. before his rescuers could turn to aid sam, he stood panting beside them. "thank god," said sam, "for this deliverance!" "amen!" was the earnest and prompt response from the others. yet it seemed but a temporary deliverance, for when these castaways looked around them, they saw nothing but a heaving ocean and a darkening sky, with the tiny raft as the only visible solid speck in all the watery waste. compared, however, with the extremity of danger though which they had just passed, the little platform on which they stood seemed to them an ample refuge--so greatly do circumstances alter our estimate of facts! but they had not time to think much, as may be easily understood, for a great deal still remained to be done. their little ark was by no means secure. we have said that only enough of nails had been driven into it to hold the planks to the frame-work, but not to withstand rough treatment. indeed, during the plunge two of the planks had been torn off, but the binding rope held them to their places, as sam had foreseen. very little daylight now remained, so that not a moment was to be lost. "no sign of the big raft," said sam, stooping to unfasten the hammer and packet of nails, after taking one quick, anxious glance round the horizon. "but it may be not far-off after all," said slagg, kneeling down to aid his comrade, while stumps, by that time recovered, assisted robin to tighten the ropes that held the pork-barrel. "with such poor light it 'ud be hard to make out a flat thing like that a-kickin' in the hollows of the seas." "but you forget," returned sam, "that it must be a-kickin' on the top o' the sea as well as in the hollows. another nail--thanks. however, i don't expect to see it again." "well, now, i expects to see it in the mornin' not far-off," said slagg. "is the water-cask fast, robin?" "all right--and the pork too." "and the sail. just give it an extra shove under the ropes, robin. we'd be badly off if we lost it." "i don't see what good a sail can do us," said stumps, who had now quite recovered. "not _as_ a sail, stumpy," replied slagg, whose spirit soon recovered elasticity, "though even in that way it may help us, but as a blanket we shall appreciate it before long." slagg was right. after the planking had been secured and the rope refastened, those unfortunates found themselves in an unenviable position. the gale had indeed abated somewhat, though the heaving of the great waves was little less tremendous, but the night had settled down into a state of pitchy darkness, so that they could barely see each other's faces, while the seas continually washed over them, obliging them to hold on to the ropes for fear of being washed away. in such circumstances sleep was out of the question, yet they stood sorely in need of rest. "now we'll see what's to be done wi' the sail," said slagg, after they had been seated some time doing nothing. "sleep i want, an' sleep i'll have, so lend a hand, boys." he drew out the sail with some trouble, so well had it been stuffed in, and bade the others hold and prevent it from flapping while he fastened the corners down. he did not arrange it like a tent, but spread it as flat as possible, doubling the superfluous edges inward, so that it presented little or no obstruction to the free passage of wind or water over them. this done, they all crept underneath, and found it to be a much snugger den than they had expected, for the two casks prevented their heads from being pressed down when a few tons of water rolled over them--as occasionally happened. still they did not dare to sleep until each had fastened a rope round his waist and bound himself to the flooring. having done so, each laid himself alongside of a turn of the binding-cable, and, embracing that affectionately with both arms, laid his head on the planks and shut his eyes. many and varied are the conditions under which healthy members of the human family seek and find repose, but we venture to think that few conditions have ever been found which were more unfavourable to sleep than that which has just been described. nevertheless, they were met promptly by slumber most profound, as they lay wet and weary on the little raft that disastrous night, on the dark and surging breast of the southern sea. chapter fifteen. life on the raft. to awake "all at sea"--in other words, ignorant of one's locality--is a rather common experience, but to awaken both at and in the sea, in a similar state of oblivion, is not so common. it was the fortune of robin wright to do so on the first morning after the day of the wreck. at first, when he opened his eyes, he fancied, from the sound of water in his ears, that it must have come on to rain very heavily, but, being regardless of rain, he tried to fall asleep again. then he felt as if there must be a leak in his berth somewhere, he was so wet; but, being sleepy, he shut his eyes, and tried to shut his senses against moisture. not succeeding, he resolved to turn on his other side, but experienced a strange resistance to that effort. waxing testy, he wrenched himself round, and in so doing kicked out somewhat impatiently. this, of course, woke him up to the real state of the case. it also awoke slagg, who received the kick on his shins. he, delivering a cry of pain straight into sam shipton's ear, caused that youth to fling out his fist, which fell on stumps's nose, and thus in rapid succession were the sleepers roused effectually to a full sense of their condition. "it's cold," remarked stumps, with chattering teeth. "you should be thankful that you're alive to feel the cold, you ungrateful creetur," said slagg. "i _am_ thankful, jim," returned the other humbly, as he sought to undo the rope that held him fast; "but you know a feller can scarcely express thanks or--or--otherwise half asleep, an' his teeth goin' like a pair o' nut-crackers." "the wind is evidently down," remarked sam, who had already undone his lashings. "here, robin, help me to untie this corner of the sail. i had no idea that sleeping with one's side in a pool of water would make one so cold and stiff." "if it had bin a pool, mr shipton," said slagg, "it wouldn't have made you cold; 'cause why? you'd have made it warm. but it was the sea washin' out and in fresh that kep' the temperater low--d'ee see?" "what a cargo o' rheumatiz we've been a-layin' in this night for old age," said stumps ruefully, as he rubbed his left shoulder. throwing off the sail, sam stood up and looked round, while an exclamation of surprise and pleasure broke from him. the contrast between the night and morning was more than usually striking. not only had darkness vanished and the wind gone down, but there was a dead calm which had changed the sea into a sheet of undulating glass, and the sun had just risen, flooding the sky with rosy light, and tipping the summit of each swell with gleaming gold. the gentle, noiseless heaving of the long swell, so far from breaking the rest of nature, rather deepened it by suggesting the soft breathings of slumber. there were a few gulls floating each on its own image, as if asleep, and one great albatross soared slowly in the bright sky, as if acting the part of sentinel over the resting sea. "how glorious!" exclaimed robin, as, with flashing eyes, he gazed round the scarce perceptible horizon. "how hard to believe," said sam, in a low voice, "that we may have been brought here to die." "but surely you do not think our case so desperate?" said robin. "i hope it is not, but it may be so." "god forbid," responded robin earnestly. as he spoke his arm pressed the little bible which he had rescued from the wreck. thrusting his hand into his bosom he drew it out. "darling mother!" he said, "when she gave me this she told me to consult it daily, but especially in times of trouble or danger. i'll look into it now, sam." he opened the book, and, selecting the verse that first met his eye, read: "in all their affliction he was afflicted, and the angel of his presence saved them; in his love and in his pity he redeemed them; and he bare them and carried them all the days of old." "that's a grand word for us, isn't it?--from isaiah," said robin. "well, what do you make of it?" asked sam, whose religious education had not been attended to as well as that of his friend. "that our god is full of love, and pity, and sympathy, so that we have nothing to fear," said robin. "but surely you can't regard that as a message to us when you know that you turned to it by mere chance," said sam. "i do regard it as a special message to us," returned robin with decision. "and what if you had turned up an entirely unsuitable or inapplicable verse?" said sam. "then i should have concluded that god had no _special_ message for us just now, but left us to that general comfort and instruction contained throughout the whole word. when, however, special comfort is sought and found, it seems to me ungrateful to refuse it." "but i don't refuse it, robin," returned sam; "i merely doubt whether it is sent to us or not." "why, sam, _all_ the bible was sent to us for comfort and instruction." "true--true. i have not thought much on that subject, robin, but i'll try to believe at present that you are right, for we stand much in need of strong hope at all events. here we are, none of us knows how far from the nearest land, with little food and less water, on a thing that the first stiff breeze may knock to pieces, without shelter and without compass!" "without shelter and compass, mr shipton!" said jim slagg, who had hitherto listened in silence to the conversation; "why, what d'ye call this?" (taking hold of the sail). "ain't that shelter enough, and won't the sun guide us by day and the stars by night. it seems to me that you are too despondin', mr shipton." "don't `mister' me any more, slagg. it was all very well aboard ship where we had our relative positions, but now we are comrades in distress, and must be on an equal footing." "very good," replied slagg, looking round in his comrades' faces, and raising his voice as if making a speech. "bein' equal, as you say, i takes the liberty o' callin' a general meetin' o' this free and--if i may be allowed the expression--easy republic. moreover, i move myself into the chair and second the motion, which, nobody objectin', is carried unanimously. gentlemen, the business of this here meetin' is to appoint a commander to this here ship, an' what could be more in accordance with the rule o' three--not to mention the rules o' four and common sense--than a shipton takin' command. who's goin' to make the first reslootion?" entering into the spirit of the thing, robin moved that samuel shipton be appointed to command the ship and the party, with the title of captain. "and without pay," suggested slagg. "and _i_ move," said stumps, who was just beginning to understand the joke, though a little puzzled by the fact that it was done in earnest, "i move that robin wright be first leftenant." "brayvo, stumps!" cried slagg, "your intellec' _is_ growin'. it on'y remains to appoint you ship's monkey and maid-of-all-work--specially dirty work--and, then, with a hearty vote o' thanks to myself for my conduct in the chair, to vacate the same an' dissolve the meetin'." these matters having been satisfactorily settled, the castaways proceeded to prepare breakfast, and while this was being done the recently appointed captain looked once more anxiously round in the hope of seeing the large raft with their late shipmates on it, but it was not to be seen. neither raft, ship, nor any other sign of man wos visible on all the glittering sea. breakfast was not a tempting meal. the biscuits were, indeed, as good as ship's biscuits ever are, and when moistened with sea water formed a comparatively pleasant as well as strengthening food; but the barrel of pork was raw; they had no means of cooking it, and had not yet experienced those pangs of hunger which induce men to luxuriate in anything that will allay the craving. they therefore breakfasted chiefly on biscuit, merely making an attempt, with wry faces, to swallow a little pork. observing this, sam said, in a half-jocular manner:-"now, my lads, it is quite clear to me that in taking command of this ship, my first duty is to point out the evils that will flow from unrestrained appetite for biscuit;--also to insist on the cultivation of a love for raw pork. you have no notion how good it is when fairly believed in. anyhow you'll have to try, for it won't do to eat up all the biscuit, and have to feed at last on pure pork." "i calls it impure pork," said slagg; "hows'-ever, capting, you've on'y to give the word and we obey. p'r'aps the best way'll be to put us on allowance." this suggestion was at once acted on, and a considerable part of that bright day was spent by sam and robin in calculating how much pork should go to a biscuit, so that they should diminish in an equal ratio, and how much of both it would be safe to allow to each man per diem, seeing that they might be many days, perhaps even weeks, at sea. while the "officers" were thus engaged, slagg and his friend stumps busied themselves in making a mast and yard out of one of the planks--split in two for the purpose--and fitting part of their sail to the same. evening found them with the work done, a small sail hoisted on the rude mast, the remaining part of the canvas fitted more securely as a covering, and the apportioned meal before them. but the sail hung idly from its yard and flapped gently to and fro as the little ark rose and sank on the swell, for the calm still prevailed and the gorgeous sunset, with its golden clouds and bright blue sky, was so faithfully reflected in the sea, that they seemed to be floating in the centre of a crystal ball which had been dipped in the rainbow. when night descended, the scene was, if possible, still more impressive, for although the bright colours had vanished, the castaways still floated in the centre of a dark crystal universe, whose unutterable depths were radiant with stars of varied size and hue. long they sat and gazed in solemn admiration at the scene, talking in subdued tones of past, present, and future, until their eyes refused to do their office and the heavy lids began to droop. then, reluctantly, they crept beneath the sail-cloth covering and lay down to rest. the planks were hard, no doubt, but our castaways were hardy; besides, a few folds of the superfluous portions of the large sail helped to soften the planks here and there. "now, boys," said slagg, as he settled himself with a long-drawn sigh, "the on'y thing we wants to make us perfectly happy is a submarine telegraph cable 'tween this an' england, to let us say good-night to our friend, ashore, an' hope they won't be long in sending out to search for us." it is sad to be obliged to record that, slagg's companions being already asleep, this tremendous and original piece of pleasantry was literally cast upon the waters, where it probably made no impression whatever on the inhabitants of the slumbering sea. chapter sixteen. in which will be found more surprises than one. events of the most singular description are often prefaced by incidents of the most commonplace character. who is so inexperienced in the vicissitudes of life as not to know this! early in the morning that succeeded their second night on the raft, robin wright awoke with a very commonplace, indeed a vulgar, snore; we might almost call it a snort. such as it was, however, it proved to be a most important link in the chain of events which it is our province to narrate. to explain: it must be understood that john shanks, or stumps, among other eccentricities, practised sprawling in his sleep, spreading himself abroad in inconceivable attitudes, shooting out an arm here, or a leg there, to the alarm or indignation of bedfellows, insomuch that, when known, bedfellows refused to remain with him. aware of stumps's propensity, slagg had so arranged that his friend should lie at the stern of the raft with two strands of the binding-cable between him and robin, who lay next to him. during the first part of the night, stumps, either overcome by weariness or subdued by his friends' discourses on the stellar world, behaved pretty well. only once did he fling out and bestow an unmerited blow on the pork-barrel. but, about daybreak, he began to sprawl, gradually working his way to the extreme edge of the raft, where a piece of wood, nailed there on purpose, prevented him from rolling off altogether. it did not, however, prevent his tossing one of his long legs over the edge, which he accordingly did. the leg and foot were naked. he preferred to sleep so, even when bedless, having been brought up in shoe-and-stockingless society. with his foot dipping lightly in the wave, he prolonged his repose. they were slipping quietly along at the time under the influence of a steady though gentle breeze, which had sprung up and filled their sail soon after they lay down to rest. an early shark, intent on picking up sea-worms, observed stumps's foot, and licked his lips, no doubt. he sank immediately for much the same reason that little boys retire to take a race before a leap. turning on his back, according to custom, he went at the foot like a submarine thunderbolt. now, it was at that precise moment that robin wright snored, as aforesaid. the snore awoke stumps, who had another sprawl, and drew up his leg gently--oh, how gently compared with what he would have done had he known what you know, reader! nevertheless, the action was in time, else would he have had, for the rest of his life, a better title than heretofore to his nickname. as it was, the nose and lips of the slimy monster struck the youth's foot and slid up the side of his leg. hideous was the yell with which stumps received the salute. acrobatic was the tumble with which he rolled over his comrades, and dire was the alarm created in all their hearts as they bounced from under the respective corners of their covering, and stood up, aghast! "you twopenny turnip," said slagg, "why did you screech like--" he stopped. there was no need to finish the question, for the fin of the disappointed shark, describing angry zig-zags in the water close by, furnished a sufficient answer. "he has only grazed me," said stumps, feeling his leg anxiously. "only grazed you! rather say crazed you," returned sam, "for a cry like that could only come from a madman. what were you doing?--washing your feet in the sea?" "no, not exactly," replied stumps, somewhat abashed, "but one of my legs got over the end of the raft somehow, and was trailing in the water." "hallo! i say, look there, sam!" said robin, with sudden animation, pointing to the horizon straight ahead of them; "is that the big raft or a ship?" "neither, robin," replied sam, after a prolonged and earnest gaze; "it must be an island. what do you think, slagg?" the incident of the shark was almost totally forgotten in the excitement caused by this new discovery. for some time slagg and all the others gazed intently without uttering a word. then slagg looked round with a deep sigh. "yes, it's a island," he said; "no doubt about that." "what a blessing!" exclaimed robin, with heartfelt emotion. "well, that depends," said sam, with a shake of the head. "islands in the china seas are not always places of refuge--at least for honest people." "by no means," added slagg; "i've heard say that the pirates there are about the wust set o' cut-throats goin'--though i don't myself believe there's much difference atween one set and another." the light wind which had carried the raft slowly over the sea, while they were asleep, now freshened into a stiff breeze, and tested the qualities of their craft, severely; but, with a little strengthening--an extra turn of a rope or an additional nail--here and there, it held pretty well together. at breakfast, which was served according to regulation, they discussed their situation. "you see," said sam, "this may turn out to be a small barren island, in which case we shall have to leave it and trust to falling in with some vessel; or it may be inhabited by savages or pirates, in which case we shall have to leave it from prudential motives, if they will allow us to do so. in any case, we won't begin by being extravagant with the provisions to-day." as they drew near to the island, the probability of its being inhabited became greater, because, although solitary, and, according to sam's amateur calculations, far remote from other lands, it presented a bold and fertile aspect. it was not, indeed, large in circumference, but it rose to a considerable height, and was covered with rich vegetation, above which waved numerous groups of the cocoa-nut palm. a band of light yellow sand fringed the shore, on which the waves roiled in a still lighter fringe of foam, while two or three indentations seemed to indicate the existence of creeks or openings into the interior. with eager gaze the castaways watched this island as they slowly approached it--the minuter beauties of rock and dell and leafy copse brightening into view as the sun mounted the clear blue sky. "what i have thought or dreamed of sometimes, when dear mother used to speak of heaven," murmured robin, as if communing with himself. "well, i have not thought much of heaven," said sam, "but i shouldn't wonder if it's something like the paradise, from which adam and eve were driven." "there's no sign o' natives as yet," said slagg, who, regardless of these remarks, had been gazing at the island with eyes shaded by his hand. "yes there is; yonder is one sitting on the rocks," said stumps; "don't you see him move?" "that's not a native," returned slagg, "it's too long in the back for a human being. it's a big monkey--a gorilla, maybe. did you ever hear tell of gorillas being in them regions?" "i rather think not," said sam; "and to my mind it looks more like a rock than anything else." a rock it proved to be, to the discomfiture of slagg and stumps; but the rock was not without interest, for it was soon seen that a rope was attached to it, and that the rope, stretching across the entrance to a creek, was lost in the foliage on the side opposite to the rock. "why, i do believe," said sam, suddenly, in an impressive whisper, "that there is a vessel of some sort at the other end of that rope, behind the point, partly hid by the trees. don't you see the top of her masts?" after long and earnest gazing, and much whispered conversation--though there was no occasion for caution at such a distance from the land--they came to the conclusion that a vessel lay concealed just within the mouth of the creek towards which the wind was driving them, and that, as they apparently had not been discovered by those who owned the vessel, their wisest course would be to land, if possible without attracting attention, somewhat farther along the coast. "but how is that to be done," asked robin, "as we have neither oar nor rudder?" "nothing easier," returned slagg, seizing the axe and wrenching up the plank that had prevented stumps from finding a watery grave, "i've on'y got to cut a handle at one end, an' we've got an oar at once." in a few minutes the handy youth converted the piece of plank into a rude oar, with which he steered the raft, so that it gradually drew to the southward of the creek where the strange vessel lay, and finally took the land in another inlet not far distant. it was evident, from the silence around, that no one was stirring in the vessel, and that their approach had not been perceived. congratulating themselves on this piece of good fortune, they lowered their sail, drew the raft under the bushes, which in some parts of the inlet came close down to the sea, and then hurried stealthily through a palm-grove towards the vessel. they reached the margin of the grove in a few minutes, and there discovered that the stranger was apparently a chinese craft, but whether a trading-vessel, or smuggler, or pirate, they had no means of knowing. as they lay flat on their faces in the rank grass, peeping through the luxuriant undergrowth, they could see that two men paced the deck with musket on shoulder as if on guard, but no other human beings were visible. "shall we go forward and trust them as honest traders?" asked sam in a whisper. "i think not," replied slagg; "if all's true that one hears, there is not much honesty afloat in them seas. my advice is to stay where we are and see what turns up." "what think you, robin?" robin was of opinion that they should trust the strangers and go forward. stumps agreed with him, but sam thought with slagg. their indecision, however, was cut short by a most startling occurrence. while they were yet whispering together, the sound of voices was heard in the distance. our castaways at once sank flatter into the grass, and became mute. in a few minutes the voices drew gradually nearer, until they were quite close to the alarmed watchers. suddenly, from among the bushes on the other side of an open space just in front of them, there issued a band of men, walking in single file. their appearance might have aroused grave anxiety in the most unsuspecting breast, for, besides possessing faces in which the effects of dissipation and evil passions were plainly stamped, they were armed--as the saying is--to the teeth, with short swords, cavalry pistols, and carbines. they were dressed in varied eastern costume, and appeared to be of malay origin, though some bore closer resemblance to the chinese. the man who marched in advance--evidently the leader of the band--was unusually tall and powerful, with a remarkably stern, but not altogether forbidding, countenance. "pirates!" whispered slagg. "looks like them, but may be smugglers," replied sam in the same cautious tone. even robin's unsuspecting and inexperienced nature would not permit him to believe that they were honest traders. had any doubts on the subject lingered in their minds, these would have been effectually cleared away by the scenes which immediately followed. while the pirates were still at some distance from the shore, sudden shouts and yells came from the vessel, which had, up to that time, been lying so peacefully at anchor, and it was at once clear that a furious hand-to-hand fight was taking place upon her deck. "it must be the poor slaves who have risen," whispered sam. the pirates had drawn their swords and pistols at the first sound of the fight, and rushed to the rescue. they well knew that, while they had been on shore, the unfortunate captives chained in the vessel's hold had succeeded in freeing themselves, and were endeavouring to overcome the few men left to guard them. slaves captured at various times by the scoundrels who infest those seas, are sometimes made to work at the oars--which are much used during calm weather--until they die, or become so worn out as to be useless, when they are mercilessly thrown overboard. that the slaves referred to on this occasion, animated probably by despair, had effected their release, and plucked up heart to assault the armed guard, was a matter of some surprise to the pirates: not so, however, to our adventurers, when they saw, foremost among the mutineers, a man clad in the garb of a european sailor. "that's the boy as has put 'em up to it," said jim slagg, in a suppressed but eager voice, "they'd never have had the pluck to do it of themselves." "we'd better go an' help 'em," said stumps, whose usually stupid face was lighted up with excitement. "right, lad," exclaimed slagg, starting up; but sam laid his hand firmly on his arm. "too late," he said; "don't you see that the guard have prevailed. besides, the pirate crew are in their boats--almost at the vessel. see, they swarm up the side." "poor, poor sailor!" said robin wright, in a voice of the deepest pity. "you may well say that; no doubt he is killed by this time," said slagg; "but no--he is fightin' still!" this was indeed true. some of the slaves, rendered desperate no doubt, were still maintaining the hopeless fight with handspikes and such arms as they had succeeded in wresting from the guard at the first onset, and the stalwart figure of the european sailor was seen swaying aloft a clubbed musket and felling a pirate at every blow. animated by his example, the other slaves fought with resolute bravery, but when the rest of the pirate crew joined the guard and surrounded them, they were instantly overpowered. then those who had not been already slain were led hastily to the side, a sword was drawn across their throats, or thrust through them, and the bodies were tossed into the sea. among those led thus to the side was the brave sailor. although his features could not be distinguished at such a distance by those in ambush, it could be clearly seen that he came boldly forward, resolved, no doubt, to meet his fate like a man. "oh, god, spare him!" burst in a voice of agony from robin, who sprang up as if with the intention of rushing to the rescue, regardless of consequences, but a second time sam shipton's restraining hand was ready. "what could we do, with the sea between us and the ship? even if we were on the deck could we four deliver him from a hundred?" robin sank down again with a groan, but his fascinated eyes still gazed at the pirate vessel. to his great surprise, the sailor at that moment uttered a long and ringing cheer! the act seemed to overawe even the bloodstained pirates, for they hesitated an instant. then one of them pointed his sword at the sailor's back, but at the same moment the leader of the band was seen to strike up the sword and give some hurried directions. a rope was instantly brought, with which the arms and legs of the seaman were secured, and he was carried below. "our prayer has been answered!" exclaimed robin with renewed excitement; "they _are_ going to spare him." sam shook his head. "i fear not, robin; at least, if i may judge from what i have read of these villains, they have only spared him for a time for the purpose of torturing him." robin shuddered. "well, i don't know," he said, "whatever they may do, god _has_ answered our prayer, for they _have_ spared him; and if god could deliver him thus at the last moment, surely he can deliver him altogether. but was it not remarkable that he should give such a cheer when--as he must have thought--at the point of death, for it sounded more like a cheer of triumph than defiance?" "it was strange indeed. the effect of strong excitement, i fancy." while they were conversing, the pirates were busily engaged in getting up the anchor and hoisting the sails of their craft. at the same time the long oars or sweeps were manned by such of the slaves as remained alive, and the vessel slowly glided out of the creek, and put to sea. fortunately the fight had engrossed the attention of those on board so much that they had failed to observe the little raft, which, although partially concealed by bushes, might not otherwise have escaped detection. our voyagers were still congratulating themselves on their good fortune in this respect, when the pirate-ship was observed to change her course, turn completely round and return towards the land! "they've seen us!" ejaculated robin in consternation. "our doom is fixed," said sam in a tone of bitter despair. slagg and his friend were so much overwhelmed that they could not speak. on came the vessel--under oars--straight for the creek where the raft lay. there could be no doubt now that they had been seen. while they gazed in blank dismay, utterly unable to decide on any course of action, an event occurred which totally altered the aspect of affairs. suddenly, as if by magic, the pirate-ship was converted into a great black-and-white cloud, from out of which there shot an indescribable mass of broken spars and wreckage which fell in all directions in a heavy shower into the sea. two seconds later and there came a roar as if a crash of the loudest thunder had rent the sky. the powder-magazine had been fired, and the pirate-ship had been blown literally to atoms! when the last of the terrible shower had fallen, nothing whatever of the vessel was to be seen save the floating morsels of the wreck. it was, we might say, a tremendous instance of almost absolute annihilation. recovering from the shock of horror and surprise, sam shipton ran swiftly down to the spot where the raft lay, followed by his companions. "there may be some left alive!" he cried. "quick--shove her off. yonder's a pole, robin, fetch it." another minute and they were afloat. pushing with the pole, sculling with the rude oar, and paddling with a plank torn off, they made for the scene of the explosion. "i see something moving," said stumps, who, having no implement to work with, stood up in front and directed their course. soon they were in the midst of the _debris_. it was an awful sight, for there, mingled with riven spars and planks and cabin furniture, and entangled in ravelled cordage, lay the torn lifeless remains of the pirates. sharks were already swimming about in anticipation of a feast. "did you not see symptoms of life somewhere?" asked sam, as he stood beside stumps, and looked earnestly round. "yes, i did, but i don't now--o yes! there it is again. give way, slagg, give way. there!" the raft was soon alongside of the moving object. it was the body of the gallant sailor who had fought so well that day. his limbs were still fast bound, excepting one arm, with which now and then he struck out feebly, as if trying to swim. lying on his back his mouth and nose were above water. "gently, gently, boys," said robin, as they lifted the head out of the water and slowly drew the shoulders up; "now, a good heave and--that's it." the body slid heavily on the raft, and the motion seemed to rouse the seaman's spirit, for he uttered a faint cheer, while they knelt round him, and tried in various ways to restore him to consciousness. "hurrah for old england!" he cried presently, in an imbecile manner, making an abortive effort to lift his loose arm; "never say die-s'long's there's--a shok in th' lotter." "well done, old saltwater!" cried slagg, unable to restrain a laugh; "you'll live to fight yet, or i'm mistaken." there was indeed some prospect that the poor fellow would recover, for, after a short time, he was able to gaze at his rescuers with an intensity of surprise that betokened the return not only of consciousness but of reason. "well, well," he said, after gazing around for some time in silence as he lay with his head supported on the sail, "i s'pose it's all right, and i'll wake up all square in the mornin', but it's out o' sight the most comical dream i've had since i was a babby. i only hope it'll take a pleasanter turn if it's agoin' to continue." with this philosophical reflection the sailor shut his eyes, and disposed himself to sleep until the period of real waking should arrive. thinking this the best thing he could do in the circumstances, his rescuers turned to examine whether any of the others had survived the explosion, but, finding that all were dead or had sunk, they returned to the land. here, after securing the raft, they made a sort of litter, with the sail spread on the oar and a plank, on which they carried the sailor to the sheltered spot whence they had witnessed the fight. as the poor man had by that time fallen into a genuine slumber--which appeared to be dreamless--he was left under the care of stumps and slagg, while sam and robin went off to ascertain whether or not the island was inhabited. "we will go straight up to the highest point at once, so as to get a bird's-eye view of it," said sam. "i can't help thinking that it must be inhabited, for these scoundrels would not care to land, i should fancy, unless there was some one to rob." "it may be so, sam. but if they had come to rob, don't you think they would not have returned to their ship without captives or booty?" "there is something in that, robin. come; we shall see." chapter seventeen. strange discoveries on pirate island. on reaching the first rising-ground that lay before them, robin and his friend received a great disappointment, for, instead of a richly wooded country, which the coast scenery where they landed had led them to expect, they found an exceedingly barren region, as far, at least, as the next ridge in advance. "no use to go further," said sam, despondingly; "nothing but barren rocks and a few scrubby bushes here. evidently there are no inhabitants, for it would be almost impossible to live on such a place." "but it may be better further inland," said robin. "i can't think that the pirates would come here for nothing. at all events let us go to the next ridge." without replying, sam followed robin, but the next ridge revealed nothing more hopeful. indeed the prospect thence was, if possible, more depressing, for it was seen that the island was small, that its sides were so steep all round, as far as the eye could reach, that there was apparently no landing-place except at the spot where they had been driven on shore. the elevated interior seemed as barren as the circumference, and no neighbouring island was to be seen in all the wide field of vision. the only living creatures visible were innumerable sea-birds which circled round the cliffs, and which, on espying the intruders, came clamouring overhead, as if to order them angrily away. "having come thus far we may as well go to the top and have a look all round," said robin, "and see--here is something like a track worn on the rock." sam's drooping spirits revived at once. he examined the track carefully and pronounced it a "human" track. "the sea-gulls could not make it, robin. goats, sheep, and cows cannot live without grass, therefore it was not made by them. a track is not usually worn on hard rock by the passage of pirates only once or twice over them. there is mystery here, robin. come on!" it will be observed that robin's spirit was more hopeful than that of his friend, nevertheless sam being physically more energetic, was, when not depressed, prone to take the lead. he walked smartly forward therefore, followed humbly by his friend, and they soon reached what proved to be the summit of the island. here supreme astonishment was the chief ingredient in their feelings, for they stood on the edge of a slope, at the foot of which, as in a basin, lay what seemed to be a small cultivated garden in the midst of a miniature valley covered with trees and shrubs, through which a tiny rivulet ran. this verdant little gem was so hemmed in by hills that it could not be seen from the sea or any low part of the island. but what surprised the discoverers most was the sight of an old woman, bent nearly double, who was busily at work in the garden. not far from her was an old man, who, from his motions while at work, appeared to be blind. their costume being nondescript, besides ragged, did not betoken their nationality. sam and robin glanced at each other in silence, then turned to have another gaze at the scene. "we've found," said sam, slowly and impressively, "a robber's nest!" "d'you think so, sam?" "think so! i'm sure of it. just think. there is nothing on such an island as this to attract any one at all--much less robbers or pirates-except the fact that it _is_ unattractive, and, apparently, far removed from the haunts of honest men. depend upon it, robin, that the pirates whom we saw have made this their head-quarters and place of deposit for their booty--their bank as it were, for it's too small for their home; besides, if it were such, we should see a colony of women and children. no--this is the great pirate bank of the southern seas, and yonder we behold the secretary and cashier!" "and what," said robin with a laugh, "if there should be a few clerks in the bank? we might perhaps find them troublesome fellows to deal with." "we might, robin. would it not be wise to return and let slagg and stumps know what we have discovered, and take counsel together before we act." "agreed," said robin. "isn't it strange though," he added, as they turned to retrace their steps, "that there are no buildings of any kind--only a little garden." "it is somewhat puzzling, i confess, but we shall--" he stopped abruptly, and stood rooted to the ground, for there, on a rock in front of him, with her light, graceful figure, and flowing golden hair, pictured against the blue sky, stood a little girl, apparently about six or seven years of age--an angel as it seemed to the amazed youths! she had caught sight of the strangers at the very moment they had observed her, and stood gazing at them with a half eager, half terrified look in her large lustrous eyes. with a sudden and irresistible impulse robin extended his arms towards her. she made a little run towards him, then stopped, and the look of fear again came over her beautiful face. robin was afraid to advance lest he should frighten her. so, with an earnest look and smile, he said, "come here, little one." she answered the invitation by bounding towards our hero and clasping him round the neck, causing him to sit down rather abruptly on a rock which lay conveniently behind. "oh! i'm so glad you've come at last!" said the child, in english so good that there could be no question as to her nationality. "i was quite sure mamma would send to fetch me away from this tiresome place, but you've been so long of coming--so very _very_ long." the thought of this, and perhaps the joy of being "sent for" at last, caused her to sob and bury her face in robin's sympathetic bosom. "cheer up, little one, and don't cry," said robin, passing his hand over her sunny hair, "your father, at all events, has sent for you, if not your mother." "i have no father," said the child, looking up quickly. "yes you have, little one; god is your father." "did _he_ send you to fetch me?" she asked in surprise. "i have not the smallest doubt," answered robin, "that he sent us to take care of you, and take you to your mother if that be possible. but tell me, little one, what is your name?" "letta." "and your surname?" "my what!" exclaimed letta, opening her large eyes to their widest, causing both sam and robin to laugh. "your other name, dear," said sam. "i have no other name. mamma always called me letta--nothing else." "and what was mamma's name?" asked robin. "it was mamma, of course," replied letta, with a look of wonder that so silly a question should be asked. sam and robin exchanged looks, and the former shook his head. "you'll not get much information out of her, i fear. ask her about the pirates," he whispered. "letta," said robin, settling the child more comfortably on his knee--an attention which she received with a sigh of deep contentment,--"are the people here kind to you?" "yes, very kind. old meerta is as kind to me almost as mamma used to be, but i don't love her so much--not nearly so much,--and blind bungo is a dear old man." "that's nice. and the others--are they kind to you?" "what others? oh, i suppose you mean the men who come and stay for a time, and then go off again. o no! they are not kind. they are bad men--very naughty; they often fight, and i think call each other bad names, but i don't understand their language very well. they never hurt me, but they are very rough, and i don't like them at all. they all went away this morning. i was _so_ glad, for they won't be back again for a good long while, and meerta and bungo won't get any more hard knocks, and whippings, till they come back." "ha! they won't come back in a hurry--not these ones at least," said sam in a voice that frightened letta, inducing her to cling closer to robin. "don't be afraid, little one," said the latter, "he's only angry with the bad men that went away this morning. are there any of them still remaining here?" "what, in the caves?" "ay, in the caves--or anywhere?" "no they're all away. nobody left but me and meerta and blind bungo." "is it a long time since you came here?" "o yes, very _very_ long!" replied the child, with a sad weary look; "so long that--that you can't think." "come, dear; tell us all about it," said robin in a coaxing tone,--"all about mamma and how you came here." "very well," said letta, quite pleased with the request. clearing her little throat with the emphasis of one who has a long story to tell, she began with the statement that "mamma was a darling." from this, as a starting-point, she gave an amazing and rambling account of the joys and toys of infancy, which period of life seemed to have been spent in a most beautiful garden full of delicious fruits and sunshine, where the presiding and ever present angel was mamma. then she told of a dark night, and a sudden awaking in the midst of flames and smoke and piercing cries, when fierce men seized her and carried her away, put her into a ship, where she was dreadfully sick for a long long time, until they landed on a rocky island, and suddenly she found herself "there,"--pointing as she spoke to the little garden below them. while she was yet describing her feelings on arrival, a voice shouting letta was heard, and she instantly struggled from robin's knee. "o let me go!" she cried. "it's meerta calling me, and i never let her call twice." "why? would she be angry?" "no, but she would be sorry. do let me go!" "but won't you let us go too?" asked sam. "o yes, if you want to come. this is the road," she added, as she took robin by the hand; "and you must be very careful how you go, else you'll fall and hurt yourselves." great was the amazement, and not slight the alarm of meerta, when she beheld her little charge thus piloting two strangers down the hill. she spoke hurriedly to her blind companion, and at first seemed disposed to hide herself, but the man evidently dissuaded her from such a course, and when letta ran forward, seized her hard old hands and said that god had sent people to take her back to mamma, she dismissed her fears and took to laughing immoderately. it soon became evident to our adventurers that the woman was in her dotage, while the old man was so frail that only a few of the sands of life remained to run. they both understood a little english, but spoke in such a remarkably broken manner, that there was little prospect of much additional information being obtained from them. "you hungry--hungry?" asked the old woman, with a sudden gleam of hospitality. "come--come--me gif you for heat." she took robin by the hand and led him towards a cavern, the mouth of which had not been visible higher up the mountain. sam followed, led by letta. the interior of the cavern was lofty and the floor level. besides this, it was sumptuously furnished in a fashion singularly out of keeping with the spot and its surroundings. pictures hung on the walls, persian rugs lay on the floors. ottomans, covered with silk and velvet, were strewn about here and there, among easy-chairs of various kinds, some formed of wicker-work--in the fantastic shapes peculiar to the east--others of wood and cane, having the ungainly and unreasonable shapes esteemed by western taste. silver lamps and drinking-cups and plates of the finest porcelain were also scattered about, for there was no order in the cavern, either as to its arrangement or the character of its decoration. in the centre stood several large tables of polished wood, on which were the remains of what must have been a substantial feast--the dishes being as varied as the furniture--from the rice and egg messes of eastern origin, to the preserved sardines of the west. "ha! ha!" laughed the weird old creature who ushered the astonished youths into this strange banqueting hall, "the rubberts--rubbers--you calls dem?" "robbers, she means; that's the naughty men," explained letta, who seemed to enjoy the old woman's blunders in the english tongue. "yis, dats so--roberts an' pyrits--ha! ha! dems feed here dis mornin'. you feed dis afternoons. me keeps house for dem. dey tinks me alone wid bungo an' letta, ho! ho! but me's got cumpiny dis day. sit down an' grub wat yous can. doo you good. doo letta and bungo good. doos all good. fire away! ha! ha-a! keep you's nose out o' dat pie, bungo, you brute. vous git sik eff you heat more." regardless of this admonition, the poor old man broke off a huge mass of pie-crust, which he began to mouth with his toothless gums, a quiet smile indicating at once his indifference to meerta and consequences, while he mumbled something about its not being every day he got so good a chance. "das true," remarked the old woman, with another hilarious laugh. "dey go hoff awful quick dis day." while sam and robin sat down to enjoy a good dinner, or rather breakfast, of which they stood much in need, letta explained in a disjointed rambling fashion, that after a feed of this kind the naughty men usually had a fight, after which they took a long sleep, and then had the dishes cleaned up and the silver things locked away before taking their departure from the cave for "a long, long time," by which, no doubt, she indicated the period spent on a pilfering expedition. but on this particular occasion, she added, while the naughty men were seated at the feast, one of their number from their ship came hastily in and said something, she could not tell what, which caused them at once to leap up and rush out of the cave, and they had not come back since. "and they're not likely to come back, little one," said robin through a mouthful of rice. "ha! ha-a!" laughed sam through a mouthful of pie-crust. "ho! ho!" cried the old woman, with a look of surprise, "yous bery brav boy, i dessay, but if dem roberts doos kum back, you soon laugh on wrong side ob de mout', for dey screw yous limbses off, an' ho! skrunch yous teeth hout, an' roast you 'live, so you better heat w'at yous can an' go hof--fast as you couldn't." "i say, robin," said sam, unable to restrain a smile at the expression of letta's face, as she listened to this catalogue of horrors, "that speech might have taken away our appetites did we not know that the `roberts' are all dead." "dead!" exclaimed the old woman with a start and a gleam of serious intelligence, such as had not before appeared on her wrinkled visage; "are de roberts _all_ dead?" "all," replied sam, who thereupon gave the old pair a full account of what had been witnessed on the shore. strange to say, the old man and woman were much depressed by the news, although, from what they afterwards related, they had been very cruelly treated by the pirates, by whom they had been enslaved for many years. nay, old meerta even dropped a tear or two quietly to their memory, for, as she remarked, by way of explanation or excuse, "dey wasn't all so bad as each oder." however, she soon recovered her composure, and while sam shipton returned to the shore to fetch their comrades to the cave, she told robin, among other things, that the pirates had brought letta to the island two years before, along with a large quantity of booty, but that she did not know where she came from, or to whom she belonged. sam shipton resolved to give his comrades the full benefit of the surprise in store, therefore, on returning to them, he merely said that he had left robin in a rather curious place in the interior, where they had discovered both food and drink in abundance, and that he had come to conduct them to it. by that time the seaman whom they had rescued had recovered considerably, and was able to walk with assistance, though still rather confused in his mind and disposed to be silent. at first he expressed a desire to be left to sleep where he was, but on being told that the place they were going to was not far-off and that he would be able to rest longer and much more comfortably there than where he was, he braced himself up and accompanied them, leaning on sam and jim slagg as he staggered along. need it be said that both slagg and stumps shouted with surprise when they came suddenly in sight of the garden; that they lost the power of utterance on beholding robin holding familiar converse with an old hag, a blind man, and a small angel; and that they all but fell down on entering the pirate's cave? no, it need not be said; let us pass, therefore, to the next scene in this amazing drama. of course robin had prepared the inhabitants of the garden for the arrival of his friends. he had also learned that the pirates, in the hurry of departure, had not only left everything lying about, but had left the key of their treasure-cave in the lock. old meerta offered to show him the contents, but robin determined to await the arrival of his friends before examining the place. when slagg and stumps had breakfasted, and the sailor had been laid on a comfortable couch, where he immediately fell fast asleep, robin pulled the key of the treasure-cave out of his pocket and asked his comrades to follow him. wondering at the request, they did so. the cave referred to lay at the inner extremity of the banqueting cavern, and was guarded by a massive door of wood. opening this, robin allowed the old woman to enter first and lead the way. she did so with one of her wild "ho! ho's!" being obviously much excited at the opportunity of showing to the visitors the contents of a cavern which she had never before been permitted to enter, save in the company of the pirates. entering the small doorway, through which only a subdued light penetrated, she went to a ledge or natural shelf of rock and took down a silver lamp of beautiful workmanship, which had probably belonged to a church or temple. lighting it, she ushered them through a natural archway into an inner cavern, round the walls of which were heaped in piles merchandise and wealth of all kinds in great profusion and variety. there were bales of broadcloth and other fabrics from the looms of tuscany; tweeds from the factories of scotland; silks, satins and velvets in great rolls, mingled with lace, linen, and more delicate fabrics. close beside these piles, but not mixed with them, were boxes of cutlery and other hardware, and, further on, chests of drawers containing spices from the east, chests of tea and coffee, barrels of sugar, and groceries of all kinds. these things were not thrown together in confusion, but arranged in systematic order, as if under the management of an expert store-keeper, and a desk with business-books on it seemed to indicate that a careful record was kept of the whole. among the miscellaneous merchandise stood several large and massive chests of ancient material and antique form. taking a bunch of small keys from a nail on the wall, the old woman proceeded to open these and exhibit their contents with much of the interest and simple delight exhibited by a child in displaying her treasures to new companions. handing the silver lamp to robin, who with his comrades looked on in silent surprise, she opened the first chest. it was loaded to the lid with jewellery of all kinds, which sparkled in the light with dazzling brilliancy, for even to the inexperienced eyes of the observers, many of the gems were obviously of the finest quality, and almost priceless in value. there was no order in the arrangement of these--bracelets, ear-rings, watches, etcetera, of european manufacture lying side by side with the costly golden wreaths and tiaras of india, and the more massive and gorgeous brooches, nose-rings, neck-rings, and anklets peculiar to semi-barbaric lands. the next chest was filled with gold, silver, and bronze drinking-cups and goblets, lamps, vases, and urns, that had been gathered from the ships of many countries. then there were chests which contained little barrels full of gold and silver coin of every realm, from the huge golden doubloon of spain to the little silver groschen of germany. besides all this varied wealth, there were piles of arms of all nations--richly chased scimitars of eastern manufacture, the clumsy cutlasses of england, long silver-handled pistols of oriental form, bluff little "bull-dog" revolvers, cavalry sabres, breech-loading rifles, flint-lock muskets, shields, spears, bows and arrows--in short, a miscellaneous armoury much too extensive to be described. it was interesting to observe the monkey-like countenance of old meerta as she watched the effect produced on her visitors, her little black eyes sparkling in the lamp-light more brightly than the finest gems there; and not less interesting was it to note the half-amused, more than half-amazed, and partially imbecile gaze of the still silent visitors. little letta enjoyed their looks quite as much as meerta. "haven't we got lots of pretty things here?" she said, looking up into robin's face. "yes, little one,--wonderful!" robin revived sufficiently to make this reply and to glance at sam, slagg, and stumps, who returned the glance. then he relapsed. snatching the lamp from his hand, old meerta now led the party to a remote corner of the cave, where a number of large casks were ranged at one end, and covered with a sheet of leather. "ha! ha!" laughed their wild guide, in a sort of screech, "here be de grandest jools, de finest dimunds of all, what buys all de rest!" she lifted a corner of the skin, removed the loose head of a cask, and holding the lamp close over the opening, bade them look in. they did so, and the effect was powerful as well as instantaneous, for there, only a few inches below the flaring light, lay an open barrel of gunpowder! the senses of sam shipton returned like a flash of lightning--interest, surprise, admiration vanished like smoke, as he uttered a shout, and, with one hand seizing the wrist of the withered arm that held the lamp, with the other he hastily drew the leathern cover over the exposed powder and held it down. "you old curmudgeon!" he cried; "here, robin, take the lamp from her, and away with it into the outer cave." our hero promptly obeyed, while the other two, under an instinct of self-preservation, had already fled in the same direction, followed by a shrill and half-fiendish laugh from the old woman. "well, i never had such a narrow escape," said sam, as he issued from the cave, still holding meerta firmly, though not roughly, by the wrist. "why, there's enough powder there, i do believe," said jim slagg, "to split the whole island in two." "there, it's all safe now," said sam, as he locked the heavy door and thrust the key in his pocket; "and i will take care of your treasures for you in future, old lady." "wass you frighted?" asked the old woman with a low laugh, in which even letta joined. "frighted, you reckless old thing," replied sam, seizing a tankard of water and draining it, "of course i was; if a spark had gone down into that cask, you would have been considerably frighted too." "i'm not so sure of that," said stumps; "she wouldn't have had time to get a fright." "o no!" said meerta; "i's niver frighted. many time me stan' by dat keg, t'inkin', t'inkin', t'inkin' if me stuff de light in it, and blow de pyrits vid all dere tings to 'warsl smash; but no--me tinks dat some of dem wasn't all so bad as each oder." this thought seemed to have the effect of quieting the roused spirit of the poor old woman, for thereafter a softened expression overspread her wrinkled face as she went silently about clearing away the debris of the recent feast. chapter eighteen. the pirate's island--continued. next morning sam shipton awoke from a sound and dreamless slumber. raising himself on the soft ottoman, or eastern couch, on which he had spent the night, he looked round in a state of sleepy wonder, unable at first to remember where he was. gradually he recalled the circumstances and events of the preceding day. the forms of his companions lay on couches similar to his own in attitudes of repose, and the seaman still slept profoundly in the position in which he had been laid down when brought in. through the mouth of the cavern sam could see the little garden, glowing like an emerald in the beams of the rising sun, and amongst the bushes he observed the old couple stooping quietly over their labour of gathering weeds. the warm air, the bright sunshine, and the soft cries of distant sea-birds, induced sam to slip into such of his garments as he had put off, and go out quietly without rousing his companions. in a few minutes he stood on the summit of the islet and saw the wide ocean surrounding him, like a vast sparkling plain, its myriad wavelets reflecting now the dazzling sun, now the azure vault, the commingling yellow and blue of which resulted in a lovely transparent green, save where a few puffs of wind swept over the great expanse and streaked it with lines of darkest blue. "truly," murmured sam, as he gazed in admiration at the glorious expanse of sea and sky, "robin is right when he says that we are not half sufficiently impressed with the goodness of the almighty in placing us in the midst of such a splendid world, with capacity to appreciate and enjoy it to the full. i begin to fear that i am a more ungrateful fellow than i've been used to think." for some time he continued to gaze in silence as if that thought were working. from his elevated position he could now see that the islet was not quite so barren as at first he had been led to suppose. several little valleys and cup-like hollows lay nestling among the otherwise barren hills, like lovely gems in a rough setting. those, he now perceived, must have been invisible from the sea, and the rugged, almost perpendicular, cliffs in their neighbourhood had apparently prevented men from landing and discovering their existence. one of the valleys, in particular, was not only larger than the others, but exceptionally rich in vegetation, besides having a miniature lake, like a diamond, in its bosom. descending the hill and returning to the cave, sam found his comrades still asleep. letta was assisting old meerta in the preparation of a substantial breakfast that would not have done discredit to a first-class hotel. "oh, i'm so glad you've come!" said letta, running up, to him and giving him both hands to shake, and a ready little mouth to kiss, "for i didn't like to awaken your friends, and the sailor one looks so still that i fear he may be dying. i saw one of the naughty men die here, and he looked just like that." somewhat alarmed by this, sam went at once to the sailor and looked earnestly at him. "no fear, letta," he said, "the poor fellow is not dying; he is only in a very profound sleep, having been much exhausted and nearly killed yesterday. hallo, robin! awake at last?" robin, who had been roused by the voices, rubbed his eyes, yawned vociferously, and looked vacantly round. "well, now, that's most extraordinary; it isn't a dream after all!" "it's an uncommon pleasant dream, if it is one," remarked jim slagg, with a grave stare at robin, as he sat up on his couch. "i never in all my born days dreamt such a sweet smell of coffee and fried sausages. why, the old 'ooman's a-bringin' of 'em in, i do declare. pinch me, stumps, to see if i'm awake!" as stumps was still asleep, slagg himself resorted to the method referred to, and roused his comrade. in a few minutes they were all seated at breakfast with the exception of the sailor, whom it was thought best to leave to his repose until nature should whisper in his ear. "well now," said slagg, pausing to rest for a few seconds, "if we _had_ a submarine cable 'tween this and england, and we was to give 'em an account of all we've seen an' bin doin', they'd never believe it." "cer'nly not. they'd say it wos all a passel o' lies," remarked stumps; "but i say, mr sam--" "come now, stumps, don't `mister' me any more." "well, i won't do it any more, though 'tain't easy to change one's 'abits. but how is it, sir, that that there electricity works? that's what i wants to know. does the words run along the cable,--or 'ow?" "of course they do, stumpy," interrupted slagg, "they run along the cable like a lot o' little tightrope dancers, an' when they come to the end o't they jumps off an' ranges 'temselves in a row. sometimes, in coorse, they spells wrong, like bad schoolboys, and then they've to be walloped an' set right." "hold your noise, slagg, an' let your betters speak," returned stumps. "well, if they don't exactly do that," said sam shipton, "there are people who think they can do things even more difficult. i remember once, when i was clerk at a country railroad station and had to work the telegraph, an old woman came into the ticket office in a state of wild despair. she was about the size and shape of meerta there, but with about an inch and a half more nose, and two or three ounces less brain. "`what's wrong, madam?' i asked, feeling quite sorry for the poor old thing. "`oh! sir,' said she, clasping her hands, `i've bin an' left my passel,--a brown paper one it was,--on the seat at the last station, an' there was a babby's muffler in it--the sweetest thing as ever was--an' f-fi' pun t-ten, on'y one sh-shillin' was b-bad--boo-hoo!' "she broke down entirely at this point, so, said i, `madam, make your mind quite easy, sit down, and i'll telegraph at once,' so i telegraphed, and got a reply back immediately that the parcel had been found all right, and would be sent on as soon as possible. i told this to the old lady, who seemed quite pleased, and went on to the platform to wait. "i was pretty busy for the next quarter of an hour, for it was market day at the next town, but i noticed through the window that the old lady was standing on the platform, gazing steadily up at the sky. "`broxley--third class,' said a big farmer at that moment, with a head like one of his own turnips. "i gave him his ticket, and for five minutes more i was kept pretty busy, when up came the train; in got the struggling crowd; whew! went the whistle, and away went the whole affair, leaving no one on the platform but the porter, and the old woman still staring up at the sky. "`what's the matter, madam?' i asked. "`matter!' she exclaimed, `a pretty telegraph _yours_ is to be sure! wuss than the old carrier by a long way. here 'ave i bin standin' for full 'alf-an-hour with my neck nigh broke, and there's no sign of it yet.' "`no sign of what, madam?' "`of my brown paper passel, to be sure. didn't you tell me, young man, that they said they'd send it by telegraph as soon as possible?' "`no, madam,' i replied, `i told you they had telegraphed to say they would send it on as soon as possible--meaning, of course, by rail, for we have not yet discovered the method of sending parcels by telegraph-though, no doubt, we shall in course of time. if you'll give me your address i'll send the parcel to you.' "`thank you, young man. do,' she said, giving me an old envelope with her name on it. `be sure you do. i don't mind the money much, but i couldn't a-bear to lose that muffler. it was _such_ a sweet thing, turned up with yaller, and a present too, which it isn't many of 'em comes my way.' "so you see, stumps, some people have queer notions about the powers of the telegraph." "but did the old lady get the parcel all right?" asked stumps, who was a sympathetic soul. "of course she did, and came over to the station next day to thank me, and offer me the bad shilling by way of reward. of course i declined it with many expressions of gratitude." while they were thus adding intellectual sauce to the material feast of breakfast, the rescued sailor awoke from his prolonged sleep, and stretched himself. he was a huge, thick-set man, with a benign expression of countenance, but that phase of his character was somewhat concealed at the time by two black eyes, a swollen nose, a cut lip, and a torn cheek. poor fellow, he had suffered severely at the hands of the pirates, and suddenly checked the stretch in which he was indulging with a sharp groan, or growl, as he sat up and pressed his hand to his side. "why, what's the matter with me, an' where am i?" he exclaimed, gazing round the cave, while a look of wonder gradually displaced the expression of pain. "you're all right--rescued from the pirates at all events," answered sam shipton, rising from table and sitting down beside the seaman's couch. "thank god for that!" said the man earnestly, though with a troubled look; "but how did i escape--where are the rascals?--what--" "there, now, don't excite yourself, my man; you're not quite yourself in body. come, let me feel your pulse. ah, slightly feverish--no wonder-i'll tell you all about it soon, but at present you must be content merely to know that you are safe in the hands of friends, that you are in the pirates' cave, and that the pirates and their vessel are now at the bottom of the sea." "that's hardly c'rect, mr shipton," murmured slagg; "i would have said they was blow'd to hatoms." the seaman turned and looked at the speaker with what would have been a twinkle if his swelled visage would have permitted, but the effort produced another spasm of pain. "i must examine you, friend," said sam; "you have been severely handled. help me to strip him, robin." the poor man at once submitted. "you're a doctor, sir, i suppose?" he asked. "no," said sam, "only an amateur; nevertheless i know what i'm about. you see, i think that every man in the world, whatever his station or profession, should be at least slightly acquainted with every subject under the sun, in connection with which he may be called on to act. in other words, he should know at least a little about surgery, and physic, and law, and carpentering, blacksmithing, building, cooking, riding, swimming, and--hallo! why, two of your ribs are broken, my man!" "sorry to hear it, sir, but not surprised, for i feels as if two or three o' my spines was broken also, and five or six o' my lungs bu'sted. you won't be able to mend 'em, i fear." "oh, yes, i shall," said sam cheerily. "ah! that's well. i'd thowt that p'r'aps you wouldn't have the tools 'andy in these parts for splicin' of 'em." "fortunately no tools are required," returned sam. "i'll soon put you right, but you'll have to lie still for some time. here, robin, go into the store-cave and fetch me a few yards of that white cotton, you remember, near the door. and, i say, mind you keep well clear of the powder." when the cotton was brought, sam tore it up into long strips, which he wound somewhat tightly round the sailor's huge chest. "you see," he observed, as he applied the bandages, "broken ribs are not necessarily displaced, but the action of breathing separates the ends of them continually, so that they can't get a chance of re-uniting. all we have to do, therefore, is to prevent your taking a full breath, and this is accomplished by tying you up tight--so. now, you can't breathe fully even if you would, and i'd recommend you not to try. by the way--what's your name?" "johnson, sir,--john johnson." "well, johnson, i'll give you something to eat and drink now, after which you'll have another sleep. to-morrow we'll have a chat on things in general." "i say," asked robin that night, as he and sam stood star-gazing together beside a small fire which had been kindled outside the cavern-mouth for cooking purposes, "is it true that you have studied all the subjects you mentioned to johnson this morning?" "quite true. i have not indeed studied them long or profoundly, but i have acquired sufficient knowledge of each to enable me to take intelligent action, as i did this morning, instead of standing helplessly by, or, what might be worse, making a blind attempt to do something on the chance that it might be the right thing, as once happened to myself when a bungling ignoramus gave me a glass of brandy to cure what he called mulligrumps, but what in truth turned out to be inflammation." "but what think you of the saying that `a little knowledge is a dangerous thing,' sam." "i think that, like most of the world's maxims, it is only partially, or relatively, true. if little knowledge claims the position and attempts to act the part of great knowledge, it becomes dangerous indeed; but if little knowledge walks modestly, and only takes action when none but ignorance stands by, it is, in my opinion, neither dangerous nor liable to be destructive." while they were speaking, little letta came out of the cavern and ran towards them. "it is like a dream of the arabian nights to meet such a little angel here," murmured robin; "what a dreadful blow the loss of her must have been to her poor mother!" "o! come to johnson, please," she said, taking sam by the hand with a very trustful look and manner. "why; he's not worse, is he?" "o no! he has just awakened, and says he is _very_ much better, and _so_ peckish. what does he mean by that?" "peckish, my dear, is hungry," explained robin, as they went into the cave together. they found that johnson was not only peckish but curious, and thirsting for information as well as meat and drink. as his pulse was pronounced by dr shipton to be all right, he was gratified with a hearty supper, a long pull at the tankard of sparkling water, and a good deal of information and small-talk about the pirates, the wreck of the triton, and the science of electricity. "but you have not told us yet," said sam, "how it was that you came to fail into the hands of the pirates." "i can soon tell 'ee that," said the seaman, turning slowly on his couch. "lie still, now, you must not move," said sam, remonstratively. "but that not movin', doctor, is wuss than downright pain, by a long way. hows'ever, i s'pose i must obey orders--anyhow you've got the whip hand o' me just now. well, as i was sayin', the yarn ain't a long 'un. i sailed from the port o' lun'on in a tea-clipper, of which i was the cook; got out to hong-kong all right, shipped a cargo, and off again for old england. we hadn't got far when a most horrible gale blew us far out of our course. when it fell calm, soon arter, we was boarded by a pirate. our captain fought like a hero, but it warn't of no use. they was too many for us; most of my shipmates was killed, and i was knocked flat on the deck from behind with a hand-spike. on recoverin', i found myself in the ship's hold, bound hand and futt, among a lot of unfortunits like myself, most of 'em bein' chinese and malays. the reptiles untied my hands and set me to an oar. they thrashed us all unmercifully to make us work hard, and killed the weak ones to be rid of 'em. at last we came to an anchor, as i knew by the rattlin' o' the cables, though, bein' below, i couldn't see where we was. then i heard the boats got out, an' all the crew went ashore, as i guessed, except the guard left to watch us. "that night i dreamed a deal about bein' free, an' about former voyages--specially one when i was wrecked in the atlantic, an' our good ship, the seahorse, went down in latitude--" "the seahorse!" echoed robin, with an earnest look at the sailor; "was she an emigrant ship?" "ay, that's just what she was." "was she lost in the year 1850?" continued robin, with increasing excitement. "jus' so, my lad." "and you were cook?" "you've hit the nail fair on the head," replied the sailor, with a look of surprise. "well, now, that _is_ most remarkable," said robin, "for i was born on board of that very ship." "you _don't_ mean it," said johnson, looking eagerly at our hero. "was you really the babby as was born to that poor miserable sea-sick gentleman, mr wright--you'll excuse my sayin' so--in the middle of a thunder-clap an' a flash o' lightnin' as would have split our main-mast an' sent us to the bottom, along wi' the ship, if it hadn't bin for the noo lightnin' conductor that mr harris, the inventor, indooced our skipper to put up!" "yes, i am that very baby," said robin, "and although, of course, i remember nothing about the thunder and lightning, or anything else. my father and mother have often told me all about it, and the wonderful deliverance which god mercifully sent when all hope had been given up. and many a time did they speak of you, johnson, as a right good fellow and a splendid cook." "much obleedged to 'em," said johnson, "an' are they both alive?" "they were both alive and well when i left england." "come now, this _is_ pleasant, to meet an old shipmate in such pecooliar circumstances," said the sailor, extending his hand, which robin shook warmly; "quite as good as a play, ain't it?" "ay," observed jim slagg, who with the others had witnessed this meeting with deep interest, "an' the babby has kep' the lighten' goin' ever since, though he's dropped the thunder, for he's an electrician no less--a manufacturer of lightnin' an' a director of it too." the sailor wass good deal puzzled by this remark, but when its purport was explained to him, he gave vent to a vigorous chuckle, notwithstanding sam's stern order to "lie still." "didn't i say so?" he exclaimed. "didn't i say distinctly, that night, to the stooard--thomson was his name--`stooard,' said i, `that there babby what has just bin born will make his mark some'ow an' somew'eres.'" "well, but i have not made my mark yet," said robin, laughing, "so you're not a true prophet, at least time has not yet proved your title." "not yet proved it!" cried johnson with vehemence, "why, how much proof do you want? here you are, not much more than a babby yet--any'ow hardly a man--and, besides havin' bin born in thunder, lightnin', wind, an' rain, you've laid the atlantic cable, you've took up lightnin' as a profession--or a plaything,--you've helped to save the life of john johnson, an' you've got comfortably located in a pirate's island! if you on'y go on as you've begun, you'll make your mark so deep that it'll never be rubbed out to the end of time. a prophet, indeed! why, i'm shuperior to mahomet, an' beat nebuchadnezzar all to sticks." "but you haven't finished your story, johnson," said jim slagg. "that's true--where was i? ah, dreamin' in the hold of the pirate-ship. well, i woke up with a start all of a suddent, bent on doin' suthin', i scarce knew what, but i wriggled away at the rope that bound me till i got my hands free; then i freed my legs; then i loosed some o' the boldest fellows among the slaves, and got handspikes and bits o' wood to arm 'em with. they was clever enough to understand signs, an' i couldn't speak to 'em, not knowin' their lingo, but i signed to 'em to keep quiet as mice. then i crep' to the powder-magazine, which the reckless reptiles fastened very carelessly, and got a bit paper and made a slow match by rubbin' some wet powder on it, and laid it all handy, for i was determined to escape and put an end to their doin's all at once. my plan was to attack and overpower the guard, free and arm all the slaves, blow up the ship, escape on shore, an' have a pitched battle with the pirate crew. unfortunately there was a white-livered traitor among us--a sort o' half-an'-half slave--very likely he was a spy. anyhow, when he saw what i was about, he slipped over the side and swam quietly ashore. why he didn't alarm the guards i don't know--p'r'aps he thought we might be too many for 'em, and that if we conquered he stood but a small chance. anyhow he escaped the sharks, and warned the crew in good time, for we was in the very middle of the scrimmage when they suddintly turned up, as you saw, an' got the better of us. hows'ever i managed to bolt below and fire the slow match, before they saw what i was after. then i turned and fought my way on deck again, so that they didn't find out. and when they was about to throw me overboard, the thought of the surprise in store for 'em indooced me to give vent to a hearty cheer. it warn't a right state o' mind, i confess, and i was properly punished, for, instead o' killin' me off quick an' comfortable, they tied me hand and futt, took me below, an' laid me not two yards from the slowly burnin' match. i felt raither unhappy, i assure you; an' the reptiles never noticed the match because o' the smoke o' the scrimmage. i do believe it was being so near it as saved me, for when the crash came, i was lifted bodily wi' the planks on which i lay, and, comin' down from the sky, as it appeared to me, i went clean into the sea without damage, except the breakin' o' one o' the ropes, which, fortunately, set my right arm free." "come now, johnson, you must go to sleep after that," said sam. "you're exciting yourself too much; remember that i am your doctor, and obedience is the first law of nature--when one is out of health." "very good, sir," returned the seaman; "but before i turn over mr wright must read me a few verses out o' that bible his mother gave him." "why, how do you know that my mother gave me a bible?" asked robin in great surprise. "didn't i know your mother?" replied the sailor with a flush of enthusiasm; "an' don't i know that she would sooner have let you go to sea without her blessing than without the word of god? she was the first human bein' as ever spoke to me about my miserable soul, and the love of god in sendin' his son to save it. many a one has asked me about my health, and warned me to fly from drink, and offered to help me on in life, but she was the first that ever asked after my soul, or tried to impress on me that eternity and its affairs were of more importance than time. i didn't say much at the time, but the seed that your mother planted nigh twenty years ago has bin watered, thank god an' kep' alive ever since." there was a tone of seriousness and gratitude in this off-hand seaman's manner, while speaking of his mother, which touched robin deeply. without a moment's hesitation he pulled out his bible and read a chapter in the gospel of john. "now you'll pray," said the sailor, to robin's surprise and embarrassment, for he had never prayed in public before, though accustomed from a child to make known his wants to god night and morning. but our hero was morally as well as physically courageous--as every hero should be! he knelt at once by the sailor's couch, while the others followed his example, and, in a few simple sentences, asked for pardon, blessing, help, and guidance in the name of jesus christ. thus peculiarly was bible-reading and family worship established on the pirates' island in the year eighteen hundred and sixty-eight. chapter nineteen. an exploration and an accident. for the first few days of their stay on what they styled pirate island, our castaways were too much taken up with the wondrous and varied contents of the robbers' cave, and the information meerta and letta had to give, to pay much regard to the island itself, or the prospect they had of quitting it. but when their interest and curiosity began to abate, and the excitement to decrease, they naturally bethought them of the nature and resources of their now home. of course they did not for a moment regard it in the light of _home_. it was merely a resting-place,--a refuge, where, after their escape from the sea, they should spend a few weeks, perhaps months, until a passing vessel should take them off. they did not know, at that time, that the islet was far removed from the usual track of ships, and that, like the pitcairn islanders, they might be doomed to spend many years, perchance a lifetime, on it. indeed, a considerable time elapsed before they would admit to themselves that there was a possibility of such a fate, although they knew, both from meerta and letta, that no ship of any kind, save that of the pirates, had been seen for the last eighteen months, and the few sails that did chance to appear, were merely seen for a few hours like sea-gulls on the horizon, from which they arose and into which they vanished. having then, as we have said, bethought them of examining the resources and nature of the island, they one morning organised an expedition. by that time the sailor, although by no means fit for it, insisted that he was sufficiently restored to accompany them. letta, who was active and strong like a small gazelle, besides being acquainted with the whole region, agreed to act as guide. stumps, having sprained his ankle slightly, remained at the cave, for the purpose, as he said, of helping meerta with the garden, but jim slagg gave him credit for laziness. "you see," said sam shipton, as letta led them down the rugged mountain-side, "we may as well make ourselves comfortable while we remain here, and i'm inclined to think that a hut, however rough, down in one of these charming valleys, will be more agreeable than the gloomy cavern on the mountain-top." "not so sure o' that, doctor," said johnson; "the cave is at all events dry, and a good stronghold in case of a visit from pirates." "but pirates what have bin blow'd to atoms," said slagg, "ain't likely to turn up again, are they?" "that's so, lad; but some of their friends might pay us a visit, you know." "i think not," rejoined sam; "there is honour among thieves here, no doubt, as elsewhere. i daresay it is well-known among the fraternity that the island belongs to a certain set, and the rest will therefore let it alone. what think you, robin?" "i'm inclined to agree with you, sam, but perhaps letta is the best authority on that point. did you ever see any other set of pirates land here, little one, except your--your own set?" "only once," answered the child, "another set came, but they only stayed one day. they looked at everything, looked at me an' meerta an' laughed very much. an' they ate and drank a good deal, and fought a little; but they took nothing away, and never came back." "i thought so," rejoined sam; "now, all we've got to do is to hoist a flag on the highest peak of the mountain, and when a vessel comes to take us off, load her with as much of the booty as she can carry--and then, hurrah for old england!" "hooray!" echoed jim slagg, "them's exactly my sentiments." "but the booty is not ours to take," objected robin. "whose is it, then?" asked sam; "the rightful owners we don't know, and the wrongful owners are defunct." "i tell 'ee what it is, mates," said johnson, "the whole o' the booty is mine, 'cause why? it was me as blowed up the owners, so i'm entitled to it by conquest, an' you needn't go to fightin' over it. if you behave yourselves, i'll divide it equally among us, share an' share alike." "it seems to me, johnson," said robin, "that in strict justice the booty belongs to letta, meerta, and blind bungo, as the natural heirs o' the pirates." "but they're not the heirs, they are part of the booty," said the seaman, "and, as sitch, falls to be divided among us." "if that's so," said slagg, "then i claim letta for my share, and you, johnson, can have your pick of meerta and blind bungo." "nay, letta is mine, because i was the first to discover her," said robin. "whom will you go with, letta?" "with you, of course," replied the child quite earnestly. "haven't you promised to take me back to mamma?" "indeed i have, little one, and if i ever get the chance, assuredly i will," said robin, with equal earnestness. "i say, doctor," said johnson to sam, sitting down on a mossy bank, "i'll stop here and wait for you. that rib ain't all square yet." "wilful man," said sam, "didn't i advise you not to come? there, lie down and take it easy. we'll bring you some fruit on our return." by this time the party had reached the valley in which the lakelet lay, and beautiful indeed was the scene which presented itself as they passed under the grateful shade of the palm-trees. everywhere, rich tropical vegetation met their gaze, through the openings in which the sunshine poured like streams of fire. on the little lake numerous flocks of ducks and other fowl were seen swimming in sportive mood, while an occasional splash told of fish of some sort below the surface. leaving the sailor in a position whence he could observe them for a long distance, the rest of the party pushed on. during their rambles they found the valley to be much richer in vegetation, and more beautiful, than the distant view from the mountain-top had led them to expect. small though the valley was, it contained, among other trees, the cocoa-nut palm, the bread-fruit, banana, and sandal-wood. there were also pine-apples, wild rice, and custard-apples, some of which latter delicious fruit, being ripe, was gathered and carried back to johnson, whom they found sound asleep and much refreshed on their return. the expedition proved that, barren though the island appeared from the sea, it contained quite enough of the good things of this life to render it a desirable abode for man. on the coast, too, where the raft had been cast ashore, were discovered a variety of shell-fish, some of which, especially the oysters, were found to be excellent food. and some of the sea-fowl turned out to be very good eating, though a little fishy, while their eggs were as good as those of the domestic fowl. "it seems to me," said robin to letta one day when they were out on a ramble together, "that this is quite a little paradise." "i don't know what paradise is like," said the child. "well, no more do i," returned robin, with a laugh, "but of course everybody understands that it is the place where everything is perfect, and where happiness is complete." "it cannot be like paradise without mamma," said letta, shaking her pretty head sadly. "i would not go to heaven unless mamma was there." robin was silent for some time, as he thought of his own mother and the talks he used to have with her on this same subject. "letta," he said at length, earnestly, "jesus will be in heaven. it was his spirit who taught you to love mamma--as you do, so you are sure to meet her there with him." "nobody _taught_ me to love mamma," returned the child quietly; "i couldn't help it." "true, little one, but it was god who made you to--`couldn't help it.'" letta was puzzled by this reply. she raised her bright eyes inquiringly into robin's honest face, and said, "but you've promised to take me to her, you know." "yes, dear little one, but you must not misunderstand me," replied the youth somewhat sadly. "i promise that, god helping me, i will do the best i can to find out where your mother is; but you must remember that i have very little to go on. i don't even know your mother's name, or the place where you were taken from. by the way, an idea has just occurred to me. have you any clothes at the cave?" "of course i have," answered letta, with a merry laugh. "yes; but i mean the clothes that you had on when you first came here." "i don't know; meerta knows. why?" "because your name may be marked on them. come, let us go back at once and see. besides, we are wasting time, for you know i was sent out to shoot some ducks for dinner." rising as he spoke, robin shouldered the shotgun which had been supplied from the robbers' armoury, and, descending with his little companion towards the lake, soon began to stalk the birds as carefully as if he had been trained to the work by a red indian. stooping low, he glided swiftly through the bushes, until he came within a hundred yards of the margin of the lakelet, where a group of some thirty or forty fat ducks were feeding. letta had fallen behind, and sat down to watch. the distance being too great for a shot, and the bushes beyond the spot which he had reached being too thin to conceal him, robin lay flat down, and began to advance through the long grass after the fashion of a snake, pushing his gun before him. it was a slow and tedious process, but robin's spirit was patient and persevering. he screwed himself, as it were, to within sixty yards of the flock, and then fired both barrels almost simultaneously. seven dead birds remained behind when the affrighted flock took wing. "it is not very scientific shooting," said robin, apologetically, to his fair companion, as she assisted him to tie their legs together; "but our object just now is food, not sport." on the way back to the cavern they had to pass over a narrow ledge, on one side of which a precipice descended towards the valley, while the other side rose upwards like a wall. it was not necessarily a dangerous place. they had passed it often before in safety, none of the party being troubled with giddiness; but at this time robin had unfortunately hung his bundle of ducks on the side which had to brush past the rocky wall. as he passed, the bunch struck a projection and threw him off his balance. in the effort to recover himself he dislodged a piece of rock under his left foot, and, without even a cry, went headlong over the precipice! poor letta stood rooted to the spot, too horrified to scream. she saw her friend, on whom all her hopes were built, go crashing through the foliage immediately below the precipice edge, and disappear. it was the first terrible shock she had ever received. with a convulsive shudder she ran by a dangerously steep route towards the foot of the precipice. but robin had not yet met his doom, although he had descended full sixty feet. his fall was broken by several leafy trees, through which he went like an avalanche; and a thick solid bush receiving him at the foot, checked his descent entirely, and slid him quietly off its boughs on to the grass, where he lay, stunned, indeed, but otherwise uninjured. poor letta of course was horrified, on reaching the spot, to find that robin could not speak, and was to all appearance dead. in an agony of terror she shrieked, and shook him and called him by name--to awaken him, as she afterwards said; but robin's sleep was too deep at that moment to be dispelled by such measures. letta therefore sprang up and ran as fast as she could to the cavern to tell the terrible news and fetch assistance. robin, however, was not left entirely alone in his extremity. it so chanced that a remarkably small monkey was seated among the boughs of a neighbouring tree, eating a morsel of fruit, when letta's first scream sounded through the grove. cocking up one ear, it arrested its little hand on the way to its lesser mouth, and listened. its little black face was corrugated with the wrinkles of care--it might be of fun, we cannot tell. the only large features of the creature were its eyes, and these seemed to blaze, while the brows rose high, as if in surprise. on hearing the second scream the small monkey laid hold of a bough with its tail, swung itself off, and caught another with its feet, sprang twenty feet, more or less, to the ground, which it reached on its hands, tumbled a somersault inadvertently, and went skipping over the ground at a great rate in the direction of the cries. when it reached the spot, however, letta had fled, but robin still lay motionless on his back. it was evident that the small monkey looked on the prostrate youth with alarm and suspicion, yet with an intense curiosity that no sense of danger could restrain. it walked slowly and inquiringly round him several times, each time drawing closer, while its crouched back and trailing tail betokened abject humility. then it ventured to put out a small black hand and touch him, drawing it back again as if it had got an electric shock. then it ventured to touch him again, with less alarm. after that it went close up, and gazed in his face. familiarity, says the proverb, breeds contempt. the truth of proverbs can be verified by monkeys as well as men. seeing that nothing came of its advances, that small monkey finally leaped on robin's chest, sat down thereon, and stared into his open mouth. still the youth moved not, whereupon the monkey advanced a little and laid its paw upon his nose! either the touch was more effective than letta's shaking, or time was bringing robin round, for he felt his nose tickled, and gave way to a tremendous sneeze. it blew the monkey clean off its legs, and sent it shrieking into a neighbouring tree. as robin still lay quiet, the monkey soon recovered, and returned to its former position, where, regardless of consequences, it again laid hold of the nose. this time consciousness returned. robin opened his eyes with a stare of dreamy astonishment. the monkey replied with a stare of indignant surprise. robin's eyebrows rose still higher. so did those of the monkey as it leaped back a foot, and formed its mouth into a little o of remonstrance. robin's mouth expanded; he burst into an uncontrollable fit of laughter, and the monkey was again on the eve of flight, when voices were heard approaching, and, next instant, letta came running forward, followed at some distance by sam and the others. "oh! my dear, sweet, exquisite darling!" exclaimed letta. it did much for the poor youth's recovery, the hearing himself addressed in such endearing terms, but he experienced a relapse when the monkey, responding to the endearments, ran with obvious joy into the child's bosom, and submitted to a warm embrace. "oh, you darling!" repeated letta; "where have you been? why did you go away? i thought you were dead. naughty thing!" recollecting robin with a shock of self-reproach, she dropped the monkey and ran to him. "it is an old friend, i see," he said with a languid smile, as she came up. "yes, yes; an old pet. i had lost him for a long time. but you're not killed? oh! i'm _so_ glad." "killed!" repeated sam, who was down on his knees carefully examining the patient; "i should think not. he's not even bruised--only stunned a little. where did you fall from, robin--the tree top?" "no; from the edge of the precipice." "what! from the ledge sixty or seventy feet up there? impossible! you would certainly have been killed if you had fallen from that." "so i certainly should," returned robin, "if god had not in his mercy grown trees and shrubs there, expressly, among other purposes, to save me." in this reply robin's mind was running on previous conversations which he had had with his friend on predestination. the idea of shrubs and trees having been expressly grown on an island of the southern seas to save an english boy, seemed doubtful to sam. he did not, however, express his doubts at the time, but reserved the subject for a future "theological discussion." meanwhile, slagg, stumps, and johnson, having spread some palm branches on a couple of stout poles, laid our hero thereon, and bore him in safety to the pirates' cave, where, for several days, he lay on one of the luxurious couches, tenderly nursed by letta and the old woman, who, although she still pathetically maintained that the "roberts an pyrits wasn't all so bad as each oder," was quite willing to admit that her present visitors were preferable, and that, upon the whole, she was rather fond of them. chapter twenty. various subjects treated of, and a great fight detailed. it was the habit of robin and his friends at this time, the weather being extremely fine and cool, to sit at the mouth of their cavern of an evening, chatting about the events of the day, or the prospects of the future, or the experiences of the past, while old meerta busied herself preparing supper over a fire kindled on the ground. no subject was avoided on these occasions, because the friends were harmoniously minded, in addition to which the sweet influences of mingled star-light and fire-light, soft air, and lovely prospect of land and sea--to say nothing of the prospect of supper--all tended to induce a peaceful and forbearing spirit. "well, now," said robin, continuing a subject which often engaged their intellectual powers, "it seems to me simple enough." "simple!" exclaimed johnson, with a half-sarcastic laugh, "w'y, now, you an' the doctor 'ave tried to worrit that electricity into my brain for many months, off an' on, and i do believe as i'm more muddled about it to-night than i was at the beginnin'." "p'r'aps it's because you hain't got no brains to work upon," suggested slagg. "p'r'aps it is," humbly admitted the seaman. "but look here, now, doctor," he added, turning to sam with his brow knotted up into an agony of mental endeavour, and the forefinger of one hand thrust into the palm of the other,--"look here. you tells me that electricity ain't a substance at all." "yes, that's so," assented sam with a nod. "wery good. now, then, if it ain't a substance at all, it's nothin'. an' if it's nothin', how can you go an' talk of it as somethin' an' give it a name, an' tell me it works the telegraph, an' does all manner of wonderful things?" "but it does not follow that a thing must be nothing because it isn't a substance. don't you see, man, that an idea is something, yet it is not a substance. thought, which is so potent a factor in this world, is not a substance, yet it cannot be called nothing. it is a condition--it is the result of brain-atoms in action. electricity is sometimes described as an `invisible imponderable fluid,' but that is not quite correct, because a fluid is a substance. it is a better definition to say that electricity is a _manifestation of energy--a result of substance in action_." "there, i'm muddled again!" said johnson, with a look of hopeless incapacity. "small blame to you, johnson," murmured slagg who had done his best to understand, while stumps sat gazing at the speakers with an expression of blank complacency. "look here, johnson," said sam, "you've often seen men shaking a carpet, haven't you?" "in coorse i have." "well, have you not observed the waves of the carpet that roll along it when shaken!" "yes, i have." "what are these waves?" "well, sir, i should say they was the carpet," replied johnson. "no, the waves are not the carpet. when the waves reach the end of the carpet they disappear. if the waves were the carpet, the carpet would disappear. the same waves in a whip, soft and undulating though they be, result in a loud crack, as you know." "muddled again," said johnson. "ditto," said slagg. "why, i'm not muddled a bit!" suddenly exclaimed stumps, with a half-contemptuous laugh. "of coorse you're not," retorted slagg. "brainless things never git into that state. you never heard of a turnip bein' muddled, did you?" stumps became vacant, and sam went on. "well, you see, the waves are not substance. they are a condition--a result of atoms in motion. now, when the atoms of a substance are disturbed by friction, or by chemical action, they get into a state of violent commotion, and try wildly to fly from, or to, each other. this effort to fly about is energy. when the atoms get into a very intense state of commotion they have a tendency to induce explosion, unless a way of escape is found--escape for the energy, not for the atoms. now, when you cause chemical disturbance in an electric battery, the energy thus evolved is called electricity, and we provide a conductor of escape for it in the shape of a copper or other metal wire, which we may carry to any distance we please, and the energy runs along it, as the wave runs along the carpet, as long as you keep up the commotion in the battery among the excited atoms of copper and zinc." "mud--no, not quite. i have got a glimmer o' su'thin'," said johnson. "ditto," said slagg. "supper," said old meerta. "ha! that's the battery for me," cried stumps, jumping up. "not a bad one either," said robin, as they entered the cave; "alternate plates of beef and greens, steeped in some such acid as lemonade, cause a wonderful commotion in the atoms of the human body." "true, robin, and the energy thereby evolved," said sam, "sometimes bursts forth in brilliant sparks of wit--to say nothing of flashes of absurdity." "an' thunderin' stoopidity," added slagg. further converse on the subject was checked at that time by what sam termed the charging of the human batteries. the evening meal went on in silence and very pleasantly for some time, but before its close it was interrupted in an alarming manner by the sudden entrance of letta with wild excitement in her eyes. "oh!" she cried, pointing back to the entrance of the cave, "a ship!-pirate-ship coming!" a bombshell could scarcely have produced greater effect. each individual leaped up and darted out, flushing deep red or turning pale, according to temperament. they were not long in verifying the statement. a ledge of rocks concealed the entrance to the cavern from the sea. over its edge could be seen the harbour in which they had found the vessel whose total destruction has been described; and there, sure enough, they beheld a similar vessel, though considerably smaller, in the act of furling her sails and dropping anchor. there could be no doubt as to her character, for although too distant to admit of her crew being distinguished by star-light, her rig and general appearance betrayed her. "not a moment to be lost, robin," said sam shipton hurriedly, as he led the way back to the tavern, where old meerta and blind bungo, aided by letta, had already cleared away all evidence of the late feast, leaving only three tin cups and three pewter plates on the table, with viands appropriate thereto. "ha! you're a knowing old lady," exclaimed sam, "you understand how to help us, i see." "me tink so!" replied meerta, with an intelligent nod. "on'y us t'ree here. all de pyrits gone away. dem sinners on'y come here for a feed-p'r'aps for leetil poodre. soon go away." "just so," said sam, "meanwhile we will hide, and return after they are gone, or, better still, if you, letta, and bungo will come and hide with us, i'll engage to lay a train of powder from the barrels inside to somewhere outside, and blow the reptiles and the whole mountain into the sea! there's powder enough to do it." "you tink me one divl?" demanded the old woman indignantly. "no, some o' dem pyrits not so bad as each oder. you let 'em alone; me let you alone." this gentle intimation that meerta had their lives in her hand, induced sam to ask modestly what she would have him do. "go," she replied promptly, "take rifles, swords, an' poodre. hide till pyrits go 'way. if de finds you--fight. better fight dan be skin alive!" "unquestionably," said sam, with a mingled laugh and shudder, in which his companions joined--as regards the shudder at least, if not the laugh. acting promptly on the suggestion, sam armed himself and his comrades each with a good breech-loading rifle, as much ammunition as he could conveniently carry, and an english sword. then, descending the mountain on the side opposite to the harbour they disappeared in the dark and tangled underwood of the palm-grove. letta went a short distance with them. "they won't kill meerta or blind bungo," she said, on the way down. "they're too useful, though they often treat them badly. meerta sent me away to hide here the last time the strange bad men came. she thinks i go hide to-night, but i won't; so, good-night." "but surely you don't mean to put yourself in the power of the pirates?" said robin. "no, never fear," returned the child with a laugh. "i know how to see them without they see me." before further remonstrance could be made, the active child had bounded up the pathway and disappeared. not long after sam and his comrades had taken their departure, the pirates came up to the cavern in a body--about forty of them--well armed and ready to fight if need be. they were as rascally a set of cut-throats as one could desire to see--or, rather, not to see--of various nationality, with ugly countenances and powerful frames, which were clothed in more or less fantastic eastern garb. their language, like themselves, was mixed, and, we need scarcely add, unrefined. the little that was interchanged between them and meerta we must, however, translate. "what! alive still!" cried the ruffian, who appeared to be the leader of the band, flinging himself down on a couch with the air of a man who knew the place well, while his men made themselves at home. meerta merely smiled to the salutation; that in to say, she grinned. "where are they?" demanded the pirate-chief, referring of course to those who, the reader is aware, were blown up. "gone away," answered meerta. "far away?" asked the pirate. "yes, _very_ far away." "goin' to be long away?" "ho! yes, _very_ long." "where's the little girl they took from sarawak?" "gone away." "where away?" "don't know." "now, look here, you old hag," said the pirate, drawing a pistol from his belt and levelling it, "tell the truth about that girl, else i'll scatter your brains on the floor. where has she gone to?" "don't know," repeated meerta, with a look of calm indifference, as she took up a tankard and wiped it out with a cloth. the man steadied the pistol and pressed the trigger. "you better wait till she has given us our grub," quietly suggested one of the men. the leader replaced the weapon in the shawl which formed his girdle, and said, "get it ready quick--the best you have, and bring us some wine to begin with." soon after that our friends, while conversing in low tones in the grove, heard the unmistakeable sounds of revelry issue from the cave. "what think you, boys," said sam suddenly, "shall we go round to the harbour, surprise and kill the guard, seize the pirate-ship, up anchor and leave these villains to enjoy themselves as best they may?" "what! and leave letta, not to mention meerta and bungo, behind us? never!" "i forgot them for the moment," said sam. "no, we can't do that." as he spoke the noise of revelry became louder and degenerated into sounds of angry disputation. then several shots were heard, followed by the clashing of steel and loud yells. "surely that was a female voice," said robin, rising and rushing up the steep path that led to the cavern, closely followed by his comrades. they had not gone a hundred yards when they were arrested by hearing a rustling in the bushes and the sound of hasty footsteps. next instant letta was seen running towards them, with glaring eyes and streaming hair. she sprang into robin's arms with a convulsive sob, and hid her white face on his breast. "speak, letta, dear child! are you hurt?" "no, o no; but meerta, darling meerta, she is dead! they have shot her and bungo." she burst again into convulsive sobbing. "dead! but are you sure--quite sure?" said sam. "quite. i saw their brains scattered on the wall.--oh, meerta!--" she ended in a low wail, as though her heart were broken. "now, boys," said johnson, who had hitherto maintained silence, "we must go to work an' try to cut out the pirate-ship. it's a good chance, and it's our only one." "yes, there's nothing to prevent us trying it now," said robin, sadly, "and the sooner the better." "lucky that we made up the parcels last night, warn't it?" said jim slagg as they made hasty arrangements for carrying out their plan. jim referred to parcels of rare and costly jewels which each of them had selected from the pirate store, put into separate bags and hid away in the woods, to be ready in case of any sudden occasion arising--such as had now actually arisen--to quit the island. going to the place where these bags were concealed, they slung them over their shoulders and set off at a steady run, or trot, for the harbour, each taking his turn in carrying letta, for the poor child was not fit to walk, much less to run. stealthy though their movements were, however, they did not altogether escape detection. two bright eyes had been watching letta during all her wanderings that night, and two nimble feet had followed her when she ran affrighted from the pirates' stronghold. the party was overtaken before half the distance to the harbour had been gained, and at length, with a cry of satisfaction. letta's favourite--the small monkey--sprang upon her shoulder. in this position, refusing to move, he was carried to the coast. as had been anticipated, the pirate vessel was found lying in the pool where the former ship had anchored. being considerably smaller, however, it had been drawn close to the rocks, so that a landing had been effected by means of a broad plank or gangway instead of a boat. fortunately for our friends, this plank had not been removed after the pirates had left, probably because they deemed themselves in a place of absolute security. as far as they could see, only one sentinel paced the deck. "i shouldn't wonder if the guard is a very small one," whispered sam to robin, as they crept to the edge of the shrubs which lined the harbour, and surveyed their intended prize. "no doubt they expected to meet only with friends here--or with nobody at all, as it has turned out,--and have left just enough to guard their poor slaves." "we shall soon find out," returned sam. "now, boys," he said, on rejoining the others in the bush, "see that your revolvers are charged and handy, but don't use them if you can avoid it." "a cut over the head with cold steel will be sufficiently effective, for we have no desire to kill. nevertheless, don't be particular. we can't afford to measure our blows with such scoundrels; only if we fire we shall alarm those in the cave, and have less time to get under weigh." "what is to be done with letta while we attack?" asked robin. "i'll wait here till you come for me," said letta, with a sad little smile on her tear-bedewed face; "i'm quite used to see fighting." "good, keep close, and don't move from this spot till we come for you, my little heroine," said sam. "now, boys, follow me in single file-tread like mice--don't hurry. there's nothing like keeping cool." "not much use o' saying that to a feller that's red-hot," growled slagg, as he stood with a flushed face, a revolver in one hand and a cutlass in the other. sam, armed similarly, glided to the extreme verge of the bushes, between which and the water there was a space of about thirty yards. with a quiet cat-like run he crossed this space, rushed up the plank gangway, and leaped upon the deck, with his comrades close at his heels. the sentinel was taken completely by surprise, but drew his sword nevertheless, and sprang at sam with a shout. the latter, although not a professional warrior, had been taught single-stick at school, and was an expert swordsman. he parried the pirate's furious thrust, and gave him what is technically termed cut number 1, which clove his turban to the skull and stretched him on the deck. it was a fortunate cut, for the shout had brought up seven pirates, five from below and two from the fore-part of the vessel, where they had been asleep between two guns. with these his comrades were now engaged in mortal combat--three of them having simultaneously attacked johnson, while two had assailed jim slagg. when sam turned round the stout sailor had cut down one of his foes, but the other two would probably have proved too much for him if sam had not instantly engaged one of them. he was a powerful, active man, so that for nearly a minute they cut and thrust at each other without advantage to either, until sam tried a feint thrust, which he followed up with a tremendous slash at the head. it took effect, and set him free to aid slagg, who was at the moment in deadly peril, for poor slagg was no swordsman, and had hitherto foiled his two antagonists by sheer activity and the fury of his assaults. he was quite collected, however, for, even in the extremity of his danger, he had refrained from using his revolver lest he should thereby give the alarm to the pirates on land. with one stroke sam disposed of one of the scoundrels, and slagg succeeded in cutting down the other. meanwhile our hero, robin, and stumps had attacked the two pirates who chanced to be nearest to them. the former thought of letta and her wretched fate if this assault should fail. the thought filled his little body, with such a gush of what seemed to him like electric fire, that he leaped on his opponent with the fury of a wild cat, and bore him backward, so that he stumbled over the combings of a hatchway and was thrown flat on the deck--_hors de combat_. but stumps was not so fortunate. slow in all his movements, and not too courageous in spirit, he gave way before the villain who assailed him. it was not indeed much to his discredit, for the man was much larger, as well as more active and fierce, than himself. a cut from the pirate's sword quickly laid him low, and his antagonist instantly turned on robin. he was so near at the moment that neither of them could effectively use his weapon. robin therefore dashed the hilt of his sword into the man's face and grappled with him. it was a most unequal struggle, for the pirate was, as we have said, a huge fellow, while robin was small and slight. but there were several things in our hero's favour. he was exceedingly tough and wonderfully strong for his size, besides being active as a kitten and brave as a lion. the way that robin wright wriggled in that big man's embrace, hammered his nose and eyes with the iron hilt of his cutlass, stuck his knees into the pit of his stomach, and assaulted his shins with the toes of boots, besides twisting his left hand into his hair like a vice, was wonderful to behold. it was all letta's doing! the more hopeless the struggle felt, the more hapless did letta's fate appear to robin, and the more furious did the spirit within rise above its disadvantages. in the whirl of the fight the pirate's head chanced for one moment to be in proximity to a large iron block. robin observed it, threw all his soul and body into one supreme effort, and launched his foe and himself against the block. both heads met it at the same moment, and the combatants rolled from each other's grasp. the pirate was rendered insensible, but robin, probably because of being lighter, was only a little stunned. recovering in a moment, he sprang up, glanced round, observed that the pirates were almost, if not quite, overpowered, and leaped over the bulwarks. a few moments later and he had letta in his arms. just then a pistol shot rang in the night air. the last of the pirates who was overpowered chanced to use his fire-arm, though without success. it was fortunate the fight was over, for, now that the alarm had been given, they knew that their chance of escaping was greatly lessened. "cut the cable, slagg. out with a boat-hook, johnson, ready to shove off. i'll fetch letta," cried sam, springing to the side. he was almost run down, as he spoke, by robin with the child in his arms. "ha! robin--well done, my boy. here, letta, you understand the language, tell the slaves below to out oars and pull for their lives. it's their only chance." the poor creatures, who were bound to the thwarts below deck, had been listening with dull surprise to the fighting on deck--not that fighting was by any means unusual in that vessel, but they must have known that they were in harbour, and that the main body of the pirates were on shore. still greater was their surprise when they received the above order in the sweet gentle tones of a child's voice. whether they deemed her an angel or not we cannot tell, but their belief in her right to command was evinced by their shoving the oars out with alacrity. a few seconds sufficed to cut the cable, and the gangway fell into the sea with a loud splash as the vessel moved slowly from the land, while johnson, robin, and slagg thrust with might and main at the boat-hooks. the oars could not be dipped or used until the vessel had been separated a few yards from the land, and it was during the delay caused by this operation that their greatest danger lay, for already the pirates were heard calling to each other among the cliffs. "pull, pull now for life, boys," shouted sam as he seized the helm. "pull, pull now for life, boys," echoed the faithful translator in her silvery tones. the oars dipped and gurgled through the water. there was no question as to the energy of the poor captives, but the vessel was heavy and sluggish at starting. she had barely got a couple of hundred yards from the shore, when the pirates from the cavern came running tumultuously out of the woods. perceiving at once that their vessel had been captured, they rushed into the water and swam off, each man with his sword between his teeth. they were resolute villains, and swam vigorously and fast. sam knew that if such a swarm should gain the side of the vessel, no amount of personal valour could prevent recapture. he therefore encouraged the slaves to redoubled effort. these responded to the silvery echo, but so short had been the distance gained that the issue seemed doubtful. "give 'em a few shots, boys," cried sam, drawing his own revolver and firing back over the stern. the others followed his example and discharged all their revolvers, but without apparent effect, for the pirates still came on. one of the sails had fortunately been left unfurled. at this moment a light puff of air from the land bulged it out, and sensibly increased their speed. "hurrah!" shouted johnson, "lend a hand, boys, to haul taut." the sail was trimmed, and in a few minutes the vessel glided quickly away from her pursuers. a loud british cheer announced the fact alike to pirates and slaves, so that the latter were heartened to greater exertion, while the former were discouraged. in a few minutes they gave up the chase with a yell of rage, and turned to swim for the shore. about a hundred yards from the mouth of the harbour there lay a small islet--a mere rock. here sam resolved to leave the pirate guard, none of whom had been quite killed--indeed two of them had tried unsuccessfully to rise during the fight. "you see," said sam, as he steered for the rock, "we don't want to have either the doctoring or the killing of such scoundrels. they will be much better with their friends, who will be sure to swim off for them-perhaps use our raft for the purpose, which they will likely find, sooner or later." they soon ranged up alongside of the island, and in a few minutes the bodies of the pirates were landed and laid there side by side. while they were being laid down, the man who had fought with robin made a sudden and furious grasp at johnson's throat with one hand, and at his knife with the other, but the seaman was too quick for him. he felled him with a blow of his fist. the others, although still alive, were unable to show fight. then, hoisting the mainsail, and directing their course to the northward, our adventurers slipped quietly over the sea, and soon left pirate island far out of sight behind them. chapter twenty one. departure from pirate island and hopeful news at sarawak. the vessel of which robin and his friends had thus become possessed, was one of those numerous native pirate-ships which did, and we believe still do, infest some parts of the malay archipelago--ships which can assume the form and do the work of simple trading-vessels when convenience requires, or can hoist the black flag when circumstances favour. it was not laden with anything valuable at the time of its capture. the slaves who wrought at the oars when wind failed, were wretched creatures who had been captured among the various islands, and many of them were in the last stage of exhaustion, having been worked almost to death by their inhuman captors, though a good many were still robust and fresh. these latter it was resolved to keep still in fetters, as it was just possible that some of them, if freed, might take a fancy to seize the ship and become pirates on their own account. they were treated as well as circumstances would admit of, however, and given to understand that they should be landed and set free as soon as possible. meanwhile, no more work would be required of them than was absolutely necessary. those of them who were ill were freed at once from toil, carefully nursed by letta and doctored by sam. at first robin and his comrades sailed away without any definite purpose in view, but after things had been got into order, a council was held and plans were discussed. it was then that letta mentioned what the pirates in the cavern had said about her having been taken from sarawak. "sarawak!" exclaimed robin, "why, that's the place that has been owned and governed for many years by an englishman named brooke--sir james brooke, if i remember rightly, and they call him rajah brooke. perhaps your mother lives there, letta." "where is sarawak?" asked stumps, whose injuries in the recent fight were not so severe as had at first been supposed. "it's in the island of borneo," replied sam; "you're right, robin--" "no, he's robin wright," interrupted slagg. "be quiet, jim. i think it is highly probable that your parents are there, letta, and as we have no particular reason for going anywhere else, and can't hope to make for england in a tub like this, we will just lay her head for sarawak." this was accordingly done, their new course being nor'-east and by east. it would extend our tale to undue proportions were we to give in detail all the adventures they experienced, dangers they encountered, and hairbreadth escapes they made, between that point on the wide southern ocean and the malay archipelago. the reader must be content to skip over the voyage, and to know that they ultimately arrived at the port of sarawak, where they were kindly treated by a deputy, the rajah himself being absent at the time. during the voyage, the subject of finding letta's parents became one of engrossing and increasing interest,--so much so, indeed, that even electricity and telegraph-cables sank into secondary importance. they planned, over and over again, the way in which they would set about making inquiries, and the various methods which they would adopt in pursuit of their end. they even took to guessing who letta's parents would turn out to be, and sam went so far as to invent and relate romantic stories, in which the father and mother of letta played a conspicuous part. he called them colonel and mrs montmorenci for convenience, which slagg reduced to colonel and mrs monty, "for short." in all this letta took great delight, chiefly because it held the conversation on that source of undying interest, "mamma," and partly because she entered into the fun and enjoyed the romance of the thing, while, poor child, her hopeful spirit never for a moment doubted that in some form or other the romance would become a reality through robin, on whom she had bestowed her highest affections--next, of course, to mamma. on landing at sarawak, sam shipton went direct to the government offices to report the capture of the pirate vessel and to make inquiries as to letta's parents, leaving robin and the others to watch the vessel. "isn't it strange," said john johnson to robin, as they leaned over the side and looked down into the clear water, "that a englishman should become a rajah, and get possession o' this here country?" "i can give you only a slight reply to that question," replied robin, "but sam will enlighten you more than i can; he seems to be acquainted with the rajah's strange career. all i know is, that he is said to govern the country well." "coorious," said johnson; "_i_ shouldn't like to settle down in sitch a nest o' pirates. hows'ever, every man to his taste, as jack said when the shark swallowed his sou'-wester. d'ee think it's likely, sir, that we'll find out who the parents o' poor miss letta is?" robin shook his head. "i'm not very hopeful. we have so little information to go upon--just one word,--sarawak! nevertheless, i don't despair, and i'll certainly not be beat without trying hard. but here comes sam; he looks pleased. i think--i hope, he has good news for us." "i've got something, but not much," replied sam to the eager inquiries with which he was assailed. "the gentleman whom i saw knew nothing about a little girl having been kidnapped from this region within the last two or three years, but an old clerk or secretary, who heard us talking about it, came up scratching his nose with the feather of his quill, and humbly said that he had heard something about a girl disappearing at a fire somewhere, though he couldn't recollect the name of the place, as he was ill at the time, besides being new to the country, but he thought there was a malay, a drunken old fellow, living some five miles inland, who used to talk about something of the sort, and who had, he fancied, been in the service of the people whose house had been burned. but, altogether, he was very hazy on the subject." "then we must go and ferret out this old man instantly," said robin, buttoning up his coat, as if about to commence the journey at once. "too late to-night, robin," said sam; "restrain your impatience, my boy. you forget that it sometimes gets dark in these latitudes, and that there are no street lamps on the country roads." "true, true, sam. and what said they about our capture?" "that we must leave it in their hands at present; that they did not know exactly what the rajah might have to say about it, but that he would be there himself in a few weeks, and decide the matter." "'pon my word, that's cool," said slagg, who came up at the moment; "an' suppose we wants to continue our voyage to england, or indy, or chiny?" "if we do we must continue it by swimming," returned sam; "but it matters little, for there is a steamer expected to touch here in a few days on her way to india, so we can take passage in her, having plenty of funds--thanks to the pirates!" "it's all very well for you to boast of bein' rich," growled stumps, "but _i_ won't be able to afford it." "oh! yes you will," returned robin with a laugh. "the jews will advance you enough on your jewellery to pay your passage." "sarves you right for bein' so greedy," said slagg. the greed which slagg referred to had been displayed by stumps at the time the parcels of coin and precious stones were made up in the cavern for sudden emergency, as before mentioned. on that occasion each man had made up his own parcel, selecting such gems, trinkets, and coin from the pirate horde as suited his fancy. unfortunately, the sight of so much wealth had roused in the heart of stumps feelings of avarice, which heretofore had lain dormant, and he stuffed many glittering and superb pieces of jewellery into his bag in a secretive manner, as if half ashamed of his new sensations, and half afraid that his right to them might be disputed. afterwards, on the voyage to borneo, when the bags were emptied and their costly contents examined, it was discovered that many of stumps's most glittering gems were mere paste--almost worthless--although some of them, of course, were valuable. stumps was much laughed at, and in a private confabulation of his comrades, it was agreed that they would punish him by contrasting their own riches with his glittering trash, but that at last they would give him a share which would make all the bags equal. this deceptive treatment, however, wrought more severely on stumps than they had expected, and roused not only jealous but revengeful feelings in his breast. next morning, sam and robin set off with letta to search for the old malay, leaving their comrades in charge of the vessel. there is something inexpressibly delightful to the feelings in passing through the glades and thickets of tropical forests and plantations after a long sea voyage. the nostrils seem to have been specially prepared, by long abstinence from sweet smells, to appreciate the scents and odours of aromatic plants and flowers. the soft shade of foliage, the refreshing green, and the gay colours everywhere, fill the eye with pleasure, not less exquisite than that which fills the ears from the warblings and chatterings of birds, the gentle tones of domestic animals, and the tinkling of rills. the mere solidity of the land, under foot, forms an element of pleasure after the tossings of the restless sea, and all the sweet influences put together tend to rouse in the heart a shout of joy and deep gratitude for a world so beautiful, and for powers so sensitively capable of enjoying it. especially powerful were the surrounding influences on our three friends as they proceeded, mile after mile, into the country, and little wonder, for eyes, and nostrils, and ears, which had of late drunk only of the blue heavens and salt sea and the music of the wind, naturally gloated over a land which produces sandal-wood, cinnamon, turmeric, ginger, benzoin, camphor, nutmeg, and a host of other gums and spices; a land whose shades are created by cocoa-nut palms, ebony, banana, bread-fruit, gutta-percha, upas, sesamum, and a vast variety of other trees and shrubs, the branches of which are laden with fruits, and flowers, and paroquets, and monkeys. little letta's heart was full to overflowing, so much so that she could scarcely speak while walking along holding robin's hand. but there was more than mere emotion in her bosom--memory was strangely busy in her brain, puzzling her with dreamy recognitions both as to sights and sounds. "it's _so_ like home!" she murmured once, looking eagerly round. "is it?" said robin with intense interest. "look hard at it, little one; do you recognise any object that used to be in your old home?" the child shook her head sadly. "no, not exactly--everything is _so_ like, and--and yet not like, somehow." they came just then upon a clearing among sugar-cane, in the midst of which stood a half-ruined hut, quite open in front and thatched with broad leaves. on a bench near the entrance was seated an old grey-haired malay man with a bottle beside him. nearer to the visitors a young girl was digging in the ground. "that's the old malay, for certain," said sam; "see, the old rascal has gone pretty deep already into the bottle. ask the girl, letta, what his name is." sam did not at first observe that the child was trembling very much and gazing eagerly at the old man. he had to repeat the question twice before she understood him, and then she asked the girl, without taking her eyes off the old man. "who is he?" responded the girl in the malay tongue, "why, that's old georgie--drunken georgie." she had scarcely uttered the words when letta uttered a wild cry, ran to the old man, leaped into his arms, and hugged him violently. the man was not only surprised but agitated. he loosened the child's hold so as to be able to look at her face. "oh, georgie, georgie!" she cried almost hysterically, "don't you know me--don't you know letta?" georgie replied by uttering a great shout of mingled astonishment and joy, as he clasped the child in his arms. then, setting her down and holding her at arm's-length, he cried in remarkably broken english-"know you! w'at? vous hold nuss--hold georgie--not know miss letty. ho! miss letty! my hold 'art's a-busted a'most! but you's come back. t'ank do lor'! look 'ere, miss letty." (he started up, put the child down, and, with sudden energy seized the bottle of ruin by the neck.) "look ere, yous oftin say to me afore you hoed away, `geo'gie, do, _do_ give up d'inkin','--you 'members?" "no, i don't remember," said letta, smiling through her tears. "ho! yes, but you said it--bery often, an' me was used to say, `yes, miss letty'--de hold hippercrit!--but i didn't gib 'im up. i d'ink away wuss dan ebber. but now--but now--but now," (he danced round, each time whirling the bottle above his head), "me d'ink no more--nebber-nebber--_nebber_ more." with a mighty swing the old man sent the rum-bottle, like a rocket, up among the branches of an ebony-tree, where it was shattered to atoms, and threw an eaves-dropping monkey almost into fits by raining rum and broken glass upon its inquisitive head. when the excitement of the meeting had somewhat subsided, letta suddenly said, "but where is mamma? oh! take me to mamma, georgie." the old man's joy instantly vanished, and letta stood pale and trembling before him, pressing her little hands to her breast, and not daring, apparently, to ask another question. "not dead?" she said at length in a low whisper. "no--no--miss letty," replied the man hastily, "ho! no, not dead, but goed away; nigh broked her heart when she losted you; git berry sick; t'ought she was go for die, but she no die. she jis turn de corner and come round, an' when she git bedder she hoed away." "where did she go to?" asked robin, anxiously. "to bumby," said old george. "to where?" "bumby." "i suppose you mean bombay?" said sam. "yes, yes--an' me _say_ bumby." "is she alive and well?" asked robin. "don' know," replied old george, shaking his head; "she no write to hold geo'gie. nigh two years since she goed away." when the excitement of this meeting began to subside, sam shipton took the old malay aside, and, after prolonged conversation, learned from him the story, of which the following is the substance. mrs langley was the widow of a gentleman who had died in the service of rajah brooke. several years before--he could not say exactly how many-the widow had retired with her only child, letta, to a little bungalow on a somewhat out-of-the-way part of the coast which mr langley used to be fond of going to, and called his "shooting-box." this had been attacked one night by labuan pirates, who, after taking all that was valuable, set fire to the house. mrs langley had escaped by a back door into the woods with her old man-servant, george. she had rushed at the first alarm to letta's bed, but the child was not there. letta had been awake, had heard the advance of the pirate crew, and had gone into a front room to see who was coming. supposing that old george must have taken charge of the child, and hearing him calling to her to come away quickly, the widow ran out at the back door as the pirates entered by the front. too late she found that george had not the child, and she would have returned to the house, regardless of consequences, if george had not forcibly restrained her. when george returned at daybreak, he found the house a smouldering ruin, the pirates gone, and letta nowhere to be found. the shock threw mrs langley into a violent fever. she even lost her reason for a time, and when at last she was restored to some degree of health, she went away to bombay without saying to any one what were her intentions. she could never entirely forgive old george for having prevented her returning to the house to share the fate of her child, and left sarawak without bidding him farewell, though, as old george himself pathetically remarked, "me couldn't 'elp it, you knows. de scoundrils kill missis if she goed back, an' dat doos no good to miss letty." this was all the information that could be obtained about mrs langley, and on the strength of it sam and robin resolved to proceed to bombay by the first opportunity. but their patience was severely tried, for many months elapsed ere they obtained berths in a vessel bound direct to bombay. of course jim slagg determined to go with them, and so did stumps, though a slight feeling of coldness had begun to manifest itself in that worthy's manner ever since the episode of the division of jewels. john johnson, however, made up his mind to take service with the rajah, and help to exterminate the nests of pirates with which those seas were infested. "depend upon it, sir," said johnson to robin at parting, "that you'll turn out somethin' or other afore long. as i said to our stooard on the night that you was born, `stooard,' says i, `take my word for it, that there babby what has just been launched ain't agoin' under hatches without makin' his mark somehow an' somewheres,' an' you've begun to make it, sir, a'ready, an' you'll go on to make it, as sure as my name's john johnson." "i'm gratified by your good opinion," replied robin, with a laugh. "all i can say is, that whatever mark i make, i hope may be a good one." poor robin had little ambition at that time to make any kind of mark for himself on the world. his one desire--which had grown into a sort of passion--was to find letta's mother. nearly all his thoughts were concentrated on that point, and so great was his personal influence on his comrades, that sam and slagg had become almost as enthusiastic about it as himself, though stumps remained comparatively indifferent. chapter twenty two. bombay--where stumps comes to grief. once again we must beg the patient reader to skip with us over time and space, until we find ourselves in the great city of bombay. it is a great day for bombay. natives and europeans alike are unusually excited. something of an unwonted nature is evidently astir. down at the sea the cause of the excitement is explained, for the great eastern steam-ship has just arrived, laden with the telegraph cable which is to connect england with her possessions in the east. the streets and quays are crowded with the men of many nations and various creeds, to say nothing of varied costume. turbans and chimney-pots salaam to each other, and fezzes nod to straw hats and wide-awakes. every one is more than usually sympathetic, for all have their minds, eyes, and hopes, more or less, centred on the "big ship," with her unique and precious cargo. but it is with neither the great eastern nor the people--not even with the cable--that we have to do just now. removing our eyes from such, we fix them and our attention on a very small steamer which lies alongside one of the wharves, and shows evidence of having been severely handled by winds and waves. at the time we direct attention to her, a few passengers were landing from this vessel, and among them were our friends, sam shipton, robin wright, jim slagg, john shanks, _alias_ stumps, and letta langley. most of the passengers had luggage of some sort, but our friends possessed only a small bag each, slung over their shoulders. a letter from the authorities of sarawak certified that they were honest men. "now, robin," said sam, as they pushed through the crowds, "there seems to me something auspicious in our arriving about the same time with the great eastern, and i hope something may come of it, but our first business is to make inquiries for mrs langley. we will therefore go and find the hotel to which we have been recommended, and make that our head-quarters while we are engaged in our search." "can i lend you a hand, mr shipton?" asked slagg, who had become, as it were, irresistibly more respectful to robin and sam since coming among civilised people. "no, slagg; our mission is too delicate to admit of numbers. if we require your services we'll let you know." "ah! i see--too many cooks apt to spoil the broth. well, my mission will be to loaf about and see bombay. you and i will pull together, stumps." "no," said stumps, to the surprise of his companions, "i've got a private mission of my own--at least for this evening." "well, please yourself, stumpy," said slagg with a good-humoured laugh, "you never was the best o' company, so i won't break my heart." at the hotel to which they had been recommended two rooms were engaged,--a small single room for letta, and one with two beds and a sofa for themselves. having breakfasted and commended letta to the landlady's care, sam and robin sallied forth together, while slagg and stumps went their separate ways, having appointed to meet again in the evening for supper. we will follow the fortunes of mr john shanks. that rather vacant and somewhat degenerate youth, having his precious bag slung from his shoulders, and his left arm round it for further security, sauntered forth, and began to view the town. his viewing it consisted chiefly in looking long and steadily at the shop windows of the principal streets. there was a slight touch of cunning, however, in his expression, for he had rid himself, cleverly as he imagined, of his comrades, and meant to dispose of some of the contents of his bag to the best advantage, without letting them know the result. in the prosecution of his deep-laid plans, stumps attracted the attention of a gentleman with exceedingly black eyes and hair, a hook nose, and rather seedy garments. this gentleman followed stumps with great care for a considerable time, watched him attentively, seemed to make up his mind about him, and finally ran violently against him. "oh! i do beg your pardon, sir. i am so sorry," he said in a slightly foreign accent, with an expression of earnest distress on his not over-clean countenance, "so very, very, sorry; it was a piece of orange peel. i almost fell; but for your kind assistance i should have been down and, perhaps, broke my legs. thank you, sir; i do hope i have not hurt you against the wall. allow me to dust your sleeve." "oh! you've done _me_ no damage, old gen'l'man," said stumps, rather flattered by the man's attention and urbanity. "i'm all right; i ain't so easy hurt. you needn't take on so." "but i cannot help take on so," returned the seedy man, with an irresistibly bland smile, "it is so good of you to make light of it, yet i might almost say you saved my life, for a fall to an elderly man is always very dangerous. will you not allow me to give my benefactor a drink? see, here is a shop." stumps chanced to be very hot and thirsty at the time; indeed he had been meditating some such indulgence, and fell into the trap at once. accepting the offer with a "well, i don't mind if i do," he entered the drinking saloon and sat down, while his new friend called for brandy and water. "you have come from a long voyage, i see," said the seedy man, pulling out a small case and offering stumps a cigar. "how d'ee know that?" asked stumps bluntly. "because i see it in your bronzed face, and, excuse me, somewhat threadbare garments." "oh! as to that, old man, i've got tin enough to buy a noo rig out, but i'm in no hurry." he glanced unintentionally at his bag as he spoke, and the seedy man glanced at it too--intentionally. of course stumps's glance let the cat out of the bag! "come," said the stranger, when the brandy was put before them, "drink-drink to--to the girls we left behind us." "i left no girl behind _me_," said stumps. "well then," cried the seedy man, with irresistible good humour, "let us drink success to absent friends and confusion to our foes." this seemed to meet the youth's views, for, without a word of comment, he drained his glass nearly to the bottom. "ha! that's good. nothin' like brandy and water on a hot day." "except brandy and water on a cold day, my dear," returned the jew--for such he was; "there is not much to choose between them. had you not better take off your bag? it incommodes you in so narrow a seat. let me help--no?" "you let alone my hag," growled stumps angrily, with a sudden clutch at it. "waiter! bring a light. my cigar is out," said the jew, affecting not to observe stumps's tone or manner. "it is strange," he went on, "how, sometimes, you find a bad cigar--a _very_ bad cigar--in the midst of good ones. yours is going well, i think." "well enough," answered stumps, taking another pull at the brandy and water. the seedy man now launched out into a pleasant light discourse about bombay and its ways, which highly interested his poor victim. he made no further allusion to the bag, stumps's behaviour having betrayed all he required to know, namely, that its contents were valuable. soon the brandy began to take effect on stumps, and, as he was unaccustomed to such potent drink besides being unused to self-restraint, he would speedily have made himself a fit subject for the care of the police, which would not have suited his new friend at all. when, therefore, stumps put out his hand to grasp his tumbler for another draught, his anxious friend inadvertently knocked it over, and then begged his pardon profusely. before stumps could decide whether to call for another glass at the risk of having to pay for it himself, the jew pointed to a tall, sallow-faced man who sat in a corner smoking and reading a newspaper. "do you see him!" he asked, in a low mysterious whisper. "yes; who is he? what about him?" asked the youth in a similar whisper. "he's an opium-smoker." "is he?" said stumps with a vacant stare. "what's that?" upon this text the seedy man delivered a discourse on the pleasures of opium-smoking, which quite roused the interest and curiosity of his hearer. "but is it so very nice to smoke opium?" he asked, after listening for some time. "nice, my dear? i should think it is--very nice, but very wrong--oh! very wrong. perhaps we ought not even to speak about it." "nonsense!" said the now half-tipsy lad with an air of determination. "i should like to try it. come, you know where i could have a pipe. let's go." "not for worlds," said the man with a look of remonstrance. "oh, yes you will," returned stumps, rising. "well, you are a wilful man, and if you will i suppose you must," said the jew. he rose with apparent reluctance, paid the reckoning, and led his miserable victim into one of the numerous dens of iniquity which exist in the lowest parts of that city. there he furnished the lad with a pipe of opium, and, while he was in the state of semi-stupor resulting therefrom, removed his bag of treasure, which he found, to his delight, contained a far richer prize than he had anticipated, despite the quantity of trash with which it was partly filled. having secured this, he waited until stumps had partially recovered, and then led him into one of the most crowded thoroughfares. "now, my boy," he said affectionately, "i think you are much better. you can walk alone." "i should think i could," he replied, indignantly shaking off the man's grasp. "wh-what d'ee take me for?" he drew his hand across his eyes, as if to clear away the cloud that still oppressed him, and stared sternly before him, then he stared, less sternly, on either side, then he wheeled round and stared anxiously behind him. then clapping his left hand quickly to his side, he became conscious that his bag was gone, and that his late friend had taken an abrupt departure without bidding him farewell. chapter twenty three. stumps in despair--and bombay in raptures. when mr john shanks realised the full extent of his loss, his first impulse was to seize hold of the nearest passer-by and strangle him; his next, to dash down a narrow street close beside him in pursuit of some one; his next, to howl "stop thief!" and "murder!" and his next, to stare into a shop window in blank dismay, and meditate. of these various impulses, he gave way only to the last. his meditations, however, were confused and unsatisfactory. turning from them abruptly, he hurried along the street at a furious walk, muttering, "i'll go an' tell slagg." then, pausing abruptly, "no, i won't, i'll go an' inform the pleece." under this new impulse he hurried forward again, jostling people as he went, and receiving a good deal of rough-handling in return. presently he came to a dead halt, and with knitted brows and set teeth, hissed, "i'll go and drown myself." full of this intention he broke into a run, but, not being acquainted with the place, found it necessary to ask his way to the port. this somewhat sobered him, but did not quite change his mind, so that when he eventually reached the neighbourhood of the shipping, he was still going at a quick excited walk. he was stopped by a big and obviously eccentric sea-captain, or mate, who asked him if he happened to know of any active stout young fellow who wanted to ship in a tight little craft about to sail for old england. "no, i don't," said stumps, angrily. "come now, think again," said the skipper, in no degree abashed, and putting on a nautical grin, which was meant for a winning smile. "i'm rather short-handed; give good wages; have an amiable temper, a good craft, and a splendid cook. you're just the active spirited fellow that i want. you'll ship now, eh?" "no, i won't," said stumps, sulkily, endeavouring to push past. "well, well, no offence. keep an easy mind, and if you should chance to change it, just come and see me, captain bounce, of the swordfish. there she lies, in all her beauty, quite a picture. good-day." the eccentric skipper passed on, but stumps did not move. he stood there with his eyes riveted on the pavement, and his lips tightly compressed. evidently the drowning plan had been abandoned for something else--something that caused him to frown, then to smile, then to grow slightly pale, and then to laugh somewhat theatrically. while in this mood he was suddenly pushed to one side by some one who said-"the track's made for walkin' on, not standin', young--hallo!" it was slagg who had thus roughly encountered his mate. "why, stumps, what's the matter with yon?" "nothing." "where 'ave you bin to?" "nowhere." "who's bin a-frightenin' of you!" "nobody." "nothin', nowhere, an' nobody," repeated his friend; "that's what i calls a coorious combination for a man who's as white as a sheet one moment, and as red as a turkey-cock the next." "well, slagg," said stumps, recovering himself a little, "the fact is, i've been taken in and robbed." hereupon he related all the circumstances of his late adventure to his astonished and disgusted comrade, who asserted roundly that he was a big booby, quite unfit to take care of himself. "hows'ever, we must do the best we can for you," he continued, "so come along to the police-office." information of the robbery was given, and inquiries instituted without delay, but without avail. indeed the chief officer held out little hope of ultimate success; nevertheless, slagg endeavoured to buoy up his friend with assurances that they must surely get hold of the thief in the long-run. "and if we don't," he said to robin and sam, during a private conversation on the subject that same night, "we must just give him each a portion of what we have, for the poor stoopid has shared our trials, and ought to share our luck." while stumps was being thus fleeced in the lower part of the city, robin and sam had gone to make inquiries about mrs langley, and at the government house they discovered a clerk who had formerly been at sarawak, and had heard of the fire, the abduction of the little girl, and of mrs langley having afterwards gone to bombay; but he also told them, to their great regret, that she had left for england six months before their arrival, and he did not know her address, or even the part of england to which she had gone. "but," continued the clerk, who was a very friendly fellow, "i'll make inquiries, and let you know the result, if you leave me your address. meanwhile you can amuse yourself by paying a visit to that wonderful ship, the great eastern, which has come to lay a submarine telegraph cable between this and aden. of course you have heard of her arrival-perhaps seen her." "o yes," replied robin. "we intend to visit her at once. she is an old acquaintance of mine, as i was in her when she laid the atlantic cable in 1865. does captain anderson still command her?" "no," answered the clerk, who seemed much interested in what robin said. "she is now commanded by captain halpin." that evening robin tried to console poor letta in her disappointment at not finding her mother, and sam sought to comfort stumps for the loss of his treasure. neither comforter was very successful. letta wept in spite of robin, and stumps absolutely refused to be comforted! next day, however, the tears were dried, and letta became cheery again in the prospect of a visit to the great eastern. but stumps was no better. indeed he seemed worse, and flatly refused to accompany them on their trip, although all the world of bombay was expected to go. "stumps, stumps, down in the dumps! down in the dumps so low--o!" sang jim slagg as he waved his hand in farewell on quitting the hotel. "good-bye, my boy, and get your spirits up before we return, if you can." "i'll try," replied stumps with a grim smile. the event which stirred the city of bombay to its centre at this time was indeed a memorable one. the connecting of india with england direct by a deep-sea cable was a matter of the greatest importance, because the land telegraph which existed at the time was wretchedly worked, passing, as it did, through several countries, which involved translation and re-translation, besides subjecting messages to needless delay on the part of unbusiness-like peoples. in addition to the brighter prospects which the proposed cable was opening up, the presence of the largest ship that had ever yet been constructed was a point of overwhelming attraction, and so great were the crowds that went on board to see the marine wonder, that it was found somewhat difficult to carry on the necessary work of coaling and making preparations for the voyage. "robin," said sam, an they walked along with letta between them, "i've just discovered that the agent of the telegraph construction and maintenance company is an old friend of mine. he has been busy erecting a cable landing-house on the shores of back bay, so we'll go there first and get him to accompany us to the big ship." "good," said robin, "if it is not too far for letta to walk." the landing-house, which they soon reached, stood near to the "green" where the bombay and baroda railway tumbled out its stream of cotton until the region became a very sea of bales. it was a little edifice with a thatched roof and venetian blinds, commanding a fine view of the whole of back bay, with malabar point to the right and the governor's house imbedded in trees. long lines of surf marked the position of ugly rocks which were visible at low water, but among these there was a pathway of soft sand marked off by stakes, along which the shore-end of the cable was to lie. for the reception of the extreme end of the cable there was provided, in the cable-house, a testing table of solid masonry, with a wooden top on which the testing instruments were to stand; the great delicacy of these instruments rendering a fixed table indispensable. when our friends reached the cable-house, native labourers, in picturesque oriental costume, were busy thatching its roof or painting it blue, while some were screwing its parts together; for the house, with a view to future telegraphic requirements, was built so as to come to pieces for shipment to still more distant quarters of the globe. sam's friend could not go with him, he said, but he would introduce him to a young acquaintance among the working engineers who was going on with a party in half an hour or so. accordingly, in a short time they were gliding over the bay, and ere long stood on the deck of the big ship. "oh, letta!" said robin, with a glitter of enthusiasm in his eyes, as he gazed round on the well-remembered deck, "it feels like meeting an old friend after a long separation." "how nice!" said letta. this "how nice" of the child was, so to speak, a point of great attraction to our hero. she always accompanied it with a smile so full of sympathy, interest, and urbanity, that it became doubly significant on her lips. letta was precocious. she had grown so rapidly in sympathetic capacity and intelligence, since becoming acquainted with her new friends, that robin had gradually come to speak to her about his thoughts and feelings very much as he used to speak to cousin madge when he was a boy. "yes," he continued, "i had forgotten how big she was, and she seems to me actually to have grown bigger. there never was a ship like her in the world. such huge proportions, such a vast sweep of graceful lines. the chief difference that i observe is the coat of white paint they have given her. she seems to have been whitewashed from stem to stern. it was for the heat, i fancy." "yes, sir, it wor," said a bluff cable-man who chanced to overhear the remark, "an' if you wor in the tanks, you'd 'ave blessed capt'n halpin for wot he done. w'y, sir, that coat o' whitewash made a difference o' no less than eight degrees in the cable-tanks the moment it was putt on. before that we was nigh stooed alive. arter that we've on'y bin baked." "indeed?" said robin, but before he could say more the bluff cable-man had returned to his bakery. "just look here," he continued, turning again to letta; "the great ships around us seem like little ones, by contrast, and the little ones like boats,--don't they?" "yes, and the boats like toys," said letta, "and the people in them like dolls." "true, little one, and yonder comes a toy steamer," said sam, who had been contemplating the paying-out gear in silent admiration, "with some rather curious dolls on it." "oh!" exclaimed letta, with great surprise, "look, robin, look at the horses--just as if we were on shore!" among the many surprising things on board of the big ship, few were more striking for incongruity than the pair of grey carriage-horses, to which letta referred, taking their morning exercise composedly up and down one side of the deck, with a groom at their heads. the steamer referred to by sam was one which contained a large party of hindu and parsee ladies and children who had come off to see the ship. these streamed into her in a bright procession, and were soon scattered about, making the decks and saloons like eastern flower-beds with their many-coloured costumes--of red, pink, white, and yellow silks and embroideries, and bracelets, brooches, nose-rings, anklets, and other gold and silver ornaments. the interest taken by the natives in the great eastern was naturally great, and was unexpectedly illustrated in the following manner. captain halpin, anticipating difficulties in the matter of coaling and otherwise carrying on the work of the expedition, had resolved to specify particular days for sight-seers, and to admit them by ticket, on which a small fee was charged--the sum thus raised to be distributed among the crew at the end of the voyage. in order to meet the convenience of the "upper ten" of english at bombay, the charge at first was two rupees (about 4 shillings), and it was advertised that the ship would afterwards be thrown open at lower rates, but to the surprise of all, from an early hour on the two-rupee day the ship was beset by parsees, hindus, and mohammedans, so that eventually, on all sides--on the decks, the bridge, the paddle-boxes, down in the saloon, outside the cable-tanks, mixed up with the machinery, clustering round the huge red buoys, and at the door of the testing-room--the snowy robes, and strange head-dresses, bright costumes, brighter eyes, brown faces, and turbans far outnumbered the stiff and sombre europeans. these people evidently regarded the great eastern as one of the wonders of the world. "the largest vessel ever seen in bombay," said an enthusiastic parsee, "used to be the bates family, of liverpool, and now there she lies alongside of us looking like a mere jolly-boat." while sam and his friends were thus standing absorbed by the contemplation of the curious sights and sounds around them, one of the engineer staff, who had served on board during the laying of the 1866 atlantic cable, chanced to pass, and, recognising robin as an old friend, grasped and shook his hand warmly. robin was not slow to return the greeting. "frank hedley," he exclaimed, "why, i thought you had gone to california!" "robin wright," replied the young engineer, "i thought you were dead!" "not yet," returned robin; "i'm thankful to report myself alive and well." "but you ought to be dead," persisted frank, "for you've been mourned as such for nigh a couple of years. at least the vessel in which you sailed has never been heard of, and the last time i saw your family, not four months since, they had all gone into mourning for you." "poor mother!" murmured robin, his eyes filling with tears, "but, please god, we shall meet again before long." "come--come down with me to the engine-room and have a talk about it," said frank, "and let your friends come too." just as he spoke, one of the little brown-faced mohammedan boys fixed his glittering eyes on an opening in the bulwarks of the ship, through which the water could be seen glancing brightly. that innate spirit of curiosity peculiar to small boys all the world over, induced him to creep partly through the opening and glance down at the sparkling fluid. that imperfect notion of balance, not infrequent in small boys, caused him to tip over and cleave the water with his head. his mohammedan relatives greeted the incident with shrieks of alarm. robin, who had seen him tip over, being a good swimmer, and prompt to act, went through the same hole like a fish-torpedo, and caught the brown boy by the hair, as he rose to the surface with staring eyes, outspread fingers, and a bursting cry. rope-ends, life-buoys, and other things were flung over the side; oars were plunged; boats darted forward; fifty efforts at rescue were made in as many seconds, for there was wealth of aid at hand, and in a wonderfully brief space of time the brown boy was restored to his grateful friends, while robin, enveloped in a suit of dry clothes much too large for him, was seated with his friend the engineer down among the great cranks, and wheels, and levers, of the regions below. "it's well the sharks weren't on the outlook," said frank hedley, as he brought forward a small bench for letta, sam, and jim slagg. "you won't mind the oily smell, my dear," he said to letta. "o no. i rather like it," replied the accommodating child. "it's said to be fattening," remarked slagg, "even when taken through the nose." "come now, let me hear all about my dear mother and the rest of them, frank," said robin. frank began at once, and, for a considerable time, conversed about the sayings and doings of the wright family, and of the world at large, and about the loss of the cable-ship; but gradually and slowly, yet surely, the minds and converse of the little party came round to the all-absorbing topic, like the needle to the pole. "so, you're actually going to begin to coal to-morrow?" said sam. "yes, and we hope to be ready in a few days to lay the shore-end of the cable," answered the young engineer. "but have they not got land-lines of telegraph which work well enough?" asked robin. "land-lines!" exclaimed frank, with a look of contempt. "yes, they have, and no doubt the lines are all right enough, but the people through whose countries they pass are all wrong. why, the government lines are so frequently out of order just now, that their daily condition is reported on as if they were noble invalids. just listen to this," (he caught up a very much soiled and oiled newspaper)--"`telegraph line reports, kurrachee, 2nd february, 6 p.m.-cable communication perfect to fao; turkish line is interrupted beyond semawali; persian line interrupted beyond shiraz.' and it is constantly like that--the telegraphic disease, though intermittent, is chronic. one can never be sure when the line may be unfit for duty. sometimes from storms, sometimes from the assassination of the operators in wild districts, through which the land wires pass, and sometimes from the destruction of lines out of pure mischief, the telegraph is often beaten by the mail." "there seems, indeed, much need for a cable direct," said sam, "which will make us independent of turks, persians, arabs, and all the rest of them. by the way, how long is your cable?" "the cable now in our tanks is 2375 nautical miles long, but our companion ships, the hibernia, chiltern, and hawk, carry among them 1225 miles more, making a total of 3600 nautical miles, which is equal, as you know, to 4050 statute miles. this is to suffice for the communication between bombay and aden, and for the connecting of the malta and alexandria lines. they are now laying a cable between england, gibraltar, and malta, so that when all is completed there will be one line of direct submarine telegraph unbroken, except at suez." "magnificent!" exclaimed robin, "why, it won't be long before we shall be able to send a message to india and get a reply in the same day." "in the same day!" cried sam, slapping his thigh; "mark my words, as uncle rik used to say, you'll be able to do that, my boy, within the same hour before long." "come, sam, don't indulge in prophecy. it does not become you," said robin. "by the way, frank, what about uncle rik? you have scarcely mentioned him." "oh! he's the same hearty old self-opinionated fellow as ever. poor fellow, he was terribly cut up about your supposed death. i really believe that he finds it hard even to smile now, much less to laugh. as for madge, she won't believe that you are lost--at least she won't admit it, though it is easy to see that anxiety has told upon her." "i wonder how my poor old mother has took it," said slagg, pathetically. "but she's tough, an' can't be got to believe things easy. she'll hold out till i turn up, i dessay, and when i present myself she'll say, `i know'd it!'" "but to return to the cable," said sam, with an apologetic smile. "is there any great difference between it and the old ones?" "not very much. we have found, however, that a little marine wretch called the teredo attacks hemp so greedily that we've had to invent a new compound wherewith to coat it, namely, ground flint or silica, pitch, and tar, which gives the teredo the toothache, i suppose, for it turns him off effectually. we have also got an intermediate piece of cable to affix between the heavy shore-end and the light deep-sea portion. there are, of course, several improvements in the details of construction, but essentially it is the same as the cables you have already seen, with its seven copper wires covered with gutta-percha, and other insulating and protecting substances." "it's what i calls a tremendious undertakin'," said slagg. "it is indeed," assented frank, heartily, for like all the rest of the crew, from the captain downwards, he was quite enthusiastic about the ship and her work. "why, when you come to think of it, it's unbelievable. i sometimes half expect to waken up and find it is all a dream. just fancy. we left england with a freight of 21,000 tons. the day is not long past when i thought a ship of 1000 tons a big one; what a mite that is to our leviathan, as she used to be called. we had 5512 tons of cable, 3824 tons of fuel, 6499 tons of coal and electric apparatus and appliances when we started; the whole concern, ship included, being valued at somewhere about two millions sterling. it may increase your idea of the size and needs of our little household when i tell you that the average quantity of coal burned on the voyage out has been 200 tons a day." "it's a positive romance in facts and figures," said sam. "a great reality, you should have said," remarked robin. and so, romancing on this reality of facts and figures in many a matter-of-fact statement and figurative rejoinder, they sat there among the great cranks, and valves, and pistons, and levers, until the declining day warned them that it was time to go ashore. chapter twenty four. shows the dreadful depravity of man, and the amazing effects of electrical treatment on man and beast. meanwhile stumps went back to the hotel to brood over his misfortunes, and hatch out the plan which his rather unfertile brain had devised. seated on a chair, with his elbows on his knees, his chin in his hands, and his nails between his teeth, he stared at a corner of the room, nibbled and meditated. there was nothing peculiar about the corner of the room at which he stared, save that there stood in it a portmanteau which sam had bought the day before, and in which were locked his and robin's bags of treasure. "if i could only manage to get away by rail to--to--anywhere, i'd do it," he muttered. almost simultaneously he leaped from his chair, reddened, and went to look-out at the window, for some one had tapped at the door. "come in," he said with some hesitation. "gen'l'man wants you, sir," said a waiter, ushering in the identical captain who had stopped stumps on the street that day. "excuse me, young man," he said, taking a chair without invitation, "i saw you enter this hotel, and followed you." "well, and what business had you to follow me?" demanded stumps, feeling uneasy. "oh, none--none at all, on'y i find i must sail this afternoon, an' i've took a fancy to you, an' hope you've made up your mind to ship with me." stumps hesitated a moment. "well, yes, i have," he said, with sudden resolution. "when must i be on board?" "at four, sharp," said the captain, rising. "i like promptitude. all right. don't fail me." "i won't," said stumps, with emphasis. when the captain was gone, stumps went nervously to the door and peeped out. nothing was visible, save the tail of a waiter's retiring coat. cautiously shutting and bolting the door, he took up a strong walking-cane, and, after some difficulty, forced the lock of the portmanteau therewith. abstracting from it the two bags containing the treasures of his mates robin and sam, he wrapped them in a handkerchief, and put them into a canvas bag, which he had purchased for the reception of his own wardrobe. taking this under his arm he went quietly out of the hotel into the street and disappeared. he was closely followed by a waiter who had taken the liberty of peeping through the key-hole when he committed the robbery, and who never lost sight of him till he had seen him embark in a vessel in the harbour, named the fairy queen, and heard him give his name as james gibson. then he returned to the hotel, giving vent to his sentiments in the following soliloquy--"of course it is no business of yours, john ribbon, whether men choose to open their comrades' portmantys with keys or walkin'-sticks, but it is well for you to note the facts that came under your observation, and to reveal them to them as they concern--for a consideration." but the waiter did not at that time obtain an opportunity to reveal his facts to those whom they concerned, for sam, robin, slagg, and letta did not return to the hotel, but sent a pencil note to stumps instead, to the effect that they had received an invitation from a telegraph official to pay him a visit at his residence up country; that, as he was to carry them off in his boat to the other side of the bay, they would not have an opportunity of calling to bid him, stumps, a temporary farewell; that he was to make himself as happy as he could in bombay during their absence, keep on the rooms at the hotel, and settle the bills, and that all expenses would be paid by them on their return. as the youth by whom this message was sent knew nothing about the senders or whither they had gone, and as stumps did not again make his appearance, the landlord seized the few things that had been left by the supposed runaways. the invitation that had thus suddenly been given and accepted, was received from a gentleman named redpath, an official in the indian telegraph service. they had been introduced to him on board of the great eastern by sam's friend, frank hedley, and he became so interested in their adventurous career that he begged them to visit his bungalow in a rather out-of-the-way part of the country, even if only for a few days. "it won't take us long to get there," he said, "for the railway passes within thirty miles of it, and i'll drive you over as pretty a piece of country as you could wish to see. i have a boat alongside, and must be off at once. do come." "but there are so many of us," objected sam shipton. "pooh! i could take a dozen more of you," returned the hospitable electrician; "and my wife rejoices--absolutely rejoices--when i bring home unexpected company." "what a pattern she must be," said slagg; "but excuse me, sir, since you are so good as to invite us all, may i make so bold as to ax if you've got a servants'-'all?" "well, i've not got exactly that," replied redpath, with an amused look; "but i've got something of the same sort for my servants. why do you ask?" "because, sir, i never did sail under false colours, and i ain't agoin' to begin now. i don't set up for a gentleman, and though circumstances has throwed me along wi' two of 'em, so that we've bin hail-feller-well-met for a time, i ain't agoin' to condescend to consort wi' them always. if you've got a servants'-'all, i'll come and thank 'ee; if not, i'll go an' keep company wi' stumps till mr shipton comes back." "very well, my good fellow, then you shall come, and we'll find you a berth in the servants'-hall," said redpath, laughing. "but what about stumps?" said robin; "he will wonder what has come over us. could we not return to the hotel first?" "impossible," said the electrician; "i have not time to wait. my leave has expired. besides, you can write him a note." so the note was written, as we have shown, and the party set out on their inland journey. before starting, however, frank hedley, the engineer, took sam and robin aside. "now, think over what i have mentioned," he said, "and make up your minds. you see, i have some influence at head-quarters, and am quite sure i can get you both a berth on board to replace the men who have left us. i think i can even manage to find a corner for slagg, if he is not particular." "we shall only be too happy to go if you can manage it," replied robin; "but stumps, what about him? we can't leave stumps behind, you know." "well. i'll try to get stumps smuggled aboard as a stoker or something, if possible, but to say truth, i don't feel quite so sure about that matter," replied frank. "but shall we have time for this trip if you should prove successful?" asked sam. "plenty of time," returned his friend; "coaling is a slow as well as a dirty process, and to ship thousands of tons is not a trifle. i daresay we shall be more than a week here before the shore-end is fixed and all ready to start." "well then, frank," said sam; "adieu, till we meet as shipmates." the railway soon conveyed our adventurers a considerable distance into the interior of the country. at the station where redpath and his guests got out, a vehicle was procured sufficiently large to hold them all, and the road over which they rapidly passed bore out the character which the electrician had given to it. every species of beautiful scenery presented itself--from the low scrubby plain, with clumps of tropical plants here and there, to undulating uplands and hills. "you must have some difficulties in your telegraph operations here," said robin to redpath, "with which we have not to contend in europe." "a few," replied his friend, "especially in the wilder parts of the east. would you believe it," he added, addressing himself to letta, "that wild animals frequently give us great trouble? whenever a wild pig, a tiger, or a buffalo, takes it into his head to scratch himself, he uses one of our telegraph-posts if he finds it handy. elephants sometimes butt them down with their thick heads, by way of pastime, i suppose, for they are not usually fond of posts and wire as food. then bandicoots and porcupines burrow under them and bring them to the ground, while kites and crows sit on the wires and weigh them down. monkeys, as usual, are most mischievous, for they lay hold of the wires with tails and paws, swinging from one to another, and thus form living conductors, which tend to mix and confuse the messages." "but does not the electricity hurt the monkeys?" asked letta. "o no! it does them no injury; and birds sitting on the wires are never killed by it, as many people suppose. the electricity passes them unharmed, and keeps faithfully to the wire. if a monkey, indeed, had a tail long enough to reach from the wire to the ground, and were to wet itself thoroughly, it might perhaps draw off some of the current, but fortunately the tails of monkeys are limited. we often find rows of birds lying dead below our telegraph lines, but these have been killed by flying against them, the wires being scarcely visible among trees." "and what about savages, sir?" asked jim slagg, who had become deeply interested in the telegraphist's discourse; "don't they bother you sometimes?" "of course they do," replied redpath, with a laugh, "and do us damage at times, though we bother them too, occasionally." "how do you manage that, sir?" asked jim. "well, you must know we have been much hindered in our work by the corruptness and stupidity of eastern officials in many places, and by the destructive propensities and rapacity of kurds and wandering arabs and semi-savages, who have found our posts in the desert good for firewood and our wires for arrow-heads or some such implements. some of our pioneers in wild regions have been killed by robbers when laying the lines, while others have escaped only by fighting for their lives. superstition, too, has interfered with us sadly, though sometimes it has come to our aid." "there was one eccentric irishman--one of the best servants i ever had," continued redpath, "who once made a sort of torpedo arrangement which achieved wonderful success. the fellow is with me still, and it is a treat to hear flinn, that's his name, tell the story, but the fun of it mostly lies in the expressive animation of his own face, and the richness of his brogue as he tells it. "`i was away in the dissert somewheres,' he is wont to say, `i don't rightly remimber where, for my brain's no better than a sive at geagraphy, but it was a wild place, anyhow--bad luck to it! well, we had sot up a line o' telegraph in it, an' wan the posts was stuck in the ground not far from a pool o' wather where the wild bastes was used to dhrink of a night, an' they tuk a mighty likin' to this post, which they scrubbed an' scraped at till they broke it agin an' agin. och! it's me heart was broke intirely wi' them. at last i putt me brains in steep an' got up an invintion. it wouldn't be aisy to explain it, specially to onscientific people. no matter, it was an electrical arrangement, which i fixed to the post, an' bein' curious to know how it would work, i wint down to the pool an' hid mesilf in a hole of a rock, wid a big stone over me an ferns all round about. i tuk me rifle, av coorse, just for company, you know, but not to shoot, for i'm not bloodthirsty, by no means. well, i hadn't bin long down whin a rustle in the laves towld me that somethin' was comin', an' sure enough down trotted a little deer-as purty a thing as you could wish to see. it took a dhrink, tremblin' all the time, an' there was good cause, for another rustlin' was heard. off wint the deer, just as a panther o' some sort jumped out o' the jungle an' followed it. bad luck go wid ye says i; but i'd scarce said it whin a loud crashing in the jungle towld me a buffalo or an elephant was comin'. it was an elephant. he wint an' took a long pull at the pool. after that he goes straight to the post. ha! says i, it's an owld friend o' yours, i see. when he putt his great side agin' it, for the purpose of scratchin', he got a shock from my electrical contrivance that caused his tail to stand upon end, and the hairs at its point to quiver. wid a grunt he stood back an' gave the post a look o' surprise, as much as to say, did ye do that a-purpose, ye spalpeen? then he tried it again, an' got another shock that sot up his dander, for he twisted his long nose round the post, goin' to pull it down, no doubt, but he got another shock on the nose that made him squeal an' draw back. then he lowered his great head for a charge. it's all over wid ye now, me post, says i; but the baste changed its mind, and wint off wid its tail an' trunk in the air, trumpetin' as if it had got the toothache. well, after that nothin' came for some time, and i think i must have gone off to slape, for i was awoke by a most tremendious roar. lookin' up i saw a tiger sprawlin' on his back beside the post! av coorse the shock wasn't enough to have knocked the baste over. i suppose it had tripped in the surprise. anyhow it jumped up and seized the post with claws an' teeth, whin av coorse it got another shock that caused it to jump back about six yards, with its tail curled, its hair all on end, all its claws out, an' its eyes blazin'. you seem to feel it, says i--into meself, for fear he'd hear me. he didn't try it again, but wint away into the bush like a war-rocket. after that, five or six little wild pigs came down, an' the smallest wan wint straight up to the post an' putt his nose to it. he drew back wid a jerk, an' gave a scream that seemed to rend all his vitals. you don't like it, thinks i; but, faix, it looked as if i was wrong, for he tried it again. another shock he got, burst himself a'most wid a most fearful yell, an' bolted. his brothers didn't seem to understand it quite. they looked after him in surprise. then the biggest wan gave a wriggle of his curly tail, an' wint to the post as if to inquire what was the matter. when _he_ got it on the nose the effect was surprisin'. the curl of his tail came straight out, an' it quivered for a minute all over, wid its mouth wide open. the screech had stuck in his throat, but it came out at last so fierce that the other pigs had to join in self-defence. i stuck my fingers in my ears and shut me eyes. when i opened them again the pigs were gone. it's my opinion they were all dissolved, like the zinc plates in a used-up battery; but i can't prove that. well, while i was cogitatin' on the result of my little invintion, what should walk out o' the woods but a man! at first i tuk him for a big monkey, for the light wasn't very good, but he had a gun on his shoulder, an' some bits o' clothes on, so i knew him for a human. like the rest o' them, he wint up to the post an' looked at it, but didn't touch it. then he came to the pool an' tuk a dhrink, an' spread out his blanket, an' began to arrange matters for spendin' the rest o' the night there. av coorse he pulled out his axe, for he couldn't do widout fire to kape the wild bastes off. an' what does he do but go straight up to my post an' lift his axe for a good cut. hallo! says i, pretty loud, for i was a'most too late. whew! what a jump he gave--six futt if it was an inch. whin he came down he staggered with his back agin the post. that was enough. the jump he tuk before was nothin' to what he did after. i all but lost sight of him among the branches. when he returned to the ground it was flat on his face he fell, an', rowlin' over his head, came up on his knees with a roar that putt the tigers and pigs to shame. sarves you right, says i, steppin' out of my hole. av coorse he thought i was a divil of some sort, for he turned as white in the face as a brown man could, an' bolted without so much as sayin' farewell. the way that nigger laid his legs along the ground was a caution. ostriches are a joke to it. i picked up his blanket an' fetched it home as a keepsake, an' from that day to this the telegraph-posts have been held sacred by man an' baste all over that part of the country.'" "i'd like to meet wi' the feller that told that yarn," said jim slagg. "so should i," said letta, laughing. "you shall both have your wish, for there he stands," said redpath, as they dashed round the corner of a bit of jungle, on the other side of which lay as pretty a bungalow as one could wish to see. a man-servant who had heard the wheels, was ready at the gate to receive the reins, while under the verandah stood a pretty little woman to receive the visitors. beside her was a black nurse with a white baby. "here we are, flinn," said redpath, leaping to the ground. "all well, eh?" "sure we're niver anything else here, sor," replied flinn, with a modest smile. "i've just been relating your electrical experiences to my friends," said the master. "ah! now, it's drawin' the long bow you've been," returned the man; "i see it in their face." "i have rather diluted the dose than otherwise," returned redpath. "let me introduce mr slagg. he wishes to see indian life in the `servants'-hall.' let him see it, and treat him well." "yours to command," said flinn, with a nod as he led the horses away. "this way, mr slug." "slagg, if you please, mr flinn," said jim. "the difference between a a an' a u ain't much, but the results is powerful sometimes." while slagg was led away to the region of the bungalow appropriated to the domestics, his friends were introduced to pretty little mrs redpath, and immediately found themselves thoroughly at home under the powerful influence of indian hospitality. although, being in the immediate neighbourhood of a veritable indian jungle, it was natural that both sam and robin should wish to see a little sport among large game, their professional enthusiasm rose superior to their sporting tendencies, and they decided next day to accompany their host on a short trip of inspection to a neighbouring telegraph station. letta being made over to the care of the hostess, was forthwith installed as assistant nurse to the white baby, whom she already regarded as a delicious doll--so readily does female nature adapt itself to its appropriate channels. not less readily did jim slagg adapt himself to one of the peculiar channels of man's nature. sport was one of slagg's weaknesses, though he had enjoyed very little of it, poor fellow, in the course of his life. to shoot a lion, a tiger, or an elephant, was, in slagg's estimation, the highest possible summit of earthly felicity. he was young, you see, at that time, and moderately foolish! but although he had often dreamed of such bliss, he had never before expected to be within reach of it. his knowledge of sport, moreover, was entirely theoretic. he knew indeed how to load a rifle and pull the trigger, but nothing more. "you haven't got many tigers in these parts, i suppose?" he said to flinn as they sauntered towards the house after seeing the electrical party off. he asked the question with hesitation, being impressed with a strange disbelief in tigers, except in a menagerie, and feeling nearly as much ashamed as if he had asked whether they kept elephants in the sugar-basin. to his relief flinn did not laugh, but replied quite gravely--"och! yes, we've got a few, but they don't often come nigh the house. we have to thravel a bit into the jungle, and camp out, whin we wants wan. i heard master say he'd have a try at 'em to-morrow, so you'll see the fun, for we've all got to turn out whin we go after tigers. if you're fond o' sport in a small way, howiver, i can give ye a turn among the birds an' small game to-day." "there's nothing i'd like better," said slagg, jumping at the offer like a hungry trout at a fly. "come along, then," returned the groom heartily; "we'll take shot-guns, an' a spalpeen of a black boy to carry a spare rifle an' the bag." in a few minutes the two men, with fowling-pieces on their shoulders, and a remarkably attenuated black boy at their heels carrying a large bore rifle, entered the jungle behind the electrician's bungalow. chapter twenty five. a great field-day, in which slagg distinguishes himself. now, although we have said that jim slagg knew how to pull a trigger, it does not follow that he knew how to avoid pulling that important little piece of metal. he was aware, of course, that the keeping of his forefinger off the trigger was a point of importance, but how to keep it off when in a state of nervous expectation, he knew not, because his memory and the forefinger of his right hand appeared to get disconnected at such times, and it did not occur to him, just at first, that there was such an arrangement in gun-locks as half-cock. flinn reminded him of the fact, however, when, soon after entering the jungle, his straw hat was blown off his head by an accidental discharge of slagg's gun. "niver mention it," said flinn, picking up his riven headpiece, while poor slagg overwhelmed him with protestations and apologies, and the black boy stood behind exposing his teeth, and gums and the whites of his eyes freely; "niver mention it, mr slagg; accidents _will_ happen, you know, in the best regulated families. as for me beaver, it's better riddled than whole in this warm weather. maybe you'd as well carry your gun at what sodgers call `the showlder,' wid the muzzle pintin' at the moon--so; that's it. don't blame yoursilf, mr slagg. sure, it's worse than that i was when i begood, for the nasty thing i carried wint off somehow of its own accord, an' i shot me mother's finest pig--wan barrel into the tail, an' the other into the hid. you see, they both wint off a'most at the same moment. we must learn by exparience, av coorse. you've not had much shootin' yet, i suppose?" poor, self-condemned slagg admitted that he had not, and humbly attended to flinn's instructions, after which they proceeded on their way; but it might have been observed that flinn kept a corner of his eye steadily on his new friend during the remainder of that day, while the attenuated black kept so close to slagg's elbow as to render the pointing of the muzzle of his gun at him an impossibility. presently there was heard among the bushes a whirring of wings, and up flew a covey of large birds of the turkey species. flinn stepped briskly aside, saying, "now thin, let drive!" while the attenuated black fell cautiously in rear. bang! bang! went slagg's gun. "oh!" he cried, conscience-stricken; "there, if i haven't done it again!" "done it! av coorse ye have!" cried flinn, picking up an enormous bird; "it cudn't have bin nater done by a sportin' lord." "then it ain't a tame one?" asked slagg eagerly. "no more a tame wan than yoursilf, an' the best of aitin' too," said. flinn. jim slagg went on quietly loading his gun, and did not think it necessary to explain that he had supposed the birds to be tame turkeys, that his piece had a second time gone off by accident, and that he had taken no aim at all! after that, however, he managed to subdue his feelings a little, and accidentally bagged a few more birds of strange form and beautiful plumage, by the simple process of shutting his eyes and firing into the middle of flocks, to the immense satisfaction of flinn, who applauded all his successes and explained away all his failures in the most amiable manner. if the frequent expanding of the mouth from ear to ear, the exposure of white teeth and red gums, and the shutting up of glittering eyes, indicated enjoyment, the attenuated boy must have been in a blissful condition that day. "why don't ye shoot yerself, mister flinn?" asked slagg on one occasion while reloading. "bekaise it shuits me better to look on," answered the self-denying man. "you see, i'm used to it; besides, i'm a marciful man, and don't care to shoot only for divarshion." "what's that?" cried slagg, suddenly pointing his gun straight upwards at two brilliant black eyes which were gazing straight down at him. "howld on--och! don't--" flinn thrust the gun aside, but he was too late to prevent the explosion, which was followed by a lamentable cry, as a huge monkey fell into slagg's arms, knocked him over with the shock, and bounded off his breast into its native woods, shrieking. "arrah! he's niver a bit the worse," cried flinn, laughing, in spite of his native politeness, "it was the fright knocked him off the branch. if you'd only given him wan shot he might have stud it, but two was too much for him. but plaise, mister slagg, don't fire at monkeys again. i niver do it mesilf, an' can't stand by to see it. it's so like murther, an' the only wan i iver shot in me life was so like me own owld gran'mother that i've niver quite got over it." slagg willingly promised never again to fire at monkeys, and they proceeded on their way. they had not gone far, when another whirring of wings was heard, but this time the noise was greater than on other occasions. "what is it?" asked slagg eagerly, preparing for action. "sure it's a pay-cock," said flinn. "a what-cock?" asked slagg, who afterwards described the noise to be like the flapping of a mainsail. "a pay-cock. splendid aitin'. fire, avic!" "what! fire at _that_?" cried slagg, as a creature of enormous size and gorgeous plumage rose above the bushes. "ye must be jokin'. i _couldn't_ fire at that." "faix, an' ye naidn't fire at it _now_," returned flinn with a quiet smile, "for it's a mile out o' range by this time. better luck--och! if there isn't another. now, thin, don't be in a hurry. be aisy. whatever ye do, be aisy." while he spoke another huge bird appeared, and as slagg beheld its size and spreading wings and tail, he took aim with the feelings of a cold-blooded murderer. that is to say, he shut both eyes and pulled both triggers. this double action had become a confirmed habit by that time, and flinn commended it on the principle that there was "nothin' like makin' cocksure of everything!" re-opening his eyes and lowering his gun, slagg beheld the peacock sailing away in the far distance. "sure ye've missed it, but after all it's a most awkward bird to hit-specially when ye don't pint the gun quite straight. an' the tail, too, is apt to throw even a crack-shot out--so it is. niver mind; there's plenty more where that wan came from." thus encouraged, our sportsman reloaded and continued his progress. it is said that fortune favours the brave, and on that occasion the proverb was verified. there can be no question that our friend jim slagg was brave. all irishmen are courageous, therefore it is equally certain that flinn was brave, and the attenuated black could not have been otherwise than brave, else he would not have continued to enjoy himself in the dangerous neighbourhood of slagg's gun. as a consequence, therefore, fortune did favour the sportsmen that day, for it brought them unexpectedly into the presence of the king of india's forests--a royal bengal tiger--tawny skin, round face, glaring eyes, and black stripes complete from nose to tail! there was no doubt in flinn's mind about it, as his actions proved, but there were considerable doubts in slagg's mind, as was evinced by his immediate petrifaction--not with fear, of course, but with something or other remarkably similar. slagg chanced to be walking in advance at the time, making his way with some trouble through a rather dense bit of jungle. he had by that time recovered his self-possession so much that he was able to let his mind wander to other subjects besides sport. at the moment when the _rencontre_ occurred he chanced to be wandering in spirit among the groves of pirate island. on turning sharp round a bend in the track, he found himself face to face with the tiger, which crouched instantly for a spring. as we have said, the sportsman was instantly petrified. he could not believe his eyes! he must have believed something, however, else he would not have gazed with such dreadful intensity. yes, there, a few feet before him, crouched the tenant of the menagerie, without the cage--the creature of picture story-books endued with life! had slagg's life depended on his putting his gun to his shoulder he would have lost it, for he could not move. his fingers, however, were gifted with independent action. they gave a spasmodic jerk, and both barrels, chancing to be levelled correctly, sent their charges full into the tiger's face. small shot may tickle a tiger but it cannot kill. with a roar like thunder the brute sprang on its audacious enemy. fortunately slagg made an _in_voluntary step to the rear at the moment, and fell on his back, so that the animal, half-blinded by shot and smoke, went over him, and alighted almost at the feet of flinn. that worthy was equal to the occasion. at the sound of his friend's double shot he had seized the large rifle and leaped forward in time to meet the baffled tiger. quick as light his practised hand discharged the heavy bullet, which, passing over the animal's head, went into its spine near the haunches, so that when it tried a second spring its hind legs refused their office, and it rolled over fuming and struggling in an agony of pain and rage. flinn ran a few paces backward so as to reload in comparative safety, while slagg followed his example, but in desperate haste. before he had half charged the first barrel, a second shot from the heavy rifle laid the royal monster dead on the ground. "well done!" cried flinn, seizing his friend's hand and wringing it. "it's nimrod you are, no less. i niver saw a purtier shot. an', faix, it's not every man that kills a tiger his first day out." "but i _didn't_ kill it," said slagg modestly. "sure but ye drew first blood, me boy, so the tiger's yours, an' i wish you joy. come, we'll go home now an' git help to fetch the carcass. won't they open their two eyes aich of them whin they see it! here, ye black spalpeen, take the rifle an' give me the gun." in a few minutes the fortunate hunters were wending their way rapidly homeward, and that night the whole party, while enjoying their supper, feasted their eyes on the magnificent form of the royal bengal tiger as it lay on the verandah, in front of the electricians' bungalow. chapter twenty six. begins with a disappointment, continues with a great reception, and ends with a series of surprises. at the breakfast-table next morning a telegram was handed to redpath. there was nothing unusual in this. on the contrary, it seemed peculiarly natural that telegrams should be frequent visitors at the house of a telegraphist, but it was not so natural that redpath should first look at the missive with surprise, and then toss it across the table to sam. "it is for you, mr shipton." "for me? impossible! i am supposed to be dead at home," exclaimed sam, tearing it open. "oh, it's from frank hedley, and--well, he _has_ been successful after all! listen, robin. excuse me, mrs redpath. may i read it aloud?" "by all means," answered the pretty little woman, who would probably have answered the same if he had asked leave to go to bed in his boots. "`your affair settled'"--continued sam, reading. "`great eastern starts almost immediately. come without delay.'" "how provoking!" exclaimed the pretty little woman. "i had counted on having you a fortnight at least." "and i had counted on showing you some capital sport in our jungles, where we have all sorts of large game. but of course you cannot do otherwise than obey the summons at once." "of course not," said sam and robin together. flinn left the room and entered the servants' quarters with something like a groan. "sure it's bad luck has followed me iver since i left owld ireland." "what's wrong with you?" asked slagg, looking up from the slice of peacock breast with which he was regaling himself. "the matter? och, it's bad luck's the matter. hasn't our frindship only just begood, an' isn't it goin' to be cut short all of a suddint, niver more to be renewed?" in pathetic tones, and with many hibernian comments, the poor man communicated the news brought by the telegram. but regrets were of no avail; the orders were peremptory; the chance of returning to england in such circumstances too good to be lightly thrown away; so that same forenoon saw the whole party, with the skin of the royal tiger, on their way back to the city of bombay. it is easier to imagine than to describe the state of mind into which they were thrown when, on returning to their hotel, they discovered the perfidy of stumps. fortunately, they had enough of money left to discharge the hotel bill, and redeem their property. "you're quite sure of the name of the vessel he sailed in?" asked sam of the waiter who had so cleverly obtained, and so cautiously retained, his information as to the proceedings of stumps. "quite sure, sir," replied the waiter. "the ship's name was fairy queen, bound for the port of london, and the thief--the gen'lem'n, i mean--shipped in the name of james gibson." having received the "consideration" which he had anticipated, and had afterwards given up as lost, the waiter retired, and sam, with his friends, went to inquire after the great cable with which they now felt themselves to be specially connected. "letta," said robin, as they went along, "you and i must part for a time." "oh! must we?" asked the child, with a distressed look. "yes, but only for a _very_ short time, dear," returned robin. "you know we cannot get you a berth on board the great eastern. they won't even take you as chief engineer or captain!" "but why not as the captain's daughter--or his wife?" said letta, who thoroughly understood and enjoyed a joke. "because, letta, you are engaged to me," replied robin, with an offended look. "o, yes; i forgot that. well?" well, what we have arranged is this. i have met with many kind people here, some of whom have been greatly interested in your story, and one of them--a very nice lady, who is going home--has offered to take you with her, and deliver you safely to my mother in england, there to wait till i come home and marry you. "how nice!" exclaimed letta; "and you'll be sure to come home soon?" "yes, quite sure, and very soon." this arrangement, being deemed satisfactory, was afterwards carried into effect, and letta sailed a few days later in one of the regular steamers for england _via_ the suez canal. meanwhile the great eastern still lay at her moorings, completing the arrangements for her voyage. during this period our hero lived in a whirl of excitement. it seemed to himself as if he were the subject of an amazing but by no means unpleasant dream, the only dark spots in which were the departure of letta and the depravity of john shanks, _alias_ james gibson, _alias_ stumps. "oh! stumps, stumps," he soliloquised, sadly, one day while standing on "the green" in the unromantic shade of a huge bale of cotton, "how could you behave so after being our trusted comrade so long!" "never mind stumps just now," said sam shipton, making his appearance at the moment, "but come along with me at once, for we have received an invitation, through my good and remarkable friend frank hedley, to the grand entertainment to be given to-night at the palace of the chief and bahee sahib of junkhundee." "and who may that be?" asked robin, with an incredulous smile. "what! know you not the great chief whose praise is in the mouths of all--hindu, mohammedan, jew, and gentile, because he feeds and entertains them all like a prince?" "he is the creation of your own brain, sam. i fancy." "no, indeed," protested sam, earnestly, "i do not jest. the bahee sahib is a wealthy young mahratta chieftain, who has been consistently loyal to us, and who entertains mixed parties of englishmen and natives in european style, and does his best to break down the barriers of prejudice and caste. he has been hospitably received on board the great eastern, it seems, and is now getting up a grand affair in honour of captain halpin and his officers. so, come along." "but, my dear sam, you forget, we have not a dress suit between us, and in the present condition of our finances it would be folly to--" "fiddlesticks, robin. we have only to make a couple of turbans out of bath-towels and a few peacock feathers; turn persian shawls, which we can borrow, into kilts, put on slippers, bare our legs and paint them with red and blue stripes crossed, to indicate something of scottish highland origin, anoint our noses with blue bear's-grease, and--" "nonsense, sam; be serious if you can, and consider what we are really to do." "you're so impatient, robin. the thing has all been considered for us. we have nothing to do but accept our fate. frank hedley, who is exactly your size, has a dress suit which he will lend you, and a friend of his, who happens to be exactly and conveniently my size, has also a suit, and is equally accommodating. come now, for time presses, and i am told the bahee's wife loves punctuality--but she's liberal-minded like her husband, and makes allowance for laziness, especially in hot weather. she is a regular trump, it seems, and quite amazed our electricians, during her visit to the big ship, by her intelligent comprehension of all they explained to her. she is an accomplished equestrian, and dresses as a native princess, with a huge ornament in her nose, but does not disdain to mingle with english ladies in the bombay rotten row, and uses a european saddle." the account which sam had thus slightly sketched was more than borne out by the facts that evening. the young rajah's reception-rooms, blazing with light, were decorated with all that the wealth of fancy could suggest or the wealth of precious metal procure, while music and perfume filled the air and intoxicated the senses. for some time sam and robin moved slowly about in the crowded rooms, finding themselves rubbing shoulders, now with eastern aristocrats in richest costume and glittering jewels, now with england's warriors in scarlet and blue; sometimes with parsees, hindus, mohammedans, and jews in their characteristic garbs; at other times with european civilians, like themselves, in sober black. it was a bewildering scene, and the loud continuous murmur of many voices, chattering in many tongues, did not tend to decrease the bewilderment. "what are they about over there?" said robin, directing his companion's attention to a room in which the people appeared to be observing something with great attention. "i don't know. let's go and see," said sam. a little polite pushing brought them into an apartment in which an english professor of conjuring, who had been engaged for the occasion, was exhibiting his tricks. they were poor enough, and would not have commanded much applause from any audience, except one that had met to enjoy whatever chanced to be provided. in another room, however, they found a performer of much greater capacity--a man who possessed considerable powers as a musician, low comedian, and local satirist; he was noted for his delineations of native character, and succeeded in making the parsees laugh heartily at his caricature of the hindus, while he convulsed the hindus with his clever skits on the parsees. he also made effective reference to the great eastern and her work, bringing out the humorous aspects of telegraphy and of quick communication between india and england. "come, let's go and see if we can find anything to eat," said sam, when tired of this man. "who is that?" asked robin, as they moved through the crowd. "why, that's the bahee himself. see, he has got hold of captain halpin, and seems greatly pleased to lead him about." the rajah did indeed exhibit much satisfaction in his beaming brown face at having got hold of so noted a character as the commander of the monster ship, and it was pleasant to see the almost childlike glee, with which, taking the captain by the hand, he threaded his way through the crowd, introducing him right and left to his friends. not less pleasant was it to observe the lively interest, with which the natives regarded the captain when they learned who he was. at this point in the evening's proceedings, a gentleman in civilian costume came up to sam shipton, and asked him if he were acquainted with mr davis--one of the petty officers of the great eastern. "i know him slightly," said sam. "he has got into trouble, sir," said the stranger, "and begged me to find you, if possible, and take you to him. i have been on board the great eastern looking for you, and was directed here." "that's strange," returned sam, "i have seldom spoken to the man. are you sure he did not send you for some one else--one of his mess-mates?" "quite sure, sir. and he bade me urge you to go quickly, else you may be too late." "well--lead the way. come, robin, i'm sorry to quit this gay and festive scene--especially before supper--but it can't be helped. you'll go with me, and we can return together." the stranger seemed to hesitate a moment, as if annoyed at robin being thus asked to go, but, as if quickly making up his mind, led them out of the rajah's residence, and, after a smart walk, conducted them into one of the poorer districts of the city. "what sort of trouble has the man got into?" asked sam as they went along. "i really do not know. he will tell you when you see him, i suppose. i am only a casual acquaintance of his, and came on this errand to oblige him, solely because he seemed in great mental distress and was very urgent." soon the conversation turned upon cable-laying, and, finding that robin had been at the laying of the atlantic cable of 1856, the stranger inquired about the attempts that had been made to injure that cable. "tell me, now, would you think it a sin," he said, with a peculiar look at sam, "to drive a nail into the cable so as to destroy it, if you were offered the sum of ten thousand pounds?" "of course i would," said sam, looking at his conductor with surprise. "i wonder that you should ask the question." "why should you wonder," returned the man with a smile, "at any question which aims at the investigation of that great enigma styled the human mind? i am fond of the study of character, and of those principles of good and evil which influence men. under given circumstances and conditions, the commission of a certain sin is greatly more blameworthy than the commission of the same sin under different conditions and circumstances. do you not think so?" "of course i do," said sam. "the man who, having been born and brought up among pickpockets, and under strong temptation commits a theft, is not nearly so guilty as the man would be who, having been trained under refined and christian influences, should commit a similar theft; but i do not see the application of your argument, for your question did not refer to the relative depth of guilt, but to the sinfulness or innocence of a certain dastardly act for a tempting sum of money." "i may not have put my question very philosophically," returned the stranger, "but i would like to have your opinion as to whether you think, under _any_ circumstances of distress--poverty, for instance, with those dependent on one dying of hunger--a man would be justified in destroying the power of a telegraph cable for a sum of money--part, let us suppose, paid in advance, and the remainder after the deed had been accomplished." "my opinion is that no circumstances whatever would justify such an act," said sam with indignation. "don't you agree with me, robin?" "of _course_ i do," said robin with even greater indignation. "and _i_ quite agree with you, gentlemen," said the stranger, with a wider smile than before; "but i like to have my opinions corroborated or combated by other minds. we have now reached our destination; please follow me, and stoop a little, for the ceiling of the passage is rather low, and the poor people here cannot afford to light it." the recent discussion had diverted sam's mind from the character of the place into which he had been led, but a suspicion which had been growing now assailed him forcibly. "keep your stick handy," he whispered to robin, at the same time grasping more firmly a stout cudgel which he carried. these precautions seemed needless, however, for the stranger, opening with a latch-key a door at the further end of the dark passage, ushered them into a dimly lighted room, where about a dozen men were seated round a table drinking and smoking. the men rose on the entrance of the visitors and received them with courtesy. "mr davis will be glad to see you, sir," said one; "he has been in much anxiety, but here he comes and will speak for himself." a door at the other end of the room opened, and a tall slightly-built man entered. sam saw at once that he was not davis. "fool!" growled the man, with a savage look at the stranger who had conducted them there, "you have brought the _wrong man_!" "i had already begun to suspect as much," returned the other, with a light laugh. swallowing his disgust, apparently with an effort, the slim man turned to sam and said, "a mistake has been made, sir. one or two of my friends here will conduct you to any part of the city you may wish to go to." "i require no assistance," said sam, flushing with sudden indignation. "i believe that you are conspirators, and will take particular note of your dwelling, in order that i may spoil your game." he was about to turn and quit the room, when he was suddenly seized from behind by two powerful men, who seemed to have come on the scene by rising through the floor! at the same moment robin was similarly secured. they did not, however, submit tamely. both were strong-bodied as well as high-spirited, and sam was large as well as strong. but what were their powers against such odds! for a few seconds they struggled furiously. then, feeling that their efforts were fruitless, they ceased. "it is as well to go quietly, my fine fellows," said the slim man in a slightly sarcastic tone. "we are not only more than a match for you, but we happen to belong to a class of gentlemen who don't allow trifles to stand in their way. at the same time we object to murder when we can get along without it. some of us will therefore conduct you to another part of the city. now, i give you fair warning, if you struggle or try to make a noise on the way, we will silence you in a manner that will effectually keep you quiet for ever. just have your knives handy, men, and don't exercise forbearance if these gentlemen turn out to be fools." a prick in their necks by the point of some sharp instrument emphasised these words to robin and sam, and, at the same time, proved that the subordinates were quite ready, perhaps even anxious, to obey their superior. they suffered themselves, therefore, to be blindfolded, and led out of the house. of course once or twice they both thought of making a sudden struggle and endeavouring to throw off their captors, but the vice-like strength of the fingers that held them, and the recollection of the sharp instruments near their necks induced discretion; besides, the absence of the sound of footsteps told them that they could not count on aid from passers-by, even if the dwellers in such a region had been willing to assist them, which was not probable. after passing quickly along several streets, the men who led them stopped and relaxed their hold. "now, you stand quiet for half a minute," said one of them gruffly; "there's a knife close to each of your spines at this moment." thus warned, the captives stood still for nearly a minute. then sam lost patience. "well," he said, angrily, "how long do you mean to keep us here?" receiving no reply, he suddenly pulled the handkerchief from his eyes and assumed the pugilistic attitude with the celerity of one whose life may depend on his action, but the only enemy to be seen was robin, who, having also pulled down the handkerchief, stood staring at his comrade in mute surprise. "they're gone!" cried sam, bursting into a fit of laughter. "the villains! the scoundrels! but who can they be? i fear there can be little doubt as to what mischief they are up to." "we have not the smallest clue to trace them by," said robin, with a vexed expression. "not the smallest. i don't even know what quarter of the town we are in now," returned sam. "the handkerchiefs!" exclaimed robin with sudden animation. "well, what of them?" "they--they may have names in the corners." again the risible sam burst into a loud laugh, as the idea of scoundrels possessing any handkerchiefs of their own at all, much less having their names marked in the corners; and poor robin, whose memories of maternal care had prompted the thought, felt some degree of confusion, which was deepened when he discovered that the kerchiefs, with which their eyes had been bound, were their own. they were startled by a gruff voice demanding to know what they were laughing at, and kicking up such a row at that time of the morning! it was one of the guardians of the night, who became very polite on drawing nearer and being informed, in a mild voice, by sam that they had lost their way and would be much indebted for guidance, for sam thought it best to say nothing about their adventure until they had had ample time to think it over and decide what was best to be done. having been directed how to go, having lost themselves a second time, and been directed again by another guardian, they found themselves at last in the neighbourhood of the port, and here the sound of loud voices, as if engaged in some nocturnal orgies, was heard in the distance. "as we seem in for a night of adventure," said sam, "we may as well accept our fate, and go see what it's all about." "agreed," said robin. hurrying forward, they came upon a remarkable and picturesque scene. the engineers of the great eastern had chosen the previous day for the laying of the mile of land-line, with which the cable was to be connected. the burying of it in its appointed home had commenced at half-past six in the evening and had continued all through the night. it was about 2 a.m. when our adventurers came upon the scene. the trench was cut through ground on which a number of soldiers were encamped, whose white tents looked ghostlike in the feeble star-light, and lines of naked natives were seen, waving lanterns, pushing along the mysterious cable, or, with hands and feet busily pressing down the loose soil that covered the buried portion. the whole operation was conducted with a superabundance of noise, for the burying of a rope in a trench three feet deep was in itself such a tremendous joke to the coolies, that they entered upon it with much excitement as a sort of unusual piece of fun. that they were in some degree also impressed with the mysterious and important object of their work might have been gathered from their chant:--"good are the cable-wallahs, great are their names; good are the cable-wallahs, wah! wah! wah! great are the cable-wallahs, wah!" which they continued without intermission all through the night, to their own intense delight and to the annoyance no doubt of the military unfortunates who were encamped on the ground. besides the naked fellows who, in their excitement and activity, resembled good-humoured, brown demons, there were many other figures in english dress moving about, directing and encouraging, running from point to point, flitting to and fro like wills-o'-the-wisp, for all bore lights, and plunged ever and anon out of sight in the trench. between three and four o'clock the work was completed; tests were taken, the portion of cable was pronounced perfect, and communication was thus established between the cable-house and rampart row. this was the first link in the great chain of submarine telegraphy between india and england. "now, robin," said sam, with a tremendous yawn, "as we've seen the first act in the play, it is time, i think, to go home to bed." with a yawn that rivalled that of his comrade, robin admitted the propriety of the proposal, and, half an hour later, they turned in, to sleep--"perchance to dream!" chapter twenty seven. describes several important events. the laying of this thick shore-end of the cable was an important point in the great work. by that time robin and cousin sam had been regularly installed as members of the expedition, and were told off with many others to assist at the operation. the chiltern carried the great coil in her tanks. after rounding colaba point into back bay, she found a barge waiting to receive some two-and-a-half miles of the cable, with which she was to proceed to the shore. the barge resembled a huge noah's ark, having a canvas awning to protect the cable, which was very sensitive to heat. a measure of anxiety is natural at the beginning of most enterprises, and there were some who dreaded a "hitch" with superstitious fear, as if it would be a bad omen. but all went well. "now then, boys--shove her along; push her through," said an experienced leader among the cable-hands, who grasped the great coil and guided it. the men took up the words at once, and, to this species of spoken chorus, "shove her along, push her through," the snaky coil was sent rattling over the pulley-wheels by the tank and along the wooden gutter prepared for it, to the paying-out wheel at the chiltern's stern, whence it plunged down into the barge, where other experienced hands coiled it carefully round and round the entire deck. it is difficult to describe the almost tender solicitude with which all this was done. the cable was passed carefully--so carefully--through all the huge staples that were to direct its course from the fore-tank to the wheel at the stern. then it was made to pass over a wheel here and under a wheel there, to restrain its impetuosity, besides being passed three times round a drum, which controlled the paying-out. a man stood ready at a wheel, which, by a few rapid turns, could bring the whole affair to a standstill should anything go wrong. in the fore-tank eight men guided each coil to prevent entanglement, and on deck men were stationed a few feet apart all along to the stern, to watch every foot as it passed out. three hours completed the transfer. then the barge went slowly shoreward, dropping the cable into the sea as she went. it was quite a solemn procession! first went a government steam-tug, flaunting flags from deck to trucks as thick as they could hang. then came the barge with her precious cargo. then two boats full of cable-hands, and an official gig pulled by a chinaman, while the steam-launch electric kept buzzing about as if superintending all. when the tug had drawn the barge shoreward as far as she could with safety, the smaller "electric" took her place. when she also had advanced as far as her draught allowed, a boat carried to the shore a hawser, one end of which was attached to the cable. then the cable-hands dropped over the sides of the barge up to waist, chest, or neck, (according to size), and, ranging themselves on either side of the rope and cable, dragged the latter to the shore, up the trench made for its reception, and laid its end on the great stone table, where it was made fast, tested by the electricians, as we have said, and pronounced perfect. a few more days had to pass before the insatiable great eastern was filled with coal and reported ready for sea. then, as a matter of course, she wound up with a grand feast--a luncheon--on board, at which many of the leading authorities and merchants of bombay were present, with a brilliant company which entirely filled the spacious saloons. "owing to circumstances," said sam to robin that day, "over which we have no control, you and i cannot be included among the guests at this approaching feast." "i'm sorry for that, sam," said our hero. "why so, robin? does a morbid devotion to chicken and ham, or sweets, influence you?" "not at all, though i make no pretence of indifference to such things, but i should so much like to hear the speeches." "well, my boy, your desire shall be gratified. through the influence of our, i might almost say miraculous, friend, frank hedley, we shall be permitted to witness the proceedings from a retired corner of the saloon, in company with crockery and waiters and other _debris_ of the feast." at the appointed time the company assembled, and enjoyed as good a luncheon as money could procure. "how some people do eat!" murmured robin from his corner to sam, who sat beside him. "yes, for it is their nature to," replied sam. after the first toast was drunk the company braced themselves to the mental work of the afternoon, and although, as a matter of course, a good deal of twaddle was spoken, there was also much that threw light on the subject of ocean telegraphy. one of the leading merchants said, in his opening remarks: "few of those present, i daresay, are really familiar with the history of ocean telegraphy." "ah!" whispered robin to sam, "that's the man for me. he's sure to tell us a good deal that we don't know, and although i have been ransacking bombay ever since i arrived, for information, i don't yet feel that i know much." "hold your tongue, robin, and listen," said sam. "mind your foot, sir," remonstrated one of the steward's assistants, who had a lugubrious countenance. robin took his foot out of a soup tureen, and applied himself to listen. "when i reflect," continued the merchant, "that it is now fourteen years since the first ocean telegraph of any importance was laid,--when i remember that the first cable was laid after an infinity of personal effort on the part of those who had to raise the capital,--when i mention that it was really a work of house-to-house visitation, when sums of 500 pounds to 1000 pounds, and even 10,000 pounds were raised by private subscription, with a view to laying a telegraph cable between england and america, when i reflect that the queen's government granted the use of one of its most splendid vessels, the agamemnon (_hear! hear! and applause_), and that the american government granted the use of an equally fine vessel, the niagara--" (_hear! hear_! and another round of applause, directed at the american consul, who was present.) ("five glasses smashed _that_ round," growled the lugubrious waiter.) "when i reflect," continued the merchant, "that the expedition set out in 1857 with the greatest hopefulness, but proved a total failure--that the earnest men (_hear! hear_!) connected with it again set to work the following year, and laid another cable (_applause_), which, after passing through it a few messages of great importance to england and america (_hear_!) also ceased communication, which so damped the courage of all concerned, that for seven or eight weary years nothing was attempted--no, i should not say nothing, for during that period mr cyrus field," (thunders of long-continued applause, during which the lugubrious waiter counted the demolition of six glasses and two dessert plates), "without whose able and persevering advocacy it is a question whether to this day we should have had ocean telegraphy carried out at all--during that period, i say, mr cyrus field never gave himself rest until he had inspired others with some of the enthusiasm that burned so brightly in himself, which resulted in the renewed effort of 1865, with its failure and loss of 1213 miles of cable,--when i think of the indomitable pluck and confidence shown by such men as thomas brassey, sir samuel canning, sir james anderson, sir daniel gooch, sir richard glass, mr george elliot. mr fender, captain sherard osborn, and others--men of mind, and men of capital, and men who could see no difficulties--and i like men who can see no difficulties," (_hear! hear! and loud applause_.) ("you'll see more difficulties than ye bargain for, if ye go through life makin' people smash crockery like that," growled the lugubrious waiter.) "when i think of these men, and of the formation of the telegraph construction and maintenance company (_applause_), and the successful laying of the 1866 cable, and the picking-up and completion of the old cable," (_loud cheers_),--("hm! a decanter gone this time. _will_ you take your foot out of the soup tureen, sir," from the lugubrious man, and an impatient "hush!" from robin.) "when i think of all these things, and a great deal more that i cannot venture to inflict on the indulgent company (_go on_!) i feel that the toast which i have the honour to propose deserves a foremost place in the toasts of the day, and that you will heartily respond to it, namely, success to the telegraph construction and maintenance company, for that company has laid scores of cables since its formation, and has now successfully commenced, and will doubtless triumphantly complete, the laying of the cable which we have met to celebrate to-day--the fourth great enterprise, i may remark, which the company has undertaken--the cable that is soon to connect india with england." the merchant sat down amid thunders of applause, during which the reckoning of breakages was lost, and finally abandoned by the lugubrious waiter. at first robin and sam listened with great interest and profound attention, and the former treasured in his memory, or made pencil notes of, such facts and expectations as the following:--that only nine months previously had they commenced the construction of the cable which was now about to be laid; that captain halpin in the great eastern had laid the french atlantic cable; that in a few weeks they hoped to connect bombay with malta, and two months later with england; that, a few months after that, england would be connected with the straits of malacca and singapore. "in short," said one gentleman at the close of his speech, "we hope that in 1871 india will be connected, chiefly, by submarine telegraph, with china, australia, europe, and america, and that your morning messages will reach home about the same hour at which they are sent from here, allowing, of course, for the difference in time; and that afternoon and evening messages from europe will be in your hands at an early hour next morning." at this point the heat and unpleasant fumes around him began to tell upon robin, and he suggested that they had better go on deck for a little fresh air. "i'll not budge," said sam, positively. "why, the best is yet to come." saying this, to the surprise of robin, sam rose, went forward to the table, and asked permission to make a few remarks. "who is he?--what? eh!" exclaimed the chairman. "turn him out," cried one. "sit down," cried another. "no, no, let him speak," cried a third. "don't you know it is samuel shipton, the great electrician?" "bravo! go on! speak out!" cried several voices, accompanied by loud applause. "gentlemen," began sam in his softest voice, "i regard this as one of the greatest occasions of--of--my life," (_hear! hear_! from a fussy guest; and _hush! hush! and then we shall hear here better_, from an angry one). "i little thought," continued sam, warming apparently with his subject--or the heat, "little thought that on this great occasion i could--could--i could--" (_would or should; go on, man_, from an impatient guest). "oh, sam, don't stick!" cried robin, in an agony of anxiety. "who's that? put him out!" chorused several voices indignantly. "there, sir, you've put your foot in it at last," said the lugubrious waiter. robin thought he referred to the interruption, but the waiter's eyes and forefinger directed his attention to the soup tureen, which, in his eagerness, he had sacrificed with a stamp. finding that no further notice was taken of the interruption, he listened, while sam continued:-"yes, gentlemen, i have some difficulty in starting, but, once set agoing, gentlemen, i can keep on like an alarum clock. what nonsense have some of you fellows been talking! some of you have remarked that you shall be able to exchange messages with england in a few hours. allow me to assure you that before long you will accomplish that feat in a few minutes." "pooh! pooh!" ejaculated an irascible old gentleman with a bald head. "did you say `pooh!' sir?" demanded sam, with a terrible frown. "i did, sir," replied the old gentleman, with a contemptuous smile. "then, sir, take that." sam hurled a wine decanter at the old gentleman, which, missing its mark, fell with a loud crash at the feet of robin, who awoke with a start to find sam shaking him by the arm. "wake up, robin," he said; "man, you've lost the best speech of the evening. come--come on deck now, you've had quite enough of it." "yes, an' done enough o' damage too," growled the lugubrious waiter. so robin became gradually aware that sam's speech was a mere fancy, while the smashing of the soup tureen was a hard fact. it may not, however, be out of place to remark here that the prophecy made by sam in robin's dream, did afterwards become a great reality. chapter twenty eight. the cable laid. "i say, robin," said samuel shipton, as he encountered our hero and slagg that same evening in the streets of bombay, "the government land telegraph was reported this morning to have recovered its health." "well, what of that?" "i have taken advantage of the lucid interval to send a telegram to uncle rik. no doubt your father has by this time received the telegram we sent announcing our safety and arrival here, so this one won't take them by surprise." "but what is it about?" asked robin. "it is sent," replied sam, "with the intention of converting uncle rik into a thief-catcher. that stupid waiter told me only this morning that the time he followed stumps to the harbour, he overheard a sailor conversing with him and praising a certain tavern named the tartar, near london bridge, to which he promised to introduce him on their arrival in england; so it struck me that by telegraphing to uncle rik to find out the owners of the fairy queen and the position of the tartar, he might lay hold of stumps on his arrival and recover our stolen property." "but i hope he won't put him in limbo, sir," said jim slagg. "i've no objection to recover our property, but somehow i don't like to have the poor fellow transported. you see i can't help thinkin' he was half-cracked when he did it." "he must take his chance, i suppose," said sam, thoughtfully. "however, the telegram is off, and, if it ever reaches him, uncle rik will act with discretion." "i agree with jim," said robin, "and should be sorry to be the means of ruining our old comrade." "it did not strike me in that light," returned sam, a little troubled at the thought. "but it can't be helped now. in any case i suppose he could not be tried till we appear as witnesses against him." "i ain't much of a lawyer," said slagg, "but it do seem to me that they couldn't very well take him up without some proof that the property wasn't his." "it may be so," returned sam; "we shall see when we get home. meanwhile it behoves us to square up here, for the great eastern starts early to-morrow and we must be on board in good time to-night." now, you must not imagine, good reader, that we intend to drag you a second time through all the details of laying a deep-sea cable. the process of laying was much the same in its general principles as that already described, but of course marked by all the improvements in machinery, etcetera, which time and experience had suggested. moreover, the laying of the indian cable was eminently, we might almost say monotonously, successful, and, consequently, devoid of stirring incident. we shall therefore merely touch on one or two features of interest connected with it, and then pass on to the more important incidents of our story. when robin and his comrades drew near to the big ship, she was surrounded by a perfect fleet of native boats, whose owners were endeavouring to persuade the sailors to purchase bananas and other fruits and vegetables; paroquets, sticks, monkeys, and fancy wares. next morning, the 14th of february 1870, the great eastern lifted her mighty anchor, and spliced the end of the 2375 miles of cable she had on board to the shore-end, which had been laid by the chiltern. this splice was effected in the presence of the governor of bombay, sir seymour fitzgerald, who, with a small party, accompanied the great eastern a short distance on its way. then, embarking in his yacht, they bade god-speed to the expedition, gave them three ringing cheers, and the voyage to aden began. soon the cable-layers were gliding merrily over the bright blue sea at the rate of five or six knots an hour, with the cable going quietly over the stern, the machinery working smoothly, the electrical condition of the cable improving as the sea deepened, and flocks of flying-fish hovering over the crisp and curly waves, as if they were specially interested in the expedition, and wished to bear it company. all went well, yet were they well prepared for accident or disaster, as sam informed robin on the morning of the 16th while sitting at breakfast. "they have got two gongs, as you've observed, no doubt," he said, "which are never to be sounded except when mischief is brewing. the first intimation of fault or disaster will be a note from one of these gongs, when the ship will be instantly stepped, the brakes put on, and the engines reversed." "everything is splendidly prepared and provided for," said robin; "hand me the sugar, sam." "the elasticity and good behaviour of the big ship are all that could be desired," remarked one of the engineers, "though she carries 3000 tons more dead-weight than when she started with the atlantic cable in 1865." at that moment there was a lull of consternation round the breakfast-table, for a drumming upon metal was heard! for one instant there was a gaze of doubt round the table. then they rose _en masse_; cups were upset, and chairs thrown over; the cabin was crossed at racing speed,--captain halpin leading--the stair-case surmounted, and a rush made to the testing-room. there all was quiet and orderly; the operators placidly pursuing their labours, working out their calculations, or watching the tell-tale spot of light on the scale, and all looking up in silent surprise at the sudden hubbub round their door. it was a false alarm, caused by the steady dripping of a shower-bath on its metal bottom! that was all, but it was sufficient to prove how intensely men were on the _qui vive_. it was a wonderful scene, the deck of the great eastern-incomprehensible by those who have not seen it. the cabins, offices, workshops, and machinery formed a continuous line of buildings up the centre of the vessel's deck, dividing it into two streets an eighth of a mile long. at the end of one of these were the wheels and drums running from the top of the aft-tank to the stern; and between them and the two thoroughfares were wooden houses which shut them out from view. there was a farmyard also, where cattle were regularly turned out for exercise; there were goats which were allowed to go free about the decks, and chickens which took the liberty of doing so, sometimes, without leave; there were parrots being taken home by the sailors which shrieked their opinions noisily; and there were numerous monkeys, which gambolled in mischievous fun, or sat still, the embodiment of ludicrous despair; while, intermingling with the general noise could be heard the rattle of the paying-out wheels, as the cable passed with solemn dignity and unvarying persistency over the stern into the sea, it seemed almost unheeded, so perfect and self-acting was the machinery; but it was, nevertheless, watched by keen sleepless eyes--as the mouse is watched by the cat--night and day. the perfection not only achieved but expected, was somewhat absurdly brought out by the electrician in the cable-house at bombay, who one day complained to the operators on board the great eastern that the reply to one of his questions had been from three to twelve seconds late! it must be understood, however, that although the testing of the cable went on continuously during the whole voyage, the sending of messages was not frequent, as that interfered with the general work. accordingly, communication with the shore was limited to a daily statement from the ship of her position at noon, and to the acknowledgment of the same by the electrician at bombay. one of the greatest dangers in paying-out consists in changing from tank to tank when one is emptied, and a full one has to be commenced. this was always an occasion of great interest and anxiety. about midnight of the 19th the change to the fore-tank was made, and nearly every soul in the ship turned out to see it. the moon was partially obscured, but darkness was made visible by a row of lanterns hung at short intervals along the trough through which the cable was to be passed, making the ship look inconceivably long. as robin wright hurried along the deck he observed that both port and starboard watches were on duty, hid in the deep shadow of the wheels, or standing by the bulwark, ready for action. traversing the entire length of the deck-past the houses of the sheep and pigs; past the great life-boats; past the half-closed door of the testing-room, where the operators maintained their unceasing watch in a flood of light; past the captain's cabin, a species of land-mark or half-way house; past a group of cows and goats lying on the deck chewing the cud peacefully, and past offices and deck-cabins too numerous to mention,--he came at last to the fore-tank, which was so full of cable that the hands ready to act, and standing on the upper coil, had to stoop to save their heads from the deck above. the after-tank, on the contrary, was by that time a huge yawning pit, twenty-five feet deep, lighted by numerous swinging lamps like a subterranean church, with its hands, like lilliputians, attending to the last coil of the cable. that coil or layer was full four miles long, but it would soon run out, therefore all was in readiness. the captain was giving directions in a low voice, and seeing that every one was in his place. the chiefs of the engineers and electricians were on the alert. every few minutes a deep voice from below announced the number of "turns" before the last one. at last the operation was successfully accomplished and the danger past, and the cable was soon running out from the fore-tank as smoothly as it had run out of the other. the tendency of one flake or coil of cable to stick to the coil immediately below, and produce a wild irremediable entanglement before the ship could be stopped, was another danger, but these and all other mishaps of a serious nature were escaped, and the unusually prosperous voyage was brought to a close on the 27th of february, when the great eastern reached aden in a gale of wind--as if to remind the cable-layers of what _might_ have been--and the cable was cut and buoyed in forty fathoms water. the continuation of the cable up the red sea, the successful termination of the great enterprise, and the start of our hero and his companions for old england after their work was done, we must unwillingly leave to the reader's imagination. chapter twenty nine. uncle rik's adventures. uncle rik seated in mr wright's drawing-room; mr wright in an easy-chair near the window; mrs wright--with much of the lustre gone out of her fine eyes--lying languidly on the sofa; madge mayland at work on some incomprehensible piece of netting beside her aunt,--all in deep mourning. uncle rik has just opened a telegram, at which he stares, open eyed and mouthed, without speaking, while his ruddy cheeks grow pale. "not bad news, i trust, brother," said poor mrs wright, to whom the worst news had been conveyed when she heard of the wreck of the triton. nothing could exceed that, she felt, in bitterness. "what is it, rik?" said mr wright, anxiously. "oh! nothing--nothing. that is to say, not bad news, certainly, but amazing news. boh! i'm a fool." he stopped short after this complimentary assertion, for uncle rik had somewhere read or heard that joy can kill, and he feared to become an accomplice in a murder. "come, rik, don't keep us in suspense," said his brother, rising; "something _has_ happened." "o yes, something has indeed happened," cried rik, "for this telegram is from sam shipton." "then robin is alive!" cried mrs wright, leaping up, while madge turned perfectly white. "no--that is to say--yes--it may be so--of course _must_ be so--for,-bah! what an ass i am! listen." he proceeded to read sam's telegram, while mrs wright covered her face with her hands and sank trembling on the sofa. the telegram having suffered rather severe mutilation at the hands of the foreigners by whom it was transmitted, conveyed a very confusing idea of the facts that were intended, but the puzzling over it by the whole party, and the gradual, though not perfect, elucidation of its meaning, had perhaps the effect of softening the joyful intelligence to a bearable extent. "now," said uncle rik, while the perspiration of mental effort and anxiety stood on his bald forehead, "this is the outcome of it all. sam clearly says `all well,' which means, of course, that robin is alive-thank god for that! then he refers to a previous telegram, which, of course, must be lost, for it hasn't come to hand. bah! i wonder the nasty things ever do come to hand. anyhow, that telegram must have been meant to announce their safe arrival at bombay, undoubtedly." "of course--i see it now," said mrs wright, with a deep sigh. "of course," echoed rik. "then there's some queer reference to a ship and a fiery queen, and a stamps and a shunks, and a gibson, and a thief, and three bags, and the port of london, which of course means london, and a public-house named, apparently, torture--" "tartar, i think, uncle," said madge. "well, tartar if you like, it's much the same if you catch him. and it winds up with a girl--which is not surprisin'--who is to be expectorated--" "expected, surely," said madge, with a rather hysterical laugh, for the conflicting feelings within her tended rather to tears. "so be it, madge--expected, with an unreadable name beginning with an l,--and that's all; and a pretty penny he must have paid to send us such a lot o' rubbish." "it has brought the oil of gladness to our hearts, brother," said mr wright, "and is worth its cost. but, now, what do you intend to do?" "do!" exclaimed rik, who was never happier than when he could explode his feelings in action. "i'll go this moment to the port of london, find out the owners of the fiery queen, make particular inquiries about the stampses, shunkses, and gibsons, visit torture public-houses--though they're all that, more or less--and see if i can hear anything about girls to be expectorated, with names beginning with l. there--these are my sailing directions, so--up anchor and away!" uncle rik immediately obeyed his own commands, and spent the remainder of that day in what he styled cruising. and he cruised to some purpose, for although he failed to obtain any information as to the girl, he discovered the owners of the fairy--not fiery--queen, who said that she was expected home in a few weeks, but that they knew nothing whatever about the rather remarkable names which he submitted for their consideration. with this amount of information he was fain to rest content, and returned in an elevated state of mind to his brother's house. some weeks after these events, the wright family was again seated round the social board, as uncle rik called it, when two visitors were announced. the social meal happening to be tea, and the drawing-room at that time in dishabille, owing to carpet disturbances, the visitors were shown into the dining-room--a lady, accompanied by a pretty little girl. "excuse my calling at an unusual hour," said the lady, "but i trust the occasion of my visit will be a sufficient excuse. i have just arrived from bombay, and hasten to present a letter from your son, and to deliver over my interesting charge, this dear child, letta langley, whom--" "the expectorated girl!" shouted uncle rik, leaping up, "begins with an l,--two l's indeed. bah, i'm an idiot! excuse my excitement, madam-pray go on." slightly surprised, but more amused, the lady went on to tell all she knew about robin and his friends, while the happy mother read snatches of robin's letter through her tears, and mr wright and madge plied the lady with questions and tea, and letta, taking at once to uncle rik, ecstatified, amazed and horrified that retired sea-captain with her charming earnest little ways, her wonderful experiences, and her intimate acquaintance with pirates and their habits. a letter from robin to his mother, and another from sam to mr wright, arrived next morning, and proved to be those which had been written immediately after their landing at bombay, and had been posted, so the writers thought, at the time their first telegram was despatched. but the letters had been given to stumps to post, and stumps was not blessed with a good memory, which may account for the delay in transmission. these letters corroborated all the lady had said. thus was letta formally installed in the wright family, and uncle rik solemnly charged himself with the discovery of her mother! "depend upon it, my dear," he said, with an amount of self-sufficient assurance and indomitable resolution that carried sweet consolation to the child's heart, "that i'll find your mother if she's above ground, though the findin' of her should cost me the whole of my fortune and the remainder of my life." and nobly did rik redeem his promise. he obtained special introduction to the british museum, consulted every directory in existence, hunted up every widow of the name of langley in the kingdom, and found the right one at last, not three miles distant from his own door in london. captain rik, it must be known, had a room in london furnished like a cabin, which he was wont to refer to as his "ship" and his "bunk," but he paid that retreat only occasional visits, finding it more agreeable to live with his brother. it was a fine sabbath morning when rik took letta's hand and led her into the presence of her mother. he would not let himself be announced, but pushed the child into the drawing-room and shut the door. with similar delicacy of feeling we now draw a curtain over the meeting of the mother and the long-lost child. "it's almost too much for me, tough old sea-dog though i am, this perpetual cruisin' about after strange runaway craft," said uncle rik, as he and letta walked hand in hand along the streets one day some weeks later. "here have i been beatin' about for i don't know how long, and i'm only in the middle of it yet. we expect the fairy queen in port to-night or to-morrow." "but you won't hurt poor stumps when you catch him, will you?" pleaded letta, looking earnestly up into her companion's jovial face. "he was very nice and kind to me, you know, on pirate island." "no, i'll not hurt him, little old woman," said rik. "indeed, i don't know yet for certain that stumps _is_ a thief; it may be shunks or it may be gibson, you see, who is the thief. however, we'll find out before long. now then, good-bye, i'll be back soon." he shook hands with letta at mr wright's house, she and her mother having agreed to reside there until robin's return home. wending his way through the streets until he reached one of the great arteries of the metropolis, he got into a 'bus and soon found himself on the banks of the thames. arrived at the docks, one of the first vessels his eyes fell on was the fairy queen. going on board, the first man he met was the captain, to whom he said, touching his hat-"excuse me, captain; may i ask if you have a man in your crew named stumps?" "no, sir, no such name on my books." "nor one named shunks?" "no, not even shunks," replied the captain, with a sternly-humorous look, as if he thought the visitor were jesting. "nor gibson?" continued rik. "yes, i've got one named gibson. what d'ye want with him?" "well, i have reason to believe that he is--or was--a friend of a friend of mine, and i should like to see him." "oh! indeed," responded the captain, regarding his visitor with a doubtful look. "well, gibson has just got leave to go ashore, and i heard him say to one of his mates he was going to the tartar public-house, so you'll see him there, probably, for he is not invisible or'narily. but i don't know where the tartar is." "but i know," returned captain rik; "thank you. i'll go seek him there." stumps sat alone in one of the boxes of the tartar public-house, which at that hour chanced to be nearly empty. his face was buried in his hands, and a pot of untasted beer stood at his elbow. poor stumps! conscience had been remarkably busy with him on the voyage home. he would have given worlds to have got back to bombay, return the ill-gotten bags, and confess his guilt, but it was too late--too late. there is something very awful in these words, too late! we read of and hear them often, and we use them sometimes, lightly it may be, but it is only when they can be used by ourselves with reference to something very serious, that we have a glimmering of their terrible significance. there is a proverb, "it is never too late to mend," which is misleading. when the dream of life is over, and the doom is fixed, it _is_ too late to mend. no doubt the proverb is meant to refer to our condition while this life lasts, but even here it is misleading. when the murderer withdraws the knife and gazes, it may be, horror-struck at the expressionless face of his victim, it is too late. he cannot mend the severed thread of life. when the reckless drunkard draws near the end of his career, and looks in the mirror, and starts to see the wreck of his former self, it is too late. health will never more return. not too late, blessed be god, for the salvation of the soul, but too late for the recovery of all that was held dear in the life of earth. yes, stumps had many a time while on the sea muttered to himself, "too late!" he did so once again in that low public-house near the docks. uncle rik overheard him, and a feeling of profound pity arose within him. "i beg pardon," he said, and at the first word stumps looked quickly, almost fiercely, up, "your name, i believe, is gibson." "no, it isn't--i, that is to say--well, yes it is. sailors has got aliases, you know, sometimes. what d'ye want wi' me?" "you were acquainted in bombay," resumed captain wright, very quietly, as he sat down opposite to stumps, "with a young man named wright--robin wright?" stumps's face became deadly pale. "ah! i see you were," resumed the captain; "and you and he had something to do, now, with bags of some sort?" the captain was, as the reader knows, profoundly ignorant of everything connected with the bags except their existence, but he had his suspicions, and thought this a rather knowing way of inducing stumps to commit himself. his surprise, then, may be imagined when stumps, instead of replying, leaped up and dashed wildly out of the room, overturning the pot of beer upon captain rik's legs. stumps shot like an arrow past the landlord, a retired pugilist, who chanced to be in the doorway. captain rik, recovering, darted after him, but was arrested by the landlord. "not quite so fast, old gen'l'man! as you've had some of your mate's beer, you'd better pay for it." "let me go!--stop him!" cried the captain, struggling. as well might he have struggled in the grasp of hercules. his reason asserted itself the instant the fugitive was out of sight. he silently paid for the beer, went back to the fairy queen to inform the captain that his man gibson was a thief--to which the captain replied that it was very probable, but that it was no business of his--and then wandered sadly back to tell the wright family how gibson, _alias_ stumps, _alias_ shunks, had been found and lost. chapter thirty. the wright family reunited, and sam becomes highly electrical. that much-abused and oft-neglected meal called tea had always been a scene of great festivity and good-fellowship in the wright family. circumstances, uncontrollable of course, had from the beginning necessitated a dinner at one o'clock, so that they assembled round the family board at six each evening, in a hungry and happy frame of body and mind, (which late diners would envy if they understood it), with the prospect of an evening--not bed--before them. in the earlier years of the family, the meal had been, so to speak, a riotous one, for both robin and madge had uncontrollable spirits, with tendencies to drop spoons on the floor, and overturn jugs of milk on the table. later on, the meal became a jolly one, and, still later, a chatty one--especially after uncle rik and cousin sam began to be frequent guests. but never in all the experience of the family had the favourite meal been so jolly, so prolific of spoony and porcelain accidents, so chatty, and so generally riotous, as it was on a certain evening in june of the year 1870, shortly after the return home of robin and his companions. besides the original wright family, consisting of father, mother, robin, and madge, there were assembled uncle rik, sam shipton, mrs langley, letta, and--no--not jim slagg. the circle was unavoidably incomplete, for jim had a mother, and jim had said with indignant emphasis, "did they suppose all the teas an' dinners an' suppers, to say nothin' o' breakfasts, an' mess-mates an' chums an' friends, crammed and jammed into one enormous mass temptation, would indooce him to delay his return to that old lady for the smallest fraction of an hour?" no, jim slagg was not at the table, but the household cat was under it, and the demoralising attentions that creature received on that occasion went far to undo the careful training of previous years. the occasion of the gathering was not simple. it was compound. first, it was in commemoration of robin's birthday; second, it was to celebrate the appointment of sam shipton to an influential position on the electrical staff of the telegraph construction and maintenance company, and sam's engagement to marjory mayland; third, to celebrate the appointment of robin wright to a sufficiently lucrative and hopeful post under sam; and, lastly, to enjoy the passing hour. "ladies and gentlemen," said uncle rik, getting on his feet with some difficulty, when the tea, toast, muffins, eggs, and other fare had blunted the appetites, "i rise to propose the toast of the evening, and mark you, i don't mean to use any butter with this toast," (_hear_, from sam), "unless i'm egged on," (_oh_!), "to do it--so i charge you to charge your cups with tea, since we're not allowed grog in this tee-total ship--though i'm free to confess that i go in with you there, for i've long since given, up the use o' that pernicious though pleasant beverage, takin' it always neat, now, in the form of cold water, varied occasionally with hot tea and coffee. my toast, ladies and gentlemen, is rob--" (rik put his hand to his throat to ease off his necktie), "is robin wright, whom i've known, off an' on, as a babby, boy, an' man, almost ever since that night--now twenty years ago, more or less--when he was launched upon the sea in thunder, lightning, and in rain. i've known him, i say--ever since--off an' on--and i'm bound to say that--" the captain paused. he had meant to be funny, but the occasion proved too much for him. "bless you, robin, my lad," he gasped, suddenly stretching his large hand across the table and grasping that of his nephew, which was quickly extended. after shaking it with intense vigour he sat promptly down and blew his nose. the thunders of applause which burst from sam and mr wright were joined in even by the ladies, who, in the excess of their sympathy, made use of knife-handles and spoons with such manly vigour that several pieces of crockery went "by the board," as the captain himself remarked, and the household cat became positively electrified and negatively mad,-inasmuch as it was repelled by the horrors around, and denied itself the remaining pleasure of the tea-table by flying wildly from the room. of course, robin attempted a reply, but was equally unsuccessful in expressing his real sentiments, or the true state of his feelings, but uncle rik came to the rescue by turning sharply on sam and demanding-"do you really mean to tell me, sir, that, after all your experience, you still believe in telegraphs and steamboats?" sam promptly asserted that he really did mean that. "of course," returned the captain, "you can't help believing in their existence--for facts are facts--but are you so soft, so unphilosophical, so idiotical as to believe in their continuance? that's the point, lad--their continuance. are you not aware that, in course o' time, rust they must--" "an' then they'll bu'st," interpolated robin. "hee! hee! ha!" giggled letta, who, during all this time, had been gazing with sparkling eyes and parted lips, from one speaker to another, utterly forgetful of, and therefore thoroughly enjoying, her own existence. "yes, then they'll bu'st," repeated rik, with an approving nod at robin; "you're right, my boy, and the sooner they do it the better, for i'm quite sick of their flashings and crashings." "i rather suspect, sam," said mr wright, "that the gentlemen with whom you dined the other day would not agree with uncle rik." "whom do you refer to, george?" asked mrs wright. "has he not yet told you of the grand `inaugural fete,' as they call it, that was given at the house of mr fender, chairman of the telegraph construction and maintenance company, to celebrate the opening of direct submarine telegraphic communication with india?" "not a word," replied mrs wright, looking at sam. "you never mentioned it to _me_," said madge, with a reproachful glance in the same direction. "because, madge, we have been so busy in talking about something else," said sam, "that i really forgot all about it." "do tell us about it now," said mrs langley, who, like her daughter, had been listening in silence up to this point. "a deal o' rubbish was spoken, i daresay," observed the captain, commencing to another muffin, and demanding more tea. "a deal of something was spoken, at all events," said sam, "and what is more to the point, an amazing deal was done. come, before speaking about it, let me propose a toast--success to batteries and boilers!" "amen to that!" said robin, with enthusiasm. "if they deserve it," said the captain, with caution. the toast having been drunk with all the honours, sam began by saying that the fete was a great occasion, and included brilliant company. "there were present, of course," he said, "nearly all the great electrical and engineering lights of the day, also the prince of wales and the duke of cambridge, with a lot of aristocrats, whom it is not necessary to mention in the presence of a democratic sea-dog like uncle rik." "don't yaw about to defame me, but keep to your course, sam." "well, you have no idea what an amount of interest and enthusiasm the affair created. you all know, of course, that the indian cable, which robin and i had a hand in laying, is now connected with the lines that pass between suez, alexandria, malta, gibraltar, lisbon, and england; and the company assembled at mr pender's house witnessed the sending of the first messages direct from london to bombay; and how long, do you think, it took to send the first message, and receive a reply?--only five minutes!" "you don't mean it, sam!" exclaimed rik, getting excited, in spite of his professed unbelief. "indeed i do," replied sam, warming with his subject. "i tell you the sober truth, however difficult it may be for you to believe it. you may see it in the papers of the 24th or 25th, i suppose. here is my note-book, in which i jotted down the most interesting points. "the proceedings of the evening were opened by the managing director in london sending a telegram to the manager at bombay. "`_how are you all_?' was the brief first telegram by sir james anderson. `_all well_,' was the briefer first reply from bombay. the question fled from london at 9:18 exactly--i had my watch in my hand at the time--and the answer came back at 9:23--just five minutes. i can tell you it was hard to believe that the whole thing was not a practical joke. in fact, the message and reply were almost instantaneous, the five minutes being chiefly occupied in manipulating the instruments at either end. the second message between the same parties occupied the same time. after that sir bartle frere sent a telegram to sir seymour fitzgerald, the governor of bombay, as follows:--`_sir bartle frere wishes health and prosperity to all old friends in bombay_.' this was received by the company's superintendent at bombay, and the acknowledgment of its receipt sent back in four minutes and fifty seconds! but the reply from the governor, `_your old friend returns your good wishes_,' did not come to us for thirty-six minutes, because the message had to be sent to the governor's house, and it found his excellency in bed. "next, a message was sent by lady mayo in london to lord mayo at simla, which, with the acknowledgment of it, occupied 15 minutes in transmission. of course time was lost in some cases, because the persons telegraphed to were not on the spot at the moment. the prince of wales telegraphed to the viceroy of india, `_i congratulate your excellency on england and india being now connected by a submarine cable. i feel assured this grand achievement will prove of immense benefit to the welfare of the empire. its success is thus matter_ _of imperial interest_,' which telegram passed out, and the acknowledgment of its receipt in india was returned to london, all within eleven minutes, but, as in the former case, the viceroy was in bed, so that his reply was not received till forty-five minutes had elapsed. had the viceroy been at the indian end of the wire, he and the prince could have conversed at an average rate of five minutes a sentence. "many other messages were sent to and fro," continued sam, turning over the leaves of his note-book, "not only from london to india, but to each of the intermediate stations on the cable line, so that we had direct intercourse that night with the king of portugal, the governors of gibraltar, malta, and aden, and the khedive of egypt. but that was not all. we put the old and the new world into communication, so that the `press of india sent salaam to the press of america.' sir james anderson also telegraphed to cyrus w. field, esquire, the father of submarine telegraphy in my estimation," (_hear, hear_, from robin), "and he sent a reply, which began, `_your message of this evening received by me before five o'clock this afternoon_.' mark that, captain rik, the message received _before_ it was sent, so to speak!" "ay, ay, lad--i know--difference of longitude,--fire away." "well, i have fired away most of my ammunition now," returned sam, "and if you don't haul down your colours, it must be because you have nailed them to the mast and are blind to reason. i may add, however, that the viceroy of india sent a telegram to the president of the united states, to which he got a reply in seven hours and forty minutes, but the slowness of this message was accounted for by the fact of accidental and partly unavoidable delay in transmission both in washington and london. at 1:30 a.m. of the 24th the traffic of the line became pressing, and all complimentary messages ceased with one from bombay, which said, `sun just risen; delightfully cool; raining.'" "doesn't it seem as if the baron monkhausen's tales were possible after all?" remarked mrs wright, looking as if her mind had got slightly confused. "the baron's tales are mere child's-play, mother," said robin, "to the grand facts of electricity." "that's so, robin," said sam, still turning over the leaves of his note-book, "and we had some magnificent experiments or illustrations at the fete, which go far to prove the truth of your remark--experiments which were so beautiful that they would have made the eyes of letta sparkle even more gorgeously than they are doing at present, if she had seen them." letta blushed, returned to self-consciousness for a moment, looked down, laughed, looked up as sam proceeded, and soon again forgot herself in a fixed and earnest gaze. "the two telegraph instruments communicating with india and america, which stood on two tables, side by side, in mr pender's house, were supplied by two batteries in the basement of the building. eighty cells of daniel's battery were used upon the penzance circuit for india, and 100 cells on the brest circuit for america. the ordinary water-pipes of the house served to connect the batteries with the earth, so as to enable them to pump their electricity from that inexhaustible reservoir." "i was not aware that electricity had to be pumped up through pipes like water," interrupted mrs wright, on whose mild countenance a complication of puzzled expressions was gradually gathering. "it is not so pumped up," said sam. "the pipes were used, not because they were pipes, but because they were metal, and therefore good conductors." "but you haven't told us about the beautiful experiments yet," murmured letta, a little impatiently. "i'm coming to them, little one," said sam. "one battery exhibited the power as well as the beauty of that mysterious force which we call electricity. it was the large grove battery. a current passed from it to copper wires, in a certain manner, produced a dazzling green light, and the copper melted like wax. with silver a still brighter and purer green flame was the result. with platinum an intense white light was given off, and the molten metal fell in globules of exceeding brilliancy. with iron lovely coruscations were exhibited, the boiling vapour flying and burning in all directions; and a platinum wire three feet long was in an instant melted into thousands of minute globules. all this showed the power of electricity to produce intense heat when resistance is opposed to its passage." "it is remarkably human-like in that respect," said captain rik, in an under-tone. "then its power to produce magnetism," continued sam, "was shown by lord lindsay's huge electro-magnet. this magnet, you must know, is nothing but a bit of ordinary metal until it is electrified, when it becomes a most powerful magnet. but the instant the current is cut off from it, it ceases to be a magnet. if you understood much about electricity," said sam, looking round on his rapt audience, "i might tell you that it is upon this power of making a piece of iron a magnet or not at pleasure, that depend the morse and digne telegraph instruments; but as you don't understand, i won't perplex you further. well, when a piece of sheet copper was passed between the poles of lord lindsay's giant magnet, it was as difficult to move as if it had been sticking in cheese--though it was in reality touching nothing!--influenced only by attraction." ("that beats your power over sam, madge," whispered robin. "no it doesn't," whispered madge in reply.) "then, one most beautiful experiment i could not hope to get you to understand, but its result was, that a ten-gallon glass jar, coated inside and out with perforated squares of tinfoil, was filled with tens of thousands of brilliant sparks, which produced so much noise as completely to drown the voices of those who described the experiment. a knowledge of these and other deep things, and of the laws that govern them, has enabled sir william thomson and mr cromwell f. varley to expedite the transmission of messages through very long submarine cables in an enormous degree. then the aurora borealis was illustrated by a large long exhausted tube--" "i say, sam," interrupted rik, "don't you think there's just a possibility of our becoming a large long-exhausted company if you don't bring this interesting lecture to a close?" "shame! shame! uncle rik," cried robin. as the rest of the company sided with him, the captain had to give way, and sam went on. "i won't try your patience much longer; in fact i have nearly come to an end. in this long exhausted tube, ten feet in length and three inches in diameter, a brilliant and beautiful crimson stream was produced, by means of an induction coil. in short, the occasion and, the proceedings altogether, made it the most interesting evening i have ever spent in my life, e-except--" sam paused abruptly, and looked at madge. madge blushed and looked down under the table,--presumably for the cat,--and the rest of the company burst into an uproarious fit of laughter, in which condition we will leave them and convey the reader to a very different though not less interesting scene. chapter thirty one. describes a happy home and a happier meeting. in a small wayside cottage in the outskirts of one of those picturesque villages which surround london, an old woman sat at the head of a small deal table, with a black teapot, a brown sugar-basin, a yellow milk jug, and a cracked tea-cup before her. at the foot of the same table sat a young man, with a large knife in one hand, a huge loaf of bread in the other, and a mass of yellow butter in a blue plate in front of him. the young man was james slagg; the old woman was his mother. jim had no brothers or sisters, and his father chanced to be absent at market, so he had the "old lady" all to himself. "well, well, jim," said mrs slagg, with a loving look at her son's flushed face, "you've told me a heap o' wonderful tales about telegrumphs, an' tigers, an' electricity an' what not. if you was as great a liar as you was used to be, jim, i tell 'ee plain, lad, i wouldn't believe one word on it. but you're a better boy than you was, jim, an' i do believe you--indeed i do, though i must confess that some on it is hard to swallow." "thank 'ee, mother," said jim, with a pleasant nod, as he cut an enormous slice from the loaf, trowelled upon it a mass of the yellow butter, and pushed in his cup for more tea. "it was good of ye, jim," said the old woman, "to leave all yer fine friends and come straight away here to see your mother." "good o' me!" ejaculated jim, with his mouth full--too full, we might say--"what goodness is there in a feller goin' _home_, eh? who's finer, i should like to know, than a feller's mother?" "well, you _are_ a good boy, jim," said the old woman, glancing at a superannuated clock, which told of the moments in loud, almost absurd solemnity; "but if you don't stop talkin' and go on wi' your eatin', you'll lose the train." "true, mother. time and tide, they say, wait for no man; but trains is wuss than time or tide, they won't even wait for a woman." "but why go at all to-day, jim; won't to-morrow do?" "no, mother, it won't do. i didn't mean to tell 'ee till i came back, for fear it should be a mistake; but i can't keep nothin' from you, old lady, so i may as well ease my mind before i go. the fact is, i've just heard of the whereabouts of john shanks--stumps, you know--my old mate, that i've told you bolted with all our treasure from bombay. ah! mother, if i'd only brought that treasure home wi' me, it's a lady you'd have bin to-day. i had all sorts o' plans for you--a coach an' six was--" "never mind your plans, jim, but tell me about poor stumps." "well, mother, a tramp came past here, an' had a bit of a talk wi' me yesterday. you know i ginerally have a bit of a chat wi' tramps now, ever since that city missionary--god bless him--pulled me up at the docks, an' began talkin' to me about my soul. well, that tramp came here early this mornin', sayin' he'd bin in a poor woman's house in the city, where there was a man dyin' in a corner. while he was talkin' with some o' the people there he chanced to mention my name, an' observed that the dyin' man got excited when he heard it, and called to the tramp and asked him about me, and then begged him, for love and for money, which he offered him, to come and fetch me to him as fast as he could, sayin' that his name was stumps, and he knew me. so, you see, as the next train is the first that--you needn't look at the clock so often, old lady; it's full ten minutes yet, and i'll back my legs to do it in three." "don't forget to take your bible wi' you, dear boy." jim slagg rose with a pleasant nod, slapped the breast of his coat, on which the oblong form of a small book in the pocket could be traced, said "good-day, mother," and left the cottage. it was not long before he stood in the dark passage which led to the room described to him by the tramp. the old woman who rented it gave him her unasked opinion of her lodger before admitting him. "you've got no notion, sir, what a strange character that young man is." "o yes, i have; let me see him," said slagg. "but, sir," continued the landlady, detaining him, "you must be careful, for he ain't hisself quite. not that he's ever done anythink wiolent to me, poor young man, but he's strong in his fits, an' he raves terribly." "has no doctor bin to see him?" asked slagg. "no; he won't let me send for one. he says it's o' no use, an' he couldn't afford to pay for one. an' oh! you've no notion what a miser that poor young man is. he must have plenty of money, for the box as he takes it out on--an' it's at his head he keeps it, day and night, ginerally holdin' it with one hand--seems full o' money, for it's wonderful heavy. i could see that when he brought it here, an' there's no clo'es in it, that i can see, when he opens it, to get at the few pence he wants now an' again. an' he starves hisself, an' says he's not fit to live, an' calls hisself sitch awful names, an'--" "well, well, show me his room," said slagg, with as much decision in his tone as compelled immediate obedience. in the corner of a small room, on a truckle-bed, with scant bedding, lay the emaciated form of john shanks, _alias_ stumps, _alias_ james gibson. he had raised himself on one elbow, and was gazing with great lustrous invalid eyes at the door, when his old comrade entered, for he had been watching, and heard the first sound of footsteps in the passage. "oh! jim slagg," he cried, extending a hand which bore strong resemblance to a claw, it was so thin. "come to me, jim, how i've wished an' longed, an'--" he stopped and burst into tears, for he was very weak, poor fellow, and even strong men weep when their strength is brought low. "come now, stumps," said slagg, in a serious voice, as he sat down on the bed, put an arm round his old comrade's thin shoulders, and made him lie down, "if you go to excite yourself like that, i'll--i'll--quit the room, an' i won't come back for an hour or more." "no! o no!" exclaimed the sick man; clutching slagg's arm with a trembling grip, "don't leave me, jim--don't, don't! i shall die if you do! i'm dyin' anyhow, but it will kill me quicker if you go." "well, i won't go. there, keep quiet, my poor old stumps." "yes, that's it--that's it--i like to hear the old name," murmured the sick man, closing his eyes. "say it again, jim--say it again." "stumps," said slagg, getting down on his knees, the better to arrange and grasp his former comrade, "don't be a fool now, but listen. i have come to look after you, so make your mind easy." "but i've been such a beast to you, jim; it was so awful shabby," cried stumps, rousing himself again, "and i've been _so_ sorry ever since. you can't think how sorry. i have repented, jim, if ever a man did. an' i'd have come back and confessed long ago, if i'd had the chance, but i can get no rest--no peace. i've never spent a rap of it, jim, except what i couldn't help--for you know, jim, body an' soul wouldn't stick together without a little o' suthin' to eat an' drink; an' when i was ill i couldn't work, you know. see, it's all here--all here--except what little--" he stopped abruptly, having raised himself to open the lid of the box at his elbow, but his strength failed, and he sank on the pillow with a groan. "stumps," said slagg, "come, old boy, you an' me will have a bit of prayer together." the sick man opened his great eyes in astonishment. it was so unlike his old friend's brusque rollicking character to propose prayer, that he fancied he must be dreaming, and the possibility of the visit turning out unreal, induced an expression of distress on his haggard countenance. on being ordered, however, in the peremptory and familiar tones of former days, to shut his eyes, he felt reassured and became calm, while his friend prayed for him. it was not a set or formal prayer by any means. it sounded strangely like a man asking a friend, in commonplace terms, but _very_ earnestly, to give him what he stood in great need of; and what jim asked for was the salvation of his friend's soul and his restoration to health. the petition, therefore, was remarkably brief, yet full of reverence, for jim, though naturally blunt and straightforward, felt that he was addressing the great and blessed god and saviour, who had so recently rescued his own soul. after saying "amen!" which the sick man echoed, slagg pulled out his bible and read through the fourteenth chapter of john's gospel, commenting quietly as he went along, while his comrade listened with intense earnestness. at the first verse jim paused and said, "this wasn't written to holy and sinless men. `let not your heart be troubled,' was said to the disciples, one o' them bein' peter, the man who was to deny jesus three times with oaths and curses, and then forsake him. the lord came to save _sinners_. it would be a poor look-out for you, stumps, if you thought yourself a good man." "but i don't--oh! i don't, and you _know_ i don't!" exclaimed the sick man vehemently. "then the lord says, `let not your heart be troubled,' and tells you to believe in god and himself." at the second verse slagg remarked that it would be a sad, sad thing if the mansion prepared, among the many mansions, for his friend were to be left empty. "but how am i to get to it, jim; how am i ever to find the way?" "just what the disciple named thomas asked--an' he _was_ a very doubting follower of jesus, like too many of us. the master said to him what he says to you and me, `_i_ am the way and the truth and the life; no one cometh unto the father but by _me_.'" at the ninth verse the sailor-missionary said, "jesus is god, you see, so we're safe to trust him," and, at the thirteenth verse, "whatsoever ye shall ask in my name that will i do," he said. "now, we have asked jesus to save you, and he will do it, by his holy spirit, as he has saved me--has saved millions in time past, and will save millions more in time to come. why, you see, in the sixteenth verse he tells you he will pray the father to send you a comforter, who will stay with you for ever. has he not reason then for beginnin' with `let not your heart be troubled'? and that same comforter, the holy spirit, is to `teach us all things,' so, you see, every difficulty is taken out of our way. `arise, let us go hence.' now, my old messmate, i have arisen. will you not arise and go with me, both of us looking unto jesus?" "i _will_--god helping me!" cried the sick man, literally arising from his couch and raising both arms to heaven. "there, now--thank the lord; but you must lie down again and keep quiet," said jim, gently and kindly forcing his friend backward. stumps did not resist. he closed his eyes, and the restful feeling that had suddenly arisen in his heart when he said the momentous words, "_i will_," coupled with exhaustion, resulted almost instantaneously in a quiet slumber. "when did he eat last?" asked slagg of the old woman, in a low voice, for he had been taught, or had learned intuitively, that few things are more disheartening in a sick-room than a whisper. "this morning he breakfasted at six, but it was on'y a hap'orth o' bread and a drink o' cold water." "and how dare you starve your lodger in that way?" demanded slagg, leading the astonished woman into the passage and closing the door. "don't you know that starving a man is equal to murdering him, and that you'll be liable to be hung if he dies? there, take this half-sov, and be off to the nearest shop, an' buy--let me see--sassengers and steaks and--oh, _you_ know better than me what a sick man wants. get along with you, and be back sharp. stay! where are your matches? ah! any coals? good, now away with you and fetch a doctor too, else i'll fetch a policeman, you bolster of bones." thus ordered, threatened, and adjured, the landlady, half-amused, and more than half-frightened at the visitor's gushing energy, hurried from the house, while slagg returned to the miserable room, and did his best to render it less miserable by kindling a splendid fire. it is, perhaps, unnecessary to add, that a breakfast soon filled that room with delicious odour, such as had not been felt in that lowly neighbourhood for many years; that stumps, after a refreshing sleep, partook of the feast with relish; that jim slagg also partook of it--of most of it, indeed--and enjoyed it to the full; that the old landlady was invited to "fall to," and did fall to with alacrity; that the domestic cat also managed to fall to, surreptitiously, without invitation, and not the less enjoyably on that account; that a miserable semi-featherless but unconquerable canary in a cage in the window took care that it was not forgotten; and that several street boys, smelling the viands from afar, came round the outer door, became clamorous, and were not sent empty away. it may, however, be advisable to add, that stumps did not die; that joy of heart, good feeding, and--perhaps--the doctor, brought him round, and that he afterwards went to the country to spend the period of convalescence in the cottage by the roadside, with slagg's mother. chapter thirty two. in which the story finds a "fault," and the electrical current ends. now, it is not in the nature of things that man, in his present state, should attain to full satisfaction. he may, indeed he should, attain to contentment, but as long as there are higher and better things within his reach, he must of necessity remain in some degree unsatisfied. some such idea must have been passing through robin wright's brain one fine morning, as he slowly paced the deck of a small schooner with his friend sam shipton, for he suddenly broke a prolonged silence with the following remark:-"i don't know how it is, sam, but although i am surrounded with everything that should make a fellow happy, i'm--i'm _not_ happy. in fact, i'm as miserable as it is possible to be!" "come now, robin, don't exaggerate," said sam in a remonstrative tone. "hyperbole is very objectionable, especially in young men. you know that if you were tied to a huge gridiron over a slow fire, you would be more miserable than you are at present." robin smiled and admitted the truth of this, but nevertheless reiterated his assertion that he was decidedly unhappy. this conversation, we may remark, took place on board of sam shipton's yacht, off the west coast of scotland, several years after the events narrated in the previous chapter. "well, now, it is strange," said sam, with an earnestly sympathetic air and tone of voice, but with the faintest possible twinkle in the extreme corner of one of his eyes. "let me see--everything, as you justly remark, ought to make you happy here. the weather, to begin with-people always begin with the weather, you know--is splendid, though there is a thundery look about the horizon to the west'ard. then our yacht, the gleam, is a perfect duck, both as to her sea-going and sailing qualities, and captain james slagg is a perfect seaman, while stumps is a superlative steward and cook. our time is our own, and the world before us where to choose. then, as to our companionship, what female society could be more agreeable than that of my wife madge, and her bosom friend letta, who, since she has grown up, has become one of the most beautiful, fascinating, charming,--but why go on, when, in the language of the poet, `adequate words is wantin'!' and letta's mother is second only to herself. then as to the men, could there be found anywhere finer fellows than uncle rik and ebenezer smith, and frank hedley--to say nothing of myself and our splendid little boy sammy? i can't understand it, robin. you're not ill, are you?" "ill? no. never was better in my life." "well, then, what is it? be confidential, my boy. the witching hour of sunrise is fitted for confidential communications. you're not in love, are--" "hush, sam! the skylight is open. come forward to the bows. yes, sam, i _am_ in love." "well, robin, i can't pretend ignorance, for i know it--at least i have seen it." "seen it!" echoed robin, "how is that? i have never by word or look given the slightest indication to any one, of the state of my feelings." "true, robin, as regards words, but there are other modes of indication, as must be well-known to a celebrated electrician like yourself. the fact is, my dear boy, that you and letta have been rubbing your intellects together for so many years, that you have electrified each other--the one positively, the other negatively; and even a manx cat with an absent mind and no tail could hardly fail to observe the telegraphic communication which you have established by means of that admirable duplex instrument, a pair of eyes." "you distress me very much, sam," returned robin, seriously. "i assure you i have never consciously done anything of the sort, and i have never opened my lips to letta on the subject--i dare not." "i believe you as to your consciousness; but, to be serious, robin, why should being in love make you miserable?" "because it makes me doubt whether letta cares for me." "nonsense, robin. take my advice, put an end to your doubts, and make sure of your ground by taking heart and proposing to letta." "i dare not, sam. it is all very well for a fine manly fellow like you to give such advice, but i am such a poor, miserable sort of--" "hallo, fasser!" cried a merry voice at that moment, "how red de sun am!" the owner of the voice--a mere chip of a child, in perfect miniature middy costume--ran up to its father and was hoisted on his shoulder. "yes, the sun is very red, like your own face, sammy, my boy, to say nothing of cousin robin's. where is mamma?" the question was answered by mamma herself, our old friend madge mayland, coming up the companion-hatch,--tall, dark, beautiful, like the spirit of departed night. she was followed by letta,--graceful, fair, sunny, like the spirit of the coming morn. "sunbeam, ahoy!" came up through the cabin skylight at that moment, like the sonorous voice of neptune. "well, grunkle rik, w'at is it?" shouted sammy, in silvery tones, from his father's shoulder. "grunkle" was the outcome of various efforts made to teach sammy to call the old captain grand-uncle. "where have you stowed away my hair-brush, you rascal?" cried the voice of thunder. "it's under my bunk, grunkle; i was bracking yous boots with it." the thunder subsided in tempestuous mutterings, and sammy, feeling that he had begun the day well, struggled out of his father's arms and went careering round the deck into every possible position of danger. he kept them all lively until stumps caught him and extinguished him, for a time, with breakfast. "uncle rik," said sam, while that meal was being discussed in the snuggest little cabin that could be imagined, "did you hear of the extraordinary manner in which a whale was caught by a telegraph cable lately?" "no, i didn't, sam, an' what's more, i wouldn't believe it if i did." "it is true, nevertheless," said sam, breaking his fifth egg--sea breezes being appetising. "how did it happen, sam?" asked madge. "in a very curious manner madge. it will amuse letta, for i know she takes a deep interest in cables." "indeed it will," said letta, who was the soul of earnest simplicity; "i delight in electric cables." robin looked at letta, and wished that he were an electric cable! "it happened to the persian gulf cable, quite recently," continued sam, addressing himself to letta. "the cable between kurrachee and gwadur, a distance of 300 miles, suddenly failed one evening. now, you must know that electrical science has advanced with such rapid strides of late, that we have the power to discover pretty nearly the exact position of a fault in a cable. of course i cannot expect a young lady to understand the technical details of the mode, in which this is done, but you will understand that by tests taken at either end the damage appeared to be about 118 miles from kurrachee, and a telegraph steamer was sent with an electrical and engineering staff to repair it. the steamer reached the supposed locality early on the morning of the second day out, and proceeded at once to grapple for the cable, though a thick fog prevailed at the time, and a heavy sea was running. "the soundings at the place were very irregular, implying a rugged bottom of submarine mountain-tops and valleys. on winding in the cable unusual resistance was experienced, as if it were foul of rocks, and when, after great difficulty, they drew it up they found that this was caused by the body of an immense whale, with two and a half turns of the cable round it immediately above the tail." "pooh! boh!" exclaimed uncle rik, "i don't believe it." "but i do, uncle," returned sam, as he opened his sixth egg, "for i read the account of it in one of the engineering journals, in which dates and names were given. the steamer was the amber witch, commanded by captain bishop, and the staff of operators were under mr harry mance. the body of the huge creature was found to be rapidly decomposing, the jaws falling away as it reached the surface, and sharks had evidently been devouring it. the tail, which measured twelve feet across, was covered with barnacles at the extremities." "but how could it have entangled itself so?" asked mrs langley. "they suppose that at the time the whale had found a part of the cable hanging in a deep loop over a submarine precipice, and, thinking the chance a good one no doubt for scraping off the barnacles and other parasites that annoy whales very much, had probably twisted the cable round him with a flip of his tail. anyhow, the fact is unquestionable that it held him fast until he was fished up dead by the electricians and engineers." "how strange!" murmured letta. "it is indeed," responded robin, "the most extraordinary case i ever heard of, though cables are subject to many singular accidents. i remember one case of accident to the cable across the river yar, in the isle of wight. a bullock fell from the deck of a vessel, and, in its struggles, caught the cable and broke it." "i have read of several very singular cases," said sam, "in which cables have been attacked and damaged by inhabitants of the sea. the cuba and florida cable was once damaged by the bite of some large fish, and a similar accident happened to the china cable. in the malta-alexandria cable, a piece of the core from which the sheathing had been worn was found to have been bitten by a shark, and pieces of the teeth were found sticking in the gutta-percha." "i thought it was to the singapore cable that that happened," said robin. "no, but something similar happened to it. that cable was laid in december. in the following march a stoppage occurred. the fault was spotted at 200 miles from singapore. when hauled up, the cable was found to have been pierced, and bits of crushed bone were sticking in the hole. the piece was cut out and sent to mr frank buckland, who, after long and careful examination, came to the conclusion that it had been the work of a saw-fish." "dear me, mr shipton," said mrs langley, "you speak as if every part of the world were connected by electric cables." "and such is the case," said sam; "we have now direct communication by submarine cable and land telegraph with every part of europe; with canada and the united states; down south america, nearly to cape horn; with africa from algiers to the cape of good hope; with india from afghanistan to ceylon; with china from pekin to hong-kong; and down through the malacca archipelago, australia, and tasmania." "i say, sam, are you a member of the royal geographical society, or a walking atlas?" asked uncle rik. "in short," continued sam, not heeding the interruption, "there isn't a civilised quarter of the globe which is not tied to us by telegraph, and from which we might not hear any morning of the events of the preceding day." "always excepting central africa and the two poles," said the captain. "i said civilised quarters," retorted sam, "and, as far as i know, the poles are inhabited only by bears." "true, i forgot, the poles are barely civilised," said uncle rik. "now, master sammy," growled a deep voice from the adjoining galley, "you keep your hands out o' that copper." "fasser," shouted a silvery voice from the same region, "'tumps is naughty. i wants to wass my hands in de soup, an' he won't let me." "quite right. keep him in order, stumps," said the unfeeling sam, senior. "dere--pa says i's kite right, an' to keep you in order, 'tumps," said the silvery voice. (then, after a few minutes), "grunkle rik, is you finish bekfist?" "ay, ay, sunbeam, quite finished." "den come on deck an' p'ay vid me." uncle rik rose with a laugh, and obediently went on deck to play. but the play did not last long, for that day ominous clouds rose in the west, and, overspreading the sky, soon drenched the little yacht with rain. towards evening the rain ceased, but the wind increased to a gale, and the weather showed signs of becoming what is known among seamen, we believe, as dirty. ere long the low mutterings of thunder increased to mighty peals, and the occasional gleams of lightning to frequent and vivid flashes, that lit up the scene with the brilliancy of full moonlight. "i wish we were nearer shore," said letta, timidly, to robin, as they stood looking over the bulwarks; "what is the land we see far away on our left?" "the island of mull," returned robin. "better if it was further away," growled captain rik, who overheard the remark. "we want plenty of sea-room on a night like this." "we've got sea-room enough," observed "captain" slagg, with the confidence of a man who knows well what he is about, as he stood by the tiller, balancing himself with his legs well apart. "you've got a lightning conductor on the mast, of course?" observed captain rik to sam. "no," replied sam. "sam!" exclaimed the captain in a tone of intense surprise, "you, of all men, without such a safeguard." "well, uncle rik," replied sam with a laugh, "yachts are not always fitted with conductors. but i'm not so bad as you think me. i had ordered a special conductor with some trifling novelties of construction for the yacht, but it was not ready when we started, so we had to sail without it. however, it is not once in a thousand times that a vessel is struck by lightning." while sam was yet speaking, a flash of lightning almost blinded them, and the little schooner received a shock which told of disaster. next moment the roar of reverberating thunder drowned the crash of timber as the topmast went overboard, carrying the bowsprit and its gear along with it. fortunately no one was hurt, but the schooner became unmanageable, owing to the mass of wreckage which hung to her. jim slagg, seizing an axe, sprang to the side to cut this away, ably seconded by all the men on board, but before it could be accomplished the gleam had drifted dangerously near to the rocks on the coast of mull. to add to the confusion, the darkness became intense. captain rik, forgetting or ignoring his years, had thrown off his coat and was working like a hero with the rest. the ladies, unable to remain below, were clinging to the stern rails, madge holding her little boy tightly in her arms, and the spray dashing wildly over all. another moment and the gleam struck on the rocks with tremendous violence. only by the lightning could they see the wild rocky shore, on which they had drifted. instinctively each member of the little crew drew towards those nearest and dearest. "get out the boat!" shouted captain slagg; but the men could not obey, for a heavy sea had anticipated them, and the little dinghy was already careering shoreward, bottom up. the next wave lifted the gleam like a cork, and let her down on the rocks like fifty-six tons of lead. a flash of lightning revealed for a moment a range of frowning cliffs, as if to add horror to a scene that was already sufficiently appalling. then all was again dark as erebus. in a frenzy of resolution captain rik seized an axe with the view of extemporising a raft, when the gleam parted amidships, and we might almost say went out, leaving her crew struggling in the waves. sam had seized his wife with his strong left arm--he happened to be left-handed--and buffeted the waves with his right. madge held on to sammy with the power of maternal love. sam was aware of that, and felt comparatively at ease in regard to his first-born. robin's arm had been round letta's waist--unknown to himself or her!-when the gleam struck. it did not relax when he felt that they were afloat. frank hedley gallantly offered to take charge of mrs langley. ebenezer smith, being unable to swim, confessed the fact, with something of a gasp, to captain rik, who considerately told him never to mind. "i can swim for both," he said, tying a piece of rope-yarn tight round his waist, for he had long before cast off coat, vest, and braces; "but you ought to be ashamed of yourself, a man come to your time o' life, an' not able to swim!" "i never lived near the sea, and had no one to teach me," pleaded ebenezer in a tremblingly apologetic voice, for the roar of united wind, waves, and thunder was really tremendous even to those who _could_ swim. "what o' that?" returned captain rik, sternly. "was there no river or pond nigh? even a horse-trough or a washing-tub would have sufficed to make a man of you. as for teaching--what teaching did you want? swimmin' ain't latin or greek. it ain't even mathematics--only aquatics. all the brute beasts swim--even donkeys swim without teaching. boh! bah! there, lay hold o' me--so. now, mind, if you try to take me round the neck with your two arms i'll plant my fist on the bridge of your nose, an' let you go to davy jones's locker." a flash of lightning revealed captain rik's face in such a way that ebenezer smith resolved to obey him to the letter. it was at this point of their conversation that the gleam went down--or out--and they sank with a gurgle, coming up next moment, however, with a gasp. strange to say, after the first plunge and overthrow amid the boiling waves, the swimmers found themselves in almost still water. "you'd better let me take sammy, ma'am," said captain slagg, swimming quietly alongside of madge, and speaking in the calm tone of a man taking an evening stroll. "is that you, slagg?" asked sam, who was striking out vigorously. "yes, sir, it is," said slagg. "you've no need to exert yourself, sir, so violently. i know the spot well. we've bin washed clean over the reef by the wave that sank us, into a sort o' nat'ral harbour, an' we ain't far from shore. i can feel bottom now, sir, which, bein' a six-footer, you'll touch easy." "so i do!" exclaimed sam, letting down his feet. "madge, darling, cheer up, we've got soundings. give sammy to slagg. there, we'll do famously now." only those who have been for a few moments in deadly peril can understand the feeling of intense relief that came to sam shipton's heart when he felt his toes touch ground on that eventful night. the feeling was expressed in his tone of voice as he asked slagg whether he had seen any of the others. "no, sir, i ain't seen 'em for want o' light, but i've heerd 'em. stumps is splutterin' behind us like a grampus. if you'll hold on a bit an' listen you'll hear him. he's a bad swimmer, and it's all he can do to save hisself. if he only knowed he could reach bottom with his long legs, he'd find it easier. not quite so tight, sammy, my boy, and keep off the wind-pipe--so; you're quite safe, my lad. as for the rest of 'em, sir, they all swim like ducks except mr ebbysneezer smith, but he's took charge on by captin rik, so you may keep your mind easy. there's a bit o' flat beach hereabouts, an' no sea inside the reef, so we'll git ashore easy enough--let's be thankful." jim slagg was right. they got ashore without difficulty, and they _were_ thankful--profoundly so--when they had time to think of the danger they had escaped. after a few minutes' rest and wringing of salt water from their garments, they proceeded inland to search for shelter, and well was it for the shipwrecked party that the captain of the lost yacht was acquainted with the lie of the land, for it was a rugged shore, with intermingled fields and morasses, and wooded rocky heights, among which it would have been difficult, if not impossible, to thread one's way in the dark without severe damage to the shins. but jim slagg led them to a cottage not far from the sea, where they received from the family resident there at the time a warm and hearty scottish welcome. it is not uncommon, we suspect, for eccentric natures to undertake the most important matters at the most unsuitable times and in the most ridiculous manners. at all events robin wright, while stumbling among the rocks and rugged ground of that midnight march in mull, dripping wet and with the elements at war around him, conceived the idea of declaring his unalterable, not to say unutterable, attachment to letta langley, who leant heavily on the arm of her preserver. but robin was intensely sensitive. he shrank from the idea, (which he had only got the length of conceiving), as if it had been a suggestion from beneath. it would be unfair, mean, contemptible, he thought, to take advantage of the darkness and the elemental noise to press his suit at such a time. no, he would wait till the morrow. he did wait for the morrow. then he waited for the morrow afterwards, and as each morrow passed he felt that more morrows must come and go, for it was quite obvious that letta regarded him only as a brother. at last, unable to bear it, our unhappy hero suddenly discovered that one of the morrows was the last of his leave of absence, so he said good-bye in despair, and parted from his companions, who could not resist the genial hospitality of their new friends in the cottage on the west of mull. ten days later sam got a letter from robin, telling him that he had received a cable-telegram from india, from their friend redpath, offering him a good situation there, and that, having reached the lowest depths of despair, he had resolved to accept it, and was sorry he should not have an opportunity of saying good-bye, as he was urged to start without a day's delay. sam was staying with his friends at the oban hotel at the time, having at last managed to tear himself away from the cottage in mull. he instantly ran out and telegraphed-"don't accept on any account." then he sought mrs langley, and opened robin's case to her. mrs langley listened with a smile of intelligence, and soon after went to her daughter's room, the window of which commanded a splendid view of the western sea. "letta, dear, are you moralising or meditating?" "both, mamma." "well, i will try to help you," said mrs langley, seating herself by the window. "by the way, did you hear that mr wright has been offered a lucrative appointment in the telegraph department of india, and is going off at once;--has not time even to say good-bye to his old friend sam shipton?" letta turned very pale, then extremely red, then covered her face with both hands and burst into tears. "so, letta, you love him," said her mother, gently. "why did you not let me know this sooner?" "oh, mamma!" said poor letta, "why do you put it so--so--suddenly. i don't love him--that is--i don't _know_ that i love him. i've never thought about it seriously. he has never opened his lips to me on the subject--and--and--" "letta, dear," said her mother, tenderly, "would you wish to prevent his going away if you could? open your heart to your mother, darling." letta laid her head on her mother's shoulder, but spoke not. a few minutes later mrs langley went to sam and said-"robin must not go to india." sam instantly went by the shortest conceivable route to london, where he found robin in his room feverishly packing his portmanteau, and said-"robin, you must not go to india." from that text he preached an eloquent lay-sermon, which he wound up with the words, "now, my boy, you must just propose to her at once." "but i can't, sam. i haven't got the pluck. i'm such a miserable sort of fellow--how could i expect _such_ a creature to throw herself away on _me_? besides, it's all very well your saying you have good ground for believing she cares for me; but how can you know? of course you have not dared to speak to her?" robin looked actually fierce at the bare idea of such a thing. "no, i have not dared," said sam. "well, then. it is merely your good-natured fancy. no, my dear fellow, it is my fate. i must bow to it. and i know that if i were to wait till i see her again, all my courage would have oozed away--" "but i don't intend that you shall wait, robin," interrupted sam. "you need not go on talking so selfishly about yourself. you must consider the girl. i'm not going to stand by and see injustice done to _her_. you have paid _marked_ attention to her, and are bound in honour to lay yourself at her feet, even at the risk of a refusal." "but how, sam? i tell you if i wait--" "then don't wait,--telegraph." robin gazed at his friend in stupefied amazement. "what! make a proposal of marriage by telegraph?" "even so, robin. you began life with electricity, so it is quite in keeping that you should begin a new departure in life with it." sam rose, sought for paper, and with pencil wrote as follows:--"from mr r. wright, london, to miss letta langley, --hotel, oban.--i can stand it no longer. may i come to see you?" presenting this to his friend, sam said, "may i despatch it?" robin nodded, smiled, and looked foolish. an hour later mrs langley, sitting beside her daughter, took up a pen, and wrote as follows:-"from miss letta langley, oban, to r. wright, london.--yes." presenting this to her daughter, she said. "may i send it?" letta once more covered her face with her hands, and blushed. thus it came to pass that our hero's fate in life, as well as his career, was decided by the electric telegraph. but the best of it was that robin _did_ go to india after all--as if to do despite to his friends, who had said he must not go. moreover, he took letta with him, and he hunted many a day through the jungles of that land in company with his friend redpath, and his henchman flinn. and, long afterwards, he returned to england, a sturdy middle-aged man, with a wife whose beauty was unabated because it consisted, chiefly, in that love of heart to god and man which lends never-fading loveliness to the human countenance. awaiting them at home was a troop of little ones--the first home-instalment of a troop of lesser ones who accompanied the parent stems. all of these, besides being gifted with galvanic energy and flashing eyes, were impressed with the strong conviction, strange to say, that batteries, boilers, and submarine cables, were the most important things in the whole world, and the only subjects worth being played at by reasonable human children. the end. makers of electricity by brother potamian, f.s.c., d.sc., lond. professor of physics in manhattan college, n. y. and james j. walsh, m. d., ph.d., ll.d. dean and professor of nervous diseases and of the history of medicine at fordham university school of medicine; professor of physiological psychology at the cathedral college, new york [illustration] fordham university press new york 1909 copyright, 1909, fordham university press, new york. preface this volume represents an effort in the direction of what may be called the biographical history of electricity. the controlling idea in its preparation was to provide brief yet reasonably complete sketches of the lives of the great pioneer workers in electricity, the ground-breaking investigators who went distinctly beyond the bounds of what was known before their time, not merely to add a fringe of information to previous knowledge, but to make it easy for succeeding generations to reach conclusions in electrical science that would have been quite impossible until their revealing work was done. the lives of these men are not only interesting as scientific history, but especially as human documents, showing the sort of men who are likely to make great advances in science and, above all, demonstrating what the outlook of such original thinkers was on all the great problems of the world around us. in recent times, many people have come to accept the impression that modern science leads to such an exclusive occupation with things material, that scientists almost inevitably lose sight of the deeper significance of the world of mystery in which humanity finds itself placed on this planet. the lives of these great pioneers in electricity, however, do not lend the slightest evidence in confirmation of any such impression. they were all of them firm believers in the existence of providence, of a creator, of man's responsibility for his acts to that creator, and of a hereafter of reward and punishment where the sanction of responsibility shall be fulfilled. besides, they were men characterized by some of the best qualities in human nature. their fellows liked them for their unselfishness, for their readiness to help others, for their devotedness to their work and to their duties as teachers, citizens and patriots. almost without exception, they were as far above the average of mankind in their personal ethics as they were in their intellectual qualities. the lives of such men, who were inspiring forces in their day, are as illuminating as they are instructive and encouraging. perhaps never more than now do we need such inspiration and illumination to lift life to a higher plane of purpose and accomplishment, than that to which it is so prone to sink when material interests attract almost exclusive attention. contents page peregrinus and columbus 1 norman and gilbert 29 franklin and some contemporaries 68 galvani, discoverer of animal electricity 133 volta, the founder of electrical science 162 coulomb 188 hans christian oersted 205 andré marie ampère 232 ohm, the founder of mathematical electricity 258 faraday 299 clerk maxwell 334 lord kelvin 361 illustrations page the double pivoted needle of petrus peregrinus 19 first pivoted compass, peregrinus, 1269 17 magnetic declination at new york 21 " " " san francisco 21 " " in london, in 1580 and 1907 23 first dip-circle, invented by norman in 1576 29 norman's illustration of magnetic dip 31 gilbert's orb of virtue, 1600 32 behavior of compass-needle on a terrella or spherical lodestone 44 gilbert's "versorium" or electroscope 69 gordon's electric chimes, 1745 75 modern form of leyden jar, with movable coatings 87 three coated panes in series 89 " panes in parallel 89 " jars in parallel 90 " jars in cascade 90 discharge by alternate contacts 94 tassel of long threads or light strips of paper 101 procopius divisch (1696-1765) 108 the divisch lightning conductor (1754) 111 set of pointed rods 112 galvani (portrait) opposite page 133 volta " " " 162 oersted " " " 205 ampère " " " 232 faraday " " " 299 clerk maxwell (portrait) opposite page 334 lord kelvin " " " 361 makers of electricity. chapter i. peregrinus and columbus. the ancients laid down the laws of literary form in prose as well as in verse, and bequeathed to posterity works which still serve as models of excellence. their poets and historians continue to be read for the sake of the narrative and beauty of the style; their philosophers for breadth and depth of thought; and their orators for judicious analysis and impassioned eloquence. in the exact sciences, too, the ancients were conspicuous leaders by reason of the number and magnitude of the discoveries which they made. you have only to think of euclid and his "elements," of apollonius and his conics, of eratosthenes and his determination of the earth's circumference, of archimedes and his mensuration of the sphere, and of the inscription on plato's academy, _let none ignorant of geometry enter my door_, to realize the fondness of the greek mind for abstract truth and its suppleness and ingenuity in mathematical investigation. but the sciences of observation did not advance with equal pace; nor was this to be expected, as time is an essential element in experimentation and in the collection of data, both of which are necessary for the framing of theories in explanation of natural phenomena. the slowness of advance is well seen in the development of the twin subjects of electricity and magnetism. as to the lodestone, with which we are concerned at present, the attractive property was the only one known to ancient philosophy for a period of six hundred years, from the time of thales to the age of the cæsars, when lucretius wrote on the nature of things in latin verse. lucretius records the scant magnetic knowledge of his predecessors and then proceeds to unfold a theory of his own to account for the phenomena of the wonder-working stone. book vi. of "de natura rerum" contains his speculations anent the magnet, together with certain observations which show that the poet was not only a thinker, but somewhat of an experimenter as well. thus he recognizes magnetic _repulsion_ when he says: "it happens, too, at times that the substance of the iron recedes from the stone as if accustomed to start back from it, and by turns to follow it." this recognition of the repelling property of the lodestone is immediately followed by the description of an experiment which is frequently referred to in works on magnetic philosophy. it reads: "thus have i seen raspings of iron, lying in brazen vessels, thrown into agitation and start up when the magnet was moved beneath"; or metrically, and oft in brazen vessels may we mark ringlets of samothrace, or fragments fine struck from the valid iron bounding high when close below, the magnet points its powers. this experiment, seen and recorded by lucretius, is of special interest to the student of magnetic history because of the use which is made of iron filings and also because it has led certain writers to credit the poet with a knowledge of what is known to-day by the various names of magnetic figures, magnetic curves, magnetic spectrum. we do not, however, share this view, because we see no adequate resemblance between the positions assumed by the bristling particles of iron in the one case, as described by the roman poet, and the continuous symmetrical curves of our laboratories in the other. if lucretius noticed such curves in his brazen vessels, he does not say so; nor does the meagre description of magnetic phenomena given in book vi. warrant us in assuming that he did. the use of iron filings to map out the entire field of force that surrounds a magnet was unknown to classical antiquity; it was not known to peregrinus or roger bacon in the thirteenth century or even to gilbert in the sixteenth. the credit for reviving the use of filings and employing them to show the direction of the resultant force at any point in the neighborhood of a magnet, belongs to cabeo, an italian jesuit, who described and illustrated it in his "philosophia magnetica," published at ferrara in the year 1629. on page 316 of that celebrated work will be found a figure, the first of the kind, showing the position taken by the filings when plentifully sifted over a lodestone: thick tufts at the polar ends with curved lines in the other parts of the field. the samothracian rings mentioned in the passage quoted above were light, hollow rings of iron which, for the amusement of the crowd, the jugglers of the times held suspended one from the other by the power of a lodestone. writing of the lodestone, lucretius says: its viewless, potent virtues men surprise, its strange effects, they view with wond'ring eyes, when without aid of hinges, links or springs a pendent chain we hold of steely rings. dropt from the stone--the stone the binding source- ring cleaves to ring and owns magnetic force; those held above, the ones below maintain; circle 'neath circle downward draws in vain whilst free in air disports the oscillating chain. though the roman poet was acquainted with two of the leading properties of the lodestone, viz., attraction and repulsion, there is nothing in the lines quoted above or in any other lines of his great didactic poem to indicate that he was aware of the remarkable difference which there is between one end of a lodestone and the other. the polarity of the magnet, as we term it, was unknown to him and remained unknown for a period of 1200 years. during that long period nothing of importance was added to the magnetic lore of the world. true, a few fables were dug out of the tomes of ancient writers which gained credence and popularity, partly by reason of the fondness of the human mind for the marvelous, and partly also by reason of the reputation of the authors who stood sponsors for them. pliny (23-79 a. d.) devotes several pages of his "natural history" to the nature and geographical distribution of various kinds of lodestones, one of which was said to repel iron just as the normal lodestone attracts it. needless to say that the mineral kingdom does not hold such a stone, although pliny calls it _theamedes_ and says that it was found in ethiopia. pliny is responsible for another myth which found favor with subsequent writers for a long time, when he says that a certain architect intended to place a mass of magnetite in the vault of an alexandrian temple for the purpose of holding an iron statue of queen arsinoe suspended in mid-air. of like fabulous character is the oft-repeated story about mahomet, that an iron sarcophagus containing his remains was suspended by means of the lodestone between the roof of the temple at mecca and the ground. as a matter of fact, mahomet died at medina and was buried there in the ordinary manner, so that the story as currently told of the suspension of his coffin in the "holy city" of mecca, contains a twofold error, one of place and the other of position. by a recent (1908) imperial irade of the sultan of turkey, the tomb is lit up by electric light in a manner that is considered worthy of the "prophet of islam." four centuries after pliny, claudian, the last of the latin poets as he is styled, wrote an idyl of fifty-seven lines on the magnet, which contains nothing but poetic generalities. st. ambrose (340-397) and palladius (368-430), writing on the brahmans of india, tell how certain magnetic mountains were said to draw iron nails from passing ships and how wooden pegs were substituted for nails in vessels going to taprobane, the modern ceylon. st. augustine (354-430) records in his "de civitate dei" the wonder which he felt in seeing scraps of iron contained in a silver dish follow every movement of a lodestone held underneath. with time, the legendary literature of the magnet became abundant and in some respects amusing. thus we read of the "flesh" magnet endowed with the extraordinary power of adhering to the skin and even of drawing the heart out of a man; the "gold" magnet which would attract particles of the precious metal from an admixture of sand; the "white" magnet used as a philter; magnetic unguents of various kinds, one of which, when smeared over a bald head, would make the hair grow; magnetic plasters for the relief of headache; magnetic applications to ease toothaches and dispel melancholy; magnetic nostrums to cure the dropsy, to quell disputes and even reconcile husband and wife. no less fictitious was the pernicious effect on the lodestone attributed in the early days of the mariner's compass to onions and garlic; and yet, so deeply rooted was the belief in this figment that sailors, while steering by the compass, were forbidden the use of these vegetables lest by their breath they might intoxicate the "index of the pole" and turn it away from its true pointing. more reasonable than this prohibition was the maritime legislation of certain northern countries for the protection of the lodestone on shipboard. according to this penal code, a sailor found guilty of tampering with the lodestone used for stroking the needles, was to have the guilty hand held to a mast of the ship by a dagger thrust through it until, by tearing the flesh away, he wrenched himself free. it was only at the time of the crusades that people in europe began to recognize the _directive_ property of the magnet, in virtue of which a freely suspended compass-needle takes up a definite position relatively to the north-and-south line, property which is serviceable to the traveler on land and supremely useful to the navigator on sea. it is commonly said that the compass was introduced into europe by the returning crusaders, who heard of it from their mussulman foes. these, in turn, derived their knowledge from the chinese, who are credited with its use on sea as far back as the third century of our era.[1] among the earliest references to the sailing compass is that of the trouvère guyot de provins,[2] who wrote, about the year 1208, a satirical poem of three thousand lines, in which the following passage occurs: the mariners employ an art which cannot deceive. an ugly stone and brown, to which iron joins itself willingly they have; after applying a needle to it, they lay the latter on a straw and put it simply in the water where the straw makes it float. then the point turns direct. to the star with such certainty that no man will ever doubt it, nor will it ever go wrong. when the sea is dark and hazy, that one sees neither star nor moon, then they put a light by the needle and have no fear of losing their way. the point turns towards the star; and the mariners are taught to follow the right way. it is an art which cannot fail. the author was a caustic and fearless critic, who lashed with equal freedom the clergy and laity, nobles and princes, and even the reigning pontiff himself, all of whom should be for their subjects, according to the satirist, what the pole-star is for mariners--a beacon to guide them over the stormy sea of life. guyot traveled extensively in his early years, but later in life retired from a world which he despised, and ended his days in the peaceful seclusion of the benedictine abbey of cluny. an interesting reference, of a similar nature to that of the minstrel guyot, is found in the spanish code of laws known as las siete partidas of alfonso el sabio, begun in 1250 and completed in 1257. it says: "and even as mariners guide themselves in the dark night by the needle, which is their connecting medium between the lodestone and the star, and thus shows them where they go alike in bad seasons as in good; so those who are to give counsel to the king ought always to guide themselves by justice, which is the connecting medium between god and the world, at all times to give their guerdon to the good and their punishment to the wicked, to each according to his deserts."[5] it will be necessary to give a few more extracts from writers of the first half of the thirteenth century in order to show how little was known about the magnet and how crude were the early appliances used in navigation when peregrinus appeared on the scene. cardinal jacques de vitry, who lived in the east for some years, wrote his "history of the orient" between the years 1215 and 1220, in which he says: "an iron needle after touching the lodestone, turns towards the north star, so that such a needle is necessary for those who navigate the seas." this passage of the celebrated cardinal seems to indicate that even then the compass was widely known and commonly used in navigation. neckam (1157-1217), the augustinian abbot of cirencester, wrote in his "utensilibus": "among the stores of a ship, there must be a needle _mounted on a dart_ which will oscillate and turn until the point looks to the north; the sailors will thus know how to direct their course when the pole-star is concealed through the troubled state of the atmosphere." this passage is of historical value, as it contains what is probably the earliest known reference to a mounted or pivoted compass. prior to the introduction of this mode of suspension, the needle was floated on a straw, in a reed, on a piece of cork or a strip of wood, all of which modes of flotation, when taken in conjunction with the unsteadiness of the vessel in troubled waters, must have made observation difficult and unsatisfactory. brunetto latini (1230-1294) makes a passing reference to the new magnetic knowledge in his "livres dou tresor," which he wrote in 1260, during his exile in paris. "the sailors navigate the seas," he says, "guided by the two stars called tramontanes; and each of the two parts of the lodestone directs the end of the needle that has touched it to the particular star to which that part of the stone itself turns." though a statesman, orator and philosopher of ability, the preceptor of dante in florence and guest of friar bacon in oxford, brunetto has not got the philosophy of the needle quite right in this passage; for the part that has been touched by the north end of a lodestone will acquire south polarity and will not, therefore, turn towards the same "tramontane" as the end of the stone by which it was touched. dante himself admitted the occult influence on the compass-needle that emanates from the pole-star when he wrote: "out of the heart of one of the new lights there came a voice that, needle to the star, made me appear in turning thitherward. _paradise_, xii., 28-30. the next writer on the compass is raymond lully (1236-1315), who was noted for his versatility, voluminous writings and extensive travels as well as for the zeal which he displayed in converting the african moors. lully writes in his "de contemplatione": "as the needle after touching the lodestone, turns to the north, so the mariners' needle directs them over the sea." this brings us to the last of our ante-peregrinian writers who make definite allusions to the use of the compass for navigation purposes, viz., roger bacon, one of the glories of the thirteenth century as he would be of the twentieth. it was at the request of his patron, pope clement iv., that bacon wrote his "opus majus," a work in which he treats of all the sciences and in which he advocates the experimental method as the right one for the study of natural phenomena and the only one that will serve to extend the boundaries of human knowledge. in a section on the magnet, a clear distinction is drawn between the physical properties of the two ends of a lodestone; for "iron which has been touched by a lodestone," he says, "follows the end by which it has been touched and turns away from the other." besides being a recognition of magnetic polarity, this is equivalent to saying that unlike poles attract while like poles repel each other. bacon further remarks, by way of corroboration, that if a strip of iron be floated in a basin, the end that was touched by the lodestone will follow the stone, while the other end will flee from it as a lamb from the wolf. there is, however, an earlier recognition known of the polarity of the lodestone; for abbot neckam, fifty years before, called attention to the dual nature of the physical action of the lodestone, attracting in one part (say) by sympathy and repelling at the other by antipathy. it was the common belief in bacon's time and for centuries after, that the compass-needle was directed by the pole-star, often called the sailor's star; but bacon himself did not think so, preferring to believe with peregrinus, that it was controlled not by any one star or by any one constellation, but by the entire celestial sphere. other contemporaries of his sought the cause of the directive property not in the heavens at all, but in the earth itself, attributing it to hypothetical mines of iron which, naturally enough, they located in regions situated near the pole. peregrinus records this opinion, which he criticises and rejects, saying in chapter x. that persons who hold such a doctrine "are ignorant of the fact that in many different parts of the globe the lodestone is found; from which it would follow that the needle should turn in different directions, according to the locality, which is contrary to experience." a little further on he gives his own view, saying: "it is evident from the foregoing chapters that we must conclude that not only from the north pole (of the world), but also from the south pole rather than from the veins of mines, virtue flows into the poles of the lodestone." observations had to accumulate and much experimentation had to be done before it was finally established that the cause of the directive property of the magnet is not to be sought in the remote star depths at all, but in the earth itself, the whole terrestrial globe acting as a colossal magnet, partly in virtue of magnetic ore lying near the surface and partly also in virtue of electrical currents, due to solar heat, circulating in the crust of the earth. of the early years of pierre le pélérin (petrus peregrinus), nothing is known save that he was born of wealthy parents in maricourt, a village of picardy in northern france. from his academic title of magister, we infer that he received the best instruction available at the time, probably in the university of paris, which was then in the height of its fame. his reputation for mathematical learning and mechanical skill crossed the channel and reached friar bacon in the university of oxford. in his "opus tertium," the franciscan friar records the esteem in which he held his picard friend, saying: "i know of only one person who deserves praise for his work in experimental philosophy, because he does not care for the discourses of men or their wordy warfare, but quietly and diligently pursues the works of wisdom. therefore it is that what others grope after blindly, as bats in the evening twilight, this man contemplates in all their brilliancy because he is master of experiment." continuing the appraisal of his gallic friend's achievements, he says: "he knows all natural sciences, whether pertaining to medicine and alchemy or to matters celestial and terrestrial. he has worked diligently in the smelting of ores and also in the working of minerals; he is thoroughly acquainted with all sorts of arms and implements used in military service and in hunting, besides which he is skilled in agriculture and also in the measurement of lands. it is impossible to write a useful or correct treatise on experimental philosophy without mentioning this man's name. moreover, he pursues knowledge for its own sake; for if he wished to obtain royal favor, he could easily find sovereigns to honor and enrich him." this is at once a beautiful tribute to the work and character of peregrinus and an emphatic recognition of the paramount importance of laboratory methods for the advancement of learning. it is evident from such testimony, coming as it does from an eminent member of the brotherhood of science, that the world had not to wait for the advent of chancellor bacon or for the publication of his _novum organum_ in 1620, to learn how to undertake and carry out a scientific research to a reliable issue. call the method what you will, inductive, deductive or both, the method advocated by the franciscan friar of the thirteenth century was the one followed at all times from archimedes to peregrinus and from peregrinus to gilbert, none of whom knew anything of lord bacon's pompous phrases and lofty commendation of the inductive method of inquiry for the advancement of physical knowledge. be it said in passing, that bacon, eminent as he undoubtedly was in the realm of the higher philosophy, was, nevertheless, neither a mathematician nor a man of science; he never put to a practical test the rules which he laid down with such certitude and expectancy for the guidance of physical inquiry. moreover, there is not a single discovery in science made during the three centuries that have elapsed since the promulgation of the baconian doctrine that can be ascribed to it; it has been steadily ignored by men renowned in the world for their scientific achievements and has been absolutely barren of results. peregrinus, on the other hand, does not stop to enumerate opinions, he does not even quote aristotle; but he experiments, observes, reasons and draws conclusions which he puts to the further test of experiment before finally accepting them. then and then only does he rise from the order of the physicist to that of the philosopher, from correlating facts and phenomena to the discovery of the laws which govern them and the causes that produce them. furthermore, he was in no hurry to let the world know that he was grinding lodestones one day and pivoting compass-needles the next; what he cared for supremely was to discover facts, new phenomena, new methods. peregrinus was not an essayist, nor was he a man of mere book-learning. he was a clear-headed thinker, a close and resourceful worker, a man who preferred facts to phrases and observation to speculation. at one period of his life, master peter applied his ingenuity to the solution of a problem in practical optics, involving the construction of a burning-mirror of large dimensions somewhat after the manner of archimedes; but though he spent three years on the enterprise and a correspondingly large sum of money, we are not told by friar bacon, who mentions the fact, what measure of success was achieved. bacon, however, avails himself of the occasion to insinuate a possible cause of failure, for he says that nothing is difficult of accomplishment to his friend _unless it be for want of means_. centuries later, the french naturalist buffon took up the same optical problem, with a view to showing that the feat attributed to archimedes during the siege of syracuse by the romans was not impossible of accomplishment. for this purpose, he used 168 small mirrors in the construction of a large concave reflector, with which he ignited wood at a distance of 150 feet and succeeded in melting lead at a distance of 140 feet. as this was done in the winter time in paris, it was concluded that it would have been quite possible to set a roman trireme on fire from a safe distance by the concentrated energy of a sicilian sun. if peregrinus was alert in mind, he appears to have been very active in body. prompted, no doubt, by the higher motives of christian faith and perhaps a little, too, by his fondness for travel and adventure, he took the cross in early life and joined one of the crusading expeditions of the time. that he went to the land of the paynim, we have no direct evidence; but we infer the fact from the title of peregrinus or pilgrim, by which he is known, his full name being pierre le pélérin de maricourt, or, in the latinized form, petrus peregrinus de maricourt. in 1269, we find him engaged in a military expedition undertaken by charles duke of anjou, for the purpose of bringing back to his allegiance as king of the two sicilies the revolted city of lucera in southern italy. he served in what might be called the engineering corps of the army, and was engaged in fortifying the camp and constructing engines of defense and attack. unlike his companions in arms, peregrinus does not allow himself to be wholly absorbed with military duties, nor does he waste his leisure hours in frivolous amusements; his mind is on higher things; he is engrossed with a problem in practical mechanics which required him to devise a piece of mechanism that would keep an armillary sphere in motion for a time. in outlining the necessary mechanism, as he conceived it, he was gradually led to consider the general and more fascinating problem of perpetual motion itself, with the result that he waxed somewhat enthusiastic when he thought that he saw the possibility of constructing an ever-turning wheel in which the motive power would be magnetic attraction, the attraction of a lodestone for a number of iron teeth arranged at equal distances on the periphery of a wheel. the device looked well on paper, beyond which stage it was not carried, perhaps for want of leisure, or more probably for want of the necessary material and tools. had peregrinus been able to test his theoretical views on the _magnetic motor_ by actual experiment, the delusive character of perpetual motion would have been recognized at an early epoch in the world's history, and much time and money spared for more profitable investment. this very wheel, which was designed in the trenches before lucera in 1269, was probably the cause of the withering rebuke which justin huntly mccarthy administers in his "history of the french revolution," vol. i., p. 256, where he says: "in the long record of rascaldom from _peregrinus_ to bamfylde moore carew, no single rascal stands forward with such magnificent effrontery, such majestic impudence, such astonishing success as cagliostro." to say the least, this is a very serious slip of the pen on the part of the irish historian of the french revolution, in which a scientific pioneer of the first rank and a patriot of exalted type is mistaken for a charlatan of the deepest dye. although peregrinus puts the burden of constructing his wheel on others, he does not appear to have considered it a vain conceit; for, in the beginning of the last chapter of the "epistola" he says: "in this chapter, i will make known to you the construction of a wheel which, in a remarkable manner, moves continuously." he is writing from southern italy to his friend siger (syger, sygerus), at home in picardy; and that this friend may the better comprehend the mechanism of the wheel, he proceeds to describe in a systematic manner the various properties of the lodestone, all of which he had investigated and many of which he had discovered. the "epistola" of peregrinus is, therefore, the first treatise on the magnet ever written; it stands as the first great landmark in magnetic philosophy. the work is divided into two parts--the first contains ten chapters and the latter three. "at your request," he says to his friend, "i will make known to you in an unpolished narrative the undoubted though hidden virtue of the lodestone, concerning which philosophers, up to the present time, give us no information. out of affection for you, i will write in simple style about things entirely unknown to the ordinary individual." [illustration: fig. 1 the double pivoted needle of petrus peregrinus, a. d., 1269] after this declaration as to the original character of his work peregrinus proceeds: "you must know that whoever wishes to experiment should be acquainted with the nature of things; he must also be skilled in manipulation, in order that by means of this stone, he may produce those marvelous results." the titles of the chapters will give an idea of the comprehensive character of the magnetic work accomplished by the author and, at the same time, will serve to show how much was known about the lodestone in the thirteenth century. part i. chap. i. purpose of this work. ii. qualifications of the experimenter. iii. characteristics of a good lodestone. iv. how to distinguish the poles of a lodestone. v. how to tell which pole is north and which south. vi. how one lodestone attracts another. vii. how iron touched by a lodestone turns towards the poles of the world. viii. how a lodestone attracts iron. ix. why the north pole of one lodestone attracts the south pole of another, and _vice versa_. x. an inquiry into the natural virtue of the lodestone. part ii. chap. i. construction of an instrument for measuring the azimuth of the sun, the moon or any star when in the horizon. ii. construction of a better instrument for the same purpose. iii. the art of making a wheel of perpetual motion. an attentive reading of the thirteen chapters of this treatise of 3,500 words will show that: (1) peregrinus assigns a definite position to what he calls the _poles_ of a lodestone and gives practical directions for determining which is north and which south. (2) he establishes the two fundamental laws of magnetism, that like poles repel and unlike poles attract each other. (3) he demonstrates by experiment that every fragment of a lodestone is a complete magnet, and shows how the fragments should be put together in order to reproduce the polarity of the unbroken stone. (4) he shows how a pole of a lodestone may neutralize a weaker one of the same name and even reverse its polarity. (5) he pivots a magnetized needle and surrounds it with a circle divided into 360 degrees. this brief summary shows the great advance made by the author on what was known about the lodestone before his time. most of the salient facts in magnetism are clearly described and some of their applications pointed out. so thorough and complete was this apprehension and explanation of magnetic phenomena that nothing of importance was added to it for the next three hundred years. [illustration: fig. 2 first pivoted compass, peregrinus, 1269] in the compass which peregrinus devised for use in navigation, a light magnetic needle was thrust through a slender vertical axis made of wood, which axis also carried a pointer of brass or silver at right angles to the needle. according to the belief of the time, the magnetic needle gave the north and south points of the horizon, while the brass pointer determined the east and west points. this compass, double pivoted be it noticed, was provided with a graduated circle and a movable arm, having a pair of upright pins at its extremities, which movable arm enabled the navigator to determine the magnetic bearing of the sun, moon or any star at the time of rising or setting. "by means of this instrument," the author says in chap. ii., "you can direct your course towards cities and islands and any other place wherever you may wish to go, by land or by sea, provided you know the latitude and longitude of the place which you want to reach." the invention of the compass has been attributed to one flavio gioja, a seafaring man of amalfi, a flourishing maritime town in southern italy. if we admit that gioja was a real and not a fictitious person, we cannot, however, admit the claim which is made by his countrymen, when they say that he gave to the mariner the use of the compass in the year 1302; for we have seen that peregrinus distinctly states that his compass, described in 1269, could be relied upon for guidance by the traveler on land as well as by the voyager on sea. to gioja may belong the merit of having simplified and improved the compass. it is likely that he suspended the needle on one pivot instead of the two used by peregrinus, and that he added the compass-card with its thirty-two divisions, attaching it to the needle itself, thereby adding materially to the practical character of the compass as a nautical instrument. on the other hand, a claim has been made for peregrinus which cannot be admitted. it was put forward by his itinerant countryman thévenot, in the seventeenth century, to the effect that the author of the "epistola" was acquainted with magnetic declination, in virtue of which a freely suspended magnet does not point north and south, but cuts the geographical meridian at a definite angle. writing in 1681, thévenot says in his "recueil de voyages" that: "it was a matter of general belief down to the present day, that the declination of the magnetic needle was first observed sometime in the beginning of the last (16th) century. i have found, however, that there was a declination of five degrees in the year 1269, having found it recorded in a manuscript with the title "epistola petri adsigerii," etc. the title of the manuscript seen by thévenot is not, however, as he gives it above, but "epistola petri ad sygerium," etc., which is quite a different reading. there are twenty-eight manuscript copies of the "epistola" known to exist; and only one of them, that of the university of leyden, contains the passage alluded to by thévenot. this manuscript was the object of careful study and critical examination by wenckebach (1865) and other competent scholars, who pronounced it a spurious addition made some time in the early part of the 16th century.[4] in the time of peregrinus, it is probable that the declination did not exceed three degrees in paris or on the shores of the mediterranean, a quantity so small that it would have been difficult of detection; and, if detected, would have been attributed either to errors in the construction of the instrument used or to inaccuracy on the part of the observer. this is what happened to columbus when, on his return to spain, having reported the many and definite observations on the variation of the compass which he had made on his outward voyage, he was told by the learned ones of the day that _he_ was in error and not the needle, because the latter was everywhere true to the pole. [illustration: fig. 3] this oft-stated and widely-believed fidelity of the needle to the pole is not, however, founded on fact; it is the exception, the rare exception, not the rule, despite the couplet of the poet: th' obedient steel with living instinct moves and veers for ever to the pole it loves; or this other, so turns the faithful needle to the pole, though mountains rise between and oceans roll. that the magnet does not turn to the pole of the world is common knowledge to-day, when the high school tyro will tell you that in new york it points 9° _west_ of north, while in san francisco it points 15° _east_ of north. if he happens to be well up, he may refer to the position of the agonic line on the globe along which the needle stands true to the pole, while all places to the east of that line in our hemisphere have westerly declination and those to the west have easterly declination. indeed, magnetic charts show places where the needle points east and west instead of north and south, and others where the north-seeking end points directly south. such varying and conflicting behavior of the compass-needle serves to show the irregular manner in which the earth's magnetism is distributed and also the intensity of distributing forces which exist at certain places. it is one of the gems in the crown of columbus, that he observed, measured and recorded this strange behavior of the magnetic needle in his narrative of the voyage. true, he did not notice it until he was far out on the trackless ocean. a week had elapsed since he left the lordly teneriffe, and a few days since the mountainous outline of gomera had disappeared from sight. the memorable night was that of september 13th, 1492. there was no mistaking it; the needle of the _santa maria_ pointed a little west of north instead of due north. some days later, on september 17th, the pilots, having taken the sun's amplitude, reported that the variation had reached a whole point of the compass, the alarming amount of 11 degrees. the surprise and anxiety which columbus manifested on those occasions may be taken as indications that the phenomenon was new to him. as a matter of fact, however, his needles were not true even at the outset of the voyage from the port of palos, where, though no one was aware of it, they pointed about 3° _east_ of north. this angle diminished from day to day as the admiral kept the prow of his caravel directed to the west, until it vanished altogether, after which the needles veered to the _west_, and kept moving westward for a time as the flag-ship proceeded on her voyage. [illustration: fig. 4 magnetic declination in london in 1580 and in 1907] columbus thus determined a place on the atlantic in which the magnetic meridian coincided with the geographical and in which the needle stood true to the pole. six years later, in 1498, sebastian cabot found another place on the same ocean, a little further north, in which the compass lay exactly in the north-and-south line. these two observations, one by columbus and the other by cabot, sufficed to determine the position of the _agonic line_, or line of no variation, for that locality and epoch. the _columbian_ line acquired at once considerable importance, in the geographical and the political world, because of the proposal that was made to discard the island of ferro and take it for the prime meridian from which longitude would be reckoned east and west, and also because it was selected by pope alexander vi. to serve as a line of reference in settling the rival claims of the kingdoms of portugal and castile with regard to their respective discoveries. it was decided that all recently discovered lands lying to the east of that line should belong to portugal; and those to the west, to castile. the line of no variation, like all other isomagnetic lines, has shifted its position with time, so that it runs to-day considerably to the west of the place assigned to it by columbus in 1492 and by the papal bull of the following year. columbus did not speak of the disquieting observation which he made on the night of the 13th of september; he thought of it, and wondered greatly what might be the cause of such an unexpected and untoward phenomenon. his silence on the matter did not avail, for the keen-eyed sailors noticed the westerly deflection of the needle when, after a few days, it became quite apparent. they grew alarmed, believing that the laws of nature were changing as they advanced farther and farther into the unknown. it was a trying moment for the admiral, but his ingenuity and tactfulness rose to the occasion. he told his seamen that the needle did not point to the _cynosure_ or last star in the tail of the little bear, as commonly supposed, but to a fixed point in the celestial sphere at which there was no star, adding that the "cynosure" itself, the polaris of our days, was not stationary, but had a rotational movement of its own like all other heavenly bodies. we do not know what columbus thought of his explanation, born of the stress of the moment, but the esteem in which he was held by pilots and sailors alike for his knowledge of astronomy and cosmography led them to accept it. their fears were allayed, a mutiny was averted and a successful termination to their voyage rendered possible. captains of ocean-liners would give to-day a different answer to a passenger who might consult them about the splinter of steel which serves to guide their fleet vessels in darkest nights, through howling tempests and over billowy seas. the mysterious influence that controls it, they would say, comes neither from polaris nor the pole of the world, nor from the heavens above, but from the earth beneath. such an explanation was not thought of until it was clearly shown a hundred years later that this globe of ours acts like a colossal lodestone, controlling every magnet in our laboratories and observatories, and every needle on board the merchantmen and fighting-monsters that plough our seas and oceans. without any intuition of modern theory, columbus made two discoveries in terrestrial magnetism, as we have seen, each of fundamental importance, whether considered from the view-point of pure science or that of practical navigation, viz., (a) that the needle is not true to the pole and (b) that the angular displacement of the needle from true orientation, the _variation of the compass_, as it is called in nautical parlance, differs with the place of the observer. these two discoveries as well as the location of a place of no variation on the atlantic ocean entitle columbus to a prominent place among the founders of the _science_ of terrestrial magnetism. later observers discovered that even for a given place this element of magnetic declination has not a constant value, but undergoes changes which complete their cycle, some in a day, others in a year, and others again in centuries. the last or _secular_ change in the direction of the magnetic needle was discovered by gellibrand, of london, in 1634 (published in 1635); the _annual_, by cassini, at paris, 1782-1791; and the _diurnal_, by graham, of london, in 1722. the first observation of magnetic declination on _land_ appears to have been made about the year 1510 by george hartmann (1489-1564), vicar of the church of st. sebald in nuremberg, who found it to be 6° east in rome, where he was living at the time. hartmann's observation of the declination in rome and also in nuremberg, where the needle pointed 10° east of north, will be found in a letter which he wrote in 1544 to duke albert of prussia and which remained unpublished until the year 1831. returning to the treatise of peregrinus on the magnet, it should be said that for several centuries the twenty-eight manuscript copies lay undisturbed on the dusty shelves of city and university libraries. in 1562, four years after the appearance of the first printed edition (augsburg, 1558), taisnier, a belgian writer on magnetics, who is also described as poet-laureate and doctor "utriusque juris," was among the earliest to discover the "epistola," from which he copied extensively in his little quarto on the magnet and its effects, thus showing that there were literary pirates in those days. it was also well known to gilbert, to cabeo and kircher; but despite the references of these writers, the "epistola" remained practically unknown until cavallo, of london, called attention to the leyden manuscript in the third edition of his "treatise on magnetism,"[3] 1800, by giving part of the text and accompanying it with a translation. later, in 1838, libri, historian of the mathematical sciences in italy, gave excerpts from the paris codex with translation; but the scholar who contributed most of all to make the work of peregrinus known is the italian barnabite, timoteo bertelli, who published in 1868 a critical study of the various manuscripts of the letter, principally those which he found in rome and in florence, adding copious notes of historic, bibliographic and scientific value. father bertelli was professor of physics in the collegio della quercia, in florence, where he took an active interest in italian seismology besides carrying on investigations in meteorology, telegraphy and electricity. born in bologna in 1826, he died in florence in march, 1905. the following list of manuscript copies of the "epistola" is taken from a scholarly paper by professor silvanus p. thompson, of london, which appeared in the "proceedings of the british academy" for 1906:- the bodleian library seven vatican four british museum one bibliothèque nationale, paris two biblioteca riccardiana, florence one trinity college, dublin one gonville and caius, cambridge one the university of leyden one geneva one turin one erfurt three vienna three s. p. thompson two the first printed edition of the "epistola" was prepared for the press in 1558 by achilles gasser, a man well versed in the science and philosophy of his day; another edition, which will probably be considered the _textus receptus_, is that which was prepared and published by bertelli in 1868. no complete translation in any language of this historical work on magnetism was made until 1902, when prof. silvanus p. thompson, of london, published his "epistle of peter peregrinus of maricourt to sygerus of foncaucourt, soldier, concerning the magnet." unfortunately, this translation was printed for private circulation and limited to 250 copies. two years later, 1904, brother arnold, f. s. c., presented a memoir on peregrinus, including a translation of the "epistola," for the m. sc. degree of manhattan college, new york city, which translation was published some months later by the mcgraw publishing company, new york. these are the only complete translations of the "letter" of peregrinus on the magnet which have yet appeared. brother potamian. footnotes: [1] see klaproth, "lettre à m. le baron a. de humbolt sur l'invention de la boussole." 1834; also encyc. brit., article _compass_. [2] provins, town 57 miles southeast of paris. [3] southey, "omniana," vol. i., p. 213, ed. 1812. [4] annali di matematica pura ed applicata. rome, 1865. [5] also in _rees_ encyclopedia, article _compass_. chapter ii. norman and gilbert. we have seen that in the thirteenth century the directive property of the lodestone was recognized by peregrinus and used by him in his pivoted compass; and that in the fifteenth, columbus discovered magnetic declination on sea as well as its variation with place. the next cardinal fact in terrestrial magnetism, magnetic dip, was discovered in 1576 by robert norman, a compass-maker of limehouse, london. norman possessed many of the fine qualities of mind, hand and disposition that are indispensable in the make-up of the original investigator. in pivoting his compass-needles, he soon noticed that, however carefully they were balanced before being magnetized, they did not remain horizontal after magnetization, the north-seeking end always going down through a small angle. he next had the happy idea of swinging a needle on a horizontal axis, so that it might be free to move up and down in a vertical plane, with the result that the north-seeking end again went down through a constant but much greater angle. [illustration: fig. 5 the first dip-circle, invented by norman in 1576] like declination, the first discovered of the three magnetic elements, the dip was found to vary with place on the earth's surface, being 0° at the magnetic equator and 90° at either pole. it was with a norman dip-circle, greatly improved, that ross in 1831 found the north magnetic pole of the earth to be in boothia felix in latitude 70° 5'.3 n., and longitude 96° 45'.8 w.; and it was with a similar instrument that amundsen recently studied the magnetic conditions of that arctic region, the exact location of the pole itself being finally determined by an earth-inductor or spinning coil of the latest make. though the results of his observations have not yet been made public, it is generally known that they indicate a spot for the magnetic pole close to that found by sir james ross. it is not expected, however, that the location of the pole by the norwegian commander shall exactly coincide with that of the english captain, because the magnetic pole is believed to have nomadic tendencies of its own like our geographical pole, only much more pronounced in magnitude. after moving westward for some time at the rate of a mile per year, it retraced its steps and is now back again in the vicinity of its starting place. besides his dip-circle, norman also devised a simple and very apt illustration of magnetic inclination. thrusting a steel needle through a round piece of cork, he pared the latter down until the system, consisting of the needle and the cork, sank to a certain depth in a glass vessel containing water, and there took up a horizontal position. the needle was next removed from the water and magnetized with great care, so as not to disturb its position in the cork. when placed again in the water, the needle sank to its former depth and settled down at an angle of 71° to the horizon. the same illustration shows another experiment which norman made in order to determine whether the earth exerts a force of translation on a magnet, in virtue of which the magnet would tend to move bodily toward the pole. for this purpose, he floated a magnetized piece of steel wire on the surface of the water and noticed that, wherever placed, it merely swung round into the magnetic meridian without showing any tendency to move northward or southward toward the rim of the vessel. hartmann, who observed the declination of the needle on land as stated on p. 26, appears also to have been the first to notice magnetic inclination. having balanced a steel needle with great precision, he found that, after magnetization, it did not remain horizontal, the north-seeking end invariably dipping through an angle of 9°. the smallness of the angle in this experiment was due to the fact that the needle used by the nuremberg vicar could move only in a horizontal plane, whereas norman's was free to move in a vertical circle. had hartmann used such a device, he would have obtained more than 60° for the dip instead of the 9° which he records. [illustration: fig. 6 norman's illustration of magnetic dip] as already remarked, the letter in which hartmann consigns these capital observations was written in 1544, but was not published until the third decade of the nineteenth century, so that norman has clearly the full merit of independent discovery. in the directions which norman gives for making observations of dip, he states explicitly that the instrument must be adjusted "duley according to the variation of the place," which means that the plane of the circle must be turned into what was called after his time "the magnetic meridian." the discovery of magnetic dip led norman to discard the view generally held in his time, which placed the controlling influence of the compass-needle in far-off celestial space; for he says that the _poynt respective_ which the magnet indicates, but to which it is not bodily drawn, is not in the heavens above, but in the earth itself. his words are: "and by the declining of the needle is also proved that the poynt respective is rather in the earth than in the heavens, as some have imagined; and the greatest reason why they so thought, as i judge, was because they were never acquainted with this declining in the needle." here we have a radical departure from the scientific creed of the time, a notable advance in scientific theory, an entirely new philosophy founded by norman, the compass-maker, and greatly developed twenty-four years later by his fellow-citizen, gilbert, the physician. [illustration: fig. 7 gilbert's _orb of virtue_, 1600] norman made another remark of great importance in the new philosophy, the justness of which was appreciated by gilbert, his contemporary, but more so by faraday and clerk maxwell, two centuries later. it refers to the space surrounding a magnet, natural or artificial, which cubical space gilbert, following norman, called an _orb of virtue_. that the influence or "effluvium" of the magnet extends throughout the entire space may readily be seen by carrying a compass-needle round a magnet from point to point, far away as well as close by. the phrase "orb of virtue," or sphere of magnetic influence, appears to describe the actual magnetic condition of the space in question more pertinently than our modern equivalent of "magnetic field." the words of norman are very remarkable: "i am of opinion that if this vertue could by anie means be made visible to the eie of man, it would be found in a sphericall forme, extending round about the stone in great compasse and the dead bodie of the stone in the middle thereof." the lines which immediately follow this statement, pregnant with significance, show the deep religious feeling of the author. they read: "and this i have partly proved and made visible to be seene in some manner, and god sparing mee life, i will herein make further experience and that not curiouslie but in the feare of god as neere as he shall give me grace and meane to annexe the same unto a booke of navigation which i have had long in hand."--chap. viii. it is evident from the pages of the _newe attractive_ (1581) that norman was animated with the right spirit of inquiry, which is calm, deliberate and judicious, which leads to the discovery of facts, to their coordination and experimental illustration before explanations are thought of and long before new theories are propounded. the style in which this little treatise is written has a charm of its own, mainly by reason of its quaintness. at the end of his address to the candid reader, which, after the manner of the times, was somewhat belabored and rhetorical in character, norman breaks away from common inadequate prose; and, giving wings to his imagination, writes a lyric on the magnet which is the first metrical composition in english that we have on such a subject. it reads:- the magnes or loadstone's challenge. give place ye glittering sparks, ye glimmering diamonds bright, ye rubies red, and saphires brave wherein ye most delight. in breefe, yee stones inricht, and burnisht all with golde, set forth in lapidaries shops, for jewells to be sold. give place, give place i say, your beautie, gleame and glee, is all the vertue for the which, accepted so you bee. magnes, the loadstone i, your painted sheath defie, without my help in indian seas, the best of you might lie. i guide the pilot's course, his helping hand i am, the mariner delights in me, so doth the marchant man. my vertue lies unknowne, my secrets hidden are, by me, the court and commonweale, are pleasured very farre. no ship could sail on seas, her course to run aright, nor compass shew the ready way were magnes not of might. blush then, and blemish all, bequeath to mee thats due, your seats in golde, your price in plate, which jewellers do renue. its i, its i alone, whom you usurp upon, magnes my name, the loadstone cal'd, the prince of stones alone. if this you can deny, then seem to make reply, and let the painfull sea-man judge, the which of us doth lie. the mariner's judgement. the loadstone is the stone, the onely stone alone, deserving praise above the rest whose vertues are unknown. the marchant's verdict. the diamonds bright, the saphires brave, are stones that bear the name, but flatter not, and tell the troath, magnes deserves the same. (edition of 1720.) norman's _newe attractive_ was well known to gilbert, as were also the _epistola_ of peregrinus, the _magiae naturalis_ of porta, and indeed all books treating of the lodestone, the magnet, or the compass-needle. his own work _de magnete_, published in the year 1600, is a compendium of the world's knowledge of magnetism and electricity at the time. in its pages, he not only discusses the opinions of others, but describes discoveries of his own made during the twenty years which he ardently devoted to the pursuit of experimental science, crowning his investigations with theories in electricity and magnetism as became a true philosopher. impressed by the originality of gilbert's treatise, the practical ingenuity and philosophic acumen displayed throughout, hallam wrote in his _introduction to the literature of europe_: "gilbert not only collected all the knowledge which others had possessed on the subject, but became at once the father of experimental philosophy in this island; and, by a singular felicity and acuteness of genius, the founder of theories which have been received after the lapse of ages and are almost universally received into the creed of science." at a period when natural science was taught in the schools of europe mainly from text-books, we find gilbert proclaiming by example and advocacy the paramount value of experiment for the advancement of learning. he was unsparing in his denunciation of the superficiality and verbosity of mere bookmen, and had no patience with writers who treated their subjects "esoterically, reconditely and mystically." for him, the laboratory method was the only one that could secure fruitful results and contribute effectively to the advancement of learning. it is true that men of unusual ability and strong character strove before his time to adjust the claims of authority in matters scientific. while respectful of the teachings of recognized leaders, they were not, however, awed into acquiescence by an academical "magister dixit." on the contrary, they wanted to test with their eyes in order to judge with reason; believing in the importance of experiment, they sought to acquire a knowledge of nature from nature herself. such were albert the great and friar bacon. albert did not bow obsequiously to the authority of aristotle or any of his arabian commentators; he investigated for himself and became, for his age, a distinguished botanist, physiologist and mineralogist. the franciscan monk of ilchester has left us in his _opus majus_ a lasting memorial of his practical genius. in the section entitled "scientia experimentalis," he affirms that "without experiment, nothing can be adequately known. an argument proves theoretically, but does not give the certitude necessary to remove all doubt, nor will the mind repose in the clear view of truth, unless it find it by way of experiment." and in his _opus tertium_: "the strongest arguments prove nothing, so long as the conclusions are not verified by experience. experimental science is the queen of sciences and the goal of all speculation." no one, even in our own times, wrote more strongly in favor of the practical method than did this follower of st. francis in the thirteenth century. being convinced that there can be no conflict between scientific and revealed truths, he became an irrepressible advocate for observation and experiment in the study of the phenomena and forces of nature. the example of peregrinus, of albert and friar bacon, not to mention others like vincent of beauvais, the dominican encyclopedist, was, however, not sufficient to wean students from the easy-going routine of book-learning. a few centuries had to elapse before the weaning was effectively begun; and the man who contributed in a marked degree to this result was gilbert the philosopher of colchester (1544-1603). having received the elements of his education in the grammar school of colchester, his native town, gilbert entered st. john's college, cambridge, from which university he took his b. a. degree in 1560, m. a. in 1564 and m. d. in 1569. in all, he appears to have been connected with the university for a period of eleven or twelve years, as student, fellow, and examiner. on leaving cambridge, gilbert traveled for four years on the continent, principally in italy, visiting medical schools and studying methods of treatment under the leading physicians and surgeons of the day as well as discussing scientific theory with the leaders of thought. on his return to england in 1573, he practised medicine in london "with great applause and success." he was elected president of the royal college of physicians in 1599, and appointed physician to queen elizabeth in 1601 and to her successor, james i., in 1603. on one occasion, he hears that baptista porta, whom he calls "a philosopher of no ordinary note," said that a piece of iron rubbed with a diamond turns to the north. he suspects this to be heresy. so, forthwith he proceeds to test the statement by experiment. he was not dazzled by the reputation of baptista porta; he respected porta, but respected truth even more. he tells us that he experimented with seventy diamonds in presence of many witnesses, employing a number of iron bars and pieces of wire, manipulating them with the greatest care while they floated on corks; and concludes his long and exhaustive research by plaintively saying: "yet never was it granted me to see the effect mentioned by porta." though it led to a negative result, this probing inquiry was a masterpiece of experimental work. gilbert incidentally regrets that the men of his time "are deplorably ignorant with respect to natural things," and the only way he sees to remedy this is to make them "quit the sort of learning that comes only from books and that rests only on vain arguments and conjectures," for he shrewdly remarks that "even men of acute intelligence without actual knowledge of facts and in the absence of experiment easily fall into error." acting on this intimate conviction, he labored for twenty years over the theories and experiments which he sets forth in his great work on the magnet. "there is naught in these books," he tells us, "that has not been investigated, and again and again done and repeated under our eyes." he begs any one that should feel disposed to challenge his results to repeat the experiments for himself "carefully, skilfully and deftly, but not heedlessly and bunglingly." it has been said that we are indebted to sir francis bacon, queen elizabeth's chancellor, for the inductive method of studying the phenomena of nature. bacon's merit lies in the fact that he not only minutely analyzed the method, pointing out its uses and abuses, but also that he showed it to be the only one by which we can attain an accurate knowledge of the physical world around us. his sententious eulogy went forth to the world of scholars invested with all the importance, authority and dignity which the high position and worldwide fame of the philosophic chancellor could give it. but while bacon thought and wrote in his study, gilbert labored and toiled in his workshop. by his pen, bacon made a profound impression on the philosophic mind of his age; by his researches, gilbert explored two provinces of nature and added them to the domain of science. bacon was a theorist, gilbert an investigator. for twenty years he shunned the glare of society and the throbbing excitement of public life; he wrenched himself away from all but the strictest exigencies of his profession, in order to devote himself undistractedly to the pursuit of science. and all this forty years before the appearance of bacon's _novum organum_, the very work which contains the philosopher's "large thoughts and lofty phrases" on the value of experiment as a means for the advancement of learning. during that long period gilbert haunted colchester, where he delved into the secrets of nature and prepared the materials for his great work on the magnet. the publication of this latin treatise made him known in the universities at home and especially abroad: he was appreciated by all the great physicists and mathematicians of his age; by such men as sir kenelm digby; by william barlowe, a great "magneticall" man; by kepler, the astronomer, who adopted and defended his views; by galileo himself, who said: "i extremely admire and envy the author of _de magnete_." the science of magnetism owes more to gilbert than to any other man, peregrinus (1269) excepted. he repeated for himself the numerous and ingenious experiments of the medieval philosopher, and added much of his own which he discovered during the long period of a life devoted to the diligent exploration of this domain in the world of natural knowledge. the ancients spoke of the lodestone as the magnesian stone, from its being found in abundance in the vicinity of magnesia, a city of asia minor. in his latin treatise of 254 (small) folio pages, gilbert uses the adjective form of the term, but never the noun "magnetismus" itself. our english term _magnetism_ appears for the first time on page 2 of archdeacon barlowe's "magneticall advertisements," published in 1616; while the surprising compound, "electro-magnetismos," is the title of a chapter in father kircher's "magnes, sive de arte magnetica," printed in the year 1641. gilbert showed that a great number of bodies could be electrified; but maintained that those only could exhibit magnetic properties which contain iron. he satisfies himself of this by rubbing with a lodestone such substances as wood, gold, silver, copper, zinc, lead, glass, etc., and then floating them on corks, quaintly adding that they show "no poles, because the energy of the lodestone has no entrance into their interior." to-day we know that nickel and cobalt behave like iron, whilst antimony, bismuth, copper, silver and gold are susceptible of being influenced by powerful electro-magnets, showing what has been termed diamagnetic phenomena. even liquids and gases, in faraday's classical experiments, yielded to the influence of his great magnet; and professor dewar, in the same royal institution, exposed some of his liquid air and liquid oxygen to the influence of faraday's electromagnet and found them to be strongly attracted, thus behaving like the paramagnetic bodies, iron, nickel and cobalt. gilbert observes in all his magnets two points, one near each end, in which the force, or, as he terms it, "the supreme attractional power," is concentrated. like peregrinus, he calls these points the _poles_ of the magnet, and the line joining them its magnetic axis. with the aid of his steel versorium, he recognizes that similar poles are mutually hostile, whilst opposite poles seize and hold each other in friendly embrace. he also satisfies himself that the energy of magnets resides not only in their extremities, but that it permeates "their inmost parts, being entire in the whole and entire in each part." this is exactly what peregrinus said in 1269 and what we say to-day; it is nothing else than the molecular theory proposed by weber, extended by ewing and universally accepted. at any rate, gilbert is quite certain that whatever magnetism may be, it is not, like electricity, a material, ponderable substance. he ascertained this by weighing in the most accurate scales of a goldsmith a rod of iron before and after it had been rubbed with the lodestone, and then observing that the weight is precisely the same in both cases, being "neither less nor more." without referring to the prior discovery of norman, whom he calls "a skilled navigator and ingenious artificer," gilbert satisfies himself that not only the magnet, but all the space surrounding it, possesses magnetic properties; for the magnet "sends its force abroad in all directions, according to its energy and quality." this region of influence norman called a sphere of "vertue," and gilbert an "orbis virtutis," which is the latin equivalent; we call it a "magnetic field," or field of force, which is less expressive and less appropriate. with wonderful intuition, gilbert sees this space filled with lines of magnetic virtue passing out radially from his spherical lodestone, which lines he calls "rays of magnetic force." clerk maxwell was so fascinated with this beautiful concept that he made it the work of his life to study the field of force due to electrified bodies, to magnets and to conductors conveying currents; his powerful intellect visualized those lines and gave them accurate mathematical expression in the great treatise on electricity and magnetism which he gave to the world in 1873. gilbert observes that the lodestone may be spherical or oblong; "whatever the shape, imperfect or irregular, verticity is present; there are poles," and the lodestones "have the selfsame way of turning to the poles of the world." he knows that a compass-needle is not drawn bodily towards the pole, and does not hesitate in this instance to give credit to his countryman, robert norman, for having clearly stated this fact and aptly demonstrated it. following norman, he floats a needle in a vessel by means of a piece of cork, and notices that on whatever part of the surface of the water it may be placed, the needle settles down after a few swings invariably in the same direction. his words are: "it revolves on its iron center and is not borne towards the rim of the vessel." gilbert knew nothing about the mechanical couple that came into play, but he knew the fact; and, with the instinct of the philosopher, tested it in a variety of ways. we explain the orientation of the compass-needle by saying that it is acted upon by a pair of equal and opposite forces due to the influence of the terrestrial magnetic poles on each end of the needle and by showing that such a couple can produce rotation, but not translation. we find gilbert working not only with steel needles and iron bars, but also with rings of iron. he strokes them with a natural magnet and feels certain that he has magnetized them. he assures us that "one of the poles will be at the point rubbed and the other will be at the opposite side." to show that the ring is really magnetized, he cuts it across, opens it out, and finds that the ends exhibit polar properties. a favorite piece of apparatus with gilbert, as with peregrinus, was a lodestone ground down into globular form. he called it a terrella, a miniature earth, and used it extensively for reproducing the phenomena described by magnetizers, travelers and navigators. he breaks up terrellas, in order to examine the magnetic condition of their inner parts. there is not a doubtful utterance in his description of what he finds; he speaks clearly and emphatically. "if magnetic bodies be divided, or in any way broken up, each several part hath a north and a south end"; _i.e._, each part will be a complete magnet. [illustration: fig. 8 behavior of compass-needle on a _terrella_ or spherical lodestone] we find him also comparing magnets by what is known to us as the "magnetometer method." he brings the magnetized bars in turn near a compass-needle and concludes that the magnet or the lodestone which is able to make the needle go round is the best and strongest. he also seeks to compare magnets by a process of weighing, similar to what is called, in laboratory parlance, the "test-nail" method. he also inquires into the effect of heat upon his magnets, and finds that 'a lodestone subjected to any great heat loses some of its energy.' he applies a red-hot iron to a compass-needle and notices that it 'stands still, not turning to the iron.' he thrusts a magnetized bar into the fire until it is red-hot and shows that it has lost all magnetic power. he does not stop at this remarkable discovery, for he proceeds to let his red-hot bars cool while lying in various positions, and finds: (1) that the bar will acquire magnetic properties if it lie in the magnetic meridian; and (2) that it will acquire none if it lie east and west. these effects he rightly attributes to the inductive action of the earth. gilbert marks these and other experiments with marginal asterisks; small stars denoting minor and large ones important discoveries of his. there are in all 21 large and 178 small asterisks, as well as 84 illustrations in _de magnete_. this implies a vast amount of original work, and forms no small contribution to the foundations of electric and magnetic science. gilbert clearly realized the phenomena and laws of magnetic induction. he tells us that "as soon as a bar of iron comes within the lodestone's sphere of influence, though it be at some distance from the lodestone itself, the iron changes instantly and has its form renewed; it was before dormant and inert; but now is quick and active." he hangs a nail from a lodestone; a second nail from the first, a third from the second and so on--a well-known experiment, made every day for elementary classes. nor is this all, for he interposes between the lodestone and his iron nail, thick boards, walls of pottery and marble, and even metals, and he finds that there is naught so solid as to do away with its force or to check it, save a plate of iron. all that can be added to this pregnant observation is that the plate of iron must be very thick in order to carry all the lines of force due to the magnet, and thus completely screen the space beyond. but gilbert is astonishing when he goes on to make thick boxes of gold, glass and marble; and, suspending his needle within them, declares with excusable enthusiasm that, regardless of the box which imprisons the magnet, it turns to its predestined points of north and south. he even constructs a box of iron, places his magnet within, observes its behavior, and concludes that it turns north and south, and would do so were "it shut up in iron vaults sufficiently roomy." in this, he was in error, for experiments show that if the sides of the box are thin, the needle will experience the directive force of the earth; but if they are sufficiently thick--thick as the walls of an ordinary safe--the inside of such a box will be completely screened; none of the earth's magnetic lines will get into it so that the needle will remain indifferently in any position in which it is placed. some years ago, the physical laboratory of st. john's college, oxford, was screened from the obtrusive lines of neighboring dynamos by building two brick walls parallel to each other and eight inches apart and filling in the space with scrap iron. a delicate magnetometer showed that such a structure allowed no leakage of lines of force through it, but offered an impenetrable barrier to the magnetic influence of the working dynamos. gilbert's greatest discovery is that the earth itself acts as a vast globular magnet having its magnetic poles, axis and equator. the pole which is in our hemisphere, he variously calls north, boreal or arctic. whilst that in the other hemisphere he calls south, austral or antarctic. he sought to explain the magnetic condition of our globe by the presence, especially in its innermost parts, of what he calls true, terrene matter, homogeneous in structure and endowed with magnetic properties, so that every separate fragment exhibits the whole force of magnetic matter. he is quite aware that his theory is a grand generalization; and admits that it is "a new and till now unheard-of view," and so confident is he in its worth that he is not afraid to say that "it will stand as firm as aught that ever was produced in philosophy, backed by ingenious argumentation or buttressed by mathematical demonstration." in developing his theory of terrestrial magnetism, gilbert fell into certain errors, chiefly for want of data, but partly also by reason of his adherence to the view that the earth exactly resembled his terrella in its magnetic action. accordingly, he believed that the magnetic poles of the earth were diametrically opposite each other and that they coincided with the poles of rotation, whence it followed that the magnetic meridian everywhere coincided with the geographical, and that the magnet, unless influenced by local disturbances, stood true to the pole. it was, however, well known from the thrilling experience of columbus and the constant report of travelers that this was not the case. gilbert himself says that at the time of writing, in the year 1600, the needle pointed 11-1/3° east of north in london; but what he did not know and could not have known was that this easterly deviation was decreasing from year to year, to vanish altogether in 1657, after which the needle began to decline to the west. this magnetic declination sorely perplexed gilbert, as it did not fit in with his theory. yet an explanation was needed; and as the earth must be considered a normal and well-behaved magnet, though of cosmical size, gilbert turns the difficulty by saying that this variation is nothing else than "a sort of perturbation of the directive force" caused by inequalities in the earth's surface by continents and mountain masses: "since the earth's surface is diversified by elevations of land and depths of seas, great continental lands, oceans and seas differing in every way while the power that produces all magnetic movements comes from the constant magnetic earth-substance which is strongest in the most massive continent and not where the surface is water or fluid or unsettled, it follows that toward a massive body of land or continent rising to some height in any meridian, there is a measurable magnetic leaning from the true pole toward the east or the west." so convinced is gilbert of the true and satisfactory character of his explanation that he goes on to say that, "in northern regions, the compass varies because of the northern eminences; in southern regions, because of southern eminences. on the equator, if the eminences on both sides were equal, there would be no variation." in a later chapter of book iv., he adds that, "in the heart of great continents there is no variation; so, too, in the midst of great seas." as continents and mountain-chains are among the permanent features of our planet, gilbert concluded that the misdirection of the needle was likewise permanent or constant at any given place, a conclusion which observations made after gilbert's time showed to be incorrect. gilbert writes: "as the needle hath ever inclined toward the east or toward the west, so even now does the arc of variation continue to be the same in whatever place or region, be it sea or continent; so, too, will it be forever unchanging." this we know to be untrue, and gilbert, too, could have known as much had he brought the experimental method, which he used with such consummate skill and fruitful results in other departments of his favorite studies, to bear on this particular element of terrestrial magnetism. he labored with incredible ardor and persistence for twenty years in his workshops at colchester over the experiments in electricity, magnetism and terrestrial magnetism which he embodies and discusses in his original and epoch-making book, _de magnete_, published in the year 1600; a period of twenty years was long enough for such a careful observer as he was to detect the slow change in magnetic declination discovered by his friend gellibrand in 1634, published by him in 1635, and known to-day as the "secular variation." it is true the quantity to be measured was small; but what is surprising is that such an industrious and resourceful experimenter as gilbert was does not record in his pages any observations of his own on declination or dip, elements of primary importance in magnetic theory. shortly after the voyage of columbus it was thought that the _longitude_ of a place could be found from its magnetic declination. gilbert, however, did not think so, and accordingly scores those who championed that view. "porta," he says, "is deluded by a vain hope and a baseless theory"; livius sanutus "sorely tortures himself and his readers with like vanities"; and even the researches of stevin, the great flemish mathematician, on the cause of variation in the southern regions of the earth are "utterly vain and absurd." with regard to dip, gilbert erroneously held that for any given latitude it had a constant value. he was so charmed with this constancy that he proposed it as a means of determining _latitude_. there is no diffidence in his mind about the matter; he is sure that with his "inclinatorium" or dip-circle, together with accompanying tables, calculated for him by briggs, of logarithmic fame, an observer can find his latitude "in any part of the world without the aid of the sun, planets or fixed stars in foggy weather as well as in darkness." after such a statement, it is no wonder that he waxes warm over the capabilities of his instrument and allows himself to exclaim: "we can see how far from idle is magnetic philosophy; on the contrary, how delightful it is, how beneficial, how divine! seamen tossed by the waves and vexed with incessant storms while they cannot learn even from the heavenly luminaries aught as to where on earth they are, may with the greatest ease gain comfort from an insignificant instrument and ascertain the latitude of the place where they happen to be." gilbert dwells at length on the inductive action of the earth. he hammers heated bars of iron on his anvil and then allows them to cool while lying in the magnetic meridian. he notes that they become magnetized, and does not fail to point out the polarity of each end. he likewise attributes to the influence of the earth the magnetic condition acquired by iron bars that have for a long time lain fixed in the north-and-south position and ingenuously adds: "for great is the effect of long-continued direction of a body towards the poles." to the same cause, he attributes the magnetization of iron crosses attached to steeples, towers, etc., and does not hesitate to say that the foot of the cross always acquires north-seeking polarity. in a similar manner, every vertical piece of iron, like railings, lamp-posts, and fire-irons, becomes a magnet under the inductive action of the earth. in the case of our modern ships, the magnetization of every plate and vertical post, intensified by the hammering during construction, converts the whole vessel into a magnetic magazine, the resulting complex "field" rendering the adjustment of the compasses somewhat difficult and unreliable. the unreliable character of the adjustment arises mainly from the changing magnetism of the ship with change of place in the earth's magnetic field, the effect increasing slightly from the magnetic equator to the poles. with luminous insight into the phenomena of terrestrial magnetism, gilbert observes that in the neighborhood of the poles, a compass-needle, tending as it does to dip greatly, must in consequence experience only a feeble directive power. to which he adds that "at the poles there is no direction," meaning, no doubt, that a compass-needle would remain in any horizontal position in which it might be placed when in the vicinity of the magnetic pole. this is precisely the experience of all arctic explorers, who find that their compasses become less and less active as they sail northward, the reason being that the horizontal component of the earth's magnetic force, which alone controls the movements of the compass-needle, decreases as the ship advances and vanishes altogether at the magnetic pole. when once a high latitude is reached, captains do not depend upon their compasses for their bearings, but have recourse to astronomical observations. in his account of magnetic work carried on in the neighborhood of the magnetic pole, amundsen says: "at prescott island the compass, which for some time had been somewhat sluggish, refused entirely to act, and we could as well have used a stick to steer by." as a physician, gilbert valued iron for its medicinal properties, but denounced quacks and wandering mountebanks who practised "the vilest imposture for lucre's sake," using powdered lodestone for the cure of wounds and disorders. "headaches," he said, "are no more cured by application of a lodestone than by putting on an iron helmet or a steel hat"; and again: "to give it in a draught to dropsical persons is either an error of the ancients or an impudent tale of their copyists." elsewhere he condemns prescriptions of lodestone as "an evil and deadly advice" and as "an abominable imposture." in the sixth and last book of _de magnete_, gilbert sets forth his views on such astronomical subjects as the figure of the earth, its suspension in space, rotation on its axis and revolution around the sun. as to the figure of our planet, the primitive view widely credited in early times was that the earth is a flat, uneven mass floating in a boundless ocean. the hindoos, however, did not accept the flatland doctrine, but taught that the earth was a convex mass which rested on the back of a triad of elephants having for their support the carapace of a gigantic tortoise. of course, they did not say how the complaisant chelonian contrived to maintain his wonderful state of equilibrium under the superincumbent mass. aristotle (384-322, b. c.) taught that the earth, fixed in the center of the universe, is not flat as a disk, but round as an orange, giving as proofs (1) the gradual disappearance of a ship standing out to sea and (2) the form of the shadow cast by the earth in lunar eclipses, to which others added (3) the change in the altitude of circumpolar stars readily noticeable in traveling north or south. aristarchus of samos (310-250), one of the great astronomers of antiquity, went further, not fearing to teach that the earth is spherical in form, that it turns on its axis daily and revolves annually around the sun. such orthodox teaching did not, however, commend itself to people generally, as they did not exactly like the idea of being whisked round with their houses and cities at a dangerous speed, preferring to explain celestial phenomena by the rotation of the vast celestial sphere, with all the starry host, round a flat, immovable earth. for them such a system of cosmography recommended itself by its simplicity and reasonableness as well as by the sense of stability, rest and comfort which it brought along with it. ptolemy, who flourished at alexandria about 150 a. d. and whose name is associated with a system of the world, also held that the earth is spherical in form, giving at the same time some very ingenious proofs of his belief. st. augustine, in the fourth century, was not opposed to the doctrine of a round earth, though he felt the religious difficulty arising from the existence of the antipodes, which difficulty reached its acute stage four hundred years later. it is well to remember that the church did not condemn the existence of an antipodean world; what it did condemn was the teaching of virgilius, bishop of salzburg, to the effect that this world, lying under the equator, was inhabited by a race of men not descended from adam. virgilius also taught that the antipodes had a sun and moon different from ours, an astronomical opinion for which he was never molested by ecclesiastical authority. boethius, the worthy representative of the natural and the higher philosophy of the sixth century, wrote of the earth as globe-like in form, but small in comparison with the heavens. isidore of seville, in the seventh century, "the most learned man of his age," and the encyclopedic bede, in the eighth, rejected the theory of a flat, discoidal earth and returned to the spherical form of the early greek astronomers. but again, centuries had to elapse before people could be brought to tolerate views of the world that seemed so directly opposed to the daily testimony of their senses. the strong, conclusive arguments which alone establish this theory on a firm basis were, however, not known to copernicus and could not have been known in an age that preceded the invention of the telescope and in which the astronomer had to be the constructor of his own crude wooden instruments. the wonder is that copernicus did such excellent observational work on the banks of the vistula with the rough appliances at his disposal. the arguments which he put forward and urged with consummate skill for the acceptance of his revolutionary theory were its general simplicity and probability. of proofs clear and decisive, he gave none; yet, while he was working on his epoch-making treatise, begun in 1507 and published in 1543 with dedication to pope paul iii., a direct proof of the earth's spherical form was given by the return (1528) from the philippines along an eastern route of one of magellan's ships, which had reached those distant isles after crossing the western ocean, which the portuguese navigator called the "pacific," from the tranquility of its waters. for a direct proof of the earth's _annual_ motion, the world had to wait two hundred years more, until bradley discovered the "aberration of light" in 1729; and for a direct demonstration of its _diurnal_ motion until foucault made his pendulum experiment in the panthéon, in 1851. we cannot let gilbert's reference to a "weightless earth" pass without a few remarks to justify our approval of the statement. the idea connoted by the term weight is the pull which the earth exerts on the mass of a body; thus, when we say that an iron ball weighs six pounds, we mean that the earth pulls it downwards with a force equal to the weight of six pounds. that the weight of a given lump of matter is not a constant but a dependent quantity may be seen from a number of considerations. its weight in vacuo, for instance, is different from its weight in air, and this latter differs considerably from its weight in water or in oil. again, if we take our experimental ball down the shaft of a mine, the spring-balance used to measure the pull of the earth on it will not record six pounds but something less; and the further we descend, the less will the spring-balance be found to register. at a depth of two thousand miles below the surface, the ball would be found to have lost half its weight; and at a depth of four thousand, all its weight. at the earth's center a "box of weights" would still be called a "box of weights," though neither the box itself nor its enclosed standards singly or collectively would have any weight whatever. it has been shown experimentally that two masses weigh slightly less when placed one above the other than when placed side by side, because in the latter case their common mass-center is measurably nearer to the center of the earth. every mother knows that when a boy is sent to buy a pound of candy, it is the mass of the sweet stuff that makes him happy, and not its weight, for this acts more like an incumbrance while he is bringing it home. of course, weight is every day used, and correctly, as a measure of mass, for every student of mechanics writes without the least hesitation, w=mg. by which he simply means that the weight of a body is directly proportional to its mass (m), which is constant wherever the body may be taken, and to the intensity of gravity (g), which varies slightly with geographical position. as both scale-pans of an ordinary balance are equally affected by the local value of _g_, it follows that equilibrium is established only when the two _masses_--that of the body and that of the standards--are themselves equal: hence weighing is in reality only a process of comparing masses, _i.e._, a process of "massing." if we bring our experimental ball to the top of a hill or to the summit of a mountain or aloft in a balloon, we find the pull on the registering spring growing less and less as we go higher and higher, from which we naturally conclude that if we could go far enough out into circumterrestrial space, say, towards the moon, the ball would lose its weight entirely; it would cease to stretch the spring of the measuring balance, its weight vanishing at a definite, calculable distance from the earth's center. if carried beyond that point the ball would come under the moon's preponderating attraction and would begin to depress anew the index of the balance until at the surface of our satellite it would be found to weigh exactly _one_ pound. if transferred to the planet mars the ball would weigh _two_ pounds, and if to the surface of the giant planet jupiter, _sixteen_ pounds. but while its weight thus changes continually, its mass or quantity of matter, the stuff of which it is made, remains constant all the while, being equally unaffected by such variables as motion, position or even temperature. returning from celestial space to our more congenial terrestrial surroundings, we find a similar inconstancy in the weight of the ball as we travel from the equator toward either pole, the weight being least at the equator and slightly greater at either end of our axis of rotation. this change is fully accounted for by the spheroidal figure of the earth and its motion of rotation, in virtue of which, while going from the equator toward the pole, our distance from the center of attraction undergoes a slight diminution, as does also the component of the local centrifugal force, which is in opposition to gravity. from all this, it will be seen that the weight of a body is more of the nature of an accidental rather than an essential property of matter, whereas its mass is a necessary and unvarying property. hence we speak with propriety of the conservation of mass just as we speak with equal propriety of the conservation of energy; but we may never speak or write of the conservation of weight. the mass of our iron ball is precisely the same away from the surface of the earth as it is anywhere on the surface, whether a thousand miles below the surface or a thousand miles above it; and the same it would be found in any part of the solar system or of the starry universe to which it might be taken. since weight is nothing else than the pull which the earth exerts on a body, it follows that, big and massive as our planet is, it must, nevertheless, be weightless; for it cannot with any degree of propriety be said to pull itself. it is incapable of producing even an infinitesimal change in the position of its mass-center, or center of gravity, as this centroid is sometimes called. the earth attracts _itself_ with no force whatever; but is attracted and governed in its annual movement by the sun, the central controlling body of our system, while the moon and planets play only the part of petty disturbers. it would, however, be right to speak of the _weight_ of the earth _relatively_ to the sun; for the sun attracts the mass of our planet with a certain definite force, readily calculable from the familiar formula for central force, viz., mv^2/r., in which _m_ is the mass of the earth, _v_ its orbital velocity and _r_ its distance from the sun. supplying the numbers, the weight of the earth relatively to the sun, comes out to be 3,000000,000000,000000 or 3×10^{18} tons weight, or, in words, three million million million tons weight. it may here be noted that the velocity _v_ of the earth in its orbit is a varying quantity, depending on distance from the sun. as this distance is least in december and greatest in june, it follows that the earth is heavier relatively to the sun in winter than it is in summer. the _mass_ of the earth, on the other hand, is not a relative and variable quantity, but a constant and independent one, which would not be affected either by the sudden annihilation of all the other members of the solar system or by the instantaneous or successive addition of a thousand orbs. mass being the product of volume by density, that of the earth is 6000,000000,000000,000000 or 6×10^{21} tons mass, which reads six thousand million million million tons mass. the number which expresses the mass of the earth is thus very different from that which represents its weight relatively to the sun. it is obvious that the latter would be a much greater quantity if our planet were transferred to the orbit of venus and very much less if transferred to that of far-off jupiter, but the number which expresses its _mass_ would remain precisely the same in both cases, viz., the value given above. in elaborating his theory of magnetism, and especially his magnetic theory of the earth, gilbert made extensive use of lodestone-globes, which he called "terrellas," _i.e._, miniature models of the earth. in pursuing his searching inquiry, he was gradually led from these "terrellas" to his great induction that the earth itself is a colossal, globe-like magnet. following norman, "the ingenious artificer," of limehouse, london, he also showed that the entire cubical space which surrounds a lodestone is an "orb of virtue," or region of influence, from which he inferred that the earth itself must have its "orb of virtue," or magnetic field, extending outward to a very great distance. gilbert does not, for a moment, think that this theory of terrestrial magnetism, the first ever given to the world, is a wild speculation. far from it; he is convinced that "it will stand as firm as aught that ever was produced in philosophy, backed by ingenious argumentation or buttressed by mathematical demonstration." if the earth has a magnetic field, he argued, why not the moon, the planets and the sun itself, "the mover and inciter of the universe"? given these planetary magnetic fields, gilbert seems to have no difficulty in finding out the forces necessary to account for the crucial difficulties of the copernican doctrine. nor is the medium absent that is needed for the mutual action of magnetic globes, for we are assured that it is none other than the universal _ether_, which, he says "is without resistance." gilbert disposes of the cosmographic puzzle of the "suspension" of the earth in space by saying, and saying justly, that the earth "has no heaviness of its own," and, therefore, "does not stray away into every region of the sky." to emphasize the statement, he continues: "the earth, in its own place, is in no wise heavy, nor does it need any balancing"; and again, "the whole earth itself has no weight." "by the wonderful wisdom of the creator," he elsewhere says, "forces were implanted in the earth that the globe itself might with steadfastness take direction." gilbert holds that the daily rotation of the earth on its axis is also caused, and maintained with strict uniformity, by the same prevalent system of magnetic forces, for "lest the earth should in divers ways perish and be destroyed, she rotates in virtue of her _magnetic energy_, and such also are the movements of the rest of the planets." just how this magnetic energy acts to produce the rotatory motion of a massive globe gilbert does not say. nor was he able to solve such a magnetic riddle, for there was nothing in his philosophy to explain how a lodestone-globe in free space should ever become a perpetual magnetic motor. oddly enough he disagrees with peregrinus, who maintained in his _epistola_, 1269, that a terrella, or spherical lodestone, poised in the meridian, would turn on its axis regularly every 24 hours. he naively says: "we have never chanced to see this; nay, we doubt if there is such a movement." continuing, he brings out his clinching argument: "this daily rotation seems to some philosophers wonderful and incredible because of the ingrained belief that the mighty mass of earth makes an orbital movement in 24 hours; it were more incredible that the moon should in the space of 24 hours traverse her orbit or complete her course; more incredible that the sun and mars should do so; still more that jupiter and saturn; more than wonderful would be the velocity of the fixed stars and firmament." here he finds himself obliged to berate ptolemy for being "over-timid and scrupulous in apprehending a break up of this nether world were the earth to move in a circle. why does he not apprehend universal ruin, dissolution, confusion, conflagration and stupendous celestial and super-celestial calamities from a motion (that of the starry sphere) which surpasses all imagination, all dreams and fables and poetic license, a motion ineffable and inconceivable?" gilbert is not clear and emphatic on the other doctrine of copernicus, the revolution of the earth and planets around the sun. he does, however, say that each of the moving globes "has circular motion either in a great circular orbit or on its own axis, or in both ways." again: "the earth by some great necessity, even by a virtue innate, evident and conspicuous, is turned circularly about the sun." elsewhere he affirms that the moon circles round the earth "by a magnetic compact of both." he returns to this point in his _de mundo nostro_, saying, "the force which emanates from the moon reaches to the earth; and, in like manner, the _magnetic virtue_ of the earth pervades the region of the moon." we have here an implied interaction between two magnetic fields, rather a clever idea for a magnetician of the sixteenth century. in one case, the reaction is between the field of the earth and that of the moon, compelling the latter to rotate round its primary once every month; and the second, between the field of the earth and that of the sun, compelling our planet to revolve round the center of our system once every year. though an inefficient cause of the annual motion of our planet, this interaction of two magnetic fields had, nevertheless, something in common with the idea of the mutual action of material particles postulated in the newtonian theory of universal gravitation. this magnetic assumption by which gilbert sought to defend the theory of the universe propounded by copernicus was a very vulnerable point in his astronomical armor which was promptly detected and fiercely assailed by a galaxy of continental writers; all of them churchmen, physicists and astronomers of note. they accepted gilbert's electric and magnetic discoveries and warmed up to his experimental method; they did not discard his theory of terrestrial magnetism, but rejected and scoffed at the use which he made of it to justify the heliocentric theory. they poked fun at the english philosopher for his magnetic hypothesis of planetary rotation and revolution, and succeeded in discrediting the copernican doctrine. error prevailed for a time, but newton's _principia_, published in 1687, gave the ptolemaic system the _coup de grâce_. gilbert's hypothesis of the interaction of planetary magnetic fields gave way to universal gravitation, and copernicanism was finally triumphant. throughout the pages of gilbert's treatise, he shows himself remarkably chary in bestowing praise, but surprisingly vigorous in denunciation. st. thomas is an instance of the former, for it is said that he gets at the nature of the lodestone fairly well; and it is admitted that "with his godlike and perspicacious mind, he would have developed many a point had he been acquainted with magnetic experiments." taisnier, the belgian, is an example of the latter, whose plagiarism from peregrinus wrings from our indignant author such withering words as "may the gods damn all such sham, pilfered, distorted works, which so muddle the minds of students!" besides his treatise on the magnet, gilbert is the author of an extensive work entitled, "de mundo nostro sublunari," in which he defends the modern system of the universe propounded by copernicus and gives his views on important cosmical problems. this work was published after the author's death, first at stettin in 1628, and again at amsterdam in 1651. chancellor bacon was well acquainted with this treatise of our philosopher; indeed he had in his collection the only two manuscript copies ever made, one in latin and the other in english, a very singular and significant fact in view of the chancellor's attitude toward gilbert. putting it crudely, one would like to know how he obtained possession of the manuscripts and what was his motive in keeping them hidden away from the philosophers of the day. "it is considered surprising," writes prof. silvanus p. thompson, "that bacon, who had the manuscripts in his possession and held them for years unpublished, should have written severe strictures upon their dead author and his methods, while at the very same time posing as the discoverer of the inductive method in science, a method which gilberd (gilbert) had practised for years before."[7] that bacon was no admirer of gilbert's physical and cosmical theories the following passages will show. in the "novum organum" the chancellor wrote: "his philosophy is an instance of extravagant speculation founded on insufficient data"; again, "as the alchemists made a philosophy out of a few experiments of the furnace, gilbert, our countryman, hath made a philosophy out of the lodestone" ("the advancement of learning"); lastly, "gilbert hath attempted a general system on the magnet, endeavoring to build a ship out of materials not sufficient to make the rowing-pins of a boat" ("de augmentis scientiarum"). one is tempted to ask how this strange disregard which bacon entertained for the scientific views of the greatest natural philosopher of his age and country came to exist? was it due to a feeling of jealousy that could not brook a rival in the domain of the higher philosophy, or was it because bacon, the anti-copernican, wanted to write down gilbert, the defender of the heliocentric theory, in the british isles? when reading bacon's depreciatory remarks we have to remember that his mathematical and physical outfit was very limited even for the age in which he lived; from which it is safe to infer that he was but little qualified to pass judgment on the value of the electric and magnetic work accomplished in the workshops at colchester or on the theories to which they gave rise. bacon deserves praise for denouncing the prevalent system of natural philosophy which was mainly authoritative, speculative and syllogistic instead of experimental, deductive and inductive, but he was inconsistent and forgetful of his own principles when he belittled the greatest living enemy of mere book-learning, and the most earnest advocate, by word and example, of the laboratory methods for the advancement of learning. to avoid misapprehension, it should be here stated that bacon was not always censorious in his treatment of his illustrious fellow-citizen, for in several places he writes approvingly of the electric and magnetic experiments contained in _de magnete_, which he calls in his _advancement of learning_, "a painfull (_i.e._, painstaking) experimentall booke." in other places he draws so freely on gilbert without acknowledgment as to come dangerously near the suspicion of plagiarism. gilbert died, probably of the plague, in the sixtieth year of his age, on december 10th, 1603, and was buried in the chancel of holy trinity church, colchester, where a mural tablet records in latin the chief facts of his life. dr. fuller in his "worthies of england" (1662) describes gilbert as tall of stature and cheerful of "complexion," a happiness, he quaintly remarks, not ordinarily found in so hard a student and retired a person." concluding his appreciation of the philosopher, fuller writes: "mahomet's tomb at mecha[6] is said strangely to hang up, attracted by some invisible loadstone; but the memory of this doctor will never fall to the ground, which his incomparable book _de magnete_ will support to eternity." animated by a similar spirit of national pride, dryden wrote gilbert shall live till loadstones cease to draw, or british fleets the boundless ocean awe. we shall close these remarks by hallam's estimate of gilbert as a scientific pioneer, contained in his _introduction to the literature of europe_. "the year 1600," he says, "was the first in which england produced a remarkable work in physical science; but this was one sufficient to raise a lasting reputation for its author. gilbert, a physician, in his latin treatise on the magnet, not only collected all the knowledge which others had possessed on the subject, but became at once the father of experimental philosophy in this island; and, by a singular felicity and acuteness of genius, the founder of theories which have been revived after a lapse of ages and are almost universally received into the creed of science." for well-nigh three hundred years, _de magnete_ remained untranslated, being read only by the scholarly few. the first translation was made by p. fleury mottelay, of new york, and published by messrs. wiley and sons in the year 1893. mr. mottelay has given much attention to the bibliography of the twin sciences of electricity and magnetism, as the foot-notes which he has added to the translation abundantly prove. a second translation appeared in the tercentenary year, 1900, and was the work of the members of the gilbert club, london, among whom were dr. joseph larmor and prof. silvanus p. thompson. it is a page-for-page translation with facsimile illustrations, initial letters and tail-pieces. as one would infer from the numerous references contained in _de magnete_, gilbert had a considerable collection of valuable books, classical and modern, bearing on the subject of his life-work; but these, as well as his terrellas, globes, minerals and instruments, perished in the great fire of london, 1666, with the buildings of the college of physicians, in which they were located. a portrait of gilbert was preserved in the bodleian library, oxford, for many years; but has long since disappeared from its walls. on the occasion of the three hundredth anniversary (1903) of gilbert's death, a fine painting representing the doctor in the act of showing some of his electrical experiments to queen elizabeth and her court (including sir walter raleigh, sir francis drake and cecil, lord burleigh, famous secretary of state), was presented to the mayor of colchester by the london institute of electrical engineers. a replica of the painting was sent to the st. louis exposition, 1904, where it formed one of the attractions of the electricity building. the house in which gilbert was born (1544) still stands in holy trinity street, colchester, where it is frequently visited by persons interested in the history of electric and magnetic science. brother potamian. footnotes: [6] "souvenir of gilberd's tercentenary," p. 6. [7] see magnetic myths, page 5. chapter iii. franklin and some contemporaries. as already seen, the writers of greece and rome knew little about the lodestone; we have now to add that the knowledge of electricity which they possessed was of the same elementary character. they knew that certain resinous substances, such as amber and jet had, when rubbed, the property of attracting straws, feathers, dry leaves and other light bodies; beyond this, their philosophy did not go. the middle ages added little to the subject, as the schoolmen were occupied with questions of a higher order. the saxon heptarchy came and went, alcuin taught in the schools of charlemagne, cardinal langton compelled a landless and worthless king to sign magna charta, universities were founded with papal sanction in italy, france, germany, england and scotland, copernicus wrote his treatise on the revolution of heavenly bodies and dedicated it to pope paul iii., tycho brahé made his famous astronomical observations at uranienborg and befriended at prague the penniless kepler, and columbus gave a new world to castile and leon--all this before the man appeared who, using amber as guide, discovered a new world of phenomena, of thought and philosophy. this man was no other that gilbert, whose discoveries in magnetism were described in an earlier chapter. the trunk line of his work was magnetism; electricity was only a siding. one was the main subject of a life-long quest while the other was only a digression. it was a digression in which the qualities of the native-born investigator are seen at their very best: alertness and earnestness, resourcefulness and perseverance, all rewarded by a rich harvest of valuable results. it is refreshing and inspiring to read the second book of gilbert's treatise, _de magnete_, in which are recorded in quick succession the twenty important discoveries which he made in his new field of labor. [illustration: fig. 9 gilbert's "versorium" or electroscope] at the very outset, he found it necessary to invent a recording instrument to test the electrification produced by rubbing a great variety of substances. this he appropriately called a _versorium_; we would call it an electroscope. "make to yourself," he says, "a rotating needle of any sort of metal three or four fingers long and pretty light and poised on a sharp point." he then briskly rubs and brings near his versorium glass, sulphur, opal, diamond, sapphire, carbuncle, rock-crystal, sealing-wax, alum, resin, etc., and finds that all these attract his suspended needle, and not only the needle, but everything else. his words are remarkable: "all things are drawn to electrics." here is a great advance on the amber and jet, the only two bodies previously known as having the power to attract "straws, chaff and twigs," the usual test-substances of the ancients. pursuing his investigations, he finds numerous bodies which perplex him, because when rubbed they do not affect his electroscope. among these, he enumerates: bone, ivory, marble, flint, silver, copper, gold, iron, even the lodestone itself. the former class he called _electrica_, electrics; the latter was termed _anelectrica_, non-electrics. to gilbert we, therefore, are indebted for the terms electric and electrical, which he took from the greek name for amber instead of succinic and succinical, their latin equivalents. the noun electricity was a coinage of a later period, due probably to sir thomas browne, in whose _pseudodoxia epidemica_, 1646, it occurs in the singular number on page 51 and in the plural on page 79. it may interest the reader to be here retold that we owe the chemical term _affinity_ to albertus magnus, _barometer_ to boyle, _gas_ to van helmont, _magnetism_ to barlowe, magnetic _inclination_ to bond, electric _circuit_ to watson, electric _potential_ to green, _galvanometer_ to cumming, _electro-magnetism_ to kircher, _electromagnet_ to sturgeon, and _telephone_ to wheatstone. gilbert was perplexed by the anomalous behavior of his non-electrics. he toiled and labored hard to find out the cause. he undertook a long, abstract, philosophical discussion on the nature of bodies which, from its very subtlety, failed to reveal the cause of his perplexing anomaly. gilbert failed to discover the distinction between conductors and insulators; and, as a consequence, never found out that similarly electrified bodies repel each other. had he but suspended an excited stick of sealing-wax, what a promised land of electrical wonders would have unfolded itself to his vision and what a harvest of results such a reaper would have gathered in! from solids, gilbert proceeds to examine the behavior of liquids, and finds that they, too, are susceptible of electrical influence. he notices that a piece of rubbed amber when brought near a drop of water deforms it, drawing it out into a conical shape. he even experiments with smoke, concluding that the small carbon particles are attracted by an electrified body. some years ago, sir oliver lodge, extending this observation, proposed to lay the poisonous dust floating about in the atmosphere of lead works by means of large electrostatic machines. he even hinted in his royal institution lecture that they might be useful in dissipating mists and fogs, and recommended that a trial be made on some of our ocean-steamers. gilbert next tries heat as an agent to produce electrification. he takes a red-hot coal and finds that it has no effect on his electroscope; he heats a mass of iron up to whiteness and finds that it, too, exerts no electrical effect. he tries a flame, a candle, a burning torch, and concludes that all bodies are attracted by electrics save those that are afire or flaming, or extremely rarefied. he then reverses the experiment, bringing near an excited body the flame of a lamp, and ingenuously states that the body no longer attracts the pivoted needle. he thus discovered the neutralizing effect of flames, and supplied us with the readiest means that we have to-day for discharging non-conductors. he goes a step further; for we find him exposing some of his electrics to the action of the sun's rays in order to see whether they acquired a charge; but all his results were negative. he then concentrates the rays of the sun by means of lenses, evidently expecting some electrical effect; but finding none, concludes with a vein of pathos that the sun imparts no power, but dissipates and spoils the electric effluvium. professor righi has shown that a clean metallic plate acquires a positive charge when exposed to the ultraviolet radiation from any artificial source of light, but that it does not when exposed to solar rays. the absence of electrical effects in the latter case is attributed to the absorptive action of the atmosphere on the shorter waves of the solar beam. of course gilbert permits himself some speculation as to the nature of the agent with which he was dealing. he thought of it, reasoned about it, pursued it in every way; and came to the conclusion that it must be something extremely tenuous indeed, but yet substantial, ponderable, material. "as air is the effluvium of the earth," he says, "so electrified bodies have an effluvium of their own, which they emit when stimulated or excited"; and again: "it is probable that amber exhales something peculiar that attracts the bodies themselves." these views are quite in line with the electronic theory of electricity in vogue to-day, which invests that elusive entity with an atomic structure. it is held that the tiny particles or electrons that are shot out from the cathode terminal of a vacuum tube with astounding velocity are none other than particles of negative electricity, pure and simple. they have mass and inertia, both of which properties are held to be entirely electrical, though quite analogous to the mass and inertia of ordinary, ponderable matter. history shows that scientific theories have their periods of infancy, maturity and decay. when they have served their purpose, like the scaffolding of a building, they are removed from sight and stored away, say, in a limbo of discarded philosophy, for use of the historian of science or of the metaphysician writing on the nature of human knowledge. such was the fate of gilbert's "effluvium" theory of electricity, of the fluid theories of dufay and franklin, and the ether-strain theory of recent years. "each physical hypothesis," says prof. fleming, "serves as a lamp to conduct us a certain stage in the journey. it illumines a limited portion of the path, throwing light before and behind for some distance; but it has to be discarded and exchanged at intervals because it has become exhausted and because its work is done." it is a little surprising that the phenomenon of electrical repulsion should have escaped the attention of one so skilled in experimentation as gilbert. yet such was the case; and gilbert even went so far as to deny its very existence, saying, "electrics attract objects of every kind; they never repel." this error reminds one of gilbert's own saying that "men of acute intelligence, without actual knowledge of facts, and in the absence of experiment, easily slip and err." just twenty-nine years after gilbert had penned this aphorism, there appeared in ferrara an extensive work on electric and magnetic philosophy, by the jesuit cabeo, in which this electrical repulsion was recognized and described. having rubbed one of his electrics, cabeo noticed that it attracted grains of dust at first and afterward repelled them suddenly and violently. in the case of threads, hairs or filaments of any kind, he observed that they quivered a little before being flung away like sawdust. this self-repelling property of electricity, described in the year 1629, opened up a new field of inquiry, which was actively explored by a number of brilliant electricians in england and on the continent. this was especially the case after the building of the first frictional machine by otto von guericke in 1672. the burgomaster of magdeburg had already acquired european fame by the original and sensational experiments on atmospheric pressure which he made in presence of the emperor and his nobles in solemn diet assembled (1651). von guericke seems to have been of a mind with gilbert concerning writers on natural science who treat their subjects "esoterically, miracle-mongeringly, abstrusely, reconditely, mystically"; for he affirms that "oratory, elegance of diction or skill in disputation avails nothing in the field of natural science." von guericke's machine consisted of a ball of sulphur, with the hand of the operator or assistant as rubber. some years later, the sulphur ball was replaced by newton (some say hauksbee) by a glass globe, which, in turn, was exchanged for a glass cylinder by gordon, a scotch benedictine, who was professor of natural philosophy in the university of erfurt. in 1755, martin de planta, of sus, in switzerland, constructed a plate-machine which was subsequently improved by ramsden of london. the frictional machine, as it was rightly called, has been superseded by the influence machine, a type of static generator which is at once efficient, reliable and easy of operation. the best known form for laboratory use is that of wimshurst (1832-1903), of london. andrew gordon, the scotch benedictine to whom reference has just been made, was a man of an inventive turn of mind. besides, the cylindrical electric machine which he constructed, he devised several ingenious pieces of electrical apparatus, among which are the _electric chimes_ usually ascribed to franklin. they are fully described in his _versuch einer erklärung der electricität_, published in 1745. on page 38, he says that he was led to try an electrical method of ringing bells; and then adds: "for this purpose i placed two small wine-glasses near each other, one of which stood on an electrified board, while the other, placed at a distance of an inch from it, was connected with the ground. between the two, i suspended a little clapper by a silk thread, which clapper was attracted by the electrified glass and then repelled to the grounded one, giving rise to a sound as it struck each glass. as the clapper adhered somewhat to the glasses, the effect on the whole was not agreeable. i, therefore, substituted two small metallic gongs suspended one from an electrified conductor and the other from a grounded rod, the gongs being on the same level and one inch apart. when the clapper was lowered and adjusted, it moved at once to the electrified bell, from which it was driven over to the other, and kept on moving to and fro, striking the bell each time with pleasing effect until the electrified bell lost its charge." in the illustration, _a_ is connected with the electrified conductor; _b_ is the insulated clapper; _c_ the grounded gong. [illustration: fig. 10 gordon's electric chimes, 1745] gordon's book was published in erfurt in 1745, while the year 1752 is that in which franklin applied the chimes to his experimental rod to apprise him of the approach of an electric storm, an application which was original and quite in keeping with the practical turn of mind that characterized our journeyman-printer, philosopher and statesman. unquestionably, franklin had all the ingenuity and constructive ability needed to make such an appliance; but there is no evidence that he actually invented it. though franklin neither claimed nor disclaimed the chimes as his own, all his admirers would have preferred less reticence on his part when the discoveries and inventions of contemporary workers in the electrical field were concerned. he had attained sufficient eminence to permit him to look appreciatingly and encouragingly on the efforts of others. gordon also invented a toy electric motor in which rotation was effected by the reaction of electrified air-particles escaping from a number of sharp points. one of these motors consisted of a star of light rays cut from a sheet of tin and pivoted at the center, with the ends of the rays slightly bent aside and all in the same direction. when electrified, gordon noticed that the star required no extraneous help to set it in motion. it was a self-starting electric-motor. in the dark, the points were tipped with light, and as they revolved traced out a luminous circle which "could neither be blown out nor decreased." the reader will recognize in this description taken from gordon's _versuch_, page 45, the _electric whirl_ of the lecture-table; gordon's name is never associated with it, but that of hamilton (hamilton's "fly" or hamilton's "mill") sometimes is! this irrepressible monk seems to have been one of the earliest electrocutors, for it is said that many an innocent chaffinch fell victim to discharges from his machine; and we would be disposed to think of him as a wizard on learning that he ignited spirits by using an electrified stream of water, to the astonishment and mystification of the spectators. abbé menon was kinder to the feathered tribe than his black-cowled brother of erfurt; he did not subject them to a powerful discharge, but rather to a gentle electrification for the purpose of determining what physical or physiological effect the agent would have on the animal system. the abbé found that cats, pigeons, sparrows and chaffinches lost weight by being electrified for five or six hours at a time, from which he concluded that electricity augments the slow, continuous perspiration of animals. the same was found to take place with the human body itself. the reader will remember that stephen gray in 1730 suspended a boy by means of silken cords for the purpose of electrification; abbé nollet did the same, and doubtless his friend abbé menon adopted a similar mode of insulation for complacent electrical subjects. an easier mode of operating would have been to make the child stand on a cake of resin, the insulating property of which had been discovered by stephen gray. about this time, 1746, franklin appears on the scene, and though he devoted but nine years (1746-1755) of his life to the study of electricity, he made discoveries in that fascinating branch of human knowledge that will hand his name down the centuries. franklin's life is interesting and instructive on account of the difficulties which he met and overcame, for his strength of will, tenacity of purpose, the philosophy which he followed, his devotedness to science, and the success which he achieved. our philosopher's moral code comprised the thirteen virtues of temperance, silence, order, resolution, frugality, industry, sincerity, justice, moderation, cleanliness, tranquility, chastity and humility. to each of these virtues franklin attached a precept which makes edifying reading even at the present day: _temperance_, eat not to dullness, drink not to elation; _silence_, speak not but what may benefit others or yourself, avoid trifling conversation; _order_, let all your things have their places, let each part of your business have its time; _resolution_, resolve to perform what you ought, perform without fail what you resolve; _frugality_, make no expense, but do good to others or yourself, _i.e._, waste nothing; _industry_, lose no time, be always employed in something useful, cut off all unnecessary actions; _sincerity_, use no hurtful deceit, think innocently and justly, and if you speak, speak accordingly; _justice_, wrong no one by doing injury or omitting the benefits that are your duty; _moderation_, avoid extremes, forbear resenting injuries so much as you think they deserve; _cleanliness_, tolerate no uncleanliness in body, clothes or habitation; _tranquility_, be not disturbed by trifles or accidents common or unavoidable; _chastity_ (no remark); _humility_, imitate jesus. this last virtue seems to have given franklin very much concern; for he admits that he had the appearance of humility, and immediately adds that in reality there is no passion of the human breast so hard to subdue as pride. he is shrewd enough to say that "even if i could conceive that i had completely overcome it, i should probably be proud of my humility." like many another, the virtue which gave him the most trouble was _order_, and this never became conspicuously apparent at any time of his long life. in his endeavors after the higher life, he seems to have been animated with the earnest spirit of the ascetic who binds himself to strive after perfection as laid down in the maxims and counsels of the gospel. it is not without surprise and perhaps a feeling too of self-condemnation, that we read the means which he adopted to reach a high moral standard. taking for granted that he had a true appreciation of right and wrong, he did not see why he should not always act according to the dictates of conscience. to improve himself morally and advance in the higher life, he adopted a means that should have proved effective. taking the first of the thirteen fundamental virtues, he applied himself to its acquisition for a whole week together, after which he took the second, then the third, and so on with the rest. he thought that by making daily acts of the virtue, it would become habitual with him at the end of the week. when the last of the thirteen virtues had received its share of attention, he returned to the first one on the list and proceeded round the cycle again. being a man of purpose and tenacity, he completed the circle of his chosen virtues four times a year; subsequently he extended the time of individual practise so as to take a whole year for the course; and later on, he devoted several years to the completion of his list. as an aid in this work of self-betterment, franklin examined himself daily, registering his failures in a little book which was ruled for the purpose, a column being allowed for each day and a line for each of the thirteen virtues. he naively tells us the result of this exercise of daily introspection in these words: "i am surprised to find myself so much fuller of faults than i had imagined; but i had the satisfaction of seeing them diminish." the evening examination of conscience was always concluded by the following prayer written by franklin himself: "o powerful goodness! bountiful father! merciful guide! increase in me that wisdom which discovers my truest interest. strengthen my resolutions to perform what that wisdom dictates. accept my kind offices to thy other children as the only return in my power for thy continual favors to me." an extensive reader, franklin found in thomson's poems some lines that appealed to him very strongly by the beauty of the sentiment expressed. he called them "a little prayer," which he recited from time to time: "father of light and life, thou lord supreme, oh, teach me what is good; teach me thyself. save me from folly, vanity and vice; from every low pursuit; and fill my soul with knowledge, conscious peace and virtue pure; sacred, substantial, never-failing bliss!" his was a praiseworthy attempt at emancipating himself from the thraldom of passion and raising himself to the high plane of perfection required by the master when he said "follow me." doubtless, as time wore on, he must have felt as many before and since, that the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak. in his autobiography, franklin attributes his success in business not only to his self-control, uniformity of conduct, philosophical indifference to slight or pique, but also to his habits of frugality, the result in part of his early training. "my original habits of frugality continuing," he says, "and my father having frequently repeated a proverb of solomon, 'seest thou a man diligent in his business? he shall stand before kings,' i from thence considered industry as a means of obtaining wealth and distinction, which encouraged me, tho' i did not think that i should ever literally _stand before kings_, which, however, has since happened." our aged philosopher proceeds to tell us of his good fortune with a little bit of pardonable vanity, to which, by the way, he was never a great stranger, despite his philosophy, acquired virtue, and staid character. referring to the kings of the earth, he informs us that he "_stood_ before five, and even had the honor of _sitting down_ with one to dinner." an important event in franklin's life was the founding by him of the first public library in the country in the year 1732. though but twenty-six years of age, he seems to have been as well aware as any of the millionaire philanthropists of to-day, of the good that may be accomplished among common people by providing them with suitable reading matter. he watched with eagerness the progress of his experiment and was pleased with the success that crowned it. he observes that such libraries "tend to improve the conversation of americans and to make common tradesmen and farmers as intelligent (well-informed?) as most gentlemen from other countries." peter collinson, fellow of the royal society of london, who had dealings with some philadelphia merchants, was led to take an active interest in the library. this he did by sending over a number of books and papers relating to electricity together with an "electrical tube" with instructions for its use. these literary and scientific contributions sent from london from time to time, excited much interest among the charter members of the library company, and principally that of franklin himself. he had heard something of the new order of phenomena which was just then engaging the attention of european physicists. in the summer of 1746, while on a visit to boston, his native place, he assisted at a lecture on electricity by a certain dr. spence, a scotchman, who sought to illustrate the properties of electrified bodies by such experiments as could be made with glass tubes and suitable rubbers, the rudimentary apparatus available at the time. franklin was impressed by what he saw and heard, even though he indulged in a little destructive criticism when he said that the experiments were "imperfectly made," because the lecturer was "not very expert." when franklin wrote those words, he knew by repeated and painful experience the difficulty of getting satisfactory results from rubbing glass tubes or rotating glass globes, owing to the provoking attraction which plain, untreated glass has for moisture. knowing this, he might have been less severe in his strictures on his friend, the peripatetic electrician. it is evident, however, that the experiments which he witnessed surprised and pleased him, for, having shortly afterward received some electrical tubes together with a paper of instructions, from his london friend, peter collinson, he set to work for himself without delay. we may well say of him that what his right hand found to do, he did calmly, but with all his might. a twelve-month had not elapsed before he wrote: "i never was engaged in any study that so totally engrossed my attention and time as this has lately done; for, what with making experiments when i can be alone and repeating them to my friends and acquaintance who, from the novelty of the thing, come continually in crowds to see them, i have had little leisure for anything else." (1747.) here we see the calm, persistent character of the philosopher united with the affability and communicativeness of the gentleman. for the sake of encouraging others as well, perhaps, as through a sense of personal relief, franklin had a number of long tubes of large bore blown at the local glass-house, which tubes he distributed to his friends that they, too, might engage in research work. in this way, rubbing and rubbing of an energetic kind became quite an occupation in the franklin circle. kinnersley, whose name still survives in works on static electricity in connection with an electric "thermometer" which he devised, was among the band of ardent workers who ungrudgingly acknowledged franklin's superior acumen, comprehensive grasp of detail and wondrous insight into the mechanism of the new phenomena. if we say that franklin was not a genius, it is only for the purpose of adding that even in those early electrical studies he displayed an uncommon amount of the unlimited capacity for taking pains which is said to be associated with that brilliant gift. he tested all his results with great care and in a variety of ways before accepting any of them as final; and considered his explanations of them provisional, being ever ready to modify them or give them up altogether if shown to conflict with the simple workings of nature. as early as 1733, the refined and tactful dufay, in france, showed by numerous experiments on woods, stones, books, oranges and metals that all solid bodies were susceptible of electrification. this was a notable advance which swept away gilbert's classification of bodies into electrics and non-electrics. the french physicist soon drew from his observations the conclusion that electrification produced by friction is of two kinds, to which he applied the terms vitreous and resinous, the former being developed when glass is rubbed with silk and the latter when amber or common sealing-wax is rubbed with flannel. he noticed, too, that silk strings repelled each other when both were touched either with excited glass or sealing-wax; but that they attracted each other when touched one with glass and the other with sealing-wax. from these observations, he deduced the electrostatic laws, that similarly electrified bodies attract while dissimilarly electrified bodies repel each other. the law of distance was discovered later by coulomb, who, in 1785, showed that the law of repulsion as well as of attraction between two electrified particles varies inversely as the square of the distance. in the year 1750, the law of the inverse square for magnets was stated by john michell, who expressed it by saying that the "attraction and repulsion decrease as the square of the distance from the respective poles increases." michell was fourth wrangler of his year (1748-9), fellow of queen's college, cambridge, and inventor of the _torsion balance_, which, however, he did not live to use; but which, in the hands of cavendish, yielded important results on the mean density of the earth. coulomb probably re-invented the "balance" and applied the practical, laboratory instrument which he made it, to the study of the quantitative laws of electricity and magnetism. to observe and correlate phenomena is the special work of the physicist; to speculate on ultimate causes is the privilege of the philosopher. dufay was both. the theory which he offered was a simple one, even if untrue to nature. it was a good working hypothesis for the time being. according to this theory, there are two distinct, independent electrical fluids mutually attractive but self-repelling. with that postulate, dufay was able to offer a plausible explanation of a great many phenomena that puzzled the electricians of the time. franklin, however, held a different view; rejecting the dual nature of electricity, he propounded his one-fluid theory, which was found equally capable of explaining electrical phenomena. a body having an excess of the fluid was said to be _positively_ charged, while one with a deficit was said to be _negatively_ charged. the sign plus was used in one case and the sign minus in the other; and just as two algebraical quantities of equal magnitude but opposite sign give zero when added together, so a conductor to which equal quantities of positive and negative electricity would be given would be in the neutral state. the franklinian theory was welcomed in england, germany and italy, but it met with opposition in france from the brilliant abbé nollet and the followers of dufay. each of the rival theories affords a mental conception of the forces in play and also a consistent explanation of the resulting phenomena. their simplicity, and, at the same time, the comprehensiveness of explanation which they afford, will continue to give them a place in our text-books for many years to come. efforts are being made to apply the _electronic_ theory to the various phenomena of electrostatics, the electron being the smallest particle of electricity that can have separate, individual existence. it is many times smaller than the hydrogen atom, the smallest of chemical atoms, and it possesses all the properties of negative electricity. by the loss of one or more electrons, a body becomes positively electrified, whereas by the acquisition of one or more electrons it becomes negatively electrified. the electron at rest gives rise to the phenomena of electrostatics; in motion, it gives rise to electrical currents, electromagnetism and electric radiation. we do not know what led franklin to call positive the electrification of glass when rubbed with silk, and negative that of sealing-wax when rubbed with flannel. if he meant to imply that positive is the more important of the two, he erred, for many reasons can be given to show the preponderating influence of negative electricity; but it is too late now to change the terminology. if asked to point out differences between the physical effects of positive and negative electrification, we would refer to the positive brush, which is finer and much more developed than the negative; to the wimshurst machine, with its positive brushes on one side and negative "beads" on the other; to the positive charge acquired by a clean plate of zinc when exposed to ultraviolet light; to the ordinary vacuum tube in which there is a violet glow at the cathode end or negative terminal; to crookes's tubes, x-ray tubes and other high vacuum tubes, in which electrified particles, kelvin's _molecular torrent_, are shot out from the negative electrode with great velocity; and to arc-lamps using a direct current in which the plus carbon is hollowed out crater-like, has the higher temperature and wastes away twice as fast as the negative. the year 1746 is an _annus mirabilis_ in the history of electricity, for it was in the january of that year that an attempt to electrify water by musschenbroek, of leyden, led to the discovery of the principle of the electrostatic condenser. whatever may be thought of the claim for priority put forward in favor of dean von kleist, of cammin in pomerania, or of cunæus, of leyden, it is certain that the discovery became known throughout europe by the startling announcement and sensational description given of it by musschenbroek, a renowned professor of a renowned university. he was not only surprised but terror-stricken by the effect of the electric energy which he had unconsciously stored up in his little phial; for after telling his french friend réaumur, the physicist, that he felt the commotion in his arms, shoulders and chest, he added that he would not take another shock for the whole kingdom of france! a resolution destined to be broken, like so many others before and since. [illustration: fig. 11 modern form of leyden jar with movable coatings] very different was the sentiment of bose, professor of physics in the university of wittenberg, who is credited with saying that he would like to die by the electric shock, that he might live in the memoirs of the french academy of sciences. the leyden jar became at once the scientific curiosity and universal topic of discussion of the time; and not only was it the curiosity, but also the _crux_ of the day, puzzling investigators, perplexing philosophers and giving rise to animated controversies. the mystery was soon dispelled, however, when franklin began in 1747 his searching inquiry into the electric conditions of each element of the jar. nothing escaped his subtle mind and nothing was left undone by his deft hand. the evidence of experiment and the logic of facts carried at last conviction even with londoners and parisians, who were wont to look upon americans as mere colonists, who had neither time nor opportunity for scientific pursuits, being obliged to hew their way through virgin forests or drive the roving indian back from their frontiers into the wilds of the west. the theory of the leyden jar given by franklin 160 years ago has stood the test of time. it has met with universal acceptance; and, despite our manifold advances, but little of permanent value has been added to it. it is very interesting to follow the main lines of this magnificent research. franklin electrifies, in the usual way, water contained in a small flask, complaisantly taking the shock on completing the circuit. to find where the charge resides, whether in the hand of the operator, as some said, or in the water, as others maintained, he again electrifies the water and pours it into another flask, which fails, however, to give a shock, thus showing that the charge had not been carried over with the water. convinced that the charge was still somewhere in the first phial, he carefully poured water into it again; and found, to his intense satisfaction, that it was capable of giving an excellent shock. it was now clear to him that the energy of the charge was either in the hand of the experimenter or in the glass itself, or in both. to determine this nice point, he proceeds to construct a "jar" which could easily be taken to pieces. for this purpose, he selected a pane of glass; and, laying it on the extended hand, placed a sheet of lead on its upper surface. the leaden plate was then electrified; and when touched with the finger, a spark was seen and a shock felt. by the addition of another plate to the lower surface, the shocking power of this simple condenser was increased. in this efficient form he had a readily dissectible condenser, which allowed him to throw off and replace the coatings at will, and thereby to prove beyond cavil that the seat of the stored-up electric energy is not in the conductors, but in the glass itself. this was a discovery of the first magnitude and one destined to associate the name of franklin with those of the most eminent electricians down the ages. fig. 11 shows the modern form of the jar with movable coatings. [illustration: fig. 12 three coated panes in _series_] [illustration: fig. 13 three panes in _parallel_] in the "fulminating" pane, as it came to be called, we have one of the eleven elements of franklin's historic battery of 1748. it is interesting to notice that he was accustomed to connect his "panes" in series while charging (fig. 12), but that he preferred to join similar coatings together, that is, to couple them in "parallel" (fig. 13), for powerful discharges. fig. 14 shows three jars in "parallel." later on, he arranged leyden jars so that the inside coating of one could be hooked to the outside coating of another, the first of the series hanging down from the prime conductor of the machine, while the last one was grounded. "what is driven out of the tail of the first," he quaintly says, "serves to charge the second; what is driven out of the second serves to charge the third, and so on." this has become known as the "cascade" method of charging a battery, owing to the flow of electricity from one jar to the next (fig. 15). electricians, however, have discarded the picturesque "cascade" for the prosaic term of "series" or "tandem" arrangement. [illustration: fig. 14 three jars in _parallel_] [illustration: fig. 15 three jars in _cascade_] franklin also noticed that a phial cannot be charged while standing on wax or on glass, or even while hanging from the prime conductor, unless communication be formed between its outer coating and the floor, the reason given being that "the jar will not suffer a charging unless as much fire can go out of it one way as is thrown in by the other." (1748.) following his very ingenious philadelphia friend and co-worker, kinnersley, he varies the mode of charging by electrifying the outside of the jar and grounding the inner coating; for "the phial will be electrified as strongly if held by the hook and the coating applied to the globe as when held by the coating and the hook applied to the globe." (1748.) the globe here referred to is the glass globe of franklin's frictional machine of american make, which, when rotated, was electrified positively by contact with the hand or with a leather rubber. franklin also used a sulphur ball or "brimstone" globe, and observed that the electrification produced on it differed in kind from that developed on the glass globe. (1752.) it may here be stated that the first to use a _leather cushion_ as a substitute for the hand in the frictional machine, was winkler, of leipzig (1745); the efficiency of the rubber was increased by canton, of london, who covered it with an _amalgam_ of tin and mercury (1762). bose, of wittenberg, had previously added the _prime-conductor_, which greatly augmented the electrical capacity and output of the machine. in 1750 franklin imitated the effect of lightning on the compasses of a ship by the action of a jar discharge on an unmagnetized steel needle. "by electricity," he says, "we have frequently given polarity to needles and reversed it at pleasure." similar experiments are made to-day in every lecture-course on static electricity; but the experimenter, when wise, does not announce beforehand which end of the needle will be north and which south, as he is just as likely to be wrong as right, the uncertainty being due to the fact that the discharge of a leyden jar is not a current of electricity in one direction, but rather a few sudden rushes or rapid surgings of electricity to and fro; in other words, it is oscillatory in character instead of being continuous in one direction. franklin did not know this; although he made a very pertinent remark in 1749 when he likened the mechanical condition of the glass of a charged jar to that of a bent rod or a stretched spring. "so, a straight spring," he says, "when forcibly bent must, to restore itself, contract that side which in the bending was extended, and extend that side which was contracted." franklin knew, of course, that the bent rod, when released, would swing to and fro a few times before settling down to its state of rest; but he failed to see the analogy between it and the strained glass of the charged leyden jar. it is to joseph henry (1799-1878), the faraday of america, that we owe the recognition and statement of the oscillatory character of the discharge from leyden jars and condensers generally. he discovered and published this cardinal fact in 1842. his words deserve recording. "the discharge, whatever may be its nature, is not correctly represented (employing for simplicity the theory of franklin) by the single transfer of an imponderable fluid from one side of the jar to the other; the phenomenon requires us to admit _the existence of a principal discharge in one direction and then several reflex actions backward and forward, each more feeble than the preceding, until equilibrium is attained._"[10] the italics are prof. henry's. it is precisely this oscillatory character of the spark-discharge that enables us to send out trains of electric waves into the all-pervading ether, and thus to communicate, by "wireless," with remote stations. having conclusively proved that the energy of a charged condenser resides in the dielectric, franklin next tries to find whether "the electric matter" in the case of conductors is limited to the surface or whether it penetrates to an appreciable depth. to ascertain this, he insulates a silver fruit-can and brings a charged ball, held by a silk thread, into contact with the outer surface. on testing after removal, he found that the ball retained some of its charge, whilst it lost all if allowed to touch the bottom of the vessel. surprised at this unexpected difference, he repeated the experiment again and again, only to find the ball every time without a trace of charge after contact with the interior of the vessel. this perplexed and puzzled him. "the fact is singular," he says, "and you require the reason? i do not know it. i find a frank acknowledgment of one's ignorance is not only the easiest way to get rid of a difficulty, but the likeliest way to obtain information, and therefore i practice it. i think it an honest policy. those who affect to be thought to know everything, often remain long ignorant of many things that others could and would instruct them in, if they appeared less conceited." this was in 1755. cavendish in 1773 and coulomb in 1788 independently attacked the same problem; and having proved by their classic experiments that a static charge is limited to the surface of conductors, it was but a step to infer that such a distribution of electricity implies that the law of force between two elements of charge, or between two point-charges, is the law of the inverse square of the distance. it will also be remembered that faraday, not knowing what had been accomplished eighty years before in philadelphia, used for one of his best-known experiments an ice-pail, into which he lowered an electrified ball for the purpose of showing the exact equality of the induced and the inducing charge. the similarity of apparatus and mode of procedure are remarkable. in pursuing his work, franklin placed a charged jar on a cake of wax and other insulating materials, and drew sparks from it by touching successively the knob and the outer coating, repeating the process a great number of times to his infinite delight. he next attached a brass rod to the outside, bending it and bringing the other end close to the knob (fig. 16) connected with the inner coating. between these two he suspended a leaden ball by a silk thread and found, as he expected, that it played to and fro between the terminals for a considerable time. observe that we have here a definite mass maintained in a state of reciprocating motion by a series of electric attractions and repulsions. we have in fact an electro-motor, closely resembling the star and the chimes of gordon, the benedictine, 1745; a mere toy, if you will, but still a remarkable invention. we repeat the same experiment to-day only with a little more harmony, by substituting for the knobs two little bells, which emit a soft, musical note when struck by the interhanging clapper. [illustration: fig. 16 discharge by alternate contacts] this experiment has further significance, for, like gordon's chimes, it is an instance of the conveyance of electricity from one point of space to another by means of a material carrier, a mode of transfer which has since been called "electric convection," the full meaning of which was not revealed until rowland (1848-1901), made his famous experiment of 1876 in the laboratory of the university of berlin with a highly-charged, rapidly-revolving, ebonite disc. it was apropos of this experiment that the illustrious clerk maxwell, of the university of cambridge, wrote to his friend, professor tait, of edinburgh, saying that: "the mounted disc of ebonite had whirled before, but whirled in vain; rowland of troy, that doughty knight, convection currents did obtain, in such a disc, of power to wheedle from its loved north, the needle." we may here say that franklin was no stranger to the work done by the electrical pioneers of the old world, his diligent london friend, peter collinson, keeping him advised by means of letters, books and pamphlets, in which inspiration and practical hints must have been found. he certainly was well acquainted with the achievements of dr. watson and dr. bevis, of london, as well as with the theories and experiments of dufay and abbé nollet in paris. it is germane to the subject to say that dr. bevis used mercury and iron filings for the inner coating of his jars, as well as sheet lead for both. he also experimented with coated panes of glass instead of jars. about this, franklin wrote to collinson: "i perceive by the ingenious mr. watson's last book, lately received, that dr. bevis had used, before we had, panes of glass to give a shock; though till that book came to hand, i thought to have communicated it to you as a novelty." (1748.) franklin gave way to a little pleasant humor when, in 1748, he proposed to wind up the "electrical season" by a banquet à la lucullus, to be given to a few of his friends and fellow-workers, not in a sumptuously decorated hall, but _al fresco_, on the banks of the schuylkill. "a turkey is to be killed for our dinner by the electrical shock," he wrote, "and roasted by the electrical jack before a fire kindled by the electrical bottle, when the healths of all the famous electricians in england, holland, france and germany are to be drunk in electrified bumpers under the discharge of guns fired from the electrical battery." it is hardly to be supposed that such an elaborate program was carried out. indeed the difficulty of preparing the apparatus and getting it ready for action on the banks of a river were formidable enough to say the least. franklin, however, had a leyden battery capable of doing considerable electrocution, for with two jars of six gallons capacity each, he knocked six men to the ground; the same two jars sufficed to kill a hen outright, whereas it required five, he tells us, to kill a turkey weighing ten pounds. the "electrical bumper" was a wine-glass containing an allowance, let us say, of some favorite brand and charged in the usual way. on approaching the lips the two coatings would be brought within striking-distance and a spark would take place, if not to the delight of the performer, at least to the amusement of the on-lookers. it was subsequently remarked that guests whose upper lip was adorned with a moustache could quaff the nectar with impunity, as every bristle would play the part of a filiform lightning-rod and prevent the apprehended, disruptive discharge! not quite so humorous was his suggestion of a hammock to be used by timid people during an electric storm: "a hammock or swinging-bed, suspended by silk cords equally distant from the walls on every side, and from the ceiling and floor above and below, affords the safest situation a person can have in any room whatever; and which, indeed, may be deemed quite free from danger of any stroke of lightning." (1767.) in his experiments on puncturing bodies by the spark-discharge, franklin does not fail to notice the double burr produced when paper is used.[9] his words are: "when a hole is struck through pasteboard by the electrified jar, if the surfaces of the pasteboard are not confined or compressed, there will be a bur raised all round the hole on both sides the pasteboard, for the bur round the outside of the hole is the effect of the explosion every way from the centre of the stream and not an effect of direction." (1753.) the spelling is franklin's _unreformed_. the to-and-fro nature of the discharge was thought, at a time, to account satisfactorily for the burr raised on each side of the pasteboard; but trowbridge, of harvard, has shown that even a unidirectional discharge, such as can be obtained by inserting a wet string or any high resistance in the circuit, would produce a double burr, from which we infer, confirming franklin, that this effect of the discharge is caused by the sudden expansion of air within the paper itself. by the year 1749, franklin had reached the conclusion that the lightning of the skies is identical with that of our laboratories, basing his belief on the following analogies which he enumerates in the notes or "minutes" which he kept of his experiments: "the electric fluid agrees with lightning in these particulars: (1) giving light; (2) color of the light; (3) crooked direction; (4) swift motion; (5) being conducted by metals; (6) crack or noise in exploding; (7) rending bodies it passes through; (8) destroying animals; (9) melting metals; (10) firing inflammable substances; and (11) sulphurous smell." but although he felt the full force of the analogical argument, franklin knew that the matter could not be finally settled without an appeal to experiment; and accordingly he adds: "the electric fluid is attracted by points; we do not know whether this property is in lightning. but since they agree in all the particulars wherein we can already compare them, is it not probable that they agree likewise in this? let the experiment be made." (1749.) in writing to collinson in july, 1750, he tells his london friend how the experiment may be made: "on the top of some high tower or steeple, place a kind of sentry-box--big enough to contain a man--and an electrical stand. from the middle of the stand let an iron rod rise and pass, bending out of the door, and then upright 20 or 30 feet, pointed very sharp at the end. if the electrical stand be kept clean and dry, a man standing on it, when such clouds are passing low, might be electrified and afford sparks, the rod drawing fire to him from the cloud." collinson brought some of franklin's letters to the notice of fellow-members of the royal society with a view to their insertion in the _philosophical transactions_ of that learned body; but even his epoch-making letter to dr. mitchell, of london, on the identity of lightning and electricity, was dismissed with derisive laughter. the royal society made amends in due time for their contemptuous treatment of the american philosopher by electing him member of the society and by awarding him the copley medal in 1753. disappointed as he was, collinson collected franklin's letters and published them under the title of _new experiments and observations on electricity made at philadelphia in america_. the pamphlet appeared in 1751, and was immediately translated into french by m. d'alibard at the request of the great naturalist count de buffon. the experiments described in the pamphlet, and especially that of the pointed conductor, were taken up in paris with great enthusiasm by de buffon himself, by d'alibard, a botanist of distinction, and by de lor, a professor of physics. following out the instructions given by franklin, they were all able to report success: d'alibard on may 10th, de lor on may 18th, and de buffon on may 19th, 1752. de buffon erected his rod on the tower of his château at montbar; de lor, over his house in paris, and d'alibard, at his country seat at marly, a little town eighteen miles from paris. d'alibard was not at home on the eventful afternoon of may 10th; but before leaving marly, he had drilled a certain coiffier in what he should do in case an electric storm came on during his absence. though a hardy and resolute old soldier and proud of the confidence placed in him, coiffier grew alarmed at the long and noisy discharges which he drew from the _insulated_ rod on the afternoon of may 10th. while the storm was still at its height he sent for the prior of the place, raulet by name, who hastened to the spot, followed by many of his parishioners. after witnessing a number of brilliant and stunning discharges, the priest drew up an account of the incident and sent it, at once, by coiffier himself to d'alibard, who was then in paris. without delay d'alibard prepared a memoir on the subject which he communicated to the académie des sciences three days later, viz.: on may 13th. in the concluding paragraph, the polished academician pays a graceful tribute to the philosopher of the western world: "it follows from all the experiments and observations contained in the present paper, and more especially from the recent experiment at marly-la-ville, that the matter of lightning is, beyond doubt, the same as that of electricity; it has become a reality, and i believe that the more we realize what he (franklin) has published on electricity, the more will we acknowledge the great debt which physical science owes him." we may, in passing, correct the error of those who credit french physicists with having originated the idea of the pointed conductor. such writers should read the words of d'alibard in the beginning of his memoir, where he says: "en suivant la route que m. franklin nous a tracée, j'ai obtenu une satisfaction complète"; that is, "in following the way traced out by franklin, i have met with complete success." to franklin, therefore, belongs the idea of the pointed rod of 1750, which became the lightning conductor of subsequent years; to the parisian savants belongs the great distinction of having been the first to make the experiment and verify the franklinian view of the identity of the lightning of our skies with the electricity of our laboratories. franklin had precise ideas on the action of his pointed conductors, clearly recognizing their twofold function: (1) that of preventing a dangerous rise of potential by disarming the cloud; and (2) that of conveying the discharge to earth, if struck. in some of his letters, he complains of people who concentrate their attention on the preventive function, forgetting the other entirely. "wherever my opinion is examined in europe," he wrote in 1755, "nothing is considered but the probability of these rods preventing a stroke, which is only a part of the use i proposed for them; and the other part, their conducting a stroke which they may happen not to prevent, seems to be totally forgotten, though of equal importance and advantage." a favorite illustration of franklin's showing the discharging power of points, consisted in insulating a cannon ball against which rested a pellet of cork, hung by a silk thread. on electrifying the ball, the cork flies off and remains suspended at a distance, falling back at once, as soon as a needle is brought near the ball. (1747.) he also used tassels consisting of fifteen or twenty long threads (fig. 17), and even cotton-fleece, the filaments of which stand out when electrified, but come together when a pointed rod is held underneath. he also noticed that the filaments do not collapse when the point of the rod is covered with a small ball. (1762.) [illustration: fig. 17 tassel of long threads or light strips of paper] franklin's views on lightning-rods met with some opposition in france from the brilliant abbé nollet, and in england from dr. benjamin wilson. the latter was mainly instrumental in bringing about the famous controversy of "points _vs._ knobs." in 1772, a committee was appointed by the royal society to consider the best means of protecting the powder-magazines at purfleet from lightning. on the committee with dr. wilson were henry cavendish, the distinguished chemist and physicist, and sir john pringle, president of the royal society. the report favored sharp conductors against blunt ones advocated by dr. wilson. five years later, in 1777, the question was again brought up, and again the new committee decided in favor of pointed terminals, convinced "that the experiments and reasons made and alleged to the contrary by mr. wilson were inconclusive." dr. wilson, being a man of influence, succeeded in having his views taken up by the board of ordnance. it has been remarked that this controversy would never have attracted attention but for the fact that the discoverer of the effect of points was franklin. he was an american and the dispute with the colonies was then at its height. the war of the revolution had begun, and the british forces had already met with serious reverses. no patriot could, therefore, admit any good in points. george iii. took sides, decreed that the points on the royal conductors at kew should be covered with balls, and ordered sir john pringle to support dr. wilson. sir john gave the dignified answer: "sire, i cannot reverse the laws and operations of nature"; to which the king, incensed that so incompetent a man should hold such an important office, replied: "then, sir john, perhaps you had better resign," which sir john did. a wit of the time put the matter epigrammatically when he wrote: "while you, great george, for knowledge hunt and sharp conductors change to blunt, the nation's out of joint; franklin a wiser course pursues, and all your thunder useless views by keeping to the point." it was in connection with this heated controversy that franklin wrote the following admirable words: "i have never entered into any controversy in defence of my philosophical opinions. i leave them to take their chance in the world. if they are _right_, truth and experience will support them; if _wrong_, they ought to be refuted and rejected. the king's changing his _pointed_ conductors for _blunt_ ones is, therefore, a matter of small importance to me." it was not until september, 1752, that franklin raised a rod over his own house. this experimental conductor was made of iron fitted with a sharp steel point and rising seven or eight feet above the roof, the other end being buried five feet in the ground. in order to avoid useless personal displacement, franklin, the economist of time, made an automatic annunciator similar to that devised by gordon in 1745, and described by watson in his _sequel_, 1746, to apprize him of the advent of a good thunder-gust. instead of making the rod of one continuous length, it was divided on the staircase, opposite his chamber door, the ends being drawn apart to a horizontal distance of a few inches. screwing a pair of tiny gongs to the ends, he suspended between them a brass ball, held by a silk thread, to act as clapper. whenever a thundercloud came hovering by, the bells began to ring, thereby summoning the philosopher to his "laboratory" on the staircase. franklin's rod, erected over his house in the summer of 1752, was evidently intended by him for experimental rather than protective purposes. there is no doubt whatever in his mind about the use of such pointed conductors for the protection of buildings and ships against the destructive effects of lightning. he expressly says, in an article printed in _poor richard's almanack_ for 1753, that "it has pleased god in his infinite goodness to mankind, to discover to them the means of securing their habitations and other buildings from mischief by thunder and lightning. the method is this: provide a small iron rod (it may be made of the rod-iron used by the nailers), but of such a length, that one end being 3 ft. or 4 ft. in the moist ground, the other may be 6 ft. or 8 ft. above the highest part of the building. to the upper end of the rod fasten about a foot of brass-wire, the size of a common knitting needle, sharpened to a fine point; the rod may be secured to the house by a few small staples. if the house or barn be long, there may be a rod and point at each end, and a middling wire along the ridge from one to the other. a house thus furnished will not be damaged by lightning, it being attracted by the points and passing through the metal into the ground without hurting anything. vessels also, having a sharp-pointed rod fixed on the top of their masts, with a wire from the foot of the rod reaching down round one of the shrouds to the water, will not be hurt by lightning." it is well known, as dr. rotch, director of the blue hill observatory, recently pointed out, that the matter for these almanacs was prepared by franklin himself under the pen-name of richard saunders. as the above passage appeared in the almanac for 1753, it is obvious that it must have been ready sometime toward the end of 1752. furthermore, we know that it was actually in the hands of the printer in the middle of october of that year, for the _pennsylvania gazette_ of oct. 19th says that the almanac was then in press and that it would be on sale shortly. whence it follows that the year 1752 is the year of the invention of the lightning rod, and not 1753 or 1754 as often stated. the instructions given by franklin include all the essentials necessary for the erection of a lightning conductor. it may be made of iron or copper, flat or round, but must make good "sky" and good "earth." the former condition is secured by screwing to the top of the rod either copper or platinum terminals ending in sharp points; and the latter, by burying the lower end deep in moist soil. between "sky" and "earth" the rod must be continuous. the function of the rod is twofold, as franklin well recognized, preventive and preservative. it prevents the stroke, under ordinary conditions, by the action of the points, which send off copious streams of air and dust particles electrified oppositely to that of the cloud. even at a distance, the dangerous potential of the cloud is reduced by these convection currents and the stroke ordinarily averted. it is clear that ten points are more efficacious than one, and fifty more than five. hence the number of points which we see distributed over the higher and more conspicuous parts of a building, all of which are carefully connected with the lightning conductor. however well a building may theoretically be protected, conditions will occasionally arise when the rod will inevitably be struck; its preservative function then comes into play, by which it carries the energy of the disruptive discharge safely to earth. the experience of more than a century shows that the lightning-rod affords protection in the great majority of cases; but it would be at least a mild exaggeration to say that it never failed, even when properly constructed. at first, the erection of lightning-rods was opposed in the new world as well as in the old: some based their opposition to the novelty on religious grounds, saying that, as lightning and thunder are tokens of divine wrath, it would be impious to interfere in any way with their manifestations. this objection was met by saying that for a parity of reason we should avoid protecting ourselves against the inclemencies of the weather. others opposed the use of the rods on the score that they invited or attracted the flash, which was answered by saying that they attract lightning as much as a rain-pipe attracts a shower, and no more. the death of professor richmann, of the university of st. petersburg, also tended to retard the adoption of the rod for the protection of buildings; but the invalidity of that objection became apparent when the circumstances of the accident became known. richmann's conductor was like d'alibard's (1751), an experimental rod, and as such was insulated at the lower end. it was, therefore, not a lightning-rod at all, inasmuch as it was not grounded. on august 6th, 1753, during a violent electric storm, richmann happened to be close to his exploring rod observing the indications of a roughly-made electrometer, when a sharp thunder-clap was heard, and at the same instant a ball of fire was seen by richmann's assistant to dart from the apparatus and strike the head of the unfortunate professor, who fell over on a near-by chest and expired instantly. his assistant was stunned for a while. on regaining consciousness, he ran to the aid of the professor; but it was too late, the body was lifeless. in recording this tragic event, priestley, the historian of electricity, says that, "it is not given to every electrician to die in so glorious a manner as the justly envied richmann." for one, we do not "envy" professor richmann's fate, and we think that the phrase "tragic manner" would better suit the circumstances of his death than the "glorious manner" of dr. priestley. risks of a similar character were taken by franklin in philadelphia, de romas in bordeaux, and d'alibard's representative at marly, when experimenting with kites and insulated rods; they took their lives in their hands, though they may not have thought so. a few years ago, sir william preece said that a man might with impunity "clasp a copper rod an inch in diameter, the bottom of which is well connected with moist earth, while the top of it receives a violent flash of lightning; the conductor might even be surrounded by gunpowder in the heaviest storm without risk or danger." it is not on record that the english electrician ever clasped a lightning conductor or even stood in close proximity to one during an electric storm. the above statement was as sensational as it was unwise and foolhardy. the neighborhood of a rod during a storm is a zone of danger, owing to the electrical surgings which are set up in it, and, as such, is to be avoided. the death of richmann caused quite a sensation throughout europe, and naturally the lightning-rod came in for severe condemnation. among the memoirs to which the fatality gave rise was one written in the heart of moravia and addressed to the celebrated euler, director of the academy of sciences at berlin. the writer was a monk of the premonstratensian order, whose field of labor was at prenditz. in the year 1754, this country priest made experiments with lightning conductors on a scale that transcended anything done in paris, london or philadelphia. the accompanying illustrations show the conductor which divisch (also diwisch) raised at prenditz (also brenditz) in the summer of that year to demonstrate publicly the efficacy of such apparatus in breaking up thunder-clouds and neutralizing the destructive energy pent up in their electric charges. prenditz, it would appear, suffered severely from electric storms; and it was mainly for the safety of the locality that the good priest devoted himself with earnestness to the study of electrical phenomena. as such a man deserves to live in the memory of posterity, we have sought out the leading facts of his career mainly from father alphons zák, of pernegg, in lower austria, a distinguished writer of the order to which divisch belonged, and have woven such details as we obtained from him and others into the simple narrative that follows. [illustration: fig. 18 procopius divisch (1696-1765)] procopius divisch (prokop diwisch) was born on aug. 1st, 1696, at helkowitz-senftenberg in bohemia. he spent his youth at znaim, where he studied the humanities and philosophy at the college conducted by the jesuit fathers in that moravian city. in 1719, when in his twenty-third year, he decided to quit the common ways of the world in order to lead the higher life in the premonstratensian order at kloster-bruck. at the ripe age of 30, divisch was ordained priest, in 1726, after which he taught philosophy and theology to classes of young aspirants to the ecclesiastical state. in 1733 he went to the university of salzburg and won his double doctorate in theology and philosophy. three years later, in 1736, he was appointed parish priest of prenditz, a small moravian town on the road to austerlitz, since of napoleonic fame. here he remained for five years, returning in 1741 to bruck as prior of the kloster or monastery situated there. at the end of the seven years' war of the austrian succession, he quitted bruck, in 1745, for his parish at prenditz, where he spent the last twenty years of his life in the pastoral ministrations of his sacred office and in electrical experimentation, of which he was very fond. the curative property of the new agent was heralded throughout europe about this time in terms of unmeasured praise. some of divisch's ailing parishioners, believing him to be an expert in electrical manipulation, applied to him for a little alleviation of their woes. the good-hearted priest did not turn them away, but thought it desirable to treat them to the therapeutic effect of such sparks as he could get from his homemade frictional machine. the results were various, depending probably on the confidence and imagination of the patient. several remarkable cures seem to have been effected either by the electric spark or by the persuasive powers of the operator, or by both combined, with the result that people far and wide were divided in their opinion of the pastor of prenditz. some physicians said that he was interfering with their practice, and even clergymen found fault with him for indulging in work which they thought unsuited to the cloth. a general impression, too, seems to have prevailed that his electrical experiments, especially those with his lightning conductor, were likely to prove harmful in more ways than one. on the other hand, divisch had admirers in high places, among whom were the emperor francis i. of germany and his imperial consort, maria theresa. having been invited to vienna, divisch repaired to the austrian capital, where, with the aid of father franz, another electrical devotee, he gave a demonstration of the wonderful capability of the new form of energy before the grandees of the empire. when he came to the electrical property of points, he showed their discharging power in a very original way, one which must have made his assistant uneasy for a while. at times, the machine worked by father franz gave excellent results; at others, it failed to generate. it was noticed by the critical few that when the machine failed, divisch was close by; while when it worked normally, he was at some distance away. after a number of such alternations of success and failure which sorely perplexed the assistant, himself a man of renown in vienna, divisch explained the occurrence by saying, with a merry twinkle in his eye, that the failure of the machine to generate when he was close to it, apparently seeking out the cause of the breakdown, was due to a number of pin-like conductors which he had concealed for the purpose in his peruke and which neutralized the charge on the rotating generator! the identity of the lightning of our skies with the artificial electricity of our laboratories was suspected by many before the middle of the eighteenth century. englishmen like hauksbee, hall, gray, freke, martin and watson; germans like bose and winkler, and frenchmen like abbé nollet, had already published their suspicions and conjectures anent the matter. franklin, too, had indicated twelve points of analogy between the two, in 1749, in his letter to collinson, of london. though he felt the force of the analogical agreement, he also felt that the matter could not be definitely settled without an appeal to experiment. accordingly, he added: "the electric fluid is attracted by points; we do not know whether this property is in lightning. but since they agree in all the particulars wherein we can already compare them, is it not probable that they agree likewise in this? let the experiment be made." [illustration: fig. 19 the divisch lightning conductor (1754)] [illustration: fig. 20] the experiment was made by franklin himself by means of his kite two years later, in the summer of 1752, and also by the lightning-rod which he erected over his own house in the autumn of the same year. doubtless divisch heard of the marvelous effects obtained from d'alibard's insulated conductor at marly; at any rate, he erected in an open space at some little distance from his rectory at prenditz, a lightning conductor 130 feet in height. as will be seen from the illustration, it bristled with points, for the bohemian wizard argued rightly that five points would be more efficient than one, and 50 more efficacious than five. the weird-looking structure destined to ward off the lightning of heaven had no less than 325 well-distributed points. lodge says in his _lightning conductors_: "points to the sky are recognized as correct; only i wish to advocate more of them, any number of them, like barbed wire along ridges and eaves. if you want to neutralize a thunder-bolt, three points are not as effective as 3000." this was written in 1892; nearly 140 years before that date, we find a simple parish priest of an obscure village in moravia using precisely such a multiple system of short, pointed conductors for the protection of life and property. this lightning conductor or _meteorological machine_, as divisch called it, was erected by him at prenditz on june 15th, 1754. on the top of the rod will be seen three light vanes, which were added in the interest of the feathered race in order to prevent incautious members from incurring the risk of electrocution by alighting on the apparatus during a storm. the wind whirled the vanes round like the cups of an anemometer, and thus kept the birds away from the zone of danger. [illustration: fig. 21 set of pointed rods] several trials came to the electrical pastor, and from quarters least expected. it happened in the second year after the erection of the apparatus that the summer was unusually dry, in consequence of which the crops failed almost completely. the farmers of the neighborhood were always suspicious of the strange-looking mast of prenditz; and, be it said, that they were more than diffident about the propriety of interfering with the forces of nature even under the plea of protection, forgetting that they took great care to protect themselves against heat and cold, rain, snow and hail. the country ladies, no doubt, used parasols for one kind of protection; and the gentry, umbrellas for another. anyhow, the people of prenditz and the good folk around did not like the lofty mast, with its outstretched arms and bristling rows of suspicious-looking iron points connected to the ground by means of four long, heavy chains. for the nonce, they deemed their pastor a queer fellow, who thought that he could avert the anger of heaven by the oddest kind of a machine which they ever laid their eyes on. it was argued in the councils of the hamlets that, whatever advantages divisch claimed for his "machine," they were all of a negative character. it _prevented_ the lightning stroke, he said; that might be, but they did not _see_ the prevention. what they did see and keenly realize was the failure of their crops. that affected them very closely; and if, as they supposed, the apparatus of prenditz had anything to do with it, the sooner they got rid of the machine the better. divisch, it must be said, was liked by his people; but despite his popularity, the men of violence carried the day and the machine was doomed. popular passion, excited by personal interest, got the better of the consideration due to the pastor. on an appointed day, a band of bellicose farmers came down on the village and wrecked the apparatus which had cost the priest so much thought and manual labor and on which, knowingly and justly, he relied for the protection of the homesteads of his rustic flock. this recalls a similar incident of mob violence which occurred at st. omer in the north of france, where a manufacturer of that quaint old town, who had been in america and seen the usefulness of lightning conductors, proceeded to erect one over his own house. hardly was it completed before the populace gathered together; and, when passion was sufficiently aroused by inflammatory remarks of the demagogues, the house was attacked and the conductor torn down. the manufacturer complained of the inaction of the "gardiens de la paix" and appealed to the courts to uphold his right to protect his home against lightning. he entrusted his case to a young, brilliant lawyer, as yet unknown to fame, but one destined to achieve unenviable notoriety during the revolutionary period. this, the first defender of the lightning-rod in a court of justice, was robespierre. the news of the untoward event soon reached the ears of the premonstratensian's superiors at kloster-bruck; and, as they very wisely considered that the duty of a country priest is primarily to attend to the spiritual welfare of his people, rather than to invent machines for their protection against the bolts of heaven, they advised him to yield to the prejudice of his people and not reconstruct the objectionable apparatus. father divisch accepted the friendly advice of his superiors and obeyed like a good premonstratensian monk. the remains of the shattered "meteorological machine" were sent to the abbey at bruck, where they could be seen for many years afterward. as a consequence of this act of vandalism, divisch gave up experimenting with lightning-rods and with electricity itself. the villagers were satisfied, but the world at large lost the benefit that might accrue from the researches on atmospheric electricity which divisch would have carried on during the remaining nineteen years of his life. in giving up electricity, the disappointed priest turned his attention, first, to acoustics and then, practical man as he was, to the construction of musical instruments. it was not long before his genius brought out an orchestrion of wind and stringed instruments which was played like an organ with hands and feet, and which was capable of 130 different combinations. prince henry of prussia offered a considerable sum of money for the invention, but divisch died while the preliminaries of sale were arranging, and negotiations were broken off. the instrument remained for many years in the abbey at bruck, where it was in daily use for the canonical office. it is a curious coincidence that franklin was also interested in musical instruments. he is credited with having devised an improved form of glass harmonica, one of which he presented to queen marie antoinette. despite the bitter experience of divisch, the introduction of lightning conductors into italy was warmly advocated some years later by padre toaldo (1719-1797), an admirer and correspondent of franklin. it was through his influence and personal activity that the magnificent thirteenth-century cathedral of siena was protected with lightning conductors after having been repeatedly struck during the centuries and seriously damaged. toaldo published in 1774 his celebrated work on the protection of public edifices and private buildings against lightning; it contributed greatly to reassure public opinion on the value of "franklinian rods," as the conductors were commonly called. it is a matter of regret that franklin used the words "the electric fluid is attracted by the points" in the passage quoted above, inasmuch as in the popular mind such "attraction" courts rather than averts danger. as already said, the rod no more "attracts" lightning than a rain-pipe attracts a downpour. franklin knew very well the twofold function of his rods, the _preventive_, by which they tend to ward off the stroke by gradually and silently neutralizing the excessive energy of the cloud; and the other, the _preservative_, by which they convey the discharge safely to earth when struck. he even complains of people who concentrate their attention on the preventive function, forgetting the other entirely, adding that, "wherever my opinion is examined in europe, nothing is considered but the probability of these rods preventing a stroke, which is only a part of the use which i proposed for them; and the other part, their conducting a stroke which they may happen not to prevent, seems to be totally forgotten, though of equal importance and advantage." (1755.) at a time, it was customary to make the rods rise to a considerable height above the building, in the belief that the diameter of the circle of protection was four times the height of the rod. such a rule was an arbitrary one which facts soon showed to be unreliable and unsafe. it is now recognized that there is no such thing as a definite area of protection. were this a literary chapter, we would point out that either of the expressions "electric" storm or "lightning" storm is preferable to _thunder-storm_, because electricity or lightning is the active agent or principal feature of the impressive phenomenon. no one thinks of calling a hailstorm by the descriptive term of _patter-storm_; yet that would be just as logical and appropriate an appellative in one case as thunder-storm is in the other. _thunder-tube_ is certainly a startling misnomer applied to the long, narrow, glazed tubes formed in siliceous materials by the fervid heat of the flash, but not in any way by the sound-waves produced by the crash. _thunder-bolt_ does not mean, despite the common opinion, a white-hot mass that accompanies the discharge; it is purely and simply the flash itself. a glowing mass that happens to come down in the track of the discharge is a _meteorite_, a body of cosmic not terrestrial origin, a visitor from space that chose the rarefied path of the flash for its descent to earth. again, there are no _thunder-clouds_ in nature, only electric clouds or lightning clouds; nor is there ever _thunder in the air_ save when the lightning breaks from cloud to cloud, or leaps from cloud to earth, or strikes from earth to cloud. but though thunder is only occasionally in the air, electricity always is. we have a normal electrical field in all seasons, times and places. though it is the lightning that kills and not the thunder, we would not, however, object to the following inscription which we found on a tombstone: "here lies (so and so), oh! what a wonder, she was killed outright by a peal of thunder," because the suddenness of the peal may have given the aged lady a shock from which her failing heart was unable to recover. we are well aware that such criticism of technical terms in popular use will have no reform effect whatever; because as long as people will say "the sun rises" and "the stars set," they will continue to speak of thunder-clouds and thunder-storms, thunder-tubes and thunder-bolts. though containing an element of error, these expressions have the sanction of the centuries; and so, they have come to stay. returning to divisch, that worthy priest and pioneer electrician died at prenditz in his sixty-ninth year, on dec. 21st, 1765, and was buried in the little churchyard where he had blessed many a grave during the twenty-five years of his ministration. a simple inscription marks the place of his interment, but a monument will soon be erected to his memory which will tell the passerby where sleeps the premonstratensian pioneer of the lightning-rod. about three months before the erection of his rod, _i.e._, in june, 1752, the idea occurred to franklin that he could approach the region of clouds just as well by means of a common kite. here are his words anent the novel and famous experiment with the "lightning kite": "make a small cross of two light strips of cedar, the arms so long as to reach to the four corners of a large thin silk handkerchief when extended; tie the corners of the handkerchief to the extremities of the cross, so you have the body of a kite, which, being properly accommodated with a tail, loop and string, will rise in the air, like those made of paper; but this, being of silk, is fitter to bear the wet and wind of a thunder-gust without tearing. to the top of the upright stick is to be fixed a very sharp-pointed wire, rising a foot or two above the wood. in the end of the twine, next the hand, is to be held a silk ribbon, and where the silk and cord join a key may be fastened. this kite is to be raised when a thunder-gust appears to be coming on, and the person who holds the string must stand within a door or window, or under some cover, so that the silk ribbon may not be wet; and care must be taken that the twine does not touch the frame of the door or window. as soon as any of the thunder-clouds come over the kite, the pointed wire will draw the electric fire from them, and the kite with all the twine will be electrified, and the loose filaments of the twine will stand out every way and be attracted by an approaching finger. and when the rain has wetted the kite, so that it can conduct the electric fire freely, you will find it stream out plentifully from the key on the approach of your knuckle. at this key the phial may be charged, and from electric fire thus obtained spirits may be kindled and all the other electric experiments be performed which are usually done by the help of a rubbed glass globe or tube, and thereby the sameness of the electric matter with that of lightning completely demonstrated."[8] here we have the electric kite and manner of using it fully described without, however, any direct statement that the author himself actually experimented with it, although he does say that the experiment was successfully carried out. this is strictly true, but it may be safely contended that the precautions enumerated, the observation about the fibres of the cord, its improved conductivity when wetted by the rain and the like, all bespeak a knowledge of practical conditions that could be obtained only by way of experiment. but if franklin is not outspoken on the matter, some of his contemporaries are. here is the kite incident as related in the _continuation of the life of dr. franklin_, by dr. stuber, a philadelphian and intimate friend of the franklins: "while franklin was waiting for the erection of a spire, it occurred to him that he might have more ready access to the region of clouds by means of a common kite. he prepared one by fastening two cross-sticks to a silk handkerchief, which would not suffer so much from the rain as paper. to the upright stick was affixed an iron point. the string was, as usual, of hemp, except the lower end, which was silk. where the hempen string terminated, a key was fastened. with this apparatus, on the appearance of a thunder-gust approaching, he went out into the commons, accompanied by his son, to whom alone he communicated his intentions, well knowing the ridicule which, too generally for the interest of science, awaits unsuccessful experiments in philosophy. he placed himself under a shed to avoid the rain. his kite was raised. a thunder-cloud passed over it. no sign of electricity appeared. he almost despaired of success, when suddenly he observed the loose fibres of his string move toward an erect position. he now presented his knuckle to the key and received a strong spark. repeated sparks were drawn from the key, the phial was charged, a shock given, and all the experiments made which are usually performed with electricity." this testimony of a man who enjoyed the unlimited confidence of franklin has a very matter-of-fact ring about it; there is not a note of uncertainty, not a word indicating doubt that his friend and neighbor went out to the fields accompanied by his robust son, carrying along with them a queer assortment of electrical impedimenta. this son, william by name, was twenty-two years of age at the time; and as he died in 1813, eleven years after the publication of dr. stuber's biographical sketch, he had ample time to contradict the kite story if instead of being a fact it were a mere romance. nor is this all, for dr. stuber's narrative, given above, appears textually in the "memoirs of the life and writings of benjamin franklin," edited by his grandson william temple franklin. the doctor, be it remarked, was very fond of his grandson, whose "faithful service and filial attachment" he warmly commends in several of his letters, and whose regard for the memory of the statesman led him to undertake the task of preparing his works for publication. on page 211, vol. i., he tells us that "as dr. franklin mentioned his electrical discoveries only in a very transient way, and as they are of a most important and interesting nature, it has been thought that a short disgression on the subject would be excusable and not void of entertainment. for this purpose the following account of the same, including the first experiment of the lightning kite, as given by dr. stuber, is here given." in these concluding lines we have the testimony of franklin's grandson to the authenticity of the "lightning kite" story. moreover, the account as given by stuber evidently meets with his cordial approval, since he transcribes it verbatim; and, as if to invest the quotations with unimpeachable authority, he tells us in the preface, p. viii., that "they deserve entire dependence because of the accuracy of the information imparted." a word now from priestley, also one of franklin's intimate friends. in his _history of electricity_, fourth edition, p. 171, he says that "dr. franklin, astonishing as it must have appeared, continued actually to bring lightning from the heavens by means of an electrical kite which he raised when a storm of thunder was perceived to be coming on." then follows a description taken almost word for word from dr. stuber, whom he styles "the best authority on the subject." if, perchance, the above testimony should not be deemed conclusive and final, all lingering doubt must be removed by franklin's own words, for in his _autobiography_, after briefly referring to the experiments made in france with pointed conductors, he adds: "i will not swell this narrative with an account of that capital experiment (the pointed conductor), nor of the infinite pleasure which i received on the success of a similar one i made soon after with a kite at philadelphia, as both are to be found in histories of electricity." here, at last, we have franklin's own word for it, that he made the kite experiment, and that he made it "soon after" the demonstration of his electrical discoveries which m. de lor gave, by request, before louis xv. and his court. the "lightning kite" is, therefore, not a myth, as some have ventured to think, having been fully described by franklin in his letter to peter collinson, dated october 19th, 1752, and having been made by him some time in june of the same year. we have now to see whether franklin was anticipated in the idea of the kite or in its use for electrical purposes. there are some who hold that he was anticipated by m. de romas as to the idea, but not the actual experiment; while others credit the french magistrate with both. let us examine the evidence which there is for these opinions. m. de romas lived in nérac, a small town some seventy-five miles south of bordeaux. he was a member of the bar; and at the time of the franklinian furor in europe was a judge of the district court. he took an interest in scientific matters quite unusual for men of his profession, proceeding, as soon as he had read of the efficiency of pointed conductors, to study their behavior for himself. his experiments met with surprising success, and were as much admired by the local savants as they were dreaded by the common folk. letters containing his observations were regularly sent to the academy of bordeaux, where they were read with lively interest on account of their character and novelty. from the published _actes_ of that body we learn that the first kite used by de romas was raised by him on may 14th, 1753. disappointment, however, attended this attempt, no electrical manifestation being observed, although rain fell and wetted the hempen cord. the magistrate of nérac attributed his failure to the resistance of the string; and, like a good electrician, surprisingly good for the time, determined to improve its conductivity by wrapping a fine copper wire round its entire length. when this long and tedious operation was completed, he went out again to the fields on a stormy day, when, assisted by two of his friends, he raised the kite and soon got torrents of sparks from the wire-wound cord. this was on june 7th, 1753. the experiment was repeated from time to time, both for his own satisfaction and that of his assistants as well as for the entertainment of his ever-growing class of admiring spectators. kites 7-1/2 ft. long and 3 ft. wide were raised 400 and even 550 ft. above ground when flashes nine feet long and an inch thick were drawn, so the account says, with the report of a pistol. the effect must have been truly spectacular. the kite was held by a silk ribbon fastened to the end of the hempen cord. it is then a matter of history vouched for by the _actes_ of the academy of bordeaux that may 14th, 1753, is the day on which the first use of a kite for electrical purposes was made in france; on the other hand, it is to be remembered that franklin flew his "lightning kite" in june, 1752, almost a year earlier. as far, then, as the _fact_ is concerned, the philadelphia philosopher was not anticipated by the justice of nérac. from facts let us pass to writings. franklin's letter to collinson, in which he describes the electric kite, is dated october 19th, 1752, while that of m. de romas, on which the claim for priority is founded, was addressed by him to the academy of bordeaux on july 12th, 1752, three months earlier. after a lengthy and interesting account of his experiments with pointed conductors, he concludes his communication as follows: "c'est là, monsieur, ce qu'il y a de plus important, car j'aurais bien d'autres particularités à vous communiquer; mais ma lettre, devenue d'une excessive longueur, m'avertit de finir. je me réserve de mettre au jour la dernière (quoiquelle ne soit qu'un jeu d'enfant) lorsque je me serai assuré de la réussite par l'expérience que je me propose d'en faire et que je ne negligerai pas." in english this would read: "such, sir, are the more important points which i have to communicate, and to which many others might be added, were it not for the excessive length of this letter, which warns me that it is time to bring it to a close. i will, however, give publicity to the last one of all (though it is only a child's plaything) as soon as i shall have assured myself of its success by an experiment which i have devised and which i shall not fail to make." the words in brackets--"though it is only a child's plaything"--are all important, for it is on them and on them alone that the claim for priority has been put forth and maintained. it will be seen that the word kite (_cerf-volant_), does not occur in the letter, so that there can be no absolute certainty as to the nature of the _jeu d'enfant_ which the author had in mind, though it is very likely that the kite was meant. in his _mémoire sur les moyens de se garantir de la foudre dans les maisons_, he says, after describing some experiments that he had made with pointed rods: "néanmoins toujours plein du désir d'augmenter le volume du feu électricque, il fallut chercher le moyen pour y parvenir. en conséquence, je me plongeai dans de nouvelles méditations. enfin une demi-heure après, tout au plus, le cerf-volant des enfants se présenta tout à coup à mon esprit, et il me tardait de la mettre à l'épreuve. par malheur, je n'en avais pas le temps." in english: "being anxious to augment the quantity of electric fire, i began to think of some means to effect my purpose, and soon became quite absorbed with the subject. not more than half an hour elapsed before the idea of the kite suddenly occurred to me, and i longed for an opportunity to try it; but unfortunately i had not sufficient leisure at the time." the work in which this passage occurs was published at bordeaux in 1776, shortly after the death of the author. de romas always maintained that he did not borrow the idea of the kite from any one, but that it occurred to him while pursuing his experiments with pointed conductors. it must be admitted that de romas could not have been acquainted with franklin's performance of june, 1752, when he sent to the bordeaux academy his letter of july 12th, of the same year, for we cannot suppose that in an age of sailing vessels such news would cross the atlantic and reach an obscure provincial town in the southwest of france in the space of a month. on the other hand, it is equally improbable that a vague allusion to the electrical use of a kite made at nérac on july 12th, by a man entirely unknown to fame as was de romas, should be talked of on the banks of the schuylkill before october 19th, the date of franklin's memorable letter to collinson. moreover, the "_jeu d'enfant_" allusion as well as the very use of the kite by de romas failed so completely to attract the attention of scientific men of his own country that he frequently and bitterly complained down to the end of his life, in 1776, of their persistent neglect of his claims to recognition. from all this, we conclude: (_a_) that franklin's "lightning kite" is not a myth, the experiment having been made by him in june, 1752, and fully described by him in a memorable letter written to peter collinson, of london, dated october 19th of the same year: (_b_) that de romas independently had the idea of using a kite for electrical purposes as early as july 12th, 1752; but that he did not carry out his idea until may 14th, 1753; and, furthermore, that he did not succeed in getting any electrical manifestations until june 7th, 1753, his success then being due, at least in part, to the clever idea which he had of entwining the cord with a fine copper wire. therefore, _suum cuique_. in conclusion, we would say that the cardinal and enduring achievements of franklin are: (1) his rejection of the two-fluid theory of electricity and substitution of the one-fluid theory; (2) his coinage of the appropriate terms _positive_ and _negative_, to denote an excess or a deficit of the common electric fluid; (3) his explanation of the leyden jar, and, notably, his recognition of the paramount role played by the glass or dielectric; (4) his experimental demonstration of the identity of lightning and electricity; and (5) his invention of the lightning conductor for the protection of life and property, together with his clear statement of its preventive and protective functions. if franklin was well acquainted with electrical phenomena, it is safe to say that his knowledge of human nature was wider and deeper still. this appears continually in his _autobiography_, in his political writings, in business transactions and diplomatic relations. on one occasion, while his re-election as clerk of the general assembly was pending, a certain member made a long speech against him. franklin listened with calm, dignified composure; and after his election, instead of resenting the opposition of the offending member, he determined that it would be better to disarm his antagonism and win his friendship. for this purpose he sent the assemblyman a courteously-worded request for the loan of a very scarce book which was in his library. the book was sent to franklin, who returned it within a week with a note of thanks, which had the desired effect. commenting on the event, our philosopher says that "it is more profitable to remove than to resent inimical proceedings." some of franklin's views on general political economy are tersely set forth in the following passage: "there seem, in fine, to be but three ways for a nation to acquire wealth. the first is by _war_, as the romans did in plundering their conquered neighbor; this is _robbery_. the second is by _commerce_, which is generally _cheating_. the third is by _agriculture_, the only _honest way_ wherein man receives a real increase of the seed thrown into the ground, in a kind of continual miracle wrought by the hand of god in his favour, as a reward for his innocent life and virtuous industry." franklin asserts his religious convictions in many passages of his "autobiography" as well as on many occasions of his public life. shocked by "tom" paine's views of fundamental religious truths, he says: "i have read your manuscript with some attention. by the argument which it contains against a particular providence, though you allow a general providence, you strike at the foundation of all religion. for, without the belief of a providence that takes cognizance of, guards and guides, and may favour particular persons, there is no motive to worship a deity, to fear his displeasure, or to pray for his protection. i will not enter into any discussion of your principles, though you seem to desire it. at present, i shall only give you my opinion that, though your reasonings are very subtile and may prevail with some readers, you will not succeed so as to change the general sentiments of mankind on that subject; and the consequence of printing this piece will be a great deal of odium drawn upon yourself, mischief to you, and no benefit to others. he that spits against the wind, spits in his own face." this aphorism recalls the ripe wisdom contained in many of the sayings of "poor richard," for franklin was a deep thinker, shrewd observer and quaint expositor of his own philosophy. continuing, he fleeces paine in the following noble words: "but were you to succeed, do you imagine any good would be done by it? you yourself may find it easy to live a virtuous life without the assistance afforded by religion; you having a clear perception of the advantages of virtue and the disadvantages of vice, and possessing strength of resolution sufficient to enable you to resist common temptations. but think how great a portion of mankind consists of weak and ignorant men and women, and of inexperienced, inconsiderate youth of both sexes, who have need of the motives of religion to restrain them from vice, to support them to virtue, and retain them in the practice of it till it becomes _habitual_, which is the great point for its security. and perhaps you are indebted to her originally, that is, to your religious education for the habits of virtue upon which you now justly value yourself. you might easily display your excellent talents of reasoning upon a less hazardous subject, and thereby obtain a rank with our most distinguished authors. for among us, it is not necessary, as among the hottentots, that a youth, to be raised into the company of men, should prove his manhood by beating his mother." franklin concludes this magnificent expression of his religious faith by the solemn warning: "i would advise you, therefore, not to attempt unchaining the tiger, but to burn this piece before it is seen by any other person; whereby you will save yourself a great deal of mortification by the enemies it may raise against you, and perhaps a good deal of regret and repentance. if men are so wicked _with_ religion, what would they be _without_ it?" franklin's belief in the cardinal doctrine of the resurrection of the body is well expressed in the epitaph which he wrote for himself in 1728, when in his twenty-second year. it reads the body of benjamin franklin printer, (like the cover of an old book its contents torn out and stript of its lettering and gilding) lies here, food for worms. but the work shall not be lost for it will (as he believed) appear once more in a new and more elegant edition revised and corrected by the author. however, when the statesman and philosopher was laid at rest beside his wife in the cemetery of christ church, philadelphia, in 1790, the marble slab which marked the grave bore no other inscription than franklin's name and the date of his death. appreciating the great loss which the country sustained by the death of franklin, congress ordered a general mourning for one month throughout the fourteen states of the union; and the french national assembly decreed three days of public mourning at the instance of mirabeau, who said in his address that "the genius that gave freedom to america and scattered torrents of light upon europe, has returned to the bosom of the divinity. antiquity would have erected altars to that mortal who for the advantage of the human race, embracing both heaven and earth in his vast mind, knew how to subdue both thunder and tyranny." the fugitive apprentice boy of 1723 turned out to be one of the most esteemed and eminent americans of his day. of an even temper and well-balanced mind, he was plain in dress, simple in manner, easy of approach and friendly to all. the success which he achieved during his long career of eighty-five years, shows what may be done by seizing the opportunities which come to every one, by concentration of mind, application to duty and tenacity of purpose. he attained distinction in science, in letters, in diplomacy; he stood for good government and true liberty. his name is a household one in his own country, where monuments, institutions and cities will bear it down to posterity. addenda. _the lightning kite._ fully described by franklin in a letter to peter collinson, of london, dated october 19th, 1752. stuber in his "continuation of the life of dr. franklin," and priestley in his "history of electricity," affirm that franklin made the experiment in june, 1752. franklin's son, william, never denied the story, although he figured in it as an active character. william temple franklin, who prepared for publication his grandfather's works, gives the kite story almost verbatim from stuber. finally, franklin himself states that he made the experiment: memoirs, vol. i., p. 164. _franklin and de romas._ june, 1752: franklin raises his kite in a field near philadelphia. july 12, 1752: letter of de romas to the academy of bordeaux, in which a probable reference is made to the kite as _un jeu d'enfant_. october 19th, 1752: franklin describes the "lightning kite" in a letter to peter collinson, of london. may 14th, 1753: first use by de romas of the electric kite in the fields around nérac; no result. june 7th, 1753: first success by de romas with his electric kite. _pointed conductor._ suggested by franklin in letter to peter collinson, of london, dated july 29th, 1750. d'alibard, following franklin's instructions, gets torrents of discharges from his iron rod 40 feet high at marly, may 10th, 1752. de lor gets good results from his conductor 99 feet high, erected over his house in paris, may 18th, 1752. de buffon succeeds with his rod on may 19th, 1752. franklin erected the first rod over his house in philadelphia in september, 1752. it was made of iron with a sharp steel point rising seven or eight feet above the roof, the other end being sunk five feet in the ground. franklin charged a leyden jar from his rod in april, 1753. professor richmann, of st. petersburg, was killed by a flash from his apparatus on august 6th, 1753. brother potamian. [illustration: aloisio galvani] footnotes: [8] scientific writings of joseph henry, vol. i., p. 201. [9] frequently referred to as lullin's experiment. [10] every schoolboy knows that the electricity which passed down the kite-string was not drawn from the clouds, but was due to their inductive action on the pointed conductor attached to the kite. kant calls franklin the "modern prometheus." chapter iv. galvani, discoverer of animal electricity. it is a well-known fact, often commented on in the history of medicine, that harvey, the discoverer of the circulation of the blood, did not give the details of his discovery to the public for some twenty years after he had first reached it. the reason for his delay was twofold. with the characteristic patience of a real investigator in science, harvey wanted to work out the details of his discovery for himself before giving it to the public, and wished to be sure of all he would have to say about it before committing it to print. he had not, as had indeed none of the really great discoverers in science, that intense desire for publicity which causes smaller men to rush into print with their embryonic discoveries, or oftener, their supposed discoveries, the moment they get their first distant glimpse of a new truth or see some mirage of a distant scientific principle, perhaps already well known, in their heated imaginations. small men squabble about priority in small discoveries, and rush headlong into print, lest some one should anticipate their wonderful observation. the example of harvey can scarcely be commended too highly, for if followed, it would save the world of science a lot of bother and obviate the necessity of taking back many things that have been proclaimed in the name of science. fortunately, it has been the rule among genuine students of science, not because of any deliberate imitation of their great predecessors, but because of modest assurance of the worth of their work and honest desire to perfect it before giving it to the world. luigi, or, as he preferred to be known himself, aloysio galvani, for the young prince of the house of gonzaga whose canonization made him st. aloysius was his patron in baptism and a favorite in life, presents an interesting exemplification of this characteristic trait of the really great discoverer in science, to wait calmly and work faithfully for thorough confirmation of his views before publishing them. his admirable patience in reaching the real significance of his discovery before proclaiming the results of his investigations is only a typical illustration of the modest thorough scientist that he was. it used to be said that galvani's discovery of the twitchings of the frog's legs, which led him to give himself to serious investigations into animal electricity, was made more or less by accident in 1786. his views on the subject of animal electricity were not formally published until the appearance of his treatise, de viribus electricitatis in motu musculari commentarius, in the eighth volume of the memoirs of the institute of science of bologna, published in 1791. this would seem to indicate that only five years elapsed between his original observation and the publication of his views. even this interval may seem long enough to our modern notions of at least supposed rapidity of scientific progress, but we know now, from documents in the possession of the institute of science at bologna, that, twenty years previous to the publication of this commentary, galvani was deeply interested in the action of electricity upon the muscles of frogs, and was diligently and fruitfully occupied during his spare time with investigations upon this subject. when, in makers of modern medicine,[18] i called special attention to the fact that practically all of the greatest discoverers in medicine had made their cardinal discovery, or at least the far-reaching observation that opened up for them the special career in investigation that was to make them famous, before they were thirty-five, one of my critics doubted the assertion and suggested the case of galvani as a distinct exception. ordinarily, it is presumed that his discovery of the twitchings of frogs' legs under the influence of electricity was made in 1786, when he was in his forty-ninth year. as a matter of fact, however, his first observations were made and his attention attracted to the importance of the subject when he was scarcely more than thirty. his career is indeed a striking example of the earliness in life at which a great man's work is likely to come to him, and yet illustrates very aptly the patience with which he devotes himself to it, without seeking the idle reputation to be derived from immediate announcement, if he really has the true spirit of the scientific investigator. galvani began original work of a high order very early in his medical career. his graduation thesis on the human skeleton treated especially of the formation and development of bone, and attracted no little attention. it is noteworthy because of the breadth of view in it, for it touches on the various questions relative to osteology, from the standpoint of physics and chemistry, as well as medicine and surgery. it was sufficient to obtain for its author the place of lecturer in anatomy in the university of bologna, besides the post of director of the teaching of anatomy in the institute of sciences, a subsidiary institution. here, from the very beginning, galvani's course was popular. he was not, as we note elsewhere, a fluent talker, but he was one of the first who introduced experimental demonstrations of his subject into his lectures, and this made his teaching very attractive and drew crowds to his university courses. galvani's work as an anatomist, however, was done much more in comparative anatomy than in the study of the human being. he selected birds for the special subject of his first investigations in the field, and his monograph on the kidneys of birds attracted widespread attention among the scientists of europe. as the farthest removed from man of the beings that are warm-blooded, these creatures have always attracted particular attention, and, quite apart from any interest in evolution, were the subject of special investigation. owing to the facility with which they can be studied in embryonic stages in the hatching egg, most of the peculiarities of their structure and development are very well known now. the kidneys of the bird are especially interesting, because they represent a different phase of development from that of human beings. galvani had selected, then, one of the cardinal or turning-point subjects in comparative anatomy. as he pointed out very clearly, the kidneys of birds differ very much among themselves, and the intense muscular action of this creature makes a large amount of excretory material, that must be disposed of, and consequently demands much more active kidney function than occurs in most other classes of animals. galvani studied every feature--the vessels, the nerves, the canals--and almost necessarily pointed out many new points or added hitherto unknown details. he next devoted himself to the study of the ear of the bird. this might seem to be of little special interest, since hearing is not one of the most characteristic qualities of the winged species. it so happens, however, that the semi-circular canals which are closely connected with the auditory apparatus in all animals are extremely large in birds. as a consequence of this, the avian auditory structures assume an importance in comparative anatomy quite like that of the kidneys in the same species. after galvani had completed his studies, he found that he had been anticipated by another great italian anatomist of the time, antonio scarpa (of scarpa's triangle in human anatomy), who afterwards became the chief surgeon to napoleon. galvani abandoned the idea of publishing his book then, but published a short article, in which he added much to scarpa's details and conclusions. his additions were particularly with regard to the semi-circular canals, which are probably the organ of direction, the necessity for which, in this species, for the purpose of flying, is so easy to understand. he also described with great care the single ossicle or small bone, which replaces the chain of little bones that exist in mammal ears, and pointed out that the shape of this bone and its appendages enabled it to fulfil, though single, all the functions of the hammer, the anvil and the stirrup bones in human beings. galvani's careful study of the semi-circular canals of various species of birds can perhaps be better appreciated from the fact that he made it a point to measure their size exactly, as compared to the semi-circular canals of most other creatures. he found that the semi-circular canals of the hawk, for instance, were larger than the corresponding structures in man or even in the cow or the horse. as these latter animals are many hundred times larger than the largest birds, the special significance of the canals in birds becomes manifest. in certain of the birds, as he pointed out, these structures are not semi-circles, nor indeed of circular form at all, but take on much more the shape of an ellipse, and, indeed, sometimes the arc of curvature of the ellipse is quite acute. he seems to have had no hint, however, of the function that we have in modern times assigned to these structures, that of presiding over direction and equilibrium, and discusses in his rather vigorous latin what the physiological significance of them may be as regards hearing. he thinks that they add something to the acuity of hearing, and would seem to imply that in birds flying rapidly through the air, there was the necessity for a more perfect hearing apparatus than among other creatures, and that this was the reason for the huge development of their semi-circular canals. at this time the science of comparative anatomy was just beginning to attract widespread attention. john hunter, in london, was doing a great work in this line, which placed him in the front rank of contributors to biology and collectors of important facts in all the sciences allied to anatomy and physiology. galvani's work on birds, then, made him a pioneer in the biological sciences that were to attract so much attention during the nineteenth century. his experimental work in comparative anatomy, strange as it might seem, and apparently not to be expected, led him into the domain of electricity, through the observation of certain phenomena of animal electricity and the effects of electrical currents on animals. like so many other great discoveries in science, galvani's first attraction to his subject of animal electricity is often said to have been the result of a happy accident. of course it is easy to talk of accidents in these cases. archimedes and his bath; the fall of the apple for newton; laennec's observation of the boys tapping on a log in the courtyard of the louvre and the ready conduction of sound, from which he got his idea for the invention of the stethoscope; lord kelvin's eye-glass falling and showing him how a weightless arm for his electrometer might be obtained in a beam of light,--may all be called happy accidents if you will. without the inventive scientific genius ready to take advantage of them, however, these accidents would not have been raised to the higher plane of important incidents in the history of science. these phenomena had probably occurred under men's eyes hundreds of times before, but there was no great mind ready to receive the seeds of thought suggested, nor to follow out the conclusions so obviously indicated. galvani's observation of the twitching of the muscles of the frog under the influence of electricity, may be called one of the happy accidents of scientific development, but it was galvani's own genius that made the accident happy. there are two stories told as to the method of the first observation in this matter. both of them make his wife an important factor in the discovery. according to a popular but less authentic form of the history, galvani was engaged in preparing some frogs' legs as a special dainty for his wife, who was ill and liked this delicacy very much. he thought so much of her that he was doing this himself, in the hope that she would be thus more readily tempted to eat them. while so engaged, he exposed the large nerve of the animal's hind legs, and at the same time split the skin covering the muscles. in doing this he touched the nerve muscle preparation, as this has come to be called, with the scalpel and the forceps simultaneously, with the result that twitchings occurred. while seeking the cause of these twitchings, the idea of animal electricity came to him. the other form of the story is told a little later in galvani's own words in the analysis of his monograph on animal electricity. he does not mention his wife in it, but there is a tradition that she was present in the laboratory when the phenomenon of the twitching of the frog's legs was first noticed, and indeed that it was she who called his attention to the curious occurrence. she was a woman of well-developed intellect, and her association with her father and also with her husband made her well acquainted with the anatomy and physiology of the day. she realized that what had occurred was quite out of the ordinary. she is even said to have suggested their possible connection with the presence and action of the electric apparatus. husband and wife, then, together, by means of a series of observations determined that, whenever the apparatus was not in use the phenomenon of the convulsive movements of the frog's legs did not take place, notwithstanding irritation by the scalpel. whenever the electric apparatus was working, however, then the phenomenon in question always took place. according to either form of the story, if we accept the traditions in the matter, madame galvani had an important part in the discovery. galvani's most important contribution to science is undoubtedly his de viribus electricitatis in motu musculari commentarius--commentary on the forces of electricity in their relation to muscular motion. like many another epoch-making contribution to science, it is not a large work, but in his collected works in the edition of 1841, occupies altogether sixty-four pages, of scarcely more than two hundred and fifty words to the page. there are probably not more than fifteen thousand words in it altogether. it was published originally in the eighth volume of the memoirs of the institute of science at bologna, in 1791, but a reprint of it, with some modifications, was issued at modena in the following year. this modenese edition, published by the societa typographica, was annotated by professor giovanni aldini, who also wrote an accompanying dissertation, de animalis electricae theoriae ortu atque incrementis, on the rise and development of the theory of animal electricity. in this volume was also published a letter from galvani to professor carminati, in italian, on the seat of animal electricity. these two editions are the sources to which we must turn for whatever galvani tried to make known with regard to animal electricity. this little volume consists of four parts: the first of which is devoted to a consideration of the effects of artificial electricity on muscular motion; the second is on the effect of atmospheric electricity on muscular motion; the third is on the effect of animal electricity on muscular motion; and the fourth consists of a series of conjectures and some conclusions from his observations. the arrangement of the work, as can readily be understood from this, is thoroughly scientific. galvani proceeds from what was best known and most evident to what he knew less about, trying to enlarge the bounds of knowledge and then suggesting the conclusions that might be drawn from his work and offering a number of hints as to the possible significance of many of the phenomena that might form suggestive material for further experimentation along this same line. in spite of the forbiddingness of the latin to a modern scientist, as a rule, the little work is well worthy of study because of its eminently scientific method and the excellent evidence it affords of the way serious students of science approached a scientific thesis before the beginning of the nineteenth century. the first paragraph of this dissertation is of such fundamental significance, because it represents the primal work done in animal electricity, that it has seemed to me worth while presenting entire. the original latin from which the translation is made, and from which a good idea of galvani's latin style may be obtained, is given in a note.[17] "i had dissected a frog and had prepared it, as in figure 2 of the fifth plate (in which is shown a nerve muscle preparation), and had placed it upon a table on which there was an electric machine, while i set about doing certain other things. the frog was entirely separated from the conductor of the machine, and indeed was at no small distance away from it. while one of those who were assisting me touched lightly and by chance the point of his scalpel to the internal crural nerves of the frog, suddenly all the muscles of its limbs were seen to be so contracted that they seemed to have fallen into tonic convulsions. another of my assistants, who was making ready to take up certain experiments in electricity with me, seemed to notice that this happened only at the moment when a spark came from the conductor of the machine. he was struck with the novelty of the phenomenon, and immediately spoke to me about it, for i was at the moment occupied with other things and mentally preoccupied. i was at once tempted to repeat the experiment, so as to make clear whatever might be obscure in it. for this purpose i took up the scalpel and moved its point close to one or the other of the crural nerves of the frog, while at the same time one of my assistants elicited sparks from the electric machine. the phenomenon happened exactly as before. strong contractions took place in every muscle of the limb, and at the very moment when the sparks appeared, the animal was seized as it were with tetanus." galvani then explains in detail how he made observations on control frogs at moments when there were no electric sparks, and decided that the contact with the scalpel was only effective in producing twitchings when there was a simultaneous electric spark. he noted, also, that occasionally the contractions did not occur, in spite of the fulfilment of the conditions mentioned. he traced this to fatigue. he then proceeded to vary the experiment in many ways, decreasing the size of the scalpel, increasing and decreasing the size of the electric machine and varying the method of preparation of the frog, so as to decide just what the significance of the phenomenon was. in a general way, it may be said that this study shows galvani as one of the most careful of experimentalists, though he has often been declared to be a theorizer, rather than an observer. a very interesting anticipation of galvani's original experiment, made long before his time by a great naturalist, the story of which serves to show that discoveries made before their time, that is, before people are ready to follow them up, fail to attract attention, has been called to my attention by brother potamian. in the second volume of the dutch naturalist swammerdam's works, page 839, is to be found the following passage:[14] "another experiment that is at once very curious and suggestive can be made if one separates the largest of the muscles of the thigh of the frog and so prepares it with its adherent nerve as to leave it unhurt. if after this has been done you take the tendons of this muscle, one in each hand, and irritate the hanging nerve by a little forceps or other instrument, the muscle will recover the former motion which it had lost. you will see at once that it contracts and that there will be an effort as it were to bring together the two hands which hold its tendons. this i demonstrated, in the year 1658, to the illustrious duke of tuscany then reigning, when he was at the moment in a state of mind that prompted him not to favor me. this same experiment can be repeated with the same muscle as often and for as long a time as any portion of the nerve remains uninjured, so that we may, therefore, irritate the muscle to its former contraction as often as we wish." as a foundation classic in electricity, galvani's de viribus electricitatis deserves more detailed analysis. the first part of the monograph is taken up with experiments of many kinds, with what may be called artificial sources of electricity--the electric machine, the leyden jar, and other modes of electrical development. the second part treats of the effects of atmospheric electricity upon muscular motion, by which expression galvani means lightning, though he also observed various electrical manifestations in the muscles of his frogs when there was no actual lightning but only darkening of the heavens, without actual passage of the current flash from one cloud to another or from the clouds to the earth. in this matter, galvani displayed quite as much courage as patient observation. he knew the fate of richmann, the russian scientist, who had been struck dead by a lightning-bolt while making experiments not very different, yet he dared to place a lightning conductor on the highest point of his house, and to this conductor he attached a wire, which ran down to his laboratory. during a storm, he suspended on this metallic circuit, by means of their sciatic nerves, frogs' legs and the legs of other animals prepared for the purpose. to the feet of the animals he attached another wire sufficiently long to reach down to the bottom of a well, thus grounding the circuit. not satisfied with this study of the influence of lightning and large electrical disturbances in the air on the preparation of the frog as he had made it, galvani set about discovering whether even the slight differences in electrical potential which occur during the day in atmospheric electricity might not give rise, even in fair weather, to certain contractions of the frog's muscles. he made his observations for many days at many different hours and under varying conditions of light and shade, of heat and cold, without finding anything. there were occasional contractions, but they bore no definite relation to variations in the atmosphere, or the electric state of the atmosphere. galvani satisfied himself of this very thoroughly, and with a patience and diligence worthy of emulation by a fellow at a modern university working on a foundation for the determination of a particular question. the third part of the work is the most important as well as the longest, and contains the ideas which are original with galvani, but which met most opposition in his time and have only been properly appreciated in recent years. galvani came to the conclusion that there is such a thing as animal electricity. this led to a famous controversy with volta, in which their contemporaries judged that galvani had the worst of it; but, as so often happens, their successors a century later would judge that galvani's views were more in accord with what we know at the present time. criticism is always easier than scientific advance, and in a controversy it is usually the man who writes most forcibly, rather than the one who thinks most deeply, who secures the assent of readers. this makes controversy in matters of science always unfortunate, for it does much more to retard than to help scientific progress. galvani insists, at the end of this chapter on animal electricity, that what he writes is entirely the result of experiment, and that he has tried in every way to make his experiments from a thoroughly critical standpoint. those who repeat his observations will find this to be true, though he confesses that there are times when conditions not well understood seem to hinder the results that he usually obtained. the fourth part of his commentary is taken up with certain conjectures, as he calls them, and some conclusions from his work. in this he suggests the use of electricity for the cure of certain nervous diseases, and especially for the treatment of the various forms of paralysis. the use of electricity for these cases had been previously suggested, and bertholinus had told the story of patients who were utterly unable to move and who had recovered after having been in the neighborhood where a lightning-bolt had struck. to the minds of physicians of that time, this must have seemed proof positive of the curative value of lightning, and, therefore, of electricity, for paralytic conditions. the remedy was heroic, if not indeed positively risky, but its good effect could not be doubted. unfortunately, as is always true in medical matters, the real question at issue in these cases is not so much the value of the remedy as the propriety of the diagnosis. paralysis, in the sense of inability to use one or more limbs, may be due to many causes. there are a number of forms of functional or hysterical palsy, that is, of incapacity to use certain groups of muscles not dependent on any organic lesion, but upon some curious state of the nervous system which may pass away entirely, and which, indeed, seem to be dependent on the patient's state of mind. a number of so-called paralytic patients were cured by the earthquake in san francisco; some are made to do the apparently impossible every year; they get up and walk because of the shock due to a fire or burglars. we know now that the electrical status of the individual is very carefully protected from disturbance by external electrical forces. what galvani began has borne fruit in diagnosis more than treatment, so that his prophecy has been amply fulfilled. "the application of this method may throw light on the subject and experience may help us to understand it." among his conclusions, galvani hints that electricity may not only proceed from the clouds during electrical disturbances, but also may proceed from the earth itself, and that living beings may be affected by this. he suggests, therefore, that plants and animals may be influenced in their growth and in their health by such electrical changes. he adds the suggestion that there may be some intimate connection between electrical phenomena and earthquakes, and suggests that, in countries where earthquakes are frequent, observations should be made by means of frogs' limbs in order to see whether there may not be some definite change in the electrical conditions of the atmosphere before and during the earthquake. he seems to have had some idea that the curious feelings which at times come before an earthquake to human beings, though they seem even more noticeable in animals, may be due to this change in atmospheric electricity.[13] we are rather prone to think that news of scientific discoveries traveled slowly in europe in the eighteenth century. there is abundant evidence of the contrary in these sketches of electricians, and galvani's case is one of the most striking. how much attention galvani's discovery attracted and how soon definite details of it spread to the other end of europe may be judged from the fact that, in 1793, mr. richard fowler published a small book at edinburgh bearing the title, experiments and observations relative to the influence lately discovered by m. galvani, and commonly called animal electricity.[15] this little book, which may be seen at the surgeons general library, washington, and in the library of the american institute of electrical engineers, new york, details a large number of experiments that fowler had made during the preceding year or more, so that galvani's work must have reached him within a few months after its publication. fowler mentions the fact that galvani had been occupied many years before this in the study of electric fishes, especially the _torpedo_, the _gymnotus electricus_ and _silurus electricus_. he also mentions a curious observation of cotugno, who, a few years before, had received a shock from a mouse while dissecting the little animal, which makes it clear that imagination played a role in helping to the introduction of the newer ideas with regard to animal electricity.[16] but before his discovery was to attract so much attention, galvani had to work it out, and this is the merit of the man. it is almost needless to say, these experiments upon frogs were not accomplished in a few days or a few weeks. galvani had his duties as professor of anatomy to attend to besides the obligations imposed upon him as a busy practitioner of medicine and surgery. at that time, it was not nearly so much the custom as it is at the present, to use frogs for experiments, with the idea that conclusions might be obtained of value for the biological sciences generally, and especially for medicine. there has always been such an undercurrent of feeling, that such experiments have been more or less a beating of the air. galvani found this opposition not only to his views with regard to animal electricity as enunciated after experimental demonstration, but also met with no little ridicule because of the supposed waste of time at occupations that could not be expected to lead to any practical results. it was the custom of scientific men to laugh somewhat scornfully at his patient persistence in studying out every detail of electrical action on the frog, and one of the supposedly prominent scientists of the time even dubbed him "the frog dancing master." this did not, however, deter galvani from his work, though some of the bitter things must have proved cutting enough, and might have discouraged a smaller man, less confident of the scientific value of the work that he was doing. his relations with his patients--for during all of his career he continued to practice, especially surgery and obstetrics--were of the friendliest character. while his distinction as a professor at the university gave him many opportunities for practice among the rich, he was always ready and willing to help the poor, and, indeed, seemed to feel more at home among poor patients than in the society of the wealthy and the noble. even toward the end of his life, when the loss of many friends, and especially his wife, made him retire within himself much more than before, he continued to exercise his professional skill for the benefit of the poor, though he often refused to take cases that might have proved sources of considerable gain to him. early in life, when he was very busy between his professorial work and his practice, he remarked more than once, on refusing to take the cases of wealthy patients, that they had the money with which to obtain other physicians, while the poor did not, and he would prefer to keep some time for his services to them. when ailing and miserable toward the end of his life, he still continued his practice, and was especially ready to spend his time with the poor. he was dying himself, as one of his biographers says, when he got up from a sick bed to see a dying woman who sent for him. he was one of the most popular professors that the university of bologna ever had. he was not, in the ordinary sense of the word, an orator, but he was a born teacher. the source of the enthusiasm which he aroused in his hearers was undoubtedly his own love for teaching and the power it gave him to express even intricate problems in simple, straightforward language. more than any of his colleagues, he understood that experiments and demonstrations must be the real groundwork of the teaching of science. accordingly, very few of his lectures were given without the aid of these material helps to attract attention. besides, he was known to be one who delighted to answer questions, and was perfectly frank about the limitations of his knowledge whenever there was no real answer to be given to a question that had been proposed. though an original discoverer of the first rank, he was extremely modest, particularly when talking about the details of his discoveries or subjects relating to them. galvani was not a good talker, though he seems to have been a good teacher. he had little of that facility which wins friends easily and enables a man to shine with a borrowed lustre of knowledge, often enough quite superficial. what he said was almost sure to have a very serious meaning. while there is no doubt that galvani was a genius, in the sense that he was one of the precious few who take the step across the boundary of the unknown and make a path along which it is easy for others to follow in reaching hitherto trackless regions in human speculation, he also had what is undoubtedly the main element in talent, for he was possessed to a high degree of the faculty for hard work. for this he regulated the hours of his labor very carefully. only thus could he have accomplished what he did. it must not be forgotten that he was teaching anatomy and obstetrics at the university of bologna, and, surprising as it may seem, doing both these tasks well. he was besides accomplishing good work in comparative anatomy and physiology by original investigations of a high order. in spite of all this, which would seem occupation enough and more for any one man, he was able to keep up a rather demanding practice. he did not have many friends, but those whom he admitted to his intimacy were bound to him with the proverbial hoops of steel. with two men in bologna he spent most of his leisure. they were dr. julio cæsare cingari, a distinguished physician of the city, and the well-known astronomer who held the chair of astronomy at the university, francisco sacchetti. with these he passed many a pleasant hour, and week after week they met at one another's houses to discuss scientific questions and the lighter topics of the day. galvani was thoroughly respected by all the members of the faculty at bologna, though he did not seek many friendships, and indeed probably would have more or less resented the intrusions of acquaintances, because of the time that it would take from him. he was a very retiring man, caring not at all for social things, and least of all for that personal fame which has been so well defined as the being known by those whom one does not know. his happiness in life came to him from his work and from his domestic relations. his wife was one of those marvelous women, rarer than they should be, one is tempted to say, who are enough interested in their husband's intellectual work to add to the zest of discovery in the discussion of it with them, and who yet realize that it is by minimizing the little worries of life that they can best help their husbands. a very interesting phase of the italian university life of that time is revealed in two important incidents of galvani's university career. one of his professors--one, by the way, for whom he seems to have had a great deal of respect, and to whose lectures he devoted much attention, was laura caterina maria bassi, the distinguished woman professor of philosophy at the university of bologna, about the middle of the eighteenth century. it is doubtless to her teaching that galvani owes some of his thorough-going conservatism in philosophic speculation, a conservatism that was of great service to him later on in life, in the midst of the ultra-radical principles which became fashionable just before and during the french revolution. madame bassi seems to have had her influence on him for good not only during his student career, but also later in life, for she was the wife of a prominent physician in bologna, and galvani was often in social contact with her during her years of connection with the university. as might, perhaps, be expected, seeing that his own happy domestic life showed him that an educated woman might be the center of intellectual influence, galvani seems to have had no spirit of opposition to even the highest education for women. this is very well illustrated by the first formal lecture in his course on anatomy at the university, which had for its subject the models for the teaching of anatomy that had been made by madame manzolini.[12] in the early part of the eighteenth century, madame manzolini had been the professor of anatomy at the university of bologna, and in order to make the teaching of this difficult subject easier and more definite, she modeled with great care and delicate attention to every detail, so that they imitated actual dissections of the human body very closely, a set of wax figures, which replaced the human body for demonstration purposes, at least at the beginning of the anatomical course. galvani, in taking up the work of lecturer in anatomy, appreciated how much such a set of models would serve to make the introduction to anatomical study easy, yet at the same time without diminishing its exactness, and accordingly introduced his students to madame manzolini's set of models in his very first lecture. at the time, not a few of the teachers of anatomy at the italian universities were inclined to consider the use of these models as rather an effeminate proceeding. galvani's lack of prejudice in the matter shows the readiness of the man to accept the best, wherever he found it, without regard to persons or feelings. galvani's personal character was very pleasant, yet rather grave and serious. his panegyrist, professor giuseppe venturoli, in the eulogium of galvani, delivered in the public academy of the institute of bologna (1802) within five years after galvani's death, says that galvani was far from that coldness or lack of interest which sometimes characterizes scientists in their social relations, and which, as he naïvely says, is sometimes praised and sometimes blamed by those who write about them. another side of galvani's character is more interesting. he was ready to do all in his power for the poor. he conducted his obstetrical clinic particularly with a liberal benevolence and charity that deserve to be mentioned. when it is considered how much time his teaching and his charity took from him, it is rather surprising to find that he had enough left to enable him to devote himself with so much success to the difficult tasks he set himself in research and to the time-taking labors of controversy, which occupied many years after the announcement of his discoveries. the most striking proof of the thorough conscientiousness with which he faced the duties of life is to be found in his conduct after the establishment of the so-called cis-alpine republic in italy. this was a government established merely by force of arms, maintained through french influence, without the consent of the people, and a plain usurpation of the rights of the previous government. galvani considered himself bound in duty to the authority under which he had lived all his previous life and to which he had sworn fealty. when the university of bologna was reorganized under the new government, the first requirement of all those who were made professors was that they should take the oath of allegiance to the new government. this he refused to do. his motives can be readily understood, and though practically all the other professors of the university had taken the oath, he did not consider that this freed him from his conscientious obligations in the matter. accordingly he was dropped from the roll of professors and deprived of the never very large salary which he had obtained from this chair. on this sum he had practically depended for his existence, and he began to suffer from want. while he had been a successful practitioner of medicine, especially of surgery, he had always been very liberal, and had spent large sums of money in demonstrations for his lectures and personal experimentation and in materials for the museums of the university. he began to suffer from actual want, and friends had to come to his assistance. he refused, however, to give up his scruples in the matter and accept the professorship which was still open to him. finally, at the end of two years, influence was brought to bear on the new government, and galvani was allowed to accept his chair in the university without taking the oath of allegiance. this tribute came too late, however, and within a short time after his restoration to his professorship he died. galvani's conduct in this affair is the key-note to his character and conduct through life. for him duty was the paramount word, and success meant the accomplishment of duty. for getting on in the world and material rewards he had no use unless they came as the consequence of duty fulfilled. his action in the matter of the university professorship has of course been much discussed by his biographers. his eulogist, professor venturoli, whom we have already quoted, and whose eulogium is to be found in the complete edition of galvani's works issued at bologna in 1841,[11] has much to say with regard to galvani's religious sentiments. he says: "the great founder in electricity was deeply religious, and his piety clothed a heart that was not less affectionate and sensitive to affection than it was intrepid and courageous. when called upon to take the civic oath in a formula involved in ambiguous words, he did not believe that he ought, on so serious an occasion, to permit himself anything but the clear and precise expression of his sentiments, full as they were of honesty and rectitude. refusing to take advantage of the suggestion that he should modify the oath by some declaration apart from the prescribed formula, though it might still be generally understood that he had taken the oath, he refused constantly to commit himself to any such subterfuge. it is not our duty here to ask whether his conclusion was correct or not. he followed the voice of his conscience, which ever must be the standard of duty, and it certainly would have been a fault to have deviated from it. it is sad to think that this great man, deprived of his position, saw himself, for an instant at least, exposed to the danger of ending his career, deprived of the recompense which he so richly deserved and to which his past services to the state and the university had given him so just a title. this is all the more sad when we realize that the vicissitudes of his delicate health, much more than his age, now rendered such recompense doubly necessary. it is a gracious thing to recall, however, the noble firmness with which he maintained himself against so serious a blow. his courage is all the more admirable as one can see how absolutely without affectation it is. he was not ostentatious in his goodness, and did not permit himself to be cast down by the unfortunate conditions, but constantly preserved in the midst of adverse fortune that modest, imperturbable and dignified conduct which had always characterized him in the midst of his prosperity and his glory." that his action in this matter was very properly appreciated by his contemporaries, and that the moral influence of his example was not lost, can be realized from the expressions used by alibert, the secretary-general of the medical society of emulation, in the historical address on galvani which he delivered before that society in paris in 1801: "galvani constantly refused to take the civil oath demanded by the decrees of the cis-alpine republic. who can blame him for having followed the voice of his conscience--that sacred, interior voice which alone prescribes the duties of man and which has preceded all human laws? who could not praise him for having sacrificed all such exemplary resignation, all the emoluments of his professorship, rather than violate the solemn engagements made under religious sanction?" in the same panegyric there is a very curiously interesting passage with regard to galvani's habit of frequently closing his lectures by calling attention to the complexity yet the purposefulness of natural things, and the inevitable conclusion that they must have been created with a definite purpose by a supreme being possessed of intelligence. at the time that alibert wrote his memoir, it was the fashion to consider, at least in france, that christianity was a thing of the past, and that while theism might remain, that would be all that could be expected to survive the crumbling effect of the emancipation of man. he says: "we have seen already what was galvani's zeal and his love for the religion which he professed. we may add that, in his public demonstrations, he never finished his lectures without exhorting his pupils to a renewal of their faith, by leading them always back to the idea of the eternal providence which develops, preserves and causes life to flow among so many different kinds of things. i write now," he continues, "in the age of reason, of tolerance and of light. must i then defend galvani in the eyes of posterity for one of the most beautiful sentiments that can spring from the nature of man? no; and they are but little initiated in the saner mechanism of philosophy who refuse to recognize the truths established on evidence so strong and so authentic. _breves haustus in philosophia ad atheismum ducunt, longiores autem reducunt ad deum_--small draughts of philosophy lead to atheism, but longer draughts bring one back to god"--(which may be better translated, perhaps, for english readers by pope's well known lines, "a little learning [in philosophy] is a dangerous thing; drink deep or touch not the pierian spring"). galvani has been honored by his fellow-citizens of bologna as one of their greatest townsmen, and by the university as one of her worthiest sons. in 1804, a medal was struck in his honor, on the reverse of which, surrounding a figure of the genius of science, were the two legends: "mors mihi vita," "death is life for me," and "spiritus intus alit," "the spirit works within," which were favorite expressions of the great scientist while living, and are lively symbols of the spirit which animated him. in 1814, a monument was erected to him in the courtyard of the university of bologna. it is surmounted by his bust, made by the most distinguished bolognian sculptor of the time, de maria. on the pedestal there are two figures in bas-relief, executed by the same sculptor, which represent religion and philosophy, the inspiring genius of galvani's life. before he died, he asked, as had his favorite poet dante, whose divina commedia had been one of the pleasures of life and above all one of the consolations of his times of adversity, to be buried in the humble habit of a member of the third order of st. francis. he is said to have valued his fellowship with the sons of the "poor little man of assisi" more than the many honorary fellowships of various kinds which had been conferred upon him by scientific societies all over europe. with him passed away one of the great pioneers of modern science and one of the most lovable men in all the history of science. his death took place just before the close of the eighteen century, dec. 4, 1798, but his work was destined to be one of the harbingers of a great period of electrical development. footnotes: [11] fordham university press, 1906. [12] ranam dissecui, atque praeparavi ut in fig. 2 tab. v. eamque in tabula, omnia mihi alia proponens, in qua erat mechina electrica fig. 1, collocavi ab ejus conductore penitus sejunctam, atque haud brevi intervallo dissitam; dum scalpelli cuspidem unus ex iis, qui mihi operam dabant, cruralibus hujus ranae internis nervis dd casu vel leviter admoveret, continuo omnes artuum musculi ita contrahi visi sunt, ut in vehementiores incidisse tonicas convulsiones viderentur. eorum vero alter, qui nobis electricitatem tentantibus praesto erat, animadvertere sibi visus est, rem contingere dum ex conductere machinae scintilla extorqueretur fig. 1 b. rei novitatem ille admiratus de eadem statim me alia omnino molientem ac mecum ipso cogitantem admonuit. his ego incredibili cum studio, et cupiditate incensus idem experiundi, et quod occultum in re esset in lucem pro ferendi admovi propterea et ipse scalpelli cuspidem uni vel alteri crurali nervo, quo tempore unus aliquis ex iis, qui aderant, scintillam eliceret. phoenomenon eadem omnino ratione contigit; vehementes nimirum contractiones in singulos artum musculos, perinde ac si tetano praeparatum animal esset correptum, eodem ipso temporis momento inducebantur, quo scintillae extorquerentur. [13] for the sake of those who might care to see how the great dutch naturalist expressed these curious scientific notions in latin, the original text seems worth while giving. "jucundissimum porro juxta ac utilissimum experimentum aliud institui potest, si quidam e maximis musculis de ranae femore separetur, atque una cum adhaerente suo nervo ita praeparetur, ut hic illaesus permaneat. quodsi enim, hoc peracto, utrumque musculi hujus tendinem a, a manibus prehenderis. nervumque ejus propendentem forsicula aliove quodam instrumento de in irritaveris b; pristinum, quem amiserat, motum suum mox recuperabit musculus. videbis hinc ilico eum contrahi, binasque manus, quae tendines ejus adtinent, ad se mutuo veluti adducere: prout olim jam, anno 1658, illustrissimo duci hetrusco, cummaxime regnanti, demonstravi; quum is immerito sane favore ad me invisere non dedignaretur. hoc ipsum veto experimentum eodem in musculo tam crebro & diu reiterari potest, donec ulla nervi pars illaesa fuerit: ut ideo toties sic ad pristinam contractionem suam lacessere musculum valeamus, quoties nobis libuerit." [14] with galvani's attention to medical electricity, it is not surprising that for several years, beginning with 1873, an italian medical journal called il galvani, with the sub-title giornale di elettro-idro-ed aero terapia, was published at milan. its directors were the brothers themistocles and ulysses santopadre. those who think that an exaggeration of claims for electrical influence on various diseases is of comparatively recent date, will do well to consult that journal. the prophylaxis of yellow-fever is suggested by means of static electricity. the cause of yellow-fever is declared to be a disturbance of the electro-magnetic conditions of the body. everything, from skin diseases to uterine inertia, chloroform asphyxia, aphasia, and the various forms of paralysis, and basedow's disease, are described as cured by electrical treatment. so does science become the nursing mother of quackery. [15] edinburgh, 1793. [16] in 1795, one of the theses presented for the fellowship of the royal college of surgeons of edinburgh was on the subject of galvanism, or at least on galvani's work, by francis barker, who signs himself hibernicus, an evidence of the fact that irishmen often went to edinburgh for their scientific training. this thesis serves to show that galvani's work was already attracting the attention even of the most distant of western universities. [17] it is interesting to note that the two successful inventions for lessening the necessity for deterrent dissecting work are due to women--professor manzolini and her wax models, and alessandra giliani, the assistant of mondino, father of dissection, (d. 1320), who knew how "to fill the veins with various colored fluids which would harden, and paint these same vessels and color them so naturally that they brought mondino great fame and credit." (old chronicler.) [18] opere edite ed inedite del professore luigi galvani raccolte e pubblicate per cura dell'accademia delle scienze dell'instituto di bologna, bologna tipografia di emilio dall'olmo. mdcccxli. chapter v. volta the founder of electrical science. up to the end of the eighteenth century, discoverers in electrical science had usually been students of science in other departments, whose attention to electricity had been attracted in passing as it were. occasionally, indeed, they had been only interested amateurs, inquisitive as to the curious phenomena of magnetism. it is surprising how many of these pioneers in electricity were clergymen, though that fact is seldom realized. it can be seen very readily in my chapter on clergymen pioneers in electricity, in catholic churchmen in science (second series, dolphin press, phila., 1909). with volta's career, however, was initiated the story of the electrical scientists who devoted themselves almost exclusively to this department of physics, though more or less necessarily paying some attention to related subjects. volta's discovery of a practical instrument for measuring electricity, as well as of comparatively simple apparatus producing a continuous current, changed the whole face of the science of electricity. after these inventions, regular work could be readily done in the investigation of problems in the science of electricity without discouragement or inadequate instruments, discontinuous electrical phenomena, disturbances of experiments by the weather, and other conditions which had been hitherto so unfavorable to electrical experimentation. volta's invention of the pile, or battery, so deservedly called after him, caused electrical science to take on an entirely new aspect, and the modern development of electricity was assured. it has been well said that no other invention, not even the steam-engine, meant so much for the transformation of modern life as this new apparatus for the production of a continuous electric current. [illustration: alessandro volta] the man who worked this revolution in electrical science was no mere inventor who, by a happy chance, brought together practical factors that had been well known before but had never been combined. he was one of the greatest scientists of a period particularly rich in examples of original scientific genius of a high order. before his death, he came to be acknowledged by the scientific world of his time as one of the greatest leaders of thought, not alone in electricity, but in all departments of the physical sciences. his life forms for this reason an important chapter in the history of science and scientific development. like most of the distinguished scientific discoverers of the last two centuries, alessandro volta was born in very humble circumstances. his father was a member of the italian nobility, but had wasted his patrimony so completely that the family was in extreme poverty when the distinguished son was born, on the eighteenth of february, 1745. this poverty was so complete that volta said of it, later in life: "my father owned nothing except a small dwelling worth about fourteen thousand lire; and as he left behind him seventeen thousand lire of debt, i was actually poorer than poor." a good idea of the circumstances in which volta's childhood was passed may be gathered from the fact that he could not even secure copy-books for his first school exercises except through the kindness of friends. volta had shown signs of genius from early boyhood, and yet had been discouragingly slow in his intellectual development as a child. in fact, it was feared that he was congenitally lacking in intelligence to a great degree. it is said that he was more than four years old before he ever uttered a word. this does not mean before he learned to talk connectedly, but before he could utter even such familiar expressions as "father," "mother," and the like. he was considered to be dumb; and, as is not infrequently the mistaken notion with regard to children dumb for any reason, he was thought to be almost an idiot. the first word he ever uttered is said to have been a vigorous "no!" which was heard when one of his relatives insisted on his doing something that he did not wish to do. at the age of seven, however, he had so far overcome all difficulties of speech as to be looked upon as a very bright child. owing to this late, unexpected development, his parents seem to have regarded him as a sort of living miracle, and felt certain that he was destined to accomplish great things. his father said of him later, "we had a jewel in the house and did not know it." fortunately for volta, one of his uncles was archdeacon of the cathedral, and another was one of the canons. these relatives helped him to obtain an education, the way being made especially easy by the fact that at this time all the jesuit colleges subsisted on foundations and collected no fees from any of their students; so that all that was necessary for his uncles to do for him was to contribute to his expenses outside of college. according to tradition, the jesuits not only helped volta in his education, but assisted him in obtaining his books and even in his living expenses while at their college. at the age of about sixteen, his education was complete, even including a year of philosophy. this is probably an indication of his talent as a student; though it was not an unusual thing in the southern countries for students to graduate at sixteen, or even younger, after a course equivalent to that now required for the bachelor's degree in arts. we have gotten far away from this early graduation, although it is still sometimes possible in italian universities; and one of the brightest men i ever knew was an italian who had graduated with a degree equivalent to our a. b. before he was sixteen. when volta graduated, however, such early completion of the undergraduate course was not at all unusual in italy, and boys of thirteen and fourteen, almost as a rule, entered the undergraduate department to complete their course for a degree at seventeen or eighteen. one of our greatest physicians in this country, benjamin rush, was only seventeen when he completed his college course, and such examples were not at all rare. indeed, the possibility for these men to devote themselves much earlier than is possible now to their serious life-work, yet with the development of mind which comes from a university course in the arts, was probably a distinct help to the success of their scientific careers. one is tempted to think that possibly such justification of earlier graduation, as we find among the distinguished scientists of a century ago, might make us reflect deeply before lending ourselves to what herbert spencer thought a phase of evolution, the lengthening of childhood, for it is just possible that the earlier recognition of manhood may mean more for individual development. of course, geniuses are exceptions to rule, and an argument founded on their careers may mean very little for the generality of students. like many another of the great scientists, volta was not that constant source of satisfaction to his teachers while at school that might possibly be expected. he had little interest in the conventional elementary education of the time, he was frequently distracted during school hours, and even as a mere boy often asked questions with regard to natural phenomena that were puzzlers to his masters, and sometimes complained of their lack of knowledge. he fortunately outgrew this priggishness, for in later childhood he seems to have been one of those talented children who learn rapidly and who are impatient at being kept back while their slower fellow-pupils are having drilled into them what came so easy to readier talents. in his classical studies, however, volta was deeply interested. he was especially enthusiastic over poetry, and at school devoted the spare time that his readiness of acquisition left him to the reading of virgil and tasso. these favorite authors became so familiar to him that he could repeat much of them by heart, and even in old age could cap verses from them better than any of his friends, even those all of whose lives had been devoted exclusively to literary occupations. during his walks, when an old man, he often entertained himself by repeating long passages from the classic latin and italian poets. even at this time, volta's interest in the physical sciences was very marked. there is still extant a latin poem of about five hundred verses, in which he sets forth the observations of priestley, the discoverer of oxygen, whom it used to be the custom to call the father of modern chemistry. this poem shows his thorough familiarity with the work of the great english investigator. volta's model was lucretius. lest it should be a source of surprise that an italian scientist had recourse to latin for even a poetic account of scientific discoveries, it may be well to recall that latin was still the universal language of science at that time, and volta's great contemporary in electricity, galvani, wrote his original monograph on animal electricity in that language, and even the father of pathology wrote his first great treatise, de causis et sedibus morborum, in that tongue. as to his adoption of verse as a vehicle for scientific writing, it must not be forgotten that, at the time when volta was writing his poem, another distinguished writer on scientific subjects, erasmus darwin, the grandfather of charles darwin of the last generation, was composing his "zoonomia; or, animal biography," in english verse. didactic verse was quite the fashion of the time, and some of it, even when it came from acknowledged poets, had not more poetry than volta's effusion. as if to make up for his lack of linguistic faculty when young, volta seems to have had a special gift for languages when he grew older. before the age of twenty, he knew french as well as his mother tongue, read german and english fluently, and low dutch and spanish were not beyond his comprehension. besides his verses in latin he wrote poetry also in french and italian, always with cleverness at least, and at times with true poetic feeling. while attending the jesuit school, he expressed, it is said, a desire to enter the order. as his father, however, had been with the jesuits for eleven years and had then given up his studies, his family feared a repetition of such an experience; and so his clergymen uncles took him away from the school and sent him for a while to the seminary at benzi. after a time volta abandoned the idea of becoming a priest, but would not consent to follow the wishes of the family council further, at least not to the extent of becoming a lawyer. though he studied law for a time, he constantly wandered away to the reading of books on the natural sciences and to the study of natural objects. finally he was allowed to give up law to devote himself exclusively to science. fortunately, one of the canons of the cathedral of como, a former fellow-student of his and a man of considerable means, was also interested in the natural sciences, and obtained the books and instruments necessary to enable volta and himself to continue their studies. father gattoni seems to have realized at once the possibilities for great advances in science that lay in volta's wonderful powers of observation, and encouraged him in every way. as a consequence, some of the important experiments that laid the foundation of the modern science of electricity and proved the beginning of volta's world-wide reputation were carried on in gattoni's rooms. as a young man, volta was so completely devoted to scientific investigations that there could be no doubt of the bent of his genius for original work of a high order. his power of concentration of attention on a subject was supreme. biographers emphasize that there was no time, much less inclination, for the levities that so often appeal to the growing youth. he was almost too staid and preoccupied with his work for his own health and the comfort of his friends. when he became interested in a series of experiments, he often forgot the flight of time, and was known to miss meals, and inadvertently to put off going to bed--apparently quite unconscious of his physical necessities. this intense concentration of mind had its disadvantages. one of his friends complained playfully that he made a rather disagreeable traveling companion on account of his tendency to become abstracted; and on occasions this friend was deeply mortified to see volta, when in company, take out a pocket-handkerchief that had been used for some purpose in the laboratory--which showed unmistakable signs of its previous employment as a cleansing agent for dirty instruments or hands, though its possessor was evidently unconscious of its appearance. more than once, too, his handkerchief proved, when taken out for its natural uses, to be as preoccupied as its owner: specimens of rocks or natural curiosities that he had gathered and inadvertently allowed to remain in his pocket came with it. all during his life he retained an unusual faculty for concentrating his attention, which at times amounted to complete abstraction from his surroundings. it is related that, one cold morning his students at the university of pavia found him in his shirt sleeves, so intent on arranging the experiments that were to illustrate his morning lecture that he was unconscious of the time, and even did not notice their coming into the room until they had been for some time in their seats and he had finally completed the arrangement for the demonstrations. he was constantly occupied with problems in natural science, looking for the explanation of phenomena that he did not understand as well as gathering new data by observation and experiment. he was gifted with the supremely inquisitive spirit, in the scientific sense of the epithet, and could not be satisfied with accepting things as he found them without knowing the reasons for them. volta furnishes another excellent illustration of how soon genius gets at its life-work. we have his own authority for the fact that he had come to certain conclusions with regard to the explanation of electrical phenomena, which, when he was only nineteen years of age, he set forth in a letter to the abbé nollet, who was then one of the best known experimenters and writers on electrical phenomena in europe. though so young, volta had tried to simplify franklin's theory of electricity by assuming that there was an action only between a (supposed) electrical substance and matter. it is curious to see how much he anticipated what was to be the thinking for more than a century after his time and practically down to the present day. he considers that all bodies, in their normal state, contain electricity in such proportion that electrical equilibrium is established within them. electrical phenomena, then, are due to disturbances of this equilibrium. such disturbances may be produced by physical means, as by friction or by chemical means, and even atmospheric electricity may be explained in the former way. volta's first formal paper on electricity, bearing the title _de vi attractiva ignis electrici_, was published in 1769, when he was twenty-four years of age. his second paper, _novus ac simplicissimus, electricorum tentaminum apparatus_--new and very simple. apparatus for electrical tests, shows that volta was getting beyond the stage of theorizing about electricity into the experimental work, which was to form the foundation of his contributions to electrical science. it is not surprising, then, that when he was just past thirty, in 1775, he was able to announce to priestley his invention of the electrophorus. priestley is usually thought of as one of the founders of modern chemistry, but he was known to his own generation, especially at this time, as the writer of a very interesting and complete history of electricity. it is characteristic of volta's careful ways, that the reason for his letter to priestley was in order to obtain information from him as to what extent this invention, which volta knew, as far as he was concerned, to be original with himself, was novel in the domain of electrical advance.[20] with the intense interest in his work that we have noted, it is not surprising to find volta's investigations proving fruitful. his active inventive genius stood him in good stead in enabling him to demonstrate principles by working instruments. the electrophorus is but one of the instruments that show the very practical character of the man. he was especially taken with the idea of securing some method of measuring electricity. among other things, he invented the condensing electroscope, in which, instead of the ribbons of gold leaf now employed, he used straws. with this instrument he was able to demonstrate the presence of minute quantities of electricity developed under circumstances in which ordinarily the occurrence of any such phenomena would be unsuspected. these two instruments, the electroscope and the electrophorus, lifted the department of electricity out of the realm of theory into that of accurate scientific demonstration, and made the electrical departments of the physical laboratories of the time much more interesting and important than they had been before. though so early occupied with electricity, volta did not confine himself to this subject, nor even to the wider field of physics, and that he did not hesitate, in his scientific inquisitiveness, to follow clues even in chemistry, is well illustrated by his first step in the investigation of gases. his attention being called to bubbles breaking on the surface of lake maggiore while on a fishing excursion, he set about finding their source, and noted that whenever the bottom of the lake near the shore was stirred somewhat a number of bubbles arose, and that the gas thus set free was inflammable. he constructed an electrical pistol in which gases thus set free were exploded by a spark from the electrophorus. about the same time, on the principle of the electrical pistol, he invented the eudiometer, an apparatus by means of which the oxygen content of air could be determined. with regard to these inventions, arago calls attention to a special quality that is peculiar to all of volta's work. "there is not a single one of the discoveries of professor volta," says the distinguished french scientist, "which can be said to be the result of chance. every instrument with which he has enriched science existed in principle in his imagination before an artisan began to put it into a material shape." after these inventions and his previous work, it is not surprising that in 1774 volta was offered the professorship of experimental physics in the college of como. here he labored for five years, until he received a call, in 1779, to the professorship of physics at the university of pavia, where he was destined to remain in an active teaching capacity for a period of forty years. volta began his life-work as professor of physics at pavia by extending his observations on gases. he was the first to demonstrate the expansion of gases under heat, especially as regards their increased expansibility at higher temperatures. many observers had been at work on this problem before his time, but there were serious discrepancies in the results reported. volta was the first to point out the reasons for the apparent inconsistencies of previous investigators' findings; and from his observations alone some valuable data might have been obtained for the establishment of what has since become known as the "law of charles." at this time, his knowledge of english enabled him to follow english discoveries closely, and he seems to have paid particular attention to the work of cavendish and priestley. not long after cavendish's description of the method of obtaining pure hydrogen, volta made a series of observations on the relations of spongy platinum to this gas, and pointed out the spontaneous ignition that takes place when the two substances are brought together. this experiment is the basis of what has since been known as the hydrogen lamp, called, from the german observer who first made it a practical instrument, dobereiner's lamp. after seven years of teaching, volta was given the opportunity to visit various parts of europe, and took advantage of the occasion to meet most of the celebrated men of science. his linguistic faculty stood him in good stead during this sabbatical year, and his travel aided him in completing a thorough acquaintanceship with european languages as well as with scientists. his practical character led him, during his trip, to note the growth of the potato and its uses in various european countries, and he brought the plant home with him to italy in order to introduce it among the farmers. he succeeded in making his countrymen realize its value, and the introduction of the potato is one of the reasons for which italians have always looked up to him as a benefactor of his native land. how modern this makes a vegetable we are inclined to think of as having been always an important food resource of the race! about the middle of the third quarter of the eighteenth century, by one of the fortunate accidents that happen, however, only to genius, galvani, at the time professor of anatomy in bologna, had been led to make the observation that if a frog, so prepared that its hind leg is attached to the trunk only by means of the sciatic nerve, happens to be touched by a metal instrument in such a way as to put nerve and muscle in connection with each other through the metal instrument, a very curious phenomenon is observed, the muscles of the almost severed leg becoming spasmodically contracted and then relaxed whenever the contacts were made and broken. galvani noted the phenomenon first in connection with an electric machine, and looked for an explanation of it in electricity, thinking that there was an analogy between it and the discharge of the leyden jar. after several years of careful observation, he published a monograph on the subject, which at once attracted attention all over europe. volta was very much interested in galvani's work, and took up the development of it from the physical side. at first he agreed with the explanation offered by galvani, who considered that his experiment demonstrated the presence of electricity in animal bodies, and who proposed to introduce the term "animal electricity." after careful investigation, however, galvani's assertion that animal electricity existed in a form entirely independent of any external electricity, though it had been accepted by most of the distinguished men of science of the time, seemed to volta without experimental verification. for many years his most determined efforts were used to demonstrate that the muscle twitchings observed were not due to the presence of animal electricity (galvanism as it had come to be called), but to the fact that the metals touching the different portions of the moist nerve muscle preparation really set up minute currents of ordinary electricity. some of the experiments which he devised for this purpose were extremely ingenious, and show how thoroughly empirical were his methods and how modern his scientific spirit. in the course of his experiments he found that a difference in the metals of which the arc was composed, when used for the purpose of eliciting the so-called animal electricity, made a great difference in the electrical phenomena observed and in the amount of muscle twitchings obtained. in one brilliant series of experiments, moreover, he showed that, even when the metallic portions touching nerve and muscle were identical, there might still be distinct electrical phenomena, if only an artificial difference in temperature of the end of the metallic arc were produced. volta was even able to demonstrate that such minute physical differences as the filing of one end of the metallic arc used might give rise to small currents of electricity. in the midst of these experiments, he came to the realization that two portions of metal of different kinds, separated by a moist non-conducting material, might be made to produce a constant current of electricity for some time. more than this, however, he found that discs of metal of different kinds might be piled on top of one another with intervening discs of moist cloth, and so produce proportionately stronger currents as more and more of the metal plates were employed. this was the origin of the voltaic pile, as it has been called--the first battery for the production at will of regular currents of electricity of definite strength.[19] while engaged at this he succeeded in demonstrating what has come to be known as volta's basic experiment; namely, that two plates of metal of different kinds become electrically excited merely by contact. this was practically the beginning of the great advance in applied electricity which ushered in our modern electrical era. it seems a simple matter now, looking back over the century that has elapsed since then, to have taken the successive steps that volta did for the construction of his electrical pile and for the demonstration of the principle of contact electricity. groping, as he was, in the dark, however, it took him three years to make the progress that we have described in a few words. how great his discoveries appeared, even to the most distinguished of his scientific contemporaries, can best be judged from an expression of one of the greatest of french electrical scientists, arago, who declared "volta's pile the most wonderful instrument that has ever come from the hand of man, not excluding even the telescope or the steam-engine." an excellent description of just how volta made his electric pile and what he was able to accomplish with it experimentally in the laboratory, is to be found in the numbers for january and february, 1900, of the stimmen aus maria-laach--a literary and scientific periodical published by the german jesuits. this article on alessandro volta, by father kneller, s. j., was written shortly after the celebration of the hundredth anniversary of volta's invention of the electric pile, when there had just been a fresh sorting over of volta's documents, and contains a very full set of references to the biographical material for volta's life. father kneller says: "before this, no one thought for a moment of any possibility of the practical application of electricity. but all at once the whole situation changed. after eight years of observation and experiment, volta accomplished one day, at the beginning of 1800, in his laboratory at como, the construction of an instrument which was to revolutionize the study and the practical applications of electricity. he made a pile composed of a large number of equal-sized copper and zinc discs. on each copper disc he placed one of zinc, and then on this a moistened piece of cloth, and continued the series of alternate discs and cloths in this order until he had a rather high column. this was an apparatus as simple as possible and from which no one but volta could possibly have promised any results. the inventor, however, knew what he was about. "as soon as he had connected the upper and lower metal plates by means of a wire, there began to flow from the zinc to the copper a secret something, which by the application of the ends of the wire to muscles caused them to twitch; which appeared before the eye as light; applied to the tongue, gave a sensation of taste; caused a thin wire to glow and even to burn between carbon points; produced a blinding light; decomposed water into its constituents; dissolved hitherto unknown metals out of salts and earth; made iron magnetic; directed the magnetic needle out of its path; inclosed wire coils caused new electric currents to be set up; to say nothing of the awful spectacle which occurred when, under the influence of the electric current, the bodies of executed criminals again gave movements of the limbs, their thoraxes really heaved and sank as if they really breathed, and even a dead grasshopper was caused to spring and apparently to sing again. "only now, after the discovery of this new kind of electricity--which did not work merely by jerks, but flowed in a constant stream from pole to pole--only now was this mighty natural agent won to the service of man. volta is, therefore, above all others, the one who broke ground not only for an immense amount of new knowledge in physics, chemistry and physiology, but who also made possible rapid progress in practical electricity, in telegraphy, in electric motors and power machines, in electroplating and the marvelous results in electro-galvanism which constitute our most wonderful mechanical effects at the present time." soon after volta's discovery of the electric pile, or voltaic pile, as it was called in his honor, his reputation spread throughout europe. at the beginning of 1800, he sent a detailed description of the voltaic pile to the royal society of london. during the year 1801 the scientific journals all over europe were filled with discussions of his discovery. the french academy of sciences invited him to paris in order to demonstrate his discoveries to the members of that body. volta was now looking forward to some peaceful years of study, and, so far as he was personally concerned, would surely have refused the invitation. circumstances were such, however, that it became a civic duty for him to proceed to paris. at this time napoleon was first consul, and the italian cities wished to propitiate his favor as far as possible. it was considered a wise thing by the city to send a special delegation to paris, and, as they knew napoleon was deeply interested in scientific discoveries that promised practical results, the name of volta was suggested as one of the official delegates. as an associate, professor brugnatelli, who had made some important investigations in chemistry, and who was later to be an extender of the practical application of volta's discoveries by the invention of the first method of electroplating, was the other member of the delegation. it is a curious reflection on the facilities for travel at the time, that it took twenty-six days for the delegates to reach paris from pavia. shortly after their arrival in paris, the travelers were formally introduced to the members of the french institute, and a number of sessions of the academy were held, at which volta's discoveries were discussed. volta read a communication on the identity of electricity and galvanism. napoleon, as first consul, was present at these sessions in the robe of an academician, and was not only an interested listener, but occasionally, by pertinent questions, drew out significant details of former experiments and volta's own theories with regard to the nature of the phenomena observed. at the end of the first meeting, at which volta took a prominent part, napoleon spent several hours with him talking about the prospects of electricity. in his letters to his brothers and to his wife at this time, volta expressed his pleasure at finding how much attention his discoveries were attracting all over europe. as he said himself, germany, france and england were full of them, and all the distinguished scientists were eager to do him honor. in france, he was chosen one of the eight foreign members of the institute, and was made knight commander of the legion of honor and of the order of the iron crown. napoleon selected him as one of the first members of the italian academy, which he was then in course of establishing, and conferred on him the honor of senator and count of the kingdom of italy. the french academy, after having heard volta's own description of his experiments and discoveries, contrary to its usual custom, voted to him by acclamation its gold medal. more important still, bonaparte made him a present of 6000 lire, and conferred upon him an annual income of 3000 lire from the public purse. it is an index of volta's feeling as a faithful son of the church, that as this income was allotted to him from the revenues of the bishopric of adria, he would consent to receive it only after napoleon's decree had been confirmed by the pope. volta had been for nearly twenty years in the university of pavia before he finally found for himself a wife. he was then past forty-nine years of age. his wife was the youngest daughter of count ludovico peregrini. she had six sisters, one of whom became a nun, and all the others were married before volta sought the hand of the youngest. writing to a friend, he says, "that her sisters had distinguished themselves so much by piety, prudence, good sense and practical economy in their households as well as by the most admirable qualities of heart and mind, that he considered himself very fortunate in obtaining a branch from the family tree; and he took her in preference to others that had been offered to him, even though they were possessed of greater physical beauty, more exalted piety and a larger dowry." the marriage seems to have been a very happy one, notwithstanding the considerable disparity of ages and the very matter-of-fact spirit with which it was entered into by one of the parties at least. the charming intimacy of his domestic life may be judged from some of his letters to his wife when he was traveling. she was always his confidante with regard to new things in science that he saw, and especially as regards the kindly reception which he met with from scientists and the readiness with which they accepted his views. at first, so many of his ideas were new, that it is not surprising that they were looked at somewhat askance by contemporary scientists. when, on his journeys through france, he noticed the trend of opinion setting in favor of his views in electricity, he took pains to tell his wife, and apparently found his greatest pleasure in having her share the joy of his triumph. one of the severest blows that he suffered was the untimely death of his eldest son, flaminio, in 1814. "this loss," he wrote to one of his nephews not long after, "strikes me so much to heart that i do not think i shall ever have another happy day." the relations between himself and his children were all of the kindliest nature; and the character of the man comes out perhaps even more clearly in the traditions that are still extant with regard to the devotion of his servants to him, and especially his body-servant, polonio. volta was always a simple and unpretentious person, notwithstanding the fact that scientific and even political honors had been heaped upon him toward the end of his life. it was rather difficult, for instance, to get him to change his old clothes for new ones. this feat was usually accomplished by polonio, who, when he thought the time had arrived for his master to put on the newer clothes, would engage him in some scientific explanation of a morning; then handing him the new garments, volta would put them on, and would be wearing them for some time before he noticed it. the old servant was then generally able to persuade him that it was time to make the change. toward the end of his career, volta led a retired life in a country house not far from his native city of como. foreigners often came to see or even have the privilege of a few words with the distinguished scientist who was regarded as the patriarch of electrical science. to volta, the being on exhibition was always an unpleasant function. he did not care to be lionized, and frequently refused to allow himself even to be seen unless his visitors had a scientific motive. on such occasions, the only chance of the visitors was to secure the good will of polonio. he would engage his unsuspecting master in a discussion of clouds or wind, or some appearance in the heavens, or something in the leaves of the neighboring trees, and would then bring him to the portico, that he might see the supposed phenomenon. this would give occasion for the visitors to get at least a glimpse of the scientist, who usually failed to suspect the real purpose for which he had been tempted out of doors. while thus living in the country, volta's piety became a sort of proverb among the country people. every morning at an early hour, in company with his servant, he could be seen with bowed head making his way to the church. here he heard mass, and usually the office of the day, in which all the canons of the cathedral took part. he had a special place on the epistle side of the altar, not far from the organ. his favorite method of prayer was the rosary. he was not infrequently held up to the people by the parish priest as a model of devotion. whenever he was in the country, every evening saw him taking his walk towards the church. on these occasions, he was usually accompanied by members of his family, and they entered the church for an evening visit to the blessed sacrament. his behavior toward those who lived in the vicinity of his country place endeared him to all the peasantry. he was not only liberal in giving alms, but made it a point to visit frequently the houses of the poor and help them as much as possible by counsel and suggestion. his scientific knowledge was at command for their benefit, and he was often able to tell them how to avoid many dangers. he gave them definite ideas with regard to the importance of cleanliness and the necessity of cooking their food very carefully so as to prevent diseases occasioned by badly cooked material. he also taught them to distinguish between the wholesome and the spurred rye, from which their polenta was prepared, in order to escape the dreaded pellagra, the disease so common in italy, which comes from the use of diseased grain. he endeared himself so much to the people of the countryside that they invented a special name for him, which proclaimed the tenderness of their liking for the man. they knew how much he was honored for his wonderful discoveries in electricity, and many of them had even seen some of the (to them at least) inexplicable phenomena that he could produce at will by means of various electrical contrivances. at first they called him a "magician"; but as this word has, particularly for the italian peasantry, a suspicion of evil in it, they added the adjective "beneficent," and he was generally known as _il mago benefico_. his interest in these gentle, kindly people may be appreciated from the fact that he knew practically all of his country neighbors by name, and, as a rule, he was familiar also with the conditions of their families and their household affairs. not infrequently he would stop and talk to them about such things, and this favor was always considered as a precious mark of his neighborly courtesy by the peasantry. such was the simplicity of the man whose name is undoubtedly one of the greatest in the history of science. the great beginnings of the chapter on applied electricity are all his. there was nothing he touched in his work that he did not illuminate. his was typically the mind of the genius, ever reaching out beyond the boundaries of the known--an abundant source of leading and light for others. far from being a doubter in matters religious, his scientific greatness seemed only to make him readier to submit to what are sometimes spoken of as the shackles of faith, though to him belief appealed as a completion of knowledge of things beyond the domain of sense or the ordinary powers of intellectual acquisition. like pasteur, a century later, the more he knew, the more ready was he to believe and the more satisfying he found his faith. this is a very different picture of the great scientific mind from that ordinarily presented as characteristic of scientific thinkers. but volta is not an exception; rather does he represent the rule, so far as the very great scientists are concerned; for it is only the second-rate minds, those destined to follow but not to lead, in science, who have so constantly proclaimed the opposition of science to faith. volta's well-known confession of faith declares his state of mind with regard to religion better than any words of a biographer, and it is a striking commentary on the impression that has in some inexplicable way gained wide acceptance, that a man cannot be a great scientist and a firm believer in religion. a distinguished professor of psychology at one of the large american universities said not long since, that a scientist must keep his science and religion apart, or there will be serious consequences for his religion. volta's opinion in this matter is worth remembering. having heard it said that, though he continued to practice his religion, this was more because he did not want to offend friends, that he did not care to scandalize his neighbors, and did not want the poor folk around him to be led by his example into giving up what he knew to be their most fruitful source of consolation in the trials of life, while in the full exercise of his intellectual faculties, volta deliberately wrote out his confession of faith so that all the world of his own and the after time might know it. "if some of my faults and negligences may have by chance given occasion to some one to suspect me of infidelity, i am ready, as some reparation for this and for any other good purpose, to declare to such a one and to every other person and on every occasion and under all circumstances that i have always held, and hold now, the holy catholic religion as the only true and infallible one, thanking without end the good god for having gifted me with such a faith, in which i firmly propose to live and die, in the lively hope of attaining eternal life. i recognize my faith as a gift of god, a supernatural faith. i have not, on this account, however, neglected to use all human means that could confirm me more and more in it and that might drive away any doubt which could arise to tempt me in matters of faith. i have studied my faith with attention as to its foundations, reading for this purpose books of apologetics as well as those written with a contrary purpose, and trying to appreciate the arguments pro and contra. i have tried to realize from what sources spring the strongest arguments which render faith most credible to natural reason and such as cannot fail to make every well-balanced mind which has not been perverted by vice or passion embrace it and love it. may this protest of mine, which i have deliberately drawn up and which i leave to posterity, subscribed with my own hand and which shows to all and everyone that i do not blush at the gospel--may it, as i have said, produce some good fruit.--signed at milan, jan. 6th, 1815, alessandro volta." when volta wrote this, he was just approaching his sixtieth year and was in the full maturity of his powers. he lived for twelve years after this, looked up to as one of the great thinkers of europe and as one of the most important men of italy of this time. far from being in his dotage, then, he was at the moment surely, if ever, in the best position to know his own mind with regard to his faith and his relations to the creator. there is a famous picture of volta, by magaud, in marseilles. it chronicles the fact that volta had become a count, a senator and a member of the french institute, so appointed by napoleon, and that he is in some sense therefore a frenchman. magaud has painted him standing, with his electric apparatus on one side and the scriptures on the other. near him is placed his friend sylvio pellico, whose little book, "my ten years' imprisonment," has endeared him to thousands of readers all over the world. pellico had doubted the presence of providence in the world and the existence of a hereafter. in the midst of his doubts, he turned to volta. "in thy old age, o volta!" said pellico, "the hand of providence placed in thy pathway a young man gone astray. oh! thou, said i to the ancient seer, who hast plunged deeper than others into the secrets of the creator, teach me the road that will lead me to the light." and the old man made answer: "i too have doubted, but i have sought. the great scandal of my youth was to behold the teachers of those days lay hold of science to combat religion. for me to-day i see only god everywhere." footnotes: [19] wilcke, a swedish investigator of electric phenomena, constructed in 1762 two machines involving the principle of the electrophorus.--(brother potamian.) [20] brother potamian has called my attention to the fact that volta's work on the origin of electricity from two different metals when, though connected, they were yet separated by some moist medium, was curiously anticipated by an observation described by sulzer, in a book called nouvelle théorie des plaisirs, 1767. in this he states that, if a silver and a lead coin, placed one above and the other under the tongue, be brought in contact a sour taste develops, which he considers to be due to vibrations set up by the contact of the two metals. he seems also to have had a dash of light before the eyes, so that all the elements necessary for the discovery of the voltaic pile were in his hands, and indeed he was making what has since become one of the classical experiments, by which certain physiological effects of the electric current are demonstrated. chapter vi. coulomb. great discoverers in science must usually be satisfied with having their names attached to some one phase of scientific development, be it an instrument, a law, a unit of measurement, a process of investigation or some phenomenon which they first observed. the originality of coulomb's genius will be better appreciated, since besides having a unit of electricity named after him, there is also a law in electro-magnetics and a torsion-balance that will always be associated with his name. few men have been more ingenious in their ability to put complex ideas into practical shape and give them simple mechanical expression by instrumental methods. while his name is to be forever associated with the science of electrostatics, he was profoundly interested in other departments of physics, and for him to be interested always meant that he would illuminate previous knowledge by practical hints and suggestions and carry the conclusions of his predecessors a little farther into science than they had ever gone before. his was typically an experimental genius, and he must be considered one of the men of whom not more than half a dozen are born in a century, who are, in kipling's strong term, "masterless"; who do not need to be taught, but who find for themselves a path into the domain of the unknown. coulomb investigated the fundamental law in electricity and magnetism, that attractions and repulsions are inversely as the square of the distances, and showed that it held accurately for point-charges and point-poles. he demonstrated that these interesting phenomena were not chance manifestations of irregular forces, but that they represented a definite mode of action of force, thus setting this department of knowledge on a scientific basis. while in practical significance ohm's law, discovered nearly a half century later, is of much more import, coulomb's discoveries are fundamental in character and, coming in the very beginnings of modern electrical science, did much to guide the infant science in the ways it should follow. the establishing of this law contributed very largely to the rapid development of the twin sciences of electricity and magnetism. it is experimental observation that means most for a rising science; and, in fact, that coulomb should have been the pioneer in it stamps him as possessed not only of great originality, but also of the power of independent thinking, which is perhaps the most precious quality for the man of science. the french investigator succeeded in demonstrating his law by two distinct methods which are still used for illustration purposes in our physical laboratories. in the first, he employed the torsion-balance devised by michell, and re-invented by himself, an instrument of exact measurement which, in his hands, yielded as invaluable results as it did in those of faraday half a century later. the instrument depends on the principle first established by coulomb himself, that when a wire is twisted, the angle of torsion is directly proportional to the force of torsion. in the application of this principle, a fine wire is suspended in a glass case, on the sides of which there is a graduated scale to measure the degree of repulsion between two like poles of a magnet or between similarly electrified bodies. in his second research on the law of the inverse square, coulomb used what is known as the method of oscillations. a magnetic needle swinging under the influence of the earth's magnetism is known to act like a pendulum, and as such obeys the laws of pendular motion. in applying this method, coulomb caused the magnetic needle to oscillate, first, under the influence of the earth's magnetism alone and then under the combined influence of the earth and the magnet placed at varying distances from the needle. the most interesting feature of this work is the manner in which coulomb succeeded in eliminating the important factor of the earth's magnetism from the problem. it is so simple and ingenious that it commands the admiration of investigators, who employ it in their laboratory work even to the present day. it is clear, then, that the international committee which selected the term coulomb for the electromagnetic unit of electrical quantity gave honor where it was eminently due. coulomb stands out as a man of precision and accuracy, whose methods of exact measurement revolutionized the rising science, and whose researches and discoveries in physics and mechanics furnish ample justification for giving him a place among the makers of electricity. he was one of the gifted men whose original works ushered in so gloriously the nineteenth century, and who laid the deep and firm foundations on which the last three generations have built up the magnificent temple of electrical science. charles augustin de coulomb was born at angoulême, june 14th, 1736. his ancestors for several generations had been magistrates, and were looked upon as representatives of the country nobility. he made his university studies in paris, and while still young, entered the army. from the very beginning, however, his genius for mathematics was recognized, and he was employed in the capacity of military engineer. to americans, it will be interesting to know that his first engineering project was undertaken at martinique, where he constructed fort bourbon. his sterling character and remarkable ability secured him rapid advancement in the service. in spite of the fact that the climate did not agree with him, he remained for three years on the island, because he would not employ the political influence that might have secured his recall, since he thought it his duty to serve his country in an important colonial post. nearly all his comrades perished by fever. it is the irony of fate that after his return to france a change in the ministry deprived him of the just recompense of his devotion to country, and he did not receive the special extraordinary promotion which he had earned in this special detail. during a short stay that he made at paris after his return, he sought the society of men of science as far as possible, and succeeded in getting in touch with all that was most promising in scientific progress at the time. he was already known rather favorably by many of the scientific men of the capital because of the paper on the statics of vaults, a monograph on static problems in architecture, which he presented to the academy of sciences in 1779. his next military assignment was to rochefort. here he composed his monograph on "the theory of simple machines," which carried off the double prize that had been offered by the academy of sciences for the solution of problems connected with this important question. this attracted the attention not only of the scientific world, but also of his military superiors. as a result, he was sent successively to cherburg and to the isle of aix, to direct engineering works, and accomplished the tasks involved with success. two years later, when he was about forty-five years of age, he was elected member of the academy of sciences by a unanimous vote. he was a man of great personal magnetism, and all those who came in contact with him learned to like him for his straightforward character and for the absolute righteousness of his life. few men have made firmer friends than coulomb, as few have ever shown more unselfish devotion to duty and to conscience than he, though under circumstances that were neither spectacular nor theatrical. it was harder to face the deadly climate of martinique than it would have been to take one's place at the head of a forlorn hope in an outburst of enthusiastic courage; and coulomb was to have other trials of quite as deterrent a nature, and was to meet them with the same imperturbed sense of duty. graft is sometimes supposed to be temptation peculiar only to our own times, but the opportunities for it have always been present in such work as coulomb had to oversee, and the army engineer of all ages has had to stand or fall before it. it was proposed, about this time, to build a system of government canals in brittany. such a canal-system would, as is easy to understand, cost an enormous sum of money and give magnificent opportunities for speculation of various kinds. no small objection had been made to the project, on the score that it would not confer all the benefits on the region that were claimed for it, and coulomb was commissioned by the minister of marine to determine the question of the advisability of constructing the canals, and of the probable effect which they would have on the commerce of the country. after careful investigation, he came to the conclusion that the advantages which were expected to accrue from the project would not compensate for the enormous expense that would be entailed. this decision aroused the angry protest of a strong political faction, who expected to reap wealth and personal advantages of many kinds from the scheme, and who protested bitterly against coulomb's report. he was able to support his conclusions in the matter, however, with such unanswerable mathematical and engineering arguments, that his opinion prevailed and the project was given up. as a consequence, instead of the opportunity to serve a political party with every avenue to preferment and, above all, to wealth open for him, he found himself, for the time being, deprived even of the opportunity to devote himself further to his favorite occupations in military engineering. the excuse given for this interruption in his career, for there has always been an excuse for such action, was that proper representations for permission to make the report had not been made to the minister of marine; and instead of commendation, coulomb received what was practically a reprimand. wounded by this injustice, which was manifestly due to the fact that his honest report had displeased those who expected to reap personal benefit from the canal project, and disgusted with a service in which such things were possible, coulomb sent in his resignation. the minister of marine realized that the acceptance of the proffered resignation would surely expose the ministry at least to suspicion as to the reasons why coulomb's report was not accepted with good grace. permission to retire from the service was refused, as this would insure his silence. he was ordered back to brittany to continue his work there, possibly with the idea that this unfavorable experience would be sufficient of itself to make him understand what was expected of him and render him a little more complacent to the wishes of those in authority. if any such ideas were entertained, they were destined to grievous disappointment. coulomb was not of those who, seeing duty plainly, refuse to follow it because some personal advantage or disadvantage intervenes. selfish reasons did not appeal to his character nor obscure the issues. he went back to brittany, ready to express his firm opinion in the matter and with integrity of soul untouched. the consequence was that the provincial authorities, recognizing their true interests, acknowledged the error they had come near falling into, and now wished to reward the engineer handsomely for his unswerving devotion to duty. coulomb as promptly refused a reward for doing his duty as he had ignored even the appearance of a bribe to avoid it. only after considerable pressure was he prevailed upon to accept the best timepiece they could procure, on which the arms of the province were engraved. it had what was quite rare in those days, a second's hand, and he constantly made use of this in all his experimental work thereafter. a french biographer says that, never was a souvenir better chosen nor more suitably employed. coulomb's merits were recognized by the government authorities not long after, and he was made superintendent of the fountains of france. a few years later, he was promoted to the position of curator of plans and relief maps of the military staff of france, and was chosen as one of the commission of the french academy of sciences who went to england in order to study hospital conditions there. at this time, he was at the acme of his career. his grade was that of lieutenant colonel of engineers, a position much higher in the foreign armies at that time than would be the post with the corresponding title in our army. he had been made a chevalier of st. louis, and it looked as though a brilliant future were opening out before him. each year, for a decade, had seen the publication of one or more memoirs on important subjects, nearly every one of which contained some original material of the highest value, destined not only to add to coulomb's reputation, but to furnish basic information for the further development of science. in 1789, however, the revolution broke out, and there was an end to all coulomb's opportunities for work. he was utterly out of sympathy with the movement, the worst consequences of which he foresaw from the beginning, and he at once handed in his resignation of the various positions that he occupied under the government. he went into almost absolute retirement, devoting himself to the education of his children. during this time, however, he did not cease to cultivate science, inasmuch as he gave the finishing touch to various papers which he had previously outlined. unfortunately, however, his departure from paris made it impossible for him to continue his investigations in electricity for want of apparatus, and so there is a ten years' interruption in his life of scientific activity and of original work. besides, it cannot be surprising that he should not have had the heart to go on with his work under the awful social conditions that prevailed. many of his friends lost their lives during the stormy period of the revolution; most of the others were banished or were in hiding. his beloved country had gone into an unfortunate eclipse, as he could not help but consider it; most of the nations of the earth were indeed in league against her, and the end was not yet in sight. it would be too much to expect of human nature that it should devote itself to abstruse problems in science at moments of such disturbance as this, and so some of the possibilities of coulomb's original genius were lost to science during that calamitous period. like many of the great discoveries of science, coulomb's most important work was done in the course of other investigations, and came by what might be called a happy accident. he had been investigating the qualities of wire of various kinds, especially with regard to their elasticity, so as to be able to determine the limits of their use in various engineering projects. when he discovered that the elasticity of torsion of a wire was a constant property, he proceeded to utilize it in the calculation of such delicate phenomena as those of electric and magnetic forces. the first instrument for this purpose that he constructed consisted simply of a long magnetized needle suspended horizontally by a fine wire. supposing this needle to be at rest, if one moves it away from the magnetic meridian by a certain number of degrees, the twisted wire will have a definite tendency to untwist and to bring back the needle to its original position by a series of oscillations whose frequency can be readily observed. for such observations, it is possible to obtain the value of the force acting on the needle and causing it to move to and fro at a given rate. this was the underlying idea which received very simple expression in the ingenious instrument which coulomb devised and called a torsion-balance. with it, he set about determining the law which governs the mutual action of magnets and of electrified bodies with regard to distance, and found it to be the same as that which newton found to hold for bodies distributed throughout the universe, that is, that attraction and repulsion vary inversely as the square of the distance. he also proved, with the aid of his torsion-balance, that the forces of attraction and repulsion vary as the product of the strength of the poles in one case and as the product of the electric charges in the other. these were the important discoveries of coulomb's life; they served to earn for him the right to have his name given to the unit of electrical quantity, the _coulomb_. coulomb did not stop here, however, but proceeded to apply his laws to various other phenomena. he proved that electricity distributes itself entirely over the surface of a body without penetrating the mass of the conductor, and he showed by calculation that this result was a necessary consequence of the law of repulsion. a list of the papers which he published on electricity and magnetism, the titles of which, with french accuracy of expression, furnish an excellent idea of their contents, shows the thoroughly progressive and scientific spirit of the man, and how well he proceeded from the known to the less known, always widening the bounds of knowledge. suffice it to say here that the observations of coulomb were not only original, but that they concerned some of the most difficult questions in electricity, and that he was clearing the ground for others in such a way as to make future work and quantitative measurements in electricity reliable and comparatively easy. it is because of this pioneer work that coulomb deserves so much praise. it was not long before coulomb's observations were confirmed by others, and then the beginnings of the modern development of electricity became manifest, owing not a little to the researches and inventions, the genius and ingenuity of this french military engineer. some phases of electrical development attributed to others really belong to coulomb. a typical example of this detraction from his merit is the attribution to biot of the solution of the problem of the complete discharge of an electrified sphere by means of two hollow hemispheres. this experiment is fully described by coulomb, and he even emphasizes the fact that the external discharging bodies need not necessarily be of the same shape as the charged sphere. some of what coulomb accepted as principles in electricity have proved in the course of time, not to be the realities that he thought them; but the progress that has led to such contradictions of his opinions has been mainly rendered possible by his own discoveries. the fable of the eagle stricken by the arrow containing some of its own feathers, is so old that one might think that, when the progress of a science due to a scientist brings men beyond the position he occupied, they would not blame him for backwardness. this is, however, one of the curious critical methods in the history of science that has most frequently to be deprecated by the historian who is tracing origins and developments. coulomb's papers, with the exception of his memoir on "problems in statics applied to architecture," his "researches on the methods of executing works under water without the necessity of pumping," his "theory of simple machines," and his researches "on windmills," which form separate monographs, were all published together in a single volume by the french physical society in 1884.[22] this volume contains, besides his investigations on the best way of making magnetic needles, his theoretic and experimental investigations on the force of torsion and on the elasticity of metallic threads, which were undertaken in order to enable him to make his electric torsion-balance something more than mere guess-work. all the other papers are concerned directly with electricity or magnetism, and show how actively, nearly a hundred and twenty-five years ago, a great mind was engaged with problems in electricity which we are apt to consider as belonging more properly to our own time. the list of papers published in these memoirs, arranged in chronological order, gives a good idea of the development of electrical science in coulomb's own mind. there is a logical as well as a chronological order to be observed in them. in 1785, when he was just approaching his fiftieth year, there were three subjects with regard to which coulomb's experimental observations enabled him to set down some definite principles. the first of these was the construction and use of an electric balance, founded on the property which wires have of exhibiting a torque proportional to the angle of torsion. the second was the determination of the laws, according to which the magnetic and electric "fluids," as coulomb and investigators in electricity called them at that time, act both as regards repulsion and attraction. the third was the determination of the quantity of electricity which an insulated body loses in a given time from contact with air more or less moist. in 1786, he published a paper in which he demonstrated what he considered the principal properties of the electric fluid. these are, that this fluid does not spread itself on a substance by any chemical affinity or any elective attraction, but that it distributes itself over various bodies that are placed in contact, entirely in accordance with their shape; and also that in electrical conductors, the charge is limited to the surface of the conductor and does not penetrate to any appreciable depth. in 1787, his only paper was on the manner in which the electrical fluid divides itself between two conducting bodies placed in contact, and on the distribution of this fluid over the different parts of the surface of these bodies. he continued his investigations into this subject in 1788, and also succeeded in determining the density of the electricity at different points on the surface of conducting bodies. in 1789, he began to work more particularly on magnetism. his first paper on the subject was published that year. unfortunately, as we have said, the revolution interrupted his scientific investigations at this point, and for the next eleven years we have nothing from his pen. as a nobleman, he was compelled to leave paris, and this not only put him out of touch with scientific work generally, but deprived him of the opportunities of using such apparatus as was necessary to carry on his experiments. that he acted prudently in leaving paris, the careers of other scientists amply prove. lavoisier continued to carry on his chemical investigations during the stormy times of the revolution, but his stay in the capital eventually cost him his life. abbé haüy, the father of crystallography,[21] who, because of his contributions to the science of pyro-electricity, is of special interest to us, continued to work at his crystals throughout even the reign of terror. when thrown into prison, he asked and obtained permission to have his crystals with him. his friends saved him from lavoisier's fate, but not without an effort, as his life was seriously endangered. it is easy to understand, however, that a member of the nobility like coulomb, whose life had been spent in military affairs, should not be able to devote himself seriously to scientific matters while his country was in such a turmoil. in 1801, he resumed his investigations once more, but now they are concerned more particularly with magnetism. the first was a theoretical and practical determination of the forces which hold different magnetic needles, magnetized to saturation, in the magnetic meridian. this was followed, in the same year, by a paper which, like its predecessor, was published among the memoirs of the institute of france, which had replaced the royal academy of sciences, to which body many of coulomb's papers of the former time had been presented, and in whose publications they originally appeared. this second paper detailed his experiments on the determination of the force of cohesion of fluids and the law of resistance in them, when the movements were very slow. when the french institute was organized under napoleon in 1801, coulomb was named among its first members. it is believed that he was even chosen to occupy a place in the first government of the state, but a man more interested in politics obtained the place, a fortunate circumstance for science. coulomb was named, however, one of the inspectors of public instruction, then the highest place in the education department, and he did much to restore to france the educational system that had been destroyed during the revolution. in this rather trying work he was noted for the kindliness yet firmness of his character, while his absolute fairness and sense of justice were recognized on all sides. unfortunately coulomb was not long spared to continue his work. he took up his experimental and mathematical investigations, on his return to the capital, with great enthusiasm, but his health had been undermined and his work had been rudely interrupted. after 1801, no further paper by him appears to have been published until 1806. this gave the result of different methods employed in order to produce in blades and bars of steel the greatest degree of magnetism. for some time preceding this, in spite of increasing ill-health, he had continued his experiments on the influence of temperature on the magnetism of steel. his work on this subject was not destined to be completed, for not long after passing his seventieth year, in june of this year, his health gave way completely, and he died august 23d, 1806. his final observations were gathered by biot, carefully preserved, and assigned a place in the volume of coulomb's memoirs, issued by the french physical society. personally, coulomb was noted for great seriousness of character, though with this was mingled a gentleness of disposition that made for him some cordial friendships among his scientific contemporaries. he had but few friends, but those who were admitted to his intimacy made up by the depth of their affection for the smallness of their number. even those who had occasion to meet him but once or twice, carried away from their meeting an affectionate remembrance of his kindliness and courtesy and readiness to help wherever he could be of service. he was extremely happy in his family relations, and this proved to be a great source of consolation to him during the years when the progress of the french revolution took him away from science and made him almost despair of his country. it is not surprising that biot, the great french physicist, in writing of coulomb in his mélanges scientifiques et littéraires, vol. iii. (paris, 1858), should have held coulomb up as a model of the simple, earnest, helpful life and as a man of the most exemplary character. he says: "coulomb lived among the men of his time in patience and charity. he was distinguished among them mainly by his separation from their passions and their errors, and he always maintained himself calm, firm and dignified _in se totus teres atque rotundus_, as horace says, a complete, perfect and well-rounded character." few men have deserved so noble a eulogy as this, written nearly fifty years after his death, by one who had known coulomb himself and his contemporaries well; it has none of the exaggeration of a funeral panegyric, and is evidently founded on details of knowledge with regard to the great electrician which had become a tradition among french scientists, and which biot has forever crystallized into the history of science by his emphatic expression. one could scarcely wish for a better epitaph than biot's summing up of coulomb's personal character: "all those who knew coulomb know how the gravity of his character was tempered by the sweetness of his disposition, and those who had the happiness to meet him at their entrance into a scientific career have kept the most tender remembrance of his gentle good-heartedness." [illustration: hans christian oersted] footnotes: [21] collection de memoires relatifs à la physique publiés par la société française de physique. tome i., mémoires de coulomb. paris. gauthier-villars, imprimeur-libraire du bureau des longitudes, de l'école polytechnique, quai des augustins, 55, 1884. [22] catholic churchmen in science, the dolphin press, philadelphia, 1906. chapter vii. hans christian oersted. whatever may be thought of the value of controversy in other departments of knowledge, it has certainly proved useful in the progress of experimental science. witness the animated and prolonged discussion which took place between volta and galvani, and which led to enduring results for the welfare of mankind. wishing to prove the correctness of his theory of electrification by contact against galvani's animal electricity, volta devoted himself unremittingly to experimentation until, in the century year 1800, his brilliant work culminated in the invention of the "pile" or electric battery which bears his name. a suspicion had been growing for many years in the minds of physicists, that there must be some degree of relationship, probably an intimate one, between magnetism and electricity, between magnetic and electric forces. in the year 1785, van swinden, a celebrated dutch physicist, published a work on electricity in which he described and commented upon a number of analogies which he had observed between the two orders of phenomena; but, voluminous as was the work, it threw no light on the nature of the suspected relationship. it was well known, in the case of houses and ships struck by lightning, that knives, forks and other articles made of steel were often found to be permanently magnetized. following up this pregnant observation, experimenters often sought to impart magnetic properties to steel needles by leyden-jar discharges, but with indifferent success. sometimes there would be a trace of magnetism left and sometimes none. in no case was it possible to say beforehand which end of the knitting-needle would have north polarity and which south. though we are better equipped to-day for research work than were our predecessors in the electrical field fifty years ago, we are still unable to predict the polarity that will result in a bar of iron from a given condenser discharge. the uncertainty arises from the fact disclosed by joseph henry in 1842 and well known to-day that, under ordinary circumstances, all such discharges consist of a rush of electricity to and fro, that is, they give rise to an oscillatory current of exceedingly short duration. were it otherwise, that is, were the discharge unidirectional, the needle would always be magnetized to a degree of intensity proportional to the energy released; and it would be possible in every case to foretell with certainty the resulting polarity which the needle would acquire. with the advent of the voltaic battery, a generator which supplies a steady flow of current in one direction, the interesting problem of relationship between electric and magnetic forces was again attacked; and this time with considerable success. probably the earliest investigator afield was romagnosi, an italian physician residing in trent (tyrol), who, in the year 1802, published in the "gazetta" of his town an account of an experiment which he had made, and which showed that he was working on promising lines. what he did was this: having connected one end of a silver chain to a voltaic pile, and having carried the chain through a glass tube for the purpose of insulation, he presented the free end, terminating in a knob, to a compass-needle, also insulated. at first, the needle was attracted; and, after contact, repelled. whatever romagnosi thought of his experiment and its theoretical bearing, the attraction and subsequent repulsion of the compass-needle which he said he observed were electrostatic and not electromagnetic effects. the italian physician was indeed on the verge of a great discovery; but he halted in his course and lost his opportunity. mojon, professor of chemistry in genoa, was a little more fortunate, though he, too, failed to improve his opportunities. in 1804, he sought to magnetize steel needles by placing them for a period of twenty days in circuit with a battery of one hundred elements of the crown-of-cups type, and had the satisfaction of finding them permanently magnetized when withdrawn from the circuit. unlike the electrostatic effect of his fellow-countryman romagnosi, this was unquestionably an electromagnetic effect, the first link in the long chain connecting electricity with magnetism. that this result attracted wide attention at the time, as it well deserved, is evident from the notice given by izarn in his "manuel du galvanisme," and by aldini in his "essai théorique et expérimental sur le galvanisme," both of which were published in paris in the same year, 1804. though the manuals of izarn and aldini served to give a fresh impetus to the quest of the relationship between electricity and magnetism, it was not, however, until the year 1820 that the cardinal discovery was made by one philosopher and the intimate relationship revealed by another. then all europe rang with the names of oersted, the fortunate discoverer of the "magnetic effect" of the electric current, and ampère, whose masterly analysis disclosed the nature of the long-sought-for connection. in the delight of the hour, men called oersted the columbus, and ampère the newton, of electricity. though a philosopher of a high order and lecturer of interest and brilliancy, oersted was, nevertheless, a poor experimentalist. he was fine in the abstract, awkward in the concrete. often did he call for the assistance of a student to perform an experiment for the class under his direction. hansteen, who is celebrated for his very fine work in terrestrial magnetism, often had this privilege, for he was clear of mind and deft of hand. writing to faraday, he said: "oersted was a man of genious, but very unsuccessful as a demonstrator, for he could not manipulate instruments." in seeking for some evidence of a physical interaction between electricity and magnetism, oersted on one occasion, placed a wire conveying a current vertically across a compass-needle; and, on obtaining no result, seemed greatly disappointed. he evidently expected the needle to respond in some way to the energy of the current; and so it would have responded had he placed the wire in any other position than the particular one which he selected. the danish philosopher now hesitates; and for lack of coolness, patience and resourcefulness, runs the risk of losing the crowning glory of his life. he is disappointed at his failure; and for the nonce, contents himself with brooding over it. [illustration: fig. 22 the magnetic effect of an electric current. oersted, 1820] on another occasion, having a stronger battery at his disposal, he determined to try the experiment again, in the hope that the greater energy at his command would provoke the magnet to respond. this time, he stretched the wire over and parallel to the compass needle, when, to his intense delight, the magnet turned aside as soon as the circuit was closed. the result was pronounced and instantaneous. the professor, an enthusiast by nature, waxed warm over his good fortune, and well might he do so, as the discovery which he had just made was destined to revolutionize existing modes of transmitting intelligence to distant parts and bring remotest countries into direct, and immediate relation with one another. that oersted fell into ecstasy over his success was but natural, though it is not stated that he exhibited his enthusiasm by the performance of any unusual feat. when lavoisier made a discovery, he was wont to take hold of his assistant and go dancing around with him for sheer joy. after making a certain successful experiment in his laboratory, gay-lussac gave vent to his feelings by dancing round the room, and clapping his hands the while. it is related that, when davy saw the first globules of potassium burst through the crust of potash and take fire, his delight knew no bounds. he also took to dancing, and some time had to elapse before he was sufficiently composed to continue his work. even the cool and self-possessed faraday occasionally waxed warm on seeing his efforts crowned with success. it is said that, when he got a wire conveying a current to revolve round the pole of a magnet, he rubbed his hands vigorously and danced around the table, his face beaming with delight: "there they go, there they go; we have succeeded at last," he said. he then gleefully proposed to cease work for the day and spend the evening at astley's seeing the feats of well-trained horses! having realized that his experiment was one of fundamental importance in physical theory, our philosopher proceeds to repeat it under varying conditions. he places the wire conveying the current in front of the needle, behind it, under it, across it; he reverses the current in each case, and notices the direction in which the needle turns. though he states results very clearly, he gives no general rule whereby the direction of the deflection may be foretold from that of the current. a _memoria technica_ to meet all cases that may occur was needed, and was promptly supplied by ampère, who, with a flash of genius, devised the rule of the little swimmer. others have been added since, such as the cork-screw rule and the rule involving the outspread right hand; but the swimmer appeals in a manner quite its own to the fancy of the youthful student. it pleases while it instructs; it is ingenious while yet remarkably simple. it has been said that the philosopher of copenhagen was led by mere accident to the experiment which will hand his name down the ages; but inasmuch as he was looking, during thirteen years, for a result analogous to the one which he obtained, it is only right to give him full credit for the success which he achieved. it has been well remarked, that the seeds of great discoveries are constantly floating around us, but take root only in minds well prepared to receive them. accidents of the oersted type happen only to men who deserve them, as was the case with musschenbroek and galvani in the eighteenth century, and with roentgen in the nineteenth. the electrification of a flask of water, the twitching of frogs' legs in response to electric sparks, and the blackening of a sensitive screen by a distant, shielded crookes's tube, led to the electrostatic condenser in the first case, to "galvanism" in the second, and to the photography of the invisible in the third. writing of oersted's discovery, faraday said that "it burst open the gates of a domain in science, dark till then, and filled it with a flood of light." the discovery of 1820 was hailed throughout europe by an extraordinary outburst of enthusiasm. oersted was complimented and congratulated on all sides. honors were showered upon him: the royal society of london awarded him the copley medal; the french academy of sciences gave him its gold medal for the physico-mathematical sciences; prussia conferred upon him the ordre pour le mérite, and his own country made him a knight of the daneborg. oersted lost no time in preparing a memoir on the subject of his work, a copy of which was sent to the learned societies and most renowned philosophers of europe. the memoir, which was written in latin and dated july 21st, 1820, consisted of four quarto pages with the title "experiments on the effect of the electric conflict on the magnetic needle." a perusal of this paper brings home the conviction that oersted realized fairly well the forces which came into play in his experiment; for in one place, he speaks of the effect as due to a transverse force emanating from the conductor conveying the current, and again as a conflict acting in a revolving manner around the wire. a complete statement of the nature of the mechanical force exerted by a conductor conveying a current on a magnetic needle was given almost immediately by ampère, a master analyst and accomplished experimentalist. [illustration: fig. 23 magnetic field surrounding a conductor carrying a current] it will stand for all time in the history of science, that in less than two months after the publication of oersted's memoir, ampère succeeded in showing the mechanical effect in magnitude and direction of an element of current not only on the magnetic needle itself, but also on a similar element of an adjacent conductor conveying a current, thereby founding a new science in the department of physics, the science of electro-dynamics. oersted does not appear to have given thought to the practical possibilities of his discovery. while appreciating the utilitarian in science, he evidently preferred the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake. in a discourse which he delivered in 1814 before the university of copenhagen, he put himself on record when he said that "the real laborer in the scientific field chooses knowledge as his highest aim." so said plato ages before, and so said archimedes, who held that it was undesirable for a philosopher to seek to apply the discoveries of science to any practical end. the screw which he invented, his catapults and burning mirrors, show, however, that when necessary the syracusan mathematician could come down from the serene heights of investigation to the prosaic arena of application. before oersted spoke of "the real laborer," thomas young had affirmed that "those who possess the genuine spirit of scientific investigation are content to proceed in their researches without inquiring at every step what they gain by their newly discovered lights, and to what practical purposes they are applicable." [illustration: fig. 24 magnetic whirl surrounding a wire through which a current is passing] young's most illustrious successor in the royal institution, michael faraday, devoted himself calmly but unflinchingly to research work, in the conviction that no discovery, however remote in its nature, from the subject of daily observation, could with reason be declared wholly inapplicable to the benefit of mankind. after discovering in 1831 that electric currents could be produced by the relative motion of magnets and coils of wire, a discovery which is the basis of all the electric engineering of our day, faraday constructed several experimental machines embodying this principle, and then turned away abruptly from the work, saying, "i had rather been desirous of discovering new facts and new relations dependent on magneto-electric induction than of exalting the force of those already obtained, being assured that the latter would find their full development hereafter." our own joseph henry, whose sterling merit is universally recognized, beautifully said in this connection: "he who loves truth for its own sake feels that its highest claims are lowered by being continually summoned to the bar of immediate and palpable utility." oersted seems to have shared the opinion largely held by the scientific men of his day, that electricity is mainly a magnetic phenomenon. ampère, for one, did not think so, as is evident from the beautiful theory which he devised to explain the magnetism of a bar by minute electric currents flowing round each individual molecule of the iron. to the french physicist, magnetism was purely an electrical phenomenon. [illustration: fig. 25 ampère's molecular currents] though propounded more than eighty years ago, this theory is still in harmony with all facts and phenomena in the domain of magnetism known to-day. it is important to remember, when thinking of this physical theory, that the amperian currents in question are confined to the molecule, and that they do not flow from one molecule to another. critics have urged against the theory that the molecules must be heated by the circulation of these elementary currents, to which objection it has been replied that, as we know nothing of the nature of the molecule, we cannot say that it offers any resistance to the current; and, therefore, we cannot affirm that there is any development of heat due to the circulation of these elementary currents. it is to ampère's credit that he was also the first to propose a practical application of oersted's discovery, an application that was nothing less than the electric telegraph itself. he suggested that the deflection of the magnetic needle could be used for the transmission of signals from one place to another by means of as many needles and circuits as there are letters in the alphabet. if ampère had only recalled the optical and mechanical telegraphs in use in his day, such as the swinging of lanterns by night and wigwagging of flags and the movements of semaphores by day, he might have reduced his twenty-four circuits to one, using the two elements, viz., motion of the needle to the right and motion to the left, to make up the entire alphabet. morse substituted the dot and the dash for these deflections, and thus rendered the reception of messages automatic and permanent. in connection with this proposal to use a magnetic needle for the transmission of intelligence, the reader will no doubt recall the lover's telegraph, so beautifully described by addison in the "spectator" for december 6th, 1711; but ingeniously conceived as it was, this magnetic telegraph was purely and simply a creation of the imagination. this canny conceit has been attributed to cardinal bembo, the elegant scholar and private secretary to pope leo x.; but it was his friend porta, the versatile philosopher, who made it widely known by the vivid description which he gave of it in his celebrated work on "natural magic," published at naples in 1558. this sympathetic telegraph consisted, we are told, of a magnetic needle poised in the center of a dial-plate, with the letters of the alphabet written around it. the two fortunate individuals privileged to hold _wireless_ correspondence with each other having agreed as to the day and the hour, proceed to the room in which the wonderful instrument is kept, where, as soon as one of them turns the needle of his transmitter to a letter, the distant needle turns at once in sympathy to the same letter on its dial! such is the power of magnetic sympathy, that the instruments will work successfully though hills, forests, lakes or mountains intervene! porta has it: "to a friend at a distance shut up in prison, we may relate our minds; which, i do not doubt, may be done by means of compasses having the alphabet written around them." [illustration: fig. 26 the "sympathetic telegraph" from cabeo's _philosophia magnetica_, 1629] this sympathetic magnetic telegraph figures extensively in the scientific literature of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries: some believed in the figment, others condemned it. addison described it in elegant prose, and akenside in beautiful verse. perhaps the most famous composition on the subject is a short latin poem, written, after the style and vein of lucretius, in 1617 by famianus strada, an italian jesuit. a few years after its publication in the author's "prolusiones," a metrical translation was made by hakewill and inserted on page 285 of his "apologie, or declaration of the power and providence of god," 1630. owing to the interest that attaches to this celebrated composition and the difficulty of getting hakewill's "apologie," we append his version of the poem. the loade above all other stones hath this strange property if sundry steels thereto or needles you apply, such force and motion thence they draw that they incline to turn them to the bear, which near the pole doth shine. nay, more, as many steels as touch that virtuous stone in strange and wondrous sort conspiring all in one together move themselves and situate together: as if one of those steels at rome be stirred, the other the self-same way will stir though they far distant be, and all through nature's force and secret sympathy; well then if you of aught would fain advise your friend that dwells far off, to whom no letter you can send; a large smooth round table make, write down the crisscross row in order on the verge thereof, and then bestow the needle in the midst which touch'd the loade that so what note soe'er you list, it straight may turn unto. then frame another orb in all respects like this describe the edge and lay the steel thereon likewise, the steel which from the self-same magnes motion drew; this orb send with thy friend what time he bids adieu. but on the days agree at first, when you do mean to prove if the steel stir, and to what letter it doth move. this done, if with thy friend thou closely wouldst advise, who in a country off far distant from thee lies, take thou the orb and steel which on the orb was set the crisscross on the edge thou seest in order writ. what notes will frame thy words, to them direct thy steel and it sometimes to this, sometimes to that note wheel turning it round about so often till you find you have compounded all the meaning of your mind. thy friend that dwells far off, o strange! doth plainly see the steel so stir though it by no man stirréd be, running now here, now there: he conscious of the plot as the steel-guide pursues, and reads from note to note. then gathering into words those notes, he clearly sees what's needful to be done, the needle truchman is. now, when the steel doth cease its motion; if thy friend think it convenient answer back to send, the same course he may take; and, with his needle write touching the several notes which so he list indite. would god, men would be pleased to put this course in use, their letters would arrive more speedy and more sure, no rivers would them stop nor thieves them intercept; princes with their own hands, their business might effect. we scribes, from black sea 'scaped, at length with hearty wills at th' altar of the loade would consecrate our quills. another translation of the poem was made by dr. samuel ward and published at the end of his "wonders of the loadstone," 1640. [illustration: fig. 27 the "sympathetic telegraph" from turner's _ars notoria_, 1657] ampère's suggestion, made, as we have seen, in the year 1820, was not the first proposal to use electricity for telegraphic purposes. already, in 1753, a writer in _the scots magazine_, signing himself c. m. (charles morrison, of greenock, according to sir david brewster, and charles marshall, of paisley, according to latimer clark), outlined a method involving the use of frictional electricity; and lesage, of geneva, constructed a short experimental line, in 1774, consisting of twenty-four wires and a pith-ball electroscope. but the man who attained the greatest success in the employment of static electricity for this purpose was ronalds, of london, who, in 1816, erected a single-wire line eight miles long in his gardens at hammersmith, with a pair of pith-balls and a rotating disc for receiving instrument. when well satisfied that his system was practicable and reliable, ronalds wrote to the head of the intelligence department in london urging the adoption of his invention for the public service; but he was promptly brought to realize the scant encouragement so often extended to inventors by persons in high places, that responsible official politely informing him "that telegraphs of all kinds are wholly unnecessary," and that no other than the mechanical one in daily use would be adopted. when penning these words, the representative of the british government must have forgotten the experience of 1812, when the result of the battle of salamanca was semaphored from plymouth to london, on which occasion a fog cut off the message after the transmission of the first two words, "wellington defeated," the remainder of the despatch, "the french at salamanca," reaching the capital only on the following morning! a rapid sketch of the life of our philosopher, whose discovery of the magnetic effect of the voltaic current in 1820 led to the invention of the electric telegraph, cannot be without interest. hans christian oersted was born on august 14th, 1777, in the little town of rudkjöbing, in the island of langeland, denmark. being the son of poor parents, his early years were spent in very narrow circumstances. he and his younger brother were mainly indebted to their own efforts for whatever instruction they received in the rudiments of learning. the town in which they lived being small, offered few opportunities for education, even if the family exchequer had been such as to permit the boys to take advantage of them. there was a german wigmaker in the place, however, who was a little more advanced in knowledge than the generality of the townspeople. he and his wife liked the oersted boys, who were very frequently to be found in the wigmaker's shop. the good housewife taught them to read, while the artist himself taught them a little german. hans christian advanced so rapidly in his studies that he acquired a reputation for precociousness, which, with the usual prejudice against bright children, made the neighbors shake their heads prophetically and say: "the child will not live; he is too bright to last long." hans christian learned the elements of arithmetic from an old school-book which he picked up by chance; and no sooner had he advanced a little, than he set about instructing his brother. very probably, the teacher benefited quite as much by this process of instruction as the pupil. adversity is a good school for the formation of character as well as for the acquisition of knowledge. it is evident, from the lives of such men as oersted, faraday, kepler, ohm, and others who were brought up in the lap of poverty, that it is not so much educational opportunity that is needed for the development of mind which we call education, as the earnest determination and the abiding desire to have it. even boyhood creates its own opportunities for education despite intervening obstacles, if it has only a decided eagerness, a pronounced thirst for knowledge. about the time that the young oersteds entered their teens, their father secured the services of a private teacher to give them some instruction in the rudiments of latin and greek. this accidental preceptor was only a wandering student who happened to be in the place at the time; but the boys, in their eagerness to learn, derived more benefit from his lessons than many boys of their age often do nowadays from the help and encouragement of a carefully selected and academically equipped tutor. at the age of twelve, oersted senior was taken into his father's apothecary-shop in quality of assistant, a position which seemed destined to put an end to all opportunities for further advancement in the path of learning. when a boy goes into a drug-store in an official capacity, his future career is usually settled; he is a druggist to the end. his new avocation, however, proved to be the beginning of new intellectual activities for oersted. the chemical side of his work became a source of new information to him, and also a stimulus to learn all that he could of chemistry and kindred subjects. science became a hobby with the young apothecary, and everything relating to it appealed to him. what hans learned, he as usual imparted to his brother, who was already becoming interested in other departments of learning, especially the law. the desire of the boys to advance grew with their stock of knowledge. accordingly, when, in 1794, hans was only seventeen years of age and his brother sixteen, they both matriculated at the university of copenhagen. their father was able to help them but little, so that they were obliged to live quietly and sparingly, a condition distinctly favorable to consecutive and efficient study. they became so successful in their pursuits that they soon began to attract attention. having passed creditable examinations, they were recommended for pecuniary assistance from an educational fund established by the government for the purpose. even then, as receipts were hardly equal to expenses, they sought to increase their little revenue by giving private lessons in their leisure hours. here we have a striking example of what may be accomplished by men who work their way through college in the teeth of adverse circumstances; in these two brothers, we have proof of the truth that it is the student's mind, his willingness and determination to work, that count in education more than the golden opportunities that may fall to his lot. in the year 1799, oersted prepared a thesis on "the architectonics of natural metaphysics," which won for him his doctorate in philosophy. though the young doctor did not hesitate to discuss metaphysical problems and even to disagree with kant at a time when most teutonic minds were deeply under the influence of the philosopher of königsberg, his chief interests, however, centered in the experimental sciences, in physics and chemistry. in spite of his devotedness to science, oersted allowed himself, by way of distraction, an occasional excursion into the field of literature. a great literary and artistic movement was making itself felt in the northern part of europe at the time. the æsthetic awakening of the teutonic nations had come after three centuries of religious and political unrest, ill adapted to intellectual development. lessing and winkelmann, goethe and schiller, the two schlegels and klopstock as well as the young poets, uhland and koerner, were either already at work or were about to enter on their distinguished careers, and the neighboring scandinavian nations were beginning to be seriously affected by the movement which was going on among their brethren. in the third year of his university course, oersted entered the lists as a competitor for literary honors on the question, "what are the limits of prose and poetry?" and had the satisfaction of winning the gold medal offered for the contest. in spite of this episode, indicative of devotedness to the muses, oersted passed a brilliant pharmaceutical examination; and in the following year succeeded in capturing another prize, this time for a medical essay. after such a period of preparation, it might be expected that a brilliant career would open up for oersted; but, unfortunately, he could not afford to wait for slow academic rewards, as it was absolutely necessary for him to set about earning his livelihood. for this purpose, shortly after graduation, he accepted the position of manager of a drug-store. as the salary attached to the office was rather slender, he increased his resources by giving lectures in the evening on the familiar subjects of chemistry, natural philosophy and metaphysics. about this time, the _wanderlust_, or passion for travel, took possession of our young philosopher; and under its influence, he resolved to see for himself what men of scientific avocations were doing in france and in germany. his own pinched circumstances would not allow him to undertake such a journey; but he was fortunate enough to win a _stipendium cappelianum_ which allowed him to travel at the expense of the government for a period of five years, though he used it only for three. if ever pecuniary aid was productive of enduring results, it was so in this case. in 1801, at the age of twenty-four, oersted set out from copenhagen on his grand tour, determined to make it a scientific as well as sentimental journey. in germany, which he first visited, he met klaproth, the orientalist; werner, the mineralogist; olbers the astronomer; the philosophers fichte, schelling and the two schlegels; and above all, the young and brilliant physicist johann wilhelm ritter, who discussed with him the theory of the wonderful "pile" invented by volta in the previous year, 1800. in paris, oersted spent about fifteen months, during which time he was in habitual relations with many of the savants who were just then reflecting great lustre on french science. to mention but a few: there was cuvier, the leading naturalist of his age; abbé haüy, crystallographer of world-wide reputation; biot, the brilliant expounder of physics; charles, the discoverer of the law which bears his name; berthollet, the associate of monge the mathematician, and lavoisier, the chemist. on his return to the danish capital in 1804, oersted delivered courses of lectures on electricity and magnetism, light and heat, before numerous and cultured audiences; and such was the success which he achieved that he was appointed, at the age of twenty-nine, to the chair of physics in the university of copenhagen. for nearly forty-five years he was destined to occupy this academical position, so that his connection with that seat of learning rounded out the full period of half a century. while sedulously occupied with the duties of his chair and the pursuit of his favorite scientific subjects, oersted was not unmindful of his civic and altruistic obligations. he frequently gave popular scientific lectures, which were open to women as well as to men. he helped in the organization of a bureau through which lectures would be given in various parts of the country, and thus became a pioneer in what we call to-day the university extension movement. when democratic ideas began to be discussed in denmark after the french revolution of 1830, oersted was one of those who took part in the onward movement for the betterment of the people. in 1835, he coöperated in the foundation of the society for the freedom of the press; and when christian viii. ascended the throne, he addressed the new monarch in a speech of liberal tendency, hailing him because of the interest which he took in the advancement of science and in the uplift of the masses. an idea of the position accorded to oersted by his colleagues in the world of science may be gathered from an address made by sir john herschel at the closing session of the southampton meeting of the british association in 1836, in which the distinguished astronomer said: "in science, there is but one direction which the needle will take when pointed towards the european continent, and that is towards my esteemed friend, professor oersted. to look at his cool manner, who would think that he wielded such an intense power, capable of altering the whole state of science, and almost the knowledge of the world? he has at this meeting developed some of those recondite and remarkable forces of nature which he was the first to discover, and which went almost to the extent of obliging us to alter our views on the most ordinary laws of energy and motion. he elaborated his ideas with slowness and certainty, bringing them forward only after a long lapse of time. how often did i wish to heaven that we could trample down, and strike forever to earth, the hasty generalizations which mark the present age, and bring up another and safer system of investigation, such as that which marked the inquiries of our friend? it was in deep recesses, as it were, of a cell, that a faint idea first occurred to oersted. he waited long and calmly for the dawn which at length broke upon him, altering the whole relations of science and life. the electric telegraph and other wonders of modern science were but mere effervescences from the surface of this deep, recondite discovery of his. if we were to characterize, by any figure, the usefulness of oersted to science, we would regard him as a fertilizing shower descending from heaven, which brought forth a new crop, delightful to the eye and pleasing to the heart." it may be noticed that in oersted's day early specialization was fortunately unknown. his education was broad and his intellectual activities broader still. quite as interesting as many of his scientific researches are some of his contributions to philosophy and some of his views on the significance of the material universe. oersted, a man of the world with a wide range of interests and a philosopher who lived at high intellectual altitudes, was one of the all-round men in the history of thought who took active part in science, in literature, in politics and in social problems. he had the opportunity of meeting many of the renowned scientists and philosophers of the century, and had been very closely in touch with some of them. he was a regular attendant at scientific congresses, in which he distinguished himself by the leading part which he took in their deliberations. his opinions, therefore, on the great problems of life, religious, moral, social and political, challenge our respect even where they do not compel our approval. our danish philosopher deserves, then, to stand as the spokesman of his generation of savants on the great questions that concern man's relations to his fellow-men, to an all-wise providence and to an enduring hereafter. his opinions on these matters are all the more interesting because they are in open contradiction with what is sometimes thought to be the views of scientists on such subjects. one of the passages of his paper on "all existence, a dominion of reason," contains some surprising anticipations of ideas that created a great stir in the intellectual world some fifty years ago. in 1846, that is, thirteen years before the publication of darwin's "origin of species," oersted discussed evolution and suggested explanations that are generally considered to have been forced from apologists when compelled to take up the work of reconciling christian doctrines with scientific conclusions. writing in the middle 'forties, he said: "if we are now thoroughly convinced that everything in the material world is produced from similar particles of matter, by the same forces and in obedience to the same laws, we must allow that the planets have been formed according to the same laws as our own earth. they have been in process of development during immeasurable periods of time, and have undergone numerous transformations which have also influenced the vegetable and animal kingdoms of those remote periods. the lower forms of life advanced by gradual stages to higher and more complex states of organization, till at length (in a comparatively recent period) a self-conscious being was evolved, the crowning work of this long-continued process of development. accordingly, we must allow a similar order of organic development to take place on the other planets of our solar family. there may be some which have not as yet attained the same degree of development that we have reached; but everywhere throughout the universe, creatures endowed with reason appear in due time, just as man appeared on our own globe. their understanding is intimately connected with the organs of sense which they possess; therefore, the nature of their mental faculties cannot be essentially different from our own. that i may avoid even the appearance of materialism, i must direct attention to the conciliatory principle, that the natural environment from which man springs must be recognized as the work of the eternal, creative spirit. in other words, our conception of the universe is incomplete, if not comprehended as a constant and continuous work of the eternally creating spirit." thus far oersted; let us here recall what lord kelvin, the representative scientist of his day, quoted with approval on a memorable occasion from the danish scientist with regard to the basic truths of science, philosophy and religion. "it will not be foreign to our purpose if, called upon by the solemnities of this day, we endeavor to establish our conviction of the harmony that subsists between religion and science, by showing how the man of science must look upon his pursuits, if he understands them rightly, as an exercise of religion. "if my purpose here was merely to show that science necessarily engenders piety, i should appeal to the great truth everywhere recognized, that the essence of all religion consists in love toward god. the conclusion would then be easy, that love of him from whom all truth proceeds must create the desire to acknowledge truth in all her paths; but as we desire here to recognize science herself as a religious duty, it will be requisite for us to penetrate deeper into its nature. it is obvious, therefore, that the searching eye of man, whether he regards his own inward being or the creation surrounding him, is always led to the eternal source of all things. in all inquiry, the ultimate aim is to discover that which really exists and to contemplate it in its pure light apart from all that deceives the careless observer by only a seeming existence. the philosopher will then comprehend what, amidst ceaseless change, is the constant and uncreated, which is hidden behind unnumbered creations, the bond of union which keeps things together in spite of their manifold divisions and separations. he must soon acknowledge that the independent can only be the constant and the constant the independent, and that true unity is inseparable from either of these. and thus it is in the nature of thought that it finds no quiet resting place, no pause, except in the invariable, eternal, uncaused, all-causing, all-comprehensive omniscience. "but, if this one-sided view does not satisfy him, if he seeks to examine the world with the eye of experience, he perceives that all those things of whose reality the multitude feels most assured never have an enduring existence, but are always on the road between birth and death. if he now properly comprehends the whole array of nature, he perceives that it is not merely an idea or an abstract notion, as it is called; but that reason and the power to which everything is indebted for its essential nature are only the revelation of a self-sustained being. how can he, when he sees this, be otherwise animated than by the deepest feeling of humility, of devotion and of love? if anyone has learned a different lesson from his observation of nature, it could only be because he lost his way amidst the dispersion and variety of creation and had not looked upwards to the eternal unity of truth." as already said, oersted lived to celebrate the fiftieth year of his connection with his university. this was in november, 1850, on which occasion his friends, pupils and the public generally united together in honoring him as a professor whose warm and animated lectures enraptured audiences; as a leader in the scientific advance of the times; and as a christian to whom nature was but a manifestation of the deity's combined wisdom and creative power. the aged scientist, much touched by this popular demonstration as well as by the tokens of esteem given him by the king, spoke of this jubilee celebration as the happiest day of his life. the reader will recall another great man, great in the world of politics and great on the field of battle, who said that the happiest day of _his_ life was that of his first communion. a few months after celebrating his golden jubilee, oersted passed away, after a short illness, on march 9th, 1851, deeply mourned by all. oersted was eminent as a scholar and equally eminent as a man; lenient in his judgment of others, he was strict with regard to himself; simple in his ways and frugal in living, he was benevolent to others, being always ready to give a helping hand wherever needed. to such a man may well be applied these beautiful words with which priestley begins his "history of electricity": "a life spent in the contemplation of the productions of divine power, wisdom and goodness, would be a life of devotion. the more we see of the wonderful structure of the world and of the laws of nature, the more clearly do we comprehend their admirable uses to make all percipient creation happy, a sentiment which cannot but fill the heart with unbounded love, gratitude and joy." a statue to the memory of oersted was unveiled in copenhagen on september 25th, 1876, in presence of the king of denmark, the king of greece, the danish crown prince and members of the royal family, as well as numerous high officials, representatives of learned societies and a vast body of students and people assembled together to do honor to a man who was distinguished alike by his scientific attainments and philosophical acumen, and who, during his long life, never faltered in his devotedness to the welfare of his country as he never weakened in his defense of the great truths of religion. brother potamian. chapter viii. andré marie ampère. few men of the nineteenth century are so interesting as andré marie ampère, who is, as we have seen, deservedly spoken of as the founder of the science of electro-dynamics. extremely precocious as a boy, so that, like his immediate predecessor in discovery, oersted the dane, his rapid intellectual development drew down upon him ominous expressions from those who knew him, he more than fulfilled the highest promise of his early years. his was no one-sided genius. he was interested in everything, and his memory was as retentive as his intellect was comprehensive. he grew up, indeed, to be a young man of the widest possible interests. literature never failed to have its attraction for him, though science was his favorite study and mathematics his hobby. the mathematical mind is commonly supposed to run in very precise grooves, yet ampère was always a speculator, and his speculations were most suggestive for his contemporaries and subsequent generations. indeed, his mathematics, far from being a hindrance to his penetrating outlook upon the hazier confines of science, rather seemed to help the penetrations it gave. while he was so great a scientist that arago, so little likely to exaggerate his french contemporary's merit, has said of ampère's discovery identifying magnetism and electricity, that "the vast field of physical science perhaps never presented so brilliant a discovery, conceived, verified, and completed with such rapidity," his friends knew this great scientist as one of the kindliest and most genial of men, noted for his simplicity, his persuasive sympathy and his tender regard for all those with whom he was brought into intimate relations. [illustration: andré marie ampère] the commonly accepted formula for a great scientist, that he is a man wrapt up in himself and his work, enmeshed so completely in the scientific speculations that occupy him that he has little or no time for great humanitarian interests, so that his human sympathies are likely to atrophy, is entirely contradicted by the life of ampère. he was no narrow specialist, and, indeed, it may be said that not a single one of these great discoverers in electricity whom we are considering in this volume was of the type that is sometimes accepted as indicative of scientific genius and originality. after reading their lives, one is prone to have the feeling that men who lack that wider sympathy which, in the famous words of the old latin poet, makes everything human of interest to them, are not of the mental calibre to make supreme discoveries, even though they may succeed in creating a large amount of interest in their scientific speculations in their own generation. it is the all-round man who does supreme original work of enduring quality. andré marie ampère was born at lyons, january 22d, 1775. his father, jean jacques ampère, was a small merchant who made a comfortable living for his family, but no more. his father and mother were both well informed for their class and time, and were well esteemed by their neighbors. his mother especially was known for an unalterable sweetness of character and charitable beneficence which sought out every possible occasion for its exercise. she was universally beloved by those who knew her, and the charm of ampère's manner, which made for him a friend of every acquaintance, was undoubtedly a manifestation of the same family strain. shortly after the birth of their son, the parents gave up business and retired on a little property situated in the country not far from lyons. it was in this little village, without any school-teacher and with only home instruction, that the genius of the future savant, who was to be one of the distinguished scientific men of the nineteenth century, began to show itself. for ampère was not only a genius, but, what is so often thought to be an almost absolute preclusion of any serious achievement later in life, a precocious genius. the first marvelous faculty that began to develop in him was an uncontrollable tendency to arithmetical expression. before he knew how to make figures, he had invented for himself a method of doing even rather complicated problems in arithmetic by the aid of a number of pebbles or peas. during an illness that overtook him as a child, his mother, anxious because of the possible evil effects upon his health of mental work, took his pebbles away from him. he supplied their place, however, during the leisure hours of his convalescence, when time hung heavy on his child hands, by bread crumbs. he craved food, but, according to the "starving" medical _régime_ of the time, he was allowed only a single biscuit in three days. it required no little self-sacrifice on his part, then, to supply himself with counters from this scanty supply, and his persistence, in spite of hunger, evidently indicates that this mathematical tendency was stronger than his appetite for food. this is all the more surprising, since children are usually scarcely more than little animals in the matter of eating, and commonly satisfy their physical cravings without an after-thought of any kind. ampère learned to read when but very young, and then began to devour all the books which came to hand. usually, the precocious taste for reading specializes on some particular subject; but everything was grist that came to the child ampère's mental mill, and it was all ground up; and, strangest of all, much of it was assimilated. travel, history, poetry, occupied him quite as much as romance; and, amazing as it may appear, even philosophy was not disdained while he was still under ten years of age. it seems amusing to read the declaration of the french biographer, that if this boy of ten had any special predilection in literature, it was for homer, lucan, tasso, fénelon, corneille and voltaire, yet it must be taken seriously. when he was about fifteen, this omnivorous intellectual genius came across a french encyclopedia in twenty folio volumes. this seemed to him a veritable golconda of endless riches of information. each of the volumes had its turn. the second was begun as soon as the first was finished, and the reading of the third followed, and so on, until every one of the volumes had been completely read. references to other volumes might be looked up occasionally, but this did not distract him into taking other portions of the works out of alphabetical order. surprising as it must seem, most of this heterogeneous mass of information, far from being forgotten at once, was deeply engraved on his wonderful memory. more than once in after-life, when many years had passed, it was a surprise to his friends to find how much information ampère had amassed on some abstruse and unfamiliar subject, and how readily he was able to pour forth details of information that seemed quite out of his line. he would then confess that the encyclopedia article on the subject, read so many years before, was still fresh in his mind, or at least that its information was so stored away as to be readily available. we have heard much of gladstone's memory in more recent years; but that seems to have been nothing compared to this wonderful faculty which recalled for ampère, even as an old man, the unrelated details of every encyclopedia article that had passed under his eyes half a century before, when he was a boy of ten to fourteen. the modest family library soon proved utterly insufficient to occupy the mind of this young, enthusiastic student; and his father, sympathetic to his ardent curiosity, took him to lyons from time to time, where he might have the opportunity to consult volumes of various kinds that might catch his fancy. at this time, his old mathematical tendency reasserted itself. he wished to learn something about the higher mathematics. he found in a library in lyons the works of bernoulli and of euler. when the delicate-looking boy, whom the librarian considered little more than a child, put in his request to the town library for these serious mathematical works, the old gentleman said to him: "the works of bernoulli and euler! what are you thinking of, my little friend? these works figure among the most difficult writings that ever came from the mind of man." "i hope to be able to understand them," replied the boy. "i suppose you know," said the librarian, "that they are written in latin." this was a disagreeable surprise for young ampère. as yet he had not studied latin. he went home, resolved, however, to remove this hindrance to his study of the higher mathematics. at the end of the month, owing to his assiduity, the obstacle had entirely disappeared; and though he could read only mathematical latin and had later to study the language from another standpoint, in order to understand the classics, he was now able to pursue the study of mathematics in latin to his heart's content. the even tenor of the boy's life, deeply engaged as he was in studies of every description, was destined to be very seriously disturbed. when he was but fourteen, in 1789, the revolution came, with its glorious promise and then its awful consummation. ampère's father was seriously alarmed at the revolutionary course things were taking in france, and had the fatal inspiration to leave his country home and betake himself to the city of lyons. for a time, he occupied a position as magistrate. after the siege of lyons, the revolutionary tribunal established there took up the project of making the lyonnese patriotic, as they called it, by properly punishing the citizens for their failure to sympathize at first with the revolutionary government, and soon a series of horrible massacres began. new victims were claimed every day, and ampère's father was one of those who had to suffer. the real reason for his condemnation was that he had accepted a position under the old government, though the pretext stated on the warrant for his arrest was that he was an aristocrat. this is the only evidence we have that the ampère family was in any way connected with the nobility. the day on which he was sentenced to die, jean jacques ampère wrote to his wife a letter of sublime simplicity, in which his christian resignation of spirit, his lofty courage, yet thoroughly practical commonsense, are manifest. he warned his wife to say nothing about his fate to their daughter josephine, though he hoped that his son would be better able to stand the blow, and perhaps prove a consolation to his mother. the news proved almost too much for the young ampère, and for a time his reason was despaired of. all his faculties seemed to be shocked for the moment into insensibility. biographers tell us that he wandered around, building little piles of sand, gazing idly at the stars or vacantly into space, wearing scarcely any of the expression of a rational being. his friends could harbor only the worst possible expectations for him, and even his physical health suffered so much that it seemed he would not long survive. one day, by chance, rousseau's "letters on botany" fell into his hands. they caught his attention, and he became interested in their charming narrative style, and as a result, his reason awoke once more. he began to study botany in the field, and soon acquired a taste for the reading of linnæus. at the same time, classic poetry, especially such as contained descriptions of nature, once more appealed to him, and so he took up his classical studies. he varied the reading of the poets with dissections of flowers, and yet succeeded in following both sets of studies so attentively that, forty years afterward, he was still perfectly capable of taking up the technical description of the plants that he had then studied, and while acting as a university inspector, he composed 150 latin verses during his horseback rides from one inspection district to another, without ever having to consult a gradus or a dictionary for the quantities, yet without making a single mistake. his memory for subjects once learned, was almost literally infallible. something of his love for nature can be appreciated from an incident of his early manhood, which is not without its amusing side. ampère was very near-sighted, and had been able to read books all his life only by holding them very close to his eyes. this makes it all the more difficult to understand how he succeeded in reading so much. his near-sightedness was so marked that he had no idea of beauties of scenery beyond him, and was often rather put out at the enthusiastic description of scenes through which he passed _en diligence_, when his fellow-travelers spoke of the beauties of the scenes around them. ampère, like most people who do not share, or at least appreciate, the enthusiasm of others for beautiful things around them, was in this mood, mainly because he was not able to see them in the way that others did, and, therefore, could not have the same pleasure in them. this lack in himself was unconscious, of course, as in all other cases, and, far from lessening, rather emphasized the tendency to be impatient with others, and rather made him more ready to think how foolish they were to go into ecstasies over something that to him was so insignificant. one day, while ampère was making the journey along the saone into lyons, it happened that there sat beside him on the stage-coach a young man who suffered from near-sightedness very nearly in the same degree as ampère himself, but whose myopia had been corrected by means of properly fitting glasses. these glasses were just exactly what ampère needed in order to correct his vision completely. the young fellows became interested in each other, and, during the course of their conversation, his companion suggested to ampère, seeing how near-sighted he was, that he should try his glasses. he put them on, and at once nature presented herself to him under an entirely different aspect. the vision was so unexpected, that the description which he had so often heard from his fellow-travelers, but could not appreciate, now recurred to him, and he could not help exclaiming in raptures, "oh! what a smiling country! what picturesque, graceful hills! how the rich, warm tones are harmoniously blended in the wonderful union of sky and mountain vista!" all of these now spoke emphatically to his delicate sensibility, and a new world was literally revealed to him. ampère was so overcome by this unexpected sight, which gave him so much pleasure, that he burst into tears from depth of emotion, and could not satisfy himself with looking at all the beauties of nature that had been hidden from him for so long. ever after, natural scenery was one of the greatest pleasures that he had in life, and the beauties of nature, near or distant, meant more to him than any other gratification of the senses. in spite of the fact that ampère had devoted considerable attention to acoustics as a young man, and had studied the ways in which the waves of air by which sounds are formed and propagated, he had absolutely no ear for music, and was as tone-deaf as he had been blind before his discovery with regard to the glasses. musical notes constituted a mathematical problem for ampère, but nothing more. this continued to be the case until about thirty years of age. then, one day, he attended a musical soirée, at which the principal portions of the program were taken from glück. it is easy to understand that this master of harmony possessed no charms for a tone-deaf young man. he became uneasy during the course of the musical program, and his uneasiness became manifest to others. after the selections of the german composer were finished, however, some simple but charming melodies were unexpectedly introduced, and ampère suddenly found himself transported into a new world. if we are to believe his biographers, once more his emotion was expressed by an abundance of tears, which ampère seems to have had at command and to have been quite as ready to give way to in public as any of homer's heroes of the olden time. blind until he was nearly twenty, he used to say of himself, he had been deaf until he was thirty. in spite of his failure to respond in youth, once it had been awakened to appreciation, his soul vibrated profoundly to all the beauties of color and sound, and, later in life, they gave rise in him to depths of emotion which calmer individuals of less delicate sensibilities could scarcely understand, much less sympathize with. between his two supreme experiences in vision and sound, there had come to ampère another and even profounder emotion. he tells the story himself, in words that probably express his feelings better than any possible description of his biographer could do, and that show us how wonderfully sensitive his soul was to emotion of all kinds. he had just completed his twenty-first year when he fell head over heels in love. though he wrote very little, as a rule, he has left us a rather detailed description in diaries, evidently kept for the purpose, of the state of his feelings at this time. these bear the title, "_amorum_," the story of his love. on the first page these words occur: "one day as i was taking an evening walk, just after the setting of the sun, making my way along a little brook," then there is a hiatus, and he was evidently quite unable to express all that he felt. it seems that he was gathering botanical specimens, wearing an excellent set of spectacles ever since his adventure on the stage-coach had shown him the need of them, when he suddenly perceived at some distance two young and charming girls who were gathering flowers in the field. he looked at one of them, and he knew that his fate was sealed. up to that time, as he says, the idea of marriage had never occurred to him. one might think that the idea would occur very gently at first, then grow little by little; but that was not ampère's way. he wanted to marry her that very day. he did not know her name; he did not know her family; he had never even heard her voice, but he knew that she was the destined one. fortunately for the young lady and himself, she had very sensible parents. they demanded how he would be able to support a wife. ampère was quite willing to do anything that they should suggest. his father had left enough to support the family, but not enough to enable him to support a wife in an independent home; and until he had some occupation, the parents of his bride-to-be refused to listen to his representations. for a time, he consented to be a salesman in a silk store in lyons, in order to have some occupation which might eventually give him enough money to enable him to marry. fortunately, however, he was diverted from a commercial vocation which might thus have absorbed a great scientist, and arrangements were made which permitted him to continue his intellectual life, yet have the woman of his choice. she was destined to make life happier far for him than is the usual lot of man, and he was ever ready to acknowledge how much she meant for his happiness. with literature, poetry, love and settling down in life to occupy him, it is hard to think of ampère as a young man doing great work in science, but he did; and his work deservedly attracted attention even from his very early years. it was in pure mathematics, perhaps, above all other branches, that ampère attracted the attention of his generation. ordinary questions he did not care for. problems which the fruitless efforts of twenty centuries had pronounced insoluble attracted him at once. even the squaring of the circle claimed his attention for a while, though he got well beyond it even before his boyhood passed away. there is a manuscript note from the secretary of the academy of lyons, which shows that on july 8th, 1788, ampère, then not quite thirteen years of age, addressed to that learned body a paper on the "squaring of the circle." later, during the same year, he submitted an analogous memoir, entitled, "the rectification of an arc of a circle, less than a semi-circumference." arago says that he was tempted to suppress this story of ampère's coquetting with so dangerous a problem, for ampère rather flattered himself that he had almost solved it. it was only after arago recalled how many geniuses in mathematics had occupied themselves with this same problem, that he saw his way clearly not to share the scruples of those who might think this incident a reflection on ampère's mathematical genius. after all, anaxagoras, hippocrates, archimedes and apollonius, among the ancients, and among the moderns, willebrod snell, huyghens, gregory, wallis, and finally newton, the mathematician of the heavens, occupied themselves seriously with this very problem. arago even notes that some men, by their speculations on the squaring of the circle, were led to distinguished discoveries, and mentions the name of father grégoire de saint-vincent, the distinguished flemish mathematician of the society of jesus, to whom, as a direct result of his studies in attempted circle-squaring, we owe the discovery of the properties of hyperbolic space, limited by the curve and its asymptotes, as well as the expansion of log (1 + _x_) in ascending powers of _x_. montucla, the historian of mathematics, writing of père saint-vincent, said that, "no one ever squared the circle with so much ability or with so much success." there was, however, a fallacy in his magnificent work which was pointed out by the celebrated huyghens. shortly after the beginning of the nineteenth century, ampère, as one of his french biographers rather characteristically declares, redeemed whatever of mathematical sinning there might have been, in indulging in fond dalliance with the squaring of the circle, by a series of mathematical papers, each of which was in itself a distinct advance on previous knowledge, and at the same time, definite evidence of his mathematical ability. the first paper, published in 1801, was a contribution to solid geometry, bearing the title, "on oblique polyhedrons." his next paper, written in 1803, though not published until 1808, was a treatise on the advantages to be derived in the theory of curves from due consideration of the osculating parabola. another treatise, written about the same time, had for title, "investigations on the application of the general formulæ of the calculus of variations to problems in mechanics." this concerned problems which had interested and, in most cases, proved too hard of solution even for such men as galileo, jacques bernoulli, leibnitz, huyghens and jean bernoulli. arago's expression with regard to this work is: "the treatise of ampère contains, in fact, new and very remarkable properties of the _catenary_ (la chainette) and its development." he adds: "there is no small merit in discovering hiatuses in subjects explored by such men as leibnitz, huyghens and the two bernoullis. i must not forget to add that the analysis of our associate unites elegance with simplicity." it is not surprising, after such marks of mathematical genius, that ampère was appointed to the chair of mathematics at the école polytechnique, where he came to be looked upon as one of the most distinguished of french mathematicians. in 1813, he became a candidate for the position left vacant by the death of the famous lagrange; and at this time, presented to the academy general considerations on the integration of partial differential equations of the first and the second order. after his election to the academy, ampère continued to present important papers at its various sessions. among these, three are especially noteworthy: one was a demonstration of père mariotte's law (known to english students as boyle's law); another bore the title, "demonstration of a new theory from which can be deduced all the laws of refraction, ordinary and extraordinary"; a third was a memoir on the "determination of the curved surfaces of luminous waves in a medium whose elasticity differs in each of the three dimensions." in his eulogy of ampère, which, together with his article in the "dictionnaire universelle de biographie," we have followed rather closely, arago calls particular attention to the fact that in paris, ampère moved in two intellectual circles quite widely separated in their interests and sympathies. among the first group, were the members of the old "institute" and professors and examiners of the école polytechnique and professors of the collège de france. in the other, were the men whose names have since become widely known as students of psychology, of whom cabanis may be taken as the representative. ampère had as great a passion for psychology, and was as ready to devote himself to fathoming and analyzing the mysteries of the mind, as he was to work out a problem in advanced mathematics, or throw light on difficult questions in the physical sciences. these two sets of interests are seldom united in the same man, though occasionally they are found. at the end of the nineteenth century, we had the spectacle of very distinguished men of science in physics, and even in biology--sir william crookes, sir oliver lodge, professor charles richet, professor lombroso and even mr. alfred russell wallace--interested in psychic and spiritualistic manifestations of many kinds as well as in natural science; and, inasmuch as they did so, they would have found ampère a brother spirit. ampère indeed dived rather deeply into what would be called, somewhat slightingly, perhaps, in our generation, metaphysical speculation. at one time, he contemplated the publication of a book which was to be called "an introduction to philosophy." he had made elaborate theories with regard to many metaphysical questions, and had written articles on "the theory of relations," "the history of existence," "subjective and objective knowledge" and "absolute morality." arago calls attention to the fact that napoleon's famous anathema against ideology, far from discouraging ampère, rather seemed to stimulate him in his studies, and he declared that it would surely contribute to the propagation of this kind of speculation, rather than to its suppression. it was simply another case of napoleon overreaching himself, though this was in the domain of ideas and not in the realm of politics, where his fate was to reach him some time later. how deeply interested ampère became in metaphysics will perhaps be best appreciated from the fact that, for progress in metaphysics, exercise in disputation is needed, and had been the custom in the old medieval universities. ampère once made an arrangement to travel from paris to lyons and stay there for some time, provided a definite promise was made that at least four afternoons a week should be devoted to discussions on ideology. the journey to lyons, a distance of two hundred and fifty miles, was no easy undertaking in those days. the paris, lyons and mediterranean express now whirls one down to the capital of the silk district in a night; but in ampère's time, it took many days, and the journey was by no means without inconveniences, which were likely to be so troublesome that a prolonged rest was needed after it was over. ampère seems quite to have exhausted the interest of his friends in lyons, who found his metaphysical speculations too high for them, though they themselves were specializing in the subject and would be glad to tempt him into discussions of the exact sciences; but in lyrical strain he apostrophizes psychological studies: "how can i abandon the country, the flowers and running waters for the arid streets of the city! how give up streams and groves for deserts scorched by the rays of a mathematical sun, which, diffusing over all surrounding objects the most brilliant light, withers and dries them down to the very roots! how much more agreeable to wander under flitting shades, where truth seems to flee before us to incite us to pursue, than walk in straight paths where the eye embraces all at a glance!" had ampère been less successful as a mathematician or an investigator of physical science, these expressions would seem little short of ridiculous. as it is, they provide food for thought. ampère seemed to realize that, for the intellectual man, the only satisfaction was not in successful research so much as in application of mind to what promised results. as in everything else, it was the chase, and not the capture, that counted. seldom has this idea been applied to intellectual things with so much force as it seems to have appealed to ampère, and one is reminded of malebranche's famous expression, "if i had truth in my hand, i would be tempted to let it go for the pleasure of recapturing it." the principal source of ampère's fame, however, for future generations, was to be in his researches in the science of electro-dynamics. the name of this science will ever be inseparably linked with that of ampère, its founder. it was for that reason, of course, that the international congress of electricians decided to give his name to the unit of current strength, so that it has now become a household word, and will continue so for ages to come. in spite of the resemblances, much more than superficial, between magnetism and electricity, the identification of these two with each other seemed as yet very distant. it is curiously interesting, however, to note that ampère himself, in a program of his course, printed in 1802, announced that the "professor will demonstrate that electrical and magnetic phenomena must be attributed to two different fluids which act independently of each other." ampère's fame was to be founded on the direct contradiction of this proposition, which he proposed and triumphantly defended by a marvelous series of experimental illustrations eighteen years later. in the meantime, the discovery of another distinguished scientist, doing his work many hundreds of miles away, was to prove the stimulus to ampère's constructive imagination, so as to enable him to fill out many obscure points of knowledge with regard to magnetism and electricity. this suggestive discovery was that of oersted, the sketch of whose life and work immediately precedes this. oersted demonstrated that a current of electricity will affect a magnetic needle. this epoch-making discovery reached paris by way of switzerland. the experiment was repeated before the french academy of sciences by a member of the academy of geneva, on september 11th, 1820. the date has some importance in the history of science, for just seven days later, on the 18th of september, ampère presented, at the session of the academy of sciences, a still more important fact, to which he had been led by the consideration of oersted's discovery while testing it by way of control experiment. this brilliant discovery of ampère, arago summed up in these words: "two parallel conducting wires attract each other when the current traverses them in the same direction. on the contrary, they repel each other when the current flows in opposite directions. the phenomenon described by oersted was called, very appropriately, electromagnetic, whilst the phenomena described by ampère, in which the magnet played no part, received at his suggestion the general name of electro-dynamics, which has since been applied to them." at first it was said that these phenomena were nothing more than manifestations of the ordinary attractive and repelling power of the two forms of electricity which had been so carefully studied, especially in france, during the eighteenth century. ampère at once disposed of any such idea as this, however, by pointing out that bodies similarly electrified repel each other, whilst those that are in opposite electrical states attract each other. in the case of conductors conveying currents, there is attraction when these are in the same direction, and repulsion when they flow in the opposite direction. this reasoning absolutely precluded all possibility of further doubt in the matter, and this particular form of objection to ampère's discoveries was dropped at once. having satisfactorily disposed of other objections, ampère was content neither to rest quietly in his discovery nor merely to develop various experimental phases of it which would be extremely interesting and popularly attractive, but which at the same time might mean very little for science. with his mathematical mind, ampère resolved to work out a mathematical theory which would embrace not only all the phenomena of magnetism then known, but also the complete theory of the science of electro-dynamics. needless to say, such a problem was extremely difficult. arago has compared it to newton's solution of the problem of gravitation by mathematics. considering the comparatively small amount of data that ampère had at his command, this problem might very well be compared to that which leverrier took up with so much success, when he set about discovering by calculation only the planet neptune, as yet unknown, which was disturbing the movements of uranus. it might be thought that these discoveries of ampère would be welcomed with great enthusiasm. as a matter of fact, however, new discoveries that are really novel always have, as almost their surest index, the fact that contemporaries refuse to accept them. the more versed a man is in the science in which the discovery comes, the more likely is he to delay his acceptance of the novelty. this is not so surprising, since, as a rule, new discoveries are nearly always very simple expressions of great truths that seem obvious once they are accepted, yet have never been thought of. they mean, therefore, that men who consider themselves distinguished in a particular science have missed some easily discoverable phenomenon or its full significance, and so, to accept a new discovery in their department of learning men must confess their own lack of foresight. it may be pointed out that the same thing happened with regard to ohm, only it was much more serious. years of ohm's life were wasted because of the refusal of his contemporaries to accept his "law" at his valuation. arago, in his life of ampère, recalls that when fresnel discovered the transverse character of waves of light, his observations created the same doubts and uncertainty in the same individuals who a few years later refused to accept ampère's conclusions. arago puts it, that as he was ambitious of a high place in the world of ideas, he should have expected to find his adversaries precisely those already occupying the highest places. ampère never looked on himself as a mere specialist in physical science, however, and it is extremely interesting to know that he dared to take sides in a discussion between cuvier and geoffroy-saint-hilaire, with regard to the unity of structure in organized beings. while the purely physical scientists mostly sat mute during the discussion, ampère took an active share in it, and ventured to subject himself to what perhaps, above all things, a frenchman dreads, the ridicule of his colleagues. arago thought that he held his own very well in this discussion, which involved some of the ideas that were afterwards to be the subject of profound study and prolonged investigation later in the nineteenth century, because of the announcement of the theory of evolution. after his discoveries in electricity ampère came to be acknowledged as one of the greatest of living scientists, and was honored as such by most of the distinguished scientific societies of europe. his work was not confined to electricity alone, however, and late in life he prepared what has been well called a remarkable work on the classification of the sciences. this showed that, far from being a mere electrical specialist or even a profound thinker in physics, he understood better probably than any man of his time the interrelations of the sciences to one another. he was a broad-minded, profound thinker in the highest sense of the words, and in many things seems to have had almost an intuition of the intimate processes of nature; a sharer in secrets as yet unrevealed, though he was at the same time an untiring experimenter, eminently successful, as is so evident in his electrical researches, in arranging experiments so as to compel answers to the questions which he put to nature. in the midst of all this preoccupation of mind with science and all the scientific problems that were working in men's minds in his time, from the constitution of matter to the nature of life, above all engaged in experimental work, he was a deeply religious man in his opinions and practices. he had indeed the simple piety of a child. during the awful period of the french revolution, he had some doubts with regard to religious truths; but once these were dispelled, he became one of the most faithful practical catholics of his generation. he seldom passed a day without finding his way into a church, and his favorite form of prayer was the rosary. frederick ozanam tells the story of how he himself, overtaken by misgivings with regard to faith, and roaming almost aimlessly through the streets of paris trying to think out solutions for his doubts, and the problems that would so insistently present themselves respecting the intellectual foundations of christianity, finally wandered one day into a church, and found ampère there in an obscure corner, telling his beads. ozanam himself was moved to do the same thing, for ampère was then looked upon as one of the greatest living scientists of france. under the magic touch of an example like this and the quiet influence of prayer, ozanam's doubts vanished, never to return. saint-beuve, whose testimony in a matter like this would surely be unsuspected of any tendency to make ampère more catholic than he was, in his introduction to ampère's essay on the philosophy of the sciences (paris, 1843), says: "the religious struggles and doubts of his earlier life had ceased. what disturbed him now lay in less exalted regions. years ago, his interior conflicts, his instinctive yearning for the eternal, and a lively correspondence with his old friend, father barrett, combined with the general tendency of the time of the restoration, had led him back to that faith and devotion which he expressed so strikingly in 1803.... during the years which followed, up to the time of his death, we were filled with wonder and admiration at the way in which, without effort, he united religion and science; faith and confidence in the intellectual possibilities of man with adoring submission to the revealed word of god." ozanam, to whose thoroughly practical christianity while he was professor of foreign literatures at the university of paris we owe the foundation of the conferences of st. vincent de paul, which so long anticipated the "settlement work" of the modern time and have done so much for the poor in large cities ever since, was very close to ampère, lived with him indeed for a while, said that, no matter where conversations with him began, they always led up to god. the great french scientist and philosopher used to take his broad forehead between his hands after he had been discussing some specially deep question of science or philosophy and say: "how great is god, ozanam! how great is god and how little is our knowledge!" of course this has been the expression of most profound thinkers at all times. st. augustine's famous vision of the angel standing by the sea emptying it out with a teaspoon, which has been rendered so living for most of us by botticelli's great picture, is but an earlier example of the same thing. one of ampère's greatest contemporaries, laplace, re-echoed the same sentiment, perhaps in less striking terms, when he declared that what we know is but little, while what we do not know is infinite. for anyone who desires to study the beautiful christian simplicity of a truly great soul, there is no better human document than the "journal and correspondence of ampère," published some years after his death. he himself wrote out the love story of his life; and it is perhaps one of the most charming of narratives, certainly the most delightful autobiographic story of this kind that has ever been told. it is human to the very core, and it shows a wonderfully sympathetic character in a great man, whose work was destined a few years later to revolutionize physics and to found the practical science of electro-dynamics. when ampère's death was impending, it was suggested that a chapter of the "imitation of christ" should be read to him; but he said, no! declaring that he preferred to be left alone for a while, as he knew the "imitation" by heart and would repeat those chapters in which he found most consolation. with the profoundest sentiments of piety and confidence in providence, he passed away june 10th, 1836, at marseilles. with all his solid piety, this man was not so distant from ordinary worldly affairs as not to take a lively interest in all that was happening around him and, above all, all that concerned the welfare of men. he was especially enthusiastic for the freedom of the south american republics, eagerly following the course of bolivar and canaris, and rejoicing at the success of their efforts. south american patriots visiting paris found a warm welcome at his hands, and also introductions that made life pleasant for them at the french capital. his house was always open to them, and no service that he performed for them seemed too much. ampère was beloved by his family and his friends; he was perhaps the best liked man among his circle of acquaintances in paris because of the charming geniality of his character and his manifold interests. he was kind, above all, to rising young men in the intellectual world around him, and was looked up to by many of them as almost a second father. his charity towards the poor was proverbial, and this side of his personality and career deserves to be studied quite as much as what he was able to accomplish for science. the beauty of his character was rooted deeply in the religion that he professed, and in our day, when it has come to be the custom for so many to think that science and faith are inalterably opposed, the lesson of this life, so deeply imbued with both of these great human interests, deserves to be studied. ozanam, who knew him best, has brought out this extremely interesting union of intellectual qualities, in a passage that serves very well to sum up the meaning of ampère's life. "in addition to his scientific achievements," says ozanam, "this brilliant genius has other claims upon our admiration and affection. he was our brother in the faith. it was religion which guided the labors of his mind and illuminated his contemplations; he judged all things, science itself, by the exalted standard of religion.... this venerable head which was crowned by achievements and honors, bowed without reserve before the mysteries of faith, down even below the line which the church has marked for us. he prayed before the same altars before which descartes and pascal had knelt; beside the poor widow and the small child who may have been less humble in mind than he was. nobody observed the regulations of the church more conscientiously, regulations which are so hard on nature and yet so sweet in the habit. above all things, however, it is beautiful to see what sublime things christianity wrought in his great soul; this admirable simplicity, the unassumingness of a mind that recognized everything except its own genius; this high rectitude in matters of science, now so rare, seeking nothing but the truth and never rewards and distinction; the pleasant and ungrudging amiability; and lastly, the kindness with which he met everyone, especially young people. i can say that those who know only the intelligence of the man, know only the less perfect part. if he thought much, he loved more." chapter ix. ohm, the founder of mathematical electricity. lord kelvin, himself one of the greatest of the electrical scientists of the nineteenth century, in commenting some years ago on ohm's law, said that it was such an extremely simple expression of a great truth in electricity, that its significance is probably not confined to that department of physical phenomena, but that it is a law of nature in some much broader way. re-echoing this expression of his colleague, professor george chrystal, of edinburgh, in his article on electricity in the encyclopedia britannica (ix. edition), says that ohm's law "must now be allowed to rank with the law of gravitation and the elementary laws of statical electricity as a _law of nature_ in the strictest sense." in a word, to these leaders and teachers in physical science of the generation after his, though within a comparatively short time after ohm's death, there has come the complete realization of the absolutely fundamental character of the discovery made by george simon ohm, when he promulgated the principle that a current of electricity is to be measured by the electromotive force, divided by the resistance in the circuit. the very simplicity of this expression is its supreme title to represent a great discovery in natural science. it is the men who reach such absolutely simple formulæ for great fundamental truths that humanity has come, and rightly, to consider as representing its greatest men in science. like most of the distinguished discoverers in science who have displayed marked originality, ohm came from what is usually called the lower classes, his ancestors having had to work for their living for as long as the history of the family can be traced. his father was a locksmith, and succeeded his father at the trade. the head of the family for many generations had been engaged at this handicraft. the first of them of whom there is any definite record was ohm's great-grandfather, wilhelm ohm, who was a locksmith at westerholt, not far from münster, in westphalia. wilhelm ohm's son, johann vincent, the grandfather of the great electrician, during his years as a journeyman locksmith had spent some time in france, and subsequently settled down in kadolzburg, a small suburb of erlangen, in bavaria. in 1764, he obtained the position of locksmith to the university of erlangen, and became a citizen of that municipality. both of his sons followed the trade of their father. the elder of these, johann wolfgang, worked at his trade as a journeyman in a number of the small cities of germany, and only after ten years of absence in what, because of the independent condition of the states now known as the german empire, were then considered foreign parts, did he wander back to his native place. on his return he received the mastership in his craft, and shortly after, about 1786, married a young woman named beck. george simon ohm, the electrical scientist, was the first child of this marriage, and was born march 16th, 1789. a second son, born three years later, also became distinguished in after-life for his mathematical ability. this younger brother, after having filled a number of teaching positions in various german educational institutions, was called as professor of mathematics to berlin, where he died in 1862. while their father, johann wolfgang ohm, followed his trade of locksmith for a living, like many another handicraftsman, he had many mental interests which he cultivated in leisure hours, and doubtless dwelt on while his hands were occupied with the mere routine work of his trade. it is curiously interesting to find that he devoted himself, during the hours he could spare from his occupation, to two such diverse intellectual occupations as mathematics and kant's philosophy; but they had no newspapers in those days, and a man, even of the artisan class, had some time for serious mental occupation. it might be thought, under these circumstances, that he would be but the most passing of amateurs in either of these subjects, and have a very superficial knowledge of them. this probably was true for his philosophy fad, for there are not many who have ever thought themselves more than amateurs in kantism, and even kant himself, i believe, thought that only one scholar ever really understood his system, and subsequently said he had some doubts even about that one; but in mathematics, the elder ohm seems to have attained noteworthy success. hofrath langsdorff, who was the professor of mathematics at erlangen during the last decade of the eighteenth century, and who was called to heidelberg in 1804, a fact that would seem quite enough to set beyond all question that his opinion in this matter may be taken as that of a competent judge, declared that the elder ohm's mathematical knowledge was far above the ordinary, and that he knew much more than the elements even of the higher mathematics. under these circumstances, it is not surprising that the father should have tried to encourage in both his boys a taste for mathematics, nor that he should have taken their mathematical instruction into his own hands and succeeded in making excellent mathematicians of them, even in their early years. he was so successful in this, indeed, that langsdorff, after a five-hour examination of the brothers when they were respectively 12 and 15, did not hesitate to declare that the erlangen locksmith's family was likely to be remembered as containing a pair of brothers who, for success in mathematics, might rival the famous bernoulli brothers, so well known at that time. this might be thought only a bit of neighborly praise, meant to warm a father's heart, yet it seems indeed to have been given quite seriously. certainly the event justified the prophecy. it is not surprising that, with such a forecast to encourage him, the father should have been ready to make every sacrifice to enable both his sons to prepare for the university. he continued his instruction of them, then, in mathematics, though he insisted at the same time that they should continue to keep up their occupation of locksmiths. in spite of his enthusiasm for mathematics, the old gentleman seems to have cherished no illusions with regard to the likelihood of pure mathematics ever serving them as a lucrative means of livelihood. it was a very satisfying intellectual interest, but a good trade was much more apt to prove their constant and substantial standby, unless, of course, the boys should actually prove to be the geniuses foretold. he seems to have realized to the full, coleridge's idea that, like the literary man, the mathematician should have some other occupation, though he might not go to the extent of following oliver wendell holmes' well-known addition to coleridge's formula, that he should, as far as possible, confine himself to the other occupation. the boys were given the opportunity to attend the gymnasium of erlangen, and seem to have had excellent success in their general studies besides mathematics.[28] in 1805, when george, the subject of our sketch, was sixteen years of age, he was graduated from the gymnasium and was ready for the university. on may 3d, 1805, he took his matriculation examination before the faculty of erlangen, electing the course of mathematics, physics and philosophy. later in life he told his friends that it was his deep love for the mathematics of these studies, and his persuasion that in them the student was brought in contact with the most important factors for absolute intellectual cultivation, that tempted him to take them up. to this he did not hesitate to add that there seemed to him to be some call of a higher voice, as if he had a vocation to dedicate himself to the cultivation and extension of these important subjects. he had been but some two years at the university, when for a time his studies had to be interrupted, partly for lack of means to pursue them, but partly because to his father, at least, the university course was not the source of such satisfaction as he had anticipated from his son's ability in mathematics. while ohm took his studies seriously, he was not by any means a mere "grind," and, indeed, the reputation which he acquired at the university for many of the qualities which make for a student's popularity among his fellows, was not such as would be likely to appeal to a very serious-minded father. ohm had acquired the fame of being one of the best dancers in the university; he was a brilliant billiard player and an unrivalled skater; all of which indicates that as a young man he had the physical development and acuteness of sense so necessary to enable him to gain prestige in all these sports. his father, in spite of his desire for his son's university career, was quite willing, then, at the end of september, 1808, to have him take up a position as teacher of mathematics in the school kept by pastor zehnder, in the canton berne, in switzerland. his very youthful appearance (he was only 18 years of age at the time, quite boyish looking and not even large for his years) caused the head of this institution no little surprise when he came with letters of introduction showing that he was to be the new teacher in mathematics. he could scarcely believe his eyes for a time. within a few months, however, he was convinced of the ability and the capacity for work of his new addition to the faculty, who seems to have given, from the very beginning, excellent satisfaction in his rather important position. ohm remained there some three years and a half and then moved to neunberg, where, independent of any educational institution, he set himself up as a private tutor in mathematics. his reason for so doing, as he himself tells, was that he wished to devote himself to the study of pure mathematics more than was possible in a regular teaching position. for this same reason also he refused a number of offers of positions as teacher of mathematics, which would ordinarily be considered quite flattering to a young man of only 21. another reason for refusing these offers was that he wished to perfect himself in french, and he had an excellent opportunity afforded him for conversation in this language in the conditions in which he was placed in neunberg. this last may seem an unusual reason, but it is characteristic of ohm's determination always to add to his power of understanding and expression. most young men in ohm's circumstances are so occupied with the thought of immediate success in life, that every possible abbreviation of their studies which will bring them nearer the opportunity to make their own living is likely to be heartily welcomed. ohm, however, realized that his own intellectual development was more important, especially at this time, even than getting on in the world; and for this reason his life has an added interest, not only for students themselves, but especially for those who have the best interests of students at heart and wish to be able to cite examples of how a little delay in getting at one's actual life-work, or, still more, at a remunerative occupation, may serve the very useful purpose of preparing a man so much the better to bring out his best intellectual possibilities when he does settle down to his work. at easter, 1811, ohm returned to erlangen, after having spent nearly two years perfecting himself in mathematics. he then finished his studies at the university, which seems not to have had the rule of requiring attendance for a definite period before coming up for its degree, but permitted him to take the examinations for the doctorate of philosophy on the strength of the work he had done, and gave him his degree on the 25th of october of the same year. with the drawing tighter of the bands of red tape in educational institutions in more recent years, ohm would have found it difficult to get his degree thus readily, though it was the university rather than the graduate who was eventually to be honored by it. after this, he became _privatdocent_ in mathematics at the university, and taught for three semesters. he met with marked success and became very popular with the students. after a year and a half, however, he gave up his university position to accept the professorship of mathematics at the realschule of bamberg. while ohm was here, the spirit of young germany awoke at the news of napoleon's unfortunate moscow campaign, in which his good fortune seemed to have definitely abandoned the great emperor of the french. most of the students of the universities of germany were deeply aroused by it, and those who know körner's and uhland's songs will have some idea of the depth of patriotic feeling that was stirred in thousands of young german hearts, who thought that now the opportunity for the fatherland to throw off the hated foreign yoke forever, had come at last. ohm debated with himself whether he should volunteer with the crowds of young men who were so bravely giving up everything, that the fatherland might be free. two things deterred him. if he went as a soldier, the material assistance he was able to give his father, and which, as the old man was now advancing in years and had spent most of his little savings upon his sons, was needed, would have to be given up. the other motive that kept him at home was, according to his german biographer in the allgemeine deutsche biographie, which we have been following for most of these details, because he felt that what he might be able to accomplish in other fields besides those of battle would eventually prove more beneficial for his fatherland, and indeed for the whole of humanity, than anything he could do as a soldier, even with the patriotic motive to help his country to throw off the yoke of the foreign usurper, which had proven so hard to bear. as we have already seen, it was a characteristic trait of ohm all through life, that he cherished the idea, which acquired almost the force of a premonition, that he was destined for great things. ohm continued his work as a teacher, then, instead of volunteering for the army; but, as might be expected, found the monotonous work of drilling young students in mathematics extremely unsatisfactory after a time. at the end of a year and a half of service at bamberg, he asked for a change in the conditions of his teaching position. instead of this, he received a transfer to the bamberg pro-gymnasium, where he was to teach latin until a regular teacher was appointed. in spite of his representations that the teaching position offered him was utterly at variance with his talents and his inclinations, he was compelled to accept this occupation for a time, though after some delay there came the assurance that, just as soon as possible, he would be assigned to a position as teacher of mathematics. in spite of his unfortunate circumstances, which would ordinarily be thought quite enough to keep him from serious work until he was settled in a position more suited to his tastes, he devoted himself to the writing of his first book during this time, and it was published by enke, in erlangen, in the spring of 1817. its title was, "outlines of the study of geometry as a means of intellectual culture." it comprised nearly two hundred pages, and gives the best possible insight into the ability and intelligence of the author, then a young man of only twenty-eight. as a sort of appendix, he gives a short sketch of his father, evidently introduced, not quite so much for the purpose of filially confessing his obligations to the old locksmith mathematician, nor with the idea of repaying some of his immeasurable debt for all the opportunities which the sacrifices of paternal affection had brought into the life of his sons, as to emphasize the excellent educational influence which his father's mathematical training had had upon his boys, and thus prove his thesis as to the value of mathematical studies in education. few filial tributes were ever more deserved or given more convincingly or with less suggestion of the conventional attitude of son to father. now that mathematics has come to occupy probably even a less prominent place in education than it did in ohm's time, though the burden of his complaint with regard to educational methods was that geometry was not used as a daily developmental subject as much as it should be, it may be interesting to recall some of the reasons which he advanced for urging its greater employment as an instrument for mental training. he thought that rational geometry should occupy a place of honor among our means of education. its quality as a mode of pure reasoning, though so closely related to the senses, made easy the transition from sensation to thought, which is such an important element in education; while its eminently simple character, though combined with definite demands upon the constructive faculties, made it appropriate in a high degree for the education of the young out of the field of merely imitative use of the intellect, into that of independent thinking and following out of ideas. "geometry," says ohm, "when properly taught, not with the fruitless drilling usually employed in teaching it, but in such ways as to secure deep personal attention, must take rank above all other branches of education, in enabling the student to break down the barrier which separates mere understanding from personal investigation. it forces a man whose thoughts were, up to this time, only the repetition of others' thoughts, to think for himself and to light for himself in his own mind the torches which enable him to see things clearly for himself, and not merely in the dimness of the half light that is thrown on them by the explanations of others." geometrical methods always had a special fascination for ohm, and practically all of his books and writings bear the impress of that close dependence of all parts on one another, that absolutely logical connection so characteristic of geometric accuracy of thought. his was the sort of mind likely to be benefited by mathematical training. such minds are, however, comparatively few, for most men are not rational in any sense of the word, that would make them dependent on logical reasoning. perhaps it is as well that they are not, for many of those lacking in logic or mathematical accuracy of thought and absoluteness of conclusion, still continue to accomplish much in the world of thought and do much valuable planning for the complexities of human affairs, where strict logic will not always solve the intricate yet incomplete problems that present themselves in human relations, where, indeed, individual unknown factors often make any but an approximate solution impossible. the opinions of the critics as to ohm's "outlines of geometry" were, as might be easily anticipated, not all flattering, since only a few of the critics were able to place themselves on the ideal standpoint of mathematical subjectivity from which he had written his book. king frederick william iii., of prussia, is said to have read it with much interest, however, and the royal pleasure doubtless drew attention to ohm's work, and may have contributed to the fact that, shortly after its publication, in september, 1817, ohm was invited by the royal consistory of cologne to take the position of head professor of mathematics and physics in the gymnasium of that city. this post was not only honorable, it was also highly remunerative, at least from the standpoint of teachers' wages as they were at that time, and ohm eagerly accepted the position. lamont, who was the director of the royal observatory at munich, has written a memorial of ohm which contains much valuable information. the body of it is an address delivered at a meeting of the faculty of the university of munich in honor of thaddeus siber and george simon ohm, but its value has been much enhanced by notes added before publication. siber was a benedictine who was professor in the philosophical department at munich, and died the same year as ohm. lamont says that he received his information as to intimate details of ohm's life from his brother, prof. martin ohm, of berlin. his sketch is, therefore, absolutely authoritative. lamont says with regard to this period of teaching at cologne: "ohm's first position of importance, in any way worthy of his talents, was the professorship of mathematics at the large jesuit gymnasium in cologne, in 1817, where the special gift that he possessed, of making the study of mathematics not only comprehensible but attractive to boys, brought him success and recognition." for nearly ten years ohm had the opportunity to put into practice in this jesuit gymnasium of the rhineland, the principles which he had so much at heart, for he was apparently given the full freedom of his department of teaching. he succeeded so well that he received wide and hearty recognition for his work. the mathematical studies of the cologne gymnasium stood higher than had ever been the case before, and this was all ohm's work. in the years before his teaching in the rhenish city, those who were distinguished in mathematics at the university of bonn had not come, as a rule, from cologne, but from other places; but now nearly all the mathematical prize-takers of bonn came from among ohm's students, and the best of the candidates for teaching positions in physics and mathematics had also, as a rule, had the advantages of his training. among the best of his scholars at this time was the afterwards well-known mathematician, lejeune-dirichlet, who taught in berlin with jacobi and steiner and succeeded gauss in göttingen. another of his most distinguished pupils was the astronomer heis, who occupied a modest position at the munster academy, but whose merits were above the post which he occupied, and who was distinguished for the excellency of his original work and his ability as a mathematician. one very interesting fact with regard to ohm's teaching, was that he was successful in catching and holding the interest not only of those of his students who were later to specialize in mathematics, but also of those who took up mathematics only as a subject for mental development, that was to be applied to other purposes later in life, and who found ohm's teaching of the greatest possible service. among these, the well-known german literary man, jacob venedey, of cologne, has expressed his affection and gratitude for his old teacher in a very striking way in his sketch of the cathedral at cologne, written in the banishment that came to so many vigorous german thinkers after the failure of the revolution of '48. in sending a copy of this to ohm, venedey says: "honored sir:--it will perhaps be a source of wonder to you that a student who apparently learned so little from you and your colleagues that he must now earn his bread by writing, should continue to cherish for you the liveliest gratitude. it is not the fault of mathematics that only the dimmest recollection of them remains with me. i shall never forget the personality of my professor, however, nor his ways and methods of teaching. i frequently recount your way with us boys, and i have the liveliest remembrance of your influence as a teacher. there are seldom weeks, there never is a month, when i fail to recall you. this is no mere compliment that i am paying to you, since i know you too well to think that flattery would mean anything to you, as it would be unworthy of you, and i for my part am not one of those who like to bandy compliments. i have often wished to meet you again, and a hundred times i thought that i saw you because some one at a distance had something that recalled you. i may say to you that you accomplished something for me in those days of teaching that i would not have been able to accomplish for myself. i can only think of you, then, with the highest feelings of reverence approaching what might well be called love. it will be a happy day, indeed, for me if i am ever in a position to make an hour of existence happier for you in any way." while ohm so zealously continued his instruction in both the upper classes of the gymnasium, he never lost from sight that higher aim of original research and investigation to which his genius disposed him. his choice of a subject for original investigation wavered for a long time between mathematics and physics, but, as he himself declared, his experience having shown him that authority was prone to play a large role in mathematics, while the field was more open for personal research and observation in physics, he resolved to take up that department for his special studies, consoled by the idea that physics cannot be properly pursued without mathematics. looking around to select a subject that would serve as a striking preface to his work in this department, though resolved at the same time to avoid one where he would be without rivalry, he found it all ready to his hand in what one of his contemporaries called the enigmatic phenomena of the galvanic current. this was to prove a fortunate selection, indeed, both for himself and the opportunity afforded his genius as well as for the science of electricity itself. he then began a series of investigations, always experimental in character, and with the mathematical explanations of the phenomena observed carefully worked out. accounts of these studies appeared from time to time in the year-book for chemistry and physics, issued by schweigger. after some ten years, these were collected together, or at least the principal portions of them, and published in the second half of the year-book for the year 1826. the apparatus for his experiments was fortunately at command in the gymnasium at cologne, but without his mechanical skill, obtained from his experience as a locksmith when a boy, it would have been impossible so to vary his experiments and modify his instruments as to bring out many of the phenomena that he succeeded in demonstrating. nearly all of the great discoverers in science have been handy men possessed of mechanical skill, and this is as true for medicine, as i have shown in "makers of modern medicine,"[27] though it might perhaps not be expected, as it is here in electricity, where it seems very natural. ohm felt, in 1826, that he had succeeded in exhausting nearly all that he could learn for himself, and as he wished to have opportunities for further study, and especially for further reading, he asked for an academic furlough that would carry him over the next year. the work that he had already accomplished was beginning to be appreciated, and after discussion of the papers that he had published up to that time, the requested furlough was promptly granted; and in a letter in which the school authorities praised his school work as well as his original investigations, they allowed him to take the sabbatic year for the furtherance of science on one-half the usual salary, though with the condition also that more would be allowed to him in case this seemed necessary and the conditions justified it. this furlough was perhaps the most important event in ohm's life. he employed it in bringing to a focus the ideas with regard to electricity which had been gradually worked out in his mind during the past ten years. in may, 1827, within six months after the beginning of his exclusive devotion to the subject, ohm's article on the mathematics of the galvanic current appeared. it proved a scientific achievement of the first rank, that was to be epoch-making in the domain of electricity. it settled the conditions under which electrical tension exists in various bodies, and made it clear that there is a fundamental law of electrical conduction which could be expressed by an easy, simple formula. ohm's preface to his little book, that was to work such a revolution in electricity and was to remain for all time one of the classics in this department of science, is typical of the man in many ways. its modesty could not very well be exceeded. its simplicity constitutes in itself an appeal to the reader's interest. i know nothing in the literature of the history of science quite like it in these regards, unless it be the preface of auenbrugger's little book on percussion, in which he laid the foundation of modern clinical diagnosis.[26] the two men have many more qualities in common than the authorship of modest prefaces to their books. both of them were geniuses whose names the aftertime will not willingly let die, and both of them accomplished their work apart from the stream of university life in their time, and met with a like fate in the neglect, for some time at least, by their distinguished colleagues of the important discoveries that they had made. ohm's preface deserves to be quoted because of its classic quality: "i herewith present to the public a theory of galvanic electricity as a special part of electrical science in general, and shall successively, as time, inclination and means permit, arrange more such portions together into a whole, if this first essay shall in some degree repay the sacrifice it has cost me. the circumstances in which i have hitherto been placed have not been suitable either to encourage me in the pursuit of novelties or to enable me to become acquainted with works relating to the same department of literature throughout its whole extent. i have, therefore, chosen for my first attempt a department of science in which i have the least to apprehend competition. "may the well-disposed reader accept whatever i have accomplished with the same love for science as that with which it is sent forth!--the author, berlin, may 1st, 1827." in his preface to the american edition of the "galvanic circuit investigated mathematically,"[25] mr. thomas d. lockwood, vice-president of the american institute of electrical engineers, said of this masterpiece of ohm's: "a sufficient reason for republishing an english translation of the wonderful book of professor g. s. ohm is the difficulty with which the only previous translation (that of taylor's scientific memoirs) is procurable. "besides this, however, the intrinsic value of the book is so great that it should be read by all electricians who care for more than superficial knowledge. "it is most remarkable to note, at this time, how completely ohm stated his famous law that the electromotive force divided by the resistance is equal to the strength of the current." with regard to the book as a whole, mr. lockwood says, after suggesting certain anticipations of ohm's ideas which had been made in the preceding century: "ohm's work stands alone, and, reading it at the present time, one is filled with wonder at the prescience, respect for his patience and prophetic soul, and admiration of the immensity and variety of ground covered by his little book, which is indeed his best monument." like many another great discovery in physical science, ohm's work failed to receive the immediate appreciation which it deserved. it cannot be said, however, that it failed to attract attention. it would be easier, indeed, to forgive the scientists of the day if this were true. not long after its appearance, abstracts from it were made by fechner in leipzig, by pfaff in erlangen, and poggendorff in berlin, which showed that these scientists understood very clearly the significance and comprehended the wide application of ohm's law as claimed by its author. from these men there was no question of hostile criticism. professor pohl, of the university of berlin, however, in the berlin "year-book of scientific criticism," did not hesitate to express his utter disagreement, and declared that ohm's work was fallacious and should be rejected. other writers of the time treated ohm's article more or less indifferently, as a merely conventional contribution to science. professor pohl's opinion was taken to represent the conclusions of the faculty of the university of berlin, especially noted for mathematical ability. this was to prove a serious hindrance to ohm in the university career which he had planned for himself. at berlin they had the ear of the minister of education, and it was not long before ohm felt that the criticisms of his work were making themselves felt in a direction unfavorable to him. not long after the appearance of his book, there came a disagreement between ohm and the educational authorities. ohm felt that this was due to failure to recognize the significance of his work, and that under the circumstances he could not hope for the appreciation that would provide him with the opportunities he deserved. he insisted on sending in his resignation as a teacher. nothing could change his determination in the matter, not even the pleas of his former scholars, and his resignation had to be accepted. ohm had hoped for a teaching position in a university. the minister of education declared that, while his work as a teacher had been accomplished with careful industry and diligence and conscientious attention to duty, the ministry regretted that, in spite of thorough appreciation of him and admiration for his excellent work as a scientist, they could not find for him a position outside of the gymnasium. how utterly trivial the conventional expressions sound, now that we know that they brought about for the time being the interruption of one of the most brilliant scientific careers in europe. of course, the geese cannot be expected to appreciate the swans, and it was not the minister's fault, but that of some of ohm's own colleagues. the next six years of his life, the precious years between 38 and 44, ohm had to give up the idea of teaching in a university, and devote himself to some private tutoring in berlin, with a stipend of about three hundred dollars a year, miserable enough, yet sufficient, as would appear, for ohm's simple mode of life. this he owed to the kindness of gen. radowitz, who employed him to teach mathematics in a military school in berlin. at the end of this time, when he was nearly 45 years of age, his unfortunate situation attracted the attention of king ludwig i., of bavaria, who offered him the chair of professor of physics at the polytechnic school in nuremberg, which had recently by royal rescript been raised to the status of a royal institute, with the same rank in educational circles as a lyceum for the study of humanities. here ohm's duties were shortly to be multiplied. he became the inspector of scientific instruction, after having occupied for some time the professorship of mathematics, and later became the rector of the polytechnic school, a position which he held for some ten years, fulfilling its duties with the greatest conscientiousness and fidelity. ohm continued his work at nuremberg for more than fifteen years. during this time, he succeeded in making his mark in every one of the departments of physics. he is usually considered as owing his reputation as an experimental and mathematical scientist to his researches in electricity. as a matter of fact, every branch of physics was illuminated by his work, and perhaps nothing shows the original genius of the man better than the fact that everything which he took up revealed new scientific aspects in his hands. the only wonder is that he should have remained so long in a subordinate position in the educational world at nuremberg, and received his appointment as university professor of physics at munich only in 1849. in the midst of the administrative educational work that came to him at nuremberg, ohm did not neglect original investigation, but somehow succeeded in finding time for experiment and study. having made a cardinal discovery in electricity, of the value of which surely no one was more aware than himself, ohm might have been expected, as soon as his new post gave him the opportunity, to devote himself quite exclusively to this department of science. instead, he turned for a time to the related subjects of sound, heat and light, devoting himself especially to their mathematics. he did this, as he said himself, to complete for his own satisfaction his knowledge of the scientific foundations of the imponderables, as heat, light and electricity were then called, but also because he wished, for the sake of his students, to get closely in touch with what had been accomplished by recent investigators in physics. it is almost a universal rule in science, that no matter how distinguished an investigator may be, he makes but one cardinal discovery. ohm, however, was destined, after having brilliantly illuminated electricity by the discovery of a great law, to throw nearly as bright a light on the domain of acoustics; and there is a law in this department of physics which is deservedly called by his name, though it is often associated with that of helmholtz. helmholtz himself was always most emphatic in his insistence on ohm's priority in the matter, and constantly speaks of the law in question by ohm's name. perhaps no better evidence of the breadth of ohm's interest in science, his supreme faculty for experimentation, or the originality of his investigating genius, can be found than the fact that he thus discovered, by experimental and mathematical methods, the solution to important problems in two such distinct departments of physical science as electricity and acoustics. before his time, the question of electrical resistance was absolutely insoluble. the problem in acoustics was not less obscure, as may be judged from the fact that, though some of the best physicists and mathematicians of europe during the eighteenth century--and there were giants in those days, among others, brook taylor in england, d'alembert in france, johann bernoulli and euler in germany, and finally, daniel bernoulli--had devoted themselves to its solution, it remained nevertheless unsolved. here, as in electricity, the simplicity of the solution which ohm found shows how direct were his methods of thinking and how thorough his modes of investigation. perhaps the most striking feature of ohm's work in acoustics, and, above all, his solution of an important problem in music, is the fact that he himself, unlike most of his german compatriots, had no ear for music and no liking for it. in his address delivered at the public meeting of the royal bavarian academy of sciences at munich, in march, 1889, the hundredth anniversary of the birth of ohm, eugene lommel, in discussing the scientific work of ohm, said: "inasmuch as his law in acoustics furnished the clearest insight into the hitherto incomprehensible nature of musical tones, it dominates the acoustics of to-day no less completely than ohm's law of the electric current dominates the science of electricity."[24] this law concerns the resolution of tones into their constituents. the ideas laid down by ohm were almost absolutely novel. they were so new that none of the workers in acoustics could think that ohm had made a great discovery. his law states that the human ear perceives only pendulum-like vibration as a simple tone. every other periodic motion it resolves into a collection of pendulum-like vibrations, which it then hears in the sound as a series of single tones, fundamentals and overtones. ohm arrived at this law from mathematical considerations, making use of fourier's series; for its experimental verification he was compelled to use the well-cultivated ear of a friend, inasmuch as he was himself, as we have said, quite devoid of musical appreciation. ohm's results were too distant from the accustomed ideas of investigators of sound at that time to be accepted by them. seebeck, who was one of the most prominent scientists of the time in acoustics, did not hesitate to criticise severely, just as pohl had made little of ohm's law of the electric current. while, however, foreigners were to teach german scientists the value of the advance that their great colleague in electricity had made, the privilege of pointing out the significance of his work in sound was to be a compatriot's good fortune. it was nearly a score of years, however, before this vindication was to take place. then helmholtz, a decade after ohm's death, furnished the experimental means which enabled even the unskilled ear to resolve a sound into its simple partial tones, and revolutionized the theory of music by his classic work, "the science of the perception of sound," which is based entirely on ohm's law of acoustics. ohm, in the appendix to his work, "the galvanic circuit treated mathematically," dared to suggest certain speculations with regard to the ultimate structure of matter. he said: "there are properties of space-filling matter which we are accustomed to look upon as belonging to it. there are other properties which heretofore we have been inclined to look upon as accidents or guests of matter, which abide with it from time to time. for these properties man has thought out causes, if not foreign, at least extrinsic, and they pass as immaterial independent phases of nature under the names light, heat, electricity, etc. it must be possible so to conceive the structure of physical bodies that, along with the properties of the first class, at the same time and necessarily those of the second shall be given." it is all the more interesting to come upon ohm's speculations on this subject of the ultimate constitution of matter, because within a few years of his time, pasteur, then only a comparatively young man, had also been taken with the idea of getting at the constitution of matter by his observations upon dissymmetry, which he abandoned after a time, however, because he found other and more practical subjects to devote himself to, though he never gave up the thought that he might some time return to them and perhaps discover the underlying principles of matter from observations in this subject. it was not until the last five years of his life, when ohm was already past sixty, that he was to enjoy the satisfaction of an ambition which he had cherished from his earliest years as a teacher, and which, in spite of untoward circumstances, had been a precious stimulus in his work. for some twenty years he had hoped some time to be able to devote himself to the investigation of the physical constitution of matter. unfortunately, when the opportunity came, the manifold duties of his teaching position prevented the completion of his great work, and doubtless robbed his generation and ours of a precious heritage in the mathematics of the structure of matter, which would doubtless have been of the greatest possible value. it is of course idle to speculate as to what he might have accomplished if left to his original investigation. the problem which he now took up was much more difficult than any of his preceding tasks. it would have seemed, however, quite as hopeless to those who lived before ohm's laws, to look for a single complete law of the resistance of the electrical current in the circuit or of the overtones in music, as it is to us to think of a simple mathematical formula for atomic relations. what ohm accomplished in these other cases by his wonderful power of eliminating all the unnecessary factors in the problem, would surely have helped him here. the main power of genius, after all, is its faculty of eliminating the superfluous, which always obscures the real question at issue to such a degree for ordinary minds, that they are utterly unable to see even the possibility of a simple solution of it. art has been defined as the elimination of the superfluous; discovery in science might well be defined in the same terms. under the circumstances, we cannot help regretting that ohm was not allowed the time and the opportunity to work out the thoughts with which he was engaged. it would have been even more satisfactory if the precious years of his ripe middle age had not been wasted in trivial, conventional tasks, so that he might have been permitted to devote his academic leisure, sooner than was actually the case, to the problem which had been so constantly in mind since he made his great generalization in the laws of electricity. unfortunately, most of ohm's time had now to be taken up with his teaching duties. only for his self-sacrifice in the matter, his success as a teacher would doubtless have been less marked. science itself must have suffered, however, from this pre-occupation of mind with a round of conventional duties, since ohm could no longer devote his time to original research. in the meantime, his great discovery was coming to its own. during these ten years since the publication of his book, a number of distinguished physicists in every country--poggendorff, and especially fechner, in germany, jacobi and lenz in russia, henry in america, rosenkoeld in sweden, and de heer in holland--took up the problems of the current strength of electricity as set forth in ohm's law, and confirmed his conclusion by their investigations along similar lines. the french physicist and member of the academy of sciences, pouillet, applied ohm's ideas to thermo-electricity and pyro-electricity, employing his terms and bringing his work to the notice of foreigners generally, so that a translation of ohm's work was made into english. ohm's work at once attracted the attention that it deserved in england. the royal society conferred on him the copley medal, which had been founded as a reward for important discoveries in the domain of natural knowledge. before ohm's time only one other german scientist, carl friedrich gauss, of göttingen, had ever been thus honored. the words employed by the royal society in conferring this distinction showed how thoroughly the representatives of english science appreciated ohm's work. they said that he had set forth the laws of the electric current very clearly, and thus accomplished the solution of a problem which was as important in the realm of applied science as it had hitherto been in the schools. recognition now became the rule, and ohm had the satisfaction of having all his colleagues in the physical sciences acknowledge the significance of his work. ohm's recognition, then, came from foreigners first, and only afterwards from his fellow-countrymen. immediate appreciation might have meant much for him, and even this tardy recognition gave him renewed courage and new strength to go on with his work. he gave effective expression at once to his gratitude and to the stimulus that had been afforded him by the dedication to the royal society of london of the great work, "contributions to molecular physics," which he planned. the year after he received the copley medal, he was made a foreign associate of the royal society of england, and from this time on his discoveries began to find their way into text-books as fundamental doctrines in the science of electricity. german and foreign scientific bodies followed the english example so happily set for them, and began to give him their recognition as a physicist of the first rank. ohm's further observations were, for a time, not accepted so readily as his first law. the reason for this was that ohm was so far ahead of his times that there was not as yet in existence a suitable electroscope to test their truth. finally, the invention of an exact electrometer by dellman, and its application by professor kohlrausch, of marburg, made the experimental confirmation of all his work quite as significant as for his law. it is a striking reflection on ohm's career, though not very encouraging for the discoverer in science, to realize that some important discoveries, which thus proved eventually quite as epoch-making as his law, had lain for practically ten years neglected, and their magnificently endowed author had been allowed to eke out a rather difficult existence in teaching, not in the important department of science in which he was so great a master, but in certain conventional phases of mathematics which might very well have been taught by almost anyone who knew the elements of higher mathematics. ohm's case is not a solitary phenomenon in the history of science, however, but rather follows the rule, that a genuine novelty is seldom welcomed by the leaders of science at any given moment; but, on the contrary, rather decried, and its discoverer always frigidly put in his proper place by those who resent his audacity in presuming to teach _them_ something new in their _own_ science. having thus illuminated electricity and acoustics, ohm turned his attention to the department of optics. his power to simplify difficulties and get at the heart of obscure problems is illustrated by his contribution to this subject, made while he was professor of physics in the university of munich. optics had early engaged his attention, and in 1840 he published a paper in poggendorff's annalen, bearing the title, "a description of some simple and easily managed arrangements for making the experiment of the interference of light." with his usual faculty for simplifying things, he showed that the interference prisms which were made so carefully by the french could be constructed from common plate-glass. he was indeed able to demonstrate that a simple strip from the edge of a piece of such glass could be used for this purpose. he pursued this absorbing subject until 1852-53, and then set himself the difficult task of developing a general theory of these phenomena of interference which are so rich in form and color. the problem was indeed alluring, but some of the best minds in nineteenth century science in europe had been engaged at it, without bringing much order out of the chaos, and it would have looked quite unpromising to anyone but ohm, to whom, the greater the difficulty of a subject, the more the attraction it possessed. with his wonderful power of synthesis and his capacity to discover a clue to the way through a maze of difficulties, ohm succeeded in finding a formula of great simplicity and beauty and which covered all the individual colors. it was only after he had reached his conclusions and was actually publishing his results, that the german scientist found that he had been anticipated by professor langberg, of christiania, in norway, with regard to the principal points of his investigation, though not as to all its details. professor langberg[23] had published his article in the norwegian magazine for natural sciences in 1841, and an abstract of it had appeared the following year in the first complementary volume (erganzungsband) of poggendorff's annalen. of this publication by professor langberg, ohm had known absolutely nothing. he had even gone to some pains to find out, before undertaking his own investigation, whether anything had been published on the matter. at the sessions of the german naturalists' association, held in 1852, he had called the attention of many prominent physicists and mineralogists who were present at that meeting to the colored concentric ellipses which occur in connection with certain crystals used in the investigation of polarization. he asked whether these had ever been seen before, or whether anything had been written about them. all of those whom he consulted declared that they had not observed them, and that, so far as they knew, nothing had been published with regard to them. accordingly, ohm proceeded with his work, only to find, after its formal publication, that he had been almost entirely anticipated and that the merit of original discovery belonged to his norwegian colleague. when his attention was called to the publication, ohm was perfectly ready to acknowledge the priority of professor langberg's claim and to give him all the credit that belonged to his discovery. at the beginning of the second part of his article, he said: "i know not whether i should consider it lucky or unlucky that the extremely meritorious work of langberg should have entirely escaped me and should have been lost to general recollection. certain it is that, if i had had any knowledge of it before, my present investigations, which were occasioned by this elliptical system, would not have been made and i would have been spared a deal of work. in that case, however, a number of other and scarcely less important scientific principles would have remained hidden for the time being at least. under the circumstances, the profound truth of the old proverb, 'man proposes, but god disposes,' has been brought home to me again. what originally set me investigating this subject now proves to be without interest for science, since the problem has been solved before. on the other hand, a number of things of which i had no hint at all at the beginning of my researches, have come to take its place and compensate for it." perhaps nothing will show better than this, ohm's disposition toward that providence which overrules everything, and somehow, out of the mixture of good and evil in life, accomplishes things that make for the great purpose of creation. his eminently inquiring attitude towards science, which had on three occasions led him to tackle problems that had puzzled the greatest of experimental scientists, has been shown. he must have been, above all things, a man of a scientific turn of mind, in the sense that he was not ready to accept what had previously been accepted even by distinguished authorities in science, but was ready to look for new clews that would lead him to simpler explanations than any that had been offered before. in spite of this inquiring disposition, so eminently appropriate to the scientist, and constituting the basis of his success as an experimenter and scientific synthesist, he seems to have no doubts about the old explanation of the creation nor the all-wise directing power of a divine providence. this is all the more interesting, because already the materialistic view of things, which claims to know nothing except what can be learned from the matter around us, had begun to make its way in europe, especially in scientific circles, but ohm remained untouched by it. another example of this same state of mind in ohm is to be found in the preface to his last great work, his contribution to molecular physics, in which he hoped to sum up all that he could discover and demonstrate mathematically with regard to the constitution of matter. he knew that he was taking up a work that would require many years and much laborious occupation of mind. he realized, too, that his duties as professor of physics and mathematics as well as the directorship of the museum and the consultancy to the department of telegraphs, left him comparatively little time for the work. he foresaw that he might not be able to finish it, yet hoped against hope that he would. in the preface to the first volume, he declared that he would devote himself to it at every possible opportunity, and that he hoped that _god would spare him to complete it_. this simplicity of confidence in the almighty is indeed a striking characteristic of the man. the work which ohm began thus with such humble trust in god, was to contain his conclusions concerning the nature, size, form and mode of action of the atom, with the idea of being able to deduce, by the aid of analytical mechanics, all the phenomena of matter. unfortunately, he was spared only to write the first, an introductory volume which bears the title, "elements of the analytical geometry of space on a system of oblique co-ordinates." this did not touch, as he confesses, the ultimate problem he had in mind. the second volume was to have contained the dynamics of the structures of bodies, and a third and fourth were to be devoted to the physical investigation of the atom and its relation to other atoms and matter in general. ohm devoted himself, however, with too much ardor to his duties as teacher, to allow himself to give the time to his own work that would have enabled him to finish it. among other things that he did for his students was to complete a text-book of physics. he confesses that he had always felt an aversion to working at a text-book, and yet was impelled to take up the task because he felt that in electricity, in sound and in optics, the only way in which his students would get his ideas, many of which were the result of his own work, was to have a text-book by himself, and he felt bound in duty to do this for them, as he had accepted the position of instructor. he succeeded in completing the book very rapidly by lithographing his lectures immediately after delivery and distributing copies to his classes. it is almost needless to say that the work was, in its way, thoroughly original. it was accomplished with the ease with which he was always able to do things; but, unfortunately, the strain of the work told on him at his years much more than when, as a younger man, he was able to work without fatigue. he acknowledges, at the close of the preface, that the task has been too great, and that he should not have undertaken its accomplishment, and especially not in the hasty way in which it was done. this preface was dated easter, 1854. within a few months, ohm's strength began to fail, and the end was not long in coming. according to the translation of the address of lommel, as it appeared in the annual report of the smithsonian institute for 1851, ohm died as the result of repeated attacks of epilepsy, on july 6th, 1854. the date is correct; the mode of death, however, is surely reported under a misunderstanding. the physician who hears of epilepsy is prone at once to inquire as to its origin, and to wonder how long the patient had been suffering from it. there are no reports of previous attacks of epilepsy, and the sudden development of genuine epilepsy in fatal form at the age of 65 is quite unlikely. his german biographer, bauernfeind, who is quoted by lommel as one of the authorities for the details of ohm's life, and who was a pupil and intimate friend, gives quite a different account. up to the very last day of his life, ohm continued his lectures. his duties as professor appealed to his conscience as no others. on thursday, july 6th, 1854, he delivered his last lecture. that night at ten o'clock he died. the cause of his death was given as a repeated apopleptic stroke. it is evidently because of the occurrence of more apopleptic seizures than one, that the assertion of epilepsy was introduced unto the account of his death. for some days before his death, ohm had been very weak, but had continued to fulfil every duty. to us in the modern time, it may seem surprising that there should be lectures in a university in july; but the second semester of the university year in germany is not supposed to come to a close until the first of august, when the summer vacation begins, and lectures are continued until well on into july. the manner of ohm's death, as told by his biographer friend, at once corrects the idea of epilepsy, and also shows that his passing came without any of the preliminary suffering that makes death a real misfortune. a half hour before his death, he had been entertaining some friends with lively recollections of the events of his early life in cologne and treves. he had been quite gay in the stories that he told, and almost boyishly happy in the recollections of those early days. for one for whom duty had meant so much in life, and who had always tried so faithfully to fulfil it, no happier call to higher things could possibly be imagined than that which came to ohm. on the following sunday he was followed to the grave by numbers of friends, by all his colleagues and by most of the students of the munich university. the university felt that it had suffered a great loss, and no signs of its grief were felt to be too much. ohm was buried in the old munich graveyard, where his bones still rest, beneath the simple memorial not unworthy of the modest scientist who did his work patiently and quietly, yet with never-failing persistency; who cared not for the applause of the multitude, and accomplished so much quite independently of any of the ordinary helps from others and from great educational institutions that are often supposed to be almost indispensably necessary for the accomplishment of original scientific work. ohm's personal appearance will be of interest to many of those to whom his discoveries have made him appeal as one of the great original thinkers in modern science. he was almost small in stature, even below middle height; and those who remember virchow, may get something of an idea of his appearance when told that those who saw ohm and knew virchow, considered that there was a certain reminder of each other in the two men. according to his intimate friend and biographer, he had a very expressive face, with a high, somewhat doubled forehead. his eyes were deep and full of intelligence. his mouth, very sharply defined, betrayed, at the first glance, at once the earnest thinker and the pleasant man of friendly disposition. he was always restful and never seemed to be distracted. he talked but little, but his conversation was always interesting, and, except when he was in some particularly serious mood, was always likely to have a vein of light humor in it. he did not hesitate to introduce a sparkle of wit now and then into his lectures, and especially knew how gently to make fun of mistakes made by his pupils, yet in such a way as not to hurt their feelings, but to make them realize the necessity for more careful thought before giving answers, and for appreciating principles before speculating on them. he was particularly careful not to do anything that would offend his students in any way, and it is to this care that the success of his method of teaching has been especially attributed. his habits of life were from the beginning of his career simple, and they continued to be so until the end. he was never married, and he himself attributed this to the unfavorable condition of his material resources at the beginning of his career as a teacher, and the fact that the improvement in these did not really come until he was well past fifty years of age. he once confessed to a friend that he missed those modest pleasures of family life which do so much to give courage and strength for the greater as well as the lesser sufferings of life. most of his years of teaching he spent in boarding houses. only after his appointment to the professorship at munich was he able to have a dwelling for himself, which was presided over by a near relative. ohm is remembered as a teacher rather than as an educational administrator. his pupils recall him as one who was able to be eminently suggestive, while at the same time he succeeded in making it easy to acquire the details of information. the didactic lecture, as a method of teaching, did not appeal to him, and his success was due to the application of quite other methods. he realized how much personal influence meant, and the peculiarity of his system of teaching was an almost uninterrupted lively personal intercourse with his pupils. demonstrations and exercises at the board always occupied the first half of his two-hour lesson, and only the other half was devoted to the setting forth of new matter. in this way, ohm succeeded not only in influencing each student according to his personal endowments, but he also began the training of future teachers by giving them a living example of what their work should be. the success of ohm as a teacher was recognized on all sides. his attitude towards his scholars was very different from that which was assumed by many teachers. instead of being a mere conveyer of scientific information, he was himself "a high priest of science," as one of his pupils declared, supplying precious inspiration, and not merely pointing out the limits of lessons and finding out whether they were known, but making work productively interesting, while neglecting none of the details. his pupils became distinguished engineers, and as this is the period in which the state railroads were being built, there was plenty of opportunity for them to apply the instruction they had received. not only were the reports of the royal commission of inspection repeated evidence of ohm's success as a teacher, but the technical schools which were under the care of ohm's disciples soon came to be recognized as far above the average, and as representing not only the successful teaching of technics on his part, but also the influence that his example as a teacher had in forming others to carry on the work. how much ohm was beloved by those who knew him best can be properly appreciated from the following passage from the panegyric delivered in munich in 1855, not long after his death, by professor lamont, who had known him intimately: "nature," he said, "conferred upon ohm goodness of heart and unselfishness to an unusual degree. these precious qualities formed the groundwork of all his intercourse with his fellows. despite the underlying strength of his character, which kept him faithfully at work during all his career, whenever there was question of merely personal advantage to himself, he preferred to yield to pressure from without, rather than rouse himself to resistance, and he thus avoided all bitterness in life. the unfortunate events which forced him, during the early part of his career, from an advantageous position back into private life, did not produce any misanthropic feelings in him, and when later a brilliant recognition gave him that rank in the world of science which by right belonged to him, his simplicity of conduct was not in any way modified, nor was the modesty of his disposition at all altered." in a word, ohm was one of those rare geniuses whose magnanimity placed him above the vicissitudes of fortune. his power to do original work was not disturbed by the opposition which a really new discoverer invariably meets, but his unfailing equanimity was just as little exalted into conceit and pretentiousness by the praise which so justly came to him once the real significance of his scientific work dawned upon the world. with the realization of all that ohm's work meant in the department of electricity, it is easy to understand how his name deserves a place in the science for all time. in order permanently to honor his memory, the international congress of electricians, which met at paris in 1881, confirmed the action of the british association of 1861, by giving the name _ohm_ to the unit of electrical resistance. this is an ideal monument to the great worker. it is as simple and modest a reward as even he would have wished, expressing as it does, the gratitude of succeeding generations of scientists for all time. footnotes: [23] ohm's brother, martin ohm, deserves a passing word, because his life is characteristically different in certain ways and because, above all, it represents academic success, while ohm's was almost an academic failure. he finally received the professorship in mathematics at berlin, and came to be considered as one of the greatest professors of the subject in europe. their careers form typical examples of the fact, often notable in history, that talent finds a ready welcome in the academic world, while genius is often neglected, and indeed may be, and often is, the target for bitter opposition. the younger ohm's writings are mainly with regard to mathematics, but nearly always from some general rather than special standpoint, and very often with regard to the educational side of the subject. his first book was on analytic and higher geometry in their elements. he then wrote class text-books of mathematics and mechanics. one of his works, the spirit of mathematical analysis and its relation to a logical system, because of its value as an educational document attracted widespread attention. this book, translated by ellis into english, was published in london in 1845. one of martin ohm's earlier books should be of special interest to educators because of its subject. its rather lengthy title is, "an attempt to formulate a short, fundamental, clear method to enable those without a taste for mathematics to learn the mathematics necessary for the higher and technical schools." [24] fordham university press, 1907. [25] makers of modern medicine, fordham university press, new york, 1907. [26] new york, van nostrand company, 1891. [27] published in the annual report of the smithsonian institute for the year 1891, washington, 1893. [28] in the address on the scientific work of george simon ohm, published by the smithsonian institute in 1891, this name is translated sangberg. in the article by baurenfeind, in the allegmeine deutsche biographie, the name is spelled langberg. the form of the old german l may have suggested the letter s, or it may have slipped in as a typographical error. chapter x. faraday. the maxim current among european scientists, that it is well to wait before accepting any scientific discovery to see what will be said about it on the other side of the rhine, throws a rather curious sidelight on the supposed absoluteness of scientific knowledge. gallic enthusiasm or german subtlety may evolve plausible theories that look like scientific discoveries, but the destructive criticism of the neighbor nation usually saves the scientific world from deception. not infrequently, the english-speaking scientists held the balance between these rivals in the intellectual world, and their adhesion to either party or side of a question secured its dominance. when all three, germans and french and english, are agreed as to the value of a scientific discovery, then it may be looked upon as having some of the absoluteness, or at least possesses for the moment the finality of scientific truth. if this triple agreement be taken as the criterion of the significance of a great scientist's work, then must michael faraday be considered as without doubt one of the greatest scientists of our time, and probably the greatest experimental scientist that the world has known. [illustration: michael faraday] dubois reymond, in berlin, declared faraday "the greatest experimentalist of all times, and the greatest physical discoverer that ever lived." professor martius said before the academy of sciences at munich, "deservedly has faraday been called the greatest experimenter of his epoch, and that the greatest epoch of scientific experimentation down to our time." dumas, the french chemist, in the panegyric delivered before the french academy of sciences, declared that faraday was "the greatest scientific scholar that the academy ever possessed." in order to give a picture of what he had accomplished in electricity, added dumas, one would have to write a complete treatise on that subject. "there is nothing in this department of science that faraday has not investigated completely or very materially modified. much of this chapter of our modern science is his creation and belongs undeniably to him." beside these testimonies from french and german scientific contemporaries must be placed tyndall's appreciation, which sets forth his brother scientist's merits. "take him all in all," he said, "it must be admitted, i think, that michael faraday was the greatest experimental scientist that the world has ever seen." nor did these magnificent appreciations of faraday cease when the enthusiasm for his memory, immediately after his death, had faded somewhat into sober realization of his merits. when dumas summed up faraday in the first faraday lecture of the english chemical society, he said: "faraday was a type of the most fortunate and the most accomplished of the learned men of our age. his hand, in the execution of his conceptions, kept pace with his mind in designing them; he never wanted boldness when he undertook an experiment, never lacked resources to insure success, and was full of discretion when interpreting results. his hardihood, which never halted once he had undertaken a task, and his wariness, which felt its way carefully in adopting a received conclusion, will ever serve as models for the experimentalist." it is evident that the life of faraday should be of supreme interest for a generation that is mainly interested in experimental science, and it so happens that his career contains many other sources of interest; for faraday was a self-made man, who owed very little to anyone but himself and his own genius. besides, he was a deep thinker with regard to all the problems of human life as well as those of science, and while he was a genial, kindly friend to those near him, the charming associate whom scientific intimates always welcomed, he had no illusions with regard to life being the end of all things, but looked confidently to the hereafter, and shaped his life here from that point of view. michael faraday was born at newington butts, now called stoke newington, an outskirt of london, in surrey, september 22d, 1791. his father was a journeyman blacksmith whose health was not very good, and as a consequence, the family suffered not a little from poverty. both his parents were noted for their good habits, industrious lives and deep religious feelings. in spite of their poverty, as is much oftener the case than is sometimes thought, their children were brought up very carefully and had a precious training in high principles. like most of his great colleagues in scientific discovery, faraday had to begin to earn his livelihood early in life. of educational opportunities he had practically none. he learned to read and write, and probably had a certain slight training in doing simple sums in arithmetic, but that was the extent of his formal teaching, and much of that he got at home. he had to help in the support of his family, and so it seemed fortunate that not far away from his home there was a bookstore and bindery, the owner of which became interested in the faradays and took michael as an errand boy when he was scarcely thirteen years of age. it was here that the future scientist began his education for himself and, strange as it may seem, laid the deep foundation of his knowledge of science. for the first year he carried newspapers around to the customers, and did his work so faithfully that at the end of this time the book-binder offered to take him as an apprentice to the trade, without the usual premium which used to be rather strictly required for teaching boys their trades at that time. faraday accepted this offer, but proved to be interested much more than in the outsides of the books he bound. whatever of leisure there was he took advantage of to read a number of works on experimental science that happened to be in the shop. luckily for him, some of these were classics. as an introduction to chemistry, he had mrs. marcet's "conversations on chemistry" and robert boyle's "notes about the producibleness of chimicall principles." he was even more interested in electricity than in chemistry, however, and lyons' "experiments on electricity" and the article on electricity in the encyclopedia britannica, whetted his interest and made the boy wish for more of such information. there probably could not be a better proof of the fact that, a man who really has intellectual interests will find the material with which to satisfy them, in spite of untoward circumstances, than this boyish experience of faraday. it is a curious anticipation of faraday's after-career that he at once began to demonstrate by personal experiment some of the statements that he found in the books. he procured a stock of chemicals as far as his meagre salary would allow, and constructed a practical electrical machine, though he had nothing better than a large glass bottle to serve as a cylinder for it. when not yet fourteen, he noticed an advertisement of a set of lectures on natural philosophy. he was at once taken with the idea of going to them, but the price of admission, one shilling, seemed to place them entirely beyond him. his elder brother, who followed his father's trade of blacksmith, had more money than he, and, when properly cajoled, was persuaded to provide the necessary shillings, and so faraday got to the lectures. elder brothers do not often have to lend shillings to their juniors for admission to scientific lectures now any more than in faraday's time, so that the incident seems worth noting. in attendance at these lectures, faraday not only learned much that was new to him in science, but met a number of earnest fellow-students and formed some life-long friendships. he took copious notes, and afterwards wrote them out in a fine, legible hand, making excellent drawings in perspective of the apparatus employed in the experiments. his notes were so extensive that faraday bound them himself, in four volumes, with an index. these volumes are still preserved in the library of the royal institution as one of the precious treasures among its faraday relics.[30] the whole story of these early years of faraday's life is a series of illustrations of how a young man without the necessary opportunities for his favorite studies can make them for himself. everything seemed to be against his acquiring a thorough knowledge of science, yet he succeeded in creating for himself the equivalent of a good scientific course out of his meagre chances to hear lectures and read books on his favorite subject in the intervals of a busy life as book-seller and book-binder. things did not always continue to run along as pleasantly in life for young faraday as while he was working for his book-binder friend as an apprentice. with the conclusion of his apprenticeship he became a journeyman book-binder, and his first employer proved to be a hard task-master. it did not matter how much work faraday did or how well, it never quite satisfied this french émigré, until it is no wonder that faraday looked for another occupation. for a time, he had the congenial occupation of acting as amanuensis for sir humphry davy, who, while working on a new violent explosive, probably chloride of hydrogen, met with an accident which prevented him from using his eyes for some time. this occupation, pleasant and even alluring as it was, lasted only for a few days, however. it had the fortunate result of suggesting to faraday to apply to sir humphry davy in person for a position not long after, and it eventually brought him the position of assistant at the royal institution. his anxiety to secure this post had been increased by the growing realization that a business life was not to his liking. it seemed to him a waste of time, or worse, for a man to give himself up to the making of money. even thus young he had the ambition to add to the knowledge possessed by mankind, and the insatiable desire to increase the opportunities of others to learn whatever they were interested in. accordingly, he set about finding the chance to devote himself entirely to science. in writing years after to dr. paris, he says: "my desire to escape from trade, which i thought vicious and selfish, and to enter into the service of science, which i imagined made its pursuers amiable and liberal, induced me at last to take the bold and simple step of writing to sir humphry davy, expressing my wishes, and a hope that, if an opportunity came in his way, he should favor my views; and at the same time i sent the notes i had taken of his lectures." davy called, not long after, on one of his friends, who was at the time honorary inspector of the models and apparatus at the royal institution, and with the letter before him asked: "here is a letter from a young man named faraday; he has been attending my lectures and wants me to give him employment at the royal institution. what can i do?" "do?" replied the inspector; "put him to wash bottles. if he is good for anything, he will do it directly; if he refuses, he is good for nothing." "no, no," replied davy, "we must try him with something better than that." davy wrote a kind reply, and arranged for an interview with young faraday. in this, however, he candidly advised him to stick to his business, telling him very plainly that "science was a harsh mistress, and, from a pecuniary point of view, but poorly rewarded those who devoted themselves to her service." he apparently put an end to all further consideration of the subject by promising faraday the book-binding work of the institution, and his own besides. faraday was not satisfied to go back to the book-shop, even with all this kindly patronage, but there was nothing else for it, and so for a time he continued at his duties and spent his spare moments reading science and his evenings at scientific lectures, or in remaking the experiments he had seen and others suggested by them, and above all in rewriting the notes that he had taken. there is no livelier picture in all the history of science, of how a man will, in spite of all obstacles, get the things he cares for, if he really cares for them, than that of faraday thus teaching himself science in the face of what seems almost insurmountable discouragement. fortunately, not long after he had been thus forcibly called to the attention of sir humphry davy, the former assistant in the laboratory of the royal institution not only neglected his duties, but became a source of considerable annoyance. his misfortune proved faraday's opportunity. he was offered the post. the salary was only twenty-five shillings a week, but he accepted it very willingly. one might think that at last his scientific career was opened for him, but his new post was no sinecure. the labors required from him, indeed, were so manifold that it is somewhat surprising that he found any time for his own improvement. his duties as set forth in writing were: "to attend and assist the lecturers and professors preparing for and during lectures. where any instruments or apparatus may be required, to attend to their careful removal from the model room and laboratory to the lecture room, and to clean and replace them after being used, reporting to the managers such accidents as shall require repair, a constant diary being kept by him for that purpose. that in one day in each week he be employed in keeping clean the models in the repository, and that all the instruments in the glass cases be cleaned and dusted at least once within a month." the previous assistant had complained of the amount of work that was required of him. it is easy to see that his duties were rather exacting and time-taking. faraday did not confine himself to them, though he did perform them with great assiduity. his interest in experimental chemistry was soon noted, and he was allowed to take his share in the experiments going on in the laboratory. some of his first work was the extraction of sugar from beet-root; but he was soon to have abundant experience of the deterring side of chemistry. not long after he began his work in the laboratory, he had to manufacture some bisulphide of carbon, one of the most nauseating of compounds. he found it disgusting enough as an experience, but the study of it brought its compensation. it was much more than foul odors that faraday had to encounter, for davy was still occupying himself with the study of the explosives, in the investigation of which he had been injured the previous year. faraday suffered from four or five explosions during the course of the first month or two of his employment. indeed, the substance with which they were experimenting proved so unreliable in this regard that, after a second rather serious injury to davy, further study of it was given up. once faraday had secured his post at the royal institution, his life-work was before him, and he became deeply engaged in scientific speculations, investigations and experiments of all kinds. the young man who had found and made opportunities when they were so distant and difficult, now made use of all that were so ready at hand. he did not confine himself to his laboratory work, however, but seems always to have felt that the contact of minds engaged along the same lines was the best possible way to be stimulated to knowledge. he applied and was admitted as member of the philosophical society of london, an association of some two score of men occupied with many things during the day, but interested in science, so far as they could get the books and the opportunities for its study. they met every wednesday evening and discussed various subjects in science or, as they called it then, in philosophy, and they seem to have occupied themselves with many questions in the social as well as the natural sciences. these men, most of whom were older than faraday, soon came to look up to him because of the depth and increasing breadth of his knowledge, and we have some emphatic expressions of their admiration for him. faraday's earliest successful scientific investigation was accomplished in chemistry. this might have been expected, from the fact that he began his work with sir humphry davy, whose principal scientific investigations had been concerned with chemistry. his own great scientific work was to be done in electricity. even in the brief time that he devoted to chemistry, however, he succeeded in making some discoveries of deep significance. for instance, in his special study of chlorine, he demonstrated the existence of the two chlorides of carbon which had not hitherto been obtained. above all, he impressed his personality upon methods in chemistry. he was the first to realize how much technics were to mean in the modern advancement of science, and he made methodic chemistry, in distinction from practical chemistry, the object of very special study. his work on _chemical manipulation_ did more to train successful students of chemistry and to make good investigators in this department of science than any other single work in his generation. it has continued to be of interest down even to our own time, and is well worthy of consultation by all those who are interested in chemistry as a science, and especially in original research in that subject. it was with regard to gases, however, that faraday's most striking chemical work was done. he succeeded in liquefying several gases, and was the first to make clear that all matter could probably exist in each of the three different states--solid, liquid and gaseous--according as the proper conditions for each particular state were present. one might almost have expected that the serious dangers incurred in his early days in the royal institution, when his chief, sir humphry davy, suffered so severely and he himself was more than once involved, might have deterred him from further investigation along similar lines; but faraday's ardor for scientific investigation overcame any hesitancy there might have been. the effect of gases upon human beings proved as attractive to faraday as it had been to davy. his experiments upon chlorine threatened to prove seriously injurious to his throat, and he was warned of the danger that he was running in the effort to determine whether such gases were respirable and what their effects upon human beings were. the warning was disregarded, however, though he exercised somewhat more care in subsequent observations. his experiments in the respiration of gases finally led him to a discovery of cardinal importance in the very practical field of anæsthesia. sir humphry davy, just at the beginning of the nineteenth century, had made a series of interesting experiments on nitrous oxide gas, the so-called "laughing gas," and had pointed out very definitely its anæsthetic properties. while suffering from toothache he had inhaled the gas, and had experienced prompt alleviation of the pain. he described in detail these curious effects, and suggested that there might be a place for nitrous oxide in surgery, at least for minor operations. the words he employed with regard to this subject show that the idea of anæsthesia, as we now understand it, had come to him very definitely. not quite a score of years later, faraday, recalling the experiments of davy with nitrous oxide, studied sulphuric ether, and showed that the inhalation of the vapor of this substance produced anæsthetic effects very similar to those of nitrous oxide gas, but with the possibility of prolonging them much more easily and apparently with less danger than would be the case with the latter. in every history of anæsthesia, these two sets of experiments at the royal institution must be set down as foundation-stones, and faraday's name particularly must be hailed as one of the initiators of a supremely beneficent advance in modern surgery. faraday had given up business to devote himself to science, and he was not to be seduced from the purpose of making his life unselfish and doing things, not for money, but for the good of science and his own satisfaction. as a practical chemist, he soon had many opportunities to increase his salary by making analyses for industrial purposes. during one year, the amount of work thus offered him was paid for so well that it formed an addition of some £500 sterling to his salary. it took away precious time, however, that he might otherwise devote to original work. as soon as faraday realized this possibility of interference with his scientific investigations, he cut it off, quite content to live on the modest salary of his position at the royal institution. his action in the matter would remind one very much of pasteur, in the latter half of the century, when asked by the empress eugénie, to whom he had been just exhibiting his discoveries in fermentation, whether he would not apply these to actual manufacture and so make a fortune for himself in brewing. pasteur replied that he thought it unworthy of a french scientist to devote his time to money-making, with all the world of science open before him.[29] with a conscientious patriotism, however, that was typical of the man and his ways, there was one exception to this rule of not taking outside work that faraday made. in a letter to lord auckland, long afterward, he says: "i have given up for the last ten years or more, all professional occupation and voluntarily resigned a large income, that i might pursue in some degree my own objects of research. but in doing this i have always, as a good subject, held myself ready to assist the government if still in my power, but not for pay; for, except in one instance (and then only for the sake of the person joined with me), i refused to take it. i have had the honor and pleasure of application, and that very recently, from the admiralty, the ordnance, the home office, the woods and forests and other departments, all of which i have replied to and will reply to as long as strength is left me." as we have said, faraday's principal work was accomplished in the domain of electricity. his supreme discovery, and, indeed, the most important practical discovery in the whole realm of electricity, was that of the induction effect of a current of electricity on a neighboring circuit. this was accomplished by experimental work of the highest order. toward the end of 1824, when he was about thirty-three, he came to the definite conclusion that an electric current might be obtained by the motion of a magnet. his mind had been prepared for such a conclusion by oersted's significant discovery in july, 1820, that an electric current acts somewhat like a magnet when the wire through which it flows is free to move. this discovery, definitely connecting electricity and magnetism, had been elaborated to an important degree by ampère, and its sphere of application broadened by wollaston. the curious though not unusual result in such cases, that it is not those who are in immediate touch with a great discoverer who develop or even apply his work, was illustrated by the fact that ampère, the frenchman, took up oersted's discovery first, while wollaston, working in england, had been the next one to follow successfully in the path thus opened up. it takes genius to go even a slight step farther into the unknown; the trained talent of disciples does not suffice. it was now faraday, though not under wollaston's influence, who was to continue successfully these labors. in spite of his persuasion that a magnet would produce by induction an electric current, and the further step that a current in one wire could induce a current in another, experiments during seven years had brought him very little nearer the actual demonstration of this important principle. those who think that great discoveries are made by accident and almost fall into the laps of their makers, as the apple upon newton, should recall these seven years of unsuccessful labor on the part of faraday. finally, in 1831, he obtained the first definite evidence that an electric current can induce another in a different circuit. the discovery meant so much for him, that he hesitated to believe in his own success. nearly a month after this first demonstration for himself, he wrote to his friend phillips: "i am busy just now again on electro-magnetism, and think i have got hold of a good thing, but can't say. it may be a weed instead of a fish that, after all my labor, i may at last pull up." he had long suspected, as we have said, that induction should occur, and he had tried currents of different strength, but without result. one day he noticed that, though he could not produce a permanent induced current, whenever the primary current started or stopped, there was a movement of the galvanometer connected with the secondary circuit, though the galvanometer remained at zero so long as the primary current flowed steadily. from this he proceeded to the demonstration that a bar magnet suddenly thrust into a helix of copper wire produced the same effect on the galvanometer, and evidently induced a transient current. when the magnet was withdrawn, the galvanometer needle swung in the opposite direction, showing another current, so that electrical currents were evidently induced by the relative motions of a magnet and a conductor. he continued his experiments in many different forms, and in the short space of a little more than a week, once the first definite hint was obtained, succeeded in so completely finding out the phenomena of electro-magnetic induction that scarcely more than practical applications in this subject were left for his successors. faraday's explanation of the induction of currents in the secondary circuit was probably quite as important a contribution to science as the series of experiments by which he demonstrated the occurrence of induced currents. his mind was not of the order that would accept action at a distance; that is, without some conducting medium through which the action took place. the old aphorism of the scholastics, "_actio in distans repugnat_"--action at a distance, that is, without a medium intervening, is absurd--would have appealed to him as a basic truth. the explanation that he outlined for induced currents was based on the lines of magnetic force, which he had so often delineated by means of iron filings. it was a favorite occupation of his, at moments of comparative leisure, to make varied pictures in iron filings of magnetic fields as they were exhibited under the influence of different combinations of magnets. he strewed iron filings over "gum paper," and then when the filings had arranged themselves in certain definite lines, he threw a jet of steam on the paper, which melted the gum and fixed the filings in position. he explained electrical action as the transmission of force along such lines as these, and he thought the whole electric field was filled with them. probably the best summary of faraday's work on induction and its significance has been given us by clerk maxwell, in his article on faraday, in the ninth edition of the encyclopedia britannica. there is no doubt but that maxwell, above all men of the nineteenth century, was in a position to judge of the meaning of faraday's work. he was not the sort of a man to say things in a panegyric mood, and his article on faraday is indeed a model of well-considered judgment and critical illumination. summing up the significance not only of faraday's great discovery of induction, but also his theory in explanation of that discovery, he does not hesitate to say that his (faraday's) opinion is the nearest approach to truth that has been advanced in this much-discussed subject. "after nearly half a century of labor of this kind, we may say that, though the practical applications of faraday's great discovery have increased and are increasing in number and value every year, no exception to the statement of these laws as given by faraday has been discovered; no new law has been added to them; and faraday's original statement remains to this day the only one which asserts no more than can be verified by experiment, and the only one by which the theory of the phenomena can be expressed in a manner which is actually and numerically accurate, and at the same time within the range of elementary methods of exposition." with what eminent care and absolute truth faraday's conclusions were reached may be judged from some further expressions of clerk maxwell's in the article just quoted, with regard to the attitude of certain mathematicians toward faraday's work. in this matter, clerk maxwell, in talking on a theme that he had made especially his own, and in which his opinion must carry the greatest possible weight, said: "up to the present time, the mathematicians who have rejected faraday's method of stating his law as unworthy of the precision of their science, have never succeeded in devising any essentially different formula which shall fully express the phenomena, without introducing the hypotheses about the mutual action of things which have no physical existence, such as elements of currents, which flow out of nothing, then along the wire, and finally sink into nothing again." faraday's results were described in papers afterwards incorporated in his first series of "experimental researches," which were read before the royal society, november 24th, 1841. these papers probably contain the best possible proof of faraday's genius as an experimentalist and a leader in scientific observation. within a few months after his first successful experiment, he had succeeded in bringing to perfection the whole doctrine of induction by currents and magnets, had laid down the fundamental ideas which were to constitute the formal basis of electro-magnetism for all time. perhaps no better idea of the importance of the discovery thus made by faraday can be given than will be found in clerk maxwell's compendious paragraph on this subject, in his sketch of faraday, in the encyclopedia britannica. it may be said that no one in all the nineteenth century was more capable of appreciating properly the value of faraday's work than this great electrical mathematician, who laid the firm foundation of mathematical electricity during the latter part of the nineteenth century. clerk maxwell says: "this was of course a great triumph, and nobody appreciated this fact better than faraday himself, who had been working at its problems for many years. one of the first problems that he had set himself in his note-book as a young man, was 'to convert magnetism into electricity,' and this he had now done. within a month of the time that his first successful experiment was formed, he succeeded in obtaining induction currents by means of the earth's magnetism. within a year he took the further immense step of obtaining a spark from the induced current. this would ordinarily have seemed quite impossible, since sparks occur only if the electromotive force is very high, and it was very low in his induced currents. he found, however, that if the circuit of wire in which a current was flowing is broken while the current is passing, a little bridge of metallic vapor is formed, across which the spark leaps. the difficulty with the experiment was to break the circuit during the extremely short period while the current is flowing. faraday succeeded in doing this, and as a result obtained the first germ of the electric light. when he demonstrated this experiment by a very ingenious apparatus at the meeting of the british association at oxford, all were deeply interested, yet probably no one, even the most sanguine of the scientists present, thought for a moment that they saw the beginning of a far-reaching revolution of all the lighting of the world." perhaps the most interesting of faraday's discoveries, from the scientific standpoint, because they throw so much light on the problems of all the related phenomena of magnetism, heat, light, even electricity, were those in which a ray of polarized light was used as a means of investigating the condition of transparent bodies when acted on by electric and magnetic forces. faraday himself, when he was just thirty years of age, made a note in his commonplace laboratory book, in which all his observations were carefully detailed, that serves to show how much this subject had begun to interest him thus early in his career. he mentions that he had polarized a ray of lamp-light by reflection, and had made various experiments to ascertain whether any depolarizing action was exerted on it by water placed between the poles of a voltaic battery in a glass cistern, or by various fluids which were decomposed by the voltaic action during the course of the experiment. besides water, the fluids used were weak solutions of sulphate of soda and strong sulphuric acid. none of them had any effect on the polarized light, either during the passage of the voltaic current or when this was shut off. no particular arrangement of particles in reference to polarized light could be found from these observations. such a note, with utter failure for conclusion, is common enough in faraday's note-book. he was never discouraged, however, by failure at the beginning. once a subject has been taken up seriously, it is almost inevitable that further observations with regard to it will be found during the course of the year. because he had asked one question of nature and had not obtained a satisfactory answer, was never a reason why he should not ask further questions along the same line; and, above all, why he should not ask the same question in another way. after having tried a continuous current, faraday next experimented on the effect of making and breaking the circuit. he did not expect very much from this, but he hoped that under circumstances when no decomposition would ensue as the effect of the current, he might find some indication of the polarization. it was nearly twenty-five years before faraday succeeded in solving the problem that he had thus set himself as a young man, and nearly twenty years more were to pass before he made the relation between magnetism and light the subject of his very last experimental work. nothing discouraged him. when he had resolved to investigate something, he continued to make his experiments over and over again in different ways, until finally he got an answer to his question and a solution to the problem. indeed, his perseverance in anything that he undertook was a striking characteristic of the man and one of the most important elements in his success in life. his tenacity of purpose showed itself equally in little as in great things. arranging some apparatus one day with a philosophical instrument-maker, he let fall on the floor a small piece of glass. he made several ineffectual attempts to pick it up. "never mind," said his companion, "it is not worth the trouble." "well, but, murray, i don't like to be beaten by something that i have once tried to do." faraday was sure that there was some very definite relation between electricity and light. his experiments, however, did not enable him to demonstrate this until nearly fifteen years after his successful experiment on induction. in september, 1845, he placed a piece of heavy glass made of silico-borate of lead in the field of a magnet, and found that, when a beam of polarized light was transmitted through the glass in the direction of the lines of force, there was a rotation of the plane of polarization. later experiments showed him that all transparent solids and liquids were capable of producing this rotation in greater or less degree. when no magnet was used and the transparent substance was placed within a coil of wire through which an electric current was flowing, similar effects were produced. this was the demonstration of a definite relation between light and electricity. later, faraday found that magnets had a directive action upon the glass. he then made experiments upon gases, and found that they too exhibited magnetic phenomena, and that, indeed, the diurnal variations of the compass-needle were due to the sun's heat diminishing the magnetic permeability of the oxygen of the air. further experiments with gases showed him that nitrogen was absolutely neutral in its reaction. it might have been expected, from faraday's early interest in chemistry, that when he turned to electricity and made discoveries in that field of research, he would naturally take up the problem of tracing the laws and demonstrating the relationships of the points of contact of the two great sciences. after his completion, then, of the subject of induction, faraday devoted himself to the experimental proof of the identity of frictional and voltaic electricity, and to showing that chemistry and physics have a common ground. his inductive electrical machine could deflect a magnet and decompose iodide of potash. with his tendency to measure things, he determined that the amount of electricity required to decompose a grain of water was equal to 800,000 charges of his large battery of leyden jars. on the other hand, the current from a frictional machine deflected the needle of his galvanometer in the same way as the induced current of electricity, so that all the elements of the proof of the identity of the two forms of phenomena were now in his hands. that he should have proceeded to the demonstration of the laws of electrolysis, was the next most natural result. he showed that the amount of any compound decomposed by the electric current is exactly proportional to the whole quantity of electricity which has passed through the electrolyte. different substances are variously refractory to dissolution under the influence of the electric current, but each one always acts in the same way and requires the same amount of current. substances that are closely related to one another chemically, are also related to one another in the amount of electricity required to bring about decomposition of their various compounds. he showed, of course, that there are differences of electrical relationship that make the results produced in the decomposition of various compounds very different. polarization, for instance, sets in to a much greater degree in the decomposition of some substances than of others. one consequence is that the resistance to the passage of the electric current differs markedly, and the opposing electromotive force will stop the current or hamper its effects in many cases, so that, until after actual experiment, the quantitative effect of the passage of the electric current through a solution cannot be determined. faraday's opinions as to the significance of electricity in the animal economy are very interesting because of his profound knowledge of electrical phenomena and their place in nature. it is all the more interesting because it is so simple, and most scientists would be apt to say that its very simplicity is a very taking argument for its truth. "as living creatures produce heat, and a heat certainly identical with that of our hearths, why should they not produce electricity also, and an electricity in like manner identical with that of our machines? like heat, like chemical action, electricity is an implement of life, and nothing more." while faraday often occupied himself with subjects connected with matter and force that are likely to remain mysteries for long after his time, and often had thoughts to express with regard to the nature of atoms and of imponderable agents, whatever he had to say about these subjects was not vague and speculative, but, on the contrary, was concrete and usually of such a practical character as to add something new to our knowledge of them. few men have ever succeeded in getting closer to the mysteries that underlie natural phenomena than faraday; yet no one was ever less carried away into vague theoretic speculations with regard to them, nor tempted to think that because he knew much more than most other men with regard to complex natural problems, that therefore he knew enough to be able to solve the mysteries that existed all around him. he had none at all of what would ordinarily be called pride of intellect, but, on the contrary, had the humility of the true scientist. knowing so much only made him realize more poignantly how much he was ignorant of. with regard to his speculations on matter and force and the imponderables, helmholtz, the great german physicist, once summed up faraday's contributions very succinctly in a way to show the practical nature of faraday's intellect. he said: "it is these things that faraday in his mature works ever seeks to purify more and more from everything that is theoretical and is not the direct and simple expression of the fact. for instance, he contended against the action of forces at a distance, and the adoption of two electrical and two magnetic fluids, as well as all hypotheses contrary to the law of the conservation of force, which he early foresaw, though he misunderstood it in its scientific expression. and it is just in this direction that he exercised the most unmistakable influence, first of all, on the english physicist, and then on the physicists of all the world." inventors and promoters of useful inventions, frequently benefited by the advice of faraday or by his general help. a remarkable instance of this was told by mr. cyrus w. field. at the commencement of his great enterprise, when he wished to unite the old and the new world by the telegraphic cable, he sought the advice of the great electrician, and faraday told him that he doubted the possibility of getting a message across the atlantic. mr. field saw that this fatal objection must be settled at once, and begged faraday to make the necessary experiments, offering to pay him properly for his services. the philosopher, however, declined all remuneration, but worked away at the question, and presently reported to mr. field: "it can be done; but you will not get an instantaneous message." "how long will it take?" was the inquiry. "oh! perhaps a second." "well, that's quick enough for me," was the conclusion of the american; and the enterprise was proceeded with. faraday was far from being a mere laboratory student; he was much more even than a great teacher of physics. he was a magnificent popular lecturer, and did an incalculable amount to bring physics to the attention and the serious interest of his generation. a contemporary has described one of his lectures at the royal institution in such a way as to give us some idea, even at this distant date, of faraday's power over his audience, of his own wonderful interest in the subject and his marvelous ability to communicate that interest to others. it was of the very nature of the man that he should not be cold and formal, for he was not a man of the head alone, but, above all, a man whose heart and affections were greatly developed, and he had powers of enthusiasm that placed him high among the artistic spirits of mankind. our american poet, stedman, once declared that the intellectual quality of the poet, the creator in the realm of thought, and of the scientist, the original worker in the domain of science, differed but little from one another, and must be considered as collateral expressions of the same form of intellectual genius. with this in mind, his contemporary's enthusiastic description of his lectures will not seem overdrawn. "it was an irresistible eloquence, which compelled attention and insisted upon sympathy. it waked the young from their visions, and the old from their dreams. there was a gleaming in his eyes which no painter could copy, and which no poet could describe. their radiance seemed to send a strange light into the very heart of his congregation; and when he spoke, it was felt that the stir of his voice and the fervor of his words could belong only to the owner of those kindling eyes. his thought was rapid, and made itself a way in new phrases, if it found none ready made, as the mountaineer cuts steps in the most hazardous ascent with his own axe. his enthusiasm sometimes carried him to the point of ecstasy." faraday's habit of testing opinions by experiment, and the frequent disillusions which he encountered with regard to things of which he thought he knew something definite, served to make him extremely careful as regards expressions of opinion. some of his thoughts on this subject are worth while recalling because they remain perennially true, and anyone in any generation will find that, as his experience grows, he gets more and more into this faraday mood of doubting his own opinion and listening with more readiness to that of others. as a rule, this is said not to be true of those who are in advancing years, but the greater minds among the older men do not get set in their ways. flourens might have said that because of constant exercise the connective tissue in the brains of such men does not form to the same extent as in others, and does not make them case-hardened. as a consequence, they retain far on in years their sympathy for others' opinions and their openness of mind. comparatively, they are so few, however, that this expression of faraday's becomes a striking commentary on his large-mindedness. "for proper self-education, it is necessary that a man examine himself, and that not carelessly either.... a first result of this habit of mind will be an internal conviction of ignorance in many things respecting which his neighbors are taught, and that his opinions and conclusions on such matters ought to be advanced with reservation. a mind so disciplined will be open to correction upon good grounds in all things, even in those it is best acquainted with, and should familiarize itself with the idea of such being the case." perhaps it is even more interesting, because more humanly sympathetic, to find that faraday distrusted his opinions of people even more than his opinions of things, and that he himself tried to be very slow to take offence at what was said to him, and counselled greatest discretion to others in judging of the significance of supposed slights. "let me, as an old man who ought by this time to have profited by experience, say that when i was younger, i found i often misinterpreted the intentions of people, and found that they did not mean what at the time i supposed they meant; and further, that, as a general rule, it was better to be a little dull of apprehension when phrases seemed to imply pique and quick in perception, when, on the contrary, they seemed to imply kindly feeling. the real truth never fails ultimately to appear, and opposing parties, if wrong, are sooner convinced when replied to forbearingly than when overwhelmed." few lives have been happier than that of faraday. he gave up the ordinary ambition of men to make what is called a successful career of money-making, and constantly guarded himself from slipping back, as so many do, to the ruin of their original purpose. he lived a long life in peace, occupied with work that he liked above all things, and surely serves as the best illustration of the maxim: "blessed is the man who has found his work." work is said to be one of the primal curses laid upon man; but if, when the creator would ban it turns to blessing in the way that work has done, then may one well ask what will his blessings prove. faraday even had what is rarer in life than happiness, the consciousness of his happiness. usually it is so elusive that it escapes reflection. at the close of his career, when he wrote, in 1861, to the managers of the royal institution resigning most of his duties, he expressed this feeling very beautifully, and at the same time so simply and clearly as to make his letter of resignation a precious bit of literature. "i entered the royal institution in march, 1813, nearly forty-nine years ago, and, with the exception of a comparatively short period, during which i was abroad on the continent with sir h. davy, i have been with you ever since. during that time i have been most happy in your kindness, and in the fostering care which the royal institution has bestowed upon me. thank god, first, for all his gifts! i have next to thank you and your predecessors for the unswerving encouragement and support which you have given me during that period. my life has been a happy one, and all i desired. during its progress, i have tried to make a fitting return for it to the royal institution, and through it to science. but the progress of years (now amounting in number to three-score and ten) having brought forth, first, the period of development, and then that of maturity, has ultimately produced for me that of gentle decay. this has taken place in such a manner as to make the evening of life a blessing; for, while increasing physical weakness occurs, a full share of health, free from pain, is granted with it; and while memory and certain other faculties of the mind diminish, my good spirits and cheerfulness do not diminish with them." for nearly five years after he had given up to a great degree his work at the royal institution, he faced death, not with the equanimity of the stoic, but with the peaceful happiness of the believer in providence and a hereafter. even the loss of his memory, dear as it must have been to a man who had spent all his life in storing it with the great facts of science, does not seem seriously to have disturbed him. he realized the necessity for patience, and took the lesson of its necessity to heart, so that there was no difficulty in it. once when calling on his friend, the distinguished scientist, barlow, who had for a lifetime almost worked beside him at the royal institution, but who was now suffering from paralysis, he said: "barlow, you and i are waiting; that is what we have to do now; and we must try to do it patiently." when the full realization that his powers were leaving him first came to him, he wrote to his niece what he thought ought to be the feelings of the believer in providence toward death, and his letter shows how thoroughly he had imbibed the great lessons of christianity, and how much of consolation his faith was to him in this darkest hour before the dawn of that other life, in which he had as implicit confidence as in any of the great scientific principles that he had demonstrated by experiment. he wrote: "i cannot think that death has, to the christian, anything in it that should make it a rare, or other than a constant thought. out of the thought of death comes the view of the life beyond the grave, as out of the view of sin (that true and real view which the holy spirit alone can give to man) comes the glorious hope.... my worldly faculties are slipping away day by day. happy is it for all of us, that the true good lies not in them. as they ebb, may they leave us as little children, trusting in the father of mercies and accepting his unspeakable gift." and when the dark shadow was creeping over him, he wrote to the comte de paris: "i bow before him who is the lord of all, and hope to be kept waiting patiently for his time and mode of releasing me, according to his divine word and the great and precious promises whereby his people are made partakers of the divine nature." probably the feature of the careers of darwin and spencer which are saddest for their adherents, and which made those who refused to be recognized as among their followers appreciate their one-sidedness, is the confession by both of them, that they had lost their interest in poetry and even in literature of all kinds, and toward the end of their lives particularly lost entirely their appreciation of things artistic. as might be expected from what we know of faraday, this was not at all the case with him; but, on the contrary, down to the end of his life, he retained all his youthful admiration for the poets. his niece tells the story of hearing him often read poetry, and of how much he used to be affected by his favorite poems. in one of her letters she says: "but of all things, i used to like to hear him read 'childe harold'; and never shall i forget the way in which he read the description of the storm on lake leman. he took great pleasure in bryon, and coleridge's 'hymn to mont blanc' delighted him. when anything touched his feelings as he read--and it happened not infrequently--he would show it not only in his voice, but by tears in his eyes also." as a young man, he was so completely taken up with the scientific studies that he could not think that he would ever find time for the ordinary interests of life. especially was this true with regard to the question of marriage. he felt that he would never marry, and he seems rather to have pitied those, the weakness of whose nature pushed them on to assume many duties in life and look for merely selfish happiness. it was as a very young man that he wrote: "what is't that comes in false, deceitful guise, making dull fools of those that 'fore were wise? 'tis love." when the time came, however, he altered this opinion. among the elders of the church which he attended in london was a mr. barnard, a silversmith. faraday occasionally spent an evening at his house, and incidentally met his daughter sarah. he had not met her many times before his ideas as to what love might mean in life were completely changed, and not long after making her acquaintance he wrote her a letter, in which he recants and asks her to be more than a friend. his letter is rather interesting as love letters go. "you know me as well or better than i do myself. you know my former prejudices and my present thoughts; you know my weaknesses, my vanity, my whole mind; you have converted me from one erroneous way; let me hope that you will attempt to correct what others are wrong.... again and again i attempt to say what i feel, but i cannot. let me, however, claim not to be the selfish being that wishes to bend his affections for his own sake only. in whatever way i can best minister to your happiness, either by assiduity or by absence, it shall be done. do not injure me by withdrawing your friendship, or punish me for aiming to be more than a friend by making me less; and if you cannot grant me more, leave me what i possess but hear me." in spite of the sincere feeling of this letter, the lady hesitated. for a time she left london, apparently in order to give herself a breathing spell from the ardor of his suit. in spite of his deep interest in science, faraday followed her to the seacoast, and after they had wandered together for several days at margate and dover, where shakespeare's cliff was an especial haunt of theirs, the lady relented. faraday returned to london bubbling over with happiness. he was not quite thirty when they were married, and at the time his salary did not amount to more than a thousand dollars a year. it was distinctly not a marriage of reason. most of the happiness of his life came to him from his marriage. many years afterward, he called it "an event which, more than any other, contributed to my happiness and healthful state of mind." with years, this feeling only deepened and strengthened. in the midst of his scientific triumphs, his first thought was always of her. when his attendance at scientific congresses took him away from her, his letters were frequent, and always expressive of his longing to be with her. one of his biographers has said "that doubtless at any time between their marriage and his final illness, he might have written to her as he did from birmingham, at the time of the meeting of the british association there." "after all, there is no pleasure like the tranquil pleasure of home; and here, the moment i leave the table, i wish i were with you _in quiet_. oh! what happiness is ours! my runs into the world in this way only serve to make me esteem that happiness the more." faraday had probably lost more illusions than most men, and came to the true appreciation of things as they are. in spite of his life-long study, he had no illusions with regard to the education of the intellect merely, or the possession of superior intellectual faculties as moral factors. his keen observation of men had made any such mistake as that impossible. on the other hand, he had often noted that the ignorant, or at least those lacking education, were very admirable in conduct and in principle, and so we have his suggestive testimony: "i should be glad to think that high mental powers insured something like a high moral sense, but have often been grieved to see the contrary; as also, on the other hand, my spirit has been cheered by observing in some lowly and uninstructed creature such a healthful and honorable and dignified mind as made one in love with human nature. when that which is good mentally and morally meet in one being, that that being is more fitted to work out and manifest the glory of god in the creation, i fully admit." faraday's very definite expression of what he considers must be the position of the man of science with regard to a hereafter and the existence of god, is worth while recalling here, because it was such a modest yet forceful presentation of the attitude of mind that every thinking modern scientist must occupy in this matter, the attitude which all of faraday's great fellow-workers in the domain of electricity also occupy. it is indeed the position that has been assumed by all the great scientists who bowed humbly to faith, though so many lesser lights have found this apparently impossible. at a lecture given in 1854 at the royal institution, faraday said: "high as man is placed above the creatures around him, there is a higher and far more exalted position within his view; and the ways are infinite in which he occupies his thoughts about the fears, or hopes, or expectations of a future life. i believe that the truth of that future cannot be brought to his knowledge by any exertion of his mental powers, however exalted they may be; that it is made known to him by other teaching than his own, and is received through simple belief of the testimony given.... yet even in earthly matters, i believe that 'the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and godhead'; and i have never seen anything incompatible between those things of man which can be known by the spirit of man which is within him, and those higher things concerning his future which he cannot know by that spirit." elsewhere he had said: "when i consider the multitude of associate forces which are diffused through nature; when i think of that calm and tranquil balancing of their energies which enables elements, most powerful in themselves, most destructive to the world's creatures and economy, to dwell associated together and be made subservient to the wants of creation, i rise from the contemplation more than ever impressed with the wisdom, the beneficence, and grandeur beyond our language to express, of the great disposer of all!" dr. gladstone, in his life of faraday, which we have so often put into requisition, has given in one striking paragraph a description of the passing of faraday, that in its simplicity is worthy of the great man whom it so well represents. it is so different from what is ordinarily supposed to be the attitude of the scientist towards death, that when by contrast we recall that faraday is acknowledged to be the greatest experimental scientist of the nineteenth century, the man of his generation most honored by scientific societies at home and abroad--his honorary memberships numbered nearly one hundred--it must be considered as a very curious contradiction of what is the usual impression in this matter: "when his faculties were fading fast, he would sit long at the western window, watching the glories of the sunset; and one day, when his wife drew his attention to a beautiful rainbow that then spanned the sky, he looked beyond the falling shower and the many-colored arch and observed, 'he hath set his testimony in the heavens.' on august 25th, 1867, quietly, almost imperceptibly, came the release. there was a philosopher less on earth, and a saint more in heaven." when we come to the end of the life of this greatest of experimentalists, the most striking remembrance is that of the supreme original genius of this great discoverer in electricity, whose work was such a stimulus to others, whose conclusions were to prove the basis for so much of the work of his contemporaries and his successors in electrical investigation, and whose place in the world of science is assured beside such men as newton and kepler and harvey and the other great pioneers in science. there is no doubt at all, however, that our heartiest feelings are aroused by the picture of the wonderfully rounded existence of the great scientist, his pervasive humanity, his largeness of soul and sympathy, his understanding of men in their ways through his own complete knowledge of himself, that is so strikingly displayed. we feel sure that faraday himself would have cared less for his fame as a great scientist than for the summary of his life which has been given us by his friend, bence jones, who said: "his was a life-long strife, to seek and say that which he thought was true and to do that which he thought was kind." footnotes: [29] some of the books bound by faraday at this time are still preserved in the library of the royal institution, together with his notes on various courses of lectures, some of which are mentioned more particularly later on in this sketch, as they were also bound by him. among the manuscripts in the collection are letters from many of the important scientific scientists of europe. [30] makers of modern medicine, fordham university press, n. y., 1907. chapter xi. clerk maxwell. natural science in every department developed very wonderfully from its experimental side during the first half of the nineteenth century. facts and observations accumulated to such an amount that, shortly after the middle of the century, there was felt the need of a great mathematical genius to bring the results of experiment into their proper places in the great body of applied and theoretic science. nearly always such a demand meets with adequate response in its own due time. clerk maxwell came at this most opportune moment for science. no mathematical problem was too abstruse or difficult for him, and whatever he took up seriously he always illuminated, and usually solved its problems as completely as can be hoped for in the present state of scientific knowledge. it was particularly in electricity that his mathematical faculty proved of the greatest value, and that he found the abundant opportunities of which he knew so well how to take advantage. [illustration: james clerk maxwell] clerk maxwell's theory of electricity, as developed in his classic treatise on "electricity and magnetism," is well called by prof. peter guthrie tait, "one of the most splendid monuments ever raised by the genius of a single individual." this book became the guide and companion of more physical scientists during the nineteenth century than perhaps any other written in that period. it was not alone in england or in english-speaking countries that it was accepted as an authority and constantly referred to, but everywhere throughout the world of science. not to know it, was to argue that a man knew nothing of the profounder truths of electrical science and was only a seeker after superficial information. clerk maxwell was known and esteemed by all the great physical scientists of the world. his name is less widely known than that of most of the great discoverers in electricity, because mathematical achievement always has less popular attraction; but he deserves to be known by all who are interested in science, not only because of his magnificent contributions to mathematical electricity, but quite as much for qualities of heart and mind that stamp him as one of the very great men of the century so rapidly receding from us. clerk maxwell, as he is usually called, because he was the representative of a younger branch of the well-known scottish family of clerk of penicuik, was born in edinburgh, june 13th, 1831. as with nearly every other person who reaches distinction in after-life, there are stories told of his precociousness which probably have more meaning in this case than in most others, since they exhibit real traits that were characteristic of the man. as a child, it is said that he was never satisfied until he had found out for himself everything that he could about anything that attracted his attention. he wanted to know where the streams of water came from, where and whence all the pipes ran, and the course of bell-wires and the like. his frequently repeated question was, "what's the go o' that." if an attempt were made to put him off with some indefinite answer, then he would insist, "but what's the particular go of it." this was probably the most prominent trait in his after-life. general explanations of phenomena that satisfied other men never satisfied him. he was a nature student from the beginning, and even as a boy he devised all sorts of ingenious mechanical contrivances. pet animals were his special delight, but for experimental purposes always, and his selection of pets would probably have startled some people. he received his early education at the edinburgh academy, and his university education at the university of edinburgh, where he graduated in 1850. his liking for mathematics, which had already been very strongly exhibited, led him, at the age of nineteen, to go to cambridge. here, for a term or two, he was a student at peterhouse, but afterwards found a more sympathetic place for his mathematical tastes at trinity. he took his degree at cambridge in 1854, though only with the rank of second wrangler, routh being senior. in the more serious and more exacting examination for the smith's prize, he was declared equal with the senior wrangler. his mathematical talents had developed very early, and it is not surprising that the rest of his life should have been devoted mainly to the teaching of mathematics and in investigations connected with applied mathematics. it was not success at the university that determined his career, for he had shown his marvelous mathematical ability much earlier than that, and had given some astonishing examples of his power to treat complex scientific problems in mathematical journals. indeed, his original contributions to the higher mathematics began before he was fifteen years of age. he was a striking example of the fact that a great genius usually finds his work very early in life, and usually accomplishes something significant in it, at once the harbinger and the token of the future, before he is twenty-five. while clerk maxwell was at the edinburgh academy, professor j. d. b. forbes, in 1836, communicated to the royal society of edinburgh a short paper by his youthful student on "a mechanical method of tracing oval curves" (cartesian ovals). in spite of the prejudice that exists with regard to precocious genius and the distinct feeling that it is not likely to prove an enduring quality, clerk maxwell continued to do excellent original work all through his teens. when he was but eighteen, he contributed two important papers to the transactions of the royal society of edinburgh. one of these was on "the theory of rolling curves," and the other on "the equilibrium of elastic solids." these are now remembered, not only because of clerk maxwell's subsequent distinguished career, but because of their distinct value as contributions to science. both of them demonstrate not only his ability to work out subtle mathematical problems at this very early age, but show the possession by him of a power of investigation for original work that stamps them as well worthy of consideration in themselves, quite apart from the repute of their author or the successful accomplishments of his subsequent life. with regard to one of those edinburgh papers of clerk maxwell's eighteenth year, prof. guthrie tait said "that in it he laid the foundation of one of the singular discoveries of his later life, the temporary double refraction produced in viscous liquid by sheering stress." after his magnificent mathematical training at cambridge, it is not surprising that this academic career of great original work should be continued by contributions to science of ever-increasing importance. immediately after his graduation, he read to the cambridge philosophical society one of the few purely mathematical papers that he ever published. this had for its title, "on the transformation of surfaces by bending." expert mathematicians who read the paper, realized at once that there was a new genius in the field of mathematics. during the same year, the young scotch mathematician took the first step in that series of electrical investigations which was to occupy so much of his attention in after-life, and which was to prove the source of his greatest inspirations. this consisted of the publication of an elaborate paper on faraday's "lines of force." while we think of maxwell as a mathematical physicist, it must not be forgotten that he was also one of the leading experimental scientists of that great epoch, the nineteenth century. only a man who was himself a great experimenter could have properly appreciated and developed, from the mathematical standpoint, the works of such men as cavendish and faraday. from his early years, maxwell displayed a distinct fondness for experimentation, and this even extended to experiments upon himself. in many ways this trait of his would remind us of johann müller, the great father of modern german medicine.[34] like müller, there was danger also of maxwell's experiments on himself getting him into trouble. for instance, at one time his love of experiment led him to try sleeping in the evening and getting up to work at midnight, so as to have the long, silent hours of the night to himself. in the sketch of his life by dr. garnett,[32] a letter from one of his friends is quoted with regard to this nocturnal habit, which is amusing as well as interesting. the friend wrote: "from 2 to 2:30 a. m. he took exercise by running along the upper corridor, down the stairs, along the lower corridor, then up the stairs, and so on until the inhabitants of the rooms along his track got up and laid _perdus_ behind their sporting doors, to have shots at him with boots, hair-brushes, etc., as he passed." his love of fun, his sharp wit, his extensive knowledge, and, above all, his complete unselfishness, rendered him a universal favorite, in spite of the temporary inconveniences which his experiments may have occasionally caused to his fellow-students. in 1857, clerk maxwell received the adams prize for his essay on "the stability of the motion of saturn's rings." he shows very clearly that these annular appendages consist of a large number of small masses. this work would seem to be very distant from anything that maxwell had attempted before, and would indeed seem to the superficial observer, at least, to be quite out of his sphere. it was the mathematics of it that attracted him, and the fact that the problem was difficult, indeed, one of the most difficult at that time before astronomers, only added zest to his resolve to fathom it. all his life, mathematics continued to be his favorite form of work, and his power to express the most complex physical phenomena in mathematical formulæ gave him a reputation throughout europe unsurpassed by anyone of his generation. the more a problem seemed incapable of direct statement in mathematical terms, provided it represented a great occurrence in nature, the more maxwell was attracted to it; and the training of these early years in thus setting mathematics to the solution of physical relations, was to serve him in good stead when he came to try his hand at demonstrating the meaning of electricity in mathematical terms. just before this, in 1856, maxwell, though only twenty-five years of age, was offered the chair of natural history, which included most of the physical sciences, at marischal college, aberdeen. with the attention that his mathematical papers attracted, it is not surprising that after four years of teaching experience he was invited to king's college, london. he held his new position for eight years, and then his health required him to retire to his estate in kirkcudbrightshire. after three years of retirement, his english alma mater demanded his services, and the temptation to get back to an academic career was so great that he could not resist it. he became, in 1871, professor of experimental physics at cambridge. to him, more than to anyone else, is due the magnificent development of the physical sciences which took place at cambridge during the last quarter of the nineteenth century. unfortunately, he was not destined to live to enjoy the fruits of his labor in organizing the scientific side of the university, but it was under his direction that the plans of the cavendish laboratory were prepared, and he superintended every step of the progress of the building. it was under his careful management, too, that the purchase of the very valuable collection of apparatus, with which it was equipped by the duke of devonshire, was made, and maxwell's work here counts for much in the history of english science. he died in 1879, when only forty-eight years of age, but he had deeply impressed himself upon the science of the nineteenth century. for quite one-half of his scant half-century span of life he had occupied a prominent place in england, and after the age of thirty-five had come to be generally recognized as one of the leading physical scientists of the world. his career is, as we have said, a striking illustration of how early in life a man's real work is likely to come to him, and how little success in original investigation is dependent on that development of mind which is supposed to be due only to long years of application to a particular branch of study. manifestly it is the original genius that counts for most, and not any training that it receives, except such as comes from its own maturing powers. environment, if unfavorable, does not hamper it much, nor keep it from reaching the proper terminus of its destiny; and poor health only serves to prevent the exercise of its full powers, but does not eclipse the manifestation of its capacity. clerk maxwell's important contribution to science was the demonstration that electro-magnetic effects travel through space in the form of transverse waves similar to those of light and having the same velocity. we have become so familiar with the ideas contained in this explanation, that they seem almost obvious now. they came, however, as a great surprise to clerk maxwell's generation, and at first seemed to be merely a theoretic expression of a mathematical formula. not long afterwards, however, maxwell's explanation was corroborated by hertz, who showed that these waves were propagated just as waves of light are, and that they exhibit the phenomena of reflection, refraction and polarization. hertz went on from his demonstration of the actuality of maxwell's mathematical theory to the demonstration of further electrical waves. these hertzian waves, as they were called, were a startling discovery, but remained only a scientific curiosity until they were taken advantage of for wireless telegraphy, when a new era of applied electrical science began. how his success in this was accomplished will be best understood from prof. guthrie tait's account of maxwell's devotion to electricity as a life-work. he says: "but the great work of his life was devoted to electricity. he began by reading with the most profound admiration and attention the whole of faraday's extraordinary self-revelations, and proceeded to translate the ideas of that master into the succinct and expressive notation of the mathematicians. a considerable part of this translation was accomplished during his career as an undergraduate in cambridge. the writer had the opportunity of perusing the ms. on faraday's lines of force, in a form little different from the final one, a year before maxwell took his degree. his great object, as it was also the great object of faraday, was to over-turn the idea of action at a distance. the splendid researches of poisson and gauss had shown how to reduce all the phenomena of statical electricity to mere attractions and repulsions exerted at a distance by particles of an imponderable on one another. sir w. thomson had, in 1846, shown that a totally different assumption, based upon other analogies, led (by its own special mathematical methods) to precisely the same results. he treated the resultant electric force at any point as an analogous flux of heat from the sources distributed, in the same manner as the supposed electric particles. this paper of thomson's, whose ideas maxwell afterwards developed in an extraordinary manner, seems to have given the first hint that there are at least two perfectly distinct methods of arriving at the known formulæ of statical electricity. the step to magnetic phenomena was comparatively simple; but it was otherwise as regards electromagnetic phenomena, where current electricity is essentially involved. an exceedingly ingenious, but highly artificial, theory had been devised by weber, which was found capable of explaining all the phenomena investigated by ampère as well as the induction currents of faraday. but this was based upon the assumption of a distance-action between electric particles, whose intensity depended upon their relative motion as well as on their position. this was, of course, more repugnant to maxwell's mind than the statical distance-action developed by poisson. the first paper of maxwell's in which an attempt at an admissible physical theory of electromagnetism was made, was communicated to the royal society in 1867. but the theory in a fully developed form, first appeared in his great treatise on electricity and magnetism (1873). availing himself of the admirable generalized coördinate system of lagrange, maxwell has shown how to reduce all electric and magnetic phenomena to stresses and motions of a material medium, and as one preliminary, but excessively severe, test of the truth of this theory has shown that, if the electromagnetic medium be that which is required for the explanation of the phenomena of light, the velocity of light in vacuo should be numerically the same as the ratio of the electromagnetic and electrostatic units. we do not as yet certainly know either of these quantities very exactly, but the mean values of the best determination of each separately agree with one another more closely than do the various values of either. there seems to be no longer any possibility of doubt that maxwell has taken the first grand step towards the discovery of the true nature of electrical phenomena. had he done nothing but this, his fame would have been secure for all time. but, striking as it is, this forms only one small part of the contents of his truly marvelous work." maxwell's prediction as to the propagation of electric waves has received its full confirmation, as we have said, in the brilliant experiments of hertz, and in the subsequent application of the hertzian waves to wireless telegraphy in our own time. it was not by mere chance that this development of maxwell's thinking came. hertz himself declared, in the introduction to his collected papers, that he owed the suggestion of his work to faraday and maxwell, and above all to maxwell's speculations as to the nature of electricity and its relations to light. hertz said: "the hypothesis that light is an electric phenomenon is thus made highly probable. to give a strict proof of this hypothesis would logically require experiments upon light itself. there is an obvious comparison between the experiments and the theory, in connection with which they were really undertaken. since 1861, science has been in possession of a theory which maxwell constructed upon faraday's views, and which we therefore call the faraday-maxwell theory. this theory affirms the occurrence of the class of phenomena here discovered, just as positively as the remaining electric theories are compelled to deny it. from the outset, maxwell's theory excelled all others in its elaboration and in the abundance of relations between the various phenomena which it included." how much maxwell's work was appreciated across the channel, may be realized from what poincaré said: "so sure did the results of his (maxwell's) theory appear as worked out for the deepest problems, that a feeling of distrust and suspicion is likely to be mingled with our admiration for his magnificent work. it is only after prolonged study and at the cost of many efforts that this feeling is dissipated." maxwell's explanation of electricity is that it is a strain or stress in the ether, that it is a condition or mode, and not a substance. one distinguished foreign contemporary who had read maxwell's books with the greatest interest, declared that he could not be quite satisfied, since nowhere did he find what a charge of electricity is, though he seemed to find satisfactory information with regard to everything else. maxwell realized, however, the limitations of his speculation very well, and hesitated, above all, to bind his mathematical conclusions to statements that might prove eventually only surmises founded on insufficient information from the standpoint of observation. even when he gave his explanation, he did not insist on it as absolute, but, as pointed out by poincaré, discussed it only as a possibility. the french scientist said: "maxwell does not give a mechanical explanation of electricity and magnetism; he is only concerned to show that such an explanation is possible." maxwell thoroughly believed in having a hobby as well as his regular work, and during the time while he was devoting himself to the mathematical explanation of electricity he turned for recreation to certain problems in physics, in physiology and psychology, relating to color. he worked almost as great a revolution in our knowledge of color-vision as in any other subject that he took up. principal garnett has condensed so well what clerk maxwell accomplished in the matter of color-vision, in his sketch of him in "the heroes of science,"[33] that i prefer to quote his explanation. he says: "it has been stated that thomas young propounded a theory of color-vision which assumes that there exists three separate color sensations, corresponding to red, green and violet, each having its own special organs, the excitement of which causes the perception of the corresponding color, other colors being due to the excitement of two or more of these simple sensations in different proportions. maxwell adopted blue instead of violet for the third sensation, and showed that, if a particular red, green, and blue were selected and placed at the angular points of an equilateral triangle, the colors formed by mixing them being arranged as in young's diagram, all the shades of the spectrum would be ranged along the sides of this triangle, the center being neutral grey. for the mixing of colored lights, he at first employed the color top; but instead of painting circles with colored sectors, the angles of which could not be changed, he used circular discs of colored paper slit along one radius. any number of such discs can be combined so that each shows a sector at the top, and the angle of each sector can be varied at will by sliding the corresponding disc between the others. maxwell used discs of two different sizes, the small discs being placed above the larger on the same pivot, so that one set forked a central circle and the other set a ring surrounding it. he found that, with discs of five different colors, of which one might be white and another black, it was always possible to combine them so that the inner circle and the outer ring exactly matched. from this he showed that there could be only three conditions to be satisfied in the eye, for two conditions were necessitated by the nature of the top, since the smaller sectors must exactly fill the circle and so must the larger. maxwell's experiments, therefore, confirmed, in general, young's theory. they showed, however, that the relative delicacy of the several color sensations is different in different eyes, for the arrangement which produced an exact match in the case of one observer, had to be modified for another; but this difference of delicacy proved to be very conspicuous in color-blind persons, for in most of the cases of color-blindness examined by maxwell the red sensation was completely absent, so that only two conditions were required by color-blind eyes, and a match could therefore always be made in such cases with four discs only. holmgren has since discovered cases of color-blindness in which the violet sensation is absent. he agrees with young in making the third sensation correspond to violet rather than blue. maxwell explained the fact that persons color-blind to the red divide colors into blues and yellows, by the consideration that, although yellow is a complex sensation corresponding to a mixture of red and green, yet in nature, yellow tints are so much brighter than greens, that they excite the green sensation more than green objects themselves can do; and hence greens and yellows are called yellow by such color-blind persons, though their perception of yellow is really the same as perception of green by normal eyes. later on, by a combination of adjustable slits, prisms, and lenses arranged in a 'color box,' maxwell succeeded in mixing, in any desired proportions, the light from any three portions of the spectrum, so that he could deal with pure spectral colors instead of the complex combinations of differently colored lights afforded by colored papers. from these experiments, it appears that no ray of the solar spectrum can affect one color sensation alone, so that there are no colors in nature so pure as to correspond to the pure simple sensations, and the colors occupying the angular points of maxwell's diagram affect all three color sensations, though they influence two of them to a much smaller extent than the third. a particular color in the spectrum corresponds to light which, according to the undulatory theory, physically consists of waves, all of the same period; but it may affect all three of the color sensations of a normal eye, though in different proportions. thus yellow-light of a given wave-length affects the red and green sensations considerably and the blue (or violet) slightly, and the same effect may be produced by various mixtures of red or orange and green." for his researches on the perception of color, the royal society awarded clerk maxwell the rumford medal in 1860. besides this more or less theoretic work, however, maxwell made some interesting and important discoveries and inventions in optics. for instance, he noted the great differences that exist in the eyes of dark and fair complexions to different colors when the light falls upon the center of the yellow spot, the so-called fovea centralis, or central pit of the retina. his researches with regard to this led him to the discovery that this portion of the retina is largely lacking in sensibility to blue light. he was able to demonstrate this by his experiment of looking through a glass vessel containing a solution of chrome alum, when the central portion of the field of vision appears of a light red color for the first second or two. he was also the inventor of an ingenious optical apparatus, a real image stereoscope. a still more important discovery was that of the double refraction which is produced for the time in viscous liquids when they are stirred and their motion is not as yet stopped. maxwell showed that canada balsam, for instance, when stirred, acquired a distinct power of double refraction, which it retained so long as the stress in the fluid produced by stirring remained. other departments of physics were not neglected. for instance, one of his greatest investigations was that on the kinetic theory of gases. geniuses had been working before him on this line, for, as pointed out by professor tait, this theory owed its origin to daniel bernoulli, the greatest mathematician of the eighteenth century, and had been developed by the successful labors of herapath, joule and, above all, of clausius. the work of these men put the general accuracy of the theory beyond all doubt and led to its very general acceptance, yet the details of it needed to be elaborated before it could become definitely scientific. its greatest developments are due to maxwell, and in this field maxwell appeared as an experimenter on the laws of gaseous friction as well as a mathematician. his work with regard to color had showed his ingenuity as an experimentalist, and this is still further illustrated by his carefully arranged experiments on gases. indeed, his work in this line makes it very clear that nothing was too difficult for him, and that anything that he turned his hand to in the field of science he was sure to accomplish with eminent success. it was not only his scientific monographs, however, that indicate how great a scientist clerk maxwell was, but his text-books, even those of more or less elementary character, which he wrote bring out this same idea. he wrote, for instance, an admirable text-book on the theory of heat, which went through many editions. students of the subject, even those who were not far advanced, found it clear and easier of study than many a less exhaustive work. he also wrote an elementary treatise on matter and motion, which has gone through several editions. one might think that so small a work would scarcely interest him enough to tempt him to put forth his powers at their best, and that at most it would be a conventional condensation of previous knowledge. prof. tait, who surely must be taken as a good judge in the matter, says that "even this, like his other and larger works, is full of valuable material worthy of the most attentive perusal not of students alone, but of the very foremost scientific men." one of the characteristic traits of maxwell was his desire to impart information to others. this extended not only to his academic relations, but, above all, to the working classes, who might have few opportunities for the obtaining of the information that was so interesting with regard to natural subjects. everywhere that he held an academic post in his life, he gave lectures to the workmen. he was an extremely interesting talker, and one of his friends said of him: "i do believe there is not a single subject on which he cannot talk, and talk well, too, displaying always the most curious and out-of-the-way information." one of his private tutors said of him: "it is not possible for maxwell to think incorrectly on physical subjects." it is easy to understand, then, how much his lectures to the working people at aberdeen, at edinburgh, and at kings college, london, as well as at cambridge, meant for them. if men like maxwell would take up the popularization of science generally, then there would be much less opprobrium attached to the expression popular science than there has been only too often in the past, and is even at present. just as maxwell set himself to the solution of the most difficult problems in physics, so he did not hesitate to give himself also to the discussion of problems in ethics. here his power of penetration, the rigid logic of his mind, and his power to follow out conclusions to their ultimate significance, were quite as manifest as any scientific writing. it is almost the rule to find that scientists either ignore the great problems of man's place in nature and his destiny, or treat them very superficially. agnosticism had become the fad of the moment, and was just beginning to make itself felt as a fashion in thinking when clerk maxwell was doing his great work. maxwell was not an agnostic in science, and because he could not solve all the problems that came to him with regard to electricity and the constitution of matter, this did not keep him from setting himself to the task of seeing what should be his thoughts with regard to these subjects. he had none of the agnostic's feelings with regard to them, that since we cannot know all about them definitely and absolutely, therefore it is not worth while studying them at all. had maxwell been tempted to any such line of thought, we would have missed some of the most helpful scientific speculations and suggestions that have ever been made. no one knew better than maxwell, that his speculations on matter and electricity were theories, and that what he was offering to science were not definite explanations, but possible hypotheses. he has emphasized this himself over and over again. this inability of the human intellect at the present moment to solve all the questions that its inquiring spirit can evoke, did not keep him from investigating and following up his investigations by mathematical deductions and mechanical suggestions just as far as possible. he had the same attitude of mind toward the great problems of man's relation to his fellow-man, to the universe, and to a hereafter. while he felt that he could not solve the problems entirely, he felt also that his reasoning was quite sufficient to enable him to get a little nearer to the heart mystery of them and to understand something of their significance. in his later years, the question of the existence of pain and suffering in the world had, because of darwin's attitude towards them and his declaration that since he was unable to understand them they carried him away from the thought of a beneficent creator, attracted much attention. we have an essay of clerk maxwell's, then, on "aspects of pain," in which he discusses particularly pain as discipline. it is, of course, the old story, that men rise on stepping-stones of their dead selves, and that the successive deaths of self represent a triumphant progress, but it comes with a new vigor from this great scientist. we all know that it is the man who has suffered who is able to do things, and we are all well aware that the man who has lived in comfort all his life is almost sure to be lacking in character when a great crisis comes upon him. indeed, as clerk maxwell re-states it, this is such a commonplace that one wonders why the problem of pain should have seemed so hard to understand. there is an essay of his, also, on "science and free will," which seems to deserve special notice. he has no illusions with regard to determinism. he is perfectly sure that he is free and that the great majority of men around him do or do not things as they choose. he points out that science makes for determinism only if one takes a very narrow view of it. free will is not only compatible with scientific thinking, but it represents what would be expected as a culmination of the significance of life. in a word, clerk maxwell wrote as suggestively with regard to the great problems of human life as with regard to the physical nature around him that claimed so much of his interest. he was a true natural philosopher, and his interests were not limited merely to the lower orders of beings. because of the supreme power of clerk maxwell's mind to seek out the very heart of difficulties, the conclusions which he reached with regard to the existence of matter and the causes for the ultimate qualities which it exhibits, have an enduring interest. mathematics is sometimes said to lead minds into scepticism. cardinal newman even thought that the mathematical cast of mind was the farthest removed from that which might be expected to accept things confidently on faith. clerk maxwell's intellect was eminently mathematical; yet, far from sending him over into the camp of the agnostics, his tendency to get at the ultimate reasons for things seemed almost to push him to conclusions with regard to the origin of matter, and especially its ultimate constituents, not ordinarily supposed to be scientific. a passage like the following, for instance, which may be found in his book on "the theory of heat," london, 1872, page 312, brings out this tendency very well: "but if we suppose the molecules to be made at all, or if we suppose them to consist of something previously made, why should we expect any irregularity to exist among them? if they are, as we believe, the only material things which still remain in the precise condition in which they first began to exist, why should we not rather look for some indication of that spirit of order, our scientific confidence in which is never shaken by the difficulty which we experience in tracing it in the complex arrangements of visible things, and of which our moral estimation is shown in all our attempts to think and speak the truth, and to ascertain the exact principles of distributive justice?" the argument from design for creation is often said in our day to have lost its weight. for clerk maxwell, however, this was evidently not the case. on the contrary, he seemed to find in the detailed knowledge of the ultimate constituents of matter which had come in recent years, additional proofs of the great design which permeates nature. he had come to the conclusion that not only were the groups of atoms which make up living things so ordered as to produce definite results, because there was a great purpose and, above all, a great designer behind nature, but he also reached the position that the separate atoms of matter were so ordered with regard to one another, and in that ordering were so closely related to corresponding qualities in higher beings, that only the presence of a great design in nature could possibly account for all these wonderful attributes, which were to be found even in the smallest portions of matter. he said in his article on the atom, in the ninth edition of the encyclopedia britannica: "what i thought of was not so much that uniformity of result which is due to uniformity in the process of formation, as a uniformity intended and accomplished by the same wisdom and power of which uniformity, accuracy, symmetry, consistency, and continuity of plan are as important attributes as the contrivance of the special utility of each individual thing." here is the old argument for the existence of god, from the design exhibited in the universe, rehabilitated by its application to the minutest portions of matter, whose qualities demand such an explanation quite as much as the highest adaptations of nature. perhaps the most striking expression of all with regard to the atoms that clerk maxwell permitted himself, is that in which he finds the type of what is best in man, in every minute portion of the universe, planted there by the creator just as surely as they are in his highest beings, because they represent the most precious qualities of his own nature as they are reflected in the creation that he called into existence. "they (the atoms) continue this day as they were created, perfect in number and measure and weight, and from the ineffaceable characters impressed on them we may learn that those aspirations, after accuracy in measurement, truth in statement, and justice in action, which we reckon among our noblest attributes as men, are ours because they are essential constituents of the image of him who in the beginning created not only the heaven and the earth, but the materials of which heaven and earth consist." a very interesting side of maxwell's life is that which shows his continued interest in literature, and even his occasional dippings into poetry. though he reached distinction in mathematics and physics so early in his career, he yet found time to indulge a liking for the classics, and we even find some rather good translations of horace's odes from his pen. the translation of a part of the ajax of sophocles from the greek is a striking testimony to the breadth of maxwell's intellectual interests. all during life, however, he permitted himself occasionally the luxury of fitting words into verse forms, and sometimes with a success that deserves much more than passing interest. it is very probable that the following verses, for instance, which are the first and last stanzas of a poem on the formula for being happy in life and were meant to be sung (or at least so he would hint) to the tune of "il segreto per esser felice," will strike many a sympathetic chord in the modern time. there are some folks that say they have found out a way to be healthy and wealthy and wise:- "let your thoughts be but few, do as other folks do, and never be caught by surprise. let your motto be follow the fashion, but let other people alone; do not love them nor hate them nor care for their fate, but keep a lookout for your own. then what though the world may run riot, still playing at catch who catch can, you may just eat your dinner in quiet and live like a sensible man." in nature i read quite a different creed, there everything lives in the rest; each feels the same force as it moves in its course, and all by one blessing are blest. the end that we live for is single, but we labor not therefor alone; for together we feel how by wheel within wheel we are helped by a force not our own. so we flee not the world and its dangers, for he that has made it is wise; he knows we are pilgrims and strangers, and he will enlighten our eyes. there probably was not a more nicely logical or more accurately reasoning intellect among all our nineteenth century scientists than that of the great mathematical electrician. he had none of the one-sidedness of the merely experimental scientist, nor, on the other hand, the narrowness of the exclusively speculative philosopher. with a power of analysis that was seldom equaled during the century, he had a power of synthesis that probably surpassed any of his contemporaries in any part of europe. his ideas with regard to matter and its ultimate constitution are most suggestive. his suggestion of a strain in the ether as an explanation of electricity, thus enabling scientists to get away from the curious theories of the foretime which had required them to accept "action at a distance," that is, without any connecting medium, shows his power of following out abstruse ideas to definite practical conclusions. his religious life, then, will be a surprise to those who think that science leads men away from religion. in the life of clerk maxwell, written by campbell and garnett,[31] there is a passage from his friend and sometime pastor, guillemard, in which the details of his religious life are given so fully as scarcely to require any further gleaning of information in this regard. "he was a constant, regular attendant at church, and seldom, if ever, failed to join in our monthly late celebration of holy communion, and he was a generous contributor to all our parish charitable institutions. but his illness drew out the whole heart and soul and spirit of the man; his firm and undoubting faith in the incarnation and all its results; in the full sufficing of atonement; in the works of the holy spirit. he had gauged and fathomed all the schemes and systems of philosophy, and had found them utterly empty and unsatisfying--'unworkable' was his own word about them--and he turned with simple faith to the gospel of the saviour." his faith was not disturbed at the near approach of death, but, on the contrary, seemed strengthened. his biographers tell the story of some of the expressions used to his friends during these last days, which furnish manifest proof of this. some of these passages are so characteristic and so striking that they deserve to be in the note-book of those to whom the modern idea that science is opposed to religion or faith may sometimes have been a source of worry, or at least an occasion for argument. here is a typical one of these passages: "mr. colin mackenzie has repeated to us two sayings of his during those last days, which may be repeated here: 'old chap, i have read up many queer religions; there is nothing like the old thing, after all; and i have looked into most philosophical systems, and i have seen that none will work without a god.'" it must not be imagined, because clerk maxwell was a deeply religious man, that, therefore, he was frigid or formal or extremely serious, or inclined to be puritanic with regard to the pleasures of life, or a fanatic in the matter of taking all the good-natured fun there might be in anything that turned up. he was far from over-serious, or what has been called, though not quite properly, ascetic; but, on the contrary, was often, indeed usually, the soul of the party with which he was at the moment. he had none at all of the self-centered interest of the narrow-minded, but had many friends, and was liked by all his acquaintances. his friends were enthusiastic about his kindness of heart and the thorough congeniality of his disposition. on this point, the sketch of him in the national dictionary of biography gives a charming picture: "as a man, maxwell was loved and honored by all who knew him; to his pupils, he was the kindest and most sympathetic of teachers; to his friends, he was the most charming of companions, brimful of fun, the life and soul of a red lion dinner at the british association meetings; but in due season brave and thoughtful, with keen interest in problems that lay outside the domain of his own work, and throughout his life a stern foe to all that was superficial or untrue. on religious questions, his beliefs were strong and deeply rooted." it may be added to this, that his religion had nothing of the merely formal about it, nor was it perfunctory. it entered into most of the details of his life, and the fact that, every day as the head of the house he led evening prayers for the family, was only a token of the deep hold which religion had upon his life. when his last illness came, though he knew that his end was not far off, and at his age sometimes the approach of death hampers religious faith because it does seem that longer life might be afforded to one who has been so faithful in his realization of the obligations of life, clerk maxwell's piety increased rather than diminished. a favorite expression of his during his last days was the verselet from richard baxter, which one would be apt to think of as frequently repeated by some feminine devotee rather than by the greatest mathematical scientist of the nineteenth century: "lord, it belongs not to my care, whether i die or live; to love and serve thee is my share, and that thy grace must give." a friend who knew him intimately says: "in private life, clerk maxwell was one of the most lovable of men, a sincere and unostentatious christian. though perfectly free from any trace of envy or ill-will, he yet showed on fit occasions his contempt for that pseudo-science which seeks for the applause of the ignorant by professing to reduce the whole system of the universe to a fortuitous sequence of uncaused events." in these phases of his intellectual life, the greatest of the mathematical electricians of the nineteenth century deserves to be taken as the type of the man of science, rather than the many mediocre intelligences whose minds were not large enough apparently for the two sets of truths--those of the moral as well as of the physical order. [illustration: lord kelvin] footnotes: [31] see life of johann müller, in makers of modern medicine, fordham university press, n. y., 1906. [32] heroes of science physicists, n.y., young & co., 1885. [33] heroes of science physicists, by wm. garnett, m. a., d. c. l. london society for promoting christian knowledge, northumberland ave., charing cross, w. c. new york, e. and j. b. young. [34] the life of james clerk maxwell, with a selection from his correspondence and occasional writings, and a sketch of his contributions to science. lewis campbell and william garnett. london, 1882. chapter xii. lord kelvin. few men lived to witness so many remarkable discoveries in science and so many applications of the same to the welfare of the race as did the man whose name stands at the head of this chapter. when william thomson, the future lord kelvin, first saw the light of day, the voltaic pile was in a rudimentary and inefficient form. it is true that water had been decomposed by the current from a pile in 1800,[37] that the magnetic effect of the current had been discovered in 1820, and the possibility of a practical form of an electric telegraph suggested in the same year; but ohm's law was still one of nature's secrets, electromagnetic induction was undiscovered, and the doctrine of energy but ill understood. light, electricity and magnetism were regarded as distinct forces, and heat was thought to be a material substance, to which the name caloric was assigned. what young, fresnel and ampère were in the early years of the nineteenth century; what faraday, regnault and joseph henry were some time later, kelvin became in the 'fifties, a leader in the intellectual and scientific life of the time, a leader destined to extend the frontiers of knowledge, to establish an accurate system of electrical measurement, and to enrich the world with instruments of marvelous ingenuity and precision. william thomson, born in belfast in 1824, received his early training in the royal academic institute of that city. when eight years of age, he left his native land, exchanging the shores of antrim for the banks of the clyde. his father, james thomson, a mathematician of note, having been appointed to the chair of mathematics in the university of glasgow (founded in 1451), proceeded early in the summer of 1832 to the commercial metropolis of scotland, accompanied by his two sons william and james, both of whom were destined to add lustre to the family name. after a period of preparatory study, the two brothers, who were ten and eleven years of age, respectively, matriculated at the university. with the iron-clad regulations that govern admission to american colleges and universities, these boys would at best have been admitted to one of our high schools, and kept there until they reached the maturity required by the age limit. by the time young william attained that limit, he had already finished his work at the university, and captured the first prizes in mathematics, astronomy and natural philosophy. he was then only sixteen years of age, small of stature, but a giant in intellect; brilliant, versatile, and with a passion for work. it was his good fortune, also, to come under the influence of a great teacher, in the person of prof. nichol. "i have to thank what i heard in the natural philosophy class," he said in 1903, "for all i did in connection with submarine cables. the knowledge of fourier was my start in the theory of signaling through submarine cables, which occupied a large part of my after-life. the inspiring character of dr. nichol's personality and his bright enthusiasm live still in my mental picture of those old days." having heard fourier's treatise on the mathematical theory of heat spoken of one day as a remarkable and inspiring work, young thomson astonished the professor when, at the end of the lecture, he addressed dr. nichol with the query, "do you think that i could read it?" to which the professor smilingly replied: "well, the mathematical part is very difficult." many a student would have left fourier alone for the nonce, after listening to a statement so little calculated to excite courage or awaken interest: but thomson was not an ordinary student; and, however forbidding the answer which he received, he was determined all the same to handle the volume and seek its inspiration. without delay, he got the book from the university library, and grew so delighted with the new ideas of the french mathematician about sine-expansions and cosine-expansions, that in the space of two weeks he had "turned over all the pages" of the book, as he modestly put it. in the summer of 1840, he accompanied his father and his brother on a tour through germany, partly to see the country and partly also, to acquire a practical knowledge of the language. in both these objects, he was somewhat hindered by his fondness for mathematical studies, which led him to include in his impedimenta for the trip a copy of fourier's _théorie analytique de la chaleur_. most students out on a summer's vacation, especially in foreign parts, would doubtless have preferred to give their minds rest and congenial distraction rather than keep on reading and pondering over abstract mathematical concepts. our young tourist, on the other hand, seems to have thought of little else than of fourier's "mathematical poem," as clerk maxwell called the work, a "poem" that continued to have a charm for him all through life. it is a noteworthy fact that thomson continually returned to the ideas and methods of this suggestive treatise on the flow of heat, and that he applied them with great success to problems in thermal conductivity, in electricity and in submarine telegraphy. shortly after returning home, thomson was sent to the university of cambridge, where he entered st. peter's college, commonly called peterhouse, one of the oldest colleges of the university, its foundation dating back to the year 1284. though he, no doubt, followed in a general way the directions given him by william hopkins, "the best of private tutors," and kept in view the requirements of the honors examination, called the "mathematical tripos," for which he intended to present himself at the end of his course, he found his studies somewhat routinal and uninspiring. original work was more to his taste than conventional subjects; his tutor, however, thought mainly of placing this brilliant pupil at the head of the wranglers, and hailing him the senior wrangler of the year, for which purpose, the beaten track must be followed, the standard works read, favorite problems worked out, short-cuts conned and rapidity of output exercised. stokes, of pembroke, had been senior wrangler in 1841; cayley, of trinity, in 1842; and adams, of john's, in 1843; why not thomson, of peterhouse, in 1845, argued hopkins, who had the distinction of being second wrangler of the previous year? but when the ordeal was over and the work of all candidates appraised, thomson's name was second on the list, with parkinson, of john's, at the top. hopkins was disappointed, as he had a right to be, for it was thought by many and said by some that parkinson was not fit to sharpen thomson's pencils. at the examination for the smith's prizes, which immediately followed, and which was generally regarded as a higher honor and a better test of original ability, the order was reversed, and thomson's star blazed out with the brilliancy of the first magnitude. we have here an instructive instance of the failure of an examination to place rightly the most gifted man; that of sylvester, in 1837, and clerk maxwell, in 1854, both of whom were second wranglers, are equally so. examinations, however, seldom fail in justly rating candidates when originality is not a necessary qualification, but only a sound knowledge and liberal interpretation of the subjects laid down in the syllabus; a good memory and rapidity of writing will do the rest. thomson committed the fatal mistake in the tripos examination of devoting too much time to a particular question in which he was deeply interested. it was a curious coincidence that the solution which parkinson sent in to the same question was almost identical with that of his rival for mathematical honors. on being questioned about the matter by the moderators, parkinson said that he had read the solution some time before in the _cambridge mathematical journal_; thomson's explanation was that the solution given in the journal was his! as he had not memorized the details, he was obliged of course to work the problem out _de novo_. parkinson in later years wrote a treatise on elementary mechanics that has long since made way for others; thomson, on the other hand, published in collaboration with tait a _treatise on natural philosophy_ for advanced students, which became at once the accepted standard. throughout this treatise, the view is emphasized that physics deals with realities more than with theories, with mutual relations more than with their mathematical expression. helmholtz thought so highly of this work that he translated it into german, saying in his preface: "william thomson, one of the most penetrating and ingenious thinkers, deserves the thanks of the scientific world, in that he takes us into the workshop of his thoughts and unravels the guiding threads which have helped him to master and set in order the most resisting and confused material." and again: "following the example given by faraday, he avoids as far as possible hypotheses about unknown subjects, and endeavors to express by his mathematical treatment of problems simply the law of observable phenomena." we are not to think of thomson, the undergraduate, as of one who gave himself up, mind and body, to his favorite studies; he knew how to combine, in some measure, the _dulce_ with the _utile_, for he was fond of music, and so proficient in the art that he was elected president of the musical society. he also took a practical interest in aquatic sports, and on the cam he could ply his sculls with the best of the men. indeed, he was fond of the water all through life, his _lalla rookh_ being well known on the clyde and in the solent. expert in the navigation of his yacht, he liked to be out on the deep, caressed by wind and buffeted by wave, on which occasions he usually studied, pencil in hand, problems connected with navigation and hydrodynamics. thomson was never without his note-book. even in his journeys to london, when he usually took the night train to save time, his mind was active, and the green-book was in frequent requisition to receive thoughts that occurred relative to problems that engaged his attention. unlike many mortals, he was able to sleep soundly on those night trips, although in the early days he had none of the luxuries of traveling which we consider indispensable to our comfort. helmholtz records that, being on the _lalla rookh_ on one occasion, thomson "carried the freedom of intercourse so far that he always had a mathematical note-book with him; and as soon as an idea occurred to him, he began to reckon right in the midst of company." this reminds us of the answer which newton gave to a friend who asked him how he accomplished so much. "by constantly thinking of it," was the brief reply. concentration of the faculties is necessary for all good work; a distracted mind never achieved anything of value in philosophy, in science, in religious worship. concentration is like a convex lens, which brings rays to a focus; whereas distraction is like a concave lens, which breaks them up into a number of divergent and scattered elements. on leaving cambridge in 1845, thomson proceeded to london, and was warmly received by faraday, then of world-wide reputation. he next went to paris, where, in the laboratory of regnault, he devoted himself to original research, under the direction of that great and accurate physicist who was then carrying out his classic work on the thermal constants of bodies. the year 1846 marks an epoch in thomson's life; for, in that year, he was chosen to succeed nichol, his friend and master, in the chair of natural philosophy in the university of glasgow. though only in his twenty-second year, he chose for the subject of his inaugural address the age of the earth, a subject which continued to have a life-long interest for him because of its very fascination, and perhaps, too, because of the opposition which his views aroused on the part of biologists and geologists. these demanded untold æons for the original fire-mist to cool down and form a spinning globe fit to be the abode of organic life, whereas thomson endeavored to show the weakness of the arguments which they advanced to uphold their claim for unlimited time. basing his estimate on the rate of increase of temperature as we go below the earth's surface, he concluded that the earth required from 100 to 200 million years, and probably less, to cool from its molten state to its present condition. impressed by the value of the experimental work which he did under regnault in paris, prof. thomson gave himself no rest until he secured a place in which the demonstrations of the lecture-room could be supplemented by qualitative and quantitative work in the laboratory. this was the first "physical laboratory" open to students in great britain, a fact that makes the year 1846 a memorable one in the history of university development. two apartments were allotted him for experimental purposes, _viz._, an abandoned wine-cellar and a disused examination-room, to which, as time went on, were added a corridor, some spare attics, and even the university tower itself, so great was the power of annexation possessed by the young professor. in those dark and cheerless rooms, a few old instruments were installed, after which students were invited and work begun. a band of men, whose ardor was enkindled by the glowing enthusiasm of the presiding genius, gathered around him, and helped him to carry out investigations on the properties of metals, on moduli of elasticity, elastic fatigue and atmospheric electricity. among this band of earnest students it will suffice to mention the names of the late prof. ayrton, an eminent electrician; prof. john perry, known for his homeric battles in favor of reform in the teaching of mathematics; sir william ramsay, the discoverer of the "newer" gases of the atmosphere; and prof. andrew gray, who succeeded his master in the university of glasgow. writing of his laboratory experiences, prof. ramsay says: "i remember that my first exercise, which occupied over a week, was to take the kinks out of a bundle of copper wire. having achieved this with some success, i was placed opposite a quadrant electrometer and made to study its construction and use." "although this method," he adds, "is not without its disadvantages--for systematic instruction is of much value--there is something to be said for it. on the one hand, too long a course of experimenting on old and well known lines is likely to imbue the young student with the idea that all physics consists in learning the use of apparatus and repeating measurements which have already been made. on the other hand, too early attempts to investigate the unknown are likely to prove fruitless for want of manipulative skill and for want of knowledge of what has already been done." prof. gray wrote: "in the physical laboratory, prof. thomson was both inspiring and distracting. he continually thought of new things to be tried, and interrupted the course of work with interpolated experiments which often robbed the previous sequence of operations of their final result." it may bring a grain of consolation to teachers who meet with troublesome elements in the discharge of their duties, to know that thomson, great and brilliant as he was, had similar experiences now and again. at one time a book of mathematical data would be removed from the place assigned to it, upon which he would give orders that it should be chained to the table; at others, there would be no chalk near the blackboard, and then the assistant would be solemnly instructed to have one hundred pieces available next time. on one occasion, he settled in a very novel manner the case of a student who insisted on disturbing the class by moving his foot back and forth on the floor. calling his assistant, thomson told him in a whisper to go down into the room under the tiers of seats, to listen attentively, and locate the wandering foot by its distance from two adjacent walls of the building. on his return to the lecture-room, the triumphant assistant gave the desired coordinates to the professor, who took out his tape at once and measured off the distances, by which the outwitted offender was mathematically located. in obedience to orders, the latter rose and left the room, muttering a few graceful epithets as he went, in honor of descartes, the founder of a system of geometry that could serve so well the twofold purpose of the detective and the mathematician. it was the custom in glasgow to open the daily sessions, morning and afternoon, with prayer, the selection of which was left to the discretion of the professor. thomson usually recited from memory the third collect from the morning service of the church of england, to which he sometimes added reflections of his own for the spiritual benefit of his hearers. in his teaching, prof. thomson was particularly insistent that his students should not bow their intellects in mute admiration before an array of mathematical symbols; but that, on all occasions, they should seek the physical meaning behind them. writing on his blackboard one day _dx/dt_, he was not satisfied when told that it represented the ratio of the increment of _x_ to the increment of the independent variable _t_ (time); he wanted the student to say it represents velocity. he himself was so wont to look for the physical meaning of symbols that, like the prophets of old, he saw many things that were hidden from the eyes of ordinary mortals. he had the rare gift of translating mathematical equations into real facts; and he strove all throughout his life, by word and writing, to purify mathematical theory from mere assumptions. he often said that he could not understand a thing until he was able to make, or at least conceive, a model of it. he had a "keen mathematical instinct," as prof. silvanus p. thomson puts it in a letter to the writer, an insight that "grew to see things." he often left matters in the dark for years, then returned to see them in the clear light of truth. at the age of sixteen, he wrote a mathematical essay on the figure of the earth; and at eighty-three, took it up again in order to add a note to the argument! thomson was discursive in his lectures, and was never able to boil the matter down to suit the taste and digestive powers of the ordinary student. the activity of his mind and its fecundity were such that new ideas, new problems, new modes of treatment were continually occurring, and with such fascination that he would leave the main subject to indulge in what often proved prolonged digressions. one of his bugbears was our system of weights and measures, which he denounced in season and out of season as "insane," "brain-wasting" and "dangerous." occasionally epithets of a more caloric nature would escape the lips of the indignant professor, who, as a consequence of his denunciation, had always to be indulgent to students who chanced to be shaky in the matter of troy weight, avoirdupois weight or even apothecaries weight. in later years, i heard lord kelvin at the royal institution, london, on some of his favorite dynamical subjects, such as the gyrostat, vortex rings and the like. however impressed by his keen eye, intellectual forehead, his mastery of the subject and wealth of illustration, i was no less impressed by his vivacity, his enthusiasm and the rapidity with which he could leave a train of thought and return to it again. at meetings of the british association, he always had something illuminating to say; but not infrequently, carried away by a torrent of ideas, he would indulge in a superfluity of detail, forgetting that other speakers had to be heard and other papers read. the idea of connecting the old world with the new by means of an electric cable laid on the bed of the ocean, seemed to most people in the 'fifties quixotic and utopian. manufacturers said such a cable could not be made; engineers, that it could not be laid; electricians, that it could not be worked; and financiers, that if laid and worked, it would never pay. but with a field to look after the financial interests of the scheme, and a thomson to attend to electrical quantities, there was no tilting at windmills, and the utopian scheme became in due time the cable whose core pulsated with the news of the world. as early as 1850, bishop mullock, of st. john's, n. f., addressed to an american newspaper, called the _courier_, a letter in which he advocated a telegraph line from newfoundland to new york, so that the news of mail steamers could be intercepted and wired to that city. in 1852, the "newfoundland electric telegraph company" was formed for the purpose of carrying out a similar plan. this was to be accomplished by means of a telegraph line from cape race, at the eastern extremity of newfoundland to cape ray, on the western, as well as by short cables over to cape breton island, to prince edward island and the mainland, and thence by ordinary telegraph lines to canada and the united states. but owing to the want of money, nothing was done. the first attempt at laying a cable under the atlantic was made by the atlantic telegraph company in 1857, after a careful survey of the ocean had revealed the existence of a submarine plain, or extended table-land, on which the cable could rest undisturbed by passing keels, monsters of the deep or angry billows. the result was the first of a series of failures, which caused great perplexity and depression at the time; for, after 330 miles had been paid out from valentia on the irish coast, the cable suddenly parted, burying in 2000 fathoms of water an electrical conductor which had cost $150,000 for its manufacture. a second attempt was made in 1858, when the u. s. frigate _niagara_ and h. m. s. _agamemnon_, each carrying half of the cable, met in mid-ocean; and, after splicing the two ends together, steamed away in opposite directions, the _niagara_ toward newfoundland and the _agamemnon_ toward valentia. fortunately for the enterprise, prof. thomson was on board the english ship as chief electrician. no doubt, his mind turned many a time during those anxious days to fourier's differential equation for the flow of heat along a conductor, and his own application of it to the conduction of the electric current through the copper core of the cable as it came up from the tanks, trailed out behind the ship, dipped silently into the blue water and slowly settled down to its bed of ooze on the ocean floor. after a series of disheartening mishaps, necessitating as many returns of the ships to the rendezvous in mid-ocean, the _agamemnon_ landed the shore-end safely in valentia; and the _niagara_, after rolling and pitching for days and nights in tempestuous seas, landed hers in trinity bay on the morning of august 5th, 1858, on which historic date the telegraphic union of the two worlds was finally consummated and the great feat of the century accomplished. though not fully realized at the time by the capitalists who financed his scheme, by the engineers and electricians who carried it out, or even by statesmen, economists and social reformers, the slender copper cord, buried away from human ken amidst the _débris_ of minute organisms, was destined to effect a revolution in the affairs of men greater than any achieved by the wisdom of sages or the policy of legislators. owing to the electrostatic capacity of the cable, signaling would have been difficult and unsatisfactory had it not been for the resourcefulness of prof. thomson, who devised his reflecting galvanometer to serve as receiving instrument. the principle of the mirror applied in this way was not new, for it had been suggested by poggendorff and even used by gauss in connection with very heavy magnets. the magnets used by thomson, on the other hand, were strips of watch-spring weighing about a grain each, so that even a very weak current coming through the cable would be sufficient to produce strong displacements of the spot of light on the scale. thomson was clearly the first to insist on small dimensions in magnetic instruments, and to show that reduction in size would be attended with corresponding increase in sensitiveness. the mirror galvanometer, surrounded with a thick iron case to screen it from the magnetic field due to the iron of the ship, the "iron-clad galvanometer" as it was called, was used for the first time on the telegraphic expedition of 1858. the instrument itself, which was fitted up on board the _niagara_ and which was connected with so many episodes of thrilling interest, was placed by prof. thomson in the collection of historical apparatus in the university of glasgow, where it is at the present day. beautiful as was the invention of the mirror galvanometer, it gave neither warning of the beginning of a message nor a permanent record of it. sitting in his dark room, the operator had to be always on the alert for the first swing of the spot of light over the scale. to obviate these drawbacks, thomson, after some thinking and more talking with his friend white, of glasgow, finally patented the _siphon-recorder_, in which a glass siphon of capillary dimensions is pulled to the right or left by the action of the current flowing through a light movable coil, and is thus made to register signals in ink on a vertical strip of paper which is kept in uniform motion by a train of clockwork. it is by this simple but very ingenious instrument that messages are received and recorded to-day at all the cable-stations of the world. the inaugural message through the cable came from the directors of the atlantic telegraph company in great britain to the directors in america, saying: "europe and america are united by telegraph; glory to god in the highest, on earth peace and good will toward men." the message from queen victoria to president buchanan, consisting of 95 words, took 67 minutes in transmission; it read: "the queen desires to congratulate the president upon the successful completion of this great international work, in which the queen has taken the deepest interest. "the queen is convinced that the president will join with her in fervently hoping that the electric cable which now connects great britain with the united states will prove an additional link between the nations whose friendship is founded upon their common interests and reciprocal esteem. "the queen has much pleasure in thus communicating with the president, and renewing to him her wishes for the prosperity of the united states." the reply of president buchanan was as follows: "the president cordially reciprocates the congratulations of her majesty, the queen, on the success of the great international enterprise accomplished by the science, skill and indomitable energy of the two countries. it is a triumph more glorious, because far more useful to mankind, than was ever won by conqueror on the field of battle. "may the atlantic telegraph, under the blessing of heaven, prove to be a bond of perpetual peace and friendship between the kindred nations, and an instrument destined by divine providence to diffuse religion, civilization, liberty and law throughout the world. in this view will not all nations of christendom spontaneously unite in the declaration that it shall be forever neutral, and that its communications shall be held sacred in passing to their places of destination, even in the midst of hostilities?" the historian of the enterprise was mr. john mullaly, of new york, who was on the _niagara_ as secretary to prof. morse and subsequently to mr. cyrus w. field and correspondent of the _new york herald_. he has published three interesting works on the subject: a _trip to newfoundland, with an account of the laying of the submarine cable_ (between port au basque and north sydney), 1855; _the ocean telegraph_, 1858; and _the first atlantic telegraph cable_, a pamphlet of 28 pages, reprinted from the "journal of the franklin institute," 1907. from it, we learn that archbishop hughes was one of the principal american subscribers to the capital of the atlantic cable company. when, in 1855, the subject of laying a cable under the atlantic ocean began to be seriously considered, thomson, who was then only 31 years of age, discussed in a series of masterly papers the theory of signaling through such conductors, showing _inter alia_ that the instruments used on land-lines would be inoperative on cables, and also that the same speed of transmission could not be attained on cables as on ordinary telegraph lines. it was shown at the same time, that these differences are due to the fact that, unlike an air-line, the cable is an electrical _condenser_ in which the copper core is separated from the waters of the ocean by a layer of gutta percha, a nonconducting material. as a submerged cable is, therefore, a long leyden jar of great electrical capacity, it follows that a signal sent in at the american end will not reach the other instantly; for while the current flows along the conductor, it has also to charge up the cable as it progresses, which operation retards the signals, and also deprives them of the clearness and sharpness with which they were sent. the phenomenon is analogous to the diffusion of heat along a bar, the temperature of the various cross-sections rising in gradual succession until the distant end is reached. the mathematical investigations of thomson showed the necessity of working slowly, and of using weak currents as well as very delicate receiving instruments. the interval of time required for the transmission of a signal from newfoundland to valentia is about one second. some years later, in 1858, thomson had the opportunity of putting his theoretical views to the test of experiment on a grand, commercial scale, and had the satisfaction of finding that all his conclusions were confirmed. electricians of the early period distrusted the inexperienced young man who had never erected a mile of telegraph line or even served for a month in a telegraph office; but their distrust was followed by admiration when they saw the efficient manner in which he handled every problem and dealt with every difficulty that occurred while laying the cable of 1858. it was generally admitted that, had it not been for the brilliant work of the young glasgow professor, many years would have passed away before the old world and the new would have been brought into telegraphic communication. like all interested in the enterprise, thomson was greatly shocked when the news reached him that signals could no longer be transmitted through the cable, which, after costing so much money, so much thought and labor, now lay a useless thing in two and a half miles of water. attempts were made to raise it, but without success. during its short life of less than a month, 366 messages were flashed through the cable, aggregating 4359 words of 21,421 letters. the failure of the pioneer cable has been attributed to a variety of causes, chief of which were defective construction and imperfect paying-out machinery, which produced unequal strains in the cable. defective as the cable was at the moment of immersion, the various troubles became intensified with time, until at last, when provoked by the feebleness of the signals, the injudicious electrician at valentia had recourse to the great penetrative power of the induction coil, and gave the dying cable the _coup de grâce_. an experiment made by mr. latimer clark is not only germane to the subject, but is also of very great interest. writing from valentia on sept. 12th, 1866, mr. latimer clark says: "with a single galvanic cell, composed of a few drops of acid in a _silver thimble_[36] and a fragment of zinc, weighing a grain or two, conversation may easily, though slowly, be carried on through one of the cables (1865, 1866) or through the two joined together at newfoundland; and although in the latter case, the spark, twice traversing the breadth of the atlantic, has to pass through 3700 miles of cable, its effects at the receiving end are visible in the galvanometer in a little more than a second after contact is made with the battery. the deflections are not of a dubious character, but full and long, the spot of light traversing freely a space of 12 in. or 13 in. on the scale; and it is manifest that a battery many times smaller would suffice to produce similar effects." not to be outdone by the english electrician, mr. william dickerson devised the gun-cap cell, which he used in 1866 with success in transmitting signals from heart's content, newfoundland, to valentia on the irish coast. a piece of no. 16 bare copper wire was procured, one end of which was firmly twisted around the head of an empty _percussion-cap_. to one end of another similar length of wire was bound, with fine copper wire, a short strip of zinc bent at a right angle to form the anode element of the diminutive cell. after charging the cell with a drop of acidulated water of the size of an ordinary well-formed tear, and properly connecting the terminals with earth and cable, signals were transmitted over the cable by the infinitesimal current generated by this novel cell. the receiving operator reported that the signals were "awfully small"; but they were intelligible, and messages were successfully transmitted under the ocean by this tiny element. contrast with this lilliputian cell the enormous power that was used on the cable of 1858 toward the end of its short existence, when batteries of 380 and 420 daniell cells were employed to force signals across. when, in 1865, it was decided to make another attempt at laying a cable under the atlantic, prof. thomson, whose reputation was enhanced during the seven intervening years by a number of communications on the theory and practice of submarine telegraphy, was again retained as scientific expert in a consultative sense, with mr. cromwell f. varley as chief electrician. in accordance with the costly experience that had been gained, a new cable was made and coiled on board the _great eastern_,[35] a leviathan which was well fitted for the work by the great man[oe]uvring power afforded by its screw and paddles combined. leaving valentia, the big ship steamed with her prow to the west at a slow rate of speed, in order to give the cable time to sink beneath the waves and adapt itself to the configuration of the ocean floor. eleven hundred miles had been successfully paid out when, to the consternation of all, the cable suddenly snapped and disappeared in more than two miles of water. attempts were made during the next nine days to recover it from those abysmal depths; and, though grappled many times during those trying hours, it gave way each time under the strain to which it was subjected. like its predecessors of 1857 and 1858, the cable of 1865 was finally abandoned to its fate, and the _great eastern_ returned home with three greatly disappointed men on board, _viz._, prof. thomson, mr. c. f. varley and captain (later sir james) anderson. in the following year, a sum of three-quarters of a million sterling, nearly $4,000,000, was offered to the directors of the "telegraph construction company" if they would complete the cable of 1865 and lay a new one. after consultation and careful consideration, the offer was accepted and the cable constructed according to the best engineering knowledge available. in 1866, prof. thomson was again on board the _great eastern_ with captain anderson; and this time the big ship had snugly coiled up in her deep, cavernous tanks _the_ cable that was destined to put europe and america in permanent telegraphic communication. with a well-manufactured cable, improved paying-out machinery and an experienced staff of mechanical engineers, not to mention the foremost electricians of the day, the immersion of the cable was successfully effected, after which the american end of the cable of 1865 was raised, a new length spliced on, and the shore-end safely landed in trinity bay. europe and america were thus united together by two electric bonds. it may here be mentioned that ocean cables are usually made in three sections, called, respectively, the shore-end, the intermediate section and the deep-sea section. it is clear that the submerged conductor needs the greatest protection in the shallow water that surrounds the coast, where it lies on a pebbly or rocky bottom, exposed to the drifting action of currents and tides, as well as to the haling flukes of the anchors of storm-tossed ships. in deep water, on the other hand, there is neither shingly bottom nor violent movement to displace and abrade the cable; for all is quiet and peaceful in the profound depths where the god of the trident holds his court; and hence few coverings and a light armor afford sufficient protection. the wear and tear in the ocean depths is a vanishing quantity when compared with the abrasive effects near coast-lines. looking at the sections of an ocean cable, the biggest and heaviest is the shore-end, while the thinnest and lightest is that which goes down into the depths of the sea. the lengths of the various sections are determined by the survey of the route, which is always carefully made before completing the specification of the cable. moreover, as the position of the cable-ship at noon every day is known from its longitude and latitude, it follows that the location of the cable on the bed of the ocean is also exactly known. when a cable is broken either by an upheaval or by a subsidence of the ocean floor, the distance of the rupture from the shore end is determined by an electrical test, after which a repair-ship is dispatched to the spot, when the cable is lifted, the "fault" cut away, a new length spliced on, and the amended cable allowed to settle down into its watery depths. at the present time (july, 1909), there are sixteen cables carrying the work of the north atlantic, at an average speed of 20 words a minute duplex, or 40 words a minute, counting both directions. this cable narrative affords as striking an illustration of the _triumph of failure_ as any recorded in the history of human enterprise. it was a victory of mind over matter; of character and tactfulness, energy and endurance over difficulties of every kind, moral and financial, mechanical and meteorological. the four expeditions of 1857, 1858, 1865 and 1866 represent years of hard work, anxiety and distressing failures; but, sustained by the patience of hope and by an unshaken confidence in the soundness of the enterprise as well as in the ability of their staff, the directors of the atlantic company were well rewarded for the disappointment occasioned and the monetary losses incurred. "it has been a long struggle," said the initial promoter of the enterprise, mr. cyrus w. field, speaking at a banquet given in his honor on november 15th, 1866, at the metropolitan hotel, new york, "a long struggle of nearly thirteen years of anxious watching and ceaseless toil. often my heart was ready to sink. many times, when wandering in the forests of newfoundland in pelting rain, or on the decks of ships in dark, stormy nights, i almost accused myself of madness and folly to sacrifice the peace of my family for what might have proved but a dream. i have seen my companions, one after another, fall by my side, and i feared that i, too, might not live to see the end. and yet one hope has led me on; i prayed that i might not taste of death till the work was accomplished. that prayer has been answered; and now, beyond all acknowledgments to men, is the feeling of gratitude to almighty god." it was men like field and thomson that the poet had in mind when he wrote: the wise and active conquer difficulties by daring to attempt them. sloth and folly shiver and shrink at sight of toil and labor, and make the impossibility they fear. shortly after his return home, prof. thomson was knighted for his splendid services in connection with sub-oceanic cables, and was also honored with the freedom of the city of glasgow. if while journeying over land or sea, sir william's mind was always active, his eyes were also open and observant. in the numerous voyages which he undertook in the interest of cable companies, he seems to have been struck by the unreliable character of the ordinary apparatus used in taking soundings, consisting of a heavy weight suspended by a thick hempen cord unwound from a reel. owing to the massiveness of the cord, the motion of the ship and currents in the water would necessarily deflect it from the vertical, so that the soundings recorded would be in excess of the true depth. to remedy this defect, thomson replaced the rope, at first by a steel wire, and later by a thin strand of steel wires, on which the speed of the ship has but little effect; the sinker descends vertically with considerable velocity, and is raised with equal rapidity by suitable winding-up machinery placed in the stern of the ship. the sinker carries a gauge consisting of a quill-tube open at the lower end and closed at the top. the inside, which is coated with silver chromate, shows by the discoloration produced by the action of the sea water how far the water has compressed the air in the tube. by comparison with a graduated ruler, the depth is then read off. when the sinker reaches bottom, the heavy weight is detached automatically, so that there is but little strain on the wire as it ascends with its thermometer and battery of tubes containing samples of the depths reached. a story is told in connection with this sounding-machine which shows the vivacity and wit of the inventor. having brought his friend joule into white's one day, he pointed to a number of coils of steel wire lying on the floor, informing his english friend of "mechanical-equivalent" fame at the same time that he intended the wire for sounding purposes. upon joule's innocently asking what note it would sound, he received the prompt answer, "the deep sea"! another subject to which sir william gave some attention after his experiences on the ocean is the navigating compass. his observations led him to distrust the long, heavy needles then in general use on shipboard. besides the friction to which the pressure on the pivot gives rise and which necessarily diminishes the sensitiveness of the needle, there was another objection, due to the difficulty experienced in successfully applying steel magnets and soft-iron masses to compensate for the magnetism of the ship and for the changes induced in it by change of place in the earth's magnetic field. as a result, prof. thomson devised a compass-card which is remarkable for its lightness and sensitiveness. it is made of two sets of magnets, containing four needles each, arranged symmetrically on the right and left of the pivot. the four needles, forming a set, are of unequal length, ranging from 3-1/4 to 2 inches, with the shortest outermost. such a card, with its associated correctors of steel magnets and soft-iron balls, has added greatly to the safety and certainty of navigation; and as such, it is used to-day in the merchant service and in the navies of most countries of the world. as we have seen, thomson had the keen, racy wit of his race. lecturing before the members of the birmingham and midland institute in 1883, he placed himself and his nationality on record in a very humorous way. his subject was "the six gateways of knowledge." as will be remembered by the readers of _the pilgrim's progress_, old bunyan likened the soul to a citadel on a hill having no means of communication with the outer world save by live gates, _viz._, the eye gate, the ear gate, the mouth gate, the nose gate and the feel gate. these are the five senses by which we obtain our knowledge of the material world which surrounds us. but prof. thomson took issue with bunyan, with reid, and the metaphysicians of all time in maintaining in this lecture that we have six gateways of knowledge instead of five, justifying the position which he took by affirming that the sense of touch is really twofold, one of heat and the other of force. it does not appear, however, that he made any marked impression on the philosophic thought of the day, for psychologists continued to write with undisturbed equanimity of the five senses and not the six. it was on this occasion that prof. thomson said: "the only census of the senses, so far as i am aware, that ever before made them more than five was the irishman's reckoning of seven senses. i presume the irishman's seventh sense was common sense; and i believe that the possession of that virtue by my countrymen, _i speak as an irishman_, i say the large possession of the seventh sense which i believe irishmen have, will do more to alleviate the woes of ireland than the removal of 'the melancholy ocean' which surrounds its shores." for the successful operation of cables, telegraph lines and scientific investigations of all sorts, a system of practical electrical units, accepted by all companies and countries of the world, was soon found to be indispensable. the pioneer in the movement for establishing an international system of electrical standards was mr. j. latimer clark, who, assisted by his distinguished partner, (sir) charles bright, prepared a paper on "the formation of standards of electrical quantity and resistance," which was read at the manchester meeting of the british association in 1861. prof. thomson was present; and, at his instance, a committee was appointed to report on the general question of electrical units. this was the first meeting of a committee that was destined to accomplish much in the electric and electromagnetic field; it was the initial impulse of a movement that brought renown to the entire body of english electricians. such units as the ohm, the volt and the farad met with immediate acceptance, while later on the ampere, the coulomb, the watt and the joule were introduced. among the members of this body besides prof. thomson, were such able men as clerk maxwell, joule, lord rayleigh, sir william siemens, johnstone stoney, balfour stewart, and carey foster. the world is then indebted to the insistence and advocacy of prof. thomson for the general acceptance of the "c.g.s." system of measurement, which involves the centimeter (length), the gram (mass), and the second (time) as the fundamental units from which all others are derived. prof. thomson has claims in the "wireless" field also; for as far back as 1855, he studied the nature of the discharge of a condenser and proved mathematically that, under certain conditions easily realized in practice, such discharges are of an oscillatory character, consisting of a forward and a backward rush of electricity between the two coatings of the condenser. as pointed out on page 92, prof. henry had reached the same conclusion in 1842, and helmholtz in 1847; but thomson's insight into the phenomenon is keen and his mathematical analysis of it very remarkable. just as the to-and-fro motions of the prongs of a tuning-fork give rise to sound-waves in the air, so the electric oscillation due to a condenser discharge sets up in the universal ether electric waves which flash the news of the world over continents and oceans with unthinkable velocity. by special request, sir william thomson gave, in 1884, a course of lectures at the johns hopkins university, baltimore, to an audience of "professional fellow-students in physical science," as he called the _élite_ of american men of science, twenty-one in number, assembled to hear him. these accomplished physicists he also affectionately called his "twenty-one coefficients." the subject was the wave-theory of light, and the object of the lecturer was to show how far the phenomena of light, such as its transmission, refraction and dispersion, could be explained within the limits of the elastic solid theory of the ether, which makes that hypothetical medium rigid, highly elastic and non-gravitational. from the very first lecture, sir william assumed a cold and diffident attitude toward the rival theory of clerk maxwell, which makes light an electromagnetic phenomenon; and though his own presented formidable difficulties, and its rival was universally accepted, the veteran professor assured his hearers that the elastic solid theory is the "only tenable foundation for the wave-theory of light in the present (1884) state of our knowledge." despite the energy which he displayed, his luminous argumentation and close logic, kelvin made no converts among his "twenty-one coefficients"; and it soon became evident that he was championing a lost cause. newton did the same when he held tenaciously to the corpuscular theory of light; and in doing so, let it be said, that he retarded the acceptance of the wave-theory and the advance of science by a hundred years. a few years after the baltimore lectures, official recognition of his distinguished services and of his eminence in science came to sir william thomson when, in 1892, he was raised to the peerage, with the title of baron kelvin of netherhall, kelvin being the name of a stream which passes near the buildings of the university of glasgow and flows into the clyde, while netherhall is that of his country-seat at largs, in ayrshire, 40 miles from glasgow. as to the structure of matter, kelvin lived to see the "atom" of his youth and mature years shattered into fragments, and the atomic theory of matter rapidly yielding to the electronic. though he maintained an open mind toward the new school of physics, he was reserved and conservative toward the revolutionary doctrine of extreme radio-activists. he did not believe in the transformation of one elementary form of matter into another; and he strenuously combated the theory of the spontaneous disintegration of the atom. notwithstanding a long life devoted to the study of mathematical and experimental physics, during which kelvin unraveled many a difficult problem in electricity and magnetism and added many a beautiful skein to the texture of our knowledge in electrostatics and electrokinetics, that illustrious man, the acknowledged leader in physical science, made a public admission in 1896 which caused a great stir throughout the scientific world. it was on the occasion of the celebration of the golden jubilee of his professorship of natural philosophy in the university of glasgow. delegates had come from all parts of the world; kings and princes had sent their representatives; universities and learned societies of every country of the old world and the new vied with one another in doing honor to the scientist who had figured so long and so conspicuously in the advances of the age. it was on that solemn occasion and in presence of such a notable assembly that kelvin made the astonishing admission that, although he had been a diligent student of electricity and magnetism for a period exceeding fifty years, and although he had pondered every day for forty years over the nature of the ether and the constitution of matter, he knew no more about their essence, about what they really are, than he knew at the beginning of his professional work. this confession, remarkable by reason of the man who made it and the circumstances in which it was made, has always appeared to the writer of these lines as having more of the ring of disappointment in it than of blank failure. kelvin's great analytical mind early and persistently strove to penetrate the closely guarded secrets of nature; and because dame nature did not yield to his open sesame, but persisted in her reticence, the philosopher grew pessimistic and disappointed; and, under the sway of such feelings, he summed up the result of his life-quest after the ultimate problems in science and pronounced it a "failure." a "failure" it was not, if science is the discovery and registration of the laws of god as revealed in the universe of mind and matter; for few men of his generation, if any, made more contributions of the first order to the theory of electrostatics, to the doctrine of energy, to hydrodynamics and the thermo-electric properties of matter. this note of disappointment, or wail of despondency, had been sounded before by faraday, who said that, the more he studied electrical phenomena, the less he seemed to know about electricity itself. was not laplace animated by a kindred feeling when he spoke about the infinitude of our ignorance? lastly, was not this intense feeling of our limited powers precisely that which, after all his discoveries in mathematics, in optics and in celestial mechanics, made newton compare himself to a child standing on the beach with the vast ocean of truth before him, unfathomed and unexplored? kelvin gave a beautiful example to the world when, after resigning the chair which he had occupied for fifty-five years in the university of glasgow, he immediately proceeded to enter his name on the undergraduate list, intimating by such an act that, whether a man is a professor-in-ordinary of natural philosophy or a professor emeritus, he must ever be a student, in close touch with nature. lord kelvin had the happiness of enjoying good health throughout all the years of his long career, a happiness due in part to nature, and in part also to the simplicity, frugality and regularity of his life. as already said, he was fond of cruising in european waters in his yacht _lalla rookh_ during the summer months, and even venturing out on the atlantic as far as madeira, for, he loved the sea, and what is more, he loved it best when far from shore. in later years, however, owing to facial neuralgia, he was accustomed to spend a month or so every summer with lady kelvin at aix-les-bains, from which visits he always derived much benefit. while making some experiments in a corridor of his beautiful home at netherhall, he caught a chill on november 23d, 1907, from which he never rallied, despite the cares and attentions that were fondly lavished upon him. the bulletins that were issued concerning his condition were read all the world over with more concern than if they referred to a reigning sovereign or an heir apparent. every teacher of physics, mathematical or experimental; every man interested in the advance of science and the spread of knowledge, anxiously awaited news from the sick-room of the illustrious patient--news that was transmitted to the ends of the earth by the siphon-recorder invented by the dying scientist in the heyday of his life; and when the word came that kelvin had breathed his last, that cablegram brought universal sorrow for the quenching of the brightest light of the age and the loss of the leading scientist, the model man and faithful christian. it was in the fitness of things that the man who was considered the greatest since newton should be buried in westminster abbey, and that the mortal remains of lord kelvin should find a resting-place next to the grave of the genius who thought out the _principia_ and discovered the gravitational law which governs the planetary as well as the stellar universe. if asked to say what impressed me most in lord kelvin, i would mention the cordial manner in which he welcomed those who sought advice; the encouragement which he held out to students; his absolute devotion to truth; his fair-mindedness and candor; his reverence in dealing with the problems of the soul and the destiny of man; and the uniform, tranquil happiness of his life, due, under god, to his profound religious belief and noble christian life. a man of strong convictions, kelvin did not, however, wear his religion on his sleeve, but treasured it in the depths of his heart, where it was never disturbed by the tossing and ever-changing wave-forms of individual opinion. he quietly but uniformly maintained that physical science demands the existence and action of creative power; and he did not shrink from affirming this conviction whenever circumstances seemed to require it, as was the case on the memorable occasion of his presidential address to the members of the british association in 1871. in concluding that brilliant discourse, he said: "but strong, overpowering proofs of intelligent and benevolent design lie all around us; and if ever perplexities, whether metaphysical or scientific, turn us away from them for a time, they come back upon us with irresistible force, showing to us, through nature, the influence of free will, and teaching us that all living beings depend on one ever-acting creator and ruler." once when particularly disgusted with the materialistic views of those who, while denying the existence of a creator, attributed the wonders of nature, animate and inanimate, to the potency of a fortuitous concourse of atoms, he wrote to liebig, asking him if a leaf or a flower could be formed or even made grow by chemical forces, to which he received the significant reply from the famous chemist of giessen: "i would more readily believe that a book on chemistry or on botany could grow out of dead matter by chemical processes." we have already referred to the custom which obtained in the university of glasgow, of beginning the daily sessions by invoking the blessing of heaven on the work about to be undertaken. having liberty in the matter of choice, prof. thomson selected for this purpose a prayer from the morning service of the church of england, which reads: "o lord, our heavenly father, almighty and everlasting god, who hast safely brought us to the beginning of this day; defend us in the same with thy mighty power; and grant that this day we fall into no sin, neither run into any kind of danger; but that all our doings may be ordered by thy governance, to do always what is righteous in thy sight; through jesus christ, our lord, amen." academical honors were showered upon lord kelvin by seats of learning, ancient and modern; he was a d. c. l. oxford, ll. d. cambridge, and a d. sc. london; he was president of the royal society from 1890 to 1895; president of the british association in 1871; knight of the prussian order _pour le mérite_, and foreign associate of the _institut de france_. his published works include a "treatise on natural philosophy," 2 vols., written in collaboration with prof. tait, of edinburgh (the two authors were often referred to as t and t'); "contributions to electrostatics and magnetism"; "collected mathematical and physical papers," 3 vols.; "popular lectures and addresses," 3 vols.; and the "baltimore lectures." these, as well as the instruments which he devised for navigation, for the finest work of the laboratory, as well as for the commercial measurement of current, potential, and energy, form a monument to lord kelvin that will be _aere perennius_. brother potamian. footnotes: [35] water was decomposed in 1789 by van troostwijk and cuthberson, by means of sparks from an electrical machine. prof. ostwald considers this the first instance of the decomposition of a chemical compound by electricity. [36] the thimble was borrowed from miss fitzgerald, daughter of the knight of kerry, who was living at valentia. [37] broken up a few years ago for scrap iron. index. a abbey, westminster, 393 academical honors, 395 academy of science, royal, 202 action at a distance, 356 adams prize, 339 addison, 215, 216 advancement of learning, 65 affinity, 70 agonic line, 22, 23 akenside, 216 albert the great, 36 albertus magnus, 70 alibert, 159 aldin, 141, 207 alfonso el sabio, 8 almanack, poor richard's, 103 ampère, jean jacques, 233, 210, 232, 361 amperean currents, 214 amundsen, 30, 51 anaesthesia, 308 anaxagoras, 244 anatomy, comparative, 136 ancients in the exact sciences, 1 anderson, 381 anelectrica, 70 animal electricity, 146, 149, 175, 205, 320 annus mirabilis, 86 apollonius, 244 arago, 177, 232, 243 archimedes, 1, 13, 139, 244, 213; burning mirror, 14 architecture, 199 architectonics of metaphysics, 222 aristarchus of samos, 53 aristotle, 52 arsinoe, queen, 5 aspects of pain, 352 assisi, poor little man of, 161 atheism, 160 atlantic telegraph co., 373 atoms, 355 attraction and repulsion, 197 auenbrugger, 274 autobiography of franklin, 126 ayrton, 369 b bacon, chancellor, 13 bacon, roger, 3, 10, 64 balance, electric, 200 balancing of energies, 331 baltimore lecture, 395 barlowe, wm., 40, 70, 326 barometer, 70 barrett, father, 254 bassi, laura, 154 battery, voltaic, 206 bauernfeind, 292 baxter, richard, 359 bear, little, 24 bede, 54 beet sugar, 306 bembo, cardinal, 215 bence jones, 333 bernoulli, 236, 245, 348 bernoulli, daniel, 280 bernoulli, johann, 280 bertelli, 27 bertholinus, 147 berthollet, 224 beuve, saint, 253 bevis, 95 biot, 198, 203, 224 birds' ears; kidneys; semi-circular canals, 137 boethius, 54 bolivar, 255 bond, 70 bose, 87 boyle, 70, 301 brewster, sir david, 218 briggs, 50 bright, sir charles, 387 brook taylor, 280 browne, sir thomas, 70 brugnatelli, prof., 179 brunetto latini, 9 buffon, 14, 99, 132 bunyan, 386 burning mirror, 14 byron, 328 c cabanis, 246 cabeo, 3, 26, 73 cable, submarine, 362; telegraph, 322 cabot, sebastian, 23 calculus of variations, 245 canada balsam, 348 canals, semi-circular, 348 canton, 91 carthesian ovals, 337 carminate, prof., 141 cascade, 90 cassini, 26 cavallo, 26 cavendish, 93, 101, 173, 338; laboratory, 340 cayley, 364 cell, gun-cap, 380 charles, law of, 173, 224 chelonian, complaisant, 52 chemical manipulation, 307 childe harold, 328 christianity, 257 chrystal, 258 churchmen in science, 162 cingari, 153 circle, graduated, 19 circuit, 70 clark, latimer, 218, 387 clausius, 348 clergymen pioneers in electricity, 162 clerk maxwell, 32, 94, 324 clerk of penicuik, 335 cluny, 8 coffin of mahomet, 5 coleridge, 261, 328 collinson, peter, 81 color vision, 345 columbian line, 23 columbus, 21, 23; on electricity, 208 como, college of, 172 compass-card, 386; variation of the, 25 concentration, 367 concourse of atoms, 394 conference of st. vincent de paul, 254 contributions to molecular physics, 285 copernicus, 54 copley medal, 284 coulomb, 84, 93, 188; character, 203; memoirs, 199 creator and ruler, 394 creatures, 331 crookes, 86, 246 cumming, 70 cunatus, 87 current, oscillatory, 206 curves, rolling, 337 cuthberson, 361 cuvier, 252, 224 cynosure, 24 d dante, 161 darwin, 227, 327, 351 davy, sir humphry, 303, 326 davy, 209, 306 d'alembert, 280 d'alibard, 99, 106 de causis et sedibus morborum, 167 declination, 21 de civitate dei, 5 degrees and residence, 205 de heer, 284 dellman, 286 de magnete, 35 de mundo nostro, 61 de mundo nostro sublunari, 63 de natura rerum, 2 de romas, 107 de vi attractiva, 170 de viribus electricitatis, 141 development, process of, 228 devotion, life of, 231 dewar, 41 dickerson, william, 380 didactic lecture, 295 digby, sir kenelen, 40 dip-circle, 30 discoveries by accident, 311; in science, 283; new, 251; practical, 213 disposer, great, 332 divinia commedia, 161 divisch, 107 dobereiner's lamp, 173 dryden, 65 dubois, reymond, 298 dufay, 83, 95 dumas, 290 dynamics of bodies, 291 e earth's magnetism, 22 earthquakes and electricity, 148 earthquakes and magnetism, 315 ear of the bird, 139 elastic solids, 337 electrica, 70 electrical bumper, 96; jack, 95; pistol, 172; treatment, 147; tube, 81 electricitatis, 134 electric light, 316; matter, 92; motor, 76 electricity, 70 electro-dynamics, 250 electromagnet, 70 electro-magnetics, 250 electro-magnetism, 70 electro-magnetismos, 41 electron, 86 electronic theory, 85 electrophorus, 171 electroscope, 171 epilepsy, 292 epitaph of franklin, 129 eratosthenes, 1 ether, 309; universal, 60 euclid, 1 eudiometer, 172 eugénie, empress, 310 euler, 107, 236, 280 ewing, 42 examination of conscience, 79 existence, history of, 247; of god, 354 f failure, triumph of, 283, 391 faith, confession of, 186 faraday, 32, 41, 189, 298, 338, 361, 366; eloquence, 323; marriage, 329; money making, 309; notebooks, 302, 317; parents, 300; passing of, 332; perseverance, 318; poverty, 300; statement of law, 314 faraday-maxwell theory, 344 father of mercies, 327 father of pathology, 167 fechner, 276, 284 fénelon, 235 fichte, 324 field, cyrus w., 322, 377, 384 field of force, 42 filial tributes, 267 flavio gioja, 20 foster, carey, 388 foucault, 55 fourier, 363 fowler, 149 francis i., emperor, 110 franklin, 68, 77; and paine, 128 franklinian rods, 115 franz, father, 110 freedom of the press, 225 free will, 352, 394 fresnel, 251, 361 frog dancing master, 151 fuller, 65 fulminating pane, 89 future, truth of, 331 g galileo, 40, 245 gateway of knowledge, 386 galtoni, father, 16, 8 galvani, 133, 205, 211; anticipation of original experiment, 144; madame, 141; the physician, the teacher, 151; wife, 140 galvanometer, 70, 375 garnett, 339 gasser, 28 gauss, 271, 375 gay-lussac, 209 gellibrand, 26, 49 genius, precocious, 234 geometry, 1; and intellectual culture, 267, 268 gilbert, 3, 13, 26, 32 giliani, alessandra, 155 gioja, 200 gladstone, 236, 332 glass harmonica, 115 god disposes, 289 goethe, 222 graduation, early, 165 graft, 192 graham, 26 gray, stephen, 77; prof. andrew, 369 great eastern, 382 green, 70 gregory, 244 grind, 263 guericke, otto von, 74 guyot de provins, 7 gymnotus electricus, 150 gyrostat, 372 h hakewill, 216 hallam, 36 hamilton, 76 handy-men, 273 hansteen, 208 happy in life, 355 hartmann, 26, 31 harvey, 133, 334 hauksbee, 74 haüy, abbé, 224 headaches, 52 helmholtz, 279, 321, 366 heis, 271 henry, 214, 361; joseph, 92, 206, 284, 388 herapath, 348 herschel, sir john, 225 hertzian waves, 342 hippocrates, 244 hobby, 345 holmes, oliver wendell, 262 homer, 235 horace, 204, 355 hottentots, 129 hunter, john, 138 huyghens, 244 hymn to mont blanc, 328 i identity of lightning and electricity, 98 il mago benefico, 184 imitation of christ, 255 inclination, 70 induction, 311; theory of, 311; sparks, 316 institute of france, 202 interference, phenomena of, 287 iron filings, 3; raspings of, 2 isidore of seville, 54 isomagnetic lines, 24 invisible things of god, 331 izarn, 207 j jacobi, 284 jesuit gymnasium, 270 johns hopkins university, 389 joule, 385, 388 k kant, 119, 260 kelvin, lord, 139, 228, 258 kepler, 40, 333 kidneys of the bird, 136 kinnersley, 83 kircher, 26, 41, 70 kite incident, 131; lightning, 121 klaproth, 7, 224 kleist, dean von, 87 klopstock, 223 kneller, father, 177 knowledge, subjective and objective, 247 koerner, 223, 265 kohlrausch, 286 l laboratory, first physical, 368 laennec, 139 lagrange, 244, 343 lamont, 270 larmor, dr. joseph, 66 langberg, 287 langsdorff, 260 languages, special gift for, 167 laplace, 254, 391 learning, a little, 160 lectures to the working people, 350 leibnitz, 245 lejeune dirichlet, 271 lenz, 284 lesage, 219 lessing, 222 leverrier, 251 libri, 27 light an electric phenomenon, 344; polarized, 316 lightning conductor, the divisch, 111; kite, 121; rods, 101, 104, 114; storm, 116 life, future, 331; happiness, 355 lines of magnetic force, 313 linnæus, 238 livius sanutus, 49 livres dou tresor, 9 lockwood, thomas d., 275 lodestone, 2 lodge, sir oliver, 71, 246 lombroso, 246 lor, m. de, 122 lucretius, 2, 167 ludwig i., 278 lucan, 235 m mackenzie, colin, 358 machines, simple, 192, 199 magaud, 187 magiae naturalis, 35 magic, natural, 215 magnes, loadstone challenge, 34 magnetic declination, 47; dip, 29; fields, 42, 313; figures, 3; inclination, 31; meridian, 45; motor, 16 magnet and chinese, 7; flesh, 5; gold, 6; polarity of, 4; white, 6 magnetism, 70, 202; into electricity, 315 magnetismus, 40 magnetization, permanent, 206 magnetometer, 44 mahomet's sarcophagus, 65 makers of modern medicine, 13 malebranche, 248 man proposes, 289 manzolini, madame, 154 marcet, mrs., 301 maria theresa, 110 mariotte, 245 marriage, faraday's, 329 marshall, chas., 218 martinique, 191 martius, 298 mass and weight, 56; of the earth, 58 mathematics, without a taste for, 262 matter and force, 320; ultimate structure of, 282; al tripos, 364 maxwell, 313, 388; the man, 359 memberships, honorary, 332 memory, wonderful, 236 menon, abbé, 77 mental powers and morals, 331 message, inaugural, 376 metaphysics, 247, 222 meteorological machine, 112 mind, concentration of, 169 mirror, galvanometer, 375 mitchell, john, 84, 189 mojon, 207 molecular torrent, 86 molecules, 353 money-making, faraday on, 309 monge, 224 montucla, 244 morality, absolute, 247 morrison, charles, 218 motion, perpetual, 18 moscow, 265 mottelay, p. fleury, 66 mullaly, john, 377 müller, johann, 338 mullock, bishop, 373 muscle-twitchings, 175 musschenbroek, 86, 211 myopia, 239 n napoleon, 179, 202, 247 near-sightedness, 239 negative, 126 neptune, 251 newe attractive, 33 newman, cardinal, 353 newton, 74, 139, 197, 244, 333, 389; principia, 62, 208 nollet, abbé, 77, 95, 101, 170 norman, 29, 59 novum organum, 13 o oersted, 208, 232, 249; discusses evolution, 227 ohm, martin, 262, 270 ohm's law, 189, 251, 258; of acoustics, 282; goodness of heart, 296 ohm's personal appearance, 293; preface, 274 olbers, 224 opus majus, 10 opus tertiam, 12 orb of virtue, 33 orchestrion, 115 origin of species, 227 ostwald, 361 oval curves, 337 ozanam, 253 p paine, 127 palladius, 5 paralysis, 148 paris, dr., 304 parkinson, 365 pascal, 256 pasteur, 185, 282, 310 pavia, university of, 173 pellagra, 184 pellico, sylvio, 187 peregrinus, 3, 8, 11 perry, prof. john, 369 pfaff, 276 philosopher of copenhagen, 210 philosophia magnetica, 3 philosophical society, 307 philosophy, small draughts of, 160 physics text-book, 291 pierre le pélérin, 12 pile, 205 pivoted compass, 9 plagiarism, 63 planta, martin de, 74 plato, 1, 213 pliny, 4 poet and scientist, 323 poem, mathematical, 364 poggendorff, 276, 284, 375 pohl, 276 poincaré, 344 polaric, 24 polarity, 4, 200 polarization, 200 polyhedrons, 244 pope alexander vi., 24; clement iv., 10; paul iii., 54; leo x., 215 popularization of science, 350 porta, 215 positive, 126 potential, 70 potato, 174 pouillet, 284 power, feeble directive, 51 preece, sir william, 107 premonstratensian order, 107 premonition, 266 priestley, 106, 121, 167, 171, 231 pringle, sir john, 101 priority in discoveries, 133 prometheus, modern, 119 providence, 327; particular, general, 127 pseudodoxia epidemica, 70 psychology, 246 ptolemy, 54 q quacks, 52 quackery, 149 r radowitz, general, 278 rainbow, 333 ramsay, sir wm., 369 ramsden, 74 rayleigh, lord, 388 raymond lully, 10 reid, 368 religion, 129 republic, cis-alpine, 156 repulsion, magnetic, 2 resurrection, 129 retina, 348 richet, 246 richmann, 106 righi, 71 ritter, 224 robespierre, 114 roentgen, 211 romagnosi, 206 ronaldo, 219 ross, sir james, 30 rotch, 104 rousseau, 238 rowland, 94 rush, benjamin, 165 s sacchetti, 153 samothracian rings, 3 saturn's rings, 339 scarpa, 137 schelling, 224 schiller, 223 schlegel, 223 schweigger, 273 science and free will, 352; and religion, 185; classification of, 252; experimental, 37; high priest of, 295 sebec, 281 secular variation, 49 semi-circular canals, 138 senses, seven, 387 series, 90 seventh sense, 387 shakespeare's cliff, 329 siena, cathedral, 115 siger, 17 silurus electricus, 150 siphon-recorder, 375 skill, mechanical, 273 smith's prize, 336, 365 snell, 244 sophocles, 355 soundings of deep sea, 384 sound, perception of, 282 southey, 8 spectator, 215 spence, dr., 82 sphere, electrified, 198 spirit of mathematical analysis, 262 squaring of the circle, 243 saint aloysius, 134; augustine, 53, 254; francis, third order of, 161; thomas, 63 saint-hilaire, geoffroy, 252 statics, 199 stereoscope, real image, 348 stethoscope, 139 stevin, 49 stewart, balfour, 388 stimmen aus maria-laach, 177 stokes, 364 stoney, 388 strada, 216 strain in the ether, 356 structure of physical bodies, 282 stuber, dr., 119 sturgeon, 70 sugar from beet-root, 306 sulzer, 176 superfluous, elimination of, 283 suspension of the earth, 60 swammerdam, 144 t taisnier, 26, 63 tait, 334, 337, 342 tampering with the lodestone, 6 tandem, 90 taprobane, 5 tasso, 166, 235 taylor's scientific memoirs, 276 telephone, 70 terrella, 44 terrestrial magnetism, 51 terror, reign of, 201 test-nail method, 44 text-books, maxwell's, 349 thales, 2 theory of induction, 314; of the leyden-jar, 88; two-fluid, 126 thévenot, 20 thimble-cell, 379 thompson, james, 362; silvanus p., 27, 63, 80, 371; wm., 361 thunderbolt, 117 toaldo, padre, 115 torpedo, 150 torsion balance, 84, 188 torque, 200 tripos, 365 truth of the future, 331 twitchings of frogs, 135 tycho brahé, 68 tyndall, 299 u uhland, 223, 265 understanding and personal investigation, 268 university degrees, 265 unworkable, 357; extension, 225 uranus, 251 v van helmont, 70 van troostwijk, 361 variation of the compass, 21 vaults, the statics of, 191 venedey, 271 venturoli, 156 verses, latin, 239 virchow, 293 virgil, 166 virgilius, 53 vitry, cardinal jacques de, 8 volta, 162; anticipation of, 176; faith, 186; honored, 180; piety;183; pile, 177 voltaic pile, 176 voltaire, 235 vortex, 372 w wallace, 244, 246 watson, 70, 95 waves, hertzian, 342 wealth, three ways to, 127 weber, 342 weight, accidental, 57; and mass of the earth, 56, 58 wenckebach, 21 werner, 224 wheatstone, 70 wilson, dr. benjamin, 101 wimshurst, 74 windmills, 199 winkelmann, 222 winkler, 91 works, sham, pilfered, distorted, 63; under-water, 99 worthies of england, 65 y young, 313 z zák, father alphons, 108 fordham university press series makers of modern medicine--a series of biographies of the men to whom we owe the important advances in the development of modern medicine. by james j. walsh, m. d., ph. d., ll.d., dean and professor of the history of medicine at fordham university school of medicine, n. y. second edition, 1909. 362 pp. price, $2.00 net. _the london lancet_ said: "the list is well chosen, and we have to express gratitude for so convenient and agreeable a collection of biographies, for which we might otherwise have to search through many scattered books. the sketches are pleasantly written, interesting, and well adapted to convey the thoughtful members of our profession just the amount of historical knowledge that they would wish to obtain. we hope that the book will find many readers." _the new york times_: "the book is intended primarily for students of medicine, but laymen will find it not a little interesting." _il morgagni_ (italy): "professor walsh narrates important lives in modern medicine with an easy style that makes his book delightful reading. it certainly will give the young physician an excellent idea of who made our modern medicine." _the lamp_: "this exceptionally interesting book is from the practiced hand of dr. james j. walsh. it is a suggestive thought that each of the great specialists portrayed were god-fearing men, men of faith, far removed from the shallow materialism that frequently flaunts itself as inherently worthy of extra consideration for its own sake." _the church standard_ (_protestant episcopal_): "there is perhaps no profession in which the lives of its leaders would make more fascinating reading than that of medicine, and dr. walsh by his clever style and sympathetic treatment by no means mars the interest which we might thus expect." _the new york medical journal_: "we welcome works of this kind; they are evidence of the growth of culture within the medical profession, which betokens that the time has come when our teachers have the leisure to look backward to what has been accomplished." _science_: "the sketches are extremely entertaining and useful. perhaps the most striking thing is that everyone of the men described was of the catholic faith, and the dominant idea is that great scientific work is not incompatible with devout adherence to the tenets of the catholic religion." the popes and science--the story of the papal relations to science from the middle ages down to the nineteenth century. by james j. walsh, m. d., ph. d., ll.d. 440 pp. price, $2.00 net. prof. pagel, professor of history at the university of berlin: "this book represents the most serious contribution to the history of medicine that has ever come out of america." sir clifford allbutt, regius professor of physic at the university of cambridge (england): "the book as a whole is a fair as well as a scholarly argument." _the evening post_ (new york) says: "however strong the reader's prejudice...he cannot lay down prof. walsh's volume without at least conceding that the author has driven his pen hard and deep into the 'academic superstition' about papal opposition to science." in a previous issue it had said: "we venture to prophesy that all who swear by dr. andrew d. white's history of the warfare of science with theology in christendom will find their hands full, if they attempt to answer dr. james j. walsh's the popes and science." _the literary digest_ said: "the book is well worth reading for its extensive learning and the vigor of its style." _the southern messenger_ says: "books like this make it clear that it is ignorance alone that makes people, even supposedly educated people, still cling to the old calumnies." _the nation_ (new york) says: "the learned fordham physician has at command an enormous mass of facts, and he orders them with logic, force and literary ease. prof. walsh convicts his opponents of hasty generalizing if not anti-clerical zeal." _the pittsburg post_ says: "with the fair attitude of mind and influenced only by the student's desire to procure knowledge, this book becomes at once something to fascinate. on every page authoritative facts confute the stereotyped statement of the purely theological publications." prof. welch, of johns hopkins, quoting martial, said: "it is pleasant indeed to drink at the living fountain-heads of knowledge after previously having had only the stagnant pools of second-hand authority." prof. piersol, professor of anatomy at the university of pennsylvania, said: "i have been reading the book with the keenest interest, for it indeed presents many subjects in what to me at least is a new light. every man of science looks to the beacon--truth--as his guiding mark, and every opportunity to replace even time-honored misconceptions by what is really the truth must be welcomed." _the independent_ (new york) said: "dr. walsh's books should be read in connection with attacks upon the popes in the matter of science by those who want to get both sides." other books by the same author fordham university press series makers of modern medicine (second thousand). lives of the dozen men to whom nineteenth century medical science owes most. cloth, octavo, 362 pp., with portrait of pasteur. new york, 1907: second edition, 1909. $2.00, net. the popes and science (second thousand). the history of the papal relations to science during the middle ages and down to our own time. new york, 1908. $2.00, net. old-time makers of medicine, in preparation. to be issued winter, 1909. makers of astronomy, in preparation. the dolphin press series catholic churchmen in science (first series). lives of seven catholic ecclesiastics who were among the great founders of science. the dolphin press, philadelphia, 1906. price, $1.00, net. catholic churchmen in science (second series). lives of four great clerical founders in science and clerical pioneers in electricity and jesuit astronomers. the dolphin press, philadelphia, 1909. price, $1.00, net. * * * * * the thirteenth greatest of centuries (second edition, third thousand). the story of the rise of the universities, and of the origin of modern art, letters, science, liberty and democracy in a single century. catholic summer school press, new york, 1907. $2.50, net. in collaboration essays in pastoral medicine. o'malley and walsh. medical information for pastors, superiors and nurses, and applications of ethical principles for physicians, judges, lawyers, etc. longmans, green & co. (fourth thousand), new york, 1906. $2.50, net. transcriber's notes: page 5, "passings" changed to "passing" (...nails from passing ships and how wooden pegs were substituted for nails in vessels...) page 27, "conville" changed to "gonville" (gonville and caius, cambridge) page 36, added word "of" (...contribute effectively to the advancement of learning.) page 98, changed "philosphical" to "philosophical" (philosophical transactions) page 145, changed "formal" to "former" (...the muscle will recover the former motion...) page 169, changed "inadventently" to "inadvertently" (...miss meals, and inadvertently to put off...) page 206, changed "cicumstances" to "circumstances" (...that, under ordinary circumstances, all...) page 246, changed two cases of "pyschology" to "psychology" (...widely known as students of psychology, of whom...); (...great a passion for psychology, and...) page 266, changed "allegmeine" to "allgemeine" (...german biographer in the allgemeine deutsche...) page 296, changed "know" to "known" (...who had known him intimately:...) page 319, changed "galvonometer" to "galvanometer" (...machine deflected the needle of his galvanometer in the...) page 340, changed "abderdeen" to "aberdeen" (...physical sciences, at marischal college, aberdeen.) page 367, changed "realtive" to "relative" (...thoughts that occurred relative to problems...) page 368, changed "suface" to "surface" (...as we go below the earth's surface, he...) page 400, changed numerical order of index entry "henry; joseph" page 400, changed "keppler" to "kepler" page 401, added missing page reference "65" to "mahomet; sarcophagus" page 402, changed "poggendorf" to "poggendorff" page 404, changed alphabetical order of "winkelmann" advertising material originally located at beginning of text moved to end. transcriber's note this is volume 1 of a 3-volume set. the other two volumes are also accessible in project gutenberg using http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/48137 and http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/48138. italic text is denoted by _underscores_. obvious typographical errors and punctuation errors have been corrected after careful comparison with other occurrences within the text and consultation of external sources. more detail can be found at the end of the book. [illustration: benjamin franklin, l.l.d. _publish'd april 1, 1806; by longman, rees, hurst, & orme, paternoster row._] the works of benjamin franklin, l.l.d. vol. 1. [illustration: (engraved by w. & g. cooke.)] printed, for longman, hurst, rees, & orme, paternoster row, london. the complete works, in philosophy, politics, and morals, of the late dr. benjamin franklin, now first collected and arranged: with memoirs of his early life, written by himself. in three volumes. vol. i. london: printed for j. johnson, st. paul's church-yard; and longman, hurst, rees and orme, paternoster-row. 1806. advertisement. _the works of dr. franklin have been often partially collected, never before brought together in one uniform publication._ _the first collection was made by mr. peter collinson in the year 1751. it consisted of letters, communicated by the author to the editor, on one subject, electricity, and formed a pamphlet only, of which the price was half-a-crown. it was enlarged in 1752, by a second communication on the same subject, and in 1754, by a third, till, in 1766, by the addition of letters and papers on other philosophical subjects, it amounted to a quarto volume of 500 pages._ _ten years after, in 1779, another collection was made, by a different editor, in one volume, printed both in quarto and octavo, of papers not contained in the preceding collection, under the title of political, miscellaneous, and philosophical pieces._ _in 1787, a third collection appeared in a thin octavo volume, entitled philosophical and miscellaneous papers._ _and lastly, in 1793, a fourth was published, in two volumes, crown octavo, consisting of memoirs of dr. franklin's life, and essays humourous, moral and literary, chiefly in the manner of the spectator._ _in the present volumes will be found all the different collections we have enumerated, together with the various papers of the same author, that have been published in separate pamphlets, or inserted in foreign collections of his works, or in the transactions of our own or of foreign philosophical societies, or in our own or foreign newspapers and magazines, as far as discoverable by the editor, who has been assisted in the research by a gentleman in america. among these papers some, we conceive, will be new to the english reader on this side of the atlantic; particularly a series of essays entitled the busy-body, written, as dr. franklin tells us in his life, when he was an assiduous imitator of addison; and a pamphlet, entitled plain truth, with which he is said to have commenced his political career as a writer. we hoped to have been enabled to add, what would have been equally new, and still more acceptable, a genuine copy of the life of our author, as written by himself; but in this hope we are disappointed, and we are in consequence obliged to content ourselves with a translation, which has been already before the public, from a copy in the french language, coming no farther down than the year 1731; and a continuation of his history from that period, by the late dr. stuber of philadelphia._ _the character of dr. franklin, as a philosopher, a politician, and a moralist, is too well known to require illustration, and his writings, from their interesting nature, and the fascinating simplicity of their style, are too highly esteemed, for any apology to be necessary for so large a collection of them, unless it should be deemed necessary by the individual to whom dr. franklin in his will consigned his manuscripts: and to him our apology will consist in a reference to his own extraordinary conduct._ _in bequeathing his papers, it was no doubt the intention of the testator, that the world should have the chance of being benefited by their publication. it was so understood by the person in question, his grandson, who, accordingly, shortly after the death of his great relative, hastened to london, the best mart for literary property, employed an amanuensis for many months in copying, ransacked our public libraries that nothing might escape, and at length had so far prepared the works of dr. franklin for the press, that proposals were made by him to several of our principal booksellers for the sale of them. they were to form three quarto volumes, and were to contain all the writings, published and unpublished, of franklin, with memoirs of his life, brought down by himself to the year 1757, and continued to his death by the legatee. they were to be published in three different languages, and the countries corresponding to those languages, france, germany, and england, on the same day. the terms asked for the copyright of the english edition were high, amounting to several thousand pounds, which occasioned a little demur; but eventually they would no doubt have been obtained. nothing more however was heard of the proposals or the work, in this its fair market. the proprietor, it seems, had found a bidder of a different description in some emissary of government, whose object was to withhold the manuscripts from the world, not to benefit it by their publication; and they thus either passed into other hands, or the person to whom they were bequeathed received a remuneration for suppressing them. this at least has been asserted, by a variety of persons, both in this country and america, of whom some were at the time intimate with the grandson, and not wholly unacquainted with the machinations of the ministry; and the silence, which has been observed for so many years respecting the publication, gives additional credibility to the report._ _what the manuscripts contained, that should have excited the jealousy of government, we are unable, as we have never seen them, positively to affirm; but, from the conspicuous part acted by the author in the american revolution and the wars connected with it, it is by no means difficult to guess; and of this we are sure, from his character, that no disposition of his writings could have been more contrary to his intentions or wishes._ _we have only to add, that in the present collection, which is probably all that will ever be published of the works of this extraordinary man, the papers are methodically arranged, the moral and philosophical ones according to their subjects, the political ones, as nearly as may be, according to their dates; that we have given, in notes, the authorities for ascribing the different pieces to franklin; that where no title existed, to indicate the nature of a letter or paper, we have prefixed a title; and lastly, that we have compiled an index to the whole, which is placed at the beginning, instead of, as is usual, at the end of the work, to render the volumes more equal._ _april 7, 1806._ contents. vol. i. _page._ life of dr. franklin 1 letters and papers on electricity. introductory letter. 169 wonderful effect of points.--positive and negative electricity.--electrical kiss.--counterfeit spider.--simple and commodious electrical machine. 170 observations on the leyden bottle, with experiments proving the different electrical state of its different surfaces. 179 further experiments confirming the preceding observations.--leyden bottle analysed.--electrical battery.--magical picture.--electrical wheel or jack.--electrical feast. 187 observations and suppositions, towards forming a new hypothesis, for explaining the several phenomena of thunder-gusts. 203 introductory letter to some additional papers. 216 opinions and conjectures, concerning the properties and effects of the electrical matter, and the means of preserving buildings, ships, &c. from lightning, arising from experiments and observations made at philadelphia, 1749.--golden fish.--extraction of effluvial virtues by electricity impracticable. 217 additional experiments: proving that the leyden bottle has no more electrical fire in it when charged, than before: nor less when discharged: that in discharging, the fire does not issue from the wire and the coating at the same time, as some have thought, but that the coating always receives what is discharged by the wire, or an equal quantity: the outer surface being always in a negative state of electricity, when the inner surface is in a positive state. 245 accumulation of the electrical fire proved to be in the electrified glass.--effect of lightning on the needle of compasses, explained.--gunpowder fired by the electric flame. 247 unlimited nature of the electric force. 250 the terms, electric per se, and non-electric, improper.--new relation between metals and water.--effects of air in electrical experiments.--experiment for discovering more of the qualities of the electric fluid. 252 mistake, that only metals and water were conductors, rectified.--supposition of a region of electric fire above our atmosphere.--theorem concerning light.--poke-weed a cure for cancers. 256 new experiments.--paradoxes inferred from them.--difference in the electricity of a globe of glass charged, and a globe of sulphur.--difficulty of ascertaining which is positive and which negative. 261 probable cause of the different attractions and repulsions of the two electrified globes mentioned in the two preceding letters. 264 reasons for supposing, that the glass globe charges positively, and the sulphur negatively.--hint respecting a leather globe for experiments when travelling. _ibid._ electrical kite. 267 hypothesis, of the sea being the grand source of lightning, retracted.--positive, and sometimes negative, electricity of the clouds discovered.--new experiments and conjectures in support of this discovery.--observations recommended for ascertaining the direction of the electric fluid.--size of rods for conductors to buildings.--appearance of a thunder-cloud described. 269 additional proofs of the positive and negative state of electricity in the clouds.--new method of ascertaining it. 284 electrical experiments, with an attempt to account for their several phenomena, &c. 286 experiments made in pursuance of those made by mr. canton, dated december 6, 1753; with explanations, by mr. benjamin franklin. 294 turkey killed by electricity.--effect of a shock on the operator in making the experiment. 299 differences in the qualities of glass.--account of domien, an electrician and traveller.--conjectures respecting the pores of glass.--origin of the author's idea of drawing down lightning.--no satisfactory hypothesis respecting the manner in which clouds become electrified.--six men knocked down at once by an electrical shock.--reflections on the spirit of invention. 301 beccaria's work on electricity.--sentiments of franklin on pointed rods, not fully understood in europe.--effect of lightning on the church of newbury, in new england.--remarks on the subject. 309 notice of another packet of letters. 313 extract of a letter from a gentleman in boston, to benjamin franklin, esq. concerning the crooked direction, and the source of lightning, and the swiftness of the electric fire. 314 observations on the subjects of the preceding letter.--reasons for supposing the sea to be the grand source of lightning.--reasons for doubting this hypothesis.--improvement in a globe for raising the electric fire. 320 effect of lightning on captain waddel's compass, and the dutch church at new york. 324 proposal of an experiment to measure the time taken up by an electric spark, in moving through any given space. 327 experiments on boiling water, and glass heated by boiling water.--doctrine of repulsion in electrised bodies doubted.--electricity of the atmosphere at different heights.--electrical horse-race.--electrical thermometer.--in what cases the electrical fire produces heat.--wire lengthened by electricity.--good effect of a rod on the house of mr. west, of philadelphia. 331 answer to some of the foregoing subjects.--how long the leyden bottle may be kept charged.--heated glass rendered permeable by the electric fluid.--electrical attraction and repulsion.--reply to other subjects in the preceding paper.--numerous ways of kindling fire.--explosion of water.--knobs and points. 343 accounts from carolina (mentioned in the foregoing letter) of the effects of lightning on two of the rods commonly affixed to houses there, for securing them against lightning. 361 mr. william maine's account of the effects of the lightning on his rod, dated at indian land, in south carolina, aug. 28, 1760. 362 on the electricity of the tourmalin. 369 new observation relating to electricity in the atmosphere. 373 flash of lightning that struck st. bride's steeple. 374 best method of securing a powder magazine from lightning. 375 of lightning, and the methods (now used in america) of securing buildings and persons from its mischievous effects. 377 st. bride's steeple.--utility of electrical conductors to steeples.--singular kind of glass tube. 382 experiments, observations, and facts, tending to support the opinion of the utility of long pointed rods, for securing buildings from damage by strokes of lightning. 383 on the utility of electrical conductors. 400 on the effects of electricity in paralytic cases. 401 electrical experiments on amber. 403 on the electricity of the fogs in ireland. 405 mode of ascertaining, whether the power, giving a shock to those who touch either the surinam eel, or the torpedo, be electrical. 408 on the analogy between magnetism and electricity. 410 concerning the mode of rendering meat tender by electricity. 413 answer to some queries concerning the choice of glass for the leyden experiment. 416 concerning the leyden bottle. 418 appendix. no. 1. account of experiments made in electricity at marly. 420 a more particular account of the same, &c. 422 letter of mr. w. watson, f. r. s. to the royal society, concerning the electrical experiments in england upon thunder-clouds. 427 no. 2. remarks on the abbé nollet's letters to benjamin franklin, esq. of philadelphia, on electricity. 430 list of the plates plate i. electrical experiments facing page 182 plate ii. electrical air thermometer 336 plate iii. cavendish experiment 348 plate iv. lightning rod experiments 388 _errata._ _page._ _line._ 2 10: for true, read me. 5 5: for was born, read who was born. 20 1: for tryon, read tyron's. _ib._ 7 from the bottom: for put to blush, read put to the blush. _ib._ 4 from the bottom: for myself, read by myself. 15 4: for collection, read works. 21 9 from the bottom: for or, read nor. 25 4 from the bottom: for pasquenades, read pasquinades. 28 7: dele the. _ib._ 12: for printer, read a printer. 28 3 from the bottom: for my old favourite work, bunyan's voyages, read my old favourite bunyan. 40 5: for money, read in money. 44 3: for bernet, read burnet. _ib._ 17: for unabled, read unable. 50 19: for ingenuous, read ingenious. 67 5: dele bridge. 80 3 from the bottom: for into, read into which. 235 21: substitute + for *. 264 2: for course read cause. life of _dr. benjamin franklin._ _life_ of dr. benjamin franklin, &c. &c. my dear son, i have amused myself with collecting some little anecdotes of my family. you may remember the enquiries i made, when you were with me in england, among such of my relations as were then living; and the journey i undertook for that purpose. to be acquainted with the particulars of my parentage and life, many of which are unknown to you, i flatter myself will afford the same pleasure to you as to me. i shall relate them upon paper: it will be an agreeable employment of a week's uninterrupted leisure, which i promise myself during my present retirement in the country. there are also other motives which induce me to the undertaking. from the bosom of poverty and obscurity, in which i drew my first breath, and spent my earliest years, i have raised myself to a state of opulence and to some degree of celebrity in the world. a constant good fortune has attended me through every period of life to my present advanced age; and my descendants may be desirous of learning what were the means of which i made use, and which, thanks to the assisting hand of providence, have proved so eminently successful. they may also, should they ever be placed in a similar situation, derive some advantage from my narrative. when i reflect, as i frequently do, upon the felicity i have enjoyed, i sometimes say to myself, that, were the offer made me, i would engage to run again, from beginning to end, the same career of life. all i would ask, should be the privilege of an author, to correct, in a second edition, certain errors of the first. i could wish, likewise if it were in my power, to change some trivial incidents and events for others more favourable. were this, however, denied me, still would i not decline the offer. but since a repetition of life cannot take place, there is nothing which, in my opinion, so nearly resembles it, as to call to mind all its circumstances, and, to render their remembrance more durable, commit them to writing. by thus employing myself, i shall yield to the inclination, so natural in old men, to talk of themselves and their exploits, and may freely follow my bent, without being tiresome to those who, from respect to my age, might think themselves obliged to listen to me; as they will be at liberty to read me or not as they please. in fine--and i may as well avow it, since nobody would believe me were i to deny it--i shall perhaps, by this employment, gratify my vanity. scarcely indeed have i ever read or heard the introductory phrase, "_i may say without vanity_," but some striking and characteristic instance of vanity has immediately followed. the generality of men hate vanity in others, however strongly they may be tinctured with it themselves: for myself, i pay obeisance to it wherever i meet with it, persuaded that it is advantageous, as well to the individual whom it governs, as to those who are within the sphere of its influence. of consequence, it would in many cases, not be wholly absurd, that a man should count his vanity among the other sweets of life, and give thanks to providence for the blessing. and here let me with all humility acknowledge, that to divine providence i am indebted for the felicity i have hitherto enjoyed. it is that power alone which has furnished me with the means i have employed, and that has crowned them with success. my faith in this respect leads me to hope, though i cannot count upon it, that the divine goodness will still be exercised towards me, either by prolonging the duration of my happiness to the close of life, or by giving me fortitude to support any melancholy reverse, which may happen to me, as to so many others. my future fortune is unknown but to him in whose hand is our destiny, and who can make our very afflictions subservient to our benefit. one of my uncles, desirous, like myself, of collecting anecdotes of our family, gave me some notes, from which i have derived many particulars respecting our ancestors. from these i learn, that they had lived in the same village (eaton in northamptonshire,) upon a freehold of about thirty acres, for the space at least of three hundred years. how long they had resided there prior to that period, my uncle had been unable to discover; probably ever since the institution of surnames, when they took the appellation of franklin, which had formerly been the name of a particular order of individuals.[1] this petty estate would not have sufficed for their subsistence, had they not added the trade of blacksmith, which was perpetuated in the family down to my uncle's time, the eldest son having been uniformly brought up to this employment: a custom which both he and my father observed with respect to their eldest sons. in the researches i made at eaton, i found no account of their births, marriages, and deaths, earlier than the year 1555; the parish register not extending farther back than that period. this register informed me, that i was the youngest son of the youngest branch of the family, counting five generations. my grandfather, thomas, who was born in 1598, lived at eaton till he was too old to continue his trade, when he retired to banbury in oxfordshire, where his son john, who was a dyer, resided, and with whom my father was apprenticed. he died, and was buried there: we saw his monument in 1758. his eldest son lived in the family house at eaton, which he bequeathed, with the land belonging to it, to his only daughter; who, in concert with her husband, mr. fisher of wellingborough, afterwards sold it to mr. estead, the present proprietor. my grandfather had four surviving sons, thomas, john, benjamin, and josias. i shall give you such particulars of them as my memory will furnish, not having my papers here, in which you will find a more minute account, if they are not lost during my absence. thomas had learned the trade of a blacksmith under his father; but possessing a good natural understanding, he improved it by study, at the solicitation of a gentleman of the name of palmer, who was at that time the principal inhabitant of the village, and who encouraged, in like manner, all my uncles to cultivate their minds. thomas thus rendered himself competent to the functions of a country attorney; soon became an essential personage in the affairs of the village; and was one of the chief movers of every public enterprise, as well relative to the county as the town of northampton. a variety of remarkable incidents were told us of him at eaton. after enjoying the esteem and patronage of lord halifax, he died, january 6, 1702, precisely four years before i was born. the recital that was made us of his life and character, by some aged persons of the village, struck you, i remember, as extraordinary, from its analogy to what you knew of myself. "had he died," said you, "just four years later, one might have supposed a transmigration of souls." john, to the best of my belief, was brought up to the trade of a wool-dyer. benjamin served his apprenticeship in london to a silk-dyer. he was an industrious man: i remember him well; for, while i was a child, he joined my father at boston, and lived for some years in the house with us. a particular affection had always subsisted between my father and him; and i was his godson. he arrived to a great age. he left behind him two quarto volumes of poems in manuscript, consisting of little fugitive pieces addressed to his friends. he had invented a short-hand, which he taught me, but having never made use of it, i have now forgotten it. he was a man of piety, and a constant attendant on the best preachers, whose sermons he took a pleasure in writing down according, to the expeditory method he had devised. many volumes were thus collected by him. he was also extremely fond of politics, too much so, perhaps, for his situation. i lately found in london a collection which he had made of all the principal pamphlets relative to public affairs, from the year 1641 to 1717. many volumes are wanting, as appears by the series of numbers; but there still remain eight in folio, and twenty-four in quarto and octavo. the collection had fallen into the hands of a second-hand bookseller, who, knowing me by having sold me some books, brought it to me. my uncle, it seems, had left it behind him on his departure for america, about fifty years ago. i found various notes of his writing in the margins. his grandson, samuel, is now living at boston. our humble family had early embraced the reformation. they remained faithfully attached during the reign of queen mary, when they were in danger of being molested on account of their zeal against popery. they had an english bible, and, to conceal it the more securely, they conceived the project of fastening it, open, with pack-threads across the leaves, on the inside of the lid of the close-stool. when my great-grandfather wished to read to his family, he reversed the lid of the close-stool upon his knees, and passed the leaves from one side to the other, which were held down on each by the pack-thread. one of the children was stationed at the door, to give notice if he saw the proctor (an officer of the spiritual court) make his appearance: in that case, the lid was restored to its place, with the bible concealed under it as before. i had this anecdote from my uncle benjamin. the whole family preserved its attachment to the church of england till towards the close of the reign of charles ii. when certain ministers, who had been ejected as nonconformists, having held conventicles in northamptonshire, they were joined by benjamin and josias, who adhered to them ever after. the rest of the family continued in the episcopal church. my father, josias, married early in life. he went, with his wife and three children, to new england, about the year 1682. conventicles being at that time prohibited by law, and frequently disturbed, some considerable persons of his acquaintance determined to go to america, where they hoped to enjoy the free exercise of their religion, and my father was prevailed on to accompany them. my father had also by the same wife, four children born in america, and ten others by a second wife, making in all seventeen. i remember to have seen thirteen seated together at his table, who all arrived to years of maturity, and were married. i was the last of the sons, and the youngest child, excepting two daughters. i was born at boston in new england. my mother, the second wife, was abiah folger, daughter of peter folger, one of the first colonists of new england, of whom cotton mather makes honourable mention, in his ecclesiastical history of that province, as "_a pious and learned englishman_," if i rightly recollect his expressions. i have been told of his having written a variety of little pieces; but there appears to be only one in print, which i met with many years ago. it was published in the year 1675, and is in familiar verse, agreeably to the taste of the times and the country. the author addresses himself to the governors for the time being, speaks for liberty of conscience, and in favour of the anabaptists, quakers, and other sectaries, who had suffered persecution. to this persecution he attributes the war with the natives, and other calamities which afflicted the country, regarding them as the judgments of god in punishment of so odious an offence, and he exhorts the government to the repeal of laws so contrary to charity. the poem appeared to be written with a manly freedom and a pleasing simplicity. i recollect the six concluding lines, though i have forgotten the order of words of the two first; the sense of which was, that his censures were dictated by benevolence, and that, of consequence, he wished to be known as the author; because, said he, i hate from my very soul dissimulation: from sherburn,[2] where i dwell, i therefore put my name, your friend, who means you well, peter folger. my brothers were all put apprentices to different trades. with respect to myself, i was sent, at the age of eight years, to a grammar-school. my father destined me for the church, and already regarded me as the chaplain of the family. the promptitude with which from my infancy i had learned to read, for i do not remember to have been ever without this acquirement, and the encouragement of his friends, who assured him that i should one day certainly become a man of letters, confirmed him in this design. my uncle benjamin approved also of the scheme, and promised to give me all his volumes of sermons, written, as i have said, in the short-hand of his invention, if i would take the pains to learn it. i remained, however, scarcely a year at the grammar-school, although, in this short interval, i had risen from the middle to the head of my class, from thence to the class immediately above, and was to pass, at the end of the year, to the one next in order. but my father, burdened with a numerous family, found that he was incapable, without subjecting himself to difficulties, of providing for the expences of a collegiate education; and considering besides, as i heard him say to his friends, that persons so educated were often poorly provided for, he renounced his first intentions, took me from the grammar-school, and sent me to a school for writing and arithmetic, kept by a mr. george brownwell, who was a skilful master, and succeeded very well in his profession by employing gentle means only, and such as were calculated to encourage his scholars. under him i soon acquired an excellent hand; but i failed in arithmetic, and made therein no sort of progress. at ten years of age, i was called home to assist my father in his occupation, which was that of a soap-boiler and tallow-chandler; a business to which he had served no apprenticeship, but which he embraced on his arrival in new england, because he found his own, that of dyer, in too little request to enable him to maintain his family, i was accordingly employed in cutting the wicks, filling the moulds, taking care of the shop, carrying messages, &c. this business displeased me, and i felt a strong inclination for a sea life; but my father set his face against it. the vicinity of the water, however, gave me frequent opportunities, of venturing myself both upon and within it, and i soon acquired the art of swimming, and of managing a boat. when embarked with other children, the helm was commonly deputed to me, particularly on difficult occasions; and, in every other project, i was almost always the leader of the troop, whom i sometimes involved in embarrassments. i shall give an instance of this, which demonstrates an early disposition of mind for public enterprises, though the one in question was not conducted by justice. the mill-pond was terminated on one side by a marsh, upon the borders of which we were accustomed to take our stand, at high water, to angle for small fish. by dint of walking, we had converted the place into a perfect quagmire. my proposal was to erect a wharf that should afford us firm footing; and i pointed out to my companions a large heap of stones, intended for the building a new house near the marsh, and which were well adapted for our purpose. accordingly, when the workmen retired in the evening, i assembled a number of my play-fellows, and by labouring diligently, like ants, sometimes four of us uniting our strength to carry a single stone, we removed them all, and constructed our little quay. the workmen were surprised the next morning at not finding their stones; which had been conveyed to our wharf. enquiries were made respecting the authors of this conveyance; we were discovered; complaints were exhibited against us; and many of us underwent correction on the part of our parents; and though i strenuously defended the utility of the work, my father at length convinced me, that nothing which was not strictly honest could be useful. it will not, perhaps, be uninteresting to you to know what a sort of man my father was. he had an excellent constitution, was of a middle size, but well made and strong, and extremely active in whatever he undertook. he designed with a degree of neatness, and knew a little of music. his voice was sonorous and agreeable; so that when he sung a psalm or hymn, with the accompaniment of his violin, as was his frequent practice in an evening, when the labours of the day were finished, it was truly delightful to hear him. he was versed also in mechanics, and could, upon occasion, use the tools of a variety of trades. but his greatest excellence was a sound understanding and solid judgment, in matters of prudence, both in public and private life. in the former, indeed, he never engaged, because his numerous family, and the mediocrity of his fortune, kept him unremittingly employed in the duties of his profession. but i well remember, that the leading men of the place used frequently to come and ask his advice respecting the affairs of the town, or of the church to which he belonged, and that they paid much deference to his opinion. individuals were also in the habit of consulting him in their private affairs, and he was often chosen arbiter between contending parties. he was fond of having at his table, as often as possible, some friends or well-informed neighbours, capable of rational conversation, and he was always careful to introduce useful or ingenious topics of discourse, which might tend to form the minds of his children. by this means he early attracted our attention to what was just, prudent, and beneficial in the conduct of life. he never talked of the meats which appeared upon the table, never discussed whether they were well or ill dressed, of a good or bad flavour, high-seasoned or otherwise, preferable or inferior to this or that dish of a similar kind. thus accustomed, from my infancy, to the utmost inattention as to these objects, i have been perfectly regardless of what kind of food was before me; and i pay so little attention to it even now, that it would be a hard matter for me to recollect, a few hours after i had dined, of what my dinner had consisted. when travelling, i have particularly experienced the advantage of this habit; for it has often happened to me to be in company with persons, who, having a more delicate, because a more exercised taste, have suffered in many cases considerable inconvenience; while, as to myself, i have had nothing to desire. my mother was likewise possessed of an excellent constitution. she suckled all her ten children, and i never heard either her or my father complain of any other disorder than that of which they died: my father at the age of eighty-seven, and my mother at eighty-five. they are buried together at boston, where, a few years ago, i placed a marble over their grave, with this inscription: "here lie josias franklin and abiah his wife: they lived together with reciprocal affection for fifty-nine years; and without private fortune, without lucrative employment, by assiduous labour and honest industry, decently supported a numerous family, and educated with success, thirteen children, and seven grand children. let this example, reader, encourage thee diligently to discharge the duties of thy calling, and to rely on the support of divine providence, he was pious and prudent, she discreet and virtuous. their youngest son, from a sentiment of filial duty, consecrates this stone to their memory." i perceive, by my rambling digressions, that i am growing old. but we do not dress for a private company as for a formal ball. this deserves, perhaps, the name of negligence. to return. i thus continued employed in my father's trade for the space of two years; that is to say, till i arrived at twelve years of age. about this time my brother john, who had served his apprenticeship in london, having quitted my father, and being married and settled in business on his own account at rhode island, i was destined, to all appearance to supply his place, and be a candle-maker all my life: but my dislike of this occupation continuing, my father was apprehensive, that, if a more, agreeable one were not offered me, i might play the truant and escape to sea; as, to his extreme mortification, my brother josias had done. he therefore took me sometimes to see masons, coopers, braziers, joiners, and other mechanics, employed at their work; in order to discover the bent of my inclination, and fix it if he could upon some occupation that might retain me on shore. i have since, in consequence of these visits, derived no small pleasure from seeing skilful workmen handle their tools; and it has proved of considerable benefit to have acquired thereby sufficient knowledge to be able to make little things for myself, when i have had no mechanic at hand, and to construct small machines for my experiments, while the idea i have conceived has been fresh and strongly impressed on my imagination. my father at length decided that i should be a cutler, and i was placed for some days upon trial with my cousin samuel, son of my uncle benjamin, who had learned this trade in london, and had established himself at boston. but the premium he required for my apprenticeship displeasing my father, i was recalled home. from my earliest years i had been passionately fond of reading, and i laid out in books all the money i could procure. i was particularly pleased with accounts of voyages. my first acquisition was bunyan's works in small separate volumes. these i afterwards sold in order to buy an historical collection by r. burton, which consisted of small cheap volumes, amounting in all to about forty or fifty. my father's little library was principally made up of books of practical and polemical theology. i read the greatest part of them. i have since often regretted that at a time when i had so great a thirst for knowledge, more eligible books had not fallen into my hands, as it was then a point decided that i should not be educated for the church. there was also among my father's books, plutarch's lives, in which i read continually, and i still regard as advantageously employed the time devoted to them. i found besides a work of de foe's, entitled an essay on projects, from which, perhaps, i derived impressions that have since influenced some of the principal events of my life. my inclination for books at last determined my father to make me a printer, though he had already a son in that profession. my brother had returned from england in 1717, with a press and types, in order to establish a printing-house at boston. this business pleased me much better than that of my father, though i had still a predilection for the sea. to prevent the effects which might result from this inclination, my father was impatient to see me engaged with my brother. i held back for some time; at length, however, i suffered myself to be persuaded, and signed my indentures, being then only twelve years of age. it was agreed that i should serve as an apprentice to the age of twenty-one, and should receive journeyman's wages only during the last year. in a very short time i made great proficiency in this business, and became very serviceable to my brother. i had now an opportunity of procuring better books. the acquaintance i necessarily formed with booksellers' apprentices, enabled me to borrow a volume now and then, which i never failed to return punctually and without injury. how often has it happened to me to pass the greater part of the night in reading by my bed-side, when the book had been lent me in the evening, and was to be returned the next morning, lest it might be missed or wanted! at length, mr. matthew adams, an ingenious tradesman, who had a handsome collection of books, and who frequented our printing-house, took notice of me. he invited me to see his library, and had the goodness to lend me any books i was desirous of reading. i then took a strange fancy for poetry, and composed several little pieces. my brother, thinking he might find his account in it, encouraged me, and engaged me to write two ballads. one, called the light-house tragedy, contained an account of the shipwreck of captain worthilake and his two daughters; the other was a sailor's song on the capture of the noted pirate called _teach_, or _blackbeard_. they were wretched verses in point of style, mere blind-men's ditties. when printed, he dispatched me about the town to sell them. the first had a prodigious run, because the event was recent, and had made a great noise. my vanity was flattered by this success; but my father checked my exultation, by ridiculing my productions, and telling me that versifiers were always poor. i thus escaped the misfortune of being a very wretched poet. but as the faculty of writing prose has been of great service to me in the course of my life, and principally contributed to my advancement, i shall relate by what means, situated as i was, i acquired the small skill i may possess in that way. there was in the town another young man, a great lover of books, of the name of john collins, with whom i was intimately connected. we frequently engaged in dispute, and were indeed so fond of argumentation, that nothing was so agreeable to us as a war of words. this contentious temper, i would observe by the bye, is in danger of becoming a very bad habit; and frequently renders a man's company insupportable, as being no otherwise capable of indulgence than by an indiscriminate contradiction. independently of the acrimony and discord it introduces into conversation, it is often productive of dislike, and even hatred, between persons to whom friendship is indispensibly necessary. i acquired it by reading, while i lived with my father, books of religious controversy. i have since remarked, that men of sense seldom fall into this error: lawyers, fellows of universities, and persons of every profession educated at edinburgh, excepted. collins and i fell one day into an argument, relative to the education of women; namely, whether it was proper to instruct them in the sciences, and whether they were competent to the study. collins supported the negative, and affirmed that the task was beyond their capacity. i maintained the opposite opinion, a little perhaps for the pleasure of disputing. he was naturally more eloquent than i; words flowed copiously from his lips; and frequently i thought myself vanquished, more by his volubility than by the force of his arguments. we separated without coming to an agreement upon this point, and as we were not to see each other again for some time, i committed my thoughts to paper, made a fair copy, and sent it him. he answered, and i replied. three or four letters had been written by each, when my father chanced to light upon my papers and read them. without entering into the merits of the cause, he embraced the opportunity of speaking to me upon my manner of writing. he observed, that though i had the advantage of my adversary in correct spelling and pointing, which i owed to my occupation, i was greatly his inferior in elegance of expression, in arrangement, and perspicuity. of this he convinced me by several examples. i felt the justice of his remarks, became more attentive to language, and resolved to make every effort to improve my style. amidst these resolves an odd volume of the spectator fell into my hands. this was a publication i had never seen. i bought the volume, and read it again and again. i was enchanted with it, thought the style excellent, and wished it were in my power to imitate it. with this view i selected some of the papers, made short summaries of the sense of each period, and put them for a few days aside. i then, without looking at the book, endeavoured to restore the essays to their due form, and to express each thought at length, as it was in the original, employing the most appropriate words that occurred to my mind. i afterwards compared my spectator with the original; i perceived some faults, which i corrected: but i found that i wanted a fund of words, if i may so express myself, and a facility of recollecting and employing them, which i thought i should by that time have acquired, had i continued to make verses. the continual need of words of the same meaning, but of different lengths for the measure, or of different sounds for the rhyme, would have obliged me to seek for a variety of synonymes, and have rendered me master of them. from this belief, i took some of the tales of the spectator and turned them into verse; and after a time, when i had sufficiently forgotten them, i again converted them into prose. sometimes also i mingled all my summaries together; and a few weeks after, endeavoured to arrange them in the best order, before i attempted to form the periods and complete the essays. this i did with a view of acquiring method in the arrangement of my thoughts. on comparing afterwards my performance with the original, many faults were apparent, which i corrected; but i had sometimes the satisfaction to think, that, in certain particulars of little importance, i had been fortunate enough to improve the order of thought or the style; and this encouraged me to hope that i should succeed, in time, in writing decently in the english language, which was one of the great objects of my ambition. the time which i devoted to these exercises, and to reading, was the evening after my day's labour was finished, the morning before it began, and sundays when i could escape attending divine service. while i lived with my father, he had insisted on my punctual attendance on public worship, and i still indeed considered it as a duty, but a duty which i thought i had no time to practise. when about sixteen years of age, a work of tyron's fell into my hands, in which he recommends vegetable diet. i determined to observe it. my brother being a bachelor, did not keep house, but boarded with his apprentices in a neighbouring family. my refusing to eat animal food was found inconvenient, and i was often scolded for my singularity. i attended to the mode in which tryon prepared some of his dishes, particularly how to boil potatoes and rice, and make hasty puddings. i then said to my brother, that if he would allow me per week half what he paid for my board, i would undertake to maintain myself. the offer was instantly embraced, and i soon found that of what he gave me, i was able to save half. this was a new fund for the purchase of books; and other advantages resulted to me from the plan. when my brother and his workmen left the printing-house to go to dinner, i remained behind; and dispatching my frugal meal, which frequently consisted of a biscuit only, or a slice of bread and a bunch of raisins, or a bun from the pastry-cook's, with a glass of water, i had the rest of the time, till their return, for study; and my progress therein was proportioned to that clearness of ideas, and quickness of conception, which are the fruit of temperance in eating and drinking. it was about this period, that having one day been put to the blush for my ignorance in the art of calculation, which i had twice failed to learn while at school, i took cocker's treatise of arithmetic, and went through it by myself with the utmost ease. i also read a book of navigation by seller and sturmy, and made myself master of the little geometry it contains, but i never proceeded far in this science. nearly at the same time i read locke on the human understanding, and the art of thinking, by messrs. du port royal. while labouring to form and improve my style, i met with an english grammar, which i believe was greenwood's, having at the end of it two little essays on rhetoric and logic. in the latter i found a model of disputation, after the manner of socrates. shortly after i procured xenophon's work, entitled memorable things of socrates, in which are various examples of the same method. charmed to a degree of enthusiasm with this mode of disputing, i adopted it, and renouncing blunt contradiction, and direct and positive argument, i assumed the character of an humble questioner. the perusal of shaftsbury and collins had made me a sceptic; and being previously so as to many doctrines of christianity, i found socrates's method to be both safest for myself, as well as the most embarrassing to those against whom i employed it. it soon afforded me singular pleasure; i incessantly practised it; and became very adroit in obtaining, even from persons of superior understanding, concessions of which they did not foresee the consequence. thus i involved them in difficulties from which they were unable to extricate themselves, and sometimes obtained victories, which neither my cause nor my arguments merited. this method i continued to employ for some years; but i afterwards abandoned it by degrees, retaining only the habit of expressing myself with modest diffidence, and never making use, when i advanced any proposition which might be controverted, of the words _certainly_, _undoubtedly_, or any others that might give the appearance of being obstinately attached to my opinion. i rather said, i imagine, i suppose, or it appears to me, that such a thing is so or so, for such and such reasons; or it is so, if i am not mistaken. this habit has, i think, been of considerable advantage to me, when i have had occasion to impress my opinion on the minds of others, and persuade them to the adoption of the measures i have suggested. and since the chief ends of conversation are, to inform or be informed, to please or to persuade, i could wish that intelligent or well-meaning men would not themselves diminish the power they possess of being useful, by a positive and presumptuous manner of expressing themselves, which scarcely ever fails to disgust the hearer, and is only calculated to excite opposition, and defeat every purpose for which the faculty of speech has been bestowed on man. in short, if you wish to inform, a positive and dogmatical manner of advancing your opinion may provoke contradiction, and prevent your being heard with attention. on the other hand, if, with a desire of being informed, and of benefiting by the knowledge of others, you express yourselves as being strongly attached to your own opinions, modest and sensible men, who do not love disputation, will leave you in tranquil possession of your errors. by following such a method, you can rarely hope to please your auditors, conciliate their good-will, or work conviction on those whom you may be desirous of gaining over to your views. pope judiciously observes, men must be taught, as if you taught them not, and things unknown propos'd--as things forgot. and in the same poem he afterwards advises us to speak, though sure, with seeming diffidence. he might have added to these lines, one that he has coupled elsewhere, in my opinion, with less propriety. it is this: for want of modesty is want of sense. if you ask why i say with _less propriety_, i must give you the two lines together: immodest words admit of _no defence_, for want of decency is want of sense. now want of sense, when a man has the misfortune to be so circumstanced, is it not a kind of excuse for want of modesty? and would not the verses have been more accurate if they had been constructed thus: immodest words admit _but this defence_, that want of decency is want of sense. but i leave the decision of this to better judges than myself. in 1720, or 1721, my brother began to print a new public paper. it was the second that made its appearance in america, and was entitled, "the new england courant." the only one that existed before was the "boston news letter." some of his friends, i remember, would have dissuaded him from this undertaking, as a thing that was not likely to succeed; a single newspaper being, in their opinion, sufficient for all america. at present, however, in 1771, there are no less than twenty-five. but he carried his project into execution, and i was employed in distributing the copies to his customers, after having assisted in composing and working them off. among his friends he had a number of literary characters, who, as an amusement, wrote short essays for the paper, which gave it reputation and increased the sale. these gentlemen frequently came to our house. i heard the conversation that passed, and the accounts they gave of the favourable reception of their writings with the public. i was tempted to try my hand among them; but, being still a child as it were, i was fearful that my brother might be unwilling to print in his paper any performance of which he should know me to be the author. i therefore contrived to disguise my hand, and having written an anonymous piece, i placed it at night under the door of the printing-house, where it was found the next morning. my brother communicated it to his friends, when they came as usual to see him, who read it, commented upon it within my hearing, and i had the exquisite pleasure to find that it met with their approbation, and that in the various conjectures they made respecting the author, no one was mentioned who did not enjoy a high reputation in the country for talents and genius. i now supposed myself fortunate in my judges, and began to suspect that they were not such excellent writers as i had hitherto supposed them. be this as it may, encouraged by this little adventure, i wrote, and sent to press in the same way, many other pieces, which were equally approved: keeping the secret till my slender stock of information and knowledge for such performances was pretty completely exhausted, when i made myself known. my brother, upon this discovery, began to entertain a little more respect for me; but he still regarded himself as my master, and treated me as an apprentice. he thought himself entitled to the same services from me, as from any other person. on the contrary, i conceived that in many instances, he was too rigorous, and that, on the part of a brother, i had a right to expect greater indulgence. our disputes were frequently brought before my father; and either my brother was generally wrong, or i was the better pleader of the two, for judgment was commonly given in my favour. but my brother was passionate, and often had recourse to blows--a circumstance which i took in very ill part. this severe and tyrannical treatment contributed, i believe, to imprint on my mind that aversion to arbitrary power, which during my whole life i have ever preserved. my apprenticeship became insupportable to me, and i continually sighed for an opportunity of shortening it, which at length unexpectedly offered. an article inserted in our paper, upon some political subject which i have now forgotten, gave offence to the assembly. my brother was taken into custody, censured, and ordered into confinement for a month, because, as i presume, he would not discover the author. i was also taken up, and examined before the council; but though i gave them no satisfaction, they contented themselves with reprimanding, and then dismissed me; considering me probably as bound, in quality of apprentice, to keep my master's secrets. the imprisonment of my brother kindled my resentment, notwithstanding our private quarrels. during its continuance, the management of the paper was entrusted to me, and i was bold enough to insert some pasquinades against the governors, which highly pleased my brother, while others began to look upon me in an unfavourable point of view, considering me as a young wit inclined to satire and lampoon. my brother's enlargement was accompanied with an arbitrary order from the house of the assembly, "that james franklin should no longer print the newspaper entitled 'the new england courant.'" in this conjuncture, we held a consultation of our friends at the printing-house, in order to determine what was proper to be done. some proposed to evade the order, by changing the title of the paper: but my brother, foreseeing inconveniences that would result from this step, thought it better that it should be in future printed in the name of benjamin franklin; and to avoid the censure of the assembly, who might charge him with still printing the paper himself under the name of his apprentice, it was resolved that my old indentures should be given up to me, with a full and entire discharge written on the back, in order to be produced upon an emergency; but that, to secure to my brother the benefit of my service, i should sign a new contract, which should be kept secret during the remainder of the term. this was a very shallow arrangement. it was, however, carried into immediate execution, and the paper continued, in consequence, to make its appearance for some months in my name. at length a new difference arising between my brother and me, i ventured to take advantage of my liberty, presuming that he would not dare to produce the new contract. it was undoubtedly dishonourable to avail myself of this circumstance, and i reckon this action as one of the first errors of my life; but i was little capable of estimating it at its true value, embittered as my mind had been by the recollection of the blows i had received. exclusively of his passionate treatment of me, my brother was by no means a man of an ill temper, and perhaps my manners had too much impertinence not to afford it a very natural pretext. when he knew that it was my determination to quit him, he wished to prevent my finding employment elsewhere. he went to all the printing-houses in the town, and prejudiced the masters against me--who accordingly refused to employ me. the idea then suggested itself to me of going to new york, the nearest town in which there was a printing-office. farther reflection confirmed me in the design of leaving boston, where i had already rendered myself an object of suspicion to the governing party. it was probable, from the arbitrary proceedings of the assembly in the affair of my brother, that, by remaining, i should soon have been exposed to difficulties, which i had the greater reason to apprehend, as, from my indiscreet disputes upon the subject of religion, i began to be regarded by pious souls with horror, either as an apostate or an atheist. i came, therefore, to a resolution: but my father, in this instance siding with my brother, presumed that if i attempted to depart openly, measures would be taken to prevent me. my friend collins undertook to favour my flight. he agreed for my passage with the captain of a new york sloop, to whom he represented me as a young man of his acquaintance, who had an affair with a girl of bad character, whose parents wished to compel me to marry her, and that of consequence i could neither make my appearance, nor go off publicly. i sold part of my books to procure a small sum of money, and went privately on board the sloop. by favour of a good wind, i found myself in three days at new york, nearly three hundred miles from my home, at the age only of seventeen years, without knowing an individual in the place, and with very little money in my pocket. the inclination i had felt for a sea-faring life had entirely subsided, or i should now have been able to gratify it; but having another trade, and believing myself to be a tolerable workman, i hesitated not to offer my services to old mr. william bradford, who had been the first printer in pennsylvania, but had quitted that province on account of a quarrel with george keith, the governor. he could not give me employment himself, having little to do, and already as many persons as he wanted; but he told me that his son, a printer at philadelphia, had lately lost his principal workman, aquilla rose, who was dead, and that if i would go thither, he believed that he would engage me. philadelphia was a hundred miles farther. i hesitated not to embark in a boat in order to repair, by the shortest cut of the sea, to amboy, leaving my trunk and effects to come after me by the usual and more tedious conveyance. in crossing the bay we met with a squall, which shattered to pieces our rotten sails, prevented us from entering the kill, and threw us upon long island. during the squall, a drunken dutchman, who like myself was a passenger in the boat, fell into the sea. at the moment that he was sinking, i seized him by the fore-top, saved him, and drew him on board. this immersion sobered him a little, so that he fell asleep, after having taken from his pocket a volume, which he requested me to dry. this volume i found to be my old favourite bunyan, in dutch, a beautiful impression on fine paper, with copper-plate engravings--a dress in which i had never seen it in its original language. i have since learned that it has been translated into almost all the languages of europe, and next to the bible, i am persuaded, it is one of the books which has had the greatest spread. honest john is the first, that i know of, who has mixed narrative and dialogue together; a mode of writing very engaging to the reader, who in the most interesting passages, finds himself admitted as it were into the company, and present at the conversation. de foe has imitated it with success in his robinson crusoe, his moll flanders, and other works; as also richardson in his pamela, &c. in approaching the island, we found that we had made a part of the coast where it was not possible to land, on account of the strong breakers produced by the rocky shore. we cast anchor and veered the cable towards the shore. some men, who stood upon the brink, halloed to us, while we did the same on our part; but the wind was so high, and the waves so noisy, that we could neither of us hear each other. there were some canoes upon the bank, and we called out to them, and made signs to prevail on them to come and take us up; but either they did not understand us, or they deemed our request impracticable, and withdrew. night came on, and nothing remained for us but to wait quietly the subsiding of the wind; till when, we determined, that is, the pilot and i, to sleep if possible. for that purpose we went below the hatches along with the dutchman, who was drenched with water. the sea broke over the boat, and reached us in our retreat, so that we were presently as completely drenched as he. we had very little repose during the whole night: but the wind abating the next day, we succeeded in reaching amboy before it was dark, after having passed thirty hours without provisions, and with no other drink than a bottle of bad rum, the water upon which we rowed being salt. in the evening i went to bed with a very violent fever. i had somewhere read that cold water, drank plentifully, was a remedy in such cases. i followed the prescription, was in a profuse sweat for the greater part of the night, and the fever left me. the next day i crossed the river in a ferryboat, and continued my journey on foot. i had fifty miles to walk, in order to reach burlington, where i was told i should find passage-boats that would convey me to philadelphia. it rained hard the whole day, so that i was wet to the skin. finding myself fatigued about noon, i stopped at a paltry inn, where i passed the rest of the day and the whole night, beginning to regret that i had quitted my home. i made besides so wretched a figure, that i was suspected to be some runaway servant. this i discovered by the questions that were asked me; and i felt that i was every moment in danger of being taken up as such. the next day, however, i continued my journey, and arrived in the evening at an inn, eight or ten miles from burlington, that was kept by one dr. brown. this man entered into conversation with me while i took some refreshment, and perceiving that i had read a little, he expressed towards me considerable interest and friendship. our acquaintance continued during the remainder of his life. i believe him to have been what is called an itinerant doctor; for there was no town in england, or indeed in europe, of which he could not give a particular account. he was neither deficient in understanding or literature, but he was a sad infidel; and, some years after, wickedly undertook to travesty the bible, in burlesque verse, as cotton has travestied virgil. he exhibited, by this means, many facts in a very ludicrous point of view, which would have given umbrage to weak minds, had his work been published, which it never was. i spent the night at his house, and reached burlington the next morning. on my arrival, i had the mortification to learn that the ordinary passage-boats had sailed a little before. this was on a saturday, and there would be no other boat till the tuesday following. i returned to the house of an old woman in the town who had sold me some gingerbread to eat on my passage, and i asked her advice. she invited me to take up my abode with her till an opportunity offered for me to embark. fatigued with having travelled so far on foot, i accepted her invitation. when she understood that i was a printer, she would have persuaded me to stay at burlington, and set up my trade; but she was little aware of the capital that would be necessary for such a purpose! i was treated while at her house with true hospitality. she gave me with the utmost good-will, a dinner of beef-steaks, and would accept of nothing in return but a pint of ale. here i imagined myself to be fixed till the tuesday in the ensuing week; but walking out in the evening by the river side, i saw a boat with a number of persons in it approach. it was going to philadelphia, and the company took me in. as there was no wind, we could only make way with our oars. about midnight, not perceiving the town, some of the company were of opinion that we must have passed it, and were unwilling to row any farther; the rest not knowing where we were, it was resolved that we should stop. we drew towards the shore, entered a creek, and landed near some old palisades, which served us for fire-wood, it being a cold night in october. here we stayed till day, when one of the company found the place in which we were to be cooper's creek, a little above philadelphia; which in reality we perceived the moment we were out of the creek. we arrived on sunday about eight or nine o'clock in the morning, and landed on market-street wharf. i have entered into the particulars of my voyage, and shall in like manner describe my first entrance into this city, that you may be able to compare beginnings so little auspicious, with the figure i have since made. on my arrival at philadelphia i was in my working dress, my best cloaths being to come by sea. i was covered with dirt; my pockets were filled with shirts and stockings; i was unacquainted with a single soul in the place, and knew not where to seek for a lodging. fatigued with walking, rowing, and having passed the night without sleep, i was extremely hungry, and all my money consisted of a dutch dollar, and about a shilling's worth of coppers, which i gave to the boatmen for my passage. as i had assisted them in rowing, they refused it at first; but i insisted on their taking it. a man is sometimes more generous when he has little, than when he has much money; probably because, in the first case, he is desirous of concealing his poverty. i walked towards the top of the street, looking eagerly on both sides, till i came to market-street, where i met a child with a loaf of bread. often had i made my dinner on dry bread. i enquired where he had bought it, and went straight to the baker's shop which he pointed out to me. i asked for some biscuits, expecting to find such as we had at boston; but they made, it seems, none of that sort at philadelphia. i then asked for a three-penny loaf; they made no loaves of that price. finding myself ignorant of the prices, as well as of the different kinds of bread, i desired him to let me have three penny-worth of bread of some kind or other. he gave me three large rolls. i was surprised at receiving so much: i took them, however, and having no room in my pockets, i walked on with a roll under each arm, eating the third. in this manner i went through market-street to fourth-street, and passed the house of mr. read, the father of my future wife. she was standing at the door, observed me, and thought with reason, that i made a very singular and grotesque appearance. i then turned the corner, and went through chesnut-street, eating my roll all the way; and having made this round, i found myself again on market-street wharf, near the boat in which i arrived. i stepped into it to take a draught of the river water; and finding myself satisfied with my first roll, i gave the other two to a woman and her child, who had come down the river with us in the boat, and was waiting to continue her journey. thus refreshed, i regained the street, which was now full of well-dressed people, all going the same way. i joined them, and was thus led to a large quaker's meeting-house near the market-place. i sat down with the rest, and after looking round me for some time, hearing nothing said, and being drowsy from my last night's labour and want of rest, i fell into a sound sleep. in this state i continued till the assembly dispersed, when one of the congregation had the goodness to wake me. this was consequently the first house i entered, or in which i slept, at philadelphia. i began again to walk along the street by the river side; and looking attentively in the face of every one i met, i at length perceived a young quaker whose countenance pleased me. i accosted him, and begged him to inform me where a stranger might find a lodging. we were then near the sign of the three mariners. they receive travellers here, said he, but it is not a house that bears a good character; if you will go with me, i will shew you a better one. he conducted me to the crooked-billet, in water-street. there i ordered something for dinner, and during my meal a number of curious questions were put to me; my youth and appearance exciting the suspicion of my being a runaway. after dinner my drowsiness returned, and i threw myself upon a bed without taking off my cloaths, and slept till six o'clock in the evening, when i was called to supper. i afterwards went to bed at a very early hour, and did not awake till the next morning. as soon as i got up i put myself in as decent a trim as i could, and went to the house of andrew bradford the printer. i found his father in the shop, whom i had seen at new york. having travelled on horseback, he had arrived at philadelphia before me. he introduced me to his son, who received me with civility, and gave me some breakfast; but told me he had no occasion at present for a journeyman, having lately procured one. he added, that there was another printer newly settled in the town, of the name of keimer, who might perhaps employ me; and that in case of refusal, i should be welcome to lodge at his house, and he would give me a little work now and then, till something better should offer. the old man offered to introduce me to the new printer. when we were at his house: "neighbour," said he, "i bring you a young man in the printing business; perhaps you may have need of his services." keimer asked me some questions, put a composing stick in my hand to see how i could work, and then said, that at present he had nothing for me to do, but that he should soon be able to employ me. at the same time taking old bradford for an inhabitant of the town well-disposed towards him, he communicated his project to him, and the prospect he had of success. bradford was careful not to discover that he was the father of the other printer; and from what keimer had said, that he hoped shortly to be in possession of the greater part of the business of the town, led him by artful questions, and by starting some difficulties, to disclose all his views, what his hopes were founded upon, and how he intended to proceed. i was present, and heard it all. i instantly saw that one of the two was a cunning old fox, and the other a perfect novice. bradford left me with keimer, who was strangely surprised when i informed him who the old man was. i found keimer's printing materials to consist of an old damaged press, and a small fount of worn-out english letters, with which he himself was at work upon an elegy on aquila rose, whom i have mentioned above, an ingenious young man, and of an excellent character, highly esteemed in the town, secretary to the assembly, and a very tolerable poet. keimer also made verses, but they were indifferent ones. he could not be said to write in verse, for his method was to set the lines as they flowed from his muse; and as he worked without copy, had but one set of letter-cases, and the elegy would probably occupy all his types, it was impossible for any one to assist him. i endeavoured to put his press in order, which he had not yet used, and of which indeed he understood nothing: and having promised to come and work off his elegy as soon as it should be ready, i returned to the house of bradford, who gave me some trifle to do for the present, for which i had my board and lodging. in a few days keimer sent for me to print off his elegy. he had now procured another set of letter-cases, and had a pamphlet to re-print, upon which he set me to work. the two philadelphia printers appeared destitute of every qualification necessary in their profession. bradford had not been brought up to it, and was very illiterate. keimer, though he understood a little of the business, was merely a compositor, and wholly incapable of working at the press. he had been one of the french prophets; and knew how to imitate their supernatural agitations. at the time of our first acquaintance he professed no particular religion, but a little of all upon occasion. he was totally ignorant of the world, and a great knave at heart, as i had afterwards, an opportunity of experiencing. keimer could not endure that, working with him, i should lodge at bradford's. he had indeed a house, but it was unfurnished; so that he could not take me in. he procured me a lodging at mr. read's, his landlord, whom i have already mentioned. my trunk and effects being now arrived, i thought of making, in the eyes of miss read, a more respectable appearance than when chance exhibited me to her view, eating my roll, and wandering in the streets. from this period i began to contract acquaintance with such young people of the town as were fond of reading, and spent my evenings with them agreeably, while at the same time i gained money by my industry, and, thanks to my frugality, lived contented. i thus forgot boston as much as possible, and wished every one to be ignorant of the place of my residence, except my friend collins, to whom i wrote, and who kept my secret. an incident however arrived, which sent me home much sooner than i had proposed. i had a brother-in-law, of the name of robert holmes, master of a trading sloop from boston to delaware. being at newcastle, forty miles below philadelphia, he heard of me, and wrote to inform me of the chagrin which my sudden departure from boston had occasioned my parents, and of the affection which they still entertained for me, assuring me that, if i would return, every thing should be adjusted to my satisfaction; and he was very pressing in his entreaties. i answered his letter, thanked him for his advice, and explained the reasons which had induced me to quit boston, with such force and clearness, that he was convinced i had been less to blame than he had imagined. sir william keith, governor of the province, was at newcastle at the time. captain holmes, being by chance in his company when he received my letter, took occasion to speak of me, and showed it him. the governor read it, and appeared surprised when he learned my age. he thought me, he said, a young man of very promising talents, and that, of consequence, i ought to be encouraged; that there were at philadelphia none but very ignorant printers, and that if i were to set up for myself, he had no doubt of my success; that, for his own part, he would procure me all the public business, and would render me every other service in his power. my brother-in-law related all this to me afterwards at boston; but i knew nothing of it at the time; when one day keimer and i being at work together near the window, we saw the governor and another gentleman, colonel french, of newcastle, handsomely dressed, cross the street, and make directly for our house. we heard them at the door, and keimer believing it to be a visit to himself, went immediately down: but the governor enquired for me, came up stairs, and, with a condescension and politeness to which i had not at all been accustomed, paid me many compliments, desired to be acquainted with me, obligingly reproached me for not having made myself known to him on my arrival in the town, and wished me to accompany him to a tavern, where he and colonel french were going to taste some excellent madeira wine. i was, i confess, somewhat surprised, and keimer appeared thunderstruck. i went, however, with the governor and the colonel to a tavern at the corner of third-street, where, while we were drinking the madeira, he proposed to me to establish a printing-house. he set forth the probabilities of success, and himself, and colonel french assured me that i should have their protection and influence in obtaining the printing of the public papers of both governments; and as i appeared to doubt whether my father would assist me in this enterprize, sir william said that he would give me a letter to him, in which he would represent the advantages of the scheme, in a light which he had no doubt would determine him. it was thus concluded that i should return to boston by the first vessel, with the letter of recommendation, from the governor to my father. meanwhile the project was to be kept secret, and i continued to work for keimer as before. the governor sent every now and then to invite me to dine with him. i considered this as a very great honour; and i was the more sensible of it, as he conversed with me in the most affable, familiar, and friendly manner imaginable. towards the end of april 1724, a small vessel was ready to sail for boston. i took leave of keimer, upon the pretext of going to see my parents. the governor gave me a long letter, in which he said many flattering things of me to my father; and strongly recommended the project of my settling at philadelphia, as a thing which could not fail to make my fortune. going down the bay we struck on a flat, and sprung a leak. the weather was very tempestuous, and we were obliged to pump without intermission; i took my turn. we arrived, however, safe and sound at boston, after about a fortnight's passage. i had been absent about seven complete months, and my relations, during that interval, had received no intelligence of me; for my brother-in-law, holmes, was not yet returned, and had not written about me. my unexpected appearance surprized the family; but they were all delighted at seeing me again, and, except my brother, welcomed me home. i went to him at the printing-house. i was better dressed than i had ever been while in his service: i had a complete suit of clothes, new and neat, a watch in my pocket, and my purse was furnished with nearly five pounds sterling in money. he gave me no very civil reception; and having eyed me from head to foot, resumed his work. the workmen asked me with eagerness where i had been, what sort of a country it was, and how i liked it. i spoke in the highest terms of philadelphia, the happy life we led there, and expressed my intention of going back again. one of them asking what sort of money we had, i displayed before them a handful of silver, which i drew from my pocket. this was a curiosity to which they were not accustomed, paper being the current money at boston. i failed not after this to let them see my watch; and at last, my brother continuing sullen and out of humour, i gave them a shilling to drink, and took my leave. this visit stung my brother to the soul; for when, shortly after, my mother spoke to him of a reconciliation, and a desire to see us upon good terms, he told her that i had so insulted him before his men, that he would never forget or forgive it: in this, however, he was mistaken. the governor's letter appeared to excite in my father some surprize; but he said little. after some days, captain holmes being returned, he showed it him, asking him if he knew keith, and what sort of a man he was: adding, that, in his opinion, it proved very little discernment to think of setting up a boy in business, who for three years to come would not be of an age to be ranked in the class of men. holmes said every thing he could in favour of the scheme; but my father firmly maintained its absurdity, and at last gave a positive refusal. he wrote, however, a civil letter to sir william, thanking him for the protection he had so obligingly offered me, but refusing to assist me for the present, because he thought me too young to be entrusted with the conduct of so important an enterprise, and which would require so considerable a sum of money. my old comrade collins, who was a clerk in the post-office, charmed with the account i gave of my new residence, expressed a desire of going thither; and while i waited my father's determination, he set off before me by land for rhode island, leaving his books, which formed a handsome collection in mathematics and natural philosophy, to be conveyed with mine to new york, where he purposed to wait for me. my father, though he could not approve sir william's proposal, was yet pleased that i had obtained so advantageous a recommendation as that of a person of his rank, and that my industry and economy had enabled me to equip myself so handsomely in so short a period. seeing no appearance of accommodating matters between my brother and me, he consented to my return to philadelphia, advised me to be civil to every body, to endeavour to obtain general esteem, and avoid satire and sarcasm, to which he thought i was too much inclined; adding, that with perseverance and prudent economy, i might, by the time i became of age, save enough to establish myself in business; and that if a small sum should then be wanting, he would undertake to supply it. this was all i could obtain from him, except some trifling presents, in token of friendship from him and my mother. i embarked once more for new york, furnished at this time with their approbation and blessing. the sloop having touched at newport in rhode island, i paid a visit to my brother john, who had for some years been settled there, and was married. he had always been attached to me, and he received me with great affection. one of his friends, whose name was vernon, having a debt of about thirty-six pounds due to him in pennsylvania, begged me to receive it for him, and to keep the money till i should hear from him: accordingly he gave me an order for that purpose. this affair occasioned me, in the sequel, much uneasiness. at newport we took on board a number of passengers; among whom were two young women, and a grave and sensible quaker lady with her servants. i had shown an obliging forwardness in rendering the quaker some trifling services, which led her, probably, to feel an interest in my welfare; for when she saw a familiarity take place, and every day increase, between the two young women and me, she took me aside and said: "young man, i am in pain for thee. thou hast no parent to watch over thy conduct, and thou seemest to be ignorant of the world, and the snares to which youth is exposed. rely upon what i tell thee: those are women of bad characters; i perceive it in all their actions. if thou dost not take care, they will lead thee into danger. they are strangers to thee, and i advise thee, by the friendly interest i take in thy preservation, to form no connection with them." as i appeared at first not to think quite so ill of them as she did, she related many things she had seen and heard, which had escaped my attention, but which convinced me that she was in the right. i thanked her for her obliging advice, and promised to follow it. when we arrived at new york, they informed me where they lodged, and invited me to come and see them. i did not however go, and it was well i did not; for the next day, the captain missing a silver spoon and some other things which had been taken from the cabin, and knowing these women to be prostitutes, procured a search-warrant, found the stolen goods upon them, and had them punished. and thus, after having been saved from one rock concealed under water, upon which the vessel struck during our passage, i escaped another of a still more dangerous nature. at new york i found my friend collins, who had arrived some time before. we had been intimate from our infancy, and had read the same books together; but he had the advantage of being able to devote more time to reading and study, and an astonishing disposition for mathematics, in which he left me far behind him. when at boston, i had been accustomed to pass with him almost all my leisure hours. he was then a sober and industrious lad; his knowledge had gained him a very general esteem, and he seemed to promise to make an advantageous figure in society. but, during my absence, he had unfortunately addicted himself to brandy, and i learned, as well from himself as from the report of others, that every day since his arrival at new york he had been intoxicated, and had acted in a very extravagant manner. he had also played, and lost all his money; so that i was obliged to pay his expences at the inn, and to maintain him during the rest of his journey; a burthen that was very inconvenient to me. the governor of new york, whose name was burnet, hearing the captain say, that a young man who was a passenger in his ship had a great number of books, begged him to bring me to his house. i accordingly went, and should have taken collins with me, had he been sober. the governor treated me with great civility, shewed me his library, which was a very considerable one, and we talked for some time upon books and authors. this was the second governor who had honoured me with his attention, and to a poor boy, as i was then, these little adventures did not fail to be pleasing. we arrived at philadelphia. on the way i received vernon's money, without which we should have been unable to have finished our journey. collins wished to get employment as a merchant's clerk, but either his breath or his countenance betrayed his bad habit; for, though he had recommendations he met with no success, and continued to lodge and eat with me, and at my expence. knowing that i had vernon's money, he was continually asking me to lend him some of it, promising to repay me as soon as he should get employment. at last he had drawn so much of this money, that i was extremely alarmed at what might become of me, should he fail to make good the deficiency. his habit of drinking did not at all diminish, and was a frequent source of discord between us; for when he had drank a little too much, he was very head-strong. being one day in a boat together on the delaware, with some other young persons, he refused to take his turn in rowing. you shall row for me, said he, till we get home.--no, i replied, we will not row for you.--you shall, said he, or remain upon the water all night. as you please.--let us row, said the rest of the company; what signifies whether he assists or not. but, already angry with him for his conduct in other respects, i persisted in my refusal. he then swore that he would make me row, or would throw me out of the boat; and he made up to me. as soon as he was within my reach, i took him by the collar, gave him a violent thrust, and threw him head foremost into the river. i knew that he was a good swimmer, and was therefore under no apprehensions for his life. before he could turn himself, we were able, by a few strokes of our oars, to place ourselves out of his reach; and whenever he touched the boat, we asked him if he would row striking his hands at the same time with the oars, to make him let go his hold. he was nearly suffocated with rage, but obstinately refused making any promise to row. perceiving, at length, that his strength began to be exhausted, we took him into the boat, and conveyed him home in the evening completely drenched. the utmost coldness subsisted between us after this adventure. at last the captain of a west-india ship, who was commissioned to procure a tutor for the children of a gentleman at barbadoes, meeting with collins, offered him the place. he accepted it, and took his leave of me, promising to discharge the debt he owed me with the first money he should receive; but i have heard nothing of him since. the violation of the trust reposed in me by vernon, was one of the first great errors of my life; and it proves that my father was not mistaken when he supposed me too young to be intrusted with the management of important affairs. but sir william, upon reading his letter, thought him too prudent. there was a difference, he said, between individuals: years of maturity were not always accompanied with discretion, neither was youth in every instance devoid of it. since your father, added he, will not set you up in business, i will do it myself. make out a list of what will be wanted from england, and i will send for the articles. you shall repay me when you can. i am determined to have a good printer here, and i am sure you will succeed. this was said with so much seeming cordiality, that i suspected not for an instant the sincerity of the offer. i had hitherto kept the project, with which sir william had inspired me, of settling in business, a secret at philadelphia, and i still continued to do so. had my reliance on the governor been known, some friend better acquainted with his character than myself, would doubtless have advised me not to trust him; for i afterwards learned he was universally known to be liberal of promises, which he had no intention to perform. but having never solicited him, how could i suppose his offers to be deceitful?--on the contrary, i believed him to be the best man in the world. i gave him an inventory of a small printing-office, the expence of which i had calculated at about a hundred pounds sterling. he expressed his approbation; but asked, if my presence in england, that i might choose the characters myself, and see that every article was good in its kind, would not be an advantage? you will also be able, said he, to form some acquaintance there, and establish a correspondence with stationers and booksellers. this i acknowledged was desirable. that being the case, added he, hold yourself in readiness to go with the annis. this was the annual vessel, and the only one, at that time, which made regular voyages between the ports of london and philadelphia. but the annis was not to sail for some months. i therefore continued to work with keimer, unhappy respecting the sum which collins had drawn from me, and almost in continual agony at the thoughts of vernon, who fortunately made no demand of his money till several years after. in the account of my first voyage from boston to philadelphia, i omitted, i believe, a trifling circumstance, which will not, perhaps, be out of place here. during a calm which stopped us above block island, the crew employed themselves in fishing for cod, of which they caught a great number. i had hitherto adhered to my resolution of not eating any thing that had possessed life; and i considered on this occasion, agreeably to the maxims of my master tryon, the capture of every fish as a sort of murder, committed without provocation, since these animals had neither done, nor were capable of doing the smallest injury to any one that should justify the measure. this mode of reasoning i conceived to be unanswerable. meanwhile, i had formerly been extremely fond of fish; and when one of these cod was taken out of the frying-pan, i thought its flavour delicious. i hesitated some time between principle and inclination, till at last recollecting, that when the cod had been opened, some small fish were found in its belly, i said to myself, if you eat one another, i see no reason why we may not eat you. i accordingly dined on the cod with no small degree of pleasure, and have since continued to eat like the rest of mankind, returning only occasionally to my vegetable plan. how convenient does it prove to be a _rational animal_, that knows how to find or invent a plausible pretext for whatever it has an inclination to do! i continued to live upon good terms with keimer, who had not the smallest suspicion of my projected establishment. he still retained a portion of his former enthusiasm; and, being fond of argument, we frequently disputed together. i was so much in the habit of using my socratic method, and had so frequently puzzled him by my questions, which appeared at first very distant from the point in debate, yet nevertheless led to it by degrees, involving him in difficulties and contradictions from which he was unable to extricate himself, that he became at last ridiculously cautious, and would scarcely answer the most plain and familiar question without previously asking me--what would you infer from that? hence he formed so high an opinion of my talents for refutation, that he seriously proposed to me to become his colleague in the establishment of a new religious sect. he was to propagate the doctrine by preaching, and i to refute every opponent. when he explained to me his tenets, i found many absurdities which i refused to admit, unless he would agree in turn to adopt some of my opinions. keimer wore his beard long, because moses had somewhere said, "thou shalt not mar the corners of thy beard." he likewise observed the sabbath; and these were with him two very essential points. i disliked them both: but i consented to adopt them, provided he would agree to abstain from animal food. i doubt, said he, whether my constitution will be able to support it. i assured him on the contrary he would find himself the better for it. he was naturally a glutton, and i wished to amuse myself by starving him. he consented to make trial of this regimen, if i would bear him company; and in reality we continued it for three months. a woman in the neighbourhood prepared and brought us our victuals, to whom i gave a list of forty dishes; in the composition of which there were entered neither flesh nor fish. this fancy was the more agreeable to me as it turned to good account; for the whole expence of our living did not exceed for each eighteen pence a week. i have since that period observed several lents with the greatest strictness, and have suddenly returned again to my ordinary diet, without experiencing the smallest inconvenience; which has led me to regard as of no importance the advice commonly given, of introducing gradually such alterations of regimen. i continued it cheerfully, but poor keimer suffered terribly. tired of the project, he sighed for the fleshpots of egypt. at length he ordered a roast pig, and invited me and two of our female acquaintance to dine with him; but the pig being ready a little too soon, he could not resist the temptation, and eat it all up before we arrived. during the circumstances i have related, i had paid some attentions to miss read. i entertained for her the utmost esteem and affection; and i had reason to believe that these sentiments were mutual. but we were both young, scarcely more than eighteen years of age; and as i was on the point of undertaking a long voyage, her mother thought it prudent to prevent matters being carried top far for the present, judging that, if marriage was our object, there would be more propriety in it after my return, when, as at least i expected, i should be established in my business. perhaps, also, she thought my expectations were not so well founded as i imagined. my most intimate acquaintance at this time were charles osborne, joseph watson, and james ralph: young men who were all fond of reading. the two first were clerks to mr. charles brockdon, one of the principal attornies in the town, and the other clerk to a merchant. watson was an upright, pious, and sensible young man: the others were somewhat more loose in their principles of religion, particularly ralph, whose faith, as well as that of collins, i had contributed to shake; each of whom made me suffer a very adequate punishment. osborne was sensible, and sincere and affectionate in his friendships, but too much inclined to the critic in matters of literature. ralph was ingenious and shrewd, genteel in his address, and extremely eloquent. i do not remember to have met with a more agreeable speaker. they were both enamoured of the muses, and had already evinced their passion by some small poetical productions. it was a custom with us to take a charming walk on sundays, in the woods that border the skuylkil. here we read together, and afterwards conversed on what we read. ralph was disposed to give himself up entirely to poetry. he flattered himself that he should arrive at great eminence in the art, and even acquire a fortune. the sublimest poets, he pretended, when they first began to write, committed as many faults as himself. osborne endeavoured to dissuade him, by assuring him that he had no genius for poetry, and advised him to stick to the trade in which he had been brought up. in the road of commerce, said he, you will be sure, by diligence and assiduity, though you have no capital, of so far succeeding as to be employed as a factor; and may thus, in time, acquire the means of setting up for yourself. i concurred in these sentiments, but at the same time expressed my approbation of amusing ourselves sometimes with poetry, with a view to improve our style. in consequence of this it was proposed, that, at our next meeting, each of us should bring a copy of verses of his own composition. our object in this competition was to benefit each other by our mutual remarks, criticisms, and corrections; and as style and expression were all we had in view, we excluded every idea of invention, by agreeing that our task should be a version of the eighteenth psalm, in which is described the descent of the deity. the time of our meeting drew near, when ralph called upon me, and told me that his performance was ready. i informed him that i had been idle, and, not much liking the task, had done nothing. he shewed me his piece, and asked me what i thought of it. i expressed myself in terms of warm approbation; because it really appeared to have considerable merit. he then said, osborne will never acknowledge the smallest degree of excellence in any production of mine. envy alone dictates to him a thousand animadversions. of you he is not so jealous: i wish, therefore, you would take the verses, and produce them as your own. i will pretend not to have had leisure to write any thing. we shall then see in what manner he will speak of them. i agreed to this little artifice, and immediately transcribed the verses to prevent all suspicion. we met. watson's performance was the first that was read; it had some beauties, but many faults. we next read osborne's, which was much better. ralph did it justice, remarking a few imperfections, and applauding such parts as were excellent. he had himself nothing to show. it was now my turn. i made some difficulty; seemed as if i wished to be excused; pretended that i had had no time to make corrections, &c. no excuse, however, was admissible, and, the piece must be produced. it was read, and re-read. watson and osborne immediately resigned the palm, and united in applauding it. ralph alone made a few remarks, and proposed some alterations; but i defended my text. osborne agreed with me, and told ralph that he was no more able to criticise than he was able to write. when osborne was alone with me, he expressed himself still more strongly in favour of what he considered as my performance. he pretended that he had put some restraint upon himself before, apprehensive of my construing his commendation into flattery. but who would have supposed, said he, franklin to be capable of such a composition? what painting--what energy--what fire! he has surpassed the original. in his common conversation he appears not to have a choice of words; he hesitates, and is at a loss--and yet, good god, how he writes! at our next meeting ralph discovered the trick we had played osborne, who was rallied without mercy. by this adventure ralph was fixed in his determination of becoming a poet. i left nothing unattempted to divert him from his purpose; but he persevered, till at last the reading of pope[3] effected his cure: he became, however, a very tolerable prose-writer. i shall speak more of him hereafter; but as i shall probably have no farther occasion to mention the other two, i ought to observe here that watson died a few years after in my arms. he was greatly regretted, for he was the best of our society. osborne went to the islands, where he gained considerable reputation as a barrister, and was getting money; but he died young. we had seriously engaged, that whoever died first should return (if possible) and pay a friendly visit to the survivor, to give him an account of the other world--but he has never fulfilled his engagement. the governor appeared to be fond of my company, and frequently invited me to his house. he always spoke of his intention of settling me in business, as a point that was decided. i was to take with me letters of recommendation to a number of his friends, and particularly a letter of credit, in order to obtain the necessary sum for the purchase of my press, types, and paper. he appointed various times for me to come for these letters, which would certainly be ready, and when i came, always put me off to another day. these successive delays continued till the vessel, whose departure had been several times deferred, was on the point of setting sail; when i again went to sir william's house, to receive my letters and take leave of him. i saw his secretary, dr. bard, who told me that the governor was extremely busy writing, but that he would be down at newcastle before the vessel, and that the letters would be delivered to me there. ralph, though he was married and had a child, determined to accompany me in this voyage. his object was supposed to be the establishing a correspondence with some mercantile houses, in order to sell goods by commission; but i afterwards learned that, having reason to be dissatisfied with the parents of his wife, he proposed to himself to leave her on their hands, and never return to america again. having taken leave of my friends, and interchanged promises of fidelity with miss read, i quitted philadelphia. at newcastle the vessel came to anchor. the governor was arrived, and i went to his lodgings. his secretary received me with great civility, told me on the part of the governor that he could not see me then, as he was engaged in affairs of the utmost importance, but that he would send the letters on board, and that he wished me, with all his heart, a good voyage, and speedy return. i returned, somewhat astonished, to the ship, but still without entertaining the slightest suspicion. mr. hamilton, a celebrated barrister of philadelphia, had taken a passage to england for himself and his son, and, in conjunction with mr. denham, a quaker, and messrs. oniam and russel, proprietors of a forge in maryland, had agreed for the whole cabin, so that ralph and i were obliged to take up our lodging with the crew. being unknown to every body in the ship, we were looked upon as of the common order of people: but mr. hamilton and his son, (it was james, who was afterwards governor,) left us at newcastle, and returned to philadelphia, where he was recalled at a very great expence, to plead the cause of a vessel that had been seized; and just as we were about to sail, colonel french came on board, and shewed me many civilities. the passengers upon this paid me more attention, and i was invited, together with my friend ralph, to occupy the place in the cabin which the return of the mr. hamiltons had made vacant; an offer which we very readily accepted. having learned that the dispatches of the governor had been brought on board by colonel french, i asked the captain for the letters that were to be entrusted to my care. he told me that they were all put together in the bag, which he could not open at present; but before we reached england, he would give me an opportunity of taking them out. i was satisfied with this answer, and we pursued our voyage. the company in the cabin were all very sociable, and we were perfectly well off as to provisions, as we had the advantage of the whole of mr. hamilton's, who had laid in a very plentiful stock. during the passage, mr. denham contracted a friendship for me, which ended only with his life: in other respects the voyage was by no means an agreeable one, as we had much bad weather. when we arrived in the river, the captain was as good as his word, and allowed me to search in the bag for the governor's letters. i could not find a single one with my name written on it, as committed to my care; but i selected six or seven, which i judged from the direction to be those that were intended for me; particularly one to mr. basket the king's printer, and another to a stationer, who was the first person i called upon. i delivered him the letter as coming from governor keith. "i have no acquaintance (said he) with any such person;" and opening the letter, "oh, it is from riddlesden!" he exclaimed. "i have lately discovered him to be a very arrant knave, and wish to have nothing to do either with him or his letters." he instantly put the letter into my hand, turned upon his heel, and left me, to serve some customers. i was astonished at finding these letters were not from the governor. reflecting, and putting circumstances together, i then began to doubt his sincerity. i rejoined my friend denham, and related the whole affair to him. he let me at once into keith's character, told me there was not the least probability of his having written a single letter; that no one who knew him ever placed any reliance on him, and laughed at my credulity in supposing that the governor would give me a letter of credit, when he had no credit for himself. as i showed some uneasiness respecting what step i should take, he advised me to try to get employment in the house of some printer. you may there, said he, improve yourself in business, and you will be able to settle yourself the more advantageously when you return to america. we knew already as well as the stationer, attorney riddlesden to be a knave. he had nearly ruined the father of miss read, by drawing him in to be his security. we learned from his letter, that he was secretly carrying on an intrigue, in concert with the governor, to the prejudice of mr. hamilton, who it was supposed would by this time be in europe. denham, who was hamilton's friend, was of opinion that he ought to be made acquainted with it; and in reality, the instant he arrived in england, which was very soon after, i waited on him, and, as much from good-will to him, as from resentment against the governor, put the letter into his hands. he thanked me very sincerely, the information it contained being of consequence to him; and from that moment bestowed on me his friendship, which afterwards proved on many occasions serviceable to me. but what are we to think of a governor who could play so scurvy a trick, and thus grossly deceive a poor young lad, wholly destitute of experience? it was a practice with him. wishing to please every body, and having little to bestow, he was lavish of promises. he was in other respects sensible and judicious, a very tolerable writer, and a good governor for the people; though not so for the proprietaries, whose instructions he frequently disregarded. many of our best laws were his work, and established during his administration. ralph and i were inseparable companions. we took a lodging together at three and sixpence a-week, which was as much as we could afford. he met with some relations in london, but they were poor, and not able to assist him. he now, for the first time, informed me of his intention to remain in england, and that he had no thoughts of ever returning to philadelphia. he was totally without money; the little he had been able to raise having barely sufficed for his passage. i had still fifteen pistoles remaining; and to me he had from time to time recourse, while he tried to get employment. at first, believing himself possessed of talents for the stage, he thought of turning actor; but wilkes, to whom he applied, frankly advised him to renounce the idea, as it was impossible he should succeed. he next proposed to roberts, a bookseller in paternoster-row, to write a weekly paper in the manner of the spectator, upon terms to which roberts would not listen. lastly, he endeavoured to procure employment as a copyist, and applied to the lawyers and stationers about the temple; but he could find no vacancy. as to myself, i immediately got engaged at palmer's, at that time a noted printer in bartholomew-close, with whom i continued nearly a year. i applied very assiduously to my work; but i expended with ralph almost all that i earned. plays, and other places of amusement which we frequented together, having exhausted my pistoles, we lived after this from hand to mouth. he appeared to have entirely forgotten his wife and child, as i also, by degrees, forgot my engagements with miss read, to whom i never wrote more than one letter, and that merely to inform her that i was not likely to return soon. this was another grand error of my life, which i should be desirous of correcting were i to begin my career again. i was employed at palmer's on the second edition of woolaston's religion of nature. some of his arguments appearing to me not to be well-founded, i wrote a small metaphysical treatise, in which i animadverted on those passages. it was entitled a "dissertation on liberty and necessity, pleasure and pain." i dedicated it to my friend ralph, and printed a small number of copies. palmer upon this treated me with more consideration, and regarded me as a young man of talents; though he seriously took me to task for the principles of my pamphlet, which he looked upon as abominable. the printing of this work was another error of my life. while i lodged in little britain i formed acquaintance with a bookseller of the name of wilcox, whose shop was next door to me. circulating libraries were not then in use. he had an immense collection of books of all sorts. we agreed that, for a reasonable retribution, of which i have now forgotten the price, i should have free access to his library, and take what books i pleased, which i was to return when i had read them. i considered this agreement as a very great advantage; and i derived from it as much benefit as was in my power. my pamphlet falling into the hands of a surgeon, of the name of lyons, author of a book entitled, "infallibility of human judgment," was the occasion of a considerable intimacy between us. he expressed great esteem for me, came frequently to see me, in order to converse upon metaphysical subjects, and introduced me to dr. mandeville, author of the fable of the bees, who had instituted a club at a tavern in cheapside, of which he was the soul: he was a facetious and very amusing character. he also introduced me, at batson's coffee-house, to dr. pemberton, who promised to give me an opportunity of seeing sir isaac newton, which i very ardently desired; but he never kept his word. i had brought some curiosities with me from america; the principal of which was a purse made of the asbestos, which fire only purifies. sir hans sloane hearing of it, called upon me, and invited me to his house in bloomsbury-square, where, after showing me every thing that was curious, he prevailed on me to add this piece to his collection; for which he paid me very handsomely. there lodged in the same house with us a young woman, a milliner, who had a shop by the side of the exchange. lively and sensible, and having received an education somewhat above her rank, her conversation was very agreeable. ralph read plays to her every evening. they became intimate. she took another lodging, and he followed her. they lived for some time together; but ralph being without employment, she having a child, and the profits of her business not sufficing for the maintenance of three, he resolved to quit london, and try a country school. this was a plan in which he thought himself likely to succeed; as he wrote a fine hand, and was versed in arithmetic and accounts. but considering the office as beneath him, and expecting some day to make a better figure in the world, when he should be ashamed of its being known that he had exercised a profession so little honourable, he changed his name, and did me the honour to assume mine. he wrote to me soon after his departure, informing me that he was settled at a small village in berkshire. in his letter he recommended mrs. t***, the milliner, to my care, and requested an answer, directed to mr. franklin, school-master, at n***. he continued to write to me frequently, sending me large fragments of an epic poem he was composing, and which he begged of me to criticise and correct. i did so, but not without endeavouring to prevail on him to renounce this pursuit. young had just published one of his satires. i copied and sent him a great part of it; in which the author demonstrates the folly of cultivating the muses, from the hope, by their instrumentality, of rising in the world. it was all to no purpose; paper after paper of his poem continued to arrive every post. meanwhile mrs. t*** having lost, on his account, both her friends and her business, was frequently in distress. in this dilemma she had recourse to me; and to extricate her from difficulties, i lent her all the money i could spare. i felt a little too much fondness for her. having at that time no ties of religion, and taking advantage of her necessitous situation, i attempted liberties, (another error of my life,) which she repelled with becoming indignation. she informed ralph of my conduct; and the affair occasioned a breach between us. when he returned to london, he gave me to understand that he considered all the obligations he owed me as annihilated by this proceeding; whence i concluded that i was never to expect the payment of what money i had lent him, or advanced on his account. i was the less afflicted at this, as he was wholly unable to pay me; and as, by losing his friendship, i was relieved at the same time from a very heavy burden. i now began to think of laying by some money. the printing-house of watts, near lincoln's-inn-fields, being a still more considerable one than that in which i worked, it was probable i might find it more advantageous to be employed there. i offered myself, and was accepted; and in this house i continued during the remainder of my stay in london. on my entrance i worked at first as a pressman, conceiving that i had need of bodily exercise, to which i had been accustomed in america, where the printers work alternately as compositors and at the press. i drank nothing but water. the other workmen, to the number of about fifty, were great drinkers of beer. i carried occasionally a large form of letters in each hand, up and down stairs, while the rest employed both hands to carry one. they were surprised to see, by this and many other examples, that the _american aquatic_, as they used to call me, was stronger than those who drank porter. the beer-boy had sufficient employment during the whole day in serving that house alone. my fellow pressman drank every day a pint of beer before breakfast, a pint with bread and cheese for breakfast, one between breakfast and dinner, one at dinner, one again about six o'clock in the afternoon, and another after he had finished his day's work. this custom appeared to me abominable; but he had need, he said, of all this beer, in order to acquire strength to work. i endeavoured to convince him that the bodily strength furnished by the beer, could only be in proportion to the solid part of the barley dissolved in the water of which the beer was composed; that there was a larger portion of flour in a penny loaf, and that consequently if he ate this loaf, and drank a pint of water with it, he would derive more strength from it than from a pint of beer. this reasoning, however, did not prevent him from drinking his accustomed quantity of beer, and paying every saturday night a score of four or five shillings a-week for this cursed beverage; an expence from which i was wholly exempt. thus do these poor devils continue all their lives in a state of voluntary wretchedness and poverty. at the end of a few weeks, watts having occasion for me above stairs as a compositor, i quitted the press. the compositors demanded of me garnish money a-fresh. this i considered as an imposition, having already paid below. the master was of the same opinion, and desired me not to comply. i thus remained two or three weeks out of the fraternity. i was consequently looked upon as excommunicated; and whenever i was absent, no little trick that malice could suggest was left unpractised upon me. i found my letters mixed, my pages transposed, my matter broken, &c. &c. all which was attributed to the spirit that haunted the chapel,[4] and tormented those who were not regularly admitted. i was at last obliged to submit to pay, notwithstanding the protection of the master; convinced of the folly of not keeping up a good understanding with those among whom we are destined to live. after this i lived in the utmost harmony with my fellow-labourers, and soon acquired considerable influence among them. i proposed some alterations in the laws of the chapel, which i carried without opposition. my example prevailed with several of them to renounce their abominable practice of bread and cheese with beer; and they procured, like me, from a neighbouring house, a good basin of warm gruel, in which was a small slice of butter, with toasted bread and nutmeg. this was a much better breakfast, which did not cost more than a pint of beer, namely, three halfpence, and at the same time preserved the head clearer. those who continued to gorge themselves with beer, often lost their credit with the publican, from neglecting to pay their score. they had then recourse to me, to become security for them; _their light_, as they used to call it, _being out_. i attended at the pay-table every saturday evening, to take up the little sum which i had made myself answerable for; and which sometimes amounted to nearly thirty shillings a-week. this circumstance, added to my reputation of being a tolerable good _gabber_, or, in other words, skilful in the art of burlesque, kept up my importance in the chapel. i had besides recommended myself to the esteem of my master by my assiduous application to business, never observing saint monday. my extraordinary quickness in composing always procured me such work as was most urgent, and which is commonly best paid; and thus my time passed away in a very pleasant manner. my lodging in little britain being too far from the printing-house, i took another in duke-street, opposite the roman catholic chapel. it was at the back of an italian warehouse. the house was kept by a widow, who had a daughter, a servant, and a shop-boy; but the latter slept out of the house. after sending to the people with whom i lodged in little britain, to enquire into my character, she agreed to take me in at the same price, three and sixpence a-week; contenting herself, she said, with so little, because of the security she should derive, as they were all women, from having a man lodger in the house. she was a woman rather advanced in life, the daughter of a clergyman. she had been educated a protestant; but her husband, whose memory she highly revered, had converted her to the catholic religion. she had lived in habits of intimacy with persons of distinction; of whom she knew various anecdotes as far back as the time of charles ii. being subject to fits of the gout, which often confined her to her room, she was sometimes disposed to see company. hers was so amusing to me, that i was glad to pass the evening with her as often as she desired it. our supper consisted only of half an anchovy a piece, upon a slice of bread and butter, with half a pint of ale between us. but the entertainment was in her conversation. the early hours i kept, and the little trouble i occasioned in the family, made her loth to part with me; and when i mentioned another lodging i had found, nearer the printing-house, at two shillings a week, which fell in with my plan of saving, she persuaded me to give it up, making herself an abatement of two shillings: and thus i continued to lodge with her, during the remainder of my abode in london, at eighteen pence a week. in a garret of the house there lived, in the most retired manner, a lady seventy years of age, of whom i received the following account from my landlady. she was a roman catholic. in her early years she had been sent to the continent, and entered a convent with the design of becoming a nun; but the climate not agreeing with her constitution, she was obliged to return to england, where, as there were no monasteries, she made a vow to lead a monastic life, in as rigid a manner as circumstances would permit. she accordingly disposed of all her property to be applied to charitable uses, reserving to herself only twelve pounds a year; and of this small pittance she gave a part to the poor, living on water gruel, and never making use of fire but to boil it. she had lived in this garret a great many years, without paying rent to the successive catholic inhabitants that had kept the house; who indeed considered her abode with them as a blessing. a priest came every day to confess her. i have asked her, said my landlady, how, living as she did, she could find so much employment for a confessor? to which she answered, that it was impossible to avoid vain thoughts. i was once permitted to visit her. she was cheerful and polite, and her conversation agreeable. her apartment was neat; but the whole furniture consisted of a mattress, a table, on which were a crucifix and a book, a chair, which she gave me to sit on, and over the mantle-piece a picture of st. veronica displaying her handkerchief, on which was seen the miraculous impression of the face of christ, which she explained to me with great gravity. her countenance was pale, but she had never experienced sickness; and i may adduce her as another proof how little is sufficient to maintain life and health. at the printing house i contracted an intimacy with a sensible young man of the name of wygate, who, as his parents were in good circumstances, had received a better education than is common among printers. he was a tolerable latin scholar, spoke french fluently, and was fond of reading. i taught him, as well as a friend of his, to swim, by taking them twice only into the river; after which they stood in need of no farther assistance. we one day made a party to go by water to chelsea, in order to see the college, and don soltero's curiosities. on our return, at the request of the company, whose curiosity wygate had excited, i undressed myself, and leaped into the river. i swam from near chelsea the whole way to blackfriars, exhibiting, during my course, a variety of feats of activity and address, both upon the surface of the water, as well as under it. this sight occasioned much astonishment and pleasure to those to whom it was new. in my youth i took great delight in this exercise. i knew, and could execute, all the evolutions and positions of thevenot; and i added to them some of my own invention, in which i endeavoured to unite gracefulness and utility. i took a pleasure in displaying them all on this occasion, and was highly flattered with the admiration they excited. wygate, besides his being desirous of perfecting himself in this art, was the more attached to me from there being, in other respects, a conformity in our tastes and studies. he at length proposed to me to make the tour of europe with him, maintaining ourselves at the same time by working at our profession. i was on the point of consenting, when i mentioned it to my friend mr. denham, with whom i was glad to pass an hour whenever i had leisure. he dissuaded me from the project, and advised me to think of returning to philadelphia, which he was about to do himself. i must relate in this place a trait of this worthy man's character. he had formerly been in business at bristol, but failing, he compounded with his creditors, and departed for america, where, by assiduous application as a merchant, he acquired in a few years a very considerable fortune. returning to england in the same vessel with myself, as i have related above, he invited all his old creditors to a feast. when assembled, he thanked them for the readiness with which they had received his small composition; and, while they expected nothing more than a simple entertainment, each found under his plate, when it came to be removed, a draft upon a banker for the residue of his debt, with interest. he told me that it was his intention to carry back with him to philadelphia a great quantity of goods, in order to open a store; and he offered to take me with him in the capacity of clerk, to keep his books, in which he would instruct me, copy letters, and superintend the store. he added, that as soon as i had acquired a knowledge of mercantile transactions, he would improve my situation, by sending me with a cargo of corn and flour to the american islands, and by procuring me other lucrative commissions; so that, with good management and economy, i might in time begin business with advantage for myself. i relished these proposals. london began to tire me; the agreeable hours i had passed at philadelphia presented themselves to my mind, and i wished to see them revive. i consequently engaged myself to mr. denham, at a salary of fifty pounds a year. this was, indeed less than i earned as a compositor, but then i had a much fairer prospect. i took leave therefore, as i believed for ever, of printing, and gave myself up entirely to my new occupation, spending all my time either in going from house to house with mr. denham to purchase goods, or in packing them up, or in expediting the workmen, &c. &c. when every thing, however, was on board, i had at last a few days leisure. during this interval, i was one day sent for by a gentleman, whom i knew only by name. it was sir william wyndham. i went to his house. he had by some means heard of my performances between chelsea and blackfriars, and that i had taught the art of swimming to wygate and another young man in the course of a few hours. his two sons were on the point of setting out on their travels; he was desirous that they should previously learn to swim, and offered me a very liberal reward if i would undertake to instruct them. they were not yet arrived in town, and the stay i should make was uncertain; i could not therefore accept his proposal. i was led, however, to suppose from this incident, that if i had wished to remain in london, and open a swimming school, i should perhaps have gained a great deal of money. this idea struck me so forcibly that, had the offer been made sooner, i should have dismissed the thought of returning as yet to america. some years after, you and i had a more important business to settle with one of the sons of sir william wyndham, then lord egremont. but let us not anticipate events. i thus passed about eighteen months in london, working almost without intermission at my trade, avoiding all expence on my own account, except going now and then to the play, and purchasing a few books. but my friend ralph kept me poor. he owed me about twenty-seven pounds, which was so much money lost; and when considered as taken from my little savings, was a very great sum. i had, notwithstanding this, a regard for him, as he possessed many amiable qualities. but though i had done nothing for myself in point of fortune, i had increased my stock of knowledge, either by the many excellent books i had read, or the conversation of learned and literary persons with whom i was acquainted. we sailed from gravesend the 23d of july, 1726. for the incidents of my voyage i refer you to my journal, where you will find all its circumstances minutely related. we landed at philadelphia on the 11th of the following october. keith had been deprived of his office of governor, and was succeeded by major gordon. i met him walking in the streets as a private individual. he appeared a little ashamed at seeing me, but passed on without saying any thing. i should have been equally ashamed myself at meeting miss read, had not her family, justly despairing of my return after reading my letter, advised her to give me up, and marry a potter, of the name of rogers; to which she consented: but he never made her happy, and she soon separated from him, refusing to cohabit with him, or even bear his name, on account of a report which prevailed, of his having another wife. his skill in his profession had seduced miss read's parents; but he was as bad a subject as he was excellent as a workman. he involved himself in debt, and fled, in the year 1727 or 1728, to the west indies, where he died. during my absence keimer had taken a more considerable house, in which he kept a shop, that was well supplied with paper, and various other articles. he had procured some new types, and a number of workmen; among whom, however, there was not one who was good for any thing; and he appeared not to want business. mr. denham took a warehouse in water-street, where we exhibited our commodities. i applied myself closely, studied accounts, and became in a short time very expert in trade. we lodged and ate together. he was sincerely attached to me, and acted towards me as if he had been my father. on my side, i respected and loved him. my situation was happy; but it was a happiness of no long duration. early in february, 1727, when i entered into my twenty-second year, we were both taken ill. i was attacked with a pleurisy, which had nearly carried me off; i suffered terribly, and considered it as all over with me. i felt indeed a sort of disappointment when i found myself likely to recover, and regretted that i had still to experience, sooner or later, the same disagreeable scene again. i have forgotten what was mr. denham's disorder; but it was a tedious one, and he at last sunk under it. he left me a small legacy in his will, as a testimony of his friendship; and i was once more abandoned to myself in the wide world, the warehouse being confided to the care of testamentary executor, who dismissed me. my brother-in-law, holmes, who happened to be at philadelphia, advised me to return to my former profession; and keimer offered me a very considerable salary if i would undertake the management of his printing-office, that he might devote himself entirely to the superintendence of his shop. his wife and relations in london had given me a bad character of him; and i was loth, for the present, to have any concern with him. i endeavoured to get employment as a clerk to a merchant; but not readily finding a situation, i was induced to accept keimer's proposal. the following were the persons i found in his printing-house: hugh meredith, a pennsylvanian, about thirty-five years of age. he had been brought up to husbandry, was honest, sensible, had some experience, and was fond of reading; but too much addicted to drinking. stephen potts, a young rustic, just broke from school, and of rustic education, with endowments rather above the common order, and a competent portion of understanding and gaiety; but a little idle. keimer had engaged these two at very low wages, which he had promised to raise every three months a shilling a week, provided their improvement in the typographic art should merit it. this future increase of wages was the bait he had made use of to ensnare them. meredith was to work at the press, and potts to bind books, which he had engaged to teach them, though he understood neither himself. john savage, an irishman, who had been brought up to no trade, and whose service, for a period of four years, keimer had purchased of the captain of a ship. he was also to be a pressman. george webb, an oxford scholar, whose time he had in like manner bought for four years, intending him for a compositor. i shall speak more of him presently. lastly, david harry, a country lad, who was apprenticed to him. i soon perceived that keimer's intention, in engaging me at a price so much above what he was accustomed to give, was, that i might form all these raw journeymen and apprentices, who scarcely cost him any thing, and who, being indentured, would, as soon as they should be sufficiently instructed, enable him to do without me. i nevertheless adhered to my agreement. i put the office in order, which was in the utmost confusion, and brought his people by degrees, to pay attention to their work, and to execute it in a more masterly style. it was singular to see an oxford scholar in the condition of a purchased servant. he was not more than eighteen years of age, and the following are the particulars he gave me of himself. born at gloucester, he had been educated at a grammar-school, and had distinguished himself among the scholars by his superior style of acting, when they represented dramatic performances. he was a member of a literary club in the town; and some pieces of his composition, in prose as well as in verse, had been inserted in the gloucester papers. from hence he was sent to oxford, where he remained about a year: but he was not contented, and wished above all things to see london, and become an actor. at length, having received fifteen guineas to pay his quarter's board, he decamped with the money, from oxford, hid his gown in a hedge, and travelled to london. there, having no friend to direct him, he fell into bad company, soon squandered his fifteen guineas, could find no way of being introduced to the actors, became contemptible, pawned his cloaths, and was in want of bread. as he was walking along the streets, almost famished with hunger, and not knowing what to do, a recruiting-bill was put into his hand, which offered an immediate treat and bounty-money to whoever was disposed to serve in america. he instantly repaired to the house of rendezvous, inlisted himself, was put on board a ship and conveyed to america, without ever writing a line to inform his parents what was become of him. his mental vivacity, and good natural disposition, made him an excellent companion; but he was indolent, thoughtless, and to the last degree imprudent. john, the irishman, soon ran away. i began to live very agreeably with the rest. they respected me, and the more so as they found keimer incapable of instructing them, and as they learned something from me every day. we never worked on a saturday, it being keimer's sabbath, so that i had two days a week for reading. i increased my acquaintance with persons of information and knowledge in the town. keimer himself treated me with great civility, and apparent esteem; and i had nothing to give me uneasiness but my debt to vernon, which i was unable to pay, my savings as yet being very little. he had the goodness, however, not to ask me for the money. our press was frequently in want of the necessary quantity of letter, and there was no such trade as that of letter-founder in america. i had seen the practice of this art at the house of james, in london, but had at the time paid it very little attention; i however, contrived to fabricate a mould. i made use of such letters as we had for punches, founded new letters of lead in mattrices of clay, and thus supplied in a tolerable manner the wants that were most pressing. i also, upon occasion, engraved various ornaments, made ink, gave an eye to the shop--in short, i was in every respect the _factotum_. but useful as i made myself, i perceived that my services became every day of less importance, in proportion as the other men improved; and when keimer paid me my second quarter's wages, he gave me to understand they were too heavy, and that he thought i ought to make an abatement. he became by degrees less civil, and assumed more the tone of master. he frequently found fault, was difficult to please, and seemed always on the point of coming to an open quarrel with me. i continued, however, to bear it patiently, conceiving that his ill humour was partly occasioned by the derangement and embarrassment of his affairs. at last a slight incident broke our connection. hearing a noise in the neighbourhood, i put my head out at the window, to see what was the matter. keimer being in the street, observed me, and in a loud and angry tone bid me to mind my work; adding some reproachful words, which piqued me the more, as they were uttered in the street; and the neighbours, whom the same noise attracted to the windows, were witnesses of the manner in which i was treated. he immediately came up to the printing-room, where he continued to exclaim against me. the quarrel became warm on both sides, and he gave me notice to quit him at the expiration of three months, as had been agreed upon between us; regretting that he was obliged to give me so long a term. i told him that his regret was superfluous, as i was ready to quit him instantly; and i took my hat and came out of the house, begging meredith to take care of some things which i left, and bring them to my lodgings. meredith came to me in the evening. we talked for some time upon the quarrel that had taken place. he had conceived a great veneration for me, and was sorry i should quit the house, while he remained in it. he dissuaded me from returning to my native country, as i began to think of doing. he reminded me that keimer owed more than he possessed; that his creditors began to be alarmed; that he kept his shop in a wretched state, often selling things at prime cost for the sake of ready money, and continually giving credit without keeping any accounts; that of consequence he must very soon fail, which would occasion a vacancy from which i might derive advantage. i objected my want of money. upon which he informed me that his father had a very high opinion of me, and, from a conversation that had passed between them, he was sure he would advance whatever might be necessary to establish us, if i was willing to enter into partnership with him. "my time with keimer," added he, "will be at an end next spring. in the mean time we may send to london for our press and types. i know that i am no workman; but if you agree to the proposal, your skill in the business will be balanced by the capital i shall furnish, and we will share the profits equally." his proposal was reasonable, and i fell in with it. his father, who was then in town, approved of it. he knew that i had some ascendancy over his son, as i had been able to prevail on him to abstain for a long time from drinking brandy; and he hoped that, when more closely connected with him, i should cure him entirely of this unfortunate habit. i gave the father a list of what it would be necessary to import from london. he took it to a merchant, and the order was given. we agreed to keep the secret till the arrival of the materials, and i was in the mean time to procure work, if possible, in another printing-house; but there was no place vacant, and i remained idle. after some days, keimer having the expectation of being employed to print some new jersey money-bills, that would require types and engravings which i only could furnish, and fearful that bradford, by engaging me, might deprive him of this undertaking, sent me a very civil message, telling me that old friends ought not to be disunited on account of a few words, which were the effect only of a momentary passion, and inviting me to return to him. meredith persuaded me to comply with the invitation, particularly as it would afford him more opportunities of improving himself in the business, by means of my instructions. i did so; and we lived upon better terms than before our separation. he obtained the new jersey business; and, in order to execute it, i constructed a copper-plate printing-press! the first that had been seen in the country. i engraved various ornaments and vignettes for the bills; and we repaired to burlington together, where i executed the whole to the general satisfaction; and he received a sum of money for this work, which enabled him to keep his head above water for a considerable time longer. at burlington i formed an acquaintance with the principal personages of the province; many of whom were commissioned by the assembly to superintend the press, and to see that no more bills were printed than the law had prescribed. accordingly they were constantly with us, each in his turn; and he that came, commonly brought with him a friend or two to bear him company. my mind was more cultivated by reading than keimer's; and it was for this reason, probably, that they set more value on my conversation. they took me to their houses, introduced me to their friends, and treated me with the greatest civility; while keimer, though master, saw himself a little neglected. he was, in fact, a strange animal, ignorant of the common modes of life, apt to oppose with rudeness generally received opinions, an enthusiast in certain points of religion, disgustingly unclean in his person, and a little knavish withal. we remained there nearly three months, and at the expiration of this period i could include in the list of my friends, judge allen, samuel bustil, secretary of the province, isaac pearson, joseph cooper, several of the smiths, all members of the assembly, and isaac decon, inspector-general. the last was a shrewd and subtle old man. he told me, that, when a boy, his first employment had been that of carrying clay to the brick-makers; that he did not learn to write till he was somewhat advanced in life; and that he was afterwards employed as an underling to a surveyor, who taught him his trade, and that by industry he had at last acquired a competent fortune. "i foresee," said he one day to me, "that you will soon supplant this man," speaking of keimer, "and get a fortune in the business at philadelphia." he was wholly ignorant at the time, of my intention of establishing myself there, or any where else. these friends were very serviceable to me in the end, as was i also, upon occasion, to some of them; and they have continued ever since their esteem for me. before i relate the particulars of my entrance into business, it may be proper to inform you what was at that time the state of my mind as to moral principles, that you may see the degree of influence they had upon the subsequent events of my life. my parents had given me betimes religious impressions; and i received from my infancy a pious education in the principles of calvinism. but scarcely was i arrived at fifteen years of age, when, after having doubted in turn of different tenets, according as i found them combated in the different books that i read, i began to doubt of revelation itself. some volumes against deism fell into my hands. they were said to be the substance of sermons preached at boyle's lecture. it happened that they produced on me an effect precisely the reverse of what was intended by the writers; for the arguments of the deists, which were cited in order to be refuted, appeared to me much more forcible than the refutation itself. in a word, i soon became a perfect deist. my arguments perverted some other young persons, particularly collins and ralph. but in the sequel, when i recollected that they had both used me extremely ill, without the smallest remorse; when i considered the behaviour of keith, another free-thinker, and my own conduct towards vernon and miss read, which at times gave me great uneasiness, i was led to suspect that this doctrine, though it might be true, was not very useful. i began to entertain a less favourable opinion of my london pamphlet to which i had prefixed as a motto, the following lines of dryden: whatever is--is right; though purblind man sees but a part of the chain, the nearest link, his eyes not carrying to the equal beam that poises all above. and of which the object was to prove, from the attributes of god, his goodness, wisdom, and power, that there could be no such thing as evil in the world; that vice and virtue did not in reality exist, and were nothing more than vain distinctions. i no longer regarded it as so blameless a work as i had formerly imagined; and i suspected that some error must have imperceptibly glided into my argument, by which all the inferences i had drawn from it had been affected, as frequently happens in metaphysical reasonings. in a word, i was at last convinced that truth, probity, and sincerity in transactions between man and man, were of the utmost importance to the happiness of life; and i resolved from that moment, and wrote the resolution in my journal, to practise them as long as i lived. revelation, indeed, as such, had no influence on my mind; but i was of opinion that, though certain actions could not be bad merely because revelation had prohibited them, or good because it enjoined them, yet it was probable that those actions were prohibited because they were bad for us, or enjoined because advantageous in their nature, all things considered. this persuasion, divine providence, or some guardian angel, and perhaps a concurrence of favourable circumstances co-operating, preserved me from all immorality, or gross and _voluntary_, injustice, to which my want of religion was calculated to expose me, in the dangerous period of youth, and in the hazardous situations in which i sometimes found myself, among strangers, and at a distance from the eye and admonitions of my father. i may say _voluntary_, because the errors into which i had fallen, had been in a manner the forced result either of my own inexperience, or the dishonesty of others. thus, before i entered on my new career, i had imbibed solid principles, and a character of probity. i knew their value; and i made a solemn engagement with myself never to depart from them. i had not long returned from burlington before our printing materials arrived from london. i settled my accounts with keimer, and quitted him, with his own consent, before he had any knowledge of our plan. we found a house to let near the market. we took it; and to render the rent less burdensome, (it was then twenty-four pounds a year, but i have since known it let for seventy,) we admitted thomas godfrey, a glazier, with his family, who eased us of a considerable part of it; and with him we agreed to board. we had no sooner unpacked our letters, and put our press in order, than a person of my acquaintance, george house, brought us a countryman, whom he had met in the streets enquiring for a printer. our money was almost exhausted by the number of things we had been obliged to procure. the five shillings we received from this countryman, the first fruits of our earnings, coming so seasonably, gave me more pleasure than any sum i have since gained; and the recollection of the gratitude i felt on this occasion to george house, has rendered me often more disposed, than perhaps i should otherwise have been, to encourage young beginners in trade. there are in every country morose beings, who are always prognosticating ruin. there was one of this stamp at philadelphia. he was a man of fortune, declining in years, had an air of wisdom, and a very grave manner of speaking. his name was samuel mickle. i knew him not; but he stopped one day at my door, and asked me if i was the young man who had lately opened a new printing-house. upon my answering in the affirmative, he said he was very sorry for me, as it was an expensive undertaking, and the money that had been laid out upon it would be lost, philadelphia being a place falling into decay; its inhabitants having all, or nearly all of them, been obliged to call together their creditors. that he knew, from undoubted fact, the circumstances which might lead us to suppose the contrary, such as new buildings, and the advanced price of rent, to be deceitful appearances, which, in reality, contributed to hasten the general ruin; and he gave me so long a detail of misfortunes, actually existing, or which were soon to take place, that he left me almost in a state of despair. had i known this man before i entered into trade, i should doubtless never have ventured. he continued, however, to live in this place of decay, and to declaim in the same style, refusing for many years to buy a house because all was going to wreck; and in the end i had the satisfaction to see him pay five times as much for one as it would have cost him had he purchased it when he first began his lamentations. i ought to have related, that, during the autumn of the preceding year, i had united the majority of well-informed persons of my acquaintance into a club, which we called by the name of the _junto_, and the object of which was to improve our understandings. we met every friday evening. the regulations i drew up, obliged every member to propose, in his turn, one or more questions upon some point of morality, politics, or philosophy, which were to be discussed by the society; and to read, once in three months, an essay of his own composition, on whatever subject he pleased. our debates were under the direction of a president, and were to be dictated only by a sincere desire of truth; the pleasure of disputing, and the vanity of triumph having no share in the business; and in order to prevent undue warmth, every expression which implied obstinate adherence to an opinion, and all direct contradiction, were prohibited, under small pecuniary penalties. the first members of our club were joseph breintnal, whose occupation was that of a scrivener. he was a middle-aged man, of a good natural disposition, strongly attached to his friends, a great lover of poetry, reading every thing that came in his way, and writing tolerably well, ingenious in many little trifles, and of an agreeable conversation. thomas godfrey, a skilful, though self-taught mathematician, and who was afterwards the inventor of what now goes by the name of hadley's quadrant; but he had little knowledge out of his own line, and was insupportable in company, always requiring, like the majority of mathematicians that had fallen in my way, an unusual precision in every thing that is said, continually contradicting, or making trifling distinctions; a sure way of defeating all the ends of conversation. he very soon left us. nicholas scull, a surveyor, and who became afterwards, surveyor-general. he was fond of books, and wrote verses. william parsons, brought up to the trade of a shoe-maker, but who, having a taste for reading, had acquired a profound knowledge of mathematics. he first studied them with a view to astrology, and was, afterwards, the first to laugh at his folly. he also became surveyor-general. william mawgridge, a joiner, and very excellent mechanic; and in other respects a man of solid understanding. hugh meredith, stephen potts, and george webb, of whom i have already spoken. robert grace, a young man of fortune; generous, animated, and witty; fond of epigrams, but more fond of his friends. and lastly, william coleman, at that time a merchant's clerk, and nearly of my own age. he had a cooler and clearer head, a better heart, and more scrupulous morals, than almost any other person i have ever met with. he became a very respectable merchant, and one of our provincial judges. our friendship subsisted, without interruption, for more than forty years, till the period of his death; and the club continued to exist almost as long. this was the best school of politics and philosophy that then existed in the province; for our questions, which were read a week previous to their discussion, induced us to peruse attentively such books as were written upon the subjects proposed, that we might be able to speak upon them more pertinently. we thus acquired the habit of conversing more agreeably; every object being discussed conformably to our regulations, and in a manner to prevent mutual disgust. to this circumstance may be attributed the long duration of the club; which i shall have frequent occasion to mention as i proceed. i have introduced it here, as being one of the means on which i had to count for success in my business, every member exerting himself to procure work for us. breintnal, among others, obtained for us, on the part of the quakers, the printing of forty sheets of their history; of which the rest was to be done by keimer. our execution of this work was by no means masterly; as the price was very low. it was in folio, upon _pro patria_ paper, and in the _pica_ letter, with heavy notes in the smallest type. i composed a sheet a-day, and meredith put it to the press. it was frequently eleven o'clock at night, sometimes later, before i had finished my distribution for the next day's task; for the little things which our friends occasionally sent us, kept us back in this work: but i was so determined to compose a sheet a-day, that one evening, when my form was imposed, and my day's work, as i thought, at an end, an accident having broken this form, and deranged two complete folio pages, i immediately distributed, and composed them anew before i went to bed. this unwearied industry, which was perceived by our neighbours, began to acquire us reputation and credit. i learned, among other things, that our new printing-house being the subject of conversation at a club of merchants, who met every evening, it was the general opinion that it would fail; there being already two printing-houses in the town, keimer's and bradford's. but dr. bard, whom you and i had occasion to see, many years after, at his native town of st. andrew's, in scotland, was of a different opinion. "the industry of this franklin, (said he,) is superior to any thing of the kind i ever witnessed. i see him still at work when i return from the club at night, and he is at it again in the morning before his neighbours are out of bed." this account struck the rest of the assembly, and shortly after, one of its members came to our house, and offered to supply us with articles of stationary; but we wished not as yet to embarrass ourselves with keeping a shop. it is not for the sake of applause that i enter so freely into the particulars of my industry, but that such of my descendants as shall read these memoirs may know the use of this virtue, by seeing in the recital of my life the effects it operated in my favour. george webb, having found a friend who lent him the necessary sum to buy out his time of keimer, came one day to offer himself to us as a journeyman. we could not employ him immediately; but i foolishly told him, under the rose, that i intended shortly to publish a new periodical paper, and that we should then have work for him. my hopes of success, which i imparted to him, were founded on the circumstance, that the only paper we had in philadelphia at that time, and which bradford printed, was a paltry thing, miserably conducted, in no respect amusing, and which yet was profitable. i consequently supposed that a good work of this kind could not fail of success. webb betrayed my secret to keimer, who, to prevent me, immediately published the _prospectus_ of a paper that he intended to institute himself, and in which webb was to be engaged. i was exasperated at this proceeding, and, with a view to counteract them, not being able at present to institute my own paper, i wrote some humourous pieces in bradford's, under the title of the busy body[5]; and which was continued for several months by breintnal. i hereby fixed the attention of the public upon bradford's paper; and the _prospectus_ of keimer, which we turned into ridicule, was treated with contempt. he began, notwithstanding, his paper; and after continuing it for nine months, having at most not more than ninety subscribers, he offered it me for a mere trifle. i had for some time been ready for such an engagement; i therefore instantly took it upon myself, and, in a few years, it proved extremely profitable to me. i perceive that i am apt to speak in the first person, though our partnership still continued. it is, perhaps, because, in fact, the whole business devolved upon me. meredith was no compositor, and but an indifferent pressman; and it was rarely that he abstained from hard drinking. my friends were sorry to see me connected with him; but i contrived to derive from it the utmost advantage the case admitted. our first number produced no other effect than any other paper which had appeared in the province, as to type and printing; but some remarks, in my peculiar style of writing, upon the dispute which then prevailed between governor burnet and the massachusetts assembly, struck some persons as above mediocrity, caused the paper and its editors to be talked of, and in a few weeks, induced them to become our subscribers. many others followed their example; and our subscription continued to increase. this was one of the first good effects of the pains i had taken to learn to put my ideas on paper. i derived this farther advantage from it, that the leading men of the place, seeing in the author of this publication a man so well able to use his pen, thought it right to patronize and encourage me. the votes, laws, and other public pieces, were printed by bradford. an address of the house of assembly to the governor had been executed by him in a very coarse and incorrect manner. we reprinted it with accuracy and neatness, and sent a copy to every member. they perceived the difference; and it so strengthened the influence of our friends in the assembly, that we were nominated its printer for the following year. among these friends i ought not to forget one member in particular, mr. hamilton, whom i have mentioned in a former part of my narrative, and who was now returned from england. he warmly interested himself for me on this occasion, as he did likewise on many others afterwards; having continued his kindness to me till his death. about this period mr. vernon reminded me of the debt i owed him, but without pressing me for payment. i wrote a handsome letter on the occasion, begging him to wait a little longer, to which he consented; and as soon as i was able i paid him, principal and interest, with many expressions of gratitude; so that this error of my life was in a manner atoned for. but another trouble now happened to me, which i had not the smallest reason to expect. meredith's father, who, according to our agreement, was to defray the whole expence of our printing materials, had only paid a hundred pounds. another hundred was still due, and the merchant being tired of waiting, commenced a suit against us. we bailed the action, but with the melancholy prospect, that, if the money was not forthcoming at the time fixed, the affair would come to issue, judgment be put in execution, our delightful hopes be annihilated, and ourselves entirely ruined; as the type and press must be sold, perhaps, at half their value, to pay the debt. in this distress, two real friends, whose generous conduct i have never forgotten, and never shall forget while i retain the remembrance of any thing, came to me separately, without the knowledge of each other, and without my having applied to either of them. each offered me whatever money might be necessary to take the business into my own hands, if the thing was practicable, as they did not like i should continue in partnership with meredith, who, they said, was frequently seen drunk in the streets, and gambling at ale-houses, which very much injured our credit. these friends were william coleman and robert grace. i told them, that while there remained any probability that the merediths would fulfil their part of the compact, i could not propose a separation, as i conceived myself to be under obligations to them for what they had done already, and were still disposed to do, if they had the power; but, in the end, should they fail in their engagement, and our partnership be dissolved, i should then think myself at liberty to accept the kindness of my friends. things remained for some time in this state. at last, i said one day to my partner, "your father is, perhaps, dissatisfied with your having a share only in the business, and is unwilling to do for two, what he would do for you alone. tell me frankly if that be the case, and i will resign the whole to you, and do for myself as well as i can."--"no, (said he,) my father has really been disappointed in his hopes; he is not able to pay, and i wish to put him to no farther inconvenience. i see that i am not at all calculated for a printer; i was educated as a farmer, and it was absurd in me to come here, at thirty years of age, and bind myself apprentice to a new trade. many of my countrymen are going to settle in north carolina, where the soil is exceedingly favourable. i am tempted to go with them, and to resume my former occupation. you will doubtless find friends who will assist you. if you will take upon yourself the debts of the partnership, return my father the hundred pounds he has advanced, pay my little personal debts, and give me thirty pounds and a new saddle, i will renounce the partnership, and consign over the whole stock to you." i accepted this proposal without hesitation. it was committed to paper, and signed and sealed without delay. i gave him what he demanded, and he departed soon after for carolina, from whence he sent me, in the following year, two long letters, containing the best accounts that had yet been given of that country, as to climate, soil, agriculture, &c. for he was well versed in these matters. i published them in my newspaper, and they were received with great satisfaction. as soon as he was gone, i applied to my two friends, and not wishing to give a disobliging preference to either of them, i accepted from each, half what he had offered me, and which it was necessary i should have. i paid the partnership debts, and continued the business on my own account; taking care to inform the public, by advertisement, of the partnership being dissolved. this was, i think, in the year 1729, or thereabout. nearly at the same period, the people demanded a new emission of paper money; the existing and only one that had taken place in the province, and which amounted to fifteen thousand pounds, being soon to expire. the wealthy inhabitants, prejudiced against every sort of paper currency, from the fear of its depreciation, of which there had been an instance in the province of new england, to the injury of its holders, strongly opposed the measure. we had discussed this affair in our junto, in which i was on the side of the new emission; convinced that the first small sum, fabricated in 1723, had done much good in the province, by favouring commerce, industry, and population, since all the houses were now inhabited, and many others building; whereas i remembered to have seen, when i first paraded the streets of philadelphia eating my roll, the majority of those in walnut-street, second-street, fourth-street, as well as a great number in chesnut and other streets, with papers on them signifying that they were to be let; which made me think at the time that the inhabitants of the town were deserting it one after another. our debates made me so fully master of the subject, that i wrote and published an anonymous pamphlet, entitled, "an enquiry into the nature and necessity of a paper currency." it was very well received by the lower and middling class of people; but it displeased the opulent, as it increased the clamour in favour of the new emission. having, however, no writer among them capable of answering it, their opposition became less violent; and there being in the house of assembly a majority for the measure, it passed. the friends i had acquired in the house, persuaded that i had done the country essential service on this occasion, rewarded me by giving me the printing of the bills. it was a lucrative employment, and proved a very seasonable help to me; another advantage which i derived from having habituated myself to write. time and experience so fully demonstrated the utility of paper currency, that it never after experienced any considerable opposition; so that it soon amounted to 55,000_l._ and in the year 1739, to 80,000_l._ it has since risen, during the last war, to 350,000_l._, trade, buildings and population, having in the interval continually increased: but i am now convinced that there are limits beyond which paper money would be prejudicial. i soon after obtained, by the influence of my friend hamilton, the printing of the newcastle paper money, another profitable work, as i then thought it, little things appearing great to persons of moderate fortune; and they were really great to me, as proving great encouragements. he also procured me the printing of the laws and votes of that government, which i retained as long as i continued in the business. i now opened a small stationer's shop. i kept bonds and agreements of all kinds, drawn up in a more accurate form than had yet been seen in that part of the world; a work in which i was assisted by my friend breintnal. i had also paper, parchment, pasteboard, books, &c. one whitemash, an excellent compositor, whom i had known in london, came to offer himself, i engaged him: and he continued constantly and diligently to work with me. i also took an apprentice, the son of aquila rose. i began to pay, by degrees, the debt i had contracted; and, in order to insure my credit and character as a tradesman, i took care not only to be _really_ industrious and frugal, but also to avoid every appearance of the contrary. i was plainly dressed, and never seen in any place of public amusement. i never went a fishing or hunting. a book, indeed, enticed me sometimes from my work, but it was seldom, by stealth, and occasioned no scandal; and to show that i did not think myself above my profession, i conveyed home, sometimes in a wheelbarrow, the paper i purchased at the warehouses. i thus obtained the reputation of being an industrious young man, and very punctual in his payments. the merchants who imported articles of stationary solicited my custom; others offered to furnish me with books, and my little trade went on prosperously. meanwhile the credit and business of keimer diminishing every day, he was at last forced to sell his stock to satisfy his creditors; and he betook himself to barbadoes, where he lived for sometime in a very impoverished state. his apprentice, david harry, whom i had instructed while i worked for keimer, having bought his materials, succeeded him in the business. i was apprehensive, at first, of finding in harry a powerful competitor, as he was allied to an opulent and respectable family; i therefore proposed a partnership, which, happily for me, he rejected with disdain. he was extremely proud, thought himself a fine gentleman, lived extravagantly, and pursued amusements which suffered him to be scarcely ever at home; of consequence he became in debt, neglected his business, and business neglected him. finding in a short time nothing to do in the country, he followed keimer to barbadoes, carrying his printing materials with him. there the apprentice employed his old master as a journeyman. they were continually quarrelling; and harry still getting in debt, was obliged at last to sell his press and types, and return to his old occupation of husbandry in pennsylvania. the person who purchased them employed keimer to manage the business; but he died a few years after. i had now at philadelphia no competitor but bradford, who, being in easy circumstances, did not engage in the printing of books, except now and then as workmen chanced to offer themselves; and was not anxious to extend his trade. he had, however, one advantage over me, as he had the direction of the post-office, and was of consequence supposed to have better opportunities of obtaining news. his paper was also supposed to be more advantageous to advertising customers; and in consequence of that supposition, his advertisements were much more numerous than mine: this was a source of great profit to him, and disadvantageous to me. it was to no purpose that i really procured other papers, and distributed my own, by means of the post; the public took for granted my inability in this respect; and i was indeed unable to conquer it in any other mode than by bribing the post-boys, who served me only by stealth, bradford being so illiberal as to forbid them. this treatment of his excited my resentment; and my disgust was so rooted, that, when i afterwards succeeded him in the post-office, i took care to avoid copying his example. i had hitherto continued to board with godfrey, who, with his wife and children, occupied part of my house, and half of the shop for his business; at which indeed he worked very little, being always absorbed by mathematics. mrs. godfrey formed a wish of marrying me to the daughter of one of her relations. she contrived various opportunities of bringing us together, till she saw that i was captivated; which was not difficult, the lady in question possessing great personal merit. the parents encouraged my addresses, by inviting me continually to supper, and leaving us together, till at last it was time to come to an explanation. mrs. godfrey undertook to negociate our little treaty. i gave her to understand, that i expected to receive with the young lady a sum of money that would enable me at least to discharge the remainder of the debt for my printing materials. it was then, i believe, not more than a hundred pounds. she brought me for answer, that they had no such sum at their disposal. i observed that it might easily be obtained, by a mortgage on their house. the reply to this was, after a few days interval, that they did not approve of the match; that they had consulted bradford, and found that the business of a printer was not lucrative; that my letters would soon be worn out, and must be supplied with new ones; that keimer and harry had failed, and that, probably, i should do so too. accordingly they forbade me the house, and the young lady was confined. i know not if they had really changed their minds, or if it was merely an artifice, supposing our affections to be too far engaged for us to desist, and that we should contrive to marry secretly, which would leave them at liberty to give or not as they pleased. but, suspecting this motive, i never went again to their house. some time after, mrs. godfrey informed me that they were very favourably disposed towards me, and wished me to renew the acquaintance; but i declared a firm resolution never to have any thing more to do with the family. the godfreys expressed some resentment at this: and as we could no longer agree, they changed their residence, leaving me in possession of the whole house. i then resolved to take no more lodgers. this affair having turned my thoughts to marriage, i looked around me, and made overtures of alliance in other quarters: but i soon found that the profession of a printer being generally looked upon as a poor trade, i could expect no money with a wife, at least, if i wished her to possess any other charm. meanwhile, that passion of youth, so difficult to govern, had often drawn me into intrigues with despicable women who fell in my way; which were not unaccompanied with expence and inconvenience, besides the perpetual risk of injuring my health, and catching a disease which i dreaded above all things. but i was fortunate enough to escape this danger. as a neighbour and old acquaintance, i had kept up a friendly intimacy with the family of miss read. her parents had retained an affection for me from the time of my lodging in their house. i was often invited thither; they consulted me about their affairs, and i had been sometimes serviceable to them. i was touched with the unhappy situation of their daughter, who was almost always melancholy, and continually seeking solitude. i regarded my forgetfulness and inconstancy, during my abode in london, as the principal cause of her misfortune, though her mother had the candour to attribute the fault to herself, rather than to me, because after having prevented our marriage previously to my departure, she had induced her to marry another in my absence. our mutual affection revived; but there existed great obstacles to our union. her marriage was considered, indeed, as not being valid, the man having, it was said, a former wife still living in england; but of this it was difficult to obtain a proof at so great a distance; and though a report prevailed of his being dead, yet we had no certainty of it; and supposing it to be true, he had left many debts, for the payment of which his successor might be sued. we ventured, nevertheless, in spite of all these difficulties; and i married her on the 1st of september, 1730. none of the inconveniences we had feared happened to us. she proved to me a good and faithful companion, and contributed essentially to the success of my shop. we prospered together, and it was our mutual study to render each other happy. thus i corrected, as well as i could, this great error of my youth. our club was not at that time established at a tavern. we held our meetings at the house of mr. grace, who appropriated a room to the purpose. some member observed one day, that as our books were frequently quoted in the course of our discussions, it would be convenient to have them collected in the room in which we assembled, in order to be consulted upon occasion; and that, by thus forming a common library of our individual collections, each would have the advantage of using the books of all the other members, which would nearly be the same as if he possessed them all himself. the idea was approved, and we accordingly brought such books as we thought we could spare, which were placed at the end of the club-room. they amounted not to so many as we expected; and through we made considerable use of them, yet some inconveniences resulting, from want of care, it was agreed, after about a year, to discontinue the collection; and each took away such books as belonged to him. it was now that i first started the idea of establishing, by subscription, a public library, i drew up the proposals, had them ingrossed in form by brockden the attorney, and my project succeeded, as will be seen in the sequel. [the life of dr. franklin, as written by himself, so far as it has yet been communicated to the world, breaks off in this place. we understand that it was continued by him somewhat farther, and we hope that the remainder will, at some future period, be communicated to the public. we have no hesitation in supposing that every reader will find himself greatly interested by the frank simplicity and the philosophical discernment by which these pages are so eminently characterized. we have therefore thought proper, in order as much as possible to relieve his regret, to subjoin the following continuation, by one of the doctor's intimate friends. it is extracted from an american periodical publication, and was written by the late dr. stuber,[6] of philadelphia.] the promotion of literature had been little attended to in pennsylvania. most of the inhabitants were too much immersed in business to think of scientific pursuits; and those few, whose inclinations led them to study, found it difficult to gratify them, from the want of libraries sufficiently large. in such circumstances, the establishment of a public library was an important event. this was first set on foot by franklin, about the year 1731. fifty persons subscribed forty shillings each, and agreed to pay ten shillings annually. the number increased; and in 1742, the company was incorporated by the name of "the library company of philadelphia." several other companies were formed in this city in imitation of it. these were all at length united with the library company of philadelphia, which thus received a considerable accession of books and property. it now contains about eight thousand volumes on all subjects, a philosophical apparatus, and a well-chosen collection of natural and artificial curiosities. for its support the company now possesses landed property of considerable value. they have lately built an elegant house in fifth-street, in the front of which will be erected a marble statue of their founder, benjamin franklin. this institution was greatly encouraged by the friends of literature in america and in great britain. the penn family distinguished themselves by their donations. amongst the earliest friends of this institution must be mentioned the late peter collinson, the friend and correspondent of dr. franklin. he not only made considerable presents himself, and obtained others from his friends, but voluntarily undertook to manage the business of the company in london, recommending books, purchasing and shipping them. his extensive knowledge, and zeal for the promotion of science, enabled him to execute this important trust with the greatest advantage. he continued to perform these services for more than thirty years, and uniformly refused to accept of any compensation. during this time, he communicated to the directors every information relative to improvements and discoveries in the arts, agriculture, and philosophy. the beneficial influence of this institution was soon evident. the terms of subscription to it were so moderate that it was accessible to every one. its advantages were not confined to the opulent. the citizens in the middle and lower walks of life were equally partakers of them. hence a degree of information was extended amongst all classes of people. the example was soon followed. libraries were established in various places, and they are now become very numerous in the united states, and particularly in pennsylvania. it is to be hoped that they will be still more widely extended, and that information will be every where increased. this will be the best security for maintaining our liberties. a nation of well informed men, who have been taught to know and prize the rights which god has given them, cannot be enslaved. it is in the regions of ignorance that tyranny reigns. it flies before the light of science. let the citizens of america, then, encourage institutions calculated to diffuse knowledge amongst the people; and amongst these, public libraries are not the least important. in 1732, franklin began to publish poor richard's almanack. this was remarkable for the numerous and valuable concise maxims which it contained, all tending to exhort to industry and frugality. it was continued for many years. in the almanack for the last year, all the maxims were collected in an address to the reader, entitled, the way to wealth. this has been translated into various languages, and inserted in different publications. it has also been printed on a large sheet, and may be seen framed in many houses in this city. this address contains, perhaps, the best practical system of economy that ever has appeared. it is written in a manner intelligible to every one, and which cannot fail of convincing every reader of the justice and propriety of the remarks and advice which it contains. the demand for this almanack was so great, that ten thousand have been sold in one year; which must be considered as a very large number, especially when we reflect, that this country was, at that time, but thinly peopled. it cannot be doubted that the salutary maxims contained in these almanacks must have made a favourable impression upon many of the readers of them. it was not long before franklin entered upon his political career. in the year 1736, he was appointed clerk to the general assembly of pennsylvania, and was re-elected by succeeding assemblies for several years, until he was chosen a representative for the city of philadelphia. bradford, the printer, mentioned above, was possessed of some advantages over franklin, by being post-master, thereby having an opportunity of circulating his paper more extensively, and thus rendering it a better vehicle for advertisements, &c. franklin, in his turn, enjoyed these advantages, by being appointed post-master of philadelphia in 1737. bradford, while in office, had acted ungenerously towards franklin, preventing as much as possible the circulation of his paper. he had now an opportunity of retaliating; but his nobleness of soul prevented him from making use of it. the police of philadelphia had early appointed watchmen, whose duty it was to guard the citizens against the midnight robber, and to give an immediate alarm in case of fire. this duty is, perhaps, one of the most important that can be committed to any set of men. the regulations, however, were not sufficiently strict. franklin saw the dangers arising from this cause, and suggested an alteration, so as to oblige the guardians of the night to be more watchful over the lives and property of the citizens. the propriety of this was immediately perceived, and a reform was effected. there is nothing more dangerous to growing cities than fires. other causes operate slowly, and almost imperceptibly; but these in a moment render abortive the labours of ages. on this account there should be, in all cities, ample provisions to prevent fires from spreading. franklin early saw the necessity of these; and, about the year 1728, formed the first fire company in this city. the example was soon followed by others; and there are now numerous fire companies in the city and liberties. to these may be attributed in a great degree the activity in extinguishing fires, for which the citizens of philadelphia are distinguished, and the inconsiderable damage this city has sustained from this cause. some time after, franklin suggested the plan for an association for insuring houses from losses by fire, which was adopted; and the association continues to this day. the advantages experienced from it have been great. from the first settlement of pennsylvania, a spirit of dispute appears to have prevailed among its inhabitants. during the life-time of william penn, the constitution had been three times altered. after this period the history of pennsylvania is little else than a recital of the quarrels between the proprietaries, or their governors, and the assembly. the proprietaries contended for the right of exempting their land from taxes; to which the assembly would by no means consent. this subject of dispute interfered in almost every question, and prevented the most salutary laws from being enacted. this at times subjected the people to great inconveniences. in the year 1774, during a war between france and great britain, some french and indians had made inroads upon the frontier inhabitants of the province, who were unprovided for such an attack. it became necessary that the citizens should arm for their defence. governor thomas recommended to the assembly, who were then sitting, to pass a militia law. to this they would agree only upon condition, that he should give his assent to certain laws, which appeared to them calculated to promote the interests of the people. as he thought these laws would be injurious to the proprietaries, he refused his assent to them; and the assembly broke up without passing a militia bill. the situation of the province was at this time truly alarming: exposed to the continual inroad of an enemy, and destitute of every means of defence. at this crisis franklin stepped forth, and proposed to a meeting of the citizens of philadelphia, a plan of a voluntary association for the defence of the province. this was approved of, and signed by twelve hundred persons immediately. copies were circulated without delay through the province; and in a short time the number of signatures amounted to ten thousand. franklin was chosen colonel of the philadelphia regiment; but he did not think proper to accept of the honour. pursuits of a different nature now occupied the greatest part of his attention for some years. he engaged in a course of electrical experiments, with all the ardor and thirst for discovery which characterized the philosophers of that day. of all the branches of experimental philosophy, electricity had been least explored. the attractive power of amber is mentioned by theophrastus and pliny, and from them, by later naturalists. in the year 1600, gilbert, an english physician, enlarged considerably the catalogue of substances which have the property of attracting light bodies. boyle, otto guericke, a burgomaster of magdeburg, celebrated as the inventor of the air-pump, dr. wall, and sir isaac newton added some facts. guericke first observed the repulsive power of electricity, and the light and noise produced by it. in 1709, hawkesbec communicated some important observations and experiments to the world. for several years electricity was entirely neglected, until mr. grey applied himself to it, in 1728, with great assiduity. he and his friend mr. wheeler, made a great variety of experiments, in which they demonstrated, that electricity may be communicated from one body to another, even without being in contact, and in this way may be conducted to a great distance. mr. grey afterwards found, that, by suspending rods of iron by silk or hair lines, and bringing an excited tube under them, sparks might be drawn, and a light perceived at the extremities in the dark. m. du faye, intendant of the french king's gardens, made a number of experiments, which added not a little to the science. he made the discovery of two kinds of electricity, which he called _vitreous_ and _resinous_; the former produced by rubbing glass, the latter from excited sulphur, sealing-wax, &c. but this he afterwards gave up as erroneous. between the years 1739 and 1742, desaguliers made a number of experiments, but added little of importance. he first used the terms _conductors_ and _electrics per se_. in 1742, several ingenious germans engaged in this subject, of these the principal were, professor boze of wittemberg, professor winkler of leipsic, gordon, a scotch benedictine monk, professor of philosophy at erfurt, and dr. ludolf, of berlin. the result of their researches astonished the philosophers of europe. their apparatus was large, and by means of it they were enabled to collect large quantities of the electric fluid, and thus to produce phenomena which had been hitherto unobserved. they killed small birds, and set spirits on fire. their experiments excited the curiosity of other philosophers. collinson, about the year 1745, sent to the library company of philadelphia, an account of these experiments, together with a tube, and directions how to use it. franklin, with some of his friends, immediately engaged in a course of experiments, the result of which is well known. he was enabled to make a number of important discoveries, and to propose theories to account for various phenomena, which have been universally adopted, and which bid fair to endure for ages. his observations he communicated in a series of letters, to his friend collinson, the first of which is dated march 28, 1747. in these he shews the power of points in drawing and throwing off the electrical matter, which had hitherto escaped the notice of electricians. he also made the grand discovery of a _plus_ and _minus_, or of a _positive_ and _negative_ state of electricity. we give him the honour of this, without hesitation; although the english have claimed it for their countryman, dr. watson. watson's paper is dated january 21, 1748; franklin's july 11, 1747: several months prior. shortly after, franklin, from his principles of the plus and minus state, explained, in a satisfactory manner, the phenomena of the leyden phial, first observed by mr. cuneus, or by professor muschenbroeck, of leyden, which had much perplexed philosophers. he shewed clearly, that when charged, the bottle contained no more electricity than before, but that as much was taken from one side as was thrown on the other; and that, to discharge it, nothing was necessary but to produce a communication between the two sides, by which the equilibrium might be restored, and that then no signs of electricity would remain. he afterwards demonstrated, by experiments, that the electricity did not reside in the coating, as had been supposed, but in the pores of the glass itself. after a phial was charged, he removed the coating, and found that upon applying a new coating, the shock might still be received. in the year 1749, he first suggested his idea of explaining the phenomena of thunder-gusts, and of the aurora borealis, upon electrical principles. he points out many particulars in which lightning and electricity agree; and he adduces many facts, and reasonings from facts, in support of his positions. in the same year he conceived the astonishingly bold and grand idea of ascertaining the truth of his doctrine, by actually drawing down the lightning, by means of sharp-pointed iron rods, raised into the region of the clouds. even in this uncertain state, his passion to be useful to mankind, displayed itself in a powerful manner. admitting the identity of electricity and lightning, and knowing the power of points in repelling bodies charged with electricity, and in conducting their fire silently and imperceptibly, he suggested the idea of securing houses, ships, &c. from being damaged by lightning, by erecting pointed rods, that should rise some feet above the most elevated part, and descend some feet into the ground or the water. the effect of these, he concluded, would be either to present a stroke by repelling the cloud beyond the striking distance, or by drawing off the electrical fire which it contained; or, if they could not effect this, they would at least conduct the electric matter to the earth, without any injury to the building. it was not until the summer of 1752, that he was enabled to complete his grand and unparalleled discovery by experiment. the plan, which he had originally proposed, was, to erect on some high tower, or other elevated place, a centry-box, from which should rise a pointed iron rod, insulated by being fixed in a cake of resin. electrified clouds passing over this, would, he conceived, impart to it a portion of their electricity, which would be rendered evident to the senses by sparks being emitted, when a key, the knuckle, or other conductor was presented to it. philadelphia at this time afforded no opportunity of trying an experiment of this kind. while franklin was waiting for the erection of a spire, it occurred to him that he might have more ready access to the region of clouds by means of a common kite. he prepared one by fastening two cross sticks to a silk handkerchief, which would not suffer so much from the rain as paper. to the upright stick was affixed an iron point. the string was, as usual, of hemp, except the lower end, which was silk. where the hempen string terminated, a key was fastened. with this apparatus, on the appearance of a thunder-gust approaching, he went out into the commons, accompanied by his son, to whom alone he communicated his intentions, well knowing the ridicule which, too generally for the interest of science, awaits unsuccessful experiments in philosophy. he placed himself under a shade, to avoid the rain--his kite was raised--a thunder-cloud passed over it--no sign of electricity appeared. he almost despaired of success, when, suddenly, he observed the loose fibres of his string to move towards an erect position. he now presented his knuckle to the key, and received a strong spark. how exquisite must his sensations have been at this moment! on this experiment depended the fate of his theory. if he succeeded, his name would rank high among those who had improved science; if he failed, he must inevitably be subjected to the derision of mankind, or, what is worse, their pity, as a well-meaning man, but a weak, silly projector. the anxiety with which he looked for the result of his experiment, may be easily conceived. doubts and despair had begun to prevail, when the fact was ascertained in so clear a manner, that even the most incredulous could no longer withhold their assent.--repeated sparks were drawn from the key, a phial was charged, a shock given, and all the experiments made which are usually performed with electricity. about a month before this period, some ingenious frenchman had completed the discovery in the manner originally proposed by dr. franklin. the letters which he sent to mr. collinson, it is said, were refused a place in the transactions of the royal society of london. however this may be, collinson published them in a separate volume, under the title of "new experiments and observations on electricity, made at philadelphia, in america." they were read with avidity, and soon translated into different languages. a very incorrect french translation fell into the hands of the celebrated buffon, who, notwithstanding the disadvantages under which the work laboured, was much pleased with it, and repeated the experiments with success. he prevailed on his friend, m. d'alibard, to give his countrymen a more correct translation of the works of the american electrician. this contributed much towards spreading a knowledge of franklin's principles in france. the king, louis xv., hearing of these experiments, expressed a wish to be a spectator of them. a course of experiments was given at the seat of the d'ayen, at st. germain, by m. de lor. the applauses which the king bestowed upon franklin, excited in buffon, d'alibard, and de lor, an earnest desire of ascertaining the truth of his theory of thunder-gusts. buffon erected his apparatus on the tower of montbar, m. d'alibard at marly-la-ville, and de lor at his house in the _estrapade_ at paris, some of the highest ground in that capital. d'alibard's machine first shewed signs of electricity. on the 10th of may, 1752, a thunder cloud passed over it, in the absence of m. d'alibard, and a number of sparks were drawn from it by coiffier, joiner, with whom d'alibard had left directions how to proceed, and by m. raulet, the prior of marly-la-ville. an account of this experiment was given to the royal academy of sciences, by m. d'alibard, in a memoir dated may 13th, 1752. on the 18th of may, m. de lor proved equally successful with the apparatus erected at his own house. these philosophers soon excited those of other parts of europe to repeat the experiment; amongst whom, none signalised themselves more than father beccaria, of turin, to whose observations science is much indebted. even the cold regions of russia were penetrated by the ardor for discovery. professor richman bade fair to add much to the stock of knowledge on this subject, when an unfortunate flash from his conductor, put a period to his existence. the friends of science will long remember with regret, the amiable martyr to electricity. by these experiments franklin's theory was established in the most convincing manner. when the truth of it could no longer be doubted, envy and vanity endeavoured to detract from its merit. that an american, an inhabitant of the obscure city of philadelphia, the name of which was hardly known, should be able to make discoveries, and to frame theories, which had escaped the notice of the enlightened philosophers of europe, was too mortifying to be admitted. he must certainly have taken the idea from some one else. an american, a being of an inferior order, make discoveries!--impossible. it was said, that the abbé nollet, 1748, had suggested the idea of the similarity of lightning and electricity in his _leçons de physique_. it is true that the abbé mentions the idea, but he throws it out as a bare conjecture, and proposes no mode of ascertaining the truth of it. he himself acknowledges, that franklin first entertained the bold thought of bringing lightning from the heavens, by means of pointed rods fixed in the air. the similarity of lightning and electricity is so strong, that we need not be surprised at notice being taken of it, as soon as electrical phenomena became familiar. we find it mentioned by dr. wall and mr. grey, while the science was in its infancy. but the honour of forming a regular theory of thunder-gusts, of suggesting a mode of determining the truth of it by experiments, and of putting these experiments in practice, and thus establishing the theory upon a firm and solid basis, is incontestibly due to franklin. d'alibard, who made the first experiments in france, says, that he only followed the tract which franklin had pointed out. it has been of late asserted, that the honour of completing the experiment with the electrical kite, does not belong to franklin. some late english paragraphs have attributed it to some frenchman, whose name they do not mention; and the abbé bertholon gives it to m. de romas, assessor to the presideal of nerac; the english paragraphs probably refer to the same person. but a very slight attention will convince us of the injustice of this procedure: dr. franklin's experiment was made in june 1752; and his letter, giving an account of it, is dated october 19, 1752. m. de romas made his first attempt on the 14th of may, 1753, but was not successful until the 7th of june; a year after franklin had completed the discovery, and when it was known to all the philosophers in europe. besides these great principles, franklin's letters on electricity contain a number of facts and hints, which have contributed greatly towards reducing this branch of knowledge to a science. his friend mr. kinnersley communicated to him a discovery of the different kinds of electricity, excited by rubbing glass and sulphur. this, we have said, was first observed by m. du faye; but it was for many years neglected. the philosophers were disposed to account for the phenomena, rather from a difference in the quantity of electricity collected, and even du faye himself seems at last to have adopted this doctrine. franklin at first entertained the same idea; but upon repeating the experiments, he perceived that mr. kinnersley was right; and that the _vitreous_ and _resinous_ electricity of du faye were nothing more than the _positive_, and _negative_ states which he had before observed; and that the glass globe charged _positively_ or increased the quantity of electricity on the prime conductor, while the globe of sulphur diminished its natural quantity, or charged _negatively_. these experiments and observations opened a new field for investigation, upon which electricians entered with avidity; and their labours have added much to the stock of our knowledge. in september, 1752, franklin entered upon a course of experiments, to determine the state of electricity in the clouds. from a number of experiments he formed this conclusion:--"that the clouds of a thunder-gust are most commonly in a negative state of electricity, but sometimes in a positive state;" and from this it follows, as a necessary consequence, "that, for the most part, in thunder-strokes, it is the earth that strikes into the clouds, and not the clouds that strike into the earth." the letter containing these observations is dated in september, 1753; and yet the discovery of ascending thunder has been said to be of a modern date, and has been attributed to the abbé bertholon, who published his memoir on the subject in 1776. franklin's letters have been translated into most of the european languages, and into latin. in proportion as they have become known, his principles have been adopted. some opposition was made to his theories, particularly by the abbé nollet, who was, however, but feebly supported, while the first philosophers in europe stepped forth in defence of franklin's principles, amongst whom d'alibard and beccaria were the most distinguished. the opposition has gradually ceased, and the franklinian system is now universally adopted, where science flourishes. the important practical use which franklin made of his discoveries, the securing of houses from injury by lightning, has been already mentioned. pointed conductors are now very common in america; but prejudice has hitherto prevented their general introduction into europe, notwithstanding the most undoubted proofs of their utility have been given. but mankind can with difficulty be brought to lay aside practices, or to adopt new ones. and perhaps we have more reason, to be surprised, that a practice however rational, which was proposed about forty years ago, should in that time have been adopted in so many places, than that it has not universally prevailed. it is only by degrees that the great body of mankind can be led into new practices, however salutary their tendency. it is now nearly eighty years since inoculation was introduced into europe and america; and it is so far from being general at present, that it will, require one or two centuries to render it so. in the year 1745, franklin published an account of his new-invented pennsylvania fire-places, in which he minutely and accurately states the advantages of different kinds of fire-places; and endeavours to show that the one which he describes is to be preferred to any other. this contrivance has given rise to the open stoves now in general use, which, however, differ from it in construction, particularly in not having an air-box at the back, through which a constant supply of air, warmed in its passage, is thrown into the room. the advantages of this are, that as a stream of warm air is continually flowing into the room, less fuel is necessary to preserve a proper temperature, and the room may be so tightened as that no air may enter through cracks--the consequence of which are colds, tooth-aches, &c. although philosophy was a principal object of franklin's pursuit for several years, he confined himself not to this. in the year 1747, he became a member of the general assembly of pennsylvania, as a burgess for the city of philadelphia. warm disputes subsisted at this time between the assembly and the proprietaries; each contending for what they conceived to be their just rights. franklin, a friend to the rights of man from his infancy, soon distinguished himself as a steady opponent of the unjust schemes of the proprietaries. he was soon looked up to as the head of the opposition; and to him have been attributed many of the spirited replies of the assembly, to the messages of the governors. his influence in the body was very great. this arose not from any superior powers of eloquence; he spoke but seldom, and he never was known to make any thing like an elaborate harangue. his speeches often consisted of a single sentence, or of a well-told story, the moral of which was always obviously to the point. he never attempted the flowery fields of oratory. his manner was plain and mild. his style in speaking was, like that of his writings, simple, unadorned, and remarkably concise. with this plain manner, and his penetrating and solid judgment, he was able to confound the most eloquent and subtle of his adversaries, to confirm the opinions of his friends, and to make converts of the unprejudiced who had opposed him. with a single observation, he has rendered of no avail an elegant and lengthy discourse, and determined the fate of a question of importance. but he was not contented with thus supporting the rights of the people. he wished to render them permanently secure, which can only be done by making their value properly known; and this must depend upon increasing and extending information to every class of men. we have already seen that he was the founder of the public library, which contributed greatly towards improving the minds of the citizens. but this was not sufficient. the schools then subsisting were in general of little utility. the teachers were men ill qualified for the important duty which they had undertaken; and, after all, nothing more could be obtained than the rudiments of a common english education. franklin drew up a plan of an academy, to be erected in the city of philadelphia, suited to "the state of an infant country;" but in this, as in all his plans, he confined not his views to the present time only. he looked forward to the period when an institution on an enlarged plan would become necessary. with this view, he considered his academy as "a foundation for posterity to erect a seminary of learning more extensive, and suitable to future circumstances." in pursuance of this plan, the constitutions were drawn up and signed on the 13th of november, 1749. in these, twenty-four of the most respectable citizens of philadelphia were named as trustees. in the choice of these, and in the formation of his plan, franklin is said to have consulted chiefly with thomas hopkinson, esq; the rev. richard peters, then secretary of the province, tench francis, esq. attorney-general, and dr. phineas bond. the following article shews a spirit of benevolence worthy of imitation; and, for the honour of our city, we hope that it continues to be in force. "in case of the disability of the _rector_, or any master (established on the foundation by receiving a certain salary) through sickness, or any other natural infirmity, whereby he may be reduced to poverty, the trustees shall have power to contribute to his support, in proportion to his distress and merit, and the stock in their hands." the last clause of the fundamental rules is expressed in language so tender and benevolent, so truly parental, that it will do everlasting honour to the hearts and heads of the founders. "it is hoped and expected that the trustees will make it their pleasure, and in some degree their business, to visit the academy often; to encourage and countenance the youth, to countenance and assist the masters, and, by all means in their power, advance the usefulness and reputation of the design; that they will look on the students as, in some measure, their own children, treat them with familiarity and affection; and when they have behaved well, gone through their studies, and are to enter the world, they shall zealously unite, and make all the interest that can be made to promote and establish them, whether in business, offices, marriages, or any other thing for their advantage, in preference to all other persons whatsoever, even of equal merit." the constitutions being signed and made public, with the names of the gentlemen proposing themselves as trustees and founders, the design was so well approved of by the public-spirited citizens of philadelphia, that the sum of eight hundred pounds per annum, for five years, was in the course of a few weeks subscribed for carrying it into execution; and in the beginning of january following (viz. 1750) three of the schools were opened, namely, the latin and greek schools, the mathematical school, and the english school. in pursuance of an article in the original plan, a school for educating sixty boys and thirty girls (in the charter since called the charitable school) was opened; and amidst all the difficulties with which the trustees have struggled in respect to their funds, has still been continued full for the space of forty years; so that allowing three years education for each boy and girl admitted into it, which is the general rule, at least twelve hundred children have received in it the chief part of their education, who might otherwise, in a great measure, have been left without the means of instruction. and many of those who have been thus educated, are now to be found among the most useful and reputable citizens of this state. the institution, thus successfully begun, continued daily to flourish, to the great satisfaction of dr. franklin; who, notwithstanding the multiplicity of his other engagements and pursuits, at that busy stage of his life, was a constant attendant at the monthly visitations and examinations of the schools, and made it his particular study, by means of his extensive correspondence abroad, to advance the reputation of the seminary, and to draw students and scholars to it from different parts of america and the west indies. through the interposition of his benevolent and learned friend, peter collinson, of london, upon the application of the trustees, a charter of incorporation, dated july 13, 1753, was obtained from the honourable proprietors of pennsylvania, thomas penn and richard penn, esqrs. accompanied with a liberal benefaction of five hundred pounds sterling; and dr. franklin now began in good earnest to please himself with the hopes of a speedy accomplishment of his original design, viz. the establishment of a perfect institution, upon the plan of the european colleges and universities; for which his academy was intended as a nursery or foundation. to elucidate this fact, is a matter of considerable importance in respect to the memory and character of dr. franklin as a philosopher, and as the friend and patron of learning and science; for, notwithstanding what is expressly declared by him in the preamble to the constitutions, viz. that the academy was begun for "teaching the latin and greek languages, with all useful branches of the arts and sciences, suitable to the state of an infant country, and laying a foundation for posterity to erect a seminary of learning more extensive, and suitable to their future circumstances;" yet it has been suggested of late, as upon dr. franklin's authority, that the latin and greek, or the dead languages, are an incumbrance upon a scheme of liberal education, and that the engrafting or founding a college, or more extensive seminary, upon his academy, was without his approbation or agency, and gave him discontent. if the reverse of this does not already appear from what has been quoted above, the following letters will put the matter beyond dispute. they were written by him to a gentleman, who had at that time published the idea of a college, suited to the circumstances of a young country (meaning new-york) a copy of which having been sent to dr. franklin for his opinion, gave rise to that correspondence which terminated about a year afterwards, in erecting the college upon the foundation of the academy, and establishing that gentleman at the head of both, where he still continues, after a period of thirty-six years, to preside with distinguished reputation. from these letters also, the state of the academy, at that time, will be, seen. footnotes: [1] as a proof that franklin was anciently the common name of an order or rank in england, see judge fortesque, _de laudibus legum angliæ_, written about the year 1412, in which is the following passage, to shew that good juries might easily be formed in any part of england: "regio etiam ilia, ita respersa refertaque est _posessoribus terrarum_ et agrorum, quod in ea, villula tam parva reperiri non poterit, in qua non est _miles_, _armiger_, vel pater-familias, qualis ibidem _franklin_ vulgariter nuncupatur, magnis ditatus possessionibus, nec non libere tenentes et alii _valecti_ plurimi, suis patrimoniis sufficientes, ad faciendum juratam, in forma prænotata." "moreover, the same country is so filled and replenished with landed menne, that therein so small a thorpe cannot be found wherein dwelleth not a knight, an esquire, or such a householder as is there commonly called a _franklin_, enriched with great possessions; and also other freeholders and many yeomen, able for their livelihoods to make a jury in form aforementioned." old translation. chaucer too, calls his country gentleman a _franklin_; and, after describing his good housekeeping, thus characterizes him: this worthy franklin bore a purse of silk fix'd to his girdle, white as morning milk; knight of the shire, first justice at th' assize, to help the poor, the doubtful to advise. in all employments, generous, just he prov'd, renown'd for courtesy, by all belov'd. [2] town in the island of nantucket. [3] probably the dunciad, where we find him thus immortalized by the author: silence, ye wolves, while ralph to cynthia howls, and makes night hideous--answer him, ye owls! [4] printing houses in general are thus denominated by the workmen: the _spirit_ they call by the name of _ralph_. [5] a manuscript note in the file of the american mercury, preserved in the philadelphia library, says, that franklin wrote the five first numbers, and part of the eighth. [6] dr. stuber was born in philadelphia, of german parents. he was sent, at an early age, to the university, where his genius, diligence and amiable temper, soon acquired him the particular notice and favour of those under whose immediate direction he was placed. after passing through the common course of study, in a much shorter time than usual, he left the university, at the age of sixteen, with great reputation. not long after, he entered on the study of physic; and the zeal with which he pursued it, and the advances he made, gave his friends reason to form the most flattering prospects of his future eminence and usefulness in the profession. as dr. stuber's circumstances were very moderate, he did not think this pursuit well calculated to improve them. he therefore relinquished it, after he had obtained a degree in the profession, and qualified himself to practise with credit and success; and immediately entered on the study of the law. while in pursuit of the last mentioned object, he was prevented by a premature death from reaping the fruit of those talents with which he was endowed, and of a youth spent in the ardent and successful pursuit of useful and elegant literature. "_philad. april 19th, 1753._ "sir, "i received your favour of the 11th instant, with your new[7] piece on _education_, which i shall carefully peruse, and give you my sentiments of it, as you desire, by next post. "i believe the young gentlemen, your pupils, may be entertained and instructed here, in mathematics and philosophy, to satisfaction. mr. alison[8] (who was educated at glasgow) has been long accustomed to teach the latter, and mr. grew[9] the former; and i think their pupils make great progress. mr. alison has the care of the latin and greek school, but as he has now three good assistants,[10] he can very well afford some hours every day for the instruction of those who are engaged in higher studies. the mathematical school is pretty well furnished with instruments. the english library is a good one; and we have belonging to it a middling apparatus for experimental philosophy, and propose speedily to complete it. the loganian library, one of the best collections in america, will shortly be opened; so that neither books nor instruments will be wanting; and as we are determined always to give good salaries, we have reason to believe we may have always an opportunity of choosing good masters; upon which indeed, the success of the whole depends. we are obliged to you for your kind offers in this respect, and when you are settled in england, we may occasionally make use of your friendship and judgment.-"if it suits your conveniency to visit philadelphia before you return to europe, i shall be extremely glad to see and converse with you here, as well as to correspond with you after your settlement in england; for an acquaintance and communication with men of learning, virtue, and public spirit, is one of my greatest enjoyments. "i do not know whether you ever happened to see the first proposals i made for erecting this academy. i send them inclosed. they had (however imperfect) the desired success, being followed by a subscription of four thousand pounds, towards carrying them into execution. and as we are fond of receiving advice, and are daily improving by experience, i am in hopes we shall, in a few years, see a _perfect institution_. "i am, very respectfully, &c. "b. franklin. "_mr. w. smith, long-island._" footnotes: [7] a general idea of the college of mirania. [8] the rev. and learned mr. francis alison, afterwards d. d. and vice-provost of the college. [9] mr. theophilus grew, afterwards professor of mathematics in the college. [10] those assistants were at that time mr. charles thomson, late secretary to congress, mr. paul jackson, and mr. jacob duche. "_philad. may 3d, 1753._ "sir, "mr. peters has just now been with me, and we have compared notes on your new piece. we find nothing in the scheme of education, however excellent, but what is, in our opinion, very practicable. the great difficulty will be to find the aratus[11], and other suitable persons, to carry it into execution; but such may be had if proper encouragement be given. we have both received great pleasure in the perusal of it. for my part, i know not when i have read a piece that has more affected me--so noble and just are the sentiments, so warm and animated the language; yet as censure from your friends may be of more use, as well as more agreeable to you than praise, i ought to mention, that i wish you had omitted not only the quotation from the review[12], which you are now justly dissatisfied with, but those expressions of resentment against your adversaries, in pages 65 and 79. in such cases, the noblest victory is obtained by neglect, and by shining on. "mr. allen has been out of town these ten days; but before he went he directed me to procure him six copies of your piece. mr. peters has taken ten. he proposed to have written to you; but omits it, as he expects so soon to have the pleasure of seeing you here. he desires me to present his affectionate compliments to you, and to assure you that you will be very welcome to him. i shall only say, that you may depend on my doing all in my power to make your visit to philadelphia agreeable to you. "i am, &c. "b. franklin. "_mr. smith._" footnotes: [11] the name given to the principal or head of the ideal college, the system of education in which hath nevertheless been nearly realized, or followed as a model, in the college and academy of philadelphia, and some other american seminaries, for many years past. [12] the quotation alluded to (from the london monthly review for 1749,) was judged to reflect too severely on the discipline and government of the english universities of oxford and cambridge, and was expunged from the following editions of this work. "_philad. nov. 27th, 1753._ "dear sir, "having written you fully, _via_ bristol, i have now little to add. matters relating to the academy remain in _statu quo_. the trustees would be glad to see a rector established there, but they dread entering into new engagements till they are got out of debt; and i have not yet got them wholly over to my opinion, that a good professor, or teacher of the higher branches of learning, would draw so many scholars as to pay great part, if not the whole of his salary. thus, unless the proprietors (of the province) shall think fit to put the finishing hand to our institution, it must, i fear, wait some few years longer before it can arrive at that state of perfection, which to me it seems now capable of; and all the pleasure i promised myself in seeing you settled among us, vanishes into smoke. "but good mr. collinson writes me word, that no endeavours of his shall be wanting; and he hopes, with the archbishop's assistance, to be able to prevail with our proprietors[13]. i pray god grant them success. "my son presents his affectionate regards, with, dear sir, "your's, &c. "b. franklin. "p. s. i have not been favoured with a line from you since your arrival in england." footnote: [13] upon the application of archbishop herring and p. collinson, esq. at dr. franklin's request, (aided by the letters of mr. allen and mr. peters,) the hon. thomas penn, esq. subscribed an annual sum, and afterwards gave at least 5000_l._ to the founding or engrafting the college upon the academy. "_philad. april 18th, 1754._ "dear sir, "i have had but one letter from you since your arrival in england, which was but a short one, _via_ boston, dated october 18th, acquainting me that you had written largely by captain davis.--davis was lost, and with him your letters, to my great disappointment.--mesnard and gibbon have since arrived here, and i hear nothing from you. my comfort is, an imagination that you only omit writing because you are coming, and propose to tell me every thing _viva voce_. so not knowing whether this letter will reach you, and hoping either to see or hear from you by the myrtilla, captain budden's ship, which is daily expected, i only add, that i am, with great esteem and affection "your's, &c. "b. franklin. "_mr. smith._" about a month after the date of this last letter, the gentleman to whom it was addressed arrived in philadelphia, and was immediately placed at the head of the seminary; whereby dr. franklin and the other trustees were enabled to prosecute their plan, for perfecting the institution, and opening the college upon the large and liberal foundation on which it now stands; for which purpose they obtained their additional charter, dated may 27th, 1755. thus far we thought it proper to exhibit in one view dr. franklin's services in the foundation and establishment of this seminary. he soon afterwards embarked for england, in the public service of his country; and having been generally employed abroad, in the like service, for the greatest part of the remainder of his life, (as will appear in our subsequent account of the same) he had but few opportunities of taking any further active part in the affairs of the seminary, until his final return in the year 1785, when he found its charters violated, and his ancient colleagues, the original founders, deprived of their trust, by an act of the legislature; and although his own name had been inserted amongst the new trustees, yet he declined to take his seat among them, or any concern in the management of their affairs, till the institution was restored by law to its original owners. he then assembled his old colleagues at his own house, and being chosen their president, all their future meetings were, at his request, held there, till within a few months of his death, when with reluctance, and at their desire, lest he might be too much injured by his attention to their business, he suffered them to meet at the college. franklin not only gave birth to many useful institutions himself, but he was also instrumental in promoting those which had originated with other men. about the year 1752, an eminent physician of this city, dr. bond, considering the deplorable state of the poor when visited with disease, conceived the idea of establishing an hospital. notwithstanding very great exertions on his part, he was able to interest few people so far in his benevolent plan, as to obtain subscriptions from them. unwilling that his scheme should prove abortive, he sought the aid of franklin, who readily engaged in the business, both by using his influence with his friends, and by stating the advantageous influence of the proposed institution in his paper. these efforts were attended with success. considerable sums were subscribed; but they were still short of what was necessary. franklin now made another exertion. he applied to the assembly; and, after some opposition, obtained leave to bring in a bill, specifying, that as soon as two thousand pounds were subscribed, the same sum should be drawn from the treasury by the speaker's warrant, to be applied to the purposes of the institution. the opposition, as the sum was granted upon a contingency which they supposed would never take place, were silent, and the bill passed. the friends of the plan now redoubled their efforts, to obtain subscriptions to the amount stated in the bill, and were soon successful. this was the foundation of the pennsylvanian hospital, which, with the bettering-house, and dispensary, bears ample testimony of the humanity of the citizens of philadelphia. dr. franklin had conducted himself so well in the office of post-master, and had shown himself to be so well acquainted with the business of that department, that it was thought expedient to raise him to a more dignified station. in 1753 he was appointed deputy post-master general for the british colonies. the profits arising from the postage of letters formed no inconsiderable part of the revenue, which the crown of great britain derived from these colonies. in the hands of franklin, it is said, that the post-office in america, yielded annually thrice as much as that of ireland. the american colonies were much exposed to depredations on their frontiers, by the indians; and more particularly whenever a war took place between france and england. the colonies, individually, were either too weak to take efficient measures for their own defence, or they were unwilling to take upon themselves the whole burden of erecting forts and maintaining garrisons, whilst their neighbours, who partook equally with themselves of the advantages, contributed nothing to the expence. sometimes also the disputes, which subsisted between the governors and assemblies, prevented the adoption of means of defence; as we have seen was the case in pennsylvania in 1745. to devise a plan of union between the colonies, to regulate this and other matters, appeared a desirable object. to accomplish this, in the year 1754, commissioners from new hampshire, massachussets, rhode island, new jersey, pennsylvania, and maryland, met at albany. dr. franklin attended here, as a commissioner from pennsylvania, and produced a plan, which, from the place of meeting, has been usually termed, "the albany plan of union." this proposed, that application should be made for an act of parliament, to establish in the colonies a general government, to be administered by a president-general, appointed by the crown, and by a grand council, consisting of members, chosen by the representatives of the different colonies; their number to be in direct proportion to the sums paid by each colony into the general treasury, with this restriction, that no colony should have more than seven, nor less than two representatives. the whole executive authority was committed to the president-general. the power of legislation was lodged in the grand council and president-general jointly; his consent being made necessary to passing a bill into a law. the power vested in the president and council was, to declare war and peace, and to conclude treaties with the indian nations; to regulate trade with, and to make purchases of vacant lands from them, either in the name of the crown, or of the union; to settle new colonies, to make laws for governing these until they should be erected into separate governments; and to raise troops, build forts, and fit out armed vessels, and to use other means for the general defence; and, to effect these things, a power was given to make laws, laying such duties, imposts, or taxes, as they should find necessary, and as would be least burdensome to the people. all laws were to be sent to england for the king's approbation; and unless disapproved of within three years, were to remain in force. all officers in the land or sea service were to be nominated by the president-general, and approved of by the general council; civil officers were to be nominated by the council, and approved of by the president. such are the outlines of the plan proposed, for the consideration of the congress, by dr. franklin. after several days' discussion, it was unanimously agreed to by the commissioners, a copy transmitted to each assembly, and one to the king's council. the fate of it was singular. it was disapproved of by the ministry of great britain, because it gave too much power to the representatives of the people; and it was rejected by every assembly, as giving to the president-general, the representative of the crown, an influence greater than appeared to them proper, in a plan of government intended for freemen. perhaps this rejection, on both sides, is the strongest proof that could be adduced of the excellence of it, as suited to the situation of america and great britain at that time. it appears to have steered exactly in the middle between the opposite interests of both. whether the adoption of this plan would have prevented the separation of america from great britain, is a question which might afford much room for speculation. it may be said, that, by enabling the colonies to defend themselves, it would have removed the pretext upon which the stamp-act, tea-act, and other acts of the british parliament, were passed; which excited a spirit of opposition, and laid the foundation for the separation of the two countries. but, on the other hand, it must be admitted, that the restriction laid by great britain upon our commerce, obliging us to sell our produce to her citizens only, and to take from them various articles, of which, as our manufactures were discouraged, we stood in need, at a price greater than that for which they could have been obtained from other nations, must inevitably produce dissatisfaction, even though no duties were imposed by the parliament; a circumstance which might still have taken place. besides, as the president-general was to be appointed by the crown, he must, of necessity, be devoted to its views, and would, therefore, refuse his assent to any laws, however salutary to the community, which had the most remote tendency to injure the interests of his sovereign. even should they receive his assent, the approbation of the king was to be necessary; who would indubitably, in every instance, prefer the advantage of his home dominions to that of his colonies. hence would ensue perpetual disagreements between the council and the president-general, and thus, between the people of america and the crown of great britain:--while the colonies continued weak, they would be obliged to submit, and as soon as they acquired strength they would become more urgent in their demands, until, at length, they would shake off the yoke, and declare themselves independent. whilst the french were in possession of canada, their trade with the natives extended very far; even to the back of the british settlements. they were disposed, from time to time, to establish posts within the territory, which the english claimed as their own. independent of the injury to the fur trade, which was considerable, the colonies suffered this further inconvenience, that the indians were frequently instigated to commit depredations on their frontiers. in the year 1753, encroachments were made upon the boundaries of virginia. remonstrances had no effect. in the ensuing year, a body of men were sent out under the command of mr. washington, who, though a very young man, had, by his conduct in the preceding year, shewn himself worthy of such an important trust. whilst marching to take possession of the post at the junction of the allegany and monongahela, he was informed that the french had already erected a fort there. a detachment of their men marched against him. he fortified himself as strongly as time and circumstances would admit. a superiority of numbers soon obliged him to surrender _fort necessity_. he obtained honourable terms for himself and men, and returned to virginia. the government of great britain now thought it necessary to interfere. in the year 1755, general braddock, with some regiments of regular troops, and provincial levies, was sent to dispossess the french of the posts upon which they had seized. after the men were all ready, a difficulty occurred, which had nearly prevented the expedition. this was the want of waggons. franklin now stepped forward, and with the assistance of his son, in a little time procured a hundred and fifty. braddock unfortunately fell into an ambuscade, and perished, with a number of his men. washington, who had accompanied him as an aid-de-camp, and had warned him, in vain, of his danger, now displayed great military talents in effecting a retreat of the remains of the army, and in forming a junction with the rear, under colonel dunbar, upon whom the chief command now devolved. with some difficulty they brought their little body to a place of safety; but they found it necessary to destroy their waggons and baggage, to prevent them falling into the hands of the enemy. for the waggons which he had furnished, franklin had given bonds to a large amount. the owners declared their intention of obliging him to make a restitution of their property. had they put their threats in execution, ruin must inevitably have been the consequence. governor shirley, finding that he had incurred these debts for the service of government, made arrangements to have them discharged, and released franklin from his disagreeable situation. the alarm spread through the colonies, after the defeat of braddock, was very great. preparations to arm were every where made. in pennsylvania, the prevalence of the quaker interest prevented the adoption of any system of defence, which would compel the citizens to bear arms. franklin introduced into the assembly a bill for organizing a militia, by which every man was allowed to take arms or not, as to him should appear fit. the quakers, being thus left at liberty, suffered the bill to pass; for although their principles would not suffer them to fight, they had no objection to their neighbours fighting for them. in consequence of this act a very respectable militia was formed. the sense of impending danger infused a military spirit in all, whose religious tenets were not opposed to war. franklin was appointed colonel of a regiment in philadelphia, which consisted of 1200 men. the north-western frontier being invaded by the enemy, it became necessary to adopt measures for its defence. franklin was directed by the governor to take charge of this. a power of raising men, and of appointing officers to command them, was vested in him. he soon levied a body of troops, with which he repaired to the place at which their presence was necessary. here he built a fort, and placed a garrison in such a posture of defence, as would enable them to withstand the inroads, to which the inhabitants had previously been exposed. he remained here for some time, in order the more completely to discharge the trust committed to him. some business of importance at length rendered his presence necessary in the assembly, and he returned to philadelphia. the defence of her colonies was a great expence to great britain. the most effectual mode of lessening this was, to put arms into the hands of the inhabitants, and to teach them their use. but england wished not that the americans should become acquainted with their own strength. she was apprehensive, that, as soon as this period arrived, they would no longer submit to that monopoly of their trade, which to them was highly injurious, but extremely advantageous to the mother-country. in comparison with the profits of this, the expence of maintaining armies and fleets to defend them was trifling. she fought to keep them dependent upon her for protection; the best plan which could be devised for retaining them in peaceable subjection. the least appearance of a military spirit was therefore to be guarded against, and, although a war then raged, the act for organizing a militia was disapproved of by the ministry. the regiments which had been formed under it were disbanded, and the defence of the province entrusted to regular troops. the disputes between the proprietaries and the people continued in full force, although a war was raging on the frontiers. not even the sense of danger was sufficient to reconcile, for ever so short a time, their jarring interests. the assembly still insisted upon the justice of taxing the proprietary estates, but the governors constantly refused their assent to this measure, without which no bill could pass into a law. enraged at the obstinacy, and what they conceived to be unjust proceedings of their opponents, the assembly at length determined to apply to the mother-country for relief. a petition was addressed to the king, in council, stating the inconveniencies under which the inhabitants laboured, from the attention of the proprietaries to their private interests, to the neglect of the general welfare of the community, and praying for redress. franklin was appointed to present this address, as agent for the province of pennsylvania, and departed from america in june, 1757. in conformity to the instructions which he had received from the legislature, he held a conference with the proprietaries who then resided in england, and endeavoured to prevail upon them to give up the long contested point. finding that they would harken to no terms of accommodation, he laid his petition before the council. during this time governor denny assented to a law imposing a tax, in which no discrimination was made in favour of the estates of the penn family. they, alarmed at this intelligence, and franklin's exertions, used their utmost endeavours to prevent the royal sanction being given to this law, which they represented as highly iniquitous, designed to throw the burden of supporting government upon them, and calculated to produce the most ruinous consequences to them and their posterity. the cause was amply discussed before the privy council. the penns found here some strenuous advocates; nor were there wanting some who warmly espoused the side of the people. after some time spent in debate, a proposal was made, that franklin should solemnly engage, that the assessment of the tax should be so made, as that the proprietary estates should pay no more than a due proportion. this he agreed to perform; the penn family withdrew their opposition, and tranquillity was thus once more restored to the province. the mode in which this dispute was terminated is a striking proof of the high opinion entertained of franklin's integrity and honour, even by those who considered him as inimical to their views. nor was their confidence ill-founded. the assessment was made upon the strictest principles of equity; and the proprietary estates bore only a proportionable share of the expences of supporting government. after the completion of this important business, franklin remained at the court of great britain, as agent for the province of pennsylvania. the extensive knowledge which he possessed of the situation of the colonies, and the regard which he always manifested for their interests, occasioned his appointment to the same office by the colonies of massachussets, maryland, and georgia. his conduct, in this situation, was such as rendered him still more dear to his countrymen. he had now an opportunity of indulging in the society of those friends, whom his merits had procured him while at a distance. the regard which they had entertained for him was rather increased by a personal acquaintance. the opposition which had been made to his discoveries in philosophy gradually ceased, and the rewards of literary merit were abundantly conferred upon him. the royal society of london, which had at first refused his performances admission into its transactions, now thought it an honour to rank him amongst its fellows. other societies of europe were equally ambitious of calling him a member. the university of st. andrew's, in scotland, conferred upon him the degree of doctor of laws. its example was followed by the universities of edinburgh and oxford. his correspondence was sought for by the most eminent philosophers of europe. his letters to these abound with true science, delivered in the most simple unadorned manner. the province of canada was at this time in the possession of the french, who had originally settled it. the trade with the indians, for which its situation was very convenient, was exceedingly lucrative. the french traders here found a market for their commodities, and received in return large quantities of rich furs, which they disposed of at a high price in europe. whilst the possession of this country was highly advantageous to france, it was a grievous inconvenience to the inhabitants of the british colonies. the indians were almost generally desirous to cultivate the friendship of the french, by whom they were abundantly supplied with arms and ammunition. whenever a war happened, the indians were ready to fall upon the frontiers: and this they frequently did, even when great britain and france were at peace. from these considerations, it appeared to be the interest of great britain to gain the possession of canada. but the importance of such an acquisition was not well understood in england. franklin about this time published his canada pamphlet, in which he, in a forcible manner, pointed out the advantages which would result from the conquest of this province. an expedition against it was planned, and the command given to general wolfe. his success is well known. at the treaty in 1762, france ceded canada to great britain, and by her cession of louisiana, at the same time, relinquished all her possessions on the continent of america. although dr. franklin was now principally occupied with political pursuits, he found time for philosophical studies. he extended his researches in electricity, and made a variety of experiments, particularly on the tourmalin. the singular properties which this stone possesses of being electrified on one side positively and on the other negatively, by heat alone, without friction, had been but lately observed. some experiments on the cold produced by evaporation, made by dr. cullen, had been communicated to dr. franklin, by professor simpson, of glasgow. these he repeated, and found, that, by the evaporation of æther in the exhausted receiver of an air-pump, so great a degree of cold was produced in a summer's day, that water was converted into ice. this discovery he applied to the solution of a number of phenomena, particularly a singular fact, which philosophers had endeavoured in vain to account for, viz. that the temperature of the human body, when in health, never exceeds 96 degrees of fahrenheit's thermometer, though the atmosphere which surrounds it may be heated to a much greater degree. this he attributed to the increased perspiration, and consequent evaporation, produced by the heat. in a letter to mr. small, of london, dated in may, 1760, dr. franklin makes a number of observations, tending to show that, in north america, north-east storms begin in the south-west parts. it appears, from actual observations, that a north-east storm, which extended a considerable distance, commenced at philadelphia near four hours before it was felt at boston. he endeavoured to account for this, by supposing that, from heat, some rarefaction takes place about the gulph of mexico, that the air further north rushes in, and is succeeded by the cooler and denser air still farther north, and that thus a continual current is at length produced. the tone produced by rubbing the brim of a drinking-glass with a wet finger, had been generally known. a mr. puckeridge, an irishman, by placing on a table a number of glasses of different sizes, and tuning them by partly filling them with water, endeavoured to form an instrument capable of playing tunes. he was prevented by an untimely end, from bringing his invention to any degree of perfection. after his death some improvements were made upon his plan. the sweetness of the tones induced dr. franklin to make a variety of experiments; and he at length formed that elegant instrument which he has called the _armonica_. in the summer of 1762, he returned to america. on his passage he observed the singular effect produced by the agitation of a vessel, containing oil, floating on water. the surface of the oil remains smooth and undisturbed, whilst the water is agitated with the utmost commotion. no satisfactory explanation of this appearance has, we believe, ever been given. dr. franklin received the thanks of the assembly of pennsylvania, "as well for the faithful discharge of his duty to that province in particular, as for the many and important services done to america in general, during his residence in great britain." a compensation of 5000_l._, pennsylvania currency, was also decreed him for his services during six years. during his absence he had been annually elected member of the assembly. on his return to pennsylvania he again took his seat in this body, and continued a steady defender of the liberties of the people. in december 1762, a circumstance which caused great alarm in the province took place. a number of indians had resided in the county of lancaster, and conducted themselves uniformly as friends to the white inhabitants. repeated depredations on the frontiers had exasperated the inhabitants to such a degree, that they determined on revenge upon every indian. a number of persons, to the number of about 120, principally inhabitants of donegal and peckstang or paxton township, in the county of york, assembled; and, mounted on horseback, proceeded to the settlement of these harmless and defenceless indians, whose number had now been reduced to about twenty. the indians had received intelligence of the attack which was intended against them, but disbelieved it. considering the white people as their friends, they apprehended no danger from them. when the party arrived at the indian settlement, they found only some women and children, and a few old men, the rest being absent at work. they murdered all whom they found, and amongst others the chief shaheas, who had been always distinguished for his friendship to the whites. this bloody deed excited much indignation in the well-disposed part of the community. the remainder of these unfortunate indians, who by absence, had escaped the massacre, were conducted to lancaster, and lodged in the gaol as a place of security. the governor issued a proclamation expressing the strongest disapprobation of the action, offering a reward for the discovery of the perpetrators of the deed, and prohibiting all injuries to the peaceable indians in future. but, notwithstanding this, a party of the same men shortly after marched to lancaster, broke open the gaol, and inhumanly butchered the innocent indians, who had been placed there for security. another proclamation was issued, but it had no effect. a detachment marched down to philadelphia, for the express purpose of murdering some friendly indians, who had been removed to the city for safety. a number of the citizens armed in their defence. the quakers, whose principles are opposed to fighting, even in their own defence, were most active upon this occasion. the rioters came to germantown. the governor fled for safety to the house of dr. franklin, who, with some others, advanced to meet the paxton boys, as they were called, and had influence enough to prevail upon them to relinquish their undertaking, and return to their homes. the disputes between the proprietaries and the assembly, which, for a time, had subsided, were again revived. the proprietaries were dissatisfied with the concessions made in favour of the people, and made great struggles to recover the privilege of exempting their estates from taxation, which they had been induced to give up. in 1763, the assembly passed a militia-bill, to which the governor refused to give his assent, unless the assembly would agree to certain amendments which he proposed. these consisted in increasing the fines, and in some cases, substituting death for fines. he wished too, that the officers should be appointed altogether by himself, and not be nominated by the people, as the bill had proposed. these amendments the assembly considered as inconsistent with the spirit of liberty. they would not adopt them--the governor was obstinate, and the bill was lost. these, and various other circumstances, encreased the uneasiness which subsisted between the proprietaries and the assembly, to such a degree, that, in 1764, a petition to the king was agreed to by the house, praying an alteration from a _proprietary_ to a _regal_ government. great opposition was made to this measure, not only in the house, but in the public prints. a speech of mr. dickenson on the subject was published, with a preface by dr. smith, in which great pains were taken to show the impropriety and impolicy of this proceeding. a speech of mr. galloway, in reply to mr. dickenson, was published, accompanied with a preface by dr. franklin, in which he ably opposed the principles laid down in the preface to mr. dickenson's speech. this application to the throne produced no effect. the proprietary government was still continued. at the election of a new assembly, in the fall of 1764, the friends of the proprietaries made great exertions to exclude those of the adverse party; and they obtained a small majority in the city of philadelphia. franklin now lost his seat in the house, which he had held for fourteen years. on the meeting of the assembly, it appeared there was still a decided majority of franklin's friends. he was immediately appointed provincial agent, to the great chagrin of his enemies, who made a solemn protest against his appointment, which was refused admission upon the minutes, as being unprecedented. it was, however, published in the papers, and produced a spirited reply from him, just before his departure for england. the disturbances produced in america by mr. grenville's stamp-act, and the opposition made to it, are well known. under the marquis of rockingham's administration, it appeared expedient to endeavour to calm the minds of the colonists; and the repeal of the odious tax was contemplated. amongst other means of collecting information on the disposition of the people to submit to it, dr. franklin was called to the bar of the house of commons. the examination which he underwent was published, and contains a striking account of the extent and accuracy of his information, and the facility with which he communicated his sentiments. he represented facts in so strong a point of view, that the inexpediency of the act must have appeared clear to every unprejudiced mind. the act, after some opposition, was repealed, about a year after it was enacted, and before it had ever been carried into execution. in the year 1766, he made a visit to holland and germany, and received the greatest marks of attention from men of science. in his passage through holland he learned from the watermen the effect which a diminution of the quantity of water in canals has, in impeding the progress of boats. upon his return to england, he was led to make a number of experiments, all of which tended to confirm the observation. these, with an explanation of the phenomenon, he communicated in a letter to his friend, sir john pringle, which will be found among his philosophical pieces. in the following year he travelled into france, where he met a no less favorable reception than he had experienced in germany. he was introduced to a number of literary characters, and to the king, louis xv. several letters written by hutchinson, oliver, and others, to persons in eminent stations in great britain, came into the hands of dr. franklin. these contained the most violent invectives against the leading characters of the state of massachussets, and strenuously advised the prosecution of vigorous measures, to compel the people to obedience to the measures of the ministry. these he transmitted to the legislature, by whom they were published. attested copies of them were sent to great britain, with an address, praying the king to discharge from office persons who had rendered themselves so obnoxious to the people, and who had shown themselves so unfriendly to their interests. the publication of these letters produced a duel between mr. whately and mr. temple, each of whom was suspected of having been instrumental in procuring them. to prevent any farther disputes on this subject, dr. franklin, in one of the public papers, declared that he had sent them to america, but would give no information concerning the manner in which he had obtained them--nor was this ever discovered. shortly after, the petition of the massachussets assembly was taken up for examination, before the privy council. dr. franklin attended, as agent for the assembly; and here a torrent of the most violent and unwarranted abuse was poured upon him by the solicitor-general, wedderburne, who was engaged as council for oliver and hutchinson. the petition was declared to be scandalous and vexatious, and the prayer of it refused. although the parliament of great britain had repealed the stamp-act, it was only upon the principle of expediency. they still insisted upon their right to tax the colonies; and, at the same time that the stamp-act was repealed, an act was passed, declaring the right of parliament to bind the colonies in all cases whatsoever. this language was used even by the most strenuous opposers of the stamp-act: and, amongst others, by mr. pitt. this right was never recognized by the colonists; but, as they flattered themselves that it would not be exercised, they were not very active in remonstrating against it. had this pretended right been suffered to remain dormant, the colonists would cheerfully have furnished their quota of supplies, in the mode to which they had been accustomed; that is, by acts of their own assemblies, in consequence of requisitions from the secretary of state. if this practice had been pursued, such was the disposition of the colonies towards their mother-country, that, notwithstanding the disadvantages under which they laboured, from restraints upon their trade, calculated solely for the benefit of the commercial and manufacturing interests of great britain, a separation of the two countries might have been a far distant event. the americans, from their earliest infancy, were taught to venerate a people from whom they were descended; whose language, laws, and manners, were the same as their own. they looked up to them as models of perfection; and, in their prejudiced minds, the most enlightened nations of europe were considered as almost barbarians, in comparison with englishmen. the name of an englishman conveyed to an american the idea of every thing good and great. such sentiments instilled into them in early life, what but a repetition of unjust treatment could have induced them to entertain the most distant thought of separation! the duties on glass, paper, leather, painters' colours, tea, &c. the disfranchisement of some of the colonies; the obstruction to the measures of the legislature in others, by the king's governors; the contemptuous treatment of their humble remonstrances, stating their grievances, and praying a redress of them, and other violent and oppressive measures, at length excited an ardent spirit of opposition. instead of endeavouring to allay this by a more lenient conduct, the ministry seemed resolutely bent upon reducing the colonies to the most slavish obedience to their decrees. but this only tended to aggravate. vain were all the efforts made use of to prevail upon them to lay aside their designs, to convince them of the impossibility of carrying them into effect, and of the mischievous consequences which must ensue from a continuance of the attempts. they persevered, with a degree of inflexibility scarcely paralleled. the advantages which great britain derived from her colonies were so great, that nothing but a degree of infatuation, little short of madness, could have produced a continuance of measures calculated to keep up a spirit of uneasiness, which might occasion the slightest wish for a separation. when we consider the great improvements in the science of government, the general diffusion of the principles of liberty amongst the people of europe, the effects which these have already produced in france, and the probable consequences which will result from them elsewhere, all of which are the offspring of the american revolution, it cannot but appear strange, that events of so great moment to the happiness of mankind, should have been ultimately occasioned by the wickedness or ignorance of a british ministry. dr. franklin left nothing untried to prevail upon the ministry to consent to a change of measures. in private conversations, and in letters to persons in government, he continually expatiated upon the impolicy and injustice of their conduct towards america; and stated, that, notwithstanding the attachment of the colonists to the mother-country, a repetition of ill treatment must ultimately alienate their affections. they listened not to his advice. they blindly persevered in their own schemes, and left to the colonists no alternative, but opposition, or unconditional submission. the latter accorded not with the principles of freedom, which they had been taught to revere. to the former they were compelled, though reluctantly, to have recourse. dr. franklin, finding all efforts to restore harmony between great britain and her colonies useless, returned to america in the year 1775; just after the commencement of hostilities. the day after his return he was elected by the legislature of pennsylvania a delegate to congress. not long after his election a committee was appointed, consisting of mr. lynch, mr. harrison, and himself, to visit the camp at cambridge, and, in conjunction with the commander in chief, to endeavour to convince the troops, whose term of enlistment was about to expire, of the necessity of their continuing in the field, and persevering in the cause of their country. in the fall of the same year he visited canada, to endeavour to unite them in the common cause of liberty; but they could not be prevailed upon to oppose the measures of the british government. m. le roy, in a letter annexed to abbé fauchet's eulogium of dr. franklin, states, that the ill success of this negociation was occasioned, in a great degree, by religious animosities, which subsisted between the canadians and their neighbours, some of whom had at different times burnt their chapels. when lord howe came to america, in 1776, vested with power to treat with the colonists, a correspondence took place between him and dr. franklin, on the subject of a reconciliation. dr. franklin was afterwards appointed, together with john adams, and edward rutledge, to wait upon the commissioners, in order to learn the extent of their powers. these were found to be only to grant pardons upon submission. such terms which could not be accepted; and the object of the commissioners was not obtained. the momentous question of independence was shortly after brought into view, at a time when the fleets and armies, which were sent to enforce obedience, were truly formidable. with an army, numerous indeed, but ignorant of discipline, and entirely unskilled in the art of war, without money, without a fleet, without allies, and with nothing but the love of liberty to support them, the colonists determined to separate from a country, from which they had experienced a repetition of injury and insult. in this question, dr. franklin was decidedly in favour of the measure proposed, and had great influence in bringing others to his sentiments. the public mind had been prepared for this event, by mr. paine's celebrated pamphlet, _common sense_. there is good reason to believe that dr. franklin had no inconsiderable share, at least, in furnishing materials for this work. in the convention which assembled at philadelphia in 1776, for the purpose of establishing a new form of government for the state of pennsylvania, dr. franklin was chosen president. the late constitution of this state, which was the result of their deliberations, may be considered as a digest of his principles of government. the single legislature, and the plural executive, seem to have been his favourite tenets. in the latter end of 1776, dr. franklin was appointed to assist in the negociation which had been set on foot by silas deane at the court of france. a conviction of the advantages of a commercial intercourse with america, and a desire of weakening the british empire by dismembering it, first induced the french court to listen to proposals of an alliance. but they shewed rather a reluctance to the measure, which, by dr. franklin's address, and particularly by the success of the american arms against general burgoyne, was at length overcome; and in february, 1778, a treaty of alliance, offensive and defensive, was concluded; in consequence of which france became involved in the war with great britain. perhaps no person could have been found more capable of rendering essential services to the united states at the court of france, than dr. franklin. he was well known as a philosopher, and his character was held in the highest estimation. he was received with the greatest marks of respect by all the literary characters; and this respect was extended amongst all classes of men. his personal influence was hence very considerable. to the effects of this were added those of various performances which he published, tending to establish the credit and character of the united states. to his exertions in this way, may, in no small degree, be ascribed the success of the loans negociated in holland and france, which greatly contributed to bring the war to a conclusion. the repeated ill success of their arms, and more particularly the capture of cornwallis and his army, at length convinced the british nation of the impossibility of reducing the americans to subjection. the trading interest particularly became clamorous for peace. the ministry were unable longer to oppose their wishes. provisional articles of peace were agreed to, and signed at paris on the 30th of november, 1782, by dr. franklin, mr. adams, mr. jay, and mr. laurens, on the part of the united states; and by mr. oswald on the part of great britain. these formed the basis of the definitive treaty, which was concluded the 3d of september, 1783, and signed by dr. franklin, mr. adams, and mr. jay, on the one part, and by mr. david hartly on the other. on the third of april, 1783, a treaty of amity and commerce, between the united states and sweden, was concluded at paris, by dr. franklin and the count von krutz. a similar treaty with prussia was concluded in 1785, not long before dr. franklin's departure from europe. dr. franklin did not suffer his political pursuits to engross his whole attention. some of his performances made their appearance in paris. the object of these was generally the promotion of industry and economy. in the year 1784, when animal magnetism made great noise in the world, particularly at paris, it was thought a matter of such importance, that the king appointed commissioners to examine into the foundation of this pretended science. dr. franklin was one of the number. after a fair and diligent examination, in the course of which mesmer repeated a number of experiments, in the presence of the commissioners, some of which were tried upon themselves, they determined that it was a mere trick, intended to impose upon the ignorant and credulous--mesmer was thus interrupted in his career to wealth and fame, and a most insolent attempt to impose upon the human understanding baffled. the important ends of dr. franklin's mission being completed by the establishment of american independence, and the infirmities of age and disease coming upon him, he became desirous of returning to his native country. upon application to congress to be recalled, mr. jefferson was appointed to succeed him in 1785. some time in september of the same year dr. franklin arrived in philadelphia. he was shortly after chosen member of the supreme executive council for the city; and soon after was elected president of the same. when a convention was called to meet in philadelphia, in 1787, for the purpose of giving more energy to the government of the union, by revising and amending the articles of confederation, dr. franklin was appointed a delegate from the state of pennsylvania. he signed the constitution which they proposed for the union, and gave it the most unequivocal marks of his approbation. a society for political enquiries, of which dr. franklin was president, was established about this period. the meetings were held at his house. two or three essays read in this society were published. it did not long continue. in the year 1787, two societies were established in philadelphia, founded on the principles of the most liberal and refined humanity--_the philadelphia society for alleviating the miseries of public prisons; and the pennsylvania society for promoting the abolition of slavery, the relief of free negroes unlawfully held in bondage, and the improvement of the condition of the african race._ of each of these dr. franklin was president. the labours of these bodies have been crowned with great success; and they continue to prosecute, with unwearied diligence, the laudable designs for which they were established. dr. franklin's increasing infirmities prevented his regular attendance at the council-chamber; and, in 1788, he retired wholly from public life. his constitution had been a remarkably good one. he had been little subject to disease, except an attack of the gout occasionally, until about the year 1781, when he was first attacked with symptoms of the calculous complaint, which continued during his life. during the intervals of pain from this grievous disease, he spent many cheerful hours, conversing in the most agreeable and instructive manner. his faculties were entirely unimpaired, even to the hour of his death. his name, as president of the abolition society, was signed to the memorial presented to the house of representatives of the united states, on the 12th of february, 1789, praying them to exert the full extent of power vested in them by the constitution, in discouraging the traffic of the human species. this was his last public act. in the debates to which this memorial gave rise, several attempts were made to justify the trade. in the federal gazette of march 25th, there appeared an essay, signed historicus, written by dr. franklin, in which he communicated a speech, said to have been delivered in the divan of algiers, in 1687, in opposition to the prayer of the petition of a sect called _erika_, or purists, for the abolition of piracy and slavery. this pretended african speech was an excellent parody of one delivered by mr. jackson, of georgia. all the arguments urged in favour of negro slavery, are applied with equal force to justify the plundering and enslaving of europeans. it affords, at the same time, a demonstration of the futility of the arguments in defence of the slave trade, and of the strength of mind and ingenuity of the author, at his advanced period of life. it furnished too, a no less convincing proof of his power of imitating the style of other times and nations, than his celebrated parable against persecution. and as the latter led many persons to search the scriptures with a view to find, it, so the former caused many persons to search the book-stores and libraries, for the work from which it was said to be extracted. in the beginning of april following, he was attacked with a fever and complaint of his breast, which terminated his existence. the following account of his last illness was written by his friend and physician, dr. jones. "the stone, with which he had been afflicted for several years, had for the last twelve months confined him chiefly to his bed; and during the extremely painful paroxysms, he was obliged to take large doses of laudanum to mitigate his tortures--still, in the intervals of pain, he not only amused himself with reading and conversing cheerfully with his family, and a few friends who visited him, but was often employed in doing business of a public as well as private nature, with various persons who waited on him for that purpose; and in every instance displayed, not only that readiness and disposition of doing good, which was the distinguishing characteristic of his life, but the fullest and clearest possession of his uncommon mental abilities; and not unfrequently indulged himself in those _jeux d'esprit_ and entertaining anecdotes, which were the delight of all who heard him. "about sixteen days before his death, he was seized with a feverish indisposition, without any particular symptoms attending it, till the third or fourth day, when he complained of a pain in the left breast, which increased till it became extremely acute, attended with a cough and laborious breathing. during this state, when the severity of his pains sometimes drew forth a groan of complaint, he would observe--that he was afraid he did not hear it as he ought--acknowledged his grateful sense of the many blessings he had received from the supreme being, who had raised him from small and low beginnings to such high rank and consideration among men--and made no doubt but his present afflictions were kindly intended to wean him from a world, in which he was no longer fit to act the part assigned him. in this frame of body and mind he continued till five days before his death, when his pain and difficulty of breathing entirely left him, and his family were flattering themselves with the hopes of his recovery, when an imposthumation, which had formed itself in his lungs, suddenly burst and discharged a great quantity of matter, which he continued to throw up while he had sufficient strength to do it, but, as that failed, the organs of respiration became gradually oppressed--a calm lethargic state succeeded--and, on the 17th of april, 1790, about eleven o'clock at night, he quietly expired, closing a long and useful life of eighty-four years and three months." it may not be amiss to add to the above account, that dr. franklin, in the year 1735, had a severe pleurisy, which terminated in an abscess of the left lobe of his lungs, and he was then almost suffocated with the quantity and suddenness of the discharge. a second attack of a similar nature happened some years after this, from which he soon recovered, and did not appear to suffer any inconvenience in his respiration from these diseases. the following epitaph on himself, was written by him many years previous to his death:- the body of _benjamin franklin_, printer. (like the cover of an old book, its contents torn out, and stript of its lettering and gilding) lies here food for worms; yet the work itself shall not be lost, for it will (as he believed) appear once more in a new and more beautiful edition corrected and amended by the author.[14] _extracts_ from the last will and testament of dr. franklin. with regard to my books, those i had in france, and those i left in philadelphia, being now assembled together here, and a catalogue made of them, it is my intention to dispose of the same as follows: my "history of the academy of sciences," in sixty or seventy volumes quarto, i give to the philosophical society of philadelphia, of which i have the honour to be president. my collection in folio of "_les arts et les metiers_," i give to the american philosophical society, established in new england, of which i am a member. my quarto edition of the same, "_arts et metiers_," i give to the library company of philadelphia. such and so many of my books as i shall mark, in the said catalogue, with the name of my grandson benjamin franklin bache, i do hereby give to him: and such and so many of my books, as i shall mark in the said catalogue with the name of my grandson william bache, i do hereby give to him: and such as shall be marked with the name of jonathan williams, i hereby give to my cousin of that name. the residue and remainder of all my books, manuscripts, and papers, i do give to my grandson william temple franklin. my share in the library company of philadelphia i give to my grandson benjamin franklin bache, confiding that he will permit his brothers and sisters to share in the use of it. i was born in boston, new england, and owe my first instructions in literature to the free grammar-schools established there. i therefore give one hundred pounds sterling to my executors, to be by them, the survivors or survivor of them, paid over to the managers or directors of the free-schools in my native town of boston, to be by them, or the person or persons who shall have the superintendance and management of the said schools, put out to interest, and so continued at interest for ever; which interest annually shall be laid out in silver medals, and given as honorary rewards annually by the directors of the said free-schools, for the encouragement of scholarship in the said schools, belonging to the said town, in such manner as to the discretion of the select men of the said town shall seem meet. out of the salary that may remain due to me, as president of the state, i give the sum of two thousand pounds to my executors, to be by them, the survivors or survivor of them, paid over to such person or persons as the legislature of this state, by an act of assembly, shall appoint to receive the same, in trust, to be employed for making the schuylkil navigable. during the number of years i was in business as a stationer, printer, and post-master, a great many small sums became due to me for books, advertisements, postage of letters, and other matters, which were not collected, when, in 1757, i was sent by the assembly to england as their agent--and, by subsequent appointments, continued there till 1775--when, on my return, i was immediately engaged in the affairs of congress, and sent to france in 1776, where i remained nine years, not returning till 1785; and the said debts not being demanded in such a length of time, are become in a manner obsolete, yet are nevertheless justly due.--these as they are stated in my great folio ledger, e, i bequeath to the contributors of the pennsylvania hospital; hoping that those debtors, and the descendants of such as are deceased, who now, as i find, make some difficulty of satisfying such antiquated demands as just debts, may, however, be induced to pay or give them as charity to that excellent institution. i am sensible that much must inevitably be lost; but i hope something considerable may be recovered. it is possible too, that some of the parties charged may have existing old unsettled accounts against me: in which case the managers of the said hospital will allow and deduct the amount, or pay the balance, if they find it against me. i request my friends, henry hill, esq. john jay, esq. francis hopkinson, esq. and mr. edward duffield, of bonfield, in philadelphia county, to be the executors of this my last will and testament, and i hereby nominate and appoint them for that purpose. i would have my body buried with as little expence or ceremony as may be. philadelphia, july 17, 1778. codicil. i benjamin franklin, in the foregoing or annexed last will and testament, having further considered the same, do think proper to make and publish the following codicil, in addition thereto. it having long been a fixed and political opinion of mine, that in a democratical state, there ought to be no offices of profit, for the reasons i had given in an article of my drawing in our constitution, it was my intention, when i accepted the office of president, to devote the appointed salary to some public use; accordingly i had already, before i made my last will in july last, given large sums of it to colleges, schools, building of churches, &c.; and in that will i bequeathed two thousand pounds more to the state, for the purpose of making the schuylkil navigable; but understanding since, that such a sum will do but little, towards accomplishing such a work, and that project is not likely to be undertaken for many years to come--and having entertained another idea, which i hope may be more extensively useful, i do hereby revoke and annul the bequest, and direct that the certificates i have of what remains due to me of that salary, be sold towards raising the sum of two thousand pounds sterling, to be disposed of as i am now about to order. it has been an opinion, that he who receives an estate from his ancestors, is under some obligation to transmit the same to posterity. this obligation lies not on me, who never inherited a shilling from any ancestor or relation. i shall, however, if it is not diminished by some accident before my death, leave a considerable estate among my descendants and relations. the above observation is made merely as some apology to my family, for my making bequests that do not appear to have any immediate relation to their advantage. i was born in boston, new england, and owe my first instructions in literature to the free grammar schools established there. i have, therefore, considered those schools in my will. but i am also under obligations to the state of massachussets, for having, unasked, appointed me formerly their agent, with a handsome salary, which continued some years; and although i accidentally lost in their service, by transmitting governor hutchinson's letters, much more than the amount of what they gave me, i do not think that ought in the least to diminish my gratitude. i have considered that, among artisans, good apprentices are most likely to make good citizens, and having myself been bred to a manual art, printing, in my native town, and afterwards assisted to set up my business in philadelphia by kind loans of money from two friends there, which was the foundation of my fortune, and of all the utility in life that may be ascribed to me--i wish to be useful even after my death, if possible, in forming and advancing other young men, that may be serviceable to their country in both these towns. to this end i devote two thousand pounds sterling, which i give, one thousand thereof to the inhabitants of the town of boston, in massachussets, and the other thousand to the inhabitants of the city of philadelphia, in trust, to and for the uses, intents, and purposes, herein after mentioned and declared. the said sum of one thousand pounds sterling, if accepted by the inhabitants of the town of boston, shall be managed under the direction of the select men, united with the ministers of the oldest episcopalian, congregational, and presbyterian churches in that town, who are to let out the same at five per cent. per annum, to such young married artificers, under the age of twenty-five years, as have served an apprenticeship in the said town, and faithfully fulfilled the duties required in their indentures, so as to obtain a good moral character from at least two respectable citizens, who are willing to become sureties in a bond, with the applicants, for the re-payment of the money so lent, with interest, according to the terms hereinafter prescribed; all which bonds are to be taken for spanish milled dollars, or the value thereof in current gold coin: and the manager shall keep a bound book, or books, wherein shall be entered the names of those who shall apply for, and receive the benefit of this institution, and of their sureties, together with the sums lent, the dates, and other necessary and proper records, respecting the business and concerns of this institution: and as these loans are intended to assist young married artificers, in setting up their business, they are to be proportioned by the discretion of the managers, so as not to exceed sixty pounds sterling to one person, nor to be less than fifteen pounds. and if the number of appliers so entitled should be so large as that the sum will not suffice to afford to each as much as might otherwise not be improper, the proportion to each shall be diminished, so as to afford to every one some assistance. these aids may, therefore, be small at first, but as the capital increases by the accumulated interest, they will be more ample. and in order to serve as many as possible in their turn, as well as to make the re-payment of the principal borrowed more easy, each borrower shall be obliged to pay with the yearly interest, one tenth part of the principal; which sums of principal and interest so paid in, shall be again let out to fresh borrowers. and it is presumed, that there will be always found in boston virtuous and benevolent citizens, willing to bestow a part of their time in doing good to the rising generation, by superintending and managing this institution gratis; it is hoped that no part of the money will at any time lie dead, or be diverted to other purposes, but be continually augmenting by the interest, in which case, there may in time be more than the occasion in boston may require; and then some may be spared to the neighbouring or other towns, in the said state of massachusetts, which may desire to have it, such towns engaging to pay punctually the interest, and the proportion of the principal annually to the inhabitants of the town of boston. if this plan is executed, and succeeds, as projected, for one hundred years, the sum will then be one hundred and thirty thousand pounds, of which i would have the managers of the donation to the town of boston then lay out, at their discretion, one hundred thousand pounds in public works, which may be judged of most general utility to the inhabitants; such as fortifications, bridges, aqueducts, public buildings, baths, pavements, or whatever may make living in the town more convenient to its people, and render it more agreeable to strangers resorting thither for health, or a temporary residence. the remaining thirty-one thousand pounds i would have continued to be let out to interest, in the manner above directed, for one hundred years; as i hope it will have been found that the institution has had a good effect on the conduct of youth, and been of service to many worthy characters and useful citizens. at the end of this second term, if no unfortunate accident has prevented the operation, the sum will be four millions and sixty-one thousand pounds sterling, of which i leave one million and sixty-one thousand pounds to the disposition and management of the inhabitants of the town of boston, and the three millions to the disposition of the government of the state--not presuming to carry my views farther. all the directions herein given respecting the disposition and management of the donation to the inhabitants of boston, i would have observed respecting that to the inhabitants of philadelphia; only, as philadelphia is incorporated, i request the corporation of that city to undertake the management, agreeable to the said directions: and i do hereby vest them with full and ample powers for that purpose. and having considered that the covering its ground-plat with buildings and pavements, which carry off most of the rain, and prevent its soaking into the earth, and renewing and purifying the springs, whence the water of the wells must gradually grow worse, and in time be unfit for use, as i find has happened in all old cities; i recommend, that, at the end of the first hundred years, if not done before, the corporation of the city employ a part of the hundred thousand pounds in bringing by pipes the water of wissahickon-creek into the town, so as to supply the inhabitants, which i apprehend may be done without great difficulty, the level of that creek being much above that of the city, and may be made higher by a dam. i also recommend making the schuylkil completely navigable. at the end of the second hundred years, i would have the disposition of the four millions and sixty-one thousand pounds divided between the inhabitants of the city of philadelphia and the government of pennsylvania, in the same manner as herein directed with respect to that of the inhabitants of boston and the government of massachusetts. it is my desire that this institution should take place, and begin to operate within one year after my decease, for which purpose due notice should be publicly given, previous to the expiration of that year, that those for whose benefit this establishment is intended may make their respective applications: and i hereby direct my executors, the survivor or survivors of them, within six months after my decease, to pay over the said sum of two thousand pounds sterling to such persons as shall be duly appointed by the select men of boston, and the corporation of philadelphia, to receive and take charge of their respective sums of one thousand pounds each, for the purposes aforesaid. considering the accidents to which all human affairs and projects are subject in such a length of time, i have, perhaps, too much flattered myself with a vain fancy, that these dispositions, if carried into execution, will be continued without interruption, and have the effects proposed: i hope, however, that if the inhabitants of the two cities should not think fit to undertake the execution, they will at least accept the offer of these donations, as a mark of my good will, token of my gratitude, and testimony of my desire to be useful to them even after my departure. i wish, indeed, that they may both undertake to endeavour the execution of my project, because i think, that, though unforeseen difficulties may arise, expedients will be found to remove them, and the scheme be found practicable. if one of them accepts the money with the conditions, and the other refuses, my will then is, that both sums be given to the inhabitants of the city accepting; the whole to be applied to the same purposes, and under the same regulations directed for the separate parts; and, if both refuse, the money remains of course in the mass of my estate, and it is to be disposed of therewith, according to my will made the seventeenth day of july, 1788. my fine crab-tree walking-stick, with a gold head curiously wrought in the form of the cap of liberty, i give to my friend, and the friend of mankind, general washington. if it was a sceptre, he has merited it, and would become it. footnote: [14] this epitaph first appeared in a boston news-paper established and printed by dr. franklin. e. letters and papers on _electricity_. _it may not be improper to present the reader with the following extract from the preface to the first edition of dr. franklin's papers on electricity, which, as we have stated in the advertisement, formed a pamphlet only._ _"the following observations and experiments were not drawn up with a view to their being made public, but were communicated at different times, and most of them in letters, written on various topics, as matters only of private amusement._ _"but some persons, to whom they were read, and who had themselves been conversant in electrical disquisitions, were of opinion, they contained so many curious and interesting particulars relative to this affair, that it would be doing a kind of injustice to the public, to confine them solely to the limits of a private acquaintance._ _"the editor was therefore prevailed upon to commit such extracts of letters and other detached pieces as were in his hands to the press, without waiting for the ingenious author's permission so to do; and this was done with the less hesitation, as it was apprehended the author's engagements in other affairs would scarce afford him leisure to give the public his reflections and experiments on the subject, finished with that care and precision, of which the treatise before us shows he is alike studious and capable."_ _with respect to the general merit and originality of the experiments and hypothesis of dr. franklin, as described and explained in these letters, the following is the testimony of one of the first natural philosophers of his age--the late dr. priestly, in his history of electricity._ _"nothing was ever written upon the subject of electricity which was more generally read and admired in all parts of europe than these letters. there is hardly any european language into which they have not been translated; and, as if this were not sufficient to make them properly known, a translation of them has lately been made into latin. it is not easy to say, whether we are most pleased with the simplicity and perspicuity with which these letters are written, the modesty with which the author proposes every hypothesis of his own, or the noble frankness with which he relates his mistakes, when they were corrected by subsequent experiments._ _"though the english have not been backward in acknowledging the great merit of this philosopher, he has had the singular good fortune to be, perhaps, even more celebrated abroad than at home; so that, to form a just idea of the great and deserved reputation of dr. franklin, we must read the foreign publications on the subject of electricity; in many of which the terms_ franklinism, franklinist, _and the_ franklinian system, _occur in almost every page. in consequence of this, dr. franklin's principles bid fair to be handed down to posterity as equally expressive of the true principles of electricity, as the newtonian philosophy is of the true system of nature in general."_ _letters and papers_ on philosophical subjects. _electricity._ to peter collinson, esq. f. r. s. london. introductory letter. _philadelphia, march 28, 1747._ sir, your kind present of an electric tube, with directions for using it, has put several of us[15] on making electrical experiments, in which we have observed some particular phenomena that we look upon to be new. i shall therefore communicate them to you in my next, though possibly they may not be new to you, as among the numbers daily employed in those experiments on your side the water, it is probable some one or other has hit on the same observations. for my own part, i never was before engaged in any study that so totally engrossed my attention and my time as this has lately done; for what with making experiments when i can be alone, and repeating them to my friends and acquaintance, who, from the novelty of the thing, come continually in crowds to see them, i have, during some months past, had little leisure for any thing else. i am, &c. b. franklin. footnotes: [15] i. e. of the _library-company_, an institution of the author's, founded 1730. to which company the present was made[16]. [16] where notes occur without a signature, in the philosophical, or other papers, they are generally notes of the author.--editor. to peter collinson, esq. f. r. s. london. _wonderful effect of points.--positive and negative electricity.--electrical kiss.--counterfeit spider.--simple and commodious electrical machine._ _philadelphia, july 11, 1747._ sir, in my last i informed you that, in pursuing our electrical enquiries, we had observed some particular phenomena, which we looked upon to be new, and of which i promised to give you some account, though i apprehended they might not possibly be new to you, as so many hands are daily employed in electrical experiments on your side the water, some or other of which would probably hit on the same observations. the first is the wonderful effect of pointed bodies, both in _drawing off_ and _throwing off_ the electrical fire. for example, place an iron shot of three or four inches diameter on the mouth of a clean dry glass bottle. by a fine silken thread from the cieling, right over the mouth of the bottle, suspend a small cork-ball, about the bigness of a marble; the thread of such a length, as that the cork-ball may rest against the side of the shot. electrify the shot, and the ball will be repelled to the distance of four or five inches, more or less, according to the quantity of electricity.--when in this state, if you present to the shot the point of a long, slender, sharp bodkin, at six or eight inches distance, the repellency is instantly destroyed, and the cork flies to the shot. a blunt body must be brought within an inch, and draw a spark to produce the same effect. to prove that the electrical fire is _drawn off_ by the point, if you take the blade of the bodkin out of the wooden handle, and fix it in a stick of sealing-wax, and then present it at the distance aforesaid, or if you bring it very near, no such effect follows; but sliding one finger along the wax till you touch the blade, and the ball flies to the shot immediately.--if you present the point in the dark, you will see, sometimes at a foot distance and more, a light gather upon it, like that of a fire-fly, or glow-worm; the less sharp the point, the nearer you must bring it to observe the light; and at whatever distance you see the light, you may draw off the electrical fire, and destroy the repellency.--if a cork-ball so suspended be repelled by the tube, and a point be presented quick to it, though at a considerable distance, it is surprising to see how suddenly it flies back to the tube. points of wood will do near as well as those of iron, provided the wood is not dry; for perfectly dry wood will no more conduct electricity than sealing-wax. to shew that points will _throw off_[17] as well as _draw off_ the electrical fire; lay a long sharp needle upon the shot, and you cannot electrise the shot so as to make it repel the cork-ball.--or fix a needle to the end of a suspended gun-barrel, or iron-rod, so as to point beyond it like a little bayonet[18]; and while it remains there, the gun-barrel, or rod, cannot by applying the tube to the other end be electrised so as to give a spark, the fire continually running out silently at the point. in the dark you may see it make the same appearance as it does in the case before-mentioned. the repellency between the cork-ball and the shot is likewise destroyed. 1. by sifting fine sand on it; this does it gradually. 2. by breathing on it. 3. by making a smoke about it from burning wood[19]. 4. by candle-light, even though the candle is at a foot distance: these do it suddenly.--the light of a bright coal from a wood fire; and the light of a red-hot iron do it likewise; but not at so great a distance. smoke from dry rosin dropt on hot iron, does not destroy the repellency; but is attracted by both shot and cork-ball, forming proportionable atmospheres round them, making them look beautifully, somewhat like some of the figures in burnet's or whiston's theory of the earth. _n.b._ this experiment should be made in a closet, where the air is very still, or it will be apt to fail. the light of the sun thrown strongly on both cork and shot by a looking-glass for a long time together, does not impair the repellency in the least. this difference between fire-light and sun-light is another thing that seems new and extraordinary to us[20]. we had for some time been of opinion, that the electrical fire was not created by friction, but collected, being really an element diffused among, and attracted by other matter, particularly by water and metals. we had even discovered and demonstrated its afflux to the electrical sphere, as well as its efflux, by means of little light windmill-wheels made of stiff paper vanes, fixed obliquely, and turning freely on fine wire axes. also by little wheels of the same matter, but formed like water-wheels. of the disposition and application of which wheels, and the various phenomena resulting, i could, if i had time, fill you a sheet[21]. the impossibility of electrising one's self (though standing on wax) by rubbing the tube, and drawing the fire from it; and the manner of doing it, by passing the tube near a person or thing standing on the floor, &c. had also occurred to us some months before mr. watson's ingenious _sequel_ came to hand, and these were some of the new things i intended to have communicated to you.--but now i need only mention some particulars not hinted in that piece, with our reasonings thereupon: though perhaps the latter might well enough be spared. 1. a person standing on wax, and rubbing the tube, and another person on wax drawing the fire, they will both of them (provided they do not stand so as to touch one another) appear to be electrised, to a person standing on the floor; that is, he will perceive a spark on approaching each of them with his knuckle. 2. but if the persons on wax touch one another during the exciting of the tube, neither of them will appear to be electrised. 3. if they touch one another after exciting the tube, and drawing the fire as aforesaid, there will be a stronger spark between them than was between either of them and the person on the floor. 4. after such strong spark, neither of them discover any electricity. these appearances we attempt to account for thus: we suppose, as aforesaid, that electrical fire is a common element, of which every one of the three persons abovementioned has his equal share, before any operation is begun with the tube. _a_, who stands on wax and rubs the tube, collects the electrical fire from himself into the glass; and his communication with the common stock being cut off by the wax, his body is not again immediately supplied. _b_,(who stands on wax likewise) passing his knuckle along near the tube, receives the fire which was collected by the glass from _a_; and his communication with the common stock being likewise cut off, he retains the additional quantity received.--to _c_, standing on the floor, both appear to be electrised: for he having only the middle quantity of electrical fire, receives a spark upon approaching _b_, who has an over quantity; but gives one to _a_, who has an under quantity. if _a_ and _b_ approach to touch each other, the spark is stronger, because the difference between them is greater: after such touch there is no spark between either of them and _c_, because the electrical fire in all is reduced to the original equality. if they touch while electrising, the equality is never destroyed, the fire only circulating. hence have arisen some new terms among us; we say _b_, (and bodies like circumstanced) is electrised _positively_; _a_, _negatively_. or rather, _b_ is electrised _plus_; _a_, _minus_. and we daily in our experiments electrise bodies _plus_ or _minus_, as we think proper.--to electrise _plus_ or _minus_, no more needs to be known than this, that the parts of the tube or sphere that are rubbed, do, in the instant of the friction, attract the electrical fire, and therefore take it from the thing rubbing: the same parts immediately, as the friction upon them ceases, are disposed to give the fire they have received, to any body that has less. thus you may circulate it, as mr. watson has shewn; you may also accumulate or subtract it, upon, or from any body, as you connect that body with the rubber or with the receiver, the communication with the common stock being cut off. we think that ingenious gentleman was deceived when he imagined (in his _sequel_) that the electrical fire came down the wire from the cieling to the gun-barrel, thence to the sphere, and so electrised the machine and the man turning the wheel, &c. we suppose it was _driven off_, and not brought on through that wire; and that the machine and man, &c. were electrised _minus_; _i. e._ had less electrical fire in them than things in common. as the vessel is just upon sailing, i cannot give you so large an account of american electricity as i intended: i shall only mention a few particulars more.--we find granulated lead better to fill the phial with, than water, being easily warmed, and keeping warm and dry in damp air.--we fire spirits with the wire of the phial.--we light candles, just blown out, by drawing a spark among the smoke between the wire and snuffers.--we represent lightning, by passing the wire in the dark, over a china plate that has gilt flowers, or applying it to gilt frames of looking-glasses, &c.--we electrise a person twenty or more times running, with a touch of the finger on the wire, thus: he stands on wax. give him the electrised bottle in his hand. touch the wire with your finger, and then touch his hand or face; there are sparks every time[22].--we encrease the force of the electrical kiss vastly, thus: let _a_ and _b_ stand on wax; or _a_ on wax, and _b_ on the floor; give one of them the electrised phial in hand; let the other take hold of the wire; there will be a small spark; but when their lips approach, they will be struck and shock'd. the same if another gentleman and lady, _c_ and _d_, standing also on wax, and joining hands with _a_ and _b_, salute or shake hands. we suspend by fine silk thread a counterfeit spider, made of a small piece of burnt cork, with legs of linnen thread, and a grain or two of lead stuck in him, to give him more weight. upon the table, over which he hangs, we stick a wire upright, as high as the phial and wire, four or five inches from the spider: then we animate him, by setting the electrified phial at the same distance on the other side of him; he will immediately fly to the wire of the phial, bend his legs in touching it, then spring off, and fly to the wire in the table, thence again to the wire of the phial, playing with his legs against both, in a very entertaining manner, appearing perfectly alive to persons unacquainted. he will continue this motion an hour or more in dry weather.--we electrify, upon wax in the dark, a book that has a double line of gold round upon the covers, and then apply a knuckle to the gilding; the fire appears every where upon the gold like a flash of lightning: not upon the leather, nor, if you touch the leather instead of the gold. we rub our tubes with buckskin, and observe always to keep the same side to the tube, and never to sully the tube by handling; thus they work readily and easily, without the least fatigue, especially if kept in tight pasteboard cases, lined with flannel, and sitting close to the tube[23]. this i mention, because the european papers on electricity frequently speak of rubbing the tube as a fatiguing exercise. our spheres are fixed on iron axes, which pass through them. at one end of the axis there is a small handle, with which you turn the sphere like a common grind-stone. this we find very commodious, as the machine takes up but little room, is portable, and may be enclosed in a tight box, when not in use. it is true, the sphere does not turn so swift as when the great wheel is used: but swiftness we think of little importance, since a few turns will charge the phial, &c. sufficiently[24]. i am, &c. b. franklin. footnotes: [17] this power of points to _throw off_ the electrical fire, was first communicated to me by my ingenious friend mr. thomas hopkinson, since deceased, whose virtue and integrity, in every station of life, public and private, will ever make his memory dear to those who knew him, and knew how to value him. [18] this was mr. hopkinson's experiment, made with an expectation of drawing a more sharp and powerful spark from the point, as from a kind of focus, and he was surprised to find little or none. [19] we suppose every particle of sand, moisture, or smoke, being first attracted and then repelled, carries off with it a portion of the electrical fire; but that the same still subsists in those particles, till they communicate it to something else, and that it is never really destroyed. so when water is thrown on common fire, we do not imagine the element is thereby destroyed or annihilated, but only dispersed, each particle of water carrying off in vapour its portion of the fire, which it had attracted and attached to itself. [20] this different effect probably did not arise from any difference in the light, but rather from the particles separated from the candle, being first attracted and then repelled, carrying off the electric matter with them; and from the rarefying the air, between the glowing coal or red-hot iron, and the electrised shot, through which rarefied air the electric fluid could more readily pass. [21] these experiments with the wheels, were made and communicated to me by my worthy and ingenious friend mr. philip syng; but we afterwards discovered that the motion of those wheels was not owing to any afflux or efflux of the electric fluid, but to various circumstances of attraction and repulsion. 1750. [22] by taking a spark from the wire, the electricity within the bottle is diminished; the outside of the bottle then draws some from the person holding it, and leaves him in the negative state. then when his hand or face is touched, an equal quantity is restored to him from the person touching. [23] our tubes are made here of green glass, 27 or 30 inches long, as big as can be grasped. [24] this simple easily-made machine was a contrivance of mr. syng's. to peter collinson, esq. f. r. s. london. _observations on the leyden bottle, with experiments proving the different electrical state of its different surfaces._ _philadelphia, sept. 1, 1747._ sir, the necessary trouble of copying long letters, which, perhaps, when they come to your hands, may contain nothing new, or worth your reading, (so quick is the progress made with you in electricity) half discourages me from writing any more on that subject. yet i cannot forbear adding a few observations on m. muschenbroek's wonderful bottle. 1. the non-electric contained in the bottle differs, when electrised, from a non-electric electrised out of the bottle, in this: that the electrical fire of the latter is accumulated _on its surface_, and forms an electrical atmosphere round it of considerable extent; but the electrical fire is crowded _into the substance_ of the former, the glass confining it[25]. 2. at the same time that the wire and the top of the bottle, &c. is electrised _positively_ or _plus_, the bottom of the bottle is electrised _negatively_ or _minus_, in exact proportion: _i. e._ whatever quantity of electrical fire is thrown in at the top, an equal quantity goes out of the bottom[26]. to understand this, suppose the common quantity of electricity in each part of the bottle, before the operation begins, is equal to 20; and at every stroke of the tube, suppose a quantity equal to 1 is thrown in; then, after the first stroke, the quantity contained in the wire and upper part of the bottle will be 21, in the bottom 19. after the second, the upper part will have 22, the lower 18, and so on, till, after 20 strokes, the upper part will have a quantity of electrical fire equal to 40, the lower part none: and then the operation ends: for no more can be thrown into the upper part, when no more can be driven out of the lower part. if you attempt to throw more in, it is spewed back through the wire, or flies out in loud cracks through the sides of the bottle. 3. the equilibrium cannot be restored in the bottle by _inward_ communication or contact of the parts; but it must be done by a communication formed _without_ the bottle, between the top and bottom, by some non-electric, touching or approaching both at the same time; in which case it is restored with a violence and quickness inexpressible; or, touching each alternately, in which case the equilibrium is restored by degrees. 4. as no more electrical fire can be thrown into the top of the bottle, when all is driven out of the bottom, so in a bottle not yet electrised, none can be thrown into the top, when none _can_ get out at the bottom; which happens either when the bottom is too thick, or when the bottle is placed on an electric _per se_. again, when the bottle is electrised, but little of the electrical fire can be _drawn out_ from the top, by touching the wire, unless an equal quantity can at the same time _get in_ at the bottom[27]. thus, place an electrised bottle on clean glass or dry wax, and you will not, by touching the wire, get out the fire from the top. place it on a non-electric, and touch the wire, you will get it out in a short time; but soonest when you form a direct communication as above. so wonderfully are these two states of electricity, the _plus_ and _minus_, combined and balanced in this miraculous bottle! situated and related to each other in a manner that i can by no means comprehend! if it were possible that a bottle should in one part contain a quantity of air strongly comprest, and in another part a perfect vacuum, we know the equilibrium would be instantly restored _within_. but here we have a bottle containing at the same time a _plenum_ of electrical fire, and a _vacuum_ of the same fire; and yet the equilibrium cannot be restored between them but by a communication _without!_ though the _plenum_ presses violently to expand, and the hungry vacuum seems to attract as violently in order to be filled. 5. the shock to the nerves (or convulsion rather) is occasioned by the sudden passing of the fire through the body in its way from the top to the bottom of the bottle. the fire takes the shortest[28] course, as mr. watson justly observes: but it does not appear from experiment that in order for a person to be shocked, a communication with the floor is necessary: for he that holds the bottle with one hand, and touches the wire with the other, will be shocked as much, though his shoes be dry, or even standing on wax, as otherwise. and on the touch of the wire, (or of the gun-barrel, which is the same thing) the fire does not proceed from the touching finger to the wire, as is supposed, but from the wire to the finger, and passes through the body to the other hand, and so into the bottom of the bottle. _experiments confirming the above._ experiment i. place an electrised phial on wax; a small cork-ball suspended by a dry silk thread held in your hand, and brought near to the wire, will first be attracted, and then repelled: when in this state of repellency, sink your hand, that the ball may be brought towards the bottom of the bottle; it will be there instantly and strongly attracted, till it has parted with its fire. if the bottle had a _positive_ electrical atmosphere, as well as the wire, an electrified cork would be repelled from one as well as from the other. [illustration: (of the experiments below) _plate i._ _vol. i. page 182._ _published as the act directs, april 1, 1806, by longman, hurst, rees & orme, paternoster row._] experiment ii. fig. 1. from a bent wire (_a_) sticking in the table, let a small linen thread (_b_) hang down within half an inch of the electrised phial (_c_). touch the wire or the phial repeatedly with your finger, and at every touch you will see the thread instantly attracted by the bottle. (this is best done by a vinegar cruet, or some such bellied-bottle). as soon as you draw any fire out from the upper part, by touching the wire, the lower part of the bottle draws an equal quantity in by the thread. experiment iii. fig. 2. fix a wire in the lead, with which the bottom of the bottle is armed (_d_) so as that bending upwards, its ring-end may be level with the top or ring-end of the wire in the cork (_e_) and at three or four inches distance. then electrise the bottle, and place it on wax. if a cork suspended by a silk thread (_f_) hang between these two wires, it will play incessantly from one to the other, till the bottle is no longer electrised; that is, it fetches and carries fire from the top to the bottom[29] of the bottle, till the equilibrium is restored. experiment iv. fig. 3. place an electrised phial on wax; take a wire (_g_) in form of a _c_, the ends at such a distance when bent, as that the upper may touch the wire of the bottle, when the lower touches the bottom: stick the outer part on a stick of sealing-wax (_h_), which will serve as a handle; then apply the lower end to the bottom of the bottle, and gradually bring the upper end near the wire in the cork. the consequence is, spark follows spark till the equilibrium is restored. touch the top first, and on approaching the bottom, with the other end, you have a constant stream of fire from the wire entering the bottle. touch the top and bottom together, and the equilibrium will instantly be restored, the crooked wire forming the communication. experiment v. fig. 4. let a ring of thin lead, or paper, surround a bottle (_i_) even at some distance from or above the bottom. from that ring let a wire proceed up, till it touch the wire of the cork (_k_). a bottle so fixt cannot by any means be electrised: the equilibrium is never destroyed: for while the communication between the upper and lower parts of the bottle is continued by the outside wire, the fire only circulates: what is driven out at bottom, is constantly supplied from the top[30]. hence a bottle cannot be electrised that is foul or moist on the outside, if such moisture continue up to the cork or wire. experiment vi. place a man on a cake of wax, and present him the wire of the electrified phial to touch, you standing on the floor, and holding it in your hand. as often as he touches it, he will be electrified _plus_; and any one standing on the floor may draw a spark from him. the fire in this experiment passes out of the wire into him; and at the same time out of your hand into the bottom of the bottle. experiment vii. give him the electrical phial to hold; and do you touch the wire; as often as you touch it he will be electrified _minus_, and may draw a spark from any one standing on the floor. the fire now passes from the wire to you, and from him into the bottom of the bottle. experiment viii. lay two books on two glasses, back towards back, two or three inches distant. set the electrified phial on one, and then touch the wire; that book will be electrified _minus_; the electrical fire being drawn out of it by the bottom of the bottle. take off the bottle, and holding it in your hand, touch the other with the wire; that book will be electrified _plus_; the fire passing into it from the wire, and the bottle at the same time supplied from your hand. a suspended small cork-ball will play between these books till the equilibrium is restored. experiment ix. when a body is electrised _plus_, it will repel a positively electrified feather or small cork-ball. when _minus_ (or when in the common state) it will attract them, but stronger when _minus_ than when in the common state, the difference being greater. experiment x. though, as in _experiment_ vi, a man standing on wax may be electrised a number of times by repeatedly touching the wire of an electrised bottle (held in the hand of one standing on the floor) he receiving the fire from the wire each time: yet holding it in his own hand, and touching the wire, though he draws a strong spark, and is violently shocked, no electricity remains in him; the fire only passing through him, from the upper to the lower part of the bottle. observe, before the shock, to let some one on the floor touch him to restore the equilibrium in his body; for in taking hold of the bottom of the bottle, he sometimes becomes a little electrised _minus_, which will continue after the shock, as would also any _plus_ electricity, which he might have given him before the shock. for restoring the equilibrium in the bottle, does not at all affect the electricity in the man through whom the fire passes; that electricity is neither increased nor diminished. experiment xi. the passing of the electrical fire from the upper to the lower part[31] of the bottle, to restore the equilibrium, is rendered strongly visible by the following pretty experiment. take a book whose covering is filletted with gold; bend a wire of eight or ten inches long, in the form of (_m_) fig. 5; slip it on the end of the cover of the book, over the gold line, so as that the shoulder of it may press upon one end of the gold line, the ring up, but leaning towards the other end of the book. lay the book on a glass or wax[32], and on the other end of the gold lines set the bottle electrised; then bend the springing wire, by pressing it with a stick of wax till its ring approaches the ring of the bottle wire, instantly there is a strong spark and stroke, and the whole line of gold, which completes the communication, between the top and bottom of the bottle, will appear a vivid flame, like the sharpest lightning. the closer the contact between the shoulder of the wire, and the gold at one end of the line, and between the bottom of the bottle and the gold at the other end, the better the experiment succeeds. the room should be darkened. if you would have the whole filletting round the cover appear in fire at once, let the bottle and wire touch the gold in the diagonally opposite corners. i am, &c. b. franklin. footnotes: [25] see this opinion rectified in § 16 and 17 of the next letter. the fire in the bottle was found by subsequent experiments not to be contained in the non-electric, but _in the glass_. 1748. [26] what is said here, and after, of the _top_ and _bottom_ of the bottle, is true of the _inside_ and _outside_ surfaces, and should have been so expressed. [27] see the preceding note, relating to _top_ and _bottom_. [28] other circumstances being equal. [29] _i. e._ from the inside to the outside. [30] see the preceding note, relating to _top_ and _bottom_. [31] _i. e._ from the _inside_ to the _outside_. [32] placing the book on glass or wax is not necessary to produce the appearance; it is only to show that the visible electricity is not brought up from the common stock in the earth. to peter collinson, esq. f. r. s. london. _farther experiments confirming the preceding observations.--leyden bottle analysed.--electrical battery.--magical picture.--electrical wheel or jack.--electrical feast._ _philadelphia, 1748._ sir, § 1. there will be the same explosion and shock if the electrified phial is held in one hand by the hook, and the coating touched with the other, as when held by the coating, and touched at the hook. 2. to take the charged phial safely by the hook, and not at the same time diminish its force, it must first be set down on an electric _per se_. 3. the phial will be electrified as strongly, if held by the hook, and the coating applied to the globe or tube; as when held by the coating, and the hook applied[33]. 4. but the _direction_ of the electrical fire being different in the charging, will also be different in the explosion. the bottle charged through the hook, will be discharged through the hook; the bottle charged through the coating, will be discharged through the coating, and not otherways; for the fire must come out the same way it went in. 5. to prove this, take two bottles that were equally charged through the hooks, one in each hand: bring their hooks near each other, and no spark or shock will follow; because each hook is disposed to give fire, and neither to receive it. set one of the bottles down on glass, take it up by the hook, and apply its coating to the hook of the other; then there will be an explosion and shock, and both bottles will be discharged. 6. vary the experiment, by charging two phials equally, one through the hook, the other through the coating: hold that by the coating which was charged through the hook; and that by the hook which was charged through the coating: apply the hook of the first to the coating of the other, and there will be no shock or spark. set that down on glass which you held by the hook, take it up by the coating, and bring the two hooks together: a spark and shock will follow, and both phials be discharged. in this experiment the bottles are totally discharged, or the equilibrium within them restored. the _abounding_ of fire in one of the hooks (or rather in the internal surface of one bottle) being exactly equal to the _wanting_ of the other: and therefore, as each bottle has in itself the _abounding_ as well as the _wanting_, the wanting and abounding must be equal in each bottle. see § 8, 9, 10, 11. but if a man holds in his hands two bottles, one fully electrified, the other not at all, and brings their hooks together, he has but half a shock, and the bottles will both remain half electrified, the one being half discharged, and the other half charged. 7. place two phials equally charged on a table at five or six inches distance. let a cork-ball, suspended by a silk thread, hang between them. if the phials were both charged through their hooks, the cork, when it has been attracted and repelled by the one, will not be attracted, but equally repelled by the other. but if the phials were charged, the one through the hook, and the other[34] through the coating, the ball, when it is repelled from one hook, will be as strongly attracted by the other, and play vigorously between them, fetching the electric fluid from the one, and delivering it to the other, till both phials are nearly discharged. 8. when we use the terms of _charging_ and _discharging_ the phial, it is in compliance with custom, and for want of others more suitable. since we are of opinion that there is really no more electrical fire in the phial after what is called its _charging_, than before, nor less after its _discharging_; excepting only the small spark that might be given to, and taken from the non-electric matter, if separated from the bottle, which spark may not be equal to a five hundredth part of what is called the explosion. for if, on the explosion, the electrical fire came out of the bottle by one part, and did not enter in again by another, then, if a man, standing on wax, and holding the bottle in one hand, takes the spark by touching the wire hook with the other, the bottle being thereby _discharged_, the man would be _charged_; or whatever fire was lost by one, would be found in the other, since there was no way for its escape: but the contrary is true. 9. besides, the phial will not suffer what is called a _charging_, unless as much fire can go out of it one way, as is thrown in by another. a phial cannot be charged standing on wax or glass, or hanging on the prime conductor, unless a communication be formed between its coating and the floor. 10. but suspend two or more phials on the prime conductor, one hanging on the tail of the other; and a wire from the last to the floor, an equal number of turns of the wheel shall charge them all equally, and every one as much as one alone would have been. what is driven out at the tail of the first, serving to charge the second; what is driven out of the second charging the third; and so on. by this means a great number of bottles might be charged with the same labour, and equally high, with one alone; were it not that every bottle receives new fire, and loses its old with some reluctance, or rather gives some small resistance to the charging, which in a number of bottles becomes more equal to the charging power, and so repels the fire back again on the globe, sooner in proportion than a single bottle would do. 11. when a bottle is charged in the common way, its _inside_ and _outside_ surfaces stand ready, the one to give fire by the hook, the other to receive it by the coating; the one is full, and ready to throw out, the other empty and extremely hungry; yet as the first will not _give out_, unless the other can at the same instant _receive in_; so neither will the latter receive in, unless the first can at the same instant give out. when both can be done at once, it is done with inconceivable quickness and violence. 12. so a straight spring (though the comparison does not agree in every particular) when forcibly bent, must, to restore itself, contract that side which in the bending was extended, and extend that which was contracted; if either of these two operations be hindered, the other cannot be done. but the spring is not said to be _charged_ with elasticity when bent, and discharged when unbent; its quantity of elasticity is always the same. 13. glass, in like manner, has, within its substance, always the same quantity of electrical fire, and that a very great quantity in proportion to the mass of glass, as shall be shewn hereafter. 14. this quantity, proportioned to the glass, it strongly and obstinately retains, and will have neither more nor less, though it will suffer a change to be made in its parts and situation; _i. e._ we may take away part of it from one of the sides, provided we throw an equal quantity into the other. 15. yet when the situation of the electrical fire is thus altered in the glass; when some has been taken from one side, and some added to the other, it will not be at rest or in its natural state, till it is restored to its original equality. and this restitution cannot be made through the substance of the glass, but must be done by a non-electric communication formed without, from surface to surface. 16. thus, the whole force of the bottle, and power of giving a shock, is in the glass itself; the non-electrics in contact with the two surfaces, serving only to _give_ and _receive_ to and from the several parts of the glass; that is, to give on one side, and take away from the other. 17. this was discovered here in the following manner: purposing to analyse the electrified bottle, in order to find wherein its strength lay, we placed it on glass, and drew out the cork and wire which for that purpose had been loosely put in. then taking the bottle in one hand, and bringing a finger of the other near its mouth, a strong spark came from the water, and the shock was as violent as if the wire had remained in it, which shewed that the force did not lie in the wire. then to find if it resided in the water, being crowded into and condensed in it, as confined by the glass, which had been our former opinion, we electrified the bottle again, and placing it on glass, drew out the wire and cork as before; then taking up the bottle, we decanted all its water into an empty bottle, which likewise stood on glass; and taking up that other bottle, we expected, if the force resided in the water, to find a shock from it; but there was none. we judged then that it must either be lost in decanting, or remain in the first bottle. the latter we found to be true; for that bottle on trial gave the shock, though filled up as it stood with fresh unelectrified water from a tea-pot.--to find, then, whether glass had this property merely as glass, or whether the form contributed any thing to it; we took a pane of sash-glass, and laying it on the hand, placed a plate of lead on its upper surface; then electrified that plate, and bringing a finger to it, there was a spark and shock. we then took two plates of lead of equal dimensions, but less than the glass by two inches every way, and electrified the glass between them, by electrifying the uppermost lead; then separated the glass from the lead, in doing which, what little fire might be in the lead was taken out, and the glass being touched in the electrified parts with a finger, afforded only very small pricking sparks, but a great number of them might be taken from different places. then dextrously placing it again between the leaden plates, and compleating a circle between the two surfaces, a violent shock ensued.--which demonstrated the power to reside in glass as glass, and that the non-electrics in contact served only, like the armature of a loadstone, to unite the force of the several parts, and bring them at once to any point desired: it being the property of a non-electric, that the whole body instantly receives or gives what electrical fire is given to or taken from any one of its parts. 18. upon this we made what we called an _electrical-battery_, consisting of eleven panes of large sash-glass, armed with thin leaden plates, pasted on each side, placed vertically, and supported at two inches distance on silk cords, with thick hooks of leaden wire, one from each side, standing upright, distant from each other, and convenient communications of wire and chain, from the giving side of one pane, to the receiving side of the other; that so the whole might be charged together, and with the same labour as one single pane; and another contrivance to bring the giving sides, after charging, in contact with one long wire, and the receivers with another, which two long wires would give the force of all the plates of glass at once through the body of any animal forming the circle with them. the plates may also be discharged separately, or any number together that is required. but this machine is not much used, as not perfectly answering our intention with regard to the ease of charging, for the reason given, _sec. 10._ we made also of large glass panes, magical pictures, and self-moving animated wheels, presently to be described. 19. i perceive by the ingenious mr. watson's last book, lately received, that dr. bevis had used, before we had, panes of glass to give a shock[35]; though, till that book came to hand, i thought to have communicated it to you as a novelty. the excuse for mentioning it here is, that we tried the experiment differently, drew different consequences from it (for mr. watson still seems to think the fire _accumulated on the non-electric_ that is in contact with the glass, p. 72) and, as far as we hitherto know, have carried it farther. 20. the magical picture[36] is made thus. having a large metzotinto with a frame and glass, suppose of the king (god preserve him) take out the print, and cut a pannel out of it near two inches distant from the frame all round. if the cut is through the picture it is not the worse. with thin paste, or gum-water, fix the border that is cut off on the inside the glass, pressing it smooth and close; then fill up the vacancy by gilding the glass well with leaf-gold, or brass. gild likewise the inner edge of the back of the frame all round, except the top part, and form a communication between that gilding and the gilding behind the glass: then put in the board, and that side is finished. turn up the glass, and gild the fore side exactly over the back gilding, and when it is dry, cover it, by pasting on the pannel of the picture that hath been cut out, observing to bring the correspondent parts of the border and picture together, by which the picture will appear of a piece, as at first, only part is behind the glass, and part before. hold the picture horizontally by the top, and place a little moveable gilt crown on the king's head. if now the picture be moderately electrified, and another person take hold of the frame with one hand, so that his fingers touch its inside gilding, and with the other hand endeavour to take off the crown, he will receive a terrible blow, and fail in the attempt. if the picture were highly charged, the consequence might perhaps be as fatal[37] as that of high treason, for when the spark is taken through a quire of paper laid on the picture by means of a wire communication, it makes a fair hole through every sheet, that is, through forty-eight leaves, though a quire of paper is thought good armour against the push of a sword, or even against a pistol bullet, and the crack is exceeding loud. the operator, who holds the picture by the upper end, where the inside of the frame is not gilt, to prevent its falling, feels nothing of the shock, and may touch the face of the picture without danger, which he pretends is a test of his loyalty.--if a ring of persons take the shock among them, the experiment is called, _the conspirators_. 21. on the principle, in _sec. 7_, that hooks of bottles, differently charged, will attract and repel differently, is made an electrical wheel, that turns with considerable strength. a small upright shaft of wood passes at right angles through a thin round board, of about twelve inches diameter, and turns on a sharp point of iron, fixed in the lower end, while a strong wire in the upper end, passing through a small hole in a thin brass plate, keeps the shaft truly vertical. about thirty _radii_ of equal length, made of sash-glass, cut in narrow strips, issue horizontally from the circumference of the board, the ends most distant from the centre, being about four inches apart. on the end of every one, a brass thimble is fixed. if now the wire of a bottle electrified in the common way, be brought near the circumference of this wheel, it will attract the nearest thimble, and so put the wheel in motion; that thimble, in passing by, receives a spark and thereby being electrified is repelled, and so driven forwards; while a second being attracted, approaches the wire, receives a spark, and is driven after the first, and so on till the wheel has gone once round, when the thimbles before electrified approaching the wire, instead of being attracted as they were at first, are repelled, and the motion presently ceases.--but if another bottle, which had been charged through the coating, be placed near the same wheel, its wire will attract the thimble repelled by the first, and thereby double the force that carries the wheel round; and not only taking out the fire that had been communicated to the thimbles by the first bottle, but even robbing them of their natural quantity, instead of being repelled when they come again towards the first bottle, they are more strongly attracted, so that the wheel mends its pace, till it goes with great rapidity twelve or fifteen rounds in a minute, and with such strength, as that the weight of one hundred spanish dollars with which we once loaded it, did not seem in the least to retard its motion.--this is called an electrical jack; and if a large fowl were spitted on the upright shaft, it would be carried round before a fire with a motion fit for roasting. 22. but this wheel, like those driven by wind, water, or weights, moves by a foreign force, to wit, that of the bottles. the self-moving wheel, though constructed on the same principles, appears more surprising. it is made of a thin round plate of window-glass, seventeen inches diameter, well gilt on both sides, all but two inches next the edge. two small hemispheres of wood are then fixed with cement to the middle of the upper and under sides, centrally opposite, and in each of them a thick strong wire eight or ten inches long, which together make the axis of the wheel. it turns horizontally on a point at the lower end of its axis, which rests on a bit of brass cemented within a glass salt-cellar. the upper end of its axis passes through a hole in a thin brass plate cemented to a long strong piece of glass, which keeps it six or eight inches distant from any non-electric, and has a small ball of wax or metal on its top, to keep in the fire. in a circle on the table which supports the wheel, are fixed twelve small pillars of glass, at about four inches distance, with a thimble on the top of each. on the edge of the wheel is a small leaden bullet, communicating by a wire with the gilding of the _upper_ surface of the wheel; and about six inches from it is another bullet, communicating in like manner with the _under_ surface. when the wheel is to be charged by the upper surface, a communication must be made from the under surface to the table. when it is well charged it begins to move; the bullet nearest to a pillar moves towards the thimble on that pillar, and passing by electrifies it, and then pushes itself from it; the succeeding bullet, which communicates with the other surface of the glass, more strongly attracts that thimble, on account of its being before electrified by the other bullet; and thus the wheel encreases its motion till it comes to such a height as that the resistance of the air regulates it. it will go half an hour, and make one minute with another twenty turns in a minute, which is six hundred turns in the whole; the bullet of the upper surface giving in each turn twelve sparks to the thimbles, which makes seven thousand two hundred sparks: and the bullet of the under surface receiving as many from the thimbles; those bullets moving in the time near two thousand five hundred feet.--the thimbles are well fixed, and in so exact a circle, that the bullets may pass within a very small distance of each of them.--if instead of two bullets you put eight, four communicating with the upper surface, and four with the under surface, placed alternately, which eight, at about six inches distance, completes the circumference, the force and swiftness will be greatly increased, the wheel making fifty turns in a minute; but then it will not continue moving so long.--these wheels may be applied, perhaps, to the ringing of chimes,[38] and moving of light-made orreries. 23. a small wire bent circularly, with a loop at each end; let one end rest against the under surface of the wheel, and bring the other end near the upper surface, it will give a terrible crack, and the force will be discharged. 24. every spark in that manner drawn from the surface of the wheel, makes a round hole in the gilding, tearing off a part of it in coming out; which shews that the fire is not accumulated on the gilding, but is in the glass itself. 25. the gilding being varnished over with turpentine varnish, the varnish, though dry and hard, is burnt by the spark drawn through it, and gives a strong smell and visible smoke. and when the spark is drawn thro' paper, all round the hole made by it, the paper will be blacked by the smoke, which sometimes penetrates several of the leaves. part of the gilding torn off is also found forcibly driven into the hole made in the paper by the stroke. 26. it is amazing to observe in how small a portion of glass a great electrical force may lie. a thin glass bubble, about an inch diameter, weighing only six grains, being half filled with water, partly gilt on the outside, and furnished with a wire hook, gives, when electrified, as great a shock as a man can well bear. as the glass is thickest near the orifice, i suppose the lower half, which being gilt was electrified and gave the shock, did not exceed two grains; for it appeared, when broken, much thinner than the upper half.--if one of these thin bottles be electrified by the coating, and the spark taken out through the gilding, it will break the glass inwards, at the same time that it breaks the gilding outwards. 27. and allowing (for the reasons before given, § 8, 9, 10,) that there is no more electrical fire in a bottle after charging, than before, how great must be the quantity in this small portion of glass! it seems as if it were of its very substance and essence. perhaps if that due quantity of electrical fire so obstinately retained by glass, could be separated from it, it would no longer be glass; it might lose its transparency, or its brittleness, or its elasticity.--experiments may possibly be invented hereafter, to discover this. 27. we were surprised at the account given in mr. watson's book, of a shock communicated through a great space of dry ground, and suspect there must be some metalline quality in the gravel of that ground; having found that simple dry earth, rammed in a glass tube, open at both ends, and a wire hook inserted in the earth at each end, the earth and wires making part of a circuit, would not conduct the least perceptible shock, and indeed when one wire was electrified the other hardly shewed any signs of its being in connection with it[39]. even a thoroughly wet packthread sometimes fails of conducting a shock, though it otherwise conducts electricity very well. a dry cake of ice, or an icicle held between two in a circle, likewise prevents the shock, which one would not expect, as water conducts it so perfectly well.--gilding on a new book, though at first it conducts the shock extremely well, yet fails after ten or a dozen experiments, though it appears otherwise in all respects the same, which we cannot account for[40]. 28. there is one experiment more which surprises us, and is not hitherto satisfactorily accounted for; it is this: place an iron shot on a glass stand, and let a ball of damp cork, suspended by a silk thread, hang in contact with the shot. take a bottle in each hand, one that is electrified through the hook, the other through the coating: apply the giving wire to the shot, which will electrify it _positively_, and the cork shall be repelled: then apply the requiring wire, which will take out the spark given by the other; when the cork will return to the shot: apply the same again, and take out another spark, so will the shot be electrified _negatively_, and the cork in that case shall be repelled equally as before. then apply the giving wire to the shot, and give the spark it wanted, so will the cork return: give it another, which will be an addition to its natural quantity, so will the cork be repelled again: and so may the experiment be repeated as long as there is any charge in the bottles. which shews that bodies, having less than the common quantity of electricity, repel each other, as well as those that have more. chagrined a little that we have been hitherto able to produce nothing in this way of use to mankind; and the hot weather coming on, when electrical experiments are not so agreeable, it is proposed to put an end to them for this season, somewhat humorously, in a party of pleasure, on the banks of _skuylkil_[41]. spirits, at the same time, are to be fired by a spark sent from side to side through the river, without any other conductor than the water; an experiment which we some time since performed, to the amazement of many[42]. a turkey is to be killed for our dinner by the _electrical shock_, and roasted by the _electrical jack_, before a fire kindled by the _electrified bottle_: when the healths of all the famous electricians in england, holland, france, and germany are to be drank in _electrified bumpers_[43], under the discharge of guns from the _electrical battery_. footnotes: [33] this was a discovery of the very ingenious mr. kinnersley, and by him communicated to me. [34] to charge a bottle commodiously through the coating, place it on a glass stand; form a communication from the prime conductor to the coating, and another from the hook to the wall or floor. when it is charged, remove the latter communication before you take hold of the bottle, otherwise great part of the fire will escape by it. [35] i have since heard that mr. smeaton was the first who made use of panes of glass for that purpose. [36] contrived by mr. kinnersley. [37] we have since found it fatal to small animals, though not to large ones. the biggest we have yet killed is a hen. 1750. [38] this was afterwards done with success by mr. kinnersley. [39] probably the ground is never so dry. [40] we afterwards found that it failed after one stroke with a large bottle; and the continuity of the gold appearing broken, and many of its parts dissipated, the electricity could not pass the remaining parts without leaping from part to part through the air, which always resists the motion of this fluid, and was probably the cause of the gold's not conducting so well as before; the number of interruptions in the line of gold, making, when added together, a space larger, perhaps, than the striking distance. [41] the river that washes one side of philadelphia, as the delaware does the other; both are ornamented with the summer habitations of the citizens, and the agreeable mansions of the principal people of this colony. [42] as the possibility of this experiment has not been easily conceived, i shall here describe it.--two iron rods, about three feet long, were planted just within the margin of the river, on the opposite sides. a thick piece of wire, with a small round knob at its end, was fixed on the top of one of the rods, bending downwards, so as to deliver commodiously the spark upon the surface of the spirit. a small wire fastened by one end to the handle of the spoon, containing the spirit, was carried a-cross the river, and supported in the air by the rope commonly used to hold by, in drawing the ferry-boats over. the other end of this wire was tied round the coating of the bottle; which being charged, the spark was delivered from the hook to the top of the rod standing in the water on that side. at the same instant the rod on the other side delivered a spark into the spoon, and fired the spirit; the electric fire returning to the coating of the bottle, through the handle of the spoon and the supported wire connected with them. that the electric fire thus actually passes through the water, has since been satisfactorily demonstrated to many by an experiment of mr. kinnersley's, performed in a trough of water about ten feet long. the hand being placed under water in the direction of the spark (which always takes the strait or shortest course, if sufficient, and other circumstances are equal) is struck and penetrated by it as it passes. to peter collinson, esq. f. r. s. london. _observations and suppositions, towards forming a new hypothesis, for explaining the several phenomena of thunder-gusts._[44] sir, non-electric bodies, that have electric fire thrown into them, will retain it till other electrics, that have less, approach; and then it is communicated by a snap, and becomes equally divided. 2. electrical fire loves water, is strongly attracted by it, and they can subsist together. 3. air is an electric _per se_, and when dry will not conduct the electrical fire; it will neither receive it, nor give it to other bodies: otherwise no body surrounded by air, could be electrified positively and negatively: for should it be attempted positively, the air would immediately take away the overplus; or negatively, the air would supply what was wanting. 4. water being electrified, the vapours arising from it will be equally electrified; and floating in the air, in the form of clouds, or otherwise, will retain that quantity of electrical fire, till they meet with other clouds or bodies not so much electrified, and then will communicate as before-mentioned. 5. every particle of matter electrified is repelled by every other particle equally electrified. thus the stream of a fountain, naturally dense and continual, when electrified, will separate and spread in the form of a brush, every drop endeavouring to recede from every other drop. but on taking out the electrical fire they close again. 6. water being strongly electrified (as well as when heated by common fire) rises in vapours more copiously; the attraction of cohesion among its particles being greatly weakened, by the opposite power of repulsion introduced with the electrical fire; and when any particle is by any means disengaged, it is immediately repelled, and so flies into the air. 7. particles happening to be situated as _a_ and _b_, (fig. vi. _representing the profile of a vessel of water_) are more easily disengaged than _c_ and _d_, as each is held by contact with three only, whereas _c_ and _d_ are each in contact with nine. when the surface of the water has the least motion, particles are continually pushed into the situation represented by _a_ and _b_. 8. friction between a non-electric and an electric _per se_ will produce electrical fire; not by _creating_, but _collecting_ it: for it is equally diffused in our walls, floors, earth, and the whole mass of common matter. thus the whirling glass globe, during its friction against the cushion, draws fire from the cushion, the cushion is supplied from the frame of the machine, that from the floor on which it stands. cut off the communication by thick glass or wax, placed under the cushion, and no fire can be _produced_, because it cannot be _collected_. 9. the ocean is a compound of water, a non-electric, and salt an electric _per se_. 10. when there is a friction among the parts near its surface, the electrical fire is collected from the parts below. it is then plainly visible in the night; it appears in the stern and in the wake of every sailing vessel; every dash of an oar shews it, and every surf and spray: in storms the whole sea seems on fire.--the detached particles of water then repelled from the electrified surface, continually carry off the fire as it is collected; they rise and form clouds, and those clouds are highly electrified, and retain the fire till they have an opportunity of communicating it. 11. the particles of water, rising in vapours, attach themselves to particles of air. 12. the particles of air are said to be hard, round, separate and distant from each other; every particle strongly repelling every other particle, whereby they recede from each other, as far as common gravity will permit. 13. the space between any three particles, equally repelling each other, will be an equilateral triangle. 14. in air compressed, these triangles are smaller; in rarified air they are larger. 15. common fire, joined with air, increases the repulsion, enlarges the triangles, and thereby makes the air specifically lighter. such air, among denser air, will rise. 16. common fire, as well as electrical fire, gives repulsion to the particles of water, and destroys their attraction of cohesion; hence common fire, as well as electrical fire, assists in raising vapours. 17. particles of water, having no fire in them, mutually attract each other. three particles of water then, being attached to the three particles of a triangle of air, would, by their mutual attraction operating against the air's repulsion, shorten the sides and lessen the triangle, whereby that portion of air made denser, would sink to the earth with its water, and not rise to the formation of a cloud. 18. but if every particle of water attaching itself to air brings with it a particle of common fire, the repulsion of the air being assisted and strengthened by the fire, more than obstructed by the mutual attraction of the particles of water, the triangle dilates, and that portion of air, becoming rarer and specifically lighter, rises. 19. if the particles of water bring electrical fire when they attach themselves to air, the repulsion between the particles of water electrified, joins with the natural repulsion of the air, to force its particles to a greater distance, whereby the triangles are dilated, and the air rises, carrying up with it the water. 20. if the particles of water bring with them portions of _both sorts_ of fire, the repulsion of the particles of air is still more strengthened and increased, and the triangles farther enlarged. 21. one particle of air may be surrounded by twelve particles of water of equal size with itself, all in contact with it; and by more added to those. 22. particles of air, thus loaded, would be drawn nearer together by the mutual attraction of the particles of water, did not the fire, common or electrical, assist their repulsion. 23. if air, thus loaded, be compressed by adverse winds, or by being driven against mountains, &c. or condensed by taking away the fire that assisted it in expanding; the triangles contract, the air with its water will descend as a dew; or, if the water surrounding one particle of air comes in contact with the water surrounding another, they coalesce and form a drop, and we have rain. 24. the sun supplies (or seems to supply) common fire to vapours, whether raised from earth or sea. 25. those vapours, which have both common and electrical fire in them, are better supported than those which have only common fire in them; for when vapours rise into the coldest region above the earth, the cold will not diminish the electrical fire, if it doth the common. 26. hence clouds, formed by vapours, raised from fresh waters within land, from growing vegetables, moist earth, &c. more speedily and easily deposite their water, having but little electrical fire to repel and keep the particles separate. so that the greatest part of the water raised from the land, is let fall on the land again; and winds blowing from the land to the sea are dry; there being little use for rain on the sea, and to rob the land of its moisture, in order to rain on the sea, would not appear reasonable. 27. but clouds, formed by vapours raised from the sea, having both fires, and particularly a great quantity of the electrical, support their water strongly, raise it high, and being moved by winds, may bring it over the middle of the broadest continent from the middle of the widest ocean. 28. how these ocean clouds, so strongly supporting their water, are made to deposite it on the land where it is wanted, is next to be considered. 29. if they are driven by winds against mountains, those mountains being less electrified attract them, and on contact take away their electrical fire (and being cold, the common fire also;) hence the particles close towards the mountains and towards each other. if the air was not much loaded, it only falls in dews on the mountain tops and sides, forms springs, and descends to the vales in rivulets, which, united, make larger streams and rivers. if much loaded, the electrical fire is at once taken from the whole cloud; and, in leaving it, flashes brightly and cracks loudly; the particles instantly coalescing for want of that fire, and falling in a heavy shower. 30. when a ridge of mountains thus dams the clouds, and draws the electrical fire from the cloud first approaching it; that which next follows, when it comes near the first cloud, now deprived of its fire, flashes into it, and begins to deposite its own water; the first cloud again flashing into the mountains; the third approaching cloud, and all succeeding ones, acting in the same manner as far back as they extend, which may be over many hundred miles of country. 31. hence the continual storms of rain, thunder, and lightning on the east side of the andes, which running north and south, and being vastly high, intercept all the clouds brought against them from the atlantic ocean by the trade winds, and oblige them to deposite their waters, by which the vast rivers amazons, la plata, and oroonoko are formed, which return the water into the same sea, after having fertilized a country of very great extent. 32. if a country be plain, having no mountains to intercept the electrified clouds, yet it is not without means to make them deposite their water. for if an electrified cloud, coming from the sea, meets in the air a cloud raised from the land, and therefore not electrified; the first will flash its fire into the latter, and thereby both clouds shall be made suddenly to deposite water. 33. the electrified particles of the first cloud close when they lose their fire; the particles of the other clouds close in receiving it: in both, they have thereby an opportunity of coalescing into drops.--the concussion, or jerk given to the air, contributes also to shake down the water, not only from those two clouds, but from others near them. hence the sudden fall of rain immediately after flashes of lightning. 34. to shew this by an easy experiment: take two round pieces of pasteboard two inches diameter; from the centre and circumference of each of them suspend by fine silk threads eighteen inches long, seven small balls of wood, or seven peas equal in goodness: so will the balls appending to each pasteboard, form equal equilateral triangles, one ball being in the centre, and six at equal distances from that, and from each other; and thus they represent particles of air. dip both sets in water, and some adhering to each ball, they will represent air loaded. dexterously electrify one set, and its ball will repel each other to a greater distance, enlarging the triangles. could the water supported by seven balls come into contact, it would form a drop or drops so heavy as to break the cohesion it had with the balls, and so fall. let the two sets then represent two clouds, the one a sea cloud electrified, the other a land cloud. bring them within the sphere of attraction, and they will draw towards each other, and you will see the separated balls close thus; the first electrified ball that comes near an unelectrified ball by attraction joins it, and gives it fire; instantly they separate, and each flies to another ball of its own party, one to give, the other to receive fire; and so it proceeds through both sets, but so quick as to be in a manner instantaneous. in the cohesion they shake off and drop their water, which represents rain. 35. thus when sea and land clouds would pass at too great a distance for the flash, they are attracted towards each other till within that distance; for the sphere of electrical attraction is far beyond the distance of flashing. 36. when a great number of clouds from the sea meet a number of clouds raised from the land, the electrical flashes appear to strike in different parts; and as the clouds are jostled and mixed by the winds, or brought near by the electrical attraction, they continue to give and receive flash after flash, till the electrical fire is equally diffused. 37. when the gun-barrel, (in electrical experiments) has but little electrical fire in it, you must approach it very near with your knuckle before you can draw a spark. give it more fire, and it will give a spark at a greater distance. two gun-barrels united, and as highly electrified, will give a spark at a still greater distance. but if two gun-barrels electrified will strike at two inches distance, and make a loud snap, to what a great distance may 10,000 acres of electrified cloud strike and give its fire, and how loud must be that crack? 38. it is a common thing to see clouds at different heights passing different ways, which shews different currents of air one under the other. as the air between the tropics is rarefied by the sun, it rises, the denser northern and southern air pressing into its place. the air so rarefied and forced up, passes northward and southward, and must descend in the polar regions, if it has no opportunity before, that the circulation may be carried on. 39. as currents of air, with the clouds therein, pass different ways, it is easy to conceive how the clouds, passing over each other, may attract each other, and so come near enough for the electrical stroke. and also how electrical clouds may be carried within land very far from the sea, before they have an opportunity to strike. 40. when the air, with its vapours raised from the ocean between the tropics, comes to descend in the polar regions, and to be in contact with the vapours arising there, the electrical fire they brought begins to be communicated, and is seen in clear nights, being first visible where it is first in motion, that is, where the contact begins, or in the most northern part; from thence the streams of light seem to shoot southerly, even up to the zenith of northern countries. but though the light seems to shoot from the north southerly, the progress of the fire is really from the south northerly, its motion beginning in the north, being the reason that it is there seen first. for the electrical fire is never visible but when in motion, and leaping from body to body, or from particle to particle through the air. when it passes through dense bodies it is unseen. when a wire makes part of the circle, in the explosion of the electrical phial, the fire, though in great quantity, passes in the wire invisibly; but in passing along a chain, it becomes visible as it leaps from link to link. in passing along leaf gilding it is visible: for the leaf-gold is full of pores; hold a leaf to the light and it appears like a net, and the fire is seen in its leaping over the vacancies.--and as when a long canal filled with still water is opened at one end, in order to be discharged, the motion of the water begins first near the opened end, and proceeds towards the close end, though the water itself moves from the close towards the opened end: so the electrical fire discharged into the polar regions, perhaps from a thousand leagues length of vaporised air, appears first where it is first in motion, _i. e._ in the most northern part, and the appearance proceeds southward, though the fire really moves northward. this is supposed to account for the _aurora borealis_. 41. when there is great heat on the land, in a particular region (the sun having shone on it perhaps several days, while the surrounding countries have been screened by clouds) the lower air is rarefied and rises, the cooler denser air above descends; the clouds in that air meet from all sides, and join over the heated place; and if some are electrified, others not, lightning and thunder succeed, and showers fall. hence thunder-gusts after heats, and cool air after gusts; the water and the clouds that bring it, coming from a higher and therefore a cooler region. 42. an electrical spark, drawn from an irregular body at some distance is scarcely ever strait, but shows crooked and waving in the air. so do the flashes of lightning; the clouds being very irregular bodies. 43. as electrified clouds pass over a country, high hills and high trees, lofty towers, spires, masts of ships, chimneys, &c. as so many prominencies and points, draw the electrical fire, and the whole cloud discharges there. 44. dangerous, therefore, is it to take shelter under a tree, during a thunder-gust. it has been fatal to many, both men and beasts. 45. it is safer to be in the open field for another reason. when the cloaths are wet, if a flash in its way to the ground should strike your head, it may run in the water over the surface of your body; whereas, if your cloaths were dry, it would go through the body, because the blood and other humours, containing so much water, are more ready conductors. hence a wet rat cannot be killed by the exploding electrical bottle, when a dry rat may[45]. 46. common fire is in all bodies, more or less, as well as electrical fire. perhaps they may be different modifications of the same element; or they may be different elements. the latter is by some suspected. 47. if they are different things, yet they may and do subsist together in the same body. 48. when electrical fire strikes through a body, it acts upon the common fire contained in it, and puts that fire in motion; and if there be a sufficient quantity of each kind of fire, the body will be inflamed. 49. when the quantity of common fire in the body is small, the quantity of the electrical fire (or the electrical stroke) should be greater: if the quantity of common fire be great, less electrical fire suffices to produce the effect. 50. thus spirits must be heated before we can fire them by the electrical spark.[46] if they are much heated, a small spark will do; if not, the spark must be greater. 51. till lately we could only fire warm vapours; but now we can burn hard dry rosin. and when we can procure greater electrical sparks, we may be able to fire not only unwarmed spirits, as lightning does, but even wood, by giving sufficient agitation to the common fire contained in it, as friction we know will do. 52. sulphureous and inflammable vapours, arising from the earth, are easily kindled by lightning. besides what arise from the earth, such vapours are sent out by stacks of moist hay, corn, or other vegetables, which heat and reek. wood, rotting in old trees or buildings, does the same. such are therefore easily and often fired. 53. metals are often melted by lightning, though perhaps not from heat in the lightning, nor altogether from agitated fire in the metals.--for as whatever body can insinuate itself between the particles of metal, and overcome the attraction by which they cohere (as sundry menstrua can) will make the solid become a fluid, as well as fire, yet without heating it: so the electrical fire, or lightning, creating a violent repulsion between the particles of the metal it passes through, the metal is fused. 54. if you would, by a violent fire, melt off the end of a nail, which is half driven into a door, the heat given the whole nail, before a part would melt, must burn the board it sticks in; and the melted part would burn the floor it dropped on. but if a sword can be melted in the scabbard, and money in a man's pocket by lightning, without burning either, it must be a cold fusion[47]. 55. lightning rends some bodies. the electrical spark will strike a hole through a quire of strong paper. 56. if the source of lightning, assigned in this paper, be the true one, there should be little thunder heard at sea far from land. and accordingly some old sea-captains, of whom enquiry has been made, do affirm, that the fact agrees perfectly with the hypothesis; for that in crossing the great ocean, they seldom meet with thunder till they come into soundings; and that the islands far from the continent have very little of it. and a curious observer, who lived thirteen years at bermudas, says, there was less thunder there in that whole time than he has sometimes heard in a month at carolina. footnotes: [43] an _electrified bumper_ is a small thin glass tumbler, nearly filled with wine, and electrified as the bottle. this when brought to the lips gives a shock, if the party be close shaved, and does not breath on the liquor.--april 29, 1749. [44] thunder-gusts are sudden storms of thunder and lightning, which are frequently of short duration, but sometimes produce mischievous effects. [45] this was tried with a bottle, containing about a quart. it is since thought that one of the large glass jars, mentioned in these papers, might have killed him, though wet. [46] we have since fired spirits without heating them, when the weather is warm. a little, poured into the palm of the hand, will be warmed sufficiently by the hand, if the spirit be well rectified. ether takes fire most readily. [47] these facts, though related in several accounts, are now doubted; since it has been observed that the parts of a bell-wire which fell on the floor, being broken and partly melted by lightning, did actually burn into the boards. (see philosophical transactions, vol. li. part i.) and mr. kinnersley has found that a fine iron wire, melted by electricity, has had the same effect. to peter collinson, esq. f. r. s. london. _introductory letter to some additional papers._ _philadelphia, july 29, 1750._ sir, as you first put us on electrical experiments, by sending to our library company a tube, with directions how to use it; and as our honorable proprietary enabled us to carry those experiments to a greater height, by his generous present of a complete electrical apparatus; it is fit that both should know, from time to time, what progress we make. it was in this view i wrote and sent you my former papers on this subject, desiring, that as i had not the honour of a direct correspondence with that bountiful benefactor to our library, they might be communicated to him through your hands. in the same view i write and send you this additional paper. if it happens to bring you nothing new, (which may well be, considering the number of ingenious men in europe, continually engaged in the same researches) at least it will shew, that the instruments put into our hands are not neglected; and that if no valuable discoveries are made by us, whatever the cause may be, it is not want of industry and application. i am, sir, your much obliged humble servant, b. franklin. _opinions and conjectures, concerning the properties and effects of the electrical matter, and the means of preserving buildings, ships, &c. from lightning, arising from experiments and observations made at philadelphia, 1749.--golden fish.--extraction of effluvial virtues by electricity impracticable._ § 1. the electrical matter consists of particles extremely subtile since it can permeate common matter, even the densest metals, with such ease and freedom as not to receive any perceptible resistance. 2. if any one should doubt whether the electrical matter passes through the substance of bodies, or only over and along their surfaces, a shock from an electrified large glass jar, taken through his own body, will probably convince him. 3. electrical matter differs from common matter in this, that the parts of the latter mutually attract, those of the former mutually repel each other. hence the appearing divergency in a stream of electrified effluvia. 4. but though the particles of electrical matter do repel each other, they are strongly attracted by all other matter[48]. 5. from these three things, the extreme subtilty of the electrical matter, the mutual repulsion of its parts, and the strong attraction between them and other matter, arise this effect, that, when a quantity of electrical matter is applied to a mass of common matter, of any bigness or length, within our observation (which hath not already got its quantity) it is immediately and equally diffused through the whole. 6. thus, common matter is a kind of spunge to the electrical fluid. and as a spunge would receive no water, if the parts of water were not smaller than the pores of the spunge; and even then but slowly, if there were not a mutual attraction between those parts and the parts of the spunge; and would still imbibe it faster, if the mutual attraction among the parts of the water did not impede, some force being required to separate them; and fastest, if, instead of attraction, there were a mutual repulsion among those parts, which would act in conjunction with the attraction of the spunge: so is the case between the electrical and common matter. 7. but in common matter there is (generally) as much of the electrical as it will contain within its substance. if more is added, it lies without upon the surface, and forms what we call an electrical atmosphere; and then the body is said to be electrified. 8. it is supposed, that all kinds of common matter do not attract and retain the electrical, with equal strength and force, for reasons to be given hereafter. and that those called electrics _per se_, as glass, &c. attract and retain it strongest, and contain the greatest quantity. 9. we know that the electrical fluid is _in_ common matter, because we can pump it _out_ by the globe or tube. we know that common matter has near as much as it can contain, because, when we add a little more to any portion of it, the additional quantity does not enter, but forms an electrical atmosphere. and we know that common matter has not (generally) more than it can contain, otherwise all loose portions of it would repel each other, as they constantly do when they have electric atmospheres. 10. the beneficial uses of this electric fluid in the creation we are not yet well acquainted with, though doubtless such there are, and those very considerable; but we may see some pernicious consequences that would attend a much greater proportion of it. for, had this globe we live on, as much of it in proportion as we can give to a globe of iron, wood, or the like, the particles of dust and other light matters that get loose from it, would, by virtue of their separate electrical atmospheres, not only repel each other, but be repelled from the earth, and not easily be brought to unite with it again; whence our air would continually be more and more clogged with foreign matter, and grow unfit for respiration. this affords another occasion of adoring that wisdom which has made all things by weight and measure! 11. if a piece of common matter be supposed entirely free from electrical matter, and a single particle of the latter be brought nigh, it will be attracted, and enter the body, and take place in the centre, or where the attraction is every way equal. if more particles enter, they take their places where the balance is equal between the attraction of the common matter, and their own mutual repulsion. it is supposed they form triangles, whose sides shorten as their number encreases; till the common matter has drawn in so many, that its whole power of compressing those triangles by attraction, is equal to their whole power of expanding themselves by repulsion; and then will such piece of matter receive no more. 12. when part of this natural proportion of electrical fluid is taken out of a piece of common matter, the triangles formed by the remainder, are supposed to widen by the mutual repulsion of the parts, until they occupy the whole piece. 13. when the quantity of electrical fluid, taken from a piece of common matter, is restored again, it enters, the expanded triangles, being again compressed till there is room for the whole. 14. to explain this: take two apples, or two balls of wood or other matter, each having its own natural quantity of the electrical fluid. suspend them by silk lines from the cieling. apply the wire of a well-charged vial, held in your hand, to one of them (a) _fig. 7_, and it will receive from the wire a quantity of the electrical fluid; but will not imbibe it, being already full. the fluid therefore will flow round its surface, and form an electrical atmosphere. bring a into contact with b, and half the electrical fluid is communicated, so that each has now an electrical atmosphere, and therefore they repel each other. take away these atmospheres, by touching the balls, and leave them in their natural state: then, having fixed a stick of sealing-wax to the middle of the vial to hold it by, apply the wire to a, at the same time the coating touches b. thus will a quantity of the electrical fluid be drawn out of b, and thrown on a. so that a will have a redundance of this fluid, which forms an atmosphere round, and b an exactly equal deficiency. now, bring these balls again into contact, and the electrical atmosphere will not be divided between a and b, into two smaller atmospheres as before; for b will drink up the whole atmosphere of a, and both will be found again in their natural state. 15. the form of the electrical atmosphere is that of the body it surrounds. this shape may be rendered visible in a still air, by raising a smoke from dry rosin dropt into a hot tea-spoon under the electrified body, which will be attracted, and spread itself equally on all sides, covering and concealing the body[49]. and this form it takes, because it is attracted by all parts of the surface of the body, though it cannot enter the substance already replete. without this attraction, it would not remain round the body, but dissipate in the air. 16. the atmosphere of electrical particles surrounding an electrified sphere, is not more disposed to leave it, or more easily drawn off from any one part of the sphere than another, because it is equally attracted by every part. but that is not the case with bodies of any other figure. from a cube it is more easily drawn at the corners than at the plane sides, and so from the angles of a body of any other form, and still most easily from the angle that is most acute. thus, if a body shaped as a, b, c, d, e, in fig. 8. be electrified, or have an electrical atmosphere communicated to it, and we consider every side as a base on which the particles rest, and by which they are attracted, one may see, by imagining a line from a to f, and another from e to g, that the portion of the atmosphere included in f, a, e, g, has the line a, e, for its basis. so the portion of atmosphere included in h, a, b, i, has the line a b for its basis. and likewise the portion included in k, b, c, l, has b, c, to rest on; and so on the other side of the figure. now if you would draw off this atmosphere with any blunt smooth body, and approach the middle of the side a, b, you must come very near, before the force of your attracter exceeds the force or power with which that side holds its atmosphere. but there is a small portion between i, b, k, that has less of the surface to rest on, and to be attracted by, than the neighbouring portions, while at the same time there is a mutual repulsion between its particles, and the particles of those portions, therefore here you can get it with more ease, or at a greater distance. between f, a, h, there is a larger portion that has yet a less surface to rest on, and to attract it; here, therefore, you can get it away still more easily. but easiest of all between l, c, m, where the quantity is largest, and the surface to attract and keep it back the least. when you have drawn away one of these angular portions of the fluid, another succeeds in its place, from the nature of fluidity, and the mutual repulsion before-mentioned; and so the atmosphere continues flowing off at such angle, like a stream, till no more is remaining. the extremities of the portions of atmosphere over these angular parts, are likewise at a greater distance from the electrified body, as may be seen by the inspection of the above figure; the point of the atmosphere of the angle c, being much farther from c, than any other part of the atmosphere over the lines c, b, or b, a: and, besides the distance arising from the nature of the figure, where the attraction is less, the particles will naturally expand to a greater distance by their mutual repulsion. on these accounts we suppose electrified bodies discharge their atmospheres upon unelectrified bodies more easily, and at a greater distance from their angles and points than from their smooth sides.--those points will also discharge into the air, when the body has too great an electrical atmosphere, without bringing any non-electric near, to receive what is thrown off: for the air, though an electric _per se_, yet has always more or less water and other non-electric matters mixed with it: and these attract and receive what is so discharged. 17. but points have a property, by which they _draw on_ as well as _throw off_ the electrical fluid, at greater distances than blunt bodies can. that is, as the pointed part of an electrified body will discharge the atmosphere of that body, or communicate it farthest to another body, so the point of an unelectrified body will draw off the electrical atmosphere from an electrified body, farther than a blunter part of the same unelectrified body will do. thus, a pin held by the head, and the point presented to an electrified body, will draw off its atmosphere at a foot distance; where, if the head were presented instead of the point, no such effect would follow. to understand this, we may consider, that if a person standing on the floor would draw off the electrical atmosphere from an electrified body, an iron crow and a blunt knitting-needle held alternately in his hand, and presented for that purpose, do not draw with different forces in proportion to their different masses. for the man, and what he holds in his hand, be it large or small, are connected with the common mass of unelectrified matter; and the force with which he draws is the same in both cases, it consisting in the different proportion of electricity in the electrified body, and that common mass. but the force with which the electrified body retains its atmosphere by attracting it, is proportioned to the surface over which the particles are placed; _i. e._ four square inches of that surface retain their atmosphere with four times the force that one square inch retains its atmosphere. and as in plucking the hairs from the horse's tail, a degree of strength not sufficient to pull away a handful at once, could yet easily strip it hair by hair; so a blunt body presented cannot draw off a number of particles at once, but a pointed one, with no greater force, takes them away easily, particle by particle. 18. these explanations of the power and operation of points, when they first occurred to me, and while they first floated in my mind, appeared perfectly satisfactory; but now i have written them, and considered them more closely, i must own i have some doubts about them; yet, as i have at present nothing better to offer in their stead, i do not cross them out: for, even a bad solution read, and its faults discovered, has often given rise to a good one, in the mind of an ingenious reader. 19. nor is it of much importance to us to know the manner in which nature executes her laws; it is enough if we know the laws themselves. it is of real use to know that china left in the air unsupported will fall and break; but _how_ it comes to fall and _why_ it breaks are matters of speculation. it is a pleasure indeed to know them, but we can preserve our china without it. 20. thus in the present case, to know this power of points may possibly be of some use to mankind, though we should never be able to explain it. the following experiments, as well as those in my first paper, show this power. i have a large prime conductor, made of several thin sheets of clothier's pasteboard, formed into a tube, near ten feet long and a foot diameter. it is covered with dutch embossed-paper, almost totally gilt. this large metallic surface supports a much greater electrical atmosphere than a rod of iron of 50 times the weight would do. it is suspended by silk lines, and when charged will strike, at near two inches distance, a pretty hard stroke, so as to make ones knuckle ach. let a person standing on the floor present the point of a needle at 12 or more inches distance from it, and while the needle is so presented, the conductor cannot be charged, the point drawing off the fire as fast as it is thrown on by the electrical globe. let it be charged, and then present the point at the same distance, and it will suddenly be discharged. in the dark you may see the light on the point, when the experiment is made. and if the person holding the point stands upon wax, he will be electrified by receiving the fire at that distance. attempt to draw off the electricity with a blunt body, as a bolt of iron round at the end, and smooth (a silversmith's iron punch, inch thick, is what i use) and you must bring it within the distance of three inches before you can do it, and then it is done with a stroke and crack. as the pasteboard tube hangs loose on silk lines, when you approach it with the punch-iron, it likewise will move towards the punch, being attracted while it is charged; but if, at the same instant, a point be presented as before, it retires again, for the point discharges it. take a pair of large brass scales, of two or more feet beam, the cords of the scales being silk. suspend the beam by a pack-thread from the cieling, so that the bottom of the scales may be about a foot from the floor: the scales will move round in a circle by the untwisting of the pack-thread. set the iron punch on the end upon the floor, in such a place as that the scales may pass over it in making their circle: then electrify one scale, by applying the wire of a charged phial to it. as they move round, you see that scale draw nigher to the floor, and dip more when it comes over the punch; and if that be placed at a proper distance, the scale will snap and discharge its fire into it. but if a needle be stuck on the end of the punch, its point upwards, the scale, instead of drawing nigh to the punch, and snapping, discharges its fire silently through the point, and rises higher from the punch. nay, even if the needle be placed upon the floor near the punch, its point upwards, the end of the punch, though so much higher than the needle, will not attract the scale and receive its fire, for the needle will get it and convey it away, before it comes nigh enough for the punch to act. and this is constantly observable in these experiments, that the greater quantity of electricity on the pasteboard-tube, the farther it strikes or discharges its fire, and the point likewise will draw it off at a still greater distance. now if the fire of electricity and that of lightning be the same, as i have endeavoured to shew at large, in a former paper, this pasteboard tube and these scales may represent electrified clouds. if a tube of only ten feet long will strike and discharge its fire on the punch at two or three inches distance, an electrified cloud of perhaps 10,000 acres may strike and discharge on the earth at a proportionably greater distance. the horizontal motion of the scales over the floor, may represent the motion of the clouds over the earth; and the erect iron punch, a hill or high building; and then we see how electrified clouds passing over hills or high buildings at too great a height to strike, may be attracted lower till within their striking distance. and lastly, if a needle fixed on the punch with its point upright, or even on the floor below the punch, will draw the fire from the scale silently at a much greater than the striking distance, and so prevent its descending towards the punch; or if in its course it would have come nigh enough to strike, yet being first deprived of its fire it cannot, and the punch is thereby secured from the stroke; i say, if these things are so, may not the knowledge of this power of points be of use to mankind, in preserving houses, churches, ships, &c. from the stroke of lightning, by directing us to fix on the highest parts of those edifices, upright rods of iron made sharp as a needle, and gilt to prevent rusting, and from the foot of those rods a wire down the outside of the building into the ground, or down round one of the shrouds of a ship, and down her side till it reaches the water? would not these pointed rods probably draw the electrical fire silently out of a cloud before it came nigh enough to strike, and thereby secure us from that most sudden and terrible mischief? 21. to determine the question, whether the clouds that contain lightning are electrified or not, i would propose an experiment to be tried where it may be done conveniently. on the top of some high tower or steeple, place a kind of centry-box (as in fig. 9) big enough to contain a man and an electrical stand. from the middle of the stand let an iron rod rise and pass bending out of the door, and then upright 20 or 30 feet, pointed very sharp at the end. if the electrical stand be kept clean and dry, a man standing on it, when such clouds are passing low, might be electrified and afford sparks, the rod drawing fire to him from a cloud. if any danger to the man should be apprehended (though i think there would be none) let him stand on the floor of his box, and now and then bring near to the rod the loop of a wire that has one end fastened to the leads, he holding it by a wax handle; so the sparks, if the rod is electrified, will strike from the rod to the wire, and not affect him. 22. before i leave this subject of lightning, i may mention some other similarities between the effects of that, and those of electricity. lightning has often been known to strike people blind. a pigeon that we struck dead to appearance by the electrical shock, recovering life, drooped about the yard several days, eat nothing, though crumbs were thrown to it, but declined and died. we did not think of its being deprived of sight; but afterwards a pullet, struck dead in like manner, being recovered by repeatedly blowing into its lungs, when set down on the floor, ran headlong against the wall, and on examination appeared perfectly blind. hence we concluded that the pigeon also had been absolutely blinded by the shock. the biggest animal we have yet killed, or tried to kill, with the electrical stroke, was a well-grown pullet. 23. reading in the ingenious dr. miles's account of the thunder-storm at stretham, the effect of the lightning in stripping off all the paint that had covered a gilt moulding of a pannel of wainscot, without hurting the rest of the paint, i had a mind to lay a coat of paint over the filletting of gold on the cover of a book, and try the effect of a strong electrical flash sent through that gold from a charged sheet of glass. but having no paint at hand, i pasted a narrow strip of paper over it; and when dry, sent the flash through the gilding, by which the paper was torn off from end to end, with such force, that it was broke in several places, and in others brought away part of the grain of the turky-leather in which it was bound; and convinced me, that had it been painted, the paint would have been stript off in the same manner with that on the wainscot at stretham. 24. lightning melts metals, and i hinted in my paper on that subject, that i suspected it to be a cold fusion; i do not mean a fusion by force of cold, but a fusion without heat[50]. we have also melted gold, silver, and copper, in small quantities, by the electrical flash. the manner is this: take leaf-gold, leaf-silver, or leaf-gilt copper, commonly called leaf-brass, or dutch gold; cut off from the leaf long narrow strips, the breadth of a straw. place one of these strips between two strips of smooth glass that are about the width of your finger. if one strip of gold, the length of the leaf, be not long enough for the glass, add another to the end of it, so that you may have a little part hanging out loose at each end of the glass. bind the pieces of glass together from end to end with strong silk thread; then place it so as to be part of an electrical circuit, (the ends of gold hanging out being of use to join with the other parts of the circuit) and send the flash through it, from a large electrified jar or sheet of glass. then if your strips of glass remain whole, you will see that the gold is missing in several places, and instead of it a metallic stain on both the glasses; the stains on the upper and under glass exactly similar in the minutest stroke, as may be seen by holding them to the light; the metal appeared to have been not only melted, but even vitrified, or otherwise so driven into the pores of the glass, as to be protected by it from the action of the strongest _aqua fortis_, or _aqua regia_. i send you enclosed two little pieces of glass with these metallic stains upon them, which cannot be removed without taking part of the glass with them. sometimes the stain spreads a little wider than the breadth of the leaf, and looks brighter at the edge, as by inspecting closely you may observe in these. sometimes the glass breaks to pieces; once the upper glass broke into a thousand pieces, looking like coarse salt. the pieces i send you were stained with dutch gold. true gold makes a darker stain, somewhat reddish; silver, a greenish stain. we once took two pieces of thick looking-glass, as broad as a gunter's scale, and six inches long; and placing leaf-gold between them, put them between two smoothly-plained pieces of wood, and fixed them tight in a book-binder's small press; yet though they were so closely confined, the force of the electrical shock shivered the glass into many pieces. the gold was melted, and stained into the glass, as usual. the circumstances of the breaking of the glass differ much in making the experiment, and sometimes it does not break at all: but this is constant, that the stains in the upper and under pieces are exact counterparts of each other. and though i have taken up the pieces of glass between my fingers immediately after this melting, i never could perceive the least warmth in them. 25. in one of my former papers, i mentioned, that gilding on a book, though at first it communicated the shock perfectly well, yet failed after a few experiments, which we could not account for. we have since found that one strong shock breaks the continuity of the gold in the filletting, and makes it look rather like dust of gold, abundance of its parts being broken and driven off; and it will seldom conduct above one strong shock. perhaps this may be the reason: when there is not a perfect continuity in the circuit, the fire must leap over the vacancies: there is a certain distance which it is able to leap over according to its strength; if a number of small vacancies, though each be very minute, taken together exceed that distance, it cannot leap over them, and so the shock is prevented. 26. from the before-mentioned law of electricity, that points as they are more or less acute, draw on and throw off the electrical fluid with more or less power, and at greater or less distances, and in larger or smaller quantities in the same time, we may see how to account for the situation of the leaf of gold suspended between two plates, the upper one continually electrified, the under one in a person's hand standing on the floor. when the upper plate is electrified, the leaf is attracted, and raised towards it, and would fly to that plate, were it not for its own points. the corner that happens to be uppermost when the leaf is rising, being a sharp point, from the extreme thinness of the gold, draws and receives at a distance a sufficient quantity of the electric fluid to give itself an electric atmosphere, by which its progress to the upper plate is stopped, and it begins to be repelled from that plate, and would be driven back to the under plate, but that its lowest corner is likewise a point, and throws off or discharges the overplus of the leaf's atmosphere, as fast as the upper corner draws it on. were these two points perfectly equal in acuteness, the leaf would take place exactly in the middle space, for its weight is a trifle compared to the power acting on it: but it is generally nearest the unelectrified plate, because, when the leaf is offered to the electrified plate, at a distance, the sharpest point is commonly first affected and raised towards it; so _that_ point, from its greater acuteness, receiving the fluid faster than its opposite can discharge it at equal distances, it retires from the electrified plate, and draws nearer to the unelectrified plate, till it comes to a distance where the discharge can be exactly equal to the receipt, the latter being lessened, and the former encreased; and there it remains as long as the globe continues to supply fresh electrical matter. this will appear plain, when the difference of acuteness in the corners is made very great. cut a piece of dutch gold, (which is fittest for these experiments on account of its great strength) into the form of fig. 10, the upper corner a right angle, the two next obtuse angles, and the lowest a very acute one; and bring this on your plate under the electrified plate, in such a manner as that the right-angled part may be first raised (which is done by covering the acute part with the hollow of your hand) and you will see this leaf take place much nearer to the upper than the under plate; because without being nearer, it cannot receive so fast at its right-angled point, as it can discharge at its acute one. turn this leaf with the acute part uppermost, and then it takes place nearest the unelectrified plate; because, otherwise, it receives faster at its acute point, than it can discharge at its right-angled one. thus the difference of distance is always proportioned to the difference of acuteness. take care in cutting your leaf, to leave no little ragged particles on the edges, which sometimes form points where you would not have them. you may make this figure so acute below, and blunt above, as to need no under plate, it discharging fast enough into the air. when it is made narrower, as the figure between the pricked lines, we call it the _golden fish_, from its manner of acting. for if you take it by the tail, and hold it at a foot or greater horizontal distance from the prime conductor, it will, when let go, fly to it with a brisk but wavering motion, like that of an eel through the water; it will then take place under the prime conductor, at perhaps a quarter or half an inch distance, and keep a continual shaking of its tail like a fish, so that it seems animated. turn its tail towards the prime conductor, and then it flies to your finger, and seems to nibble it. and if you hold a plate under it at six or eight inches distance, and cease turning the globe when the electrical atmosphere of the conductor grows small, it will descend to the plate and swim back again several times with the same fish-like motion, greatly to the entertainment of spectators. by a little practice in blunting or sharpening the heads or tails of these figures, you may make them take place as desired, nearer or farther from the electrified plate. 27. it is said in section 8, of this paper, that all kinds of common matter are supposed not to attract the electrical fluid with equal strength; and that those called electrics _per se_, as glass, &c. attract and retain it strongest, and contain the greatest quantity. this latter position may seem a paradox to some, being contrary to the hitherto received opinion; and therefore i shall now endeavour to explain it. 28. in order to this, let it first be considered, _that we cannot by any means we are yet acquainted with, force the electrical fluid through glass_. i know it is commonly thought that it easily pervades glass; and the experiment of a feather suspended by a thread, in a bottle hermetically sealed, yet moved by bringing a rubbed tube near the outside of the bottle, is alleged to prove it. but, if the electrical fluid so easily pervades glass, how does the phial become _charged_ (as we term it) when we hold it in our hands? would not the fire, thrown in by the wire, pass through to our hands, and so escape into the floor? would not the bottle in that case be left just as we found it, uncharged, as we know a metal bottle so attempted to be charged would be? indeed, if there be the least crack, the minutest solution of continuity in the glass, though it remains so tight that nothing else we know of will pass, yet the extremely subtile electric fluid flies through such a crack with the greatest freedom, and such a bottle we know can never be charged: what then makes the difference between such a bottle and one that is sound, but this, that the fluid can pass through the one, and not through the other[51]? 29. it is true, there is an experiment that at first sight would be apt to satisfy a slight observer, that the fire, thrown into the bottle by the wire, does really pass through the glass. it is this: place the bottle on a glass stand, under the prime conductor, suspend a bullet by a chain from the prime conductor, till it comes within a quarter of an inch right over the wire of the bottle; place your knuckle on the glass stand, at just the same distance from the coating of the bottle, as the bullet is from its wire. now let the globe be turned, and you see a spark strike from the bullet to the wire of the bottle, and the same instant you see and feel an exactly equal spark striking from the coating on your knuckle, and so on, spark for spark. this looks as if the whole received by the bottle was again discharged from it. and yet the bottle by this means is charged[52]! and therefore the fire that thus leaves the bottle, though the same in quantity, cannot be the very same fire that entered at the wire, for if it were, the bottle would remain uncharged. 30. if the fire that so leaves the bottle be not the same that is thrown in through the wire, it must be fire that subsisted in the bottle (that is, in the glass of the bottle) before the operation began. 31. if so, there must be a great quantity in glass, because a great quantity is thus discharged, even from very thin glass. 32. that this electrical fluid or fire is strongly attracted by glass, we know from the quickness and violence with which it is resumed by the part that had been deprived of it, when there is an opportunity. and by this, that we cannot from a mass of glass, draw a quantity of electric fire, or electrify the whole mass _minus_, as we can a mass of metal. we cannot lessen or increase its whole quantity, for the quantity it has it holds; and it has as much as it can hold. its pores are filled with it as full as the mutual repellency of the particles will admit; and what is already in, refuses, or strongly repels, any additional quantity. nor have we any way of moving the electrical fluid in glass, but one; that is, by covering part of the two surfaces of thin glass with non-electrics, and then throwing an additional quantity of this fluid on one surface, which spreading in the non-electric, and being bound by it to that surface, acts by its repelling force on the particles of the electrical fluid contained in the other surface, and drives them out of the glass into the non-electric on that side from whence they are discharged, and then those added on the charged side can enter. but when this is done, there is no more in the glass, nor less than before, just as much having left it on one side as it received on the other. 33. i feel a want of terms here, and doubt much whether i shall be able to make this part intelligible. by the word _surface_, in this case, i do not mean mere length and breadth without thickness; but when i speak of the upper or under surface of a piece of glass, the outer or inner surface of the phial, i mean length, breadth, and half the thickness, and beg the favour of being so understood. now i suppose, that glass in its first principles, and in the furnace, has no more of this electrical fluid than other common matter: that when it is blown, as it cools, and the particles of common fire leave it, its pores become a vacuum: that the component parts of glass are extremely small and fine, i guess from its never showing a rough face when it breaks, but always a polish; and from the smallness of its particles i suppose the pores between them must be exceedingly small, which is the reason that aqua-fortis, nor any other menstruum we have, can enter to separate them and dissolve the substance; nor is any fluid we know of, fine enough to enter, except common fire, and the electric fluid. now the departing fire, leaving a vacuum, as aforesaid, between these pores, which air nor water are fine enough to enter and fill, the electric fluid (which is every where ready in what we call the non-electrics, and in the non-electric mixtures that are in the air) is attracted in; yet does not become fixed with the substance of the glass, but subsists there as water in a porous stone, retained only by the attraction of the fixed parts, itself still loose and a fluid. but i suppose farther, that in the cooling of the glass, its texture becomes closest in the middle, and forms a kind of partition, in which the pores are so narrow, that the particles of the electrical fluid, which enter both surfaces at the same time, cannot go through, or pass and repass from one surface to the other, and so mix together; yet, though the particles of electric fluid, imbibed by each surface, cannot themselves pass through to those of the other, their repellency can, and by this means they act on one another. the particles of the electric fluid have a mutual repellency, but by the power of attraction in the glass they are condensed or forced nearer to each other. when the glass has received, and, by its attraction, forced closer together so much of this electric fluid, as that the power of attracting and condensing in the one, is equal to the power of expansion in the other, it can imbibe no more, and that remains its constant whole quantity; but each surface would receive more, if the repellency of what is in the opposite surface did not resist its entrance. the quantities of this fluid in each surface being equal, their repelling action on each other is equal; and therefore those of one surface cannot drive out those of the other; but, if a greater quantity is forced into one surface than the glass would naturally draw in, this increases the repelling power on that side, and overpowering the attraction on the other, drives out part of the fluid that had been imbibed by that surface, if there be any non-electric ready to receive it: such there is in all cases where glass is electrified to give a shock. the surface that has been thus emptied, by having its electrical fluid driven out, resumes again an equal quantity with violence, as soon as the glass has an opportunity to discharge that over quantity more than it could retain by attraction in its other surface, by the additional repellency of which the vacuum had been occasioned. for experiments favouring (if i may not say confirming) this hypothesis, i must, to avoid repetition, beg leave to refer you back to what is said of the electrical phial in my former papers. 34. let us now see how it will account for several other appearances.--glass, a body extremely elastic, (and perhaps its elasticity may be owing in some degree to the subsisting of so great a quantity of this repelling fluid in its pores) must, when rubbed, have its rubbed surface somewhat stretched, or its solid parts drawn a little farther asunder, so that the vacancies in which the electrical fluid resides, become larger, affording room for more of that fluid, which is immediately attracted into it from the cushion or hand rubbing, they being supplied from the common stock. but the instant the parts of the glass so opened and filled, have passed the friction, they close again, and force the additional quantity out upon the surface, where it must rest till that part comes round to the cushion again, unless some non-electric (as the prime conductor, first presents to receive it[53]). but if the inside of the globe be lined with a non-electric, the additional repellency of the electrical fluid, thus collected by friction on the rubbed part of the globe's outer surface, drives an equal quantity out of the inner surface into that non-electric lining, which receiving it, and carrying it away from the rubbed part into the common mass, through the axis of the globe, and frame of the machine, the new collected electrical fluid can enter and remain in the outer surface, and none of it (or a very little) will be received by the prime conductor. as this charged part of the globe comes round to the cushion again, the outer surface delivers its overplus fire into the cushion, the opposite inner surface receiving at the same time an equal quantity from the floor. every electrician knows that a globe wet within will afford little or no fire, but the reason has not before been attempted to be given, that i know of. 34. so if a tube lined with a non-electric be rubbed[54], little or no fire is obtained from it; what is collected from the hand, in the downward rubbing stroke, entering the pores of the glass, and driving an equal quantity out of the inner surface into the non-electric lining: and the hand in passing up to take a second stroke, takes out again what had been thrown into the outer surface, and then the inner surface receives back again what it had given to the non-electric lining. thus the particles of electrical fluid belonging to the inside surface go in and out of their pores every stroke given to the tube. put a wire into the tube, the inward end in contact with the non-electric lining, so it will represent the leyden bottle. let a second person touch the wire while you rub, and the fire driven out of the inward surface when you give the stroke, will pass through him into the common mass, and return through him when the inner surface resumes its quantity, and therefore this new kind of leyden bottle cannot be so charged. but thus it may: after every stroke, before you pass your hand up to make another, let a second person apply his finger to the wire, take the spark, and then withdraw his finger; and so on till he has drawn a number of sparks; thus will the inner surface be exhausted, and the outer surface charged; then wrap a sheet of gilt paper close round the outer surface, and grasping it in your hand you may receive a shock by applying the finger of the other hand to the wire: for now the vacant pores in the inner surface resume their quantity, and the overcharged pores in the outer surface discharge that overplus; the equilibrium being restored through your body, which could not be restored through the glass[55]. if the tube be exhausted of air, a non-electric lining, in contact with the wire, is not necessary; for _in vacuo_ the electrical fire will fly freely from the inner surface, without a non-electric conductor: but air resists in motion; for being itself an electric _per se_, it does not attract it, having already its quantity. so the air never draws off an electric atmosphere from any body, but in proportion to the non-electrics mixed with it: it rather keeps such an atmosphere confined, which, from the mutual repulsion of its particles, tends to dissipation, and would immediately dissipate _in vacuo_.--and thus the experiment of the feather inclosed in a glass vessel hermetically sealed, but moving on the approach of the rubbed tube, is explained. when an additional quantity of the electrical fluid is applied to the side of the vessel by the atmosphere of the tube, a quantity is repelled and driven out of the inner surface of that side into the vessel, and there affects the feather, returning again into its pores, when the tube with its atmosphere is withdrawn; not that the particles of that atmosphere did themselves pass through the glass to the feather. and every other appearance i have yet seen, in which glass and electricity are concerned, are, i think, explained with equal ease by the same hypothesis. yet, perhaps, it may not be a true one, and i shall be obliged to him that affords me a better. 35. thus i take the difference between non-electrics, and glass, an electric _per se_, to consist in these two particulars. 1st, that a non-electric easily suffers a change in the quantity of the electric fluid it contains. you may lessen its whole quantity, by drawing out a part, which the whole body will again resume; but of glass you can only lessen the quantity contained in one of its surfaces; and not that, but by supplying an equal quantity at the same time to the other surface: so that the whole glass may always have the same quantity in the two surfaces, their two different quantities being added together. and this can only be done in glass that is thin; beyond a certain thickness we have yet no power that can make this change. and, 2dly, that the electric fire freely removes from place to place, in and through the substance of a non-electric, but not so through the substance of glass. if you offer a quantity to one end of a long rod of metal, it receives it, and when it enters, every particle that was before in the rod pushes its neighbour quite to the farther end, where the overplus is discharged; and this instantaneously where the rod is part of the circle in the experiment of the shock. but glass, from the smallness of its pores, or stronger attraction of what it contains, refuses to admit so free a motion: a glass rod will not conduct a shock, nor will the thinnest glass suffer any particle entering one of its surfaces to pass through to the other. 36. hence we see the impossibility of success in the experiments proposed, to draw out the effluvial virtues of a non-electric, as cinnamon, for instance, and mixing them with the electric fluid, to convey them with that into the body, by including it in the globe, and then applying friction, &c. for though the effluvia of cinnamon, and the electric fluid should mix within the globe, they would never come out together through the pores of the glass, and so go to the prime conductor; for the electric fluid itself cannot come through; and the prime conductor is always supplied from the cushion, and that from the floor. and besides, when the globe is filled with cinnamon, or other non-electric, no electric fluid can be obtained from its outer surface, for the reason before-mentioned. i have tried another way, which i thought more likely to obtain a mixture of the electric and other effluvia together, if such a mixture had been possible. i placed a glass plate under my cushion, to cut off the communication between the cushion and floor; then brought a small chain from the cushion into a glass of oil of turpentine, and carried another chain from the oil of turpentine to the floor, taking care that the chain from the cushion to the glass, touched no part of the frame of the machine. another chain was fixed to the prime conductor, and held in the hand of a person to be electrified. the ends of the two chains in the glass were near an inch distant from each other, the oil of turpentine between. now the globe being turned could draw no fire from the floor through the machine, the communication that way being cut off by the thick glass plate under the cushion: it must then draw it through the chains whose ends were dipped in the oil of turpentine. and as the oil of turpentine, being an electric _per se_, would not conduct, what came up from the floor was obliged to jump from the end of one chain to the end of the other, through the substance of that oil, which we could see in large sparks, and so it had a fair opportunity of seizing some of the finest particles of the oil in its passage, and carrying them off with it: but no such effect followed, nor could i perceive the least difference in the smell of the electric effluvia thus collected, from what it has when collected otherwise, nor does it otherwise affect the body of a person electrised. i likewise put into a phial, instead of water, a strong purgative liquid, and then charged the phial, and took repeated shocks from it, in which case every particle of the electrical fluid must, before it went through my body, have first gone through the liquid when the phial is charging, and returned through it when discharging, yet no other effect followed than if it had been charged with water. i have also smelt the electric fire when drawn through gold, silver, copper, lead, iron, wood, and the human body, and could perceive no difference: the odour is always the same, where the spark does not burn what it strikes; and therefore i imagine it does not take that smell from any quality of the bodies it passes through. and indeed, as that smell so readily leaves the electric matter, and adheres to the knuckle receiving the sparks, and to other things; i suspect that it never was connected with it, but arises instantaneously from something in the air acted upon by it. for if it was fine enough to come with the electric fluid through the body of one person, why should it stop on the skin of another? but i shall never have done, if i tell you all my conjectures, thoughts, and imaginations on the nature and operations of this electric fluid, and relate the variety of little experiments we have tried. i have already made this paper too long, for which i must crave pardon, not having now time to abridge it. i shall only add, that as it has been observed here that spirits will fire by the electric spark in the summer time, without heating them, when fahrenheit's thermometer is above 70; so when colder, if the operator puts a small flat bottle of spirits in his bosom, or a close pocket, with the spoon, some little time before he uses them, the heat of his body will communicate warmth more than sufficient for the purpose. additional experiments: _proving that the leyden bottle has no more electrical fire in it when charged, than before: nor less when discharged: that, in discharging, the fire does not issue from the wire and the coating at the same time, as some have thought, but that the coating always receives what is discharged by the wire, or an equal quantity; the outer surface being always in a negative state of electricity, when the inner surface is in a positive state._ place a thick plate of glass under the rubbing cushion, to cut off the communication of electrical fire from the floor to the cushion; then if there be no fine points or hairy threads sticking out from the cushion, or from the parts of the machine opposite to the cushion, (of which you must be careful) you can get but a few sparks from the prime conductor, which are all the cushion will part with. hang a phial then on the prime conductor, and it will not charge though you hold it by the coating.--but, form a communication by a chain from the coating to the cushion, and the phial will charge. for the globe then draws the electric fire out of the outside surface of the phial and forces it through the prime conductor and wire of the phial into the inside surface. thus the bottle is charged with its own fire, no other being to be had while the glass plate is under the cushion. hang two cork balls by flaxen threads to the prime conductor; then touch the coating of the bottle, and they will be electrified and recede from each other. for just as much fire as you give the coating, so much is discharged through the wire upon the prime conductor, whence the cork balls receive an electrical atmosphere.--but, take a wire bent in the form of a c, with a stick of wax fixed to the outside of the curve, to hold it by; and apply one end of this wire to the coating, and the other at the same time to the prime conductor, the phial will be discharged; and if the balls are not electrified before the discharge, neither will they appear to be so after the discharge, for they will not repel each other. if the phial really exploded at both ends, and discharged fire from both coating and wire, the balls would be _more_ electrified, and recede _farther_; for none of the fire can escape, the wax handle preventing. but if the fire with which the inside surface is surcharged be so much precisely as is wanted by the outside surface, it will pass round through the wire fixed to the wax handle, restore the equilibrium in the glass, and make no alteration in the state of the prime conductor. accordingly we find, that if the prime conductor be electrified, and the cork balls in a state of repellency before the bottle is discharged, they continue so afterwards. if not, they are not electrified by that discharge. footnotes: [48] see the ingenious essays on electricity, in the transactions, by mr. ellicot. [49] see page 173. [50] see note in page 214. [51] see the first sixteen sections of the former paper, called _farther experiments_, &c. [52] see sect. 10, of _farther experiments_, &c. [53] in the dark the electric fluid may be seen on the cushion in two semi-circles or half-moons, one on the fore-part, the other on the back part of the cushion, just where the globe and cushion separate. in the fore crescent the fire is passing out of the cushion into the glass; in the other it is leaving the glass, and returning into the back part of the cushion. when the prime conductor is applied to take it off the glass, the back crescent disappears. [54] gilt paper, with the gilt face next the glass, does well [55] see _further experiments_, sect. 15. to peter collinson, esq. f. r. s. london. _accumulation of the electrical fire proved to be in the electrified glass.--effect of lightning on the needle of compasses, explained.--gunpowder fired by the electric flame._ _philadelphia, july 27, 1750._ sir, mr. watson, i believe, wrote his observations on my last paper in haste, without having first well considered the experiments related §. 17[56], which still appear to me decisive in the question,--_whether the accumulation of the electrical fire be in the electrified glass, or in the non-electric matter connected with the glass?_ and to demonstrate that it is really in the glass. as to the experiment that ingenious gentleman mentions, and which he thinks conclusive on the other side, i persuade myself he will change his opinion of it, when he considers, that as one person applying the wire of the charged bottle to warm spirits, in a spoon held by another person, both standing on the floor, will fire the spirits, and yet such firing will not determine whether the accumulation was in the glass or the non-electric; so the placing another person between them, standing on wax, with a bason in his hand, into which the water from the phial is poured, _while he at the instant of pouring_ presents a finger of his other hand to the spirits, does not at all alter the case; the stream from the phial, the side of the bason, with the arms and body of the person on the wax, being all together but as one long wire, reaching from the internal surface of the phial to the spirits. _june 29, 1751._ in capt. waddell's account of the effects of lightning on his ship, i could not but take notice of the large comazants (as he calls them) that settled on the spintles at the top-mast heads, and burnt like very large torches (before the stroke.) according to my opinion, the electrical fire was then drawing off, as by points, from the cloud; the largeness of the flame betokening the great quantity of electricity in the cloud: and had there been a good wire communication from the spintle heads to the sea, that could have conducted more freely than tarred ropes, or masts of turpentine wood, i imagine there would either have been no stroke, or, if a stroke, the wire would have conducted it all into the sea without damage to the ship. his compasses lost the virtue of the load-stone, or the poles were reversed; the north point turning to the south.--by electricity we have (_here_ at _philadelphia_) frequently given polarity to needles, and reversed it at pleasure. mr. wilson, at london, tried it on too large masses, and with too small force. a shock from four large glass jars, sent through a fine sewing-needle, gives it polarity, and it will traverse when laid on water.--if the needle, when struck, lies east and west, the end entered by the electric blast points north.--if it lies north and south, the end that lay towards the north will continue to point north when placed on water, whether the fire entered at that end, or at the contrary end. the polarity given is strongest when the needle is struck lying north and south, weakest when lying east and west; perhaps if the force was still greater, the south end, entered by the fire (when the needle lies north and south) might become the north, otherwise it puzzles us to account for the inverting of compasses by lightning; since their needles must always be found in that situation, and by our little experiments, whether the blast entered the north and went out at the south end of the needle, or the contrary, still the end that lay to the north should continue to point north. in these experiments the ends of the needles are sometimes finely blued like a watch-spring by the electric flame.--this colour given by the flash from two jars only, will wipe off, but four jars fix it, and frequently melt the needles. i send you some that have had their heads and points melted off by our mimic lightning; and a pin that had its point melted off, and some part of its head and neck run. sometimes the surface on the body of the needle is also run, and appears blistered when examined by a magnifying glass: the jars i make use off hold seven or eight gallons, and are coated and lined with tin foil; each of them takes a thousand turns[57] of a globe nine inches diameter to charge it. i send you two specimens of tin-foil melted between glass, by the force of two jars only. i have not heard that any of your european electricians have ever been able to fire gun-powder by the electric flame. we do it here in this manner:--a small cartridge is filled with dry powder, hard rammed, so as to bruise some of the grains; two pointed wires are then thrust in, one at each end, the points approaching each other in the middle of the cartridge till within the distance of half an inch; then, the cartridge being placed in the circuit, when the four jars are discharged, the electric flame leaping from the point of one wire to the point of the other, within the cartridge amongst the powder, _fires it_, and the explosion of the powder is at the same instant with the crack of the discharge. your's, &c. b. franklin. footnotes: [56] see the paper entitled, _farther experiments, &c._ [57] the cushion being afterwards covered with a long flap of buckskin, which might cling to the globe; and care being taken to keep that flap of a due temperature, between too dry and too moist, we found so much more of the electric fluid was obtained, as that 150 turns were sufficient. 1753. to c. c[58]. esq. at new-york, communicated to mr. collinson. _unlimited nature of the electric force._ _philadelphia, 1751._ sir, i inclose you answers, such as my present hurry of business will permit me to make, to the principal queries contained in your's of the 28th instant, and beg leave to refer you to the latter piece in the printed collection of my papers, for farther explanation of the difference between what is called _electrics per se_, and _non-electrics_. when you have had time to read and consider these papers, i will endeavour to make any new experiments you shall propose, that you think may afford farther light or satisfaction to either of us; and shall be much obliged to you for such remarks, objections, &c. as may occur to you.--i forget whether i wrote to you that i have melted brass pins and steel needles, inverted the poles of the magnetic needle, given a magnetism and polarity to needles that had none, and fired dry gunpowder by the electric spark. i have five bottles that contain eight or nine gallons each, two of which charged are sufficient for those purposes: but i can charge and discharge them altogether. there are no bounds (but what expence and labour give) to the force man may raise and use in the electrical way: for bottle may be added to bottle _in infinitum_, and all united and discharged together as one, the force and effect proportioned to their number and size. the greatest known effects of common lightning may, i think, without much difficulty, be exceeded in this way, which a few years since could not have been believed, and even now may seem to many a little extravagant to suppose.--so we are got beyond the skill of rabelais's devils of two years old, who, he humourously says, had only learnt to thunder and lighten a little round the head of a cabbage. i am, with sincere respect, your most obliged humble servant, b. franklin. queries and answers referred to in the foregoing letter. _the terms, electric per se, and non-electric, improper.--new relation between metals and water.--effects of air in electrical experiments.--experiment for discovering more of the qualities of the electric fluid._ _query_, wherein consists the difference between an _electric_ and a _non-electric_ body? _answer._ the terms electric _per se_, and non-electric, were first used to distinguish bodies, on a mistaken supposition that those called electrics _per se_, alone contained electric matter in their substance, which was capable of being excited by friction, and of being produced or drawn from them, and communicated to those called non-electrics, supposed to be destitute of it: for the glass, &c. being rubbed, discovered signs of having it, by snapping to the finger, attracting, repelling, &c. and could communicate those signs to metals and water.--afterwards it was found, that rubbing of glass would not produce the electric matter, unless a communication was preserved between the rubber and the floor; and subsequent experiments proved that the electric matter was really drawn from those bodies that at first were thought to have none in them. then it was doubted whether glass, and other bodies called _electrics per se_, had really any electric matter in them, since they apparently afforded none but what they first extracted from those which had been called non-electrics. but some of my experiments show, that glass contains it in great quantity, and i now suspect it to be pretty equally diffused in all the matter of this terraqueous globe. if so, the terms _electric per se_, and _non-electric_, should be laid aside as improper: and (the only difference being this, that some bodies will conduct electric matter, and others will not) the terms _conductor_ and _non-conductor_ may supply their place. if any portion of electric matter is applied to a piece of conducting matter, it penetrates and flows through it, or spreads equally on its surface; if applied to a piece of non-conducting matter, it will do neither. perfect conductors of electric matter are only metals and water. other bodies conducting only as they contain a mixture of those; without more or less of which they will not conduct at all[59]. this (by the way) shews a new relation between metals and water heretofore unknown. to illustrate this by a comparison, which, however, can only give a faint resemblance. electric matter passes through conductors as water passes through a porous stone, or spreads on their surfaces as water spreads on a wet stone; but when applied to non-conductors, it is like water dropt on a greasy stone, it neither penetrates, passes through, nor spreads on the surface, but remains in drops where it falls. see farther on this head, in my last printed piece, entitled, _opinions and conjectures, &c._ 1749. _query_, what are the effects of air in electrical experiments? _answer._ all i have hitherto observed are these. moist air receives and conducts the electrical matter in proportion to its moisture, quite dry air not at all: air is therefore to be classed with the non-conductors. dry air assists in confining the electrical atmosphere to the body it surrounds, and prevents its dissipating: for in vacuo it quits easily, and points operate stronger, _i. e._ they throw off or attract the electrical matter more freely, and at greater distances; so that air intervening obstructs its passage from body to body in some degree. a clean electrical phial and wire, containing air instead of water, will not be charged nor give a shock, any more than if it was filled with powder of glass; but exhausted of air, it operates as well as if filled with water. yet an electric atmosphere and air do not seem to exclude each other, for we breathe freely in such an atmosphere, and dry air will blow through it without displacing or driving it away. i question whether the strongest dry north-wester[60] would dissipate it. i once electrified a large cork-ball at the end of a silk thread three feet long, the other end of which i held in my fingers, and whirl'd it round, like a sling one hundred times, in the air, with the swiftest motion i could possibly give it, yet it retained its electric atmosphere, though it must have passed through eight hundred yards of air, allowing my arm in giving the motion to add a foot to the semi-diameter of the circle.--by quite dry air, i mean the dryest we have: for perhaps we never have any perfectly free from moisture. an electrical atmosphere raised round a thick wire, inserted in a phial of air, drives out none of the air, nor on withdrawing that atmosphere will any air rush in, as i have found by a curious experiment[61] accurately made, whence we concluded that the air's elasticity was not affected thereby. an experiment towards discovering more of the qualities of the electric fluid. from the prime conductor, hang a bullet by a wire hook; under the bullet, at half an inch distance, place a bright piece of silver to receive the sparks; then let the wheel be turned, and in a few minutes, (if the repeated sparks continually strike in the same spot) the silver will receive a blue stain, nearly the colour of a watch spring. a bright piece of iron will also be spotted, but not with that colour; it rather seems corroded. on gold, brass, or tin, i have not perceived it makes any impression. but the spots on the silver or iron will be the same, whether the bullet be lead, brass, gold, or silver. on a silver bullet there will also appear a small spot, as well as on the plate below it. footnotes: [58] cadwallader colden, who was afterwards lieutenant-governor of new-york. _editor._ [59] this proposition is since found to be too general; mr. wilson having discovered that melted wax and rosin will also conduct. [60] a cold dry wind of north america. [61] the experiment here mentioned was thus made. an empty phial was stopped with a cork. through the cork passed a thick wire, as usual in the leyden experiment, which wire almost reached the bottom. through another part of the cork passed one leg of a small glass syphon, the other leg on the outside came down almost to the bottom of the phial. this phial was first held a short time in the hand, which, warming, and of course rarefying the air within, drove a small part of it out through the syphon. then a little red ink in a tea-spoon was applied to the opening of the outer leg of the syphon; so that as the air within cooled, a little of the ink might rise in that leg. when the air within the bottle came to be of the same temperature of that without, the drop of red ink would rest in a certain part of the leg. but the warmth of a finger applied to the phial would cause that drop to descend, as the least outward coolness applied would make it ascend. when it had found its situation, and was at rest, the wire was electrified by a communication from the prime conductor. this was supposed to give an electric atmosphere to the wire within the bottle, which might likewise rarefy the included air, and of course depress the drop of ink in the syphon. but no such effect followed. to c. c[62]. esq. at new york. _mistake, that only metals and water were conductors, rectified.--supposition of a region of electric fire above our atmosphere.--theorem concerning light.--poke-weed a cure for cancers._ read at the royal society, nov. 11, 1756. _philadelphia, april 23, 1752._ sir, in considering your favour of the 16th past, i recollected my having wrote you answers to some queries concerning the difference between electrics _per se_, and non-electrics, and the effects of air in electrical experiments, which, i apprehend, you may not have received. the date i have forgotten. we have been used to call those bodies electrics _per se_, which would not conduct the electric fluid: we once imagined that only such bodies contained that fluid; afterwards that they had none of it, and only educed it from other bodies: but further experiments shewed our mistake. it is to be found in all matter we know of; and the distinctions of electrics _per se_, and non-electrics, should now be dropt as improper, and that of _conductors_ and _non-conductors_ assumed in its place, as i mentioned in those answers. i do not remember any experiment by which it appeared that high rectified spirit will not conduct; perhaps you have made such. this i know, that wax, rosin, brimstone, and even glass, commonly reputed electrics _per se_, will, when in a fluid state, conduct pretty well. glass will do it when only red hot. so that my former position, that only metals and water were conductors, and other bodies more or less such, as they partook of metal or moisture, was too general. your conception of the electric fluid, that it is incomparably more subtle than air, is undoubtedly just. it pervades dense matter with the greatest ease; but it does not seem to mix or incorporate willingly with mere air, as it does with other matter. it will not quit common matter to join with air. air obstructs, in some degree, its motion. an electric atmosphere cannot be communicated at so great a distance, through intervening air, by far, as through a vacuum.--who knows then, but there may be, as the ancients thought, a region of this fire above our atmosphere, prevented by our air, and its own too great distance for attraction, from joining our earth? perhaps where the atmosphere is rarest, this fluid may be densest, and nearer the earth where the atmosphere grows denser, this fluid may be rarer; yet some of it be low enough to attach itself to our highest clouds, and thence they becoming electrified, may be attracted by, and descend towards the earth, and discharge their watry contents, together with that etherial fire. perhaps the _auroræ boreales_ are currents of this fluid in its own region, above our atmosphere, becoming from their motion visible. there is no end to conjectures. as yet we are but novices in this branch of natural knowledge. you mention several differences of salts in electrical experiments. were they all equally dry? salt is apt to acquire moisture from a moist air, and some sorts more than others. when perfectly dried by lying before a fire, or on a stove, none that i have tried will conduct any better than so much glass. new flannel, if dry and warm, will draw the electric fluid from non-electrics, as well as that which has been worn. i wish you had the convenience of trying the experiments you seem to have such expectations from, upon various kinds of spirits, salts, earth, &c. frequently, in a variety of experiments, though we miss what we expected to find, yet something valuable turns out, something surprising, and instructing, though unthought of. i thank you for communicating the illustration of the theorem concerning light. it is very curious. but i must own i am much in the _dark_ about _light_. i am not satisfied with the doctrine that supposes particles of matter called light, continually driven off from the sun's surface, with a swiftness so prodigious! must not the smallest particle conceivable have, with such a motion, a force exceeding that of a twenty-four pounder, discharged from a cannon? must not the sun diminish exceedingly by such a waste of matter; and the planets, instead of drawing nearer to him, as some have feared, recede to greater distances through the lessened attraction. yet these particles, with this amazing motion, will not drive before them, or remove, the least and lightest dust they meet with: and the sun, for aught we know, continues of his antient dimensions, and his attendants move in their antient orbits. may not all the phenomena of light be more conveniently solved, by supposing universal space filled with a subtle elastic fluid, which, when at rest, is not visible, but whose vibrations affect that fine sense in the eye, as those of air do the grosser organs of the ear? we do not, in the case of sound, imagine that any sonorous particles are thrown off from a bell, for instance, and fly in strait lines to the ear; why must we believe that luminous particles leave the sun and proceed to the eye? some diamonds, if rubbed, shine in the dark, without losing any part of their matter. i can make an electrical spark as big as the flame of a candle, much brighter, and, therefore, visible further; yet this is without fuel; and, i am persuaded, no part of the electric fluid flies off in such case to distant places, but all goes directly, and is to be found in the place to which i destine it. may not different degrees of the vibration of the above-mentioned universal medium, occasion the appearances of different colours? i think the electric fluid is always the same; yet i find that weaker and stronger sparks differ in apparent colour, some white, blue, purple, red; the strongest, white; weak ones red. thus different degrees of vibration given to the air produce the seven, different sounds in music, analagous to the seven colours, yet the medium, air, is the same. if the sun is not wasted by expence of light, i can easily conceive that he shall otherwise always retain the same quantity of matter; though we should suppose him made of sulphur constantly flaming. the action of fire only _separates_ the particles of matter, it does not _annihilate_ them. water, by heat raised in vapour, returns to the earth in rain; and if we could collect all the particles of burning matter that go off in smoak, perhaps they might, with the ashes, weigh as much as the body before it was fired: and if we could put them into the same position with regard to each other, the mass would be the same as before, and might be burnt over again. the chymists have analysed sulphur, and find it composed, in certain proportions, of oil, salt, and earth; and having, by the analysis, discovered those proportions, they can, of those ingredients, make sulphur. so we have only to suppose, that the parts of the sun's sulphur, separated by fire, rise into his atmosphere, and there being freed from the immediate action of the fire, they collect into cloudy masses, and growing, by degrees, too heavy to be longer supported, they descend to the sun, and are burnt over again. hence the spots appearing on his face, which are observed to diminish daily in size, their consuming edges being of particular brightness. it is well we are not, as poor galileo was, subject to the inquisition for _philosophical heresy_. my whispers against the orthodox doctrine, in private letters, would be dangerous; but your writing and printing would be highly criminal. as it is, you must expect some censure, but one heretic will surely excuse another. i am heartily glad to hear more instances of the success of the poke-weed, in the cure of that horrible evil to the human body, a cancer. you will deserve highly of mankind for the communication. but i find in boston they are at a loss to know the right plant, some asserting it is what they call _mechoachan_, others other things. in one of their late papers it is publicly requested that a perfect description may be given of the plant, its places of growth, &c. i have mislaid the paper, or would send it to you. i thought you had described it pretty fully[63]. i am, sir, &c. b. franklin. footnotes: [62] cadwallader colden. see note, page 250. _editor._ [63] as the poke-weed, though out of place, is introduced here, we shall translate and insert two extracts of letters from dr. franklin to m. dubourg, the french translator of his works, on the same subject. "london, march 27, 1773. "i apprehend that our poke-weed is what the botanists term _phytolacca_. this plant bears berries as large as peas; the skin is black, but it contains a crimson juice. it is this juice, thickened by evaporation in the sun, which was employed. it caused great pain, but some persons were said to have been cured. i am not quite certain of the facts; all that i know is, that dr. colden had a good opinion of the remedy." "london, april 23, 1773. "you will see by the annexed paper by dr. solander, that this herb, poke-weed, in which has been found a specific remedy for cancers, is the most common species of phytolacca. (phytolacca decandra l.)" _editor._ mr. e. kinnersley, at boston, to benjamin franklin, esq. at philadelphia. _new experiments.--paradoxes inferred from them.--difference in the electricity of a globe of glass charged, and a globe of sulphur.--difficulty of ascertaining which is positive and which negative._ _feb. 3, 1752._ sir, i have the following experiments to communicate: i held in one hand a wire, which was fastened at the other end to the handle of a pump, in order to try whether the stroke from the prime conductor, through my arms, would be any greater than when conveyed only to the surface of the earth, but could discover no difference. i placed the needle of a compass on the point of a long pin, and holding it in the atmosphere of the prime conductor, at the distance of about three inches, found it to whirl round like the flyers of a jack, with great rapidity. i suspended with silk a cork ball, about the bigness of a pea, and presented to it rubbed amber, sealing-wax, and sulphur, by each of which it was strongly repelled; then i tried rubbed glass and china, and found that each of these would attract it, until it became electrified again, and then it would be repelled as at first; and while thus repelled by the rubbed glass or china, either of the others when rubbed would attract it. then i electrified the ball, with the wire of a charged phial, and presented to it rubbed glass (the stopper of a decanter) and a china tea-cup, by which it was as strongly repelled as by the wire; but when i presented either of the other rubbed electrics, it would be strongly attracted, and when i electrified it by either of these, till it became repelled, it would be attracted by the wire of the phial, but be repelled by its coating. these experiments surprised me very much, and have induced me to infer the following paradoxes. 1. if a glass globe be placed at one end of a prime-conductor, and a sulphur one at the other end, both being equally in good order, and in equal motion, not a spark of fire can be obtained from the conductor; but one globe will draw out, as fast as the other gives in. 2. if a phial be suspended on the conductor, with a chain from its coating to the table, and only one of the globes be made use of at a time, 20 turns of the wheel, for instance, will charge it; after which, so many tarns of the other wheel will discharge it; and as many more will charge it again. 3. the globes being both in motion, each having a separate conductor, with a phial suspended on one of them, and the chain of it fastened to the other, the phial will become charged; one globe charging positively, the other negatively. 4. the phial being thus charged, hang it in like manner on the other conductor; set both wheels a going again, and the same number of turns that charged it before, will now discharge it; and the same number repeated, will charge it again. 5. when each globe communicates with the same prime conductor, having a chain hanging from it to the table, one of them, when in motion (but which i cannot say) will draw fire up through the cushion, and discharge it through the chain; the other will draw it up through the chain, and discharge it through the cushion. i should be glad if you would send to my house for my sulphur globe, and the cushion belonging to it, and make the trial; but must caution you not to use chalk on the cushion, some fine powdered sulphur will do better. if, as i expect, you should find the globes to charge the prime conductor differently, i hope you will be able to discover some method of determining which it is that charges positively. i am, &c. e. kinnersley. to mr. e. kinnersley, at boston. _probable cause of the different attractions and repulsions of the two electrified globes mentioned in the two preceding letters._ _philadelphia, march 2, 1752._ sir, i thank you for the experiments communicated. i sent immediately for your brimstone globe, in order to make the trials you desired, but found it wanted centres, which i have not time now to supply; but the first leisure i will get it fitted for use, try the experiments, and acquaint you with the result. in the mean time i suspect, that the different attractions and repulsions you observed, proceeded rather from the greater or smaller quantities of the fire you obtained from different bodies, than from its being of a different _kind_, or having a different _direction_. in haste, i am, &c. b. franklin. to mr. e. kinnersley, at boston. _reasons for supposing, that the glass globe charges positively, and the sulphur negatively.--hint respecting a leather globe for experiments when travelling._ _philadelphia, march 16, 1752._ sir, having brought your brimstone globe to work, i tried one of the experiments you proposed, and was agreeably surprised to find, that the glass globe being at one end of the conductor, and the sulphur globe at the other end, both globes in motion, no spark could be obtained from the conductor, unless when one globe turned slower, or was not in so good order as the other; and then the spark was only in proportion to the difference, so that turning equally, or turning that slowest which worked best, would again bring the conductor to afford no spark. i found also, that the wire of a phial charged by the glass globe, attracted a cork ball that had touched the wire of a phial charged by the brimstone globe, and _vice versa_, so that the cork continued to play between the two phials, just as when one phial was charged through the wire, the other through the coating, by the glass globe alone. and two phials charged, the one by the brimstone globe, the other by the glass globe, would be both discharged by bringing their wires together, and shock the person holding the phials. from these experiments one may be certain that your 2d, 3d, and 4th proposed experiments, would succeed exactly as you suppose, though i have not tried them, wanting time. i imagine it is the glass globe that charges positively, and the sulphur negatively, for these reasons: 1. though the sulphur globe seems to work equally well with the glass one, yet it can never occasion so large and distant a spark between my knuckle and the conductor, when the sulphur one is working, as when the glass one is used; which, i suppose, is occasioned by this, that bodies of a certain bigness cannot so easily part with a quantity of electrical fluid they have and hold attracted _within_ their substance, as they can receive an additional quantity _upon_ their surface by way of atmosphere. therefore so much cannot be drawn _out_ of the conductor, as can be thrown _on_ it. 2. i observe that the stream or brush of fire, appearing at the end of a wire, connected with the conductor, is long, large, and much diverging, when the glass globe is used, and makes a snapping (or rattling) noise: but when the sulphur one is used, it is short, small, and makes a hissing noise; and just the reverse of both happens, when you hold the same wire in your hand, and the globes are worked alternately: the brush is large, long, diverging, and snapping (or rattling) when the sulphur globe is turned; short, small, and hissing, when the glass globe is turned.--when the brush is long, large, and much diverging, the body to which it joins seems to me to be throwing the fire out; and when the contrary appears, it seems to be drinking in. 3. i observe, that when i hold my knuckle before the sulphur globe, while turning, the stream of fire between my knuckle and the globe seems to spread on its surface, as if it flowed from the finger; on the glass globe it is otherwise. 4. the cool wind (or what was called so) that we used to feel as coming from an electrified point, is, i think, more sensible when the glass globe is used, than when the sulphur one.--but these are hasty thoughts. as to your fifth paradox, it must likewise be true, if the globes are alternately worked; but if worked together, the fire will neither come up nor go down by the chain, because one globe will drink it as fast as the other produces it. i should be glad to know, whether the effects would be contrary if the glass globe is solid, and the sulphur globe is hollow; but i have no means at present of trying. in your journeys, your glass globes meet with accidents, and sulphur ones are heavy and inconvenient.--_query._ would not a thin plane of brimstone, cast on a board, serve on occasion as a cushion, while a globe of leather stuffed (properly mounted) might receive the fire from the sulphur, and charge the conductor positively? such a globe would be in no danger of breaking[64]. i think i can conceive how it may be done; but have not time to add more than that i am, yours, &c. b. franklin. footnote: [64] the discoveries of the late ingenious mr. symmer, on the positive and negative electricity produced by the mutual friction of white and black silk, &c. afford hints for farther improvements to be made with this view. [in mr. collinson's edition, several papers followed here, by the abbé mazeas, and others, upon the subject of dr. franklin's experiments, which, that the letters of our author might not be too much interrupted, we have thought proper to transfer to an appendix. a subsequent paper by mr. david colden, entitled remarks on the abbé nollet's letters to benjamin franklin, esq. on electricity, will be found transferred in the same manner.] to peter collinson, esq. f. r. s. london. _electrical kite._ _philadelphia, oct. 19, 1752._ sir, as frequent mention is made in public papers from europe of the success of the philadelphia experiment for drawing the electric fire from clouds by means of pointed rods of iron erected on high buildings, &c. it may be agreeable to the curious to be informed that the same experiment has succeeded in philadelphia, though made in a different and more easy manner, which is as follows: make a small cross of two light strips of cedar, the arms so long as to reach to the four corners of a large thin silk handkerchief when extended; tie the corners of the handkerchief to the extremities of the cross, so you have the body of a kite; which being properly accommodated with a tail, loop, and string, will rise in the air, like those made of paper; but this being of silk is fitter to bear the wet and wind of a thunder-gust without tearing. to the top of the upright stick of the cross is to be fixed a very sharp pointed wire, rising a foot or more above the wood. to the end of the twine, next the hand, is to be tied a silk ribbon, and where the silk and twine join, a key may be fastened. this kite is to be raised when a thunder-gust appears to be coming on, and the person who holds the string must stand within a door or window, or under some cover, so that the silk ribbon may not be wet; and care must be taken that the twine does not touch the frame of the door or window. as soon as any of the thunder clouds come over the kite, the pointed wire will draw the electric fire from them, and the kite, with all the twine, will be electrified, and the loose filaments of the twine will stand out every way, and be attracted by an approaching finger. and when the rain has wetted the kite and twine, so that it can conduct the electric fire freely, you will find it stream out plentifully from the key on the approach of your knuckle. at this key the phial may be charged; and from electric fire thus obtained, spirits may be kindled, and all the other electric experiments be performed, which are usually done by the help of a rubbed glass globe or tube, and thereby the sameness of the electric matter with that of lightning completely demonstrated. b. franklin. to peter collinson, esq. f. r. s. london. _hypothesis, of the sea being the grand source of lightning, retracted. positive, and sometimes negative, electricity of the clouds discovered.--new experiments and conjectures in support of this discovery.--observations recommended for ascertaining the direction of the electric fluid.--size of rods for conductors to buildings.--appearance of a thunder-cloud described._ _philadelphia, september, 1753._ sir, in my former paper on this subject, written first in 1747, enlarged and sent to england in 1749, i considered the sea as the grand source of lightning, imagining its luminous appearance to be owing to electric fire, produced by friction between the particles of water and those of salt. living far from the sea, i had then no opportunity of making experiments on the sea-water, and so embraced this opinion too hastily. for in 1750, and 1751, being occasionally on the sea-coast, i found, by experiments, that sea-water in a bottle, though at first it would by agitation appear luminous, yet in a few hours it lost that virtue: _hence and from this_, that i could not by agitating a solution of sea-salt in water produce any light, i first began to doubt of my former hypothesis, and to suspect that the luminous appearance in sea-water must be owing to some other principles. i then considered whether it were not possible, that the particles of air, being electrics _per se_, might, in hard gales of wind, by their friction against trees, hills, buildings, &c. as so many minute electric globes, rubbing against non-electric cushions, draw the electric fire from the earth, and that the rising vapours might receive that fire from the air, and by such means the clouds become electrified. if this were so, i imagined that by forcing a constant violent stream of air against my prime conductor, by bellows, i should electrify it _negatively_; the rubbing particles of air, drawing from it part of its natural quantity of the electric fluid. i accordingly made the experiment, but it did not succeed. in september 1752, i erected an iron rod to draw the lightning down into my house, in order to make some experiments on it, with two bells to give notice when the rod should be electrified: a contrivance obvious to every electrician. i found the bells rang sometimes when there was no lightning or thunder, but only a dark cloud over the rod; that sometimes after a flash of lightning they would suddenly stop; and at other times, when they had not rang before, they would, after a flash, suddenly begin to ring; that the electricity was sometimes very faint, so that when a small spark was obtained, another could not be got for some time after; at other times the sparks would follow extremely quick, and once i had a continual stream from bell to bell, the size of a crow-quill: even during the same gust there were considerable variations. in the winter following i conceived an experiment, to try whether the clouds were electrified _positively_ or _negatively_; but my pointed rod, with its apparatus, becoming out of order, i did not refit it till towards the spring, when i expected the warm weather would bring on more frequent thunder-clouds. the experiment was this: to take two phials; charge one of them with lightning from the iron rod, and give the other an equal charge by the electric glass globe, through the prime conductor: when charged, to place them on a table within three or four inches of each other, a small cork ball being suspended by a fine silk thread from the cieling, so as it might play between the wires. if both bottles then were electrified _positively_, the ball being attracted and repelled by one, must be also repelled by the other. if the one _positively_, and the other _negatively_; then the ball would be attracted and repelled alternately by each, and continue to play between them as long as any considerable charge remained. being very intent on making this experiment, it was no small mortification to me, that i happened to be abroad during two of the greatest thunder-storms we had early in the spring, and though i had given orders in my family, that if the bells rang when i was from home, they should catch some of the lightning for me in electrical phials, and they did so, yet it was mostly dissipated before my return, and in some of the other gusts, the quantity of lightning i was able to obtain was so small, and the charge so weak, that i could not satisfy myself: yet i sometimes saw what heightened my suspicions, and inflamed my curiosity. at last, on the 12th of april, 1753, there being a smart gust of some continuance, i charged one phial pretty well with lightning, and the other equally, as near as i could judge, with electricity from my glass globe; and, having placed them properly, i beheld, with great surprize and pleasure, the cork ball play briskly between them; and was convinced that one bottle was electrised _negatively_. i repeated this experiment several times during the gust, and in eight succeeding gusts, always with the same success; and being of opinion (for reasons i formerly gave in my letter to mr. kinnersley, since printed in london) that the glass globe electrises _positively_, i concluded that the clouds are _always_ electrised _negatively_, or have always in them less than their natural quantity of the electric fluid. yet notwithstanding so many experiments, it seems i concluded too soon; for at last, june the 6th, in a gust which continued from five o'clock, p. m. to seven, i met with one cloud that was electrised positively, though several that passed over my rod before, during the same gust, were in the negative state. this was thus discovered: i had another concurring experiment, which i often repeated, to prove the negative state of the clouds, viz. while the bells were ringing, i took the phial charged from the glass globe, and applied its wire to the erected rod, considering, that if the clouds were electrised _positively_, the rod which received its electricity from them must be so too; and then the additional _positive_ electricity of the phial would make the bells ring faster:--but, if the clouds were in a _negative_ state, they must exhaust the electric fluid from my rod, and bring that into the same negative state with themselves, and then the wire of a positively charged phial, supplying the rod with what it wanted (which it was obliged otherwise to draw from the earth by means of the pendulous brass ball playing between the two bells) the ringing would cease till the bottle was discharged. in this manner i quite discharged into the rod several phials that were charged from the glass globe, the electric fluid streaming from the wire to the rod, till the wire would receive no spark from the finger; and, during this supply to the rod from the phial, the bells stopped ringing; but by continuing the application of the phial wire to the rod, i exhausted the natural quantity from the inside surface of the same phials, or, as i call it, charged them _negatively_. at length, while i was charging a phial by my glass globe, to repeat this experiment, my bells, of themselves, stopped ringing, and, after some pause, began to ring again.--but now, when i approached the wire of the charged phial to the rod, instead of the usual stream that i expected from the wire to the rod, there was no spark; not even when i brought the wire and the rod to touch; yet the bells continued ringing vigorously, which proved to me, that the rod was then _positively_ electrified, as well as the wire of the phial, and equally so; and, consequently, that the particular cloud then over the rod was in the same positive state. this was near the end of the gust. but this was a single experiment, which, however, destroys my first too general conclusion, and reduces me to this: _that the clouds of a thunder-gust are most commonly in a negative state of electricity, but sometimes in a positive state._ the latter i believe is rare; for though i soon after the last experiment set out on a journey to boston, and was from home most part of the summer, which prevented my making farther trials and observations; yet mr. kinnersley returning from the islands just as i left home, pursued the experiments during my absence, and informs me that he always found the clouds in the _negative_ state. so that, for the most part, in thunder-strokes, _it is the earth that strikes into the clouds, and not the clouds that strike into the earth_. those who are versed in electric experiments, will easily conceive, that the effects and appearances must be nearly the same in either case; the same explosion, and the same flash between one cloud and another, and between the clouds and mountains, &c. the same rending of trees, walls, &c. which the electric fluid meets with in its passage, and the same fatal shock to animal bodies; and that pointed rods fixed on buildings, or masts of ships, and communicating with the earth or sea, must be of the same service in restoring the equilibrium silently between the earth and clouds, or in conducting a flash or stroke, if one should be, so as to save harmless the house or vessel: for points have equal power to throw off, as to draw on the electric fire, and, rods will conduct up as well as down. but though the light gained from these experiments makes no alteration in the practice, it makes a considerable one in the theory. and now we as much need an hypothesis to explain by what means the clouds become negatively, as before to shew how they became positively electrified. i cannot forbear venturing some few conjectures on this occasion: they are what occur to me at present, and though future discoveries should prove them not wholly right, yet they may in the mean time be of some use, by stirring up the curious to make more experiments, and occasion more exact disquisitions. i conceive then, that this globe of earth and water, with its plants, animals, and buildings, have diffused throughout their substance, a quantity of the electric fluid, just as much as they can contain, which i call the _natural quantity_. that this natural quantity is not the same in all kinds of common matter under the same dimensions, nor in the same kind of common matter in all circumstances; but a solid foot, for instance, of one kind of common matter, may contain more of the electric fluid than a solid foot of some other kind of common matter; and a pound weight of the same kind of common matter may, when in a rarer state, contain more of the electric fluid than when in a denser state. for the electric fluid, being attracted by any portion of common matter, the parts of that fluid, (which have among themselves a mutual repulsion) are brought so near to each other by the attraction of the common matter that absorbs them, as that their repulsion is equal to the condensing power of attraction in common matter; and then such portion of common matter will absorb no more. bodies of different kinds having thus attracted and absorbed what i call their _natural quantity, i. e._ just as much of the electric fluid as is suited to their circumstances of density, rarity, and power of attracting, do not then show any signs of electricity among each other. and if more electric fluid be added to one of these bodies, it does not enter, but spreads on the surface, forming an atmosphere; and then such body shews signs of electricity. i have in a former paper compared common matter to a spunge, and the electric fluid to water: i beg leave once more to make use of the same comparison, to illustrate farther my meaning in this particular. when a spunge is somewhat condensed by being squeezed between the fingers, it will not receive and retain so much water as when in its more loose and open state. if _more_ squeezed and condensed, some of the water will come out of its inner parts, and flow on the surface. if the pressure of the fingers be entirely removed, the spunge will not only resume what was lately forced out, but attract an additional quantity. as the spunge in its rarer state will _naturally_ attract and absorb _more_ water, and in its denser state will _naturally_ attract and absorb _less_ water; we may call the quantity it attacks and absorbs in either state, its _natural quantity_, the state being considered. now what the spunge is to water, the same is water to the electric fluid. when a portion of water is in its common dense state, it can hold no more electric fluid than it has: if any be added, it spreads on the surface. when the same portion of water is rarefied into vapour, and forms a cloud, it is then capable of receiving and absorbing a much greater quantity; there is room for each particle to have an electric atmosphere. thus water, in its rarefied state, or in the form of a cloud, will be in a negative state of electricity; it will have less than its _natural quantity_; that is, less than it is naturally capable of attracting and absorbing in that state. such a cloud, then, coming so near the earth as to be within the striking distance, will receive from the earth a flash of the electric fluid; which flash, to supply a great extent of cloud, must sometimes contain a very great quantity of that fluid. or such a cloud, passing over woods of tall trees, may from the points and sharp edges of their moist top leaves, receive silently some supply. a cloud being by any means supplied from the earth, may strike into other clouds that have not been supplied, or not so much supplied; and those to others, till an equilibrium is produced among all the clouds that are within striking distance of each other. the cloud thus supplied, having parted with much of what it first received, may require and receive a fresh supply from the earth, or from some other cloud, which by the wind is brought into such a situation as to receive it more readily from the earth. hence repeated and continual strokes and flashes till the clouds have all got nearly their natural quantity as clouds, or till they have descended in showers, and are united again with this terraqueous globe, their original. thus, thunder-clouds are generally in a negative state of electricity compared with the earth, agreeable to most of our experiments; yet as by one experiment we found a cloud electrised positively, i conjecture that, in that case, such cloud, after having received what was, in its rare state, only its _natural quantity_, became compressed by the driving winds, or some other means, so that part of what it had absorbed was forced out, and formed an electric atmosphere around it in its denser state. hence it was capable of communicating positive electricity to my rod. to show that a body in different circumstances of dilatation and contraction is capable of receiving and retaining more or less of the electric fluid on its surface, i would relate the following experiment: i placed a clean wine glass on the floor, and on it a small silver can. in the can i put about three yards of brass chain; to one end of which i fastened a silk thread, which went right up to the cieling, where it passed over a pulley, and came down again to my hand, that i might at pleasure draw the chain up out of the can, extending it till within a foot of the cieling, and let it gradually sink into the can again.--from the cieling, by another thread of fine raw silk, i suspended a small light lock of cotton, so as that when it hung perpendicularly, it came in contact with the side of the can.--then approaching the wire of a charged phial to the can, i gave it a spark, which flowed round in an electric atmosphere; and the lock of cotton was repelled from the side of the can to the distance of about nine or ten inches. the can would not then receive another spark from the wire of the phial; but as i gradually drew up the chain, the atmosphere of the can diminished by flowing over the rising chain, and the lock of cotton accordingly drew nearer and nearer to the can; and then, if i again brought the phial wire near the can, it would receive another spark, and the cotton fly off again to its first distance; and thus, as the chain was drawn higher, the can would receive more sparks; because the can and extended chain were capable of supporting a greater atmosphere than the can with the chain gathered up into its belly.--and that the atmosphere round the can was diminished by raising the chain, and increased again by lowering it, is not only agreeable to reason, since the atmosphere of the chain, must be drawn from that of the can, when it rose, and returned to it again when it fell; but was also evident to the eye, the lock of cotton always approaching the can when the chain was drawn up, and receding when it was let down again. thus we see that increase of surface makes a body capable of receiving a greater electric atmosphere: but this experiment does not, i own, fully demonstrate my new hypothesis; for the brass and silver still continue in their solid state, and are not rarefied into vapour, as the water is in clouds. perhaps some future experiments on vapourized water may set this matter in a clearer light. one seemingly material objection arises to the new hypothesis, and it is this: if water, in its rarefied state, as a cloud, requires, and will absorb more of the electric fluid than when in its dense state as water, why does it not acquire from the earth all it wants at the instant of its leaving the surface, while it is yet near, and but just rising in vapour? to this difficulty i own i cannot at present give a solution satisfactory to myself: i thought, however, that i ought to state it in its full force, as i have done, and submit the whole to examination. and i would beg leave to recommend it to the curious in this branch of natural philosophy, to repeat with care and accurate observation the experiments i have reported in this and former papers relating to _positive_ and _negative_ electricity, with such other relative ones as shall occur to them, that it may be certainly known whether the electricity communicated by a glass globe, be _really positive_. and also i would request all who may have an opportunity of observing the recent effects of lightning on buildings, trees, &c. that they would consider them particularly with a view to discover the direction. but in these examinations, this one thing is always to be understood, viz. that a stream of the electric fluid passing through wood, brick, metal, &c. while such fluid passes in _small quantity_, the mutually repulsive power of its parts is confined and overcome by the cohesion of the parts of the body it passes through, so as to prevent an explosion; but when the fluid comes in a quantity too great to be confined by such cohesion, it explodes, and rends or fuses the body that endeavoured to confine it. if it be wood, brick, stone, or the like, the splinters will fly off on that side where there is least resistance. and thus, when a hole is struck through pasteboard by the electrified jar, if the surfaces of the pasteboard are not confined or compressed, there will be a bur raised all round the hole on both sides the pasteboard; but if one side be confined, so that the bur cannot be raised on that side, it will be all raised on the other, which way soever the fluid was directed. for the bur round the outside of the hole, is the effect of the explosion every way from the centre of the stream, and not an effect of the direction. in every stroke of lightning, i am of opinion that the stream of the electric fluid, moving to restore the equilibrium between the cloud and the earth, does always previously find its passage, and mark out, as i may say, its own course, taking in its way all the conductors it can find, such as metals, damp walls, moist wood, &c. and will go considerably out of a direct course, for the sake of the assistance of good conductors; and that, in this course, it is actually moving, though silently and imperceptibly, before the explosion, in and among the conductors; which explosion happens only when the conductors cannot discharge it as fast as they receive it, by reason of their being incomplete, dis-united, too small, or not of the best materials for conducting. metalline rods, therefore, of sufficient thickness, and extending from the highest part of an edifice to the ground, being of the best materials and complete conductors, will, i think, secure the building from damage, either by restoring the equilibrium so fast as to prevent a stroke, or by conducting it in the substance of the rod as far as the rod goes, so that there shall be no explosion but what is above its point, between that and the clouds. if it be asked, what thickness of a metalline rod may be supposed sufficient? in answer, i would remark, that five large glass jars, such as i have described in my former papers, discharge a very great quantity of electricity, which nevertheless will be all conducted round the corner of a book, by the fine filleting of gold on the cover, it following the gold the farthest way about, rather than take the shorter course through the cover, that not being so good a conductor. now in this line of gold, the metal is so extremely thin as to be little more than the colour of gold, and on an octavo book is not in the whole an inch square, and therefore not the thirty-sixth part of a grain, according to m. reaumur; yet it is sufficient to conduct the charge of five large jars, and how many more i know not. now, i suppose a wire of a quarter of an inch diameter to contain about five thousand times as much metal as there is in that gold line, and if so, it will conduct the charge of twenty-five thousand such glass jars, which is a quantity, i imagine, far beyond what was ever contained in any one stroke of natural lightning. but a rod of half an inch diameter would conduct four times as much as one of a quarter. and with regard to conducting, though a certain thickness of metal be required to conduct a great quantity of electricity, and, at the same time, keep its own substance firm and unseparated; and a less quantity, as a very small wire for instance, will be destroyed by the explosion; yet such small wire will have answered the end of conducting that stroke, though it become incapable of conducting another. and considering the extreme rapidity with which the electric fluid moves without exploding, when it has a free passage, or compleat metal communication, i should think a vast quantity would be conducted in a short time, either to or from a cloud, to restore its equilibrium with the earth, by means of a very small wire; and therefore thick rods should seem not so necessary.--however, as the quantity of lightning discharged in one stroke, cannot well be measured, and, in different strokes, is certainly very various, in some much greater than others; and as iron (the best metal for the purpose, being least apt to fuse) is cheap, it may be well enough to provide a larger canal to guide that impetuous blast than we imagine necessary: for, though one middling wire may be sufficient, two or three can do no harm. and time, with careful observations well compared, will at length point out the proper size to greater certainty. pointed rods erected on edifices may likewise often prevent a stroke, in the following manner: an eye so situated as to view horizontally the under side of a thunder-cloud, will see it very ragged, with a number of separate fragments, or petty clouds, one under another, the lowest sometimes not far from the earth. these, as so many stepping-stones, assist in conducting a stroke between the cloud and a building. to represent these by an experiment, take two or three locks of fine loose cotton, connect one of them with the prime conductor by a fine thread of two inches (which may be spun out of the same lock by the fingers) another to that, and the third to the second, by like threads.--turn the globe and you will see these locks extend themselves towards the table (as the lower small clouds do towards the earth) being attracted by it: but on presenting a sharp point erect under the lowest, it will shrink up to the second, the second to the first, and all together to the prime conductor, where they will continue as long as the point continues under them. may not, in like manner, the small electrised clouds, whose equilibrium with the earth is soon restored by the point, rise up to the main body, and by that means occasion so large a vacancy, as that the grand cloud cannot strike in that place? these thoughts, my dear friend, are many of them crude and hasty; and if i were merely ambitious of acquiring some reputation in philosophy, i ought to keep them by me, till corrected and improved by time, and farther experience. but since even short hints and imperfect experiments in any new branch of science, being communicated, have oftentimes a good effect, in exciting the attention of the ingenious to the subject, and so become the occasion of more exact disquisition, and more compleat discoveries, you are at liberty to communicate this paper to whom you please; it being of more importance that knowledge should increase, than that your friend should be thought an accurate philosopher. b. franklin. to peter collinson, esq. f. r. s. london. _additional proofs of the positive and negative state of electricity in the clouds.--new method of ascertaining it._ _philadelphia, april 18, 1754._ sir, since september last, having been abroad on two long journeys, and otherwise much engaged, i have made but few observations on the _positive_ and _negative_ state of electricity in the clouds. but mr. kinnersley kept his rod and bells in good order, and has made many. once this winter the bells rang a long time, during a fall of snow, though no thunder was heard, or lightning seen. sometimes the flashes and cracks of the electric matter between bell and bell were so large and loud as to be heard all over the house: but by all his observations, the clouds were constantly in a negative state, till about six weeks ago, when he found them once to change in a few minutes from the negative to the positive. about a fortnight after that, he made another observation of the same kind; and last monday afternoon, the wind blowing hard at s. e. and veering round to n. e. with many thick driving clouds, there were five or six successive changes from negative to positive, and from positive to negative, the bells stopping a minute or two between every change. besides the methods mentioned in my paper of september last, of discovering the electrical state of the clouds, the following may be used. when your bells are ringing, pass a rubbed tube by the edge of the bell, connected with your pointed rod: if the cloud is then in a negative state, the ringing will stop; if in a positive state, it will continue, and perhaps be quicker. or, suspend a very small cork-ball by a fine silk thread, so that it may hang close to the edge of the rod-bell: then whenever the bell is electrified, whether positively or negatively, the little ball will be repelled, and continue at some distance from the bell. have ready a round-headed glass stopper of a decanter, rub it on your side till it is electrified, then present it to the cork-ball. if the electricity in the ball is positive, it will be repelled from the glass stopper as well as from the bell. if negative, it will fly to the stopper. b. franklin. electrical experiments, _with an attempt to account for their several phænomena. together with some observations on thunder-clouds, in further confirmation of mr. franklin's observations on the positive and negative electrical state of the clouds, by john canton, m. a. and f. r. s._ _dec. 6, 1753._ experiment i. from the cieling, or any convenient part of a room, let two cork-balls, each about the bigness of a small pea, be suspended by linen threads of eight or nine inches in length, so as to be in contact with each other. bring the excited glass tube under the balls, and they will be separated by it, when held at the distance of three or four feet; let it be brought nearer, and they will stand farther apart; entirely withdraw it, and they will immediately come together. this experiment may be made with very small brass balls hung by silver wire; and will succeed as well with sealing-wax made electrical, as with glass. experiment ii. if two cork-balls be suspended by dry silk threads, the excited tube must be brought within eighteen inches before they will repel each other; which they will continue to do, for some time, after the tube is taken away. as the balls in the first experiment are not insulated, they cannot properly be said to be electrified: but when they hang within the atmosphere of the excited tube, they may attract and condense the electrical fluid round about them, and be separated by the repulsion of its particles. it is conjectured also, that the balls at this time contain less than their common share of the electrical fluid, on account of the repelling power of that which surrounds them; though some, perhaps, is continually entering and passing through the threads. and if that be the case, the reason is plain why the balls hung by silk, in the second experiment, must be in a much more dense part of the atmosphere of the tube, before they will repel each other. at the approach of an excited stick of wax to the balls, in the first experiment, the electrical fire is supposed to come through the threads into the balls, and be condensed there, in its passage towards the wax; for, according to mr. franklin, excited glass _emits_ the electrical fluid, but excited wax _receives_ it. experiment iii. let a tin tube, of four or five feet in length, and about two inches in diameter, be insulated by silk; and from one end of it let the cork-balls be suspended by linen threads. electrify it, by bringing the excited glass tube near the other end, so as that the balls may stand an inch and an half, or two inches, apart: then, at the approach of the excited tube, they will, by degrees, lose their repelling power, and come into contact; and as the tube is brought still nearer, they will separate again to as great a distance as before: in the return of the tube they will approach each other till they touch, and then repel as at first. if the tin tube be electrified by wax, or the wire of a charged phial, the balls will be affected in the same manner at the approach of excited wax, or the wire of the phial. experiment iv. electrify the cork-balls as in the last experiment by glass, and at the approach of an excited stick of wax their repulsion will be increased. the effect will be the same, if the excited glass be brought towards them, when they have been electrified by wax. the bringing the excited glass to the end, or edge of the tin-tube, in the third experiment, is supposed to electrify it positively, or to add to the electrical fire it before contained; and therefore some will be running off through the balls, and they will repel each other. but at the approach of excited glass, which likewise _emits_ the electrical fluid, the discharge of it from the balls will be diminished; or part will be driven back, by a force acting in a contrary direction: and they will come nearer together. if the tube be held at such a distance from the balls, that the excess of the density of the fluid round about them, above the common quantity in air, be equal to the excess of the density of that within them, above the common quantity contained in cork; their repulsion will be quite destroyed. but if the tube be brought nearer; the fluid without being more dense than that within the balls, it will be attracted by them, and they will recede from each other again. when the apparatus has lost part of its natural share of this fluid, by the approach of excited wax to one end of it, or is electrified negatively; the electrical fire is attracted and imbibed by the balls to supply the deficiency; and that more plentifully at the approach of excited glass; or a body positively electrified, than before; whence the distance between the balls will be increased, as the fluid surrounding them is augmented. and in general, whether by the approach or recess of any body; if the difference between the density of the internal and external fluid be increased, or diminished; the repulsion of the balls will be increased, or diminished, accordingly. experiment v. when the insulated tin tube is not electrified, bring the excited glass tube towards the middle of it, so as to be nearly at right angles with it, and the balls at the end will repel each other; and the more so, as the excited tube is brought nearer. when it has been held a few seconds, at the distance of about six inches, withdraw it, and the balls will approach each other till they touch; and then separating again, as the tube is moved farther off, will continue to repel when it is taken quite away. and this repulsion between the balls will be increased by the approach of excited glass, but diminished by excited wax; just as if the apparatus had been electrified by wax, after the manner described in the third experiment. experiment vi. insulate two tin tubes, distinguished by a and b, so as to be in a line with each other, and about half an inch apart; and at the remote end of each, let a pair of cork balls be suspended. towards the middle of a, bring the excited glass tube, and holding it a short time, at the distance of a few inches, each pair of balls will be observed to separate: withdraw the tube, and the balls of a will come together, and then repel each other again; but those of b will hardly be affected. by the approach of the excited glass tube, held under the balls of a, their repulsion will be increased: but if the tube be brought, in the same manner, towards the balls of b, their repulsion will be diminished. in the fifth experiment, the common stock of electrical matter in the tin tube, is supposed to be attenuated about the middle, and to be condensed at the ends, by the repelling power of the atmosphere of the excited glass tube, when held near it. and perhaps the tin tube may lose some of its natural quantity of the electrical fluid, before it receives any from the glass; as that fluid will more readily run off from the ends and edges of it, than enter at the middle: and accordingly, when the glass tube is withdrawn, and the fluid is again equally diffused through the apparatus, it is found to be electrified negatively: for excited glass brought under the balls will increase their repulsion. in the sixth experiment, part of the fluid driven out of one tin tube enters the other; which is found to be electrified positively, by the decreasing of the repulsion of its balls, at the approach of excited glass. experiment vii. let the tin tube, with a pair of balls at one end, be placed three feet at least from any part of the room, and the air rendered very dry by means of a fire: electrify the apparatus to a considerable degree; then touch the tin tube with a finger, or any other conductor, and the balls will, notwithstanding, continue to repel each other; though not at so great a distance as before. the air surrounding the apparatus to the distance of two or three feet, is supposed to contain more or less of the electrical fire, than its common share, as the tin tube is electrified positively, or negatively; and when very dry, may not part with its overplus, or have its deficiency supplied so suddenly, as the tin; but may continue to be electrified, after that has been touched for a considerable time. experiment viii. having made the torricellian vacuum about five feet long, after the manner described in the _philosophical transactions_, vol. xlvii. p. 370, if the excited tube be brought within a small distance of it, a light will be seen through more than half its length; which soon vanishes, if the tube be not brought nearer; but will appear again, as that is moved farther off. this may be repeated several times, without exciting the tube afresh. this experiment may be considered as a kind of ocular demonstration of the truth of mr. franklin's hypothesis; that when the electrical fluid is condensed on one side of thin glass, it will be repelled from the other, if it meets with no resistance. according to which, at the approach of the excited tube, the fire is supposed to be repelled from the inside of the glass surrounding the vacuum, and to be carried off through the columns of mercury; but, as the tube is withdrawn, the fire is supposed to return. experiment ix. let an excited stick of wax, of two feet and an half in length, and about an inch in diameter, be held near its middle. excite the glass tube, and draw it over one half of it; then, turning it a little about its axis, let the tube be excited again, and drawn over the same half; and let this operation be repeated several times: then will that half destroy the repelling power of balls electrified by glass, and the other half will increase it. by this experiment it appears, that wax also may be electrified positively and negatively. and it is probable, that all bodies whatsoever may have the quantity they contain of the electrical fluid, increased, or diminished. the clouds, i have observed, by a great number of experiments, to be some in a positive, and others in a negative state of electricity. for the cork balls, electrified by them, will sometimes close at the approach of excited glass; and at other times be separated to a greater distance. and this change i have known to happen five or six times in less than half an hour; the balls coming together each time and remaining in contact a few seconds, before they repel each other again. it may likewise easily be discovered, by a charged phial, whether the electrical fire be drawn out of the apparatus by a negative cloud, or forced into it by a positive one: and by which soever it be electrified, should that cloud either part with its overplus, or have its deficiency supplied suddenly, the apparatus will lose its electricity: which is frequently observed to be the case, immediately after a flash of lightning. yet when the air is very dry, the apparatus will continue to be electrised for ten minutes, or a quarter of an hour, after the clouds have passed the zenith; and sometimes till they appear more than half-way towards the horizon. rain, especially when the drops are large, generally brings down the electrical fire: and hail, in summer, i believe never fails. when the apparatus was last electrified, it was by the fall of thawing snow, which happened so lately, as on the 12th of november; that being the twenty-sixth day, and sixty-first time it has been electrified, since it was first set up; which was about the middle of may. and as fahrenheit's thermometer was but seven degrees above freezing, it is supposed the winter will not entirely put a stop to observations of this sort. at london, no more than two thunder-storms have happened during the whole summer; and the apparatus was sometimes so strongly electrified in one of them, that the bells, which have been frequently rung by the clouds, so loud as to be heard in every room of the house (the doors being open) were silenced by the almost constant stream of dense electrical fire, between each bell and the brass ball, which would not suffer it to strike. i shall conclude this paper, already too long, with the following queries: 1. may not air, suddenly rarefied, give electrical fire to, and air suddenly condensed, receive electrical fire from, clouds and vapours passing through it? 2. is not the _aurora borealis_, the flashing of electrical fire from positive, towards negative clouds at a great distance, through the upper part of the atmosphere, where the resistance is least? experiments _made in pursuance of those made by mr. canton, dated december 6, 1753; with explanations, by mr. benjamin franklin._ read at the royal society, dec. 18, 1755. _philadelphia, march 14, 1755._ principles. i. electric atmospheres, that flow round non-electric bodies, being brought near each other, do not readily mix and unite into one atmosphere, but remain separate, and repel each other. this is plainly seen in suspended cork balls, and other bodies electrified. ii. an electric atmosphere not only repels another electric atmosphere, but will also repel the electric matter contained in the substance of a body approaching it; and without joining or mixing with it, force it to other parts of the body that contained it. this is shewn by some of the following experiments. iii. bodies electrified negatively, or deprived of their natural quantity of electricity, repel each other, (or at least appear to do so, by a mutual receding) as well as those electrified positively, or which have electric atmospheres. this is shewn by applying the negatively charged wire of a phial to two cork balls, suspended by silk threads, and many other experiments. preparation. fix a tassel of fifteen or twenty threads, three inches long, at one end of a tin prime conductor (mine is about five feet long, and four inches diameter) supported by silk lines. let the threads be a little damp, but not wet. experiment i. _pass an excited glass tube near the other end of the prime conductor, so as to give it some sparks, and the threads will diverge._ because each thread, as well as the prime conductor, has acquired an electric atmosphere, which repels and is repelled by the atmospheres of the other threads: if those several atmospheres would readily mix, the threads might unite, and hang in the middle of one atmosphere, common to them all. _rub the tube afresh, and approach the prime conductor therewith, crossways, near that end, but not nigh enough to give sparks; and the threads will diverge a little more._ because the atmosphere of the prime conductor is pressed by the atmosphere of the excited tube, and driven towards the end where the threads are, by which each thread acquires more atmosphere. _withdraw the tube, and they will close as much._ they close as much, and no more; because the atmosphere of the glass tube not having mixed with the atmosphere of the prime conductor, is withdrawn intire, having made no addition to, or diminution from it. _bring the excited tube under the tuft of threads, and they will close a little._ they close, because the atmosphere of the glass tube repels their atmospheres, and drives part of them back on the prime conductor. _withdraw it, and they will diverge as much._ for the portion of atmosphere which they had lost, returns to them again. experiment ii. _excite the glass tube, and approach the prime conductor with it, holding it across, near the end opposite to that on which the threads hang, at the distance of five or six inches. keep it there a few seconds, and the threads of the tassels will diverge. withdraw it, and they will close._ they diverge, because they have received electric atmospheres from the electric matter before contained in the substance of the prime conductor; but which is now repelled and driven away, by the atmosphere of the glass tube, from the parts of the prime conductor opposite and nearest to that atmosphere, and forced out upon the surface of the prime conductor at its other end, and upon the threads hanging thereto. were it any part of the atmosphere of the glass tube that flowed over and along the prime conductor to the threads, and gave them atmospheres (as is the case when a spark is given to the prime conductor from the glass tube) such part of the tube's atmosphere would have remained, and the threads continue to diverge; but they close on withdrawing the tube, because the tube takes with it _all its own atmosphere_, and the electric matter, which had been driven out of the substance of the prime conductor, and formed atmospheres round the threads, is thereby permitted to return to its place. _take a spark from the prime conductor near the threads, when they are diverged as before, and they will close._ for by so doing you take away their atmospheres, composed of the electric matter driven out of the substance of the prime conductor, as aforesaid, by the repellency of the atmosphere of the glass tube. by taking this spark you rob the prime conductor of part of its natural quantity of the electric matter; which part so taken is not supplied by the glass tube, for when that is afterwards withdrawn, it takes with it its whole atmosphere, and leaves the prime conductor electrised negatively, as appears by the next operation. _then withdraw the tube, and they will open again._ for now the electric matter in the prime conductor, returning to its equilibrium, or equal diffusion, in all parts of its substance, and the prime conductor having lost some of its natural quantity, the threads connected with it lose part of theirs, and so are electrised negatively, and therefore repel each other, by _pr. iii._ _approach the prime conductor with the tube near the same place as at first, and they will close again._ because the part of their natural quantity of electric fluid, which they had lost, is now restored to them again, by the repulsion of the glass tube forcing that fluid to them from other parts of the prime conductor; so they are now again in their natural state. _withdraw it, and they will open again._ for what had been restored to them, is now taken from them again, flowing back into the prime conductor, and leaving them once more electrised negatively. _bring the excited tube under the threads, and they will diverge more._ because more of their natural quantity is driven from them into the prime conductor, and thereby their negative electricity increased. experiment iii. _the prime conductor not being electrified, bring the excited tube under the tassel, and the threads will diverge._ part of their natural quantity is thereby driven out of them into the prime conductor, and they become negatively electrised, and therefore repel each other. _keeping the tube in the same place with one hand, attempt to touch the threads with the finger of the other hand, and they will recede from the finger._ because the finger being plunged into the atmosphere of the glass tube, as well as the threads, part of its natural quantity is driven back through the hand and body, by that atmosphere, and the finger becomes, as well as the threads, negatively electrised, and so repels, and is repelled by them. to confirm this, hold a slender light lock of cotton, two or three inches long, near a prime conductor, that is electrified by a glass globe, or tube. you will see the cotton stretch itself out towards the prime conductor. attempt to touch it with the finger of the other hand, and it will be repelled by the finger. approach it with a positively charged wire of a bottle, and it will fly to the wire. bring it near a negatively charged wire of a bottle, it will recede from that wire in the same manner that it did from the finger; which demonstrates the finger to be negatively electrised, as well as the lock of cotton so situated. _turkey killed by electricity_.--_effect of a shock on the operator in making the experiment._ as mr. franklin, in a former letter to mr. collinson, mentioned his intending to try the power of a very strong electrical shock upon a turkey, that gentleman accordingly has been so very obliging as to send an account of it, which is to the following purpose. he made first several experiments on fowls, and found, that two large thin glass jars gilt, holding each about six gallons, were sufficient, when fully charged, to kill common hens outright; but the turkeys, though thrown into violent convulsions, and then lying as dead for some minutes, would recover in less than a quarter of an hour. however, having added three other such to the former two, though not fully charged, he killed a turkey of about ten pounds weight, and believes that they would have killed a much larger. he conceited, as himself says, that the birds killed in this manner eat uncommonly tender. in making these experiments, he found, that a man could, without great detriment, bear a much greater shock than he had imagined: for he inadvertently received the stroke of two of these jars through his arms and body, when they were very near fully charged. it seemed to him an universal blow throughout the body from head to foot, and was followed by a violent quick trembling in the trunk, which went off gradually, in a few seconds. it was some minutes before he could recollect his thoughts, so as to know what was the matter; for he did not see the flash, though his eye was on the spot of the prime conductor, from whence it struck the back of his hand; nor did he hear the crack, though the by-standers said it was a loud one; nor did he particularly feel the stroke on his hand, though he afterwards found it had raised a swelling there, of the bigness of half a pistol-bullet. his arms and the back of the neck felt somewhat numbed the remainder of the evening, and his breast was sore for a week after as if it had been bruised. from this experiment may be seen the danger, even under the greatest caution, to the operator, when making these experiments with large jars; for it is not to be doubted, but several of these fully charged would as certainly, by increasing them, in proportion to the size, kill a man, as they before did a turkey. _n. b._ the original of this letter, which was read at the royal society, has been mislaid. to dr. l----[65], at charles town, south carolina. _differences in the qualities of glass.--account of domien, an electrician and traveller.--conjectures respecting the pores of glass.--origin of the author's idea of drawing down lightning.--no satisfactory hypothesis respecting the manner in which clouds become electrified.--six men knocked down at once by an electrical shock.--reflections on the spirit of invention._ _philadelphia, march 18, 1755._ sir, i send you enclosed a paper containing some new experiments i have made, in pursuance of those by mr. canton that are printed with my last letters. i hope these, with my explanation of them, will afford you some entertainment[66]. in answer to your several enquiries. the tubes and globes we use here, are chiefly made here. the glass has a greenish cast, but is clear and hard, and, i think, better for electrical experiments than the white glass of london, which is not so hard. there are certainly great differences in glass. a white globe i had made here some years since, would never, by any means, be excited. two of my friends tried it, as well as myself, without success. at length, putting it on an electric stand, a chain from the prime conductor being in contact with it, i found it had the properties of a non-electric; for i could draw sparks from any part of it, though it was very clean and dry. all i know of domien, is, that by his own account he was a native of transylvania, of tartar descent, but a priest of the greek church: he spoke and wrote latin very readily and correctly. he set out from his own country with an intention of going round the world, as much as possible by land. he travelled through germany, france, and holland, to england. resided some time at oxford. from england he came to maryland; thence went to new england; returned by land to philadelphia; and from hence travelled through maryland, virginia, and north carolina to you. he thought it might be of service to him in his travels to know something of electricity. i taught him the use of the tube; how to charge the leyden phial, and some other experiments. he wrote to me from charles-town, that he had lived eight hundred miles upon electricity, it had been meat, drink, and cloathing to him. his last letter to me was, i think, from jamaica, desiring me to send the tubes you mention, to meet him at the havannah, from whence he expected to get a passage to la vera cruz; designed travelling over land through mexico to acapulco; thence to get a passage to manilla, and so through china, india, persia, and turkey, home to his own country; proposing to support himself chiefly by electricity. a strange project! but he was, as you observe, a very singular character. i was sorry the tubes did not get to the havannah in time for him. if they are still in being, please to send for them, and accept of them. what became of him afterwards i have never heard. he promised to write to me as often as he could on his journey, and as soon as he should get home after finishing his tour. it is now seven years since he was here. if he is still in new spain, as you imagine from that loose report, i suppose it must be that they confine him there, and prevent his writing: but i think it more likely that he may be dead. the questions you ask about the pores of glass, i cannot answer otherwise, than that i know nothing of their nature; and suppositions, however ingenious, are often mere mistakes. my hypothesis, that they were smaller near the middle of the glass, too small to admit the passage of electricity, which could pass through the surface till it came near the middle, was certainly wrong: for soon after i had written that letter, i did, in order to _confirm_ the hypothesis (which indeed i ought to have done before i wrote it) make an experiment. i ground away five-sixths of the thickness of the glass, from the side of one of my phials, expecting that the supposed denser part being so removed, the electric fluid might come through the remainder of the glass, which i had imagined more open; but i found myself mistaken. the bottle charged as well after the grinding as before. i am now, as much as ever, at a loss to know how or where the quantity of electric fluid, on the positive side of the glass, is disposed of. as to the difference of conductors, there is not only this, that some will conduct electricity in small quantities, and yet do not conduct it fast enough to produce the shock; but even among those that will conduct a shock, there are some that do it better than others. mr. kinnersley has found, by a very good experiment, that when the charge of a bottle hath an opportunity of passing two ways, _i. e._ straight through a trough of water ten feet long, and six inches square; or round about through twenty feet of wire, it passes through the wire, and not through the water, though that is the shortest course; the wire being the better conductor. when the wire is taken away, it passes through the water, as may be felt by a hand plunged in the water; but it cannot be felt in the water when the wire is used at the same time. thus, though a small phial containing water will give a smart shock, one containing the same quantity of mercury will give one much stronger, the mercury being the better conductor; while one containing oil, only, will scarce give any shock at all. your question, how i came first to think of proposing the experiment of drawing down the lightning, in order to ascertain its sameness with the electric fluid, i cannot answer better than by giving you an extract from the minutes i used to keep of the experiments i made, with memorandums of such as i purposed to make, the reasons for making them, and the observations that arose upon them, from which minutes my letters were afterwards drawn. by this extract you will see that the thought was not so much "an out-of-the-way one," but that it might have occurred to an electrician. "nov. 7, 1749. electrical fluid agrees with lightning in these particulars: 1. giving light. 2. colour of the light. 3. crooked direction. 4. swift motion. 5. being conducted by metals. 6. crack or noise in exploding. 7. subsisting in water or ice. 8. rending bodies it passes through. 9. destroying animals. 10. melting metals. 11. firing inflammable substances. 12. sulphureous smell.--the electric fluid is attracted by points.--we do not know whether this property is in lightning.--but since they agree in all the particulars wherein we can already compare them, is it not probable they agree likewise in this?--let the experiment be made." i wish i could give you any satisfaction in the article of clouds. i am still at a loss about the manner in which they become charged with electricity; no hypothesis i have yet formed perfectly satisfying me. some time since, i heated very hot a brass plate, two feet square, and placed it on an electric stand. from the plate a wire extended horizontally four or five feet, and, at the end of it, hung, by linen threads, a pair of cork balls. i then repeatedly sprinkled water over the plate, that it might be raised from it in vapour, hoping that if the vapour either carried off the electricity of the plate, or left behind it that of the water (one of which i supposed it must do, if, like the clouds, it became electrised itself, either positively or negatively) i should perceive and determine it by the separation of the balls, and by finding whether they were positive or negative; but no alteration was made at all, nor could i perceive that the steam was itself electrised, though i have still some suspicion that the steam was not fully examined, and i think the experiment should be repeated. whether the first state of electrised clouds is positive or negative, if i could find the cause of that, i should be at no loss about the other, for either is easily deduced from the other, as one state is easily produced by the other. a strongly positive cloud may drive out of a neighbouring cloud much of its natural quantity of the electric fluid, and, passing by it, leave it in a negative state. in the same way, a strongly negative cloud may occasion a neighbouring cloud to draw into itself from others, an additional quantity, and, passing by it, leave it in a positive state. how these effects may be produced, you will easily conceive, on perusing and considering the experiments in the enclosed paper: and from them too it appears probable, that every change from positive to negative, and from negative to positive, that, during a thunder-gust, we see in the cork-balls annexed to the apparatus, is not owing to the presence of clouds in the same state, but often to the absence of positive or negative clouds, that, having just passed, leave the rod in the opposite state. the knocking down of the six men was performed with two of my large jars not fully charged. i laid one end of my discharging rod upon the head of the first; he laid his hand on the head of the second; the second his hand on the head of the third, and so to the last, who held, in his hand, the chain that was connected with the outside of the jars. when they were thus placed, i applied the other end of my rod to the prime conductor, and they all dropped together. when they got up, they all declared they had not felt any stroke, and wondered how they came to fall; nor did any of them either hear the crack, or see the light of it. you suppose it a dangerous experiment; but i had once suffered the same myself, receiving, by accident, an equal stroke through my head, that struck me down, without hurting me: and i had seen a young woman that was about to be electrified through the feet (for some indisposition) receive a greater charge through the head, by inadvertently stooping forward to look at the placing of her feet, till her forehead (as she was very tall) came too near my prime conductor: she dropped, but instantly got up again, complaining of nothing. a person so struck, sinks down doubled, or folded together as it were, the joints losing their strength and stiffness at once, so that he drops on the spot where he stood, instantly, and there is no previous staggering, nor does he ever fall lengthwise. too great charge might, indeed, kill a man, but i have not yet seen any hurt done by it. it would certainly, as you observe, be the easiest of all deaths. the experiment you have heard so imperfect an account of, is merely this: i electrified a silver pint can, on an electric stand, and then lowered into it a cork ball, of about an inch diameter, hanging by a silk string, till the cork touched the bottom of the can. the cork was not attracted to the inside of the can as it would have been to the outside, and though it touched the bottom, yet, when drawn out, it was not found to be electrified by that touch, as it would have been by touching the outside. the fact is singular. you require the reason; i do not know it. perhaps you may discover it, and then you will be so good as to communicate it to me[67]. i find a frank acknowledgment of one's ignorance is not only the easiest way to get rid of a difficulty, but the likeliest way to obtain information, and therefore i practise it: i think it an honest policy. those who affect to be thought to know every thing, and so undertake to explain every thing, often remain long ignorant of many things that others could and would instruct them in, if they appeared less conceited. the treatment your friend has met with is so common, that no man who knows what the world is, and ever has been, should expect to escape it. there are every where a number of people, who, being totally destitute of any inventive faculty themselves, do not readily conceive that others may possess it: they think of inventions as of miracles; there might be such formerly, but they are ceased. with these, every one who offers a new invention is deemed a pretender: he had it from some other country, or from some book: a man of _their own acquaintance_; one who has no more sense than themselves, could not possibly, in their opinion, have been the inventor of any thing. they are confirmed, too, in these sentiments, by frequent instances of pretensions to invention, which vanity is daily producing. that vanity too, though an incitement to invention, is, at the same time, the pest of inventors. jealousy and envy deny the merit or the novelty of your invention; but vanity, when the novelty and merit are established, claims it for its own. the smaller your invention is, the more mortification you receive in having the credit of it disputed with you by a rival, whom the jealousy and envy of others are ready to support against you, at least so far as to make the point doubtful. it is not in itself of importance enough for a dispute; no one would think your proofs and reasons worth their attention: and yet, if you do not dispute the point, and demonstrate your right, you not only lose the credit of being in that instance _ingenious_, but you suffer the disgrace of not being _ingenuous_; not only of being a plagiary, but of being a plagiary for trifles. had the invention been greater it would have disgraced you less; for men have not so contemptible an idea of him that robs for gold on the highway, as of him that can pick pockets for half-pence and farthings. thus, through envy, jealousy, and the vanity of competitors for fame, the origin of many of the most extraordinary inventions, though produced within but a few centuries past, is involved in doubt and uncertainty. we scarce know to whom we are indebted for the _compass_, and for _spectacles_, nor have even _paper_ and _printing_, that record every thing else, been able to preserve with certainty the name and reputation of their inventors. one would not, therefore, of all faculties, or qualities of the mind, wish, for a friend, or a child, that he should have that of invention. for his attempts to benefit mankind in that way, however well imagined, if they do not succeed, expose him, though very unjustly, to general ridicule and contempt; and, if they do succeed, to envy, robbery, and abuse. i am, &c. b. franklin. footnotes: [65] dr. lining.--editor. [66] see page 286, for the paper here mentioned. [67] mr. f. has since thought, that, possibly, the mutual repulsion of the inner opposite sides of the electrised can may prevent the accumulating an electric atmosphere upon them, and occasion it to stand chiefly on the outside. but recommends it to the farther examination of the curious. to mons. dalibard, at paris, inclosed in a letter to mr. peter collinson, f. r. s. _beccaria's work on electricity.--sentiments of franklin on pointed rods, not fully understood in europe.--effect of lightning on the church of newbury, in new england.--remarks on the subject._ read at the royal society, dec. 18, 1755. _philadelphia, june 29, 1755._ sir, you desire my opinion of pere beccaria's italian book[68]. i have read it with much pleasure, and think it one of the best pieces on the subject that i have seen in any language. yet as to the article of water-spouts, i am not at present of his sentiments; though i must own with you, that he has handled it very ingeniously. mr. collinson has my opinion of whirlwinds and water-spouts at large, written some time since. i know not whether they will be published; if not, i will get them transcribed for your perusal[69]. it does not appear to me that pere beccaria doubts of the _absolute impermeability of glass_ in the sense i meant it; for the instances he gives of holes made through glass by the electric stroke are such as we have all experienced, and only show that the electric fluid could not pass without making a hole. in the same manner we say, glass is impermeable to water, and yet a stream from a fire-engine will force through the strongest panes of a window. as to the effect of points in drawing the electric matter from clouds, and thereby securing buildings, &c. which, you say, he seems to doubt, i must own i think he only speaks modestly and judiciously. i find i have been but partly understood in that matter. i have mentioned it in several of my letters, and except once, always in the _alternative, viz_. that pointed rods erected on buildings, and communicating with the moist earth, would either _prevent_ a stroke, _or_, if not prevented, would _conduct_ it, so as that the building should suffer no damage. yet whenever my opinion is examined in europe, nothing is considered but the probability of those rods _preventing_ a stroke or explosion, which is only a _part_ of the use i proposed for them; and the other part, their conducting a stroke, which they may happen not to prevent, seems to be totally forgotten, though of equal importance and advantage. i thank you for communicating m. de buffon's relation of the effect of lightning at dijon, on the 7th of june last. in return, give me leave to relate an instance i lately saw of the same kind. being in the town of newbury in new england, in november last, i was shewn the effect of lightning on their church, which had been struck a few months before. the steeple was a square tower of wood, reaching seventy feet up from the ground to the place where the bell hung, over which rose a taper spire, of wood likewise, reaching seventy feet higher, to the vane of the weather-cock. near the bell was fixed an iron hammer to strike the hours; and from the tail of the hammer a wire went down through a small gimlet-hole in the floor that the bell stood upon, and through a second floor in like manner; then horizontally under and near the plaistered cieling of that second floor, till it came near a plaistered wall; then down by the side of that wall to a clock, which stood about twenty feet below the bell. the wire was not bigger than a common knitting-needle. the spire was split all to pieces by the lightning, and the parts flung in all directions over the square in which the church stood, so that nothing remained above the bell. the lightning passed between the hammer and the clock in the above-mentioned wire, without hurting either of the floors, or having any effect upon them (except making the gimlet-holes, through which the wire passed, a little bigger,) and without hurting the plaistered wall, or any part of the building, so far as the aforesaid wire and the pendulum wire of the clock extended; which latter wire was about the thickness of a goose-quill. from the end of the pendulum, down quite to the ground, the building was exceedingly rent and damaged, and some stones in the foundation-wall torn out, and thrown to the distance of twenty or thirty feet. no part of the afore-mentioned long small wire, between the clock and the hammer, could be found, except about two inches that hung to the tail of the hammer, and about as much that was fastened to the clock; the rest being exploded, and its particles dissipated in smoke and air, as gunpowder is by common fire, and had only left a black smutty track on the plaistering, three or four inches broad, darkest in the middle, and fainter toward the edges, all along the cieling, under which it passed, and down the wall. these were the effects and appearances; on which i would only make the few following remarks, viz. 1. that lightning, in its passage through a building, will leave wood to pass as far as it can in metal, and not enter the wood again till the conductor of metal ceases. and the same i have observed in other instances, as to walls of brick or stone. 2. the quantity of lightning that passed through this steeple must have been very great, by its effects on the lofty spire above the bell, and on the square tower all below the end of the clock pendulum. 3. great as this quantity was, it was conducted by a small wire and a clock pendulum, without the least damage to the building so far as they extended. 4. the pendulum rod being of a sufficient thickness, conducted the lightning without damage to itself; but the small wire was utterly destroyed. 5. though the small wire was itself destroyed, yet it had conducted the lightning with safety to the building. 6. and from the whole it seems probable, that if even such a small wire had been extended from the spindle of the vane to the earth, before the storm, no damage would have been done to the steeple by that stroke of lightning, though the wire itself had been destroyed. footnotes: [68] this work is written conformable to mr. franklin's theory, upon artificial and natural electricity, which compose the two parts of it. it was printed in italian, at turin, in 4to. 1753; between the two parts is a letter to the abbé nollet, in defence of mr. franklin's system. _j. bevis._ [69] these papers will be found in vol ii. _editor._ to peter collinson, esq. f. r. s. london. _notice of another packet of letters._ _philadelphia, nov. 23, 1753_. dear friend. in my last, via virginia, i promised to send you per next ship, a small philosophical packet: but now having got the materials (old letters and rough drafts) before me, i fear you will find it a great one. nevertheless, as i am like to have a few days leisure before this ship sails, which i may not have again in a long time, i shall transcribe the whole, and send it; for you will be under no necessity of reading it all at once, but may take it a little at a time, now and then of a winter evening. when you happen to have nothing else to do (if that ever happens) it may afford you some amusement[70]. b. franklin. footnotes: [70] these letters and papers are a philosophical correspondence between mr. franklin and some of his american friends[71]. mr. collinson communicated them to the royal society, where they were read at different meetings during the year 1756. but mr. franklin having particularly requested that they might not be printed, none of them were inserted in the transactions. mr. f. had at that time an intention of revising them, and pursuing some of the enquiries farther; but finding that he is not like to have sufficient leisure, he has at length been induced, imperfect as they are, to permit their publication, as some of the hints they contain may possibly be useful to others in their philosophical researches. note in mr. collinson's edition. [71] as some of these papers are upon subjects not immediately connected with electricity, we have taken such papers from the order in which they were placed by mr. collinson, and transferred them to other parts of the work. _editor._ _extract of a letter from a gentleman in boston[72], to benjamin franklin, esq. concerning the crooked direction, and the source of lightning, and the swiftness of the electric fire._ _boston, dec. 21, 1751._ sir, the experiments mr. k. has exhibited here, have been greatly pleasing to all sorts of people that have seen them; and i hope, by the time he returns to philadelphia, his tour this way will turn to good account. his experiments are very curious, and i think prove most effectually your doctrine of electricity; that it is a real element, annexed to, and diffused among all bodies we are acquainted with; that it differs in nothing from lightning, the effects of both being similar, and their properties, so far as they are known, the same, &c. the remarkable effect of lightning on iron, lately discovered, in giving it the magnetic virtue, and the same effect produced on small needles by the electrical fire, is a further and convincing proof that they are both the same element; but, which is very unaccountable, mr. k. tells me, it is necessary to produce this effect, that the direction of the needle and the electric fire should be north and south; from either to the other, and that just so far as they deviate therefrom, the magnetic power in the needle is less, till their direction being at right angles with the north and south, the effect entirely ceases. we made at faneuil hall, where mr. k----'s apparatus is, several experiments to give some small needles the magnetic virtue; previously examining, by putting them in water, on which they will be supported, whether or not they had any of that virtue; and i think we found all of them to have some small degree of it, their points turning to the north: we had nothing to do then but to invert the poles, which accordingly was done, by sending through them the charge of two large glass jars; the eye of the needle turning to the north, as the point before had done; that end of the needle which the fire is thrown upon, mr. k. tells me always points to the north. the electrical fire passing through air has the same crooked direction as lightning[73]. this appearance i endeavour to account for thus: air is an electric _per se_, therefore there must be a mutual repulsion betwixt air and the electrical fire. a column or cylinder of air, having the diameter of its base equal to the diameter of the electrical spark, intervenes that part of the body which the spark is taken from, and of the body it aims at. the spark acts upon this column, and is acted upon by it, more strongly than any other neighbouring portion of air. the column, being thus acted upon, becomes more dense, and, being more dense, repels the spark more strongly; its repellency being in proportion to its density: having acquired, by being condensed, a degree of repellency greater than its natural, it turns the spark out of its strait course; the neighbouring air, which must be less dense, and therefore has a smaller degree of repellency, giving it a more ready passage. the spark, having taken a new direction, must now act on, or most strongly repel the column of air which lies in that direction, and consequently must condense that column in the same manner as the former, when the spark must again change its course, which course will be thus repeatedly changed, till the spark reaches the body that attracted it. to this account one objection occurs; that as air is very fluid and elastic, and so endeavours to diffuse itself equally, the supposed accumulated air within the column aforesaid, would be immediately diffused among the contiguous air, and circulate to fill the space it was driven from; and consequently that the said column, on the greater density of which the phenomenon is supposed to depend, would not repel the spark more strongly than the neighbouring air. this might be an objection, if the electrical fire was as sluggish and inactive as air. air takes a sensible time to diffuse itself equally, as is manifest from winds which often blow for a considerable time together from the same point, and with a velocity even in the greatest storms, not exceeding, as it is said, sixty miles an hour: but the electric fire seems propagated instantaneously, taking up no perceptible time in going very great distances. it must then be an inconceivably short time in its progress from an electrified to an unelectrified body, which, in the present case, can be but a few inches apart: but this small portion of time is not sufficient for the elasticity of the air to exert itself, and therefore the column aforesaid must be in a denser state than its neighbouring air. about the velocity of the electric fire more is said below, which perhaps may more fully obviate this objection. but let us have recourse to experiments. experiments will obviate all objections, or confound the hypothesis. the electric spark, if the foregoing be true, will pass through a vacuum in a right line. to try this, let a wire be fixed perpendicularly on the plate of an air pump, having a leaden ball on its upper end; let another wire, passing through the top of a receiver, have on each end a leaden ball; let the leaden balls within the receiver, when put on the air pump, be within two or three inches of each other: the receiver being exhausted, the spark given from a charged phial to the upper wire will pass through rarefied air, nearly approaching to a vacuum, to the lower wire, and i suppose in a right line, or nearly so; the small portion of air remaining in the receiver, which cannot be entirely exhausted, may possibly cause it to deviate a little, but perhaps not sensibly, from a right line. the spark also might be made to pass through air greatly condensed, which perhaps would give a still more crooked direction. i have not had opportunity to make any experiments of this sort, not knowing of an air-pump nearer than cambridge, but you can easily make them. if these experiments answer, i think the crooked direction of lightning will be also accounted for. with respect to your letters on electricity, * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *. your hypothesis in particular for explaining the phenomena of lightning is very ingenious. that some clouds are highly charged with electrical fire, and that their communicating it to those that have less, to mountains and other eminencies, makes it visible and audible, when it is denominated lightning and thunder, is highly probable: but that the sea, which you suppose the grand source of it, can collect it, i think admits of a doubt: for though the sea be composed of salt and water, an electric _per se_ and non-electric, and though the friction of electrics _per se_ and non-electrics, will collect that fire, yet it is only under certain circumstances, which water will not admit. for it seems necessary, that the electrics _per se_ and non-electrics rubbing one another, should be of such substances as will not adhere to, or incorporate with each other. thus a glass or sulphur sphere turned in water, and so a friction between them, will not collect any fire; nor, i suppose, would a sphere of salt revolving in water; the water adhering to, or incorporating with those electrics _per se_. but granting that the friction between salt and water would collect the electrical fire, that fire, being so extremely subtle and active, would be immediately communicated, either to those lower parts of the sea from which it was drawn, and so only perform quick revolutions; or be communicated to the adjacent islands or continent, and so be diffused instantaneously through the general mass of the earth. i say instantaneously, for the greatest distances we can conceive within the limits of our globe, even that of the two most opposite points, it will take no sensible time in passing through: and therefore it seems a little difficult to conceive how there can be any accumulation of the electrical fire upon the surface of the sea or how the vapours arising from the sea should have a greater share of that fire than other vapours. that the progress of the electrical fire is so amazingly swift, seems evident from an experiment you yourself (not out of choice) made, when two or three large glass jars were discharged through your body. you neither heard the crack, was sensible of the stroke, nor, which is more extraordinary, saw the light; which gave you just reason to conclude, that it was swifter than sound, than animal sensation, and even light itself. now light (as astronomers have demonstrated) is about six minutes passing from the sun to the earth; a distance, they say, of more than eighty millions of miles. the greatest rectilinear distance within the compass of the earth is about eight thousand miles, equal to its diameter. supposing then, that the velocity of the electric fire be the same as that of light, it will go through a space equal to the earth's diameter in about 2/60 of one second of a minute. it seems inconceivable then, that it should be accumulated upon the sea, in its present state, which, as it is a non-electric, must give the fire an instantaneous passage to the neighbouring shores, and they convey it to the general mass of the earth. but such accumulation seems still more inconceivable when the electrical fire has but a few feet depth of water to penetrate, to return to the place from whence it is supposed to be collected. your thoughts upon these remarks i shall receive with a great deal of pleasure. i take notice that in the printed copies of your letters several things are wanting which are in the manuscript you sent me. i understand by your son, that you had writ, or was writing, a paper on the effect of the electrical fire on loadstones, needles, &c. which i would ask the favour of a copy of, as well as of any other papers on electricity, written since i had the manuscript, for which i repeat my obligations to you. i am, &c. j. b. footnotes: [72] mr. badouin. _editor._ [73] this is most easily observed in large strong sparks taken at some inches distance. to j. b. at boston. _observations on the subjects of the preceding letter.--reasons for supposing the sea to be the grand source of lightning.--reasons for doubting this hypothesis.--improvement in a globe for raising the electric fire._ read at the royal society, may 27, 1756. _philadelphia, jan. 24, 1752._ sir, i am glad to learn, by your favour of the 21st past, that mr. kinnersley's lectures have been acceptable to the gentlemen of boston, and are like to prove serviceable to himself. i thank you for the countenance and encouragement you have so kindly afforded my fellow-citizen. i send you enclosed an extract of a letter containing the substance of what i observed concerning the communication of magnetism to needles by electricity. the minutes i took at the time of the experiments are mislaid. i am very little acquainted with the nature of magnetism. dr. gawin knight, inventor of the steel magnets, has wrote largely on that subject, but i have not yet had leisure to peruse his writings with the attention necessary to become master of his doctrine. your explication of the crooked direction of lightning appears to me both ingenious and solid. when we can account as satisfactorily for the electrification of clouds, i think that branch of natural philosophy will be nearly complete. the air, undoubtedly, obstructs the motion of the electric fluid. dry air prevents the dissipation of an electric atmosphere, the denser the more, as in cold weather. i question whether such an atmosphere can be retained by a body _in vacuo_. a common electrical phial requires a non-electric communication from the wire to every part of the charged glass; otherwise, being dry and clean, and filled with air only, it charges slowly, and discharges gradually, by sparks, without a shock: but, exhausted of air, the communication is so open and free between the inserted wire and surface of the glass, that it charges as readily, and shocks as smartly as if filled with water: and i doubt not, but that in the experiment you propose, the sparks would not only be near strait _in vacuo_, but strike at a greater distance than in the open air, though perhaps there would not be a loud explosion. as soon as i have a little leisure, i will make the experiment, and send you the result. my supposition, that the sea might possibly be the grand source of lightning, arose from the common observation of its luminous appearance in the night, on the least motion; an appearance never observed in fresh water. then i knew that the electric fluid may be pumped up out of the earth, by the friction of a glass globe, on a non-electric cushion; and that, notwithstanding the surprising activity and swiftness of that fluid, and the non-electric communication between all parts of the cushion and the earth, yet quantities would be snatched up by the revolving surface of the globe, thrown on the prime conductor, and dissipated in air. how this was done, and why that subtle active spirit did not immediately return again from the globe, into some part or other of the cushion, and so into the earth, was difficult to conceive; but whether from its being opposed by a current setting upwards to the cushion, or from whatever other cause, that it did not so return was an evident fact. then i considered the separate particles of water as so many hard spherules, capable of touching the salt only in points, and imagined a particle of salt could therefore no more be wet by a particle of water, than a globe by a cushion; that there might therefore be such a friction between these originally constituent particles of salt and water, as in a sea of globes and cushions; that each particle of water on the surface might obtain from the common mass, some particles of the universally diffused, much finer, and more subtle electric fluid, and forming to itself an atmosphere of those particles, be repelled from the then generally electrified surface of the sea, and fly away with them into the air. i thought too, that possibly the great mixture of particles electric _per se_, in the ocean water, might, in some degree, impede the swift motion and dissipation of the electric fluid, through it to the shores, &c.--but having since found, that salt in the water of an electric phial does not lessen the shock; and having endeavoured in vain to produce that luminous appearance from a mixture of salt and water agitated; and observed, that even the sea-water will not produce it after some hours standing in a bottle; i suspect it to proceed from some principle yet unknown to us (which i would gladly make some experiments to discover, if i lived near the sea) and i grow more doubtful of my former supposition, and more ready to allow weight to that objection (drawn from the activity of the electric fluid, and the readiness of water to conduct) which you have indeed stated with great strength and clearness. in the mean time, before we part with this hypothesis, let us think what to substitute in its place. i have sometimes queried whether the friction of the air, an electric _per se_, in violent winds, among trees, and against the surface of the earth, might not pump up, as so many glass globes, quantities of the electric fluid, which the rising vapours might receive from the air, and retain in the clouds they form? on which i should be glad to have your sentiments. an ingenious friend of mine supposes the land-clouds more likely to be electrified than the sea-clouds. i send his letter for your perusal, which please to return me. i have wrote nothing lately on electricity, nor observed any thing new that is material, my time being much taken up with other affairs. yesterday i discharged four jars through a fine wire, tied up between two strips of glass: the wire was in part melted, and the rest broke into small pieces, from half an inch long, to half a quarter of an inch. my globe raises the electric fire with greater ease, in much greater quantities, by the means of a wire extended from the cushion, to the iron pin of a pump handle behind my house, which communicates by the pump spear with the water in the well. by this post i send to ****, who is curious in that way, some meteorological observations and conjectures, and desire him to communicate them to you, as they may afford you some amusement, and i know you will look over them with a candid eye. by throwing our occasional thoughts on paper, we more readily discover the defects of our opinions, or we digest them better and find new arguments to support them. this i sometimes practise: but such pieces are fit only to be seen by friends. i am, &c. b. franklin. from j. b. esq. of boston, to benjamin franklin, esq. at philadelphia. _effect of lightning on captain waddel's compass, and the dutch church at new york._ read at the royal society, june 3, 1756. _boston, march 2, 1752._ sir, i have received your favour of the 24th of january past, inclosing an extract from your letter to mr. collinson, and ****'s letter to yourself, which i have read with a great deal of pleasure, and am much obliged to you for. your extract confirms a correction mr. kinnersley made a few days ago, of a mistake i was under respecting the polarity given to needles by the electrical fire, "that the end which receives the fire always points north;" and, "that the needle being situated east and west, will not have a polar direction." you find, however, the polarity strongest when the needle is shocked lying north and south; weakest when lying east and west; which makes it probable that the communicated magnetism is less, as the needle varies from a north and south situation. as to the needle of captain waddel's compass, if its polarity was reversed by the lightning, the effect of lightning and electricity, in regard of that, seems dissimilar; for a magnetic needle in a north and south situation (as the compass needle was) instead of having its power reversed, or even diminished, would have it confirmed or increased by the electric fire. but perhaps the lightning communicated to some nails in the binnacle (where the compass is placed) the magnetic virtue, which might disturb the compass. this i have heard was the case; if so, the seeming dissimilarity vanishes: but this remarkable circumstance (if it took place) i should think would not be omitted in captain waddel's account. i am very much pleased that the explication i sent you, of the crooked direction of lightning, meets with your approbation. as to your supposition about the source of lightning, the luminous appearance of the sea in the night, and the similitude between the friction of the particles of salt and water, as you considered them in their original separate state, and the friction of the globe and cushion, very naturally led you to the ocean, as the grand source of lightning: but the activity of lightning, or the electric element, and the fitness of water to conduct it, together with the experiments you mention of salt and water, seem to make against it, and to prepare the way for some other hypothesis. accordingly you propose a new one, which is very curious, and not so liable, i think, to objections as the former. but there is not as yet, i believe, a sufficient variety of experiments to establish any theory, though this seems the most hopeful of any i have heard of. the effect which the discharge of your four glass jars had upon a fine wire, tied between two strips of glass, puts me in mind of a very similar one of lightning, that i observed at new-york, october, 1750, a few days after i left philadelphia. in company with a number of gentlemen, i went to take a view of the city from the dutch church steeple, in which is a clock about twenty or twenty-five feet below the bell. from the clock went a wire through two floors, to the clock-hammer near the bell, the holes in the floor for the wire being perhaps about a quarter of an inch diameter. we were told, that in the spring of 1750, the lightning struck the clock hammer, and descended along the wire to the clock, melting in its way several spots of the wire, from three to nine inches long, through one-third of its substance, till coming within a few feet of the lower end, it melted the wire quite through, in several places, so that it fell down in several pieces; which spots and pieces we saw. when it got to the end of the wire, it flew off to the hinge of a door, shattered the door, and dissipated. in its passage through the holes of the floors it did not do the least damage, which evidences that wire is a good conductor of lightning (as it is of electricity) provided it be substantial enough, and might, in this case, had it been continued to the earth, have conducted it without damaging the building.[74] your information about your globe's raising the electric fire in greater quantities, by means of a wire extended from the cushion to the earth, will enable me, i hope, to remedy a great inconvenience i have been under, to collect the fire with the electrifying glass i use, which is fixed in a very dry room, three stories from the ground. when you send your meteorological observations to ****, i hope i shall have the pleasure of seeing them. i am, &c. j. b. footnote: [74] the wire mentioned in this account was re-placed by a small brass chain. in the summer of 1763, the lightning again struck that steeple, and from the clock-hammer near the bell, it pursued the chain as it had before done the wire, went off to the same hinge, and again shattered the same door. in its passage through the same holes of the same floors, it did no damage to the floors, nor to the building during the whole extent of the chain. but the chain itself was destroyed, being partly scattered about in fragments of two or three links melted and stuck together, and partly blown up or reduced to smoke, and dissipated. [see an account of the same effect of lightning on a wire at newbury, p. 311.] the steeple, when repaired, was guarded by an iron conductor, or rod, extending from the foot of the vane-spindle down the outside of the building, into the earth. the newspapers have mentioned, that in 1765, the lightning fell a third time on the same steeple, and was safely conducted by the rod; but the particulars are not come to hand. _proposal of an experiment to measure the time taken up by an electric spark, in moving through any given space. by j. a.[75] esq. of new-york._ read at the royal society, dec 26, 1756. if i remember right, the royal society made one experiment to discover the velocity of the electric fire, by a wire of about four miles in length, supported by silk, and by turning it forwards and backwards in a field, so that the beginning and end of the wire were at only the distance of two people, the one holding the leyden bottle and the beginning of the wire, and the other holding the end of the wire and touching the ring of the bottle; but by this experiment no discovery was made, except that the velocity was extremely quick. as water is a conductor as well as metals, it is to be considered whether the velocity of the electric fire might not be discovered by means of water; whether a river, or lake, or sea, may not be made part of the circuit through which the electric fire passes? instead of the circuit all of wire, as in the above experiment. whether in a river, lake, or sea, the electric fire will not dissipate and not return to the bottle? or, will it proceed in strait lines through the water the shortest courses possible back to the bottle? if the last, then suppose one brook that falls into delaware doth head very near to a brook that falls into schuylkil, and let a wire be stretched and supported as before, from the head of the one brook to the head of the other, and let the one end communicate with the water, and let one person stand in the other brook, holding the leyden bottle, and let another person hold that end of the wire not in the water, and touch the ring of the bottle.--if the electric fire will go as in the last question, then will it go down the one brook to delaware or schuylkill, and down one of them to their meeting, and up the other and the other brook; the time of its doing this may possibly be observable, and the further upwards the brooks are chosen, the more observable it would be. should this be not observable, then suppose the two brooks falling into sasquehana and delaware, and proceeding as before, the electric fire may, by that means, make a circuit round the north cape of virginia, and go many hundreds of miles, and in doing that, it would seem it must take some observable time. if still no observable time is found in that experiment, then suppose the brooks falling the one into the ohio, and the other into sasquehana, or potomack, in that the electric fire would have a circuit of some thousands of miles to go down ohio to mississippi, to the bay of mexico, round florida, and round the south cape of virginia; which, i think, would give some observable time, and discover exactly the velocity. but if the electric fire dissipates, or weakens in the water, as i fear it does, these experiments will not answer. _answer to the foregoing_. read at the royal society, dec. 25, 1756. suppose a tube of any length open at both ends, and containing a moveable wire of just the same length, that fills its bore. if i attempt to introduce the end of another wire into the same tube, it must be done by pushing forward the wire it already contains; and the instant i press and move one end of that wire, the other end is also moved; and in introducing one inch of the same wire, i extrude, at the same time, an inch of the first, from the other end of the tube. if the tube be filled with water, and i inject an additional inch of water at one end, i force out an equal quantity at the other, in the very same instant. and the water forced out at one end of the tube is not the very same water that was forced in at the other end at the same time, it was only in motion at the same time. the long wire, made use of in the experiment to discover the velocity of the electric fluid, is itself filled with what we call its natural quantity of that fluid, before the hook of the leyden bottle is applied to one end of it. the outside of the bottle being at the time of such application in contact with the other end of the wire, the whole quantity of electric fluid contained in the wire is, probably, put in motion at once. for at the instant the hook, connected with the inside of the bottle, _gives out_; the coating, or outside of the bottle, _draws in_ a portion of that fluid. if such long wire contains precisely the quantity that the outside of the bottle demands, the whole will move out of the wire to the outside of the bottle, and the over quantity which the inside of the bottle contained, being exactly equal, will flow into the wire, and remain there, in the place of the quantity the wire had just parted with to the outside of the bottle. but if the wire be so long as that one-tenth (suppose) of its natural quantity is sufficient to supply what the outside of the bottle demands, in such case the outside will only receive what is contained in one-tenth of the wire's length, from the end next to it; though the whole will move so as to make room at the other end for an equal quantity issuing, at the same time, from the inside of the bottle. so that this experiment only shews the extreme facility with which the electric fluid moves in metal; it can never determine the velocity. and, therefore, the proposed experiment (though well imagined, and very ingenious) of sending the spark round through a vast length of space, by the waters of susquehannah, or potowmack, and ohio, would not afford the satisfaction desired, though we could be sure that the motion of the electric fluid would be in that tract, and not under ground in the wet earth by the shortest way. b. franklin. footnote: [75] james alexander. _editor._ from mr. kinnersley to b. franklin, esq. _experiments on boiling water, and glass heated by boiling water.--doctrine of repulsion in electrised bodies doubted.--electricity of the atmosphere at different heights.--electrical horse-race.--electrical thermometer.--in what cases the electrical fire produces heat.--wire lengthened by electricity.--good effect of a rod on the house of mr. west, of philadelphia._ _philadelphia, march 12, 1761._ sir, having lately made the following experiments, i very chearfully communicate them, in hopes of giving you some degree of pleasure, and exciting you to further explore your favorite, but not quite exhausted subject, _electricity_. i placed myself on an electric stand, and, being well electrised, threw my hat to an unelectrised person, at a considerable distance, on another stand, and found that the hat carried some of the electricity with it; for, upon going immediately to the person who received it, and holding a flaxen thread near him, i perceived he was electrised sufficiently to attract the thread. i then suspended, by silk, a broad plate of metal, and electrised some boiling water under it at about four feet distance, expecting that the vapour, which ascended plentifully to the plate, would, upon the principle of the foregoing experiment, carry up some of the electricity with it; but was at length fully convinced, by several repeated trials, that it left all its share thereof behind. this i know not how to account for; but does it not seem to corroborate your hypothesis, that the vapours of which the clouds are formed, leave their share of electricity behind, in the common stock, and ascend in the negative state? i put boiling water into a coated florence flask, and found that the heat so enlarged the pores of the glass, that it could not be charged. the electricity passed through as readily, to all appearance, as through metal; the charge of a three-pint bottle went freely through, without injuring the flask in the least. when it became almost cold, i could charge it as usual. would not this experiment convince the abbé nollet of his egregious mistake? for while the electricity went fairly through the glass, as he contends it always does, the glass could not be charged at all. i took a slender piece of cedar, about eighteen inches long, fixed a brass cap in the middle, thrust a pin horizontally and at right angles, through each end (the points in contrary directions) and hung it, nicely balanced, like the needle of a compass, on a pin, about six inches long, fixed in the centre of an electric stand. then, electrising the stand, i had the pleasure of seeing what i expected; the wooden needle turned round, carrying the pins with their heads foremost. i then electrised the stand negatively, expecting the needle to turn the contrary way, but was extremely disappointed, for it went still the same way as before. when the stand was electrised positively, i suppose that the natural quantity of electricity in the air being increased on one side, by what issued from the points, the needle was attracted by the lesser quantity on the other side. when electrised negatively, i suppose that the natural quantity of electricity in the air was diminished near the points; in consequence whereof, the equilibrium being destroyed, the needle was attracted by the greater quantity on the opposite side. the doctrine of repulsion, in electrised bodies, i begin to be somewhat doubtful of. i think all the phenomena on which it is founded, may be well enough accounted for without it. will not cork balls, electrised negatively, separate as far as when electrised positively? and may not their separation in both cases be accounted for upon the same principle, namely, the mutual attraction of the natural quantity in the air, and that which is denser or rarer in the cork balls? it being one of the established laws of this fluid, that quantities of different densities shall mutually attract each other, in order to restore the equilibrium. i can see no reason to conclude that the air has not its share of the common stock of electricity, as well as glass, and perhaps, all other electrics _per se_. for though the air will admit bodies to be electrised in it either positively or negatively, and will not readily carry off the redundancy in the one case, or supply the deficiency in the other, yet let a person in the negative state, out of doors in the dark, when the air is dry, hold, with his arm extended, a long sharp needle, pointing upwards, and he will soon be convinced that electricity may be drawn out of the air; not very plentifully, for, being a bad conductor, it seems loth to part with it, but yet some will evidently be collected. the air near the person's body, having less than its natural quantity, will have none to spare; but, his arm being extended, as above, some will be collected from the remoter air, and will appear luminous, as it converges to the point of the needle. let a person electrised negatively present the point of a needle, horizontally, to a cork ball, suspended by silk, and the ball will be attracted towards the point, till it has parted with so much of its natural quantity of electricity as to be in the negative state in the same degree with the person who holds the needle; then it will recede from the point, being, as i suppose, attracted the contrary way by the electricity of greater density in the air behind it. but, as this opinion seems to deviate from electrical orthodoxy, i should be glad to see these phenomena better accounted for by your superior and more penetrating genius. whether the electricity in the air, in clear dry weather, be of the same density at the height of two or three hundred yards, as near the surface of the earth, may be satisfactorily determined by your old experiment of the kite. the twine should have throughout a very small wire in it, and the ends of the wire, where the several lengths are united, ought to be tied down with a waxed thread, to prevent their acting in the manner of points. i have tried the experiment twice, when the air was as dry as we ever have it, and so clear that not a cloud could be seen, and found the twine each time in a small degree electrised positively. the kite had three metalline points fixed to it: one on the top, and one on each side. that the twine was electrised, appeared by the separating of two small cork balls, suspended on the twine by fine flaxen threads, just above where the silk was tied to it, and sheltered from the wind. that the twine was electrised positively, was proved, by applying to it the wire of a charged bottle, which caused the balls to separate further, without first coming nearer together. this experiment showed, that the electricity in the air, at those times, was denser above than below. but that cannot be always the case; for you know we have frequently found the thunder-clouds in the negative state, attracting electricity from the earth; which state, it is probable, they are always in when first formed, and till they have received a sufficient supply. how they come afterwards, towards the latter end of the gust, to be in the positive state, which is sometimes the case, is a subject for further enquiry. after the above experiments with the wooden needle, i formed a cross, of two pieces of wood, of equal length, intersecting each other at right angles in the middle, hung it horizontally upon a central pin, and set a light horse with his rider, upon each extremity; whereupon, the whole being nicely balanced, and each courser urged on by an electrised point of a pair of spurs, i was entertained with an electrical horse-race. i have contrived an electrical air thermometer, and made several experiments with it, that have afforded me much satisfaction and pleasure. it is extremely sensible of any alteration in the state of the included air, and fully determines that controverted point, whether there be any heat in the electric fire? by the enclosed draught, and the following description, you will readily apprehend the construction of it. (see plate ii.) a b is a glass tube, about eleven inches long, and one inch diameter in the bore. it has a brass ferrule cemented on each end, with a top and bottom part, c and d, to be screwed on, air-tight, and taken off at pleasure. in the centre of the bottom part d, is a male screw, which goes into a brass nut, in the mahogany pedestal e. the wires f and g are for the electric fire to pass through, darting from one to the other. the wire g extends through the pedestal to h, and may be raised and lowered by means of a male screw on it. the wire f may be taken out, and the hook i be screwed into its place. k is a glass tube, with a small bore, open at both ends, cemented in the brass tube l which screws into the top part c. the lower end of the tube k is immersed in water, coloured with cochineal, at the bottom of the tube a b. (i used, at first, coloured spirits of wine, but in one experiment i made, it took fire.) on the top of the tube k is cemented, for ornament, a brass ferrule, with a head screwed on it, which has a small air-hole through its side, at _a_. the wire _b_, is a small round spring, that embraces the tube k, so as to stay wherever it is placed. the weight m is to keep strait whatever may be suspended in the tube a b, on the hook i. air must be blown through the tube k, into the tube a b, till enough is intruded to raise, by its elastic force, a column of the coloured water in the tube k, up to _c_, or thereabouts; and then, the gage-wire _b_, being slipt down to the top of the column, the thermometer is ready for use. [illustration: (of the experiment below) _plate ii._ _vol. i. page 336._ _published as the act directs, april 1, 1806, by longman, hurst, rees & orme, paternoster row._] i set the thermometer on an electric stand, with the chain n fixed to the prime conductor, and kept it well electrised a considerable time; but this produced no sensible effect; which shews, that the electric fire, when in a state of rest, has no more heat than the air, and other matter wherein it resides. when the wires f and g are in contact, a large charge of electricity sent through them, even that of my case of five and thirty bottles, containing above thirty square feet of coated glass, will produce no rarefaction of the air included in the tube a b; which shows that the wires are not heated by the fire's passing through them. when the wires are about two inches apart, the charge of a three pint bottle, darting from one to the other, rarefies the air very evidently; which shows, i think, that the electric fire must produce heat in itself, as well as in the air, by its rapid motion. the charge of one of my glass jars (which will contain about five gallons and a half, wine measure) darting from wire to wire, will, by the disturbance it gives the air, repelling it in all directions, raise the column in the tube k, up to _d_, or thereabouts; and the charge of the above-mentioned case of bottles will raise it to the top of the tube. upon the air's coalescing, the column, by its gravity, instantly subsides, till it is in equilibrio with the rarefied air; it then gradually descends as the air cools, and settles where it stood before. by carefully observing at what height above the gage-wire _b_, the descending column first stops, the degree of rarefaction is discovered, which, in great explosions, is very considerable. i hung in the thermometer, successively, a strip of wet writing paper, a wet flaxen and woollen thread, a blade of green grass, a filament of green wood, a fine silver thread, a very small brass wire, and a strip of gilt paper; and found that the charge of the above-mentioned glass jar, passing through each of these, especially the last, produced heat enough to rarefy the air very perceptibly. i then suspended, out of the thermometer, a piece of small harpsichord wire, about twenty-four inches long, with a pound weight at the lower end, and sent the charge of the case of five and thirty bottles through it, whereby i discovered a new method of wire-drawing. the wire was red hot the whole length, well annealed, and above an inch longer than before. a second charge melted it; it parted near the middle, and measured, when the ends were put together, four inches longer than at first. this experiment, i remember, you proposed to me before you left philadelphia; but i never tried it till now. that i might have no doubt of the wire's being _hot_ as well as red, i repeated the experiment on another piece of the same wire, encompassed with a goose-quill, filled with loose grains of gun-powder; which took fire as readily as if it had been touched with a red hot poker. also tinder, tied to another piece of the wire, kindled by it. i tried a wire about three times as big, but could produce no such effects with that. hence it appears that the electric fire, though it has no sensible heat when in a state of rest, will, by its violent motion, and the resistance it meets with, produce heat in other bodies when passing through them, provided they be small enough. a large quantity will pass through a large wire, without producing any sensible heat; when the same quantity passing through a very small one, being there confined to a narrower passage, the particles crowding closer together, and meeting with greater resistance, will make it red hot, and even melt it. hence lightning does not melt metal by a cold fusion, as we formerly supposed; but, when it passes through the blade of a sword, if the quantity be not very great, it may heat the point so as to melt it, while the broadest and thickest part may not be sensibly warmer than before. and when trees or houses are set on fire by the dreadful quantity which a cloud, or the earth, sometimes discharges, must not the heat, by which the wood is first kindled, be generated by the lightning's violent motion, through the resisting combustible matter? if lightning, by its rapid motion, produces heat in _itself_; as well as in other bodies (and that it does i think is evident from some of the foregoing experiments made with the thermometer) then its sometimes singeing the hair of animals killed by it, may easily be accounted for. and the reason of its not always doing so, may, perhaps, be this: the quantity, though sufficient to kill a large animal, may sometimes not be great enough, or not have met with resistance enough, to become, by its motion, burning hot. we find that dwelling-houses, struck with lightning, are seldom set on fire by it; but when it passes through barns, with hay or straw in them, or store-houses, containing large quantities of hemp, or such like matter, they seldom, if ever, escape a conflagration; which may, perhaps, be owing to such combustibles being apt to kindle with a less degree of heat than is necessary to kindle wood. we had four houses in this city, and a vessel at one of the wharfs, struck and damaged by lightning last summer. one of the houses was struck twice in the same storm. but i have the pleasure to inform you, that your method of preventing such terrible disasters, has, by a fact which had like to have escaped our knowledge, given a very convincing proof of its great utility; and is now in higher repute with us than ever. hearing, a few days ago, that mr. william west, merchant in this city, suspected that the lightning in one of the thunder-storms last summer had passed through the iron conductor, which he had provided for the security of his house; i waited on him, to enquire what ground he might have for such suspicion. mr. west informed me, that his family and neighbours were all stunned with a very terrible explosion, and that the flash and crack were seen and heard at the same instant. whence he concluded, that the lightning must have been very near, and, as no house in the neighbourhood had suffered by it, that it must have passed through his conductor. mr. white, his clerk, told me that he was sitting, at the time, by a window, about two feet distant from the conductor, leaning against the brick wall with which it was in contact; and that he felt a smart sensation, like an electric shock, in that part of his body which touched the wall. mr. west further informed me, that a person of undoubted veracity assured him, that, being in the door of an opposite house, on the other side of water-street (which you know is but narrow) he saw the lightning diffused over the pavement, which was then very wet with rain, to the distance of two or three yards from the foot of the conductor; and that another person of very good credit told him, that he being a few doors off on the other side of the street, saw the lightning above, darting in such direction that it appeared to him to be directly over that pointed rod. upon receiving this information, and being desirous of further satisfaction, there being no traces of the lightning to be discovered in the conductor, as far as we could examine it below, i proposed to mr. west our going to the top of the house, to examine the pointed rod, assuring him, that if the lightning had passed through it, the point must have been melted; and, to our great satisfaction, we found it so. this iron rod extended in height about nine feet and a half above a stack of chimneys to which it was fixed (though i suppose three or four feet would have been sufficient.) it was somewhat more than half an inch diameter in the thickest part, and tapering to the upper end. the conductor, from the lower end of it to the earth, consisted of square iron nail-rods, not much above a quarter of an inch thick, connected together by interlinking joints. it extended down the cedar roof to the eaves, and from thence down the wall of the house, four story and a half, to the pavement in water-street, being fastened to the wall, in several places, by small iron hooks. the lower end was fixed to a ring, in the top of an iron stake that was drove about four or five feet into the ground. the above-mentioned iron rod had a hole in the top of it, about two inches deep, wherein was inserted a brass wire, about two lines thick, and, when first put there, about ten inches long, terminating in a very acute point; but now its whole length was no more than seven inches and a half, and the top very blunt. some of the metal appears to be missing, the slenderest part of the wire being, as i suspect, consumed into smoke. but some of it, where the wire was a little thicker, being only melted by the lightning, sunk down, while in a fluid state, and formed a rough irregular cap, lower on one side than the other, round the upper end of what remained, and became intimately united therewith. this was all the damage that mr. west sustained by a terrible stroke of lightning;--a most convincing proof of the great utility of this method of preventing its dreadful effects. surely it will now be thought as expedient to provide conductors for the lightning, as for the rain. mr. west was so good as to make me a present of the melted wire, which i keep as a great curiosity, and long for the pleasure of shewing it to you. in the mean time, i beg your acceptance of the best representation i can give of it, which you will find by the side of the thermometer, drawn in its full dimensions as it now appears. the dotted lines above are intended to shew the form of the wire before the lightning melted it. and now, sir, i most heartily congratulate you on the pleasure you must have in finding your great and well-grounded expectations so far fulfilled. may this method of security from the destructive violence of one of the most awful powers of nature, meet with such further success, as to induce every good and grateful heart to bless god for the important discovery! may the benefit thereof be diffused over the whole globe! may it extend to the latest posterity of mankind, and make the name of franklin, like that of newton, _immortal_. i am, sir, with sincere respect, your most obedient and most humble servant, eben. kinnersley. to mr. kinnersley. _answer to some of the foregoing subjects.--how long the leyden bottle may be kept charged.--heated glass rendered permeable by the electric fluid.--electrical attraction and repulsion.--reply to other subjects in the preceding paper.--numerous ways of kindling fire.--explosion of water.--knobs and points._ _london, feb. 20, 1762._ sir, i received your ingenious letter of the 12th of march last, and thank you cordially for the account you give me of the new experiments you have lately made in electricity.--it is a subject that still affords me pleasure, though of late i have not much attended to it. your second experiment, in which you attempted, without success, to communicate positive electricity by vapour ascending from electrised water, reminds me of one i formerly made, to try if negative electricity might be produced by evaporation only. i placed a large heated brass plate, containing four or five square feet on an electric stand; a rod of metal, about four feet long, with a bullet at its end, extended from the plate horizontally. a light lock of cotton, suspended a fine thread from the cieling, hung opposite to, and within an inch of the bullet. i then sprinkled the heated plate with water, which arose fast from it in vapour. if vapour should be disposed to carry off the electrical, as it does the common fire from bodies, i expected the plate would, by losing some of its natural quantity, become negatively electrised. but i could not perceive, by any motion in the cotton, that it was at all affected: nor by any separation of small cork-balls suspended from the plate, could it be observed that the plate was in any manner electrified. mr. canton here has also found, that two tea-cups, set on electric stands, and filled, one with boiling, the other with cold water, and equally electrified, continued equally so, notwithstanding the plentiful evaporation from the hot water. your experiment and his agreeing, show another remarkable difference between electric and common fire. for the latter quits most readily the body that contains it, where water, or any other fluid, is evaporating from the surface of that body, and escapes with the vapour. hence the method, long in use in the east, of cooling liquors, by wrapping the bottles round with a wet cloth, and exposing them to the wind. dr. cullen, of edinburgh, has given some experiments of cooling by evaporation; and i was present at one made by dr. hadley, then professor of chemistry at cambridge, when, by repeatedly wetting the ball of a thermometer with spirit, and quickening the evaporation by the blast of a bellows, the mercury fell from 65, the state of warmth in the common air, to 7, which is 22 degrees below freezing; and, accordingly, from some water mixed with the spirit, or from the breath of the assistants, or both, ice gathered in small spicula round the ball, to the thickness of near a quarter of an inch. to such a degree did the mercury lose the fire it before contained, which, as i imagine, took the opportunity of escaping, in company with the evaporating particles of the spirit, by adhering to those particles. your experiment of the florence flask, and boiling water, is very curious. i have repeated it, and found it to succeed as you describe it, in two flasks out of three. the third would not charge when filled with either hot or cold water. i repeated it, because i remembered i had once attempted to make an electric bottle of a florence flask, filled with cold water, but could not charge it at all; which i then imputed to some imperceptible cracks in the small, extremely thin bubbles, of which that glass is full, and i concluded none of that kind would do. but you have shown me my mistake.--mr. wilson had formerly acquainted us, that red hot glass would conduct electricity; but that so small a degree of heat, as that communicated by boiling water, would so open the pores of extremely thin glass, as to suffer the electric fluid freely to pass, was not before known. some experiments similar to yours, have, however, been made here, before the receipt of your letter, of which i shall now give you an account. i formerly had an opinion that a leyden bottle, charged and then sealed hermetically, might retain its electricity for ever; but having afterwards some suspicion that possibly that subtle fluid might, by slow imperceptible degrees, soak through the glass, and in time escape, i requested some of my friends, who had conveniences for doing it, to make trial, whether, after some months, the charge of a bottle so sealed would be sensibly diminished. being at birmingham, in september, 1760, mr. bolton of that place opened a bottle that had been charged, and its long tube neck hermetically sealed in the january preceding. on breaking off the end of the neck, and introducing a wire into it, we found it possessed of a considerable quantity of electricity, which was discharged by a snap and spark. this bottle had lain near seven months on a shelf, in a closet, in contact with bodies that would undoubtedly have carried off all its electricity, if it could have come readily through the glass. yet as the quantity manifested by the discharge was not apparently so great as might have been expected from a bottle of that size well charged, some doubt remained whether part had escaped while the neck was sealing, or had since, by degrees, soaked through the glass. but an experiment of mr. canton's, in which such a bottle was kept under water a week, without having its electricity in the least impaired, seems to show, that when the glass is cold, though extremely thin, the electric fluid is well retained by it. as that ingenious and accurate experimenter made a discovery, like yours, of the effect of heat in rendering thin glass permeable by that fluid, it is but doing him justice to give you his account of it, in his own words, extracted from his letter to me, in which he communicated it, dated oct. 31, 1760, _viz_. "having procured some thin glass balls, of about an inch and a half in diameter, with stems, or tubes, of eight or nine inches in length, i electrified them, some positively on the inside, and others negatively, after the manner of charging the leyden bottle, and sealed them hermetically. soon after i applied the naked balls to my electrometer, and could not discover the least sign of their being electrical, but holding them, before the fire, at the distance of six or eight inches, they became strongly electrical in a very short time, and more so when they were cooling. these balls will, every time they are heated, give the electrical fluid to, or take it from other bodies, according to the _plus_ or _minus_ state of it within them. heating them frequently, i find will sensibly diminish their power; but keeping one of them under water a week did not appear in the least degree to impair it. that which i kept under water, was charged on the 22d of september last, was several times heated before it was kept in water, and has been heated frequently since, and yet it still retains its virtue to a very considerable degree. the breaking two of my balls accidentally gave me an opportunity of measuring their thickness, which i found to be between seven and eight parts in a thousand of an inch. a down feather, in a thin glass ball, hermetically sealed, will not be affected by the application of an excited tube, or the wire of a charged phial, unless the ball be considerably heated; and if a glass pane be heated till it begins to grow soft, and in that state be held between the wire of a charged phial, and the discharging wire, the course of the electrical fluid will not be through the glass, but on the surface, round by the edge of it." by this last experiment of mr. canton's, it appears, that though by a moderate heat, thin glass becomes, in some degree, a conductor of electricity, yet, when of the thickness of a common pane, it is not, though in a state near melting, so good a conductor as to pass the shock of a discharged bottle. there are other conductors which suffer the electric fluid to pass through them gradually, and yet will not conduct a shock. for instance, a quire of paper will conduct through its whole length, so as to electrify a person, who, standing on wax, presents the paper to an electrified prime conductor; but it will not conduct a shock even through its thickness only; hence the shock either fails, or passes by rending a hole in the paper. thus a sieve will pass water gradually, but a stream from a fire engine would either be stopped by it, or tear a hole through it. it should seem, that to make glass permeable to the electric fluid, the heat should be proportioned to the thickness. you found the heat of boiling water, which is but 210, sufficient to render the extreme thin glass in a florence flask permeable even to a shock.--lord charles cavendish, by a very ingenious experiment, has found the heat of 400 requisite to render thicker glass permeable to the common current. "a glass tube, (see _plate_ iii.) of which the part c b was solid, had wire thrust in each end, reaching to b and c. "a small wire was tied on at d, reaching to the floor, in order to carry off any electricity that might run along upon the tube. "the bent part was placed in an iron pot, filled with iron filings; a thermometer was also put into the filings; a lamp was placed under the pot; and the whole was supported upon glass. "the wire a being electrified by a machine, before the heat was applied, the corks at e separated, at first upon the principle of the leyden phial. "but after the part c b of the tube was heated to 600, the corks continued to separate, though you discharged the electricity by touching the wire at e, the electrical machine continuing in motion. "upon letting the whole cool, the effect remained till the thermometer was sunk to 400." [illustration: (of the experiment above) _plate iii._ _vol. i. page 348._ ] it were to be wished, that this noble philosopher would communicate more of his experiments to the world, as he makes many, and with great accuracy. you know i have always looked upon and mentioned the equal repulsion in cases of positive and of negative electricity, as a phenomenon difficult to be explained. i have sometimes, too, been inclined, with you, to resolve all into attraction; but besides that attraction seems in itself as unintelligible as repulsion, there are some appearances of repulsion that i cannot so easily explain by attraction; this for one instance. when the pair of cork balls are suspended by flaxen threads, from the end of the prime conductor, if you bring a rubbed glass tube near the conductor, but without touching it, you see the balls separate, as being electrified positively; and yet you have communicated no electricity to the conductor, for, if you had, it would have remained there, after withdrawing the tube; but the closing of the balls immediately thereupon, shows that the conductor has no more left in it than its natural quantity. then again approaching the conductor with the rubbed tube, if, while the balls are separated, you touch with a finger that end of the conductor to which they hang, they will come together again, as being, with that part of the conductor, brought to the same state with your finger, _i. e._ the natural state. but the other end of the conductor, near which the tube is held, is not in that state, but in the negative state, as appears on removing the tube; for then part of the natural quantity left at the end near the balls, leaving that end to supply what is wanting at the other, the whole conductor is found to be equally in the negative state. does not this indicate that the electricity of the rubbed tube had repelled the electric fluid, which was diffused in the conductor while in its natural state, and forced it to quit the end to which the tube was brought near, accumulating itself on the end to which the balls were suspended? i own i find it difficult to account for its quitting that end, on the approach of the rubbed tube, but on the supposition of repulsion; for, while the conductor was in the same state with the air, _i. e._ the natural state, it does not seem to me easy to suppose, that an attraction should suddenly take place between the air and the natural quantity of the electric fluid in the conductor, so as to draw it to, and accumulate it on the end opposite to that approached by the tube; since bodies, possessing only their natural quantity of that fluid, are not usually seen to attract each other, or to affect mutually the quantities of electricity each contains. there are likewise appearances of repulsion in other parts of nature. not to mention the violent force with which the particles of water, heated to a certain degree, separate from each other, or those of gunpowder, when touched with the smallest spark of fire, there is the seeming repulsion between the same poles of the magnet, a body containing a subtle moveable fluid in many respects analagous to the electric fluid. if two magnets are so suspended by strings, as that their poles of the same denomination are opposite to each other, they will separate, and continue so; or if you lay a magnetic steel bar on a smooth table, and approach it with another parallel to it, the poles of both in the same position, the first will recede from the second, so as to avoid the contact, and may thus be pushed (or at least appear to be pushed) off the table. can this be ascribed to the attraction of any surrounding body or matter drawing them asunder, or drawing the one away from the other? if not, and repulsion exists in nature, and in magnetism, why may it not exist in electricity? we should not, indeed, multiply causes in philosophy without necessity; and the greater simplicity of your hypothesis would recommend it to me, if i could see that all appearances would be solved by it. but i find, or think i find, the two causes more convenient than one of them alone. thus i might solve the circular motion of your horizontal stick, supported on a pivot, with two pins at their ends, pointing contrary ways, and moving in the same direction when electrified, whether positively or negatively: when positively, the air opposite to the points being electrised positively, repels the points; when negatively, the air opposite the points being also, by their means, electrised negatively, attraction takes place between the electricity in the air behind the heads of the pins, and the negative pins, and so they are, in this case, drawn in the same direction that in the other they were driven.--you see i am willing to meet you half way, a complaisance i have not met with in our brother nollet, or any other hypothesis-maker, and therefore may value myself a little upon it, especially as they say i have some ability in defending even the wrong side of a question, when i think fit to take it in hand. what you give as an established law of the electric fluid, "that quantities of different densities mutually attract each other, in order to restore the equilibrium," is, i think, not well founded, or else not well expressed. two large cork balls, suspended by silk strings, and both well and equally electrified, separate to a great distance. by bringing into contact with one of them another ball of the same size, suspended likewise by silk, you will take from it half its electricity. it will then, indeed, hang at a less distance from the other, but the full and the half quantities will not appear to attract each other, that is, the balls will not come together. indeed, i do not know any proof we have, that one quantity of electric fluid is attracted by another quantity of that fluid, whatever difference there may be in their densities. and, supposing in nature, a mutual attraction between two parcels of any kind of matter, it would be strange if this attraction should subsist strongly while those parcels were unequal, and cease when more matter of the same kind was added to the smallest parcel, so as to make it equal to the biggest. by all the laws of attraction in matter, that we are acquainted with, the attraction is stronger in proportion to the increase of the masses, and never in proportion to the difference of the masses. i should rather think the law would be, "that the electric fluid is attracted strongly by all other matter that we know of, while the parts of that fluid mutually repel each other." hence its being equally diffused (except in particular circumstances) throughout all other matter. but this you jokingly call "electrical orthodoxy." it is so with some at present, but not with all; and, perhaps, it may not always be orthodoxy with any body. opinions are continually varying, where we cannot have mathematical evidence of the nature of things; and they must vary. nor is that variation without its use, since it occasions a more thorough discussion, whereby error is often dissipated, true knowledge is encreased, and its principles become better understood and more firmly established. air should have, as you observe, "its share of the common stock of electricity, as well as glass, and, perhaps, all other electrics _per se_." but i suppose, that, like them, it does not easily part with what it has, or receive more, unless when mixed with some non-electric, as moisture for instance, of which there is some in our driest air. this, however, is only a supposition; and your experiment of restoring electricity to a negatively electrised person, by extending his arm upwards into the air, with a needle between his fingers, on the point of which light may be seen in the night, is, indeed, a curious one. in this town the air is generally moister than with us, and here i have seen mr. canton electrify the air in one room positively, and in another, which communicated by a door, he has electrised the air negatively. the difference was easily discovered by his cork balls, as he passed out of one room into another.--pere beccaria, too, has a pretty experiment, which shows that air may be electrised. suspending a pair of small light balls, by flaxen threads, to the end of his prime conductor, he turns his globe some time, electrising positively, the balls diverging and continuing separate all the time. then he presents the point of a needle to his conductor, which gradually drawing off the electric fluid, the balls approach each other, and touch, before all is drawn from the conductor; opening again as more is drawn off, and separating nearly as wide as at first, when the conductor is reduced to the natural state. by this it appears, that when the balls came together, the air surrounding the balls was just as much electrised as the conductor at that time; and more than the conductor, when that was reduced to its natural state. for the balls, though in the natural state, will diverge, when the air that surrounds them is electrised _plus_ or _minus_, as well as when that is in its natural state and they are electrised _plus_ or _minus_ themselves. i foresee that you will apply this experiment to the support of your hypothesis, and i think you may make a good deal of it. it was a curious enquiry of yours, whether the electricity of the air, in clear dry weather, be of the same density at the height of two or three hundred yards, as near the surface of the earth; and i am glad you made the experiment. upon reflection, it should seem probable, that whether the general state of the atmosphere at any time be positive or negative, that part of it which is next the earth will be nearer the natural state, by having given to the earth in one case, or having received from it in the other. in electrising the air of a room, that which is nearest the walls, or floor, is least altered. there is only one small ambiguity in the experiment, which may be cleared by more trials; it arises from the supposition that bodies may be electrised positively by the friction of air blowing strongly on them, as it does on the kite and its string. if at some times the electricity appears to be negative, as that friction is the same, the effect must be from a negative state of the upper air. i am much pleased with your electrical thermometer, and the experiments you have made with it. i formerly satisfied myself by an experiment with my phial and syphon, that the elasticity of the air was not increased by the mere existence of an electric atmosphere within the phial; but i did not know, till you now inform me, that heat may be given to it by an electric explosion. the continuance of its rarefaction, for some time after the discharge of your glass jar and of your case of bottles, seem to make this clear. the other experiments on wet paper, wet thread, green grass, and green wood, are not so satisfactory; as possibly the reducing part of the moisture to vapour, by the electric fluid passing through it, might occasion some expansion which would be gradually reduced by the condensation of such vapour. the fine silver thread, the very small brass wire, and the strip of gilt paper, are also subject to a similar objection, as even metals, in such circumstances, are often partly reduced to smoke, particularly the gilding on paper. but your subsequent beautiful experiment on the wire, which you made hot by the electric explosion, and in that state fired gunpowder with it, puts it out of all question, that heat is produced by our artificial electricity, and that the melting of metals in that way, is not by what i formerly called a cold fusion. a late instance here, of the melting a bell-wire, in a house struck by lightning, and parts of the wire burning holes in the floor on which they fell, has proved the same with regard to the electricity of nature. i was too easily led into that error by accounts given, even in philosophical books, and from remote ages downwards, of melting money in purses, swords in scabbards, &c. without burning the inflammable matters that were so near those melted metals. but men are, in general, such careless observers, that a philosopher cannot be too much on his guard in crediting their relations of things extraordinary, and should never build an hypothesis on any thing but clear facts and experiments, or it will be in danger of soon falling, as this does, like a house of cards. how many ways there are of kindling fire, or producing heat in bodies! by the sun's rays, by collision, by friction, by hammering, by putrefaction, by fermentation, by mixtures of fluids, by mixtures of solids with fluids, and by electricity. and yet the fire when produced, though in different bodies it may differ in circumstances, as in colour, vehemence, &c. yet in the same bodies is generally the same. does not this seem to indicate that the fire existed in the body, though in a quiescent state, before it was by any of these means excited, disengaged, and brought forth to action and to view? may it not constitute a part, and even a principal part, of the solid substance of bodies? if this should be the case, kindling fire in a body would be nothing more than developing this inflammable principle, and setting it at liberty to act in separating the parts of that body, which then exhibits the appearances of scorching, melting, burning, &c. when a man lights an hundred candles from the flame of one, without diminishing that flame, can it be properly said to have _communicated_ all that fire? when a single spark from a flint, applied to a magazine of gunpowder, is immediately attended with this consequence, that the whole is in flame, exploding with immense violence, could all this fire exist first in the spark? we cannot conceive it. and thus we seem led to this supposition, that there is fire enough in all bodies to singe, melt, or burn them, whenever it is, by any means, set at liberty, so that it may exert itself upon them, or be disengaged from them. this liberty seems to be afforded it by the passage of electricity through them, which we know can and does, of itself, separate the parts even of water; and perhaps the immediate appearances of fire are only the effects of such separations? if so, there would be no need of supposing that the electric fluid _heats itself_ by the swiftness of its motion, or heats bodies by the resistance it meets with in passing through them. they would only be heated in proportion as such separation could be more easily made. thus a melting heat cannot be given to a large wire in the flame of a candle, though it may to a small one; and this not because the large wire resists _less_ that action of the flame which tends to separate its parts, but because it resists it _more_ than the smaller wire; or because the force being divided among more parts acts weaker on each. this reminds me, however, of a little experiment i have frequently made, that shows, at one operation, the different effects of the same quantity of electric fluid passing through different quantities of metal. a strip of tinfoil, three inches long, a quarter of an inch wide at one end, and tapering all the way to a sharp point at the other, fixed between two pieces of glass, and having the electricity of a large glass jar sent through it, will not be discomposed in the broadest part; towards the middle will appear melted in spots; where narrower, it will be quite melted; and about half an inch of it next the point will be reduced to smoke. you were not mistaken in supposing that your account of the effect of the pointed rod, in securing mr. west's house from damage by a stroke of lightning, would give me great pleasure. i thank you for it most heartily, and for the pains you have taken in giving me so complete a description of its situation, form, and substance, with the draft of the melted point. there is one circumstance, viz. that the lightning was seen to diffuse itself from the foot of the rod over the wet pavement, which seems, i think, to indicate, that the earth under the pavement was very dry, and that the rod should have been sunk deeper, till it came to earth moister, and therefore apter to receive and dissipate the electric fluid. and although, in this instance, a conductor formed of nail rods, not much above a quarter of an inch thick, served well to convey the lightning, yet some accounts i have seen from carolina, give reason to think, that larger may be sometimes necessary, at least for the security of the conductor itself, which, when too small, may be destroyed in executing its office, though it does, at the same time, preserve the house. indeed, in the construction of an instrument so new, and of which we could have so little experience, it is rather lucky that we should at first be so near the truth as we seem to be, and commit so few errors. there is another reason for sinking deeper the lower end of the rod, and also for turning it outwards under ground to some distance from the foundation; it is this, that water dripping from the eaves falls near the foundation, and sometimes soaks down there in greater quantities, so as to come near the end of the rod, though the ground about it be drier. in such case, this water may be exploded, that is, blown into vapour, whereby a force is generated, that may damage the foundation. water reduced to vapour, is said to occupy 14,000 times its former space. i have sent a charge through a small glass tube, that has borne it well while empty, but when filled first with water, was shattered to pieces and driven all about the room:--finding no part of the water on the table, i suspected it to have been reduced to vapour; and was confirmed in that suspicion afterwards, when i had filled a like piece of tube with ink, and laid it on a sheet of clean paper, whereon, after the explosion, i could find neither any moisture nor any sully from the ink. this experiment of the explosion of water, which i believe was first made by that most ingenious electrician, father beccaria, may account for what we sometimes see in a tree struck by lightning, when part of it is reduced to fine splinters like a broom; the sap vessels being so many tubes containing a watry fluid, which, when reduced to vapour, rends every tube lengthways. and perhaps it is this rarefaction of the fluids in animal bodies killed by lightning or electricity, that, by separating its fibres, renders the flesh so tender, and apt so much sooner to putrify. i think too, that much of the damage done by lightning to stone and brick-walls may sometimes be owing to the explosion of water, found, during showers, running or lodging in the joints or small cavities or cracks that happen to be in the walls. here are some electricians that recommend knobs instead of points on the upper end of the rods, from a supposition that the points invite the stroke. it is true that points draw electricity at greater distances in the gradual silent way; but knobs will draw at the greatest distance a stroke. there is an experiment that will settle this. take a crooked wire of the thickness of a quill, and of such a length as that one end of it being applied to the lower part of a charged bottle, the upper may be brought near the ball on the top of the wire that is in the bottle. let one end of this wire be furnished with a knob, and the other may be gradually tapered to a fine point. when the point is presented to discharge the bottle, it must be brought much nearer before it will receive the stroke, than the knob requires to be. points besides tend to repel the fragments of an electrised cloud, knobs draw them nearer. an experiment, which i believe i have shewn you, of cotton fleece hanging from an electrised body, shows this clearly when a point or a knob is presented under it. you seem to think highly of the importance of this discovery, as do many others on our side of the water. here it is very little regarded; so little, that though it is now seven or eight years since it was made public, i have not heard of a single house as yet attempted to be secured by it. it is true the mischiefs done by lightning are not so frequent here as with us, and those who calculate chances may perhaps find that not one death (or the destruction of one house) in a hundred thousand happens from that cause, and that therefore it is scarce worth while to be at any expence to guard against it.--but in all countries there are particular situations of buildings more exposed than others to such accidents, and there are minds so strongly impressed with the apprehension of them, as to be very unhappy every time a little thunder is within their hearing;--it may therefore be well to render this little piece of new knowledge as general and as well understood as possible, since to make us _safe_ is not all its advantage, it is some to make us _easy_. and as the stroke it secures us from might have chanced perhaps but once in our lives, while it may relieve us a hundred times from those painful apprehensions, the latter may possibly on the whole contribute more to the happiness of mankind than the former. your kind wishes and congratulations are very obliging. i return them cordially;--being, with great regard and esteem, my dear sir, your affectionate friend, and most obedient humble servant, b. franklin. _accounts from carolina (mentioned in the foregoing letter) of the effects of lightning on two of the rods commonly affixed to houses there, for securing them against lightning_. _charlestown, nov. 1, 1760._ "----it is some years since mr. raven's rod was struck by lightning. i hear an account of it was published at the time, but i cannot find it. according to the best information i can now get, he had fixed to the outside of his chimney a large iron rod, several feet in length, reaching above the chimney; and to the top of this rod the points were fixed. from the lower end of this rod, a small brass wire was continued down to the top of another iron rod driven into the earth. on the ground-floor in the chimney stood a gun, leaning against the back-wall, nearly opposite to where the brass wire came down on the outside. the lightning fell upon the points, did no damage to the rod they were fixed to; but the brass wire, all down till it came opposite to the top of the gun-barrel, was destroyed[76]. there the lightning made a hole through the wall or back of the chimney, to get to the gun-barrel[77], down which it seems to have passed, as, although it did not hurt the barrel, it damaged the butt of the stock, and blew up some bricks of the hearth. the brass wire below the hole in the wall remained good. no other damage, as i can learn, was done to the house. i am told the same house had formerly been struck by lightning, and much damaged, before these rods were invented."---footnotes: [76] a proof that it was not of sufficient substance to conduct with safety to itself (though with safety _so far_ to the wall) so large a quantity of the electric fluid. [77] a more substantial conductor. _mr. william maine's account of the effects of the lightning on his rod, dated at indian land, in south carolina, aug. 28, 1760._ ----"i had a set of electrical points, consisting of three prongs, of large brass wire tipt with silver, and perfectly sharp, each about seven inches long; these were rivetted at equal distances into an iron nut about three quarters of an inch square, and opened at top equally to the distance of six or seven inches from point to point, in a regular triangle. this nut was screwed very tight on the top of an iron rod of above half an inch diameter, or the thickness of a common curtain-rod, composed of several joints, annexed by hooks turned at the ends of each joint, and the whole fixed to the chimney of my house by iron staples. the points were elevated (_a_) six or seven inches above the top of the chimney; and the lower joint sunk three feet in the earth, in a perpendicular direction. thus stood the points on tuesday last about five in the evening, when the lightning broke with a violent explosion on the chimney, cut the rod square off just under the nut, and i am persuaded, melted the points, nut, and top of the rod, entirely up; as after the most diligent search, nothing of either was found (_b_), and the top of the remaining rod was cased over with a congealed solder. the lightning ran down the rod, starting almost all the staples (_c_), and unhooking the joints without affecting the rod (_d_), except on the inside of each hook where the joints were coupled, the surface of which was melted (_e_), and left as cased over with solder.--no part of the chimney was damaged (_f_), only at the foundation (_g_), where it was shattered almost quite round, and several bricks were torn out (_h_). considerable cavities were made in the earth quite round the foundation, but most within eight or nine inches of the rod. it also shattered the bottom weather-board (_i_) at one corner of the house, and made a large hole in the earth by the corner post. on the other side of the chimney, it ploughed up several furrows in the earth, some yards in length. it ran down the inside of the chimney (_k_), carrying only soot with it; and filled the whole house with its flash (_l_), smoke, and dust. it tore up the hearth in several places (_m_), and broke some pieces of china in the beaufet (_n_). a copper tea-kettle standing in the chimney was beat together, as if some great weight had fallen upon it (_o_); and three holes, each about half an inch diameter, melted through the bottom (_p_). what seems to me the most surprising is, that the hearth under the kettle was not hurt, yet the bottom of the kettle was drove inward, as if the lightning proceeded from under it upwards (_q_), and the cover was thrown to the middle of the floor (_r_). the fire dogs, an iron logger-head, an indian pot, an earthen cup, and a cat, were all in the chimney at the time unhurt, though a great part of the hearth was torn up (_s_). my wife's sister, two children, and a negro wench, were all who happened to be in the house at the time: the first, and one child, sat within five feet of the chimney; and were so stunned, that they never saw the lightning nor heard the explosion; the wench, with the other child in her arms, sitting at a greater distance, was sensible of both; though every one was so stunned that they did not recover for some time; however it pleased god that no farther mischief ensued. the kitchen, at 90 feet distance, was full of negroes, who were all sensible of the shock; and some of them tell me, that they felt the rod about a minute after, when it was so hot that they could not bear it in hand." remarks by benjamin franklin. the foregoing very sensible and distinct account may afford a good deal of instruction relating to the nature and effects of lightning, and to the construction and use of this instrument for averting the mischiefs of it. like other new instruments, this appears to have been at first in some respects imperfect; and we find that we are, in this as in others, to expect improvement from experience chiefly: but there seems to be nothing in the account, that should discourage us in the use of it; since at the same time that its imperfections are discovered, the means of removing them are pretty easily to be learnt from the circumstances of the account itself; and its utility upon the whole is manifest. one intention of the pointed rod, is, to _prevent_ a stroke of lightning. (_see pages_ 283, 310.) but to have a better chance of obtaining this end, the points should not be too near to the top of the chimney or highest part of the building to which they are affixed, but should be extended five or six feet above it; otherwise their operation in silently drawing off the fire (from such fragments of cloud as float in the air between the great body of cloud and the earth) will be prevented. for the experiment with the lock of cotton hanging below the electrified prime conductor shows, that a finger under it, being a blunt body, extends the cotton, drawing its lower part downwards; when a needle, with its point presented to the cotton, makes it fly up again to the prime conductor; and that this effect is strongest when as much of the needle as possible appears above the end of the finger; grows weaker as the needle is shortened between the finger and thumb; and is reduced to nothing when only a short part below the point appears above the finger. now it seems the points of mr. maine's rod were elevated only (_a_) _six or seven inches above the top of the chimney_; which, considering the bulk of the chimney and the house, was too small an elevation. for the great body of matter near them would hinder their being easily brought into a negative state by the repulsive power of the electrised cloud, in which negative state it is that they attract most strongly and copiously the electric fluid from other bodies, and convey it into the earth. (_b_) _nothing of the points, &c. could be found._ this is a common effect. (_see page_ 312.) where the quantity of the electric fluid passing is too great for the conductor through which it passes, the metal is either melted, or reduced to smoke and dissipated; but where the conductor is sufficiently large, the fluid passes in it without hurting it. thus these three wires were destroyed, while the rod to which they were fixed, being of greater substance, remained unhurt; its end only, to which they were joined, being a little melted, some of the melted part of the lower ends of those wires uniting with it, and appearing on it like solder. (_c_)(_d_)(_e_) as the several parts of the rod were connected only by the ends being bent round into hooks, the contact between hook and hook was much smaller than the rod; therefore the current through the metal being confined in those narrow passages, melted part of the metal, as appeared on examining the inside of each hook. where metal is melted by lightning, some part of it is generally exploded; and these explosions in the joints appear to have been the cause of unhooking them; and, by that violent action, of starting also most of the staples. we learn from hence, that a rod in one continued piece is preferable to one composed of links or parts hooked together. (_f_) _no part of the chimney was damaged_: because the lightning passed in the rod. and this instance agrees with others in showing, that the second and principal intention of the rods is obtainable, viz. that of _conducting_ the lightning. in all the instances yet known of the lightning's falling on any house guarded by rods, it has pitched down upon the point of the rod, and has not fallen upon any other part of the house. had the lightning fallen on this chimney, unfurnished with a rod, it would probably have rent it from top to bottom, as we see, by the effects of the lightning on the points and rod, that its quantity was very great; and we know that many chimneys have been so demolished. but _no part of this was damaged, only_ (_f_)(_g_)(_h_) _at the foundation, where it was shattered and several bricks torn out_. here we learn the principal defect in fixing this rod. the lower joint being sunk but three feet into the earth, did not it seems go low enough to come at water, or a large body of earth so moist as to receive readily from its end the quantity it conducted. the electric fluid therefore, thus accumulated near the lower end of the rod, quitted it at the surface of the earth, dividing in search of other passages. part of it tore up the surface in furrows, and made holes in it: part entered the bricks of the foundation, which being near the earth are generally moist, and, in exploding that moisture, shattered them. (_see page_ 358.) part went through or under the foundation, and got under the hearth, blowing up great part of the bricks (_m_)(_s_), and producing the other effects (_o_)(_p_)(_q_)(_r_). the iron dogs, loggerhead and iron pot were not hurt, being of sufficient substance, and they probably protected the cat. the copper tea-kettle being thin suffered some damage. perhaps, though found on a sound part of the hearth, it might at the time of the stroke have stood on the part blown up, which will account both for the bruising and melting. that _it ran down the inside of the chimney_ (_k_) i apprehend must be a mistake. had it done so, i imagine it would have brought something more than soot with it; it would probably have ripped off the pargetting, and brought down fragments of plaster and bricks. the shake, from the explosion on the rod, was sufficient to shake down a good deal of loose soot. lightning does not usually enter houses by the doors, windows, or chimneys, as open passages, in the manner that air enters them: its nature is, to be attracted by substances, that are conductors of electricity; it penetrates and passes _in_ them, and, if they are not good conductors as are neither wood, brick, stone nor plaster, it is apt to rend them in its passage. it would not easily pass through the air from a cloud to a building, were it not for the aid afforded it in its passage by intervening fragments of clouds below the main body, or by the falling rain. it is said that _the house was filled with its flash_ (_l_). expressions like this are common in accounts of the effects of lightning, from which we are apt to understand that the lightning filled the house. our language indeed seems to want a word to express the _light_ of lightning as distinct from the lightning itself. when a tree on a hill is struck by it, the lightning of that stroke exists only in a narrow vein between the cloud and tree, but its light fills a vast space many miles round; and people at the greatest distance from it are apt to say, "the lightning came into our rooms through our windows." as it is in itself extremely bright, it cannot, when so near as to strike a house, fail illuminating highly every room in it through the windows; and this i suppose to have been the case at mr. maine's; and that, except in and near the hearth, from the causes above-mentioned, it was not in any other part of the house; _the flash_ meaning no more than _the light_ of the lightning.--it is for want of considering this difference, that people suppose there is a kind of lightning not attended with thunder. in fact there is probably a loud explosion accompanying every flash of lightning, and at the same instant;--but as sound travels slower than light, we often hear the sound some seconds of time after having seen the light; and as sound does not travel so far as light, we sometimes see the light at a distance too great to hear the sound. (_n_) the _breaking some pieces of china in the beaufet_, may nevertheless seem to indicate that the lightning was there: but as there is no mention of its having hurt any part of the beaufet, or of the walls of the house, i should rather ascribe that effect to the concussion of the air, or shake of the house by the explosion. thus, to me it appears, that the house and its inhabitants were saved by the rod, though the rod itself was unjointed by the stroke; and that, if it had been made of one piece, and sunk deeper in the earth, or had entered the earth at a greater distance from the foundation, the mentioned small damages (except the melting of the points) would not have happened. to dr. h[78]. at london. _on the electricity of the tourmalin._ _craven-street, june 7, 1759._ sir, i now return the smallest of your two tourmalins, with hearty thanks for your kind present of the other, which, though i value highly for its rare and wonderful properties, i shall ever esteem it more for the friendship i am honoured with by the giver. i hear that the negative electricity of one side of the tourmalin, when heated, is absolutely denied (and all that has been related of it ascribed to prejudice in favour of a system) by some ingenious gentlemen abroad, who profess to have made the experiments on the stone with care and exactness. the experiments have succeeded differently with me; yet i would not call the accuracy of those gentlemen in question. possibly the tourmalins they have tried were not properly cut; so that the positive and negative powers were obliquely placed, or in some manner whereby their effects were confused, or the negative parts more easily supplied by the positive. perhaps the lapidaries who have hitherto cut these stones, had no regard to the situation of the two powers, but chose to make the faces of the stone where they could obtain the greatest breadth, or some other advantage in the form. if any of these stones, in their natural state, can be procured here, i think it would be right to endeavour finding, before they are cut, the two sides that contain the opposite powers, and make the faces there. possibly, in that case, the effects might be stronger, and more distinct; for though both these stones that i have examined have evidently the two properties, yet, without the full heat given by boiling water, they are somewhat confused; the virtue seems strongest towards one end of the face; and in the middle, or near the other end, scarce discernible; and the negative, i think, always weaker than the positive. i have had the large one new cut, so as to make both sides alike, and find the change of form has made no change of power, but the properties of each side remain the same as i found them before. it is now set in a ring in such a manner as to turn on an axis, that i may conveniently, in making experiments, come at both side of the stone. the little rim of gold it is set in, has made no alteration in its effects. the warmth of my finger, when i wear it, is sufficient to give it some degree of electricity, so that it is always ready to attract light bodies. the following experiments have satisfied me that m. æpinus's account of the positive and negative states of the opposite sides of the heated tourmalin is well founded. i heated the large stone in boiling water. as soon as it was dry, i brought it near a very small cork ball, that was suspended by a silk thread. the ball was attracted by one face of the stone, which i call a, and then repelled. the ball in that state was also repelled by the positively charged wire of a phial, and attracted by the other side of the stone, b. the stone being a-fresh heated, and the side b brought near the ball, it was first attracted, and presently after repelled by that side. in this second state it was repelled by the negatively charged wire of a phial. therefore, if the principles now generally received, relating to positive and negative electricity, are true, the side a of the large stone, when the stone is heated in water, is in a positive state of electricity; and the side b, in a negative state. the same experiments being made with the small stone stuck by one edge on the end of a small glass tube, with sealing-wax, the same effects are produced. the flat side of the small stone gives the signs of positive electricity; the high side gives the signs of negative electricity. again: i suspended the small stone by a silk thread. i heated it as it hung, in boiling water. i heated the large one in boiling water. then i brought the large stone near to the suspended small one. which immediately turned its flat side to the side b of the large stone, and would cling to it. i turned the ring, so as to present the side a of the large stone, to the flat side of the small one. the flat side was repelled, and the small stone, turning quick, applied its high side to the side a of the large one. this was precisely what ought to happen, on the supposition that the flat side of the small stone, when heated in water, is positive, and the high side negative; the side a of the large stone positive, and the side b negative. the effect was apparently the same as would have been produced, if one magnet had been suspended by a thread, and the different poles of another brought alternately near it. i find that the face a, of the large stone, being coated with leaf-gold (attached by the white of an egg, which will bear dipping in hot water) becomes quicker and stronger in its effect on the cork ball, repelling it the instant it comes in contact; which i suppose to be occasioned by the united force of different parts of the face, collected and acting together through the metal. i am, &c. b. franklin. footnote: [78] dr. heberden. _editor._ from professor winthrop, to b. franklin. _new observation relating to electricity in the atmosphere._ _cambridge, n. e. sept. 29, 1762._ sir, there is an observation relating to electricity in the atmosphere, which seemed new to me, though perhaps it will not to you: however, i will venture to mention it. i have some points on the top of my house, and the wire where it passes within-side the house is furnished with bells, according to your method, to give notice of the passage of the electric fluid. in summer, these bells, generally ring at the approach of a thunder-cloud; but cease soon after it begins to rain. in winter, they sometimes though not very often, ring while it is snowing; but never, that i remember, when it rains. but what was unexpected to me was, that, though the bells had not rung while it was snowing, yet, the next day, after it had done snowing, and the weather was cleared up, while the snow was driven about by a high wind at w. or n. w. the bells rung for several hours (though with little intermissions) as briskly as ever i knew them, and i drew considerable sparks from the wire. this phenomenon i never observed but twice; viz. on the 31st of january, 1760, and the 3d of march, 1762. i am, sir, &c. from mr. a. s[79]. to b. f. _flash of lightning that struck st. bride's steeple._ i have just recollected that in one of our great storms of lightning, i saw an appearance, which i never observed before, nor ever heard described. i am persuaded that i saw _the_ flash which struck st. bride's steeple. sitting at my window, and looking to the north, i saw what appeared to me a solid strait rod of fire, moving at a very sharp angle with the horizon. it appeared to my eye as about two inches diameter, and had nothing of the zig-zag lightning motion. i instantly told a person sitting with me, that some place must be struck at that instant. i was so much surprized at the vivid distinct appearance of the fire, that i did not hear the clap of thunder, which stunned every one besides. considering how low it moved, i could not have thought it had gone so far, having st. martin's, the new church, and st. clements's steeples in its way. it struck the steeple a good way from the top, and the first impression it made in the side is in the same direction i saw it move in. it was succeeded by two flashes, almost united, moving in a pointed direction. there were two distinct houses struck in essex-street. i should have thought the rod would have fallen in covent-garden, it was so low. perhaps the appearance is frequent, though never before seen by your's, a. s. footnote: [79] mr. alexander small. _editor._ to mr. p. f[80]. newport. _best method of securing a powder magazine from lightning._ ----you may acquaint the gentleman that desired you to enquire my opinion of the best method of securing a powder magazine from lightning, that i think they cannot do better than to erect a mast not far from it, which may reach fifteen or twenty feet above the top of it, with a thick iron rod in one piece fastened to it, pointed at the highest end, and reaching down through the earth till it comes to water. iron is a cheap metal; but if it were dearer, as this is a public thing the expence is insignificant; therefore i would have the rod at least an inch thick, to allow for its gradually wasting by rust; it will last as long as the mast, and may be renewed with it. the sharp point for five or six inches should be gilt. but there is another circumstance of importance to the strength, goodness, and usefulness of the powder, which does not seem to have been enough attended to: i mean the keeping it perfectly dry. for want of a method of doing this, much is spoiled in damp magazines, and much so damaged as to become of little value.--if, instead of barrels it were kept in cases of bottles well corked; or in large tin canisters, with small covers shutting close by means of oiled paper between, or covering the joining on the canister; or if in barrels, then the barrels lined with thin sheet lead; no moisture in either of these methods could possibly enter the powder, since glass and metals are both impervious to water. by the latter of these means you see tea is brought dry and crisp from china to europe, and thence to america, though it comes all the way by sea in the damp hold of a ship. and by this method, grain, meal, &c. if well dried before it is put up, may be kept for ages sound and good. there is another thing very proper to line small barrels with; it is what they call tin-foil, or leaf-tin, being tin milled between rollers till it becomes as thin as paper, and more pliant, at the same time that its texture is extremely close. it may be applied to the wood with common paste, made with boiling-water thickened with flour; and, so laid on; will lie very close and stick well: but i should prefer a hard sticky varnish for that purpose, made of linseed oil much boiled. the heads might be lined separately, the tin wrapping a little round their edges. the barrel, while the lining is laid on, should have the end hoops slack, so that the staves standing at a little distance from each other, may admit the head into its groove. the tin-foil should be plyed into the groove. then, one head being put in, and that end hooped tight, the barrel would be fit to receive the powder, and when the other head is put in and the hoops drove up, the powder would be safe from moisture even if the barrel were kept under water. this tin-foil is but about eighteen pence sterling a pound, and is so extremely thin, that i imagine a pound of it would line three or four powder-barrels. i am, &c. b. franklin. footnote: [80] peter franklin. _editor._ _of lightning, and the methods (now used in america) of securing buildings and persons from its mischievous effects._ experiments made in electricity first gave philosophers a suspicion, that the matter of lightning was the same with the electric matter. experiments afterwards made on lightning obtained from the clouds by pointed rods, received into bottles, and subjected to every trial, have since proved this suspicion to be perfectly well founded; and that whatever properties we find in electricity, are also the properties of lightning. this matter of lightning, or of electricity, is an extreme subtile fluid, penetrating other bodies, and subsisting in them, equally diffused. when by any operation of art or nature, there happens to be a greater proportion of this fluid in one body than in another, the body which has most will communicate to that which has least, till the proportion becomes equal; provided the distance between them be not too great; or, if it is too great, till there be proper conductors to convey it from one to the other. if the communication be through the air without any conductor, a bright light is seen between the bodies, and a sound is heard. in our small experiments, we call this light and sound the electric spark and snap; but in the great operations of nature, the light is what we call _lightning_, and the sound (produced at the same time, though generally arriving later at our ears than the light does to our eyes) is, with its echoes, called _thunder_. if the communication of this fluid is by a conductor, it may be without either light or sound, the subtle fluid passing in the substance of the conductor. if the conductor be good and of sufficient bigness, the fluid passes through it without hurting it. if otherwise, it is damaged or destroyed. all metals, and water, are good conductors.--other bodies may become conductors by having some quantity of water in them, as wood, and other materials used in building, but not having much water in them, they are not good conductors, and therefore are often damaged in the operation. glass, wax, silk, wool, hair, feathers, and even wood, perfectly dry are non-conductors: that is, they resist instead of facilitating the passage of this subtle fluid. when this fluid has an opportunity of passing through two conductors, one good, and sufficient, as of metal, the other not so good, it passes in the best, and will follow it in any direction. the distance at which a body charged with this fluid will discharge itself suddenly, striking through the air into another body that is not charged, or not so highly charged, is different according to the quantity of the fluid, the dimensions and form of the bodies themselves, and the state of the air between them.--this distance, whatever it happens to be between any two bodies, is called their _striking distance_, as, till they come within that distance of each other, no stroke will be made. the clouds have often more of this fluid in proportion than the earth; in which case, as soon as they come near enough (that is, within the striking distance) or meet with a conductor, the fluid quits them and strikes into the earth. a cloud fully charged with this fluid, if so high as to be beyond the striking distance from the earth, passes quietly without making noise or giving light; unless it meets with other clouds that have less. tall trees, and lofty buildings, as the towers and spires of churches, become sometimes conductors between the clouds and the earth; but not being good ones, that is, not conveying the fluid freely, they are often damaged. buildings that have their roofs covered with lead, or other metal, and spouts of metal continued from the roof into the ground to carry off the water, are never hurt by lightning, as, whenever it falls on such a building, it passes in the metals and not in the walls. when other buildings happen to be within the striking distance from such clouds, the fluid passes in the walls whether of wood, brick or stone, quitting the walls only when it can find better conductors near them, as metal rods, bolts, and hinges of windows or doors, gilding on wainscot, or frames of pictures, the silvering on the backs of looking-glasses, the wires for bells, and the bodies of animals, as containing watery fluids. and in passing through the house it follows the direction of these conductors, taking as many in its way as can assist it in its passage, whether in a strait, or crooked line leaping from one to the other, if not far distant from each other, only rending the wall in the spaces where these partial good conductors are too distant from each other. an iron rod being placed on the outside of a building, from the highest part continued down into the moist earth, in any direction strait or crooked, following the form of the roof or other parts of the building, will receive the lightning at its upper end, attracting it so as to prevent its striking any other part; and, affording it a good conveyance into the earth, will prevent its damaging any part of the building. a small quantity of metal is found able to conduct a great quantity of this fluid. a wire no bigger than a goose-quill has been known to conduct (with safety to the building as far as the wire was continued) a quantity of lightning that did prodigious damage both above and below it; and probably larger rods are not necessary, though it is common in america, to make them of half an inch, some of three quarters, or an inch diameter. the rod may be fastened to the wall, chimney, &c. with staples of iron.--the lightning will not leave the rod (a good conductor) to pass into the wall (a bad conductor) through those staples.--it would rather, if any were in the wall, pass out of it into the rod to get more readily by that conductor into the earth. if the building be very large and extensive, two or more rods may be placed at different parts, for greater security. small ragged parts of clouds, suspended in the air between the great body of clouds and the earth (like leaf gold in electrical experiments) often serve as partial conductors for the lightning, which proceeds from one of them to another, and by their help comes within the striking distance to the earth or a building. it therefore strikes through those conductors a building that would otherwise be out of the striking distance. long sharp points communicating with the earth, and presented to such parts of clouds, drawing silently from them the fluid they are charged with, they are then attracted to the cloud, and may leave the distance so great as to be beyond the reach of striking. it is therefore that we elevate the upper end of the rod six or eight feet above the highest part of the building, tapering it gradually to a fine sharp point, which is gilt to prevent its rusting. thus the pointed rod either prevents a stroke from the cloud, or, if a stroke is made, conducts it to the earth with safety to the building. the lower end of the rod should enter the earth so deep as to come at the moist part, perhaps two or three feet; and if bent when under the surface so as to go in a horizontal line six or eight feet from the wall, and then bent again downwards three or four feet, it will prevent damage to any of the stones of the foundation. a person apprehensive of danger from lightning, happening during the time of thunder to be in a house not so secured, will do well to avoid sitting near the chimney, near a looking glass, or any gilt pictures or wainscot; the safest place is in the middle of the room (so it be not under a metal lustre suspended by a chain) sitting in one chair and laying the feet up in another. it is still safer to bring two or three mattrasses or beds into the middle of the room, and, folding them up double, place the chair upon them; for they not being so good conductors as the walls, the lightning will not chuse an interrupted course through the air of the room and the bedding, when it can go through a continued better conductor, the wall. but where it can be had, a hammock or swinging bed, suspended by silk cords equally distant from the walls on every side, and from the cieling and floor above and below, affords the safest situation a person can have in any room whatever; and what indeed may be deemed quite free from danger of any stroke by lightning. b. franklin. _paris, sept. 1767._ from j. w.[81] esq. professor of natural philosophy at cambridge, in new england, jan. 6, 1768. _st. bride's steeple.--utility of electrical conductors to steeples.--singular kind of glass tube._ "**** i have read in the philosophical transactions the account of the effects of lightning on st. bride's steeple. it is amazing to me, that after the full demonstration you had given, of the identity of lightning and of electricity, and the power of metalline conductors, they should ever think of repairing that steeple without such conductors. how astonishing is the force of prejudice even in an age of so much knowledge and free enquiry!" answer to the above. **** it is perhaps not so extraordinary that unlearned men, such as commonly compose our church vestries, should not yet be acquainted with, and sensible of the benefits of metal conductors in averting the stroke of lightning, and preserving our houses from its violent effects, or that they should be still prejudiced against the use of such conductors, when we see how long even philosophers, men of extensive science and great ingenuity, can hold out against the evidence of new knowledge, that does not square with their preconceptions; and how long men can retain a practice that is conformable to their prejudices, and expect a benefit from such practice, though constant experience shows its inutility. a late piece of the abbé nollet, printed last year in the memoirs of the french academy of sciences, affords strong instances of this: for though the very relations he gives of the effects of lightning in several churches and other buildings show clearly, that it was conducted from one part to another by wires, gildings, and other pieces of metal that were _within_, or connected with the building, yet in the same paper he objects to the providing metalline conductors _without_ the building, as useless or dangerous.[82] he cautions people not to ring the church bells during a thunder-storm, lest the lightning, in its way to the earth, should be conducted down to them by the bell ropes,[83] which are but bad conductors; and yet is against fixing metal rods on the outside of the steeple, which are known to be much better conductors, and which it would certainly chuse to pass in, rather than in dry hemp. and though for a thousand years past bells have been solemnly consecrated by the romish church[84], in expectation that the sound of such blessed bells would drive away those storms, and secure our buildings from the stroke of lightning; and during so long a period, it has not been found by experience, that places within the reach of such blessed sound, are safer than others where it is never heard; but that on the contrary, the lightning seems to strike steeples of choice, and that at the very time the bells are ringing[85]; yet still they continue to bless the new bells, and jangle the old ones whenever it thunders.--one would think it was now time to try some other trick;--and ours is recommended (whatever this able philosopher may have been told to the contrary) by more than twelve years experience, wherein, among the great number of houses furnished with iron rods in north america, not one so guarded has been materially hurt with lightning, and several have been evidently preserved by their means; while a number of houses, churches, barns, ships, &c. in different places, unprovided with rods, have been struck and greatly damaged, demolished or burnt. probably the vestries of our english churches are not generally well acquainted with these facts; otherwise, since as good protestants they have no faith in the blessing of bells, they would be less excusable in not providing this other security for their respective churches, and for the good people that may happen to be assembled in them during a tempest, especially as those buildings, from their greater height, are more exposed to the stroke of lightning than our common dwellings. i have nothing new in the philosophical way to communicate to you, except what follows. when i was last year in germany, i met with a singular kind of glass, being a tube about eight inches long, half an inch in diameter, with a hollow ball of near an inch diameter at one end, and one of an inch and half at the other, hermetically sealed, and half filled with water.--if one end is held in the hand, and the other a little elevated above the level, a constant succession of large bubbles proceeds from the end in the hand to the other end, making an appearance that puzzled me much, till i found that the space not filled with water was also free from air, and either filled with a subtle invisible vapour continually rising from the water, and extremely rarefiable by the least heat at one end, and condensable again by the least coolness at the other; or it is the very fluid of fire itself, which parting from the hand pervades the glass, and by its expansive force depresses the water till it can pass between it and the glass, and escape to the other end, where it gets through the glass again into the air. i am rather inclined to the first opinion, but doubtful between the two. an ingenious artist here, mr. nairne, mathematical instrument-maker, has made a number of them from mine, and improved them, for his are much more sensible than those i brought from germany.--i bored a very small hole through the wainscot in the seat of my window, through which a little cold air constantly entered, while the air in the room was kept warmer by fires daily made in it, being winter time. i placed one of his glasses, with the elevated end against this hole; and the bubbles from the other end, which was in a warmer situation, were continually passing day and night, to the no small surprise of even philosophical spectators. each bubble discharged is larger than that from which it proceeds, and yet that is not diminished; and by adding itself to the bubble at the other end, that bubble is not increased, which seems very paradoxical.--when the balls at each end are made large, and the connecting tube very small and bent at right angles, so that the balls, instead of being at the ends, are brought on the side of the tube, and the tube is held so as that the balls are above it, the water will be depressed in that which is held in the hand, and rise in the other as a jet or fountain; when it is all in the other, it begins to boil, as it were, by the vapour passing up through it; and the instant it begins to boil, a sudden coldness is felt in the ball held; a curious experiment, this, first observed and shown me by mr. nairne. there is something in it similar to the old observation, i think mentioned by aristotle, that the bottom of a boiling pot is not warm; and perhaps it may help to explain that fact;--if indeed it be a fact.--when the water stands at an equal height in both these balls, and all at rest; if you wet one of the balls by means of a feather dipt in spirit, though that spirit is of the same temperament as to heat and cold with the water in the glasses, yet the cold occasioned by the evaporation of the spirit from the wetted ball will so condense the vapour over the water contained in that ball, as that the water of the other ball will be pressed up into it, followed by a succession of bubbles, till the spirit is all dried away. perhaps the observations on these little instruments may suggest and be applied to some beneficial uses. it has been thought, that water reduced to vapour by heat was rarefied only fourteen thousand times, and on this principle our engines for raising water by fire are said to be constructed: but if the vapour so much rarefied from water is capable of being itself still farther rarefied to a boundless degree by the application of heat to the vessels or parts of vessels containing the vapour (as at first it is applied to those containing the water) perhaps a much greater power may be obtained, with little additional expence. possibly too, the power of easily moving water from one end to the other of a moveable beam (suspended in the middle like a scale-beam) by a small degree of heat, may be applied advantageously to some other mechanical purposes.**** i am, &c. b. franklin. footnotes: [81] john winthrop. _editor._ [82] notre curiosité pourroit peut-être s'applandir des recherches qu'elle nous a fait faire sur la nature du tonnerre, & sur la mécanisme de ses principaux effets, mais ce n'est point ce qu'il y a de plus important; il vaudroit bien mieux que nous puissions tronver quelque moyen de nous en garantir: on y a pensé; on s'est même flatté d'avoir fait cette grande découverte; mais malheureusement douze années d'épreuves & un peu de réflexion, nous apprennent qu'il ne faut pas compter sur les promesses qu'on nous a faites. je l'ai dit, il y a long temps, and avec regret, toutes ces pointes de fer qu'on dresse en l'air, soit comme _électroscopes_, soit comme préservatifs,----sont plus propre à nous attirer le feu du tonnerre qu'à nous en préserver;----& je persiste â dire que le projet d'épuiser une nuée orageuse du feu dont elle est chargée, n'est pas celui d'un physicien,----. _memoire sur les effets du tonnerre._ [83] les cloches, en vertu de leur bénédiction, doivent écarter les orages & nous preserver des coups de foudre; mais l'église permet à la prudence humaine le choix des momens où il convient d'user de ce préservatif. je ne sais si le son, considéré physiquement, est capable ou non de faire crever une nuée, & de causer l'épanchement de son feu vers les objets terrestres, mais il est certain & prouvé par l'expérience, que la tonnerre peut tomber sur un clocher, soit que l'on y sonne ou que l'on n'y sonne point; & si cela arrive dans le premier cas, les sonneurs sont en grand danger, parcequ'ils tiennent des cordes par lesquelles la commotion de la foudre peut se communiquer jusq'à eux: il est donc plus sage de laisser les cloches en repos quand l'orage est arrivé au-dessus de l'église. ibid. [84] suivant le rituel de paris, lorsqu'on benit des cloches, on recite les oraisons suivantes: _benedic, domine ... quotiescumque sonuerit, procul recedat virtus insidiantium, umbra phantasmatis, incursio turbinum, percussio fulminum, læsio tonitruum, calamitas tempestatum, omnisque spiritus procellarum, &c._ _deus, qui per beatum moïsen, &c. ... procul pellentur insidiæ inimici, fragor grandinum, procella turbinum, impetus tempestatum, temperentur infesta tonitrua. &c._ _omnipotens sempiterne deus, &c. ... ut ante sonitum ejus effugentur ignita jacula inimici, percussio fulminum, impetus lapidum, læsio tempestatum, &c._ [85] en 1718. m. deslandes fit savoir à l'academie royale des sciences, que la nuit du 14 ou 15 d'avril de la mème année, le tonnerre étoit tombé sur vingtquatre églises, dequis landernau jusqu'à saint-pol-de-léon en bretagne; que ces églises étoient précisément celles où l'on sonnoit, & que la foudre avoit épargné celles ou l'on ne sonnoit pas: que dans celle de gouisnon, qui fut entièrement ruinée, le tonnerre tua deux personnes de quatre qui sonnoient, &c. _hist. du l'ac. r. des sci. 1719._ _experiments, observations, and facts, tending to support the opinion of the utility of long pointed rods, for securing buildings from damage by strokes of lightning._ read at the committee appointed to consider the erecting conductors to secure the magazines at purfleet, aug. 27, 1772. experiment i. the prime conductor of an electric machine, a. b. (_see plate_ iv.) being supported about 10 inches and a half above the table by a wax-stand, and under it erected a _pointed wire_ 7 inches and a half high, and one-fifth of an inch thick, and tapering to a sharp point, and communicating with the table; when the _point_ (being uppermost) is _covered_ by the end of a finger, the conductor may be full charged, and the electrometer c[86], will rise to the height indicating a full charge: but the moment the point is _uncovered_, the ball of the electrometer drops, showing the prime conductor to be instantly discharged and nearly emptied of its electricity. turn the wire its _blunt_ end upwards (which represents an unpointed bar) and no such effect follows, the electrometer remaining at its usual height when the prime conductor is charged. [illustration: (of these experiments) _plate iv._ _vol. i. page 388._ _published as the act directs, april 1, 1806, by longman, hurst, rees & orme, paternoster row._] observation. _what_ quantity of lightning, a high pointed rod well communicating with the earth may be expected to discharge from the clouds silently in a short time, is yet unknown; but i have reason from a particular fact to think it may at some times be very great. in philadelphia i had such a rod fixed to the top of my chimney, and extending about nine feet above it. from the foot of this rod, a wire (the thickness of a goose-quill) came through a covered glass tube in the roof, and down through the well of the stair-case; the lower end connected with the iron spear of a pump. on the stair-case opposite to my chamber-door, the wire was divided; the ends separated about six inches, a little bell on each end; [and] between the bells a little brass ball suspended by a silk thread, to play between and strike the bells when clouds passed with electricity in them. after having frequently drawn sparks and charged bottles from the bell of the upper wire, i was one night waked by loud cracks on the stair-case. starting up and opening the door, i perceived that the brass ball, instead of vibrating as usual between the bells, was repelled and kept at a distance from both; while the fire passed sometimes in very large quick cracks from bell to bell; and sometimes in a continued dense white stream, seemingly as large as my finger, whereby the whole stair-case was enlightened as with sunshine, so that one might see to pick up a pin[87]. and from the apparent quantity thus discharged, i cannot but conceive that a _number_[88] of such conductors must considerably lessen that of any approaching cloud, before it comes so near as to deliver its contents in a general stroke:--an effect not to be expected from bars _unpointed_; if the above experiment with the blunt end of the wire is deemed pertinent to the case. experiment ii. the pointed wire under the prime conductor continuing of the same height, _pinch_ it between the thumb and finger near the top, so as _just to conceal_ the point; then turning the globe, the electrometer will rise and mark the full charge. slip the fingers down so as to discover about half an inch of the wire, then another half inch, and then another; at every one of these motions _discovering more and more_ of the pointed wire; you will see the electrometer fall quick and proportionably, stopping when you stop. if you slip down the _whole distance_ at once, the ball falls instantly down to the stem. observation. from this experiment it seems that a greater effect in drawing off the lightning from the clouds may be expected from _long_ pointed rods, than from _short_ ones; i mean from such as show the greatest length, _above the building_ they are fixed on. experiment iii. instead of pinching the point between the thumb and finger, as in the last experiment, keep the thumb and finger each at _near an inch distance_ from it, but at the _same height_, the point between them. in this situation, though the point is fairly exposed to the prime conductor, it has little or no effect; the electrometer rises to the height of a full charge.--but the moment the fingers are _taken away_, the ball falls quick to the stem. observation. to explain this, it is supposed, that one reason of the sudden effect produced by a long naked pointed wire is, that (by the repulsive power of the positive charge in the prime conductor) the natural quantity of electricity contained in the pointed wire is driven down into the earth, and the point of the wire made strongly _negative_; whence it attracts the electricity of the prime conductor more strongly than bodies in their natural state would do; the _small quantity of common matter_ in the point, not being able by its attractive force to retain its _natural quantity of the electric fluid_, against the force of that repulsion.--but the finger and thumb being substantial and blunt bodies, though as near the prime conductor, hold up better their _own_ natural quantity against the force of that repulsion; and so, continuing nearly in the natural state, they jointly operate on the electric fluid in the point, opposing its descent, and _aiding the point_ to retain it; contrary to the repelling power of the prime conductor, which would drive it down.--and this may also serve to explain the different powers of the point in the preceding experiment, on the slipping down the finger and thumb to different distances. hence is collected, that a pointed rod erected _between two tall chimnies_, and very little higher (an instance of which i have seen) cannot have so good an effect, as if it had been erected on one of the chimneys, its whole length above it. experiment iv. if, _instead_ of a long pointed wire, a _large solid body_ (to represent a building without a point) be brought under and as near the prime conductor, when charged; the ball of the electrometer will _fall_ a little; and on taking away the large body, will _rise again_. observation. its _rising again_ shows that the prime conductor lost little or none of its electric charge, as it had done through the point: the _falling_ of the ball while the large body was under the conductor therefore shows, that a quantity of its atmosphere was drawn from the end where the electrometer is placed to the part immediately over the large body, and there accumulated _ready_ to strike into it with its whole undiminished force, as soon as within the striking distance; and, were the prime conductor moveable like a _cloud_, it would approach the body by attraction till within that distance. the swift motion of clouds, as driven by the winds, probably prevents this happening so often as otherwise it might do: for, though parts of the cloud may stoop towards a building as they pass, in consequence of such attraction, yet they are carried forward beyond the striking distance before they could by their descending come within it. experiment v. attach a small light _lock of cotton_ to the underside of the prime conductor, so that it may hang down towards the pointed wire mentioned in the first experiment. _cover_ the point with your finger, and the globe being turned, the cotton will extend itself, stretching down towards the finger, as at _a_; but on _uncovering_ the point, it instantly flies up to the prime conductor, as at _b_, and continues there as long as the point is uncovered. the moment you cover it again, the cotton flies down again, extending itself towards the finger; and the same happens in degree, if (instead of the finger) you use, uncovered, the _blunt_ end of the wire uppermost. observation. to explain this, it is supposed that the cotton, by its connection with the prime conductor, receives from it a quantity of its electricity; which occasions its being attracted by the _finger_ that remains still in nearly its natural state. but when a _point_ is opposed to the cotton, its electricity is thereby taken from it, faster than it can at a distance be supplied with a fresh quantity from the conductor. therefore being reduced _nearer_ to the natural state, it is attracted _up_ to the electrified prime conductor; _rather than down_, as before, to the finger. supposing farther that the prime conductor represents a cloud charged with the electric fluid; the cotton, a ragged fragment of cloud (of which the underside of great thunder-clouds are seen to have many) the finger, a chimney or highest part of a building.--we then may conceive that when such a cloud passes over a _building_, some one of its ragged under-hanging fragments may be drawn down by the chimney or other high part of the edifice; creating thereby a _more easy communication_ between it and the great cloud.--but a _long pointed rod_ being presented to this fragment, may occasion its receding, like the cotton, up to the great cloud; and thereby _increase_, instead _of lessening_ the distance, so as often to make it greater than the striking distance. turning the _blunt end of a wire_ uppermost (which represents the unpointed bar) it appears that the same good effect is not from that to be expected. a long pointed rod it is therefore imagined, may _prevent_ some strokes; as well as _conduct_ others that fall upon it, when a great body of cloud comes on so heavily that the above repelling operation on fragments cannot take place. experiment vi. opposite the side of the prime conductor place _separately_, isolated by wax stems, mr. canton's two boxes with pith balls suspended by fine linen threads. on each box, lay a wire six inches long and one-fifth of an inch thick, tapering to a sharp point; but so laid, as that four inches of the _pointed_ end of _one_ wire, and an equal length of the _blunt_ end of the _other_, may project beyond the ends of the boxes; and both at eighteen inches distance from the prime conductor. then charging the prime conductor by a turn or two of the globe, the balls of each pair will separate; those of the box, whence the point projects most, _considerably_; the others _less_. touch the prime conductor, and those of the box with the _blunt_ point will _collapse_, and join. those connected with the _point_ will at the same time approach each other, _till_ within about an inch, and there _remain_. observation. this seems a proof, that though the small sharpened part of the wire must have had a _less natural_ quantity in it before the operation, than the thick blunt part; yet a greater quantity was _driven down from it_ to the balls. thence it is again inferred, that the pointed rod is rendered _more negative_: and farther, that if a _stroke must fall_ from the cloud over a building, furnished with such a rod, it is more likely to be drawn to that pointed rod, than to a blunt one; as being more strongly negative, and of course its attraction stronger. and it seems more eligible, that the lightning should fall on the point of the conductor (provided to convey it into the earth) than on any other part of the building, _thence_ to proceed to such conductor. which end is also more likely to be obtained by the length and loftiness of the rod; as protecting more extensively the building under it. it has been _objected_, that erecting pointed rods upon _edifices_, is to _invite_ and draw the lightning into _them_; and therefore dangerous. were such rods to be erected on buildings, _without continuing the communication_ quite down into the moist earth, this objection might then have weight; but when such compleat conductors are made, the lightning is invited not into the building, but into the _earth_, the situation it aims at, and which it always seizes every help to obtain, even from broken partial metalline conductors. it has also been suggested, that from such electric experiments _nothing certain can be concluded as to the great operations of nature_; since it is often seen, that experiments, which have succeeded in small, in large have failed. it is true that in mechanics this has sometimes happened. but when it is considered that we owe our first knowledge of the nature and operations of lightning, to observations on such small experiments; and that on carefully comparing the most accurate accounts of former facts, and the exactest relations of those that have occurred since, the effects have surprizingly agreed with the theory; it is humbly conceived that in natural philosophy, in this branch of it at least, the suggestion has not so much weight; and that the farther new experiments now adduced in recommendation of _long_ sharp-pointed rods, may have some claim to credit and consideration. it has been urged too, that though points may have considerable effects on a _small_ prime conductor at _small distances_; yet on _great_ clouds and at _great distances_, nothing is to be expected from them. to this it is answered, that in those _small_ experiments it is evident the points act at a greater than the _striking_ distance; and in the large way, their service is _only expected_ where there is _such_ nearness of the cloud, as to _endanger a stroke_; and there, it cannot be doubted the points must have some effect. and if the quantity discharged by a single pointed rod may be so considerable as i have shown it; the quantity discharged by a number will be proportionably greater. but this part of the theory does not depend alone on _small_ experiments. since the practice of erecting pointed rods in america (now near twenty years) five of them have been struck by lightning, viz. mr. raven's and mr. maine's in south carolina; mr. tucker's in virginia; mr. west's and mr. moulder's in philadelphia. possibly there may have been more that have not come to my knowledge. but in every one of these, the lightning did _not_ fall upon the _body of the house_, but precisely on the several _points_ of the rods; and, though the conductors were sometimes _not sufficiently large and complete_, was conveyed into the earth, without any material damage to the buildings. facts then _in great_, as far as we have them authenticated, justify the opinion that is drawn from the experiments _in small_ as above related. it has also been objected, that unless we knew the quantity that might _possibly_ be discharged at one stroke from the clouds, we cannot be sure we have provided _sufficient_ conductors; and therefore cannot depend on their conveying away _all_ that may fall on their points. indeed we have nothing to form a judgment by in this but past facts; and we know of no instance where a _compleat_ conductor to the moist earth _has_ been insufficient, if half an inch diameter. it is probable that many strokes of lightning have been conveyed through the common leaden pipes affixed to houses to carry down the water from the roof to the ground: and there is no account of such pipes being melted and destroyed, as must sometimes have happened if they had been insufficient. we can then only judge of the dimensions proper for a conductor of lightning, as we do of those proper for a _conductor of rain_, by past observation. and as we think a pipe of three inches bore sufficient to carry off the rain that falls on a square of 20 feet, because we never saw such a pipe glutted by any shower; so we may judge a conductor of an inch diameter, more than sufficient for any stroke of lightning that will fall on its point. it is true that if another deluge should happen wherein the windows of heaven are to be opened, such pipes may be unequal to the falling quantity; and if god for our sins should think fit to rain fire upon us, as upon some cities of old, it is not expected that our conductors of whatever size, should secure our houses against a miracle. probably as water drawn up into the air and there forming clouds, is disposed to fall again in _rain_ by its natural gravity, as soon as a number of particles sufficient to make a drop can get together; so when the clouds are (by whatever means) over or under-charged [with the _electric fluid_] to a degree sufficient to attract them towards the earth, the equilibrium is restored, before the difference becomes great beyond that degree. mr. lane's _electrometer_, for limiting precisely the quantity of a shock that is to be administered in a medical view, may serve to make this more easily intelligible. the discharging knob does by a screw approach the conductor to the distance intended, but there remains fixed. whatever power there may be in the glass globe to collect the fulminating fluid, and whatever capacity of receiving and accumulating it there may be in the bottle or glass jar; yet neither the accumulation or the discharge ever exceeds the destined quantity. thus, were the _clouds_ always at a certain fixed distance from the earth, all discharges would be made when the quantity accumulated was equal to the distance: but there is a circumstance which by occasionally lessening the distance, lessens the discharge; to wit, the moveableness of the clouds, and their being drawn nearer to the earth by attraction when electrified; so that discharges are thereby rendered more frequent and of course less violent. hence whatever the quantity may be in nature, and whatever the power in the clouds of collecting it; yet an accumulation and force beyond what mankind has hitherto been acquainted with is scarce to be expected[89]. b. f. _aug. 27, 1772._ footnotes: [86] mr. henley's. [87] mr. de romas saw still greater quantities of lightning brought down by the wire of his kite. he had "explosions from it, the noise of which greatly resembled that of thunder, and were heard (from without) into the heart of the city, notwithstanding the various noises there. the fire seen at the instant of the explosion had the shape of a spindle eight inches long and five lines in diameter. yet from the time of the explosion to the end of the experiment, no lightning was seen above, nor any thunder heard. at another time the streams of fire issuing from it were observed to be an inch thick and ten feet long."--_see dr. priestley's history of electricity_, pages 134-6, _first edition_. [88] twelve were proposed on and near the magazines at purfleet. [89] it may be fit to mention here, that the immediate occasion of the dispute concerning the preference between pointed and blunt conductors of lightning, arose as follows:--a powder-mill having blown up at brescia, in consequence of its being struck with lightning, the english board of ordnance applied to their painter, mr. wilson, then of some note as an electrician, for a method to prevent the like accident to their magazines at purfleet. mr. wilson having advised a blunt conductor, and it being understood that dr. franklin's opinion, formed upon the spot, was for a pointed one; the matter was referred in 1772, to the royal society, and by them as usual, to a committee, who, after consultation, prescribed a method conformable to dr. franklin's theory. but a harmless stroke of lightning, having under particular circumstances, fallen upon one of the buildings and its apparatus in may 1777; the subject came again into violent agitation, and was again referred to the society, and by the society again referred to a new committee, which committee confirmed the decision of the first committee. b. v.[90] [90] wherever this signature occurs, the note is taken from a volume of dr. franklin's writings, entitled political, miscellaneous, and philosophical pieces, printed for johnson, 1779. the editor of that volume, though a young man at the time, had already evinced extraordinary talents, and was the friend and correspondent of our author. as he has chosen to withhold his name, we conceive ourselves not entitled to disclose it: but we shall take the freedom of an acquaintance to use the notes occasionally, deeming them in many instances valuable historical records. _editor._ to professor landriani, of italy. _on the utility of electrical conductors._ _philadelphia, oct. 14, 1787._ sir, i have received the excellent work, _upon the utility of electrical conductors_, which you had the goodness to send me. i read it with great pleasure, and beg you to accept my sincere thanks for it. upon my return to this country, i found the number of conductors much increased, many proofs of their efficacy in preserving buildings from lightning having demonstrated their utility. among other instances, my own house was one day attacked by lightning, which occasioned the neighbours to run in to give assistance, in case of its being on fire. but no damage was done, and my family was only found a good deal frightened with the violence of the explosion. last year, my house being enlarged, the conductor was obliged to be taken down. i found, upon examination, that the pointed termination of copper, which was originally nine inches long, and about one third of an inch in diameter in its thickest part, had been almost entirely melted; and that its connection with the rod of iron below was very slight. thus, in the course of time, this invention has proved of use to the author of it, and has added this personal advantage to the pleasure he before received, from having been useful to others. mr. rittenhouse, our astronomer, has informed me, that having observed with his excellent telescope, many conductors that are within the field of his view, he has remarked in various instances, that the points were melted in like manner. there is no example of a house, provided with a perfect conductor, which has suffered any considerable damage; and even those which are without them have suffered little, since conductors have come common in this city. b. franklin. to john pringle, m. d. and f. r. s. _on the effects of electricity in paralytic cases._ _craven-street, dec. 21, 1757._ sir, in compliance with your request, i send you the following account of what i can at present recollect relating to the effects of electricity in paralytic cases, which have fallen under my observation. some years since, when the news-papers made mention of great cures performed in italy and germany, by means of electricity, a number of paralytics were brought to me from different parts of pensylvania, and the neighbouring provinces, to be electrised, which i did for them at their request. my method was, to place the patient first in a chair, on an electric stool, and draw a number of large strong sparks from all parts of the affected limb or side. then i fully charged two six-gallon glass jars, each of which had about three square feet of surface coated; and i sent the united shock of these through the affected limb or limbs, repeating the stroke commonly three times each day. the first thing observed, was an immediate greater sensible warmth in the lame limbs that had received the stroke than in the others; and the next morning the patients usually related, that they had in the night felt a pricking sensation in the flesh of the paralytic limbs; and would sometimes show a number of small red spots, which they supposed were occasioned by those prickings. the limbs, too, were found more capable of voluntary motion, and seemed to receive strength. a man, for instance, who could not the first day lift the lame hand from off his knee, would the next day raise it four or five inches, the third day higher; and on the fifth day was able, but with a feeble languid motion, to take off his hat. these appearances gave great spirits to the patients, and made them hope a perfect cure; but i do not remember that i ever saw any amendment after the fifth day; which the patients perceiving, and finding the shocks pretty severe, they became discouraged, went home, and in a short time relapsed; so that i never knew any advantage from electricity in palsies that was permanent. and how far the apparent temporary advantage might arise from the exercise in the patients journey, and coming daily to my house, or from the spirits given by the hope of success, enabling them to exert more strength in moving their limbs, i will not pretend to say. perhaps some permanent advantage might have been obtained, if the electric shocks had been accompanied with proper medicine and regimen, under the direction a skilful physician. it may be, too, that a few great strokes, as given in my method, may not be so proper as many small ones; since by the account from scotland of a case, in which two hundred shocks from a phial were given daily, it seems, that a perfect cure has been made. as to any uncommon strength supposed to be in the machine used in that case, i imagine it could have no share in the effect produced; since the strength of the shock from charged glass, is in proportion to the quantity of surface of the glass coated; so that my shocks from those large jars, must have been much greater than any that could be received from a phial held in the hand. i am, with great respect, sir, your most obedient servant, b. franklin. _electrical experiments on amber._ _saturday, july 3, 1762._ to try, at the request of a friend, whether amber finely powdered might be melted and run together again by means of the electric fluid, i took a piece of small glass tube, about two inches and a half long, the bore about one-twelfth of an inch diameter, the glass itself about the same thickness; i introduced into this tube some powder of amber, and with two pieces of wire nearly fitting the bore, one inserted at one end, the other at the other, i rammed the powder hard between them in the middle of the tube, where it stuck fast, and was in length about half an inch. then leaving the wires in the tube, i made them part of the electric circuit, and discharged through them three rows of my case of bottles. the event was, that the glass was broke into very small pieces and those dispersed with violence in all directions. as i did not expect this, i had not, as in other experiments, laid thick paper over the glass to save my eyes, so several of the pieces struck my face smartly, and one of them cut my lip a little so as to make it bleed. i could find no part of the amber; but the table where the tube lay was stained very black in spots, such as might be made by a thick smoke forced on it by a blast, and the air was filled with a strong smell, somewhat like that from burnt gunpowder. whence i imagined, that the amber was burnt, and had exploded as gunpowder would have done in the same circumstances. that i might better see the effect on the amber, i made the next experiment in a tube formed of a card rolled up and bound strongly with packthread. its bore was about one-eighth of an inch diameter. i rammed powder of amber into this as i had done in the other, and as the quantity of amber was greater, i increased the quantity of electric fluid, by discharging through it at once five rows of my bottles. on opening the tube, i found that some of the powder had exploded, an impression was made on the tube, though it was not hurt, and most of the powder remaining was turned black, which i suppose might be by the smoke forced through it from the burned part: some of it was hard; but as it powdered again when pressed by the fingers, i suppose that hardness not to arise from melting any parts in it, but merely from my ramming the powder when i charged the tube. b. franklin. to thomas ronayne, esq. at corke[91]. _on the electricity of the fogs in ireland._ _london, april 20, 1766._ sir, i have received your very obliging and very ingenious letter by captain kearney. your observations upon the electricity of fogs and the air in ireland, and upon different circumstances of storms, appear to me very curious, and i thank you for them. there is not, in my opinion, any part of the earth whatever which is, or can be, naturally in a state of negative electricity: and though different circumstances may occasion an inequality in the distribution of the fluid, the equilibrium is immediately restored by means of its extreme subtilty, and of the excellent conductors with which the humid earth is amply provided. i am of opinion, however, that when a cloud, well charged positively, passes near the earth, it repels and forces down into the earth that natural portion of electricity, which exists near its surface, and in buildings, trees, &c. so as actually to reduce them to a negative state before it strikes them. i am of opinion too, that the negative state in which you have frequently found the balls, which are suspended from your apparatus, is not always occasioned by clouds in a negative state; but more commonly by clouds positively electrified, which have passed over them, and which in their passage have repelled and driven off a part of the electrical matter, which naturally existed in the apparatus; so that what remained after the passing of the clouds, diffusing itself uniformly through the apparatus, the whole became reduced to a negative state. if you have read my experiments made in continuation of those of mr. canton, you will readily understand this; but you may easily make a few experiments, which will clearly demonstrate it. let a common glass be warmed before the fire that it may continue very dry for some time; set it upon a table, and place upon it the small box made use of by mr. canton, so that the balls may hang a little beyond the edge of the table. rub another glass, which has previously been warmed in a similar manner, with a piece of black silk or a silk handkerchief, in order to electrify it. hold then the glass above the little box, at about the distance of three or four inches from that part, which is most distant from the balls; and you will see the balls separate from each other; being positively electrified by the natural portion of electricity, which was in the box, and which is driven to the further part of it by the repulsive power of the atmosphere in the excited glass. touch the box near the little balls (the excited glass continuing in the same state) and the balls will again unite; the quantity of electricity which had been driven to this part being drawn off by your finger. withdraw then both your finger and the glass at the same instant, and the quantity of electricity which remained in the box, uniformly diffusing itself, the balls will again be separated; being now in a negative state. while things are in this situation, begin once more to excite your glass, and hold it above the box, but not too near, and you will find, that when brought within a certain distance, the balls will at first approach each other, being then in a natural state. in proportion as the glass is brought nearer, they, will again separate, being positive. when the glass is moved beyond them, and at some little farther distance, they will unite again, being in a natural state. when it is entirely removed, they will separate again, being then made negative. the excited glass in this experiment may represent a cloud positively charged, which you see is capable of producing in this manner all the different changes in the apparatus, without the least necessity for supposing any negative cloud. i am nevertheless fully convinced, that these are negative clouds; because they sometimes absorb, through the medium of the apparatus, the positive electricity of a large jar, the hundredth part of which the apparatus itself would have not been able to receive or contain at once. in fact, it is not difficult to conceive, that a large cloud, highly charged positively, may reduce smaller clouds to a negative state, when it passes above or near them, by forcing a part of their natural portion of the fluid either to their inferior surfaces, whence it may strike into the earth, or to the opposite side, whence it may strike into the adjacent clouds; so that when the large cloud has passed off to a distance, the small clouds shall remain in a negative state, exactly like the apparatus; the former (like the latter) being frequently insulated bodies, having communication neither with the earth nor with other clouds. upon the same principle it may easily be conceived, in what manner a large negative cloud may render others positive. the experiment which you mention, of filing your glass, is analogous to one which i made in 1751, or 1752. i had supposed in my preceding letters, that the pores of glass were smaller in the interior parts than near the surface, and that on this account they prevented the passage of the electrical fluid. to prove whether this was actually the case or not, i ground one of my phials in a part where it was extremely thin, grinding it considerably beyond the middle, and very near to the opposite superficies, as i found, upon breaking it after the experiment. it was charged nevertheless after being ground, equally well as before, which convinced me, that my hypothesis on this subject was erroneous. it is difficult to conceive where the immense superfluous quantity of electricity on the charged side of a glass is deposited. i send you my paper concerning meteors, which was lately published here in the philosophical transactions, immediately after a paper by mr. hamilton on the same subject. i am, sir, &c. b. franklin. footnote: [91] this letter is translated from the french edition of dr. franklin's works, as are also all that follow, to the appendix, the one to miss stephenson excepted. _editor._ _mode of ascertaining, whether the power, giving a shock to those who touch either the surinam eel, or the torpedo, be electrical._ 1. touch the fish with a stick of dry sealing-wax, or a glass rod, and observe if the shock be communicated by means of those bodies. touch the same fish with an iron, or other metalline rod. if the shock be communicated by the latter body, and not by the others, it is probably not the mechanical effect, as has been supposed, of some muscular action in the fish, but of a subtile fluid, in this respect analogous at least to the electric fluid. 2. observe farther, whether the shock can be conveyed without the metal being actually in contact with the fish, and if it can, whether, in the space between, any light appear, and a slight noise or crackling be heard. if so, these also are properties common to the electric fluid. 3. lastly, touch the fish with the wire of a small leyden bottle, and if the shock can be received across, observe whether the wire will attract and repel light bodies, and you feel a shock, while holding the bottle in one hand, and touching the wire with the other. if so, the fluid, capable of producing such effects seems to have all the known properties of the electric fluid. addition, _12th august, 1772,_ _in consequence of the experiments and discoveries made in france by mr. walsh, and communicated by him to dr. franklin._ let several persons, standing on the floor, hold hands, and let one of them touch the fish, so as to receive a shock. if the shock be felt by all, place the fish flat on a plate of metal, and let one of the persons holding hands touch this plate, while the person farthest from the plate touches the upper part of the fish with a metal rod: then observe, if the force of the shock be the same as to all the persons forming the circle, or is stronger than before. repeat this experiment with this difference: let two or three of the persons forming the circle, instead of holding by the hand, hold each an uncharged electrical bottle, so that the little balls at the end of the wires may touch, and observe, after the shock, if these wires will attract and repel light bodies, and if a ball of cork, suspended by a long silk string between the wires, a little distance from the bottles, will be alternately attracted and repelled by them. to m. dubourg. _on the analogy between magnetism and electricity._ _london, march 10, 1773._ sir, as to the magnetism, which seems produced by electricity, my real opinion is, that these two powers of nature have no affinity with each other, and that the apparent production of magnetism is purely accidental. the matter may be explained thus: 1st, the earth is a great magnet. 2dly, there is a subtile fluid, called the magnetic fluid, which exists in all ferruginous bodies, equally attracted by all their parts, and equally diffused through their whole substance; at least where the equilibrium is not disturbed by a power superior to the attraction of the iron. 3dly, this natural quantity of the magnetic fluid, which is contained in a given piece of iron, may be put in motion so as to be more rarefied in one part and more condensed in another; but it cannot be withdrawn by any force that we are yet made acquainted with, so as to leave the whole in a negative state, at least relatively to its natural quantity; neither can it be introduced so as to put the iron into a positive state, or render it _plus_. in this respect, therefore magnetism differs from electricity. 4thly, a piece of soft iron allows the magnetic fluid which it contains to be put in motion by a moderate force, so that being placed in a line with the magnetic pole of the earth, it immediately acquires the properties of a magnet; its magnetic fluid being drawn or forced from one extremity to the other; and this effect continues as long as it remains in the same position, one of its extremities becoming positively magnetised, and the other negatively. this temporary magnetism ceases as soon as the iron is turned east and west, the fluid immediately diffusing itself equally through the whole iron, as in its natural state. 5thly, the magnetic fluid in hard iron, or steel, is put in motion with more difficulty, requiring a force greater than the earth to excite it; and when once it has been forced from one extremity of the steel to the other, it is not easy for it to return; and thus a bar of steel is converted into a permanent magnet. 6thly, a great heat, by expanding the substance of this steel, and increasing the distance between its particles, affords a passage to the electric fluid, which is thus again restored to its proper equilibrium; the bar appearing no longer to possess magnetic virtue. 7thly, a bar of steel which is not magnetic, being placed in the same position, relatively to the pole of the earth, which the magnetic needle assumes, and in this position being heated and suddenly cooled, becomes a permanent magnet. the reason is, that while the bar was hot, the magnetic fluid which it naturally contained was easily forced from one extremity to the other by the magnetic virtue of the earth; and that the hardness and condensation, produced by the sudden cooling of the bar, retained it in this state without permitting it to resume its original situation. 8thly, the violent vibrations of the particles of a steel bar, when forcibly struck in the same position, separate the particles in such a manner during their vibration, that they permit a portion of the magnetic fluid to pass, influenced by the natural magnetism of the earth; and it is afterwards so forcibly retained by the re-approach of the particles when the vibration ceases, that the bar becomes a permanent magnet. 9thly, an electric shock passing through a needle in a like position, and dilating it for an instant, renders it, for the same reason, a permanent magnet; that is, not by imparting magnetism to it, but by allowing its proper magnetic fluid to put itself in motion. 10thly, thus, there is not in reality more magnetism in a given piece of steel after it is become magnetic, than existed in it before. the natural quantity is only displaced or repelled. hence it follows, that a strong apparatus of magnets may charge millions of bars of steel, without communicating to them any part of its proper magnetism; only putting in motion the magnetism which already existed in these bars. i am chiefly indebted to that excellent philosopher of petersburgh, mr. æpinus, for this hypothesis, which appears to me equally ingenious and solid. i say, _chiefly_, because, as it is many years since i read his book, which i have left in america, it may happen, that i may have added to or altered it in some respect; and if i have misrepresented any thing, the error ought to be charged to my account. if this hypothesis appears admissible, it will serve as an answer to the greater part of your questions. i have only one remark to add, which is, that however great the force is of magnetism employed, you can only convert a given portion of steel into a magnet of a force proportioned to its capacity of retaining its magnetic fluid in the new position in which it is placed, without letting it return. now this power is different in different kinds of steel, but limited in all kinds whatever. b. franklin. to messrs. dubourg and d'alibard[92]. _concerning the mode of rendering meat tender by electricity._ my dear friends, my answer to your questions concerning the mode of rendering meat tender by electricity, can only be founded upon conjecture; for i have not experiments enough to warrant the facts. all that i can say at present is, that i think electricity might be employed for this purpose, and i shall state what follows as the observations or reasons, which make me presume so. it has been observed, that lightning, by rarefying and reducing into vapour the moisture contained in solid wood, in an oak, for instance, has forcibly separated its fibres, and broken it into small splinters; that by penetrating intimately the hardest metals, as iron, it has separated the parts in an instant, so as to convert a perfect solid into a state of fluidity: it is not then improbable, that the same subtile matter, passing through the bodies of animals with rapidity, should possess sufficient force to produce an effect nearly similar. the flesh of animals, fresh killed in the usual manner, is firm, hard, and not in a very eatable state, because the particles adhere too forcibly to each other. at a certain period, the cohesion is weakened and in its progress towards putrefaction, which tends to produce a total separation, the flesh becomes what we call tender, or is in that state most proper to be used as our food. it has frequently been remarked, that animals killed by lightning putrify immediately. this cannot be invariably the case, since a quantity of lightning sufficient to kill, may not be sufficient to tear and divide the fibres and particles of flesh, and reduce them to that tender state, which is the prelude to putrefaction. hence it is, that some animals killed in this manner will keep longer than others. but the putrefaction sometimes proceeds with surprising celerity. a respectable person assured me, that he once knew a remarkable instance of this: a whole flock of sheep in scotland, being closely assembled under a tree, were killed by a flash of lightning; and it being rather late in the evening, the proprietor, desirous of saving something, sent persons early the next morning to flay them; but the putrefaction was such, and the stench so abominable, that they had not the courage to execute their orders, and the bodies were accordingly buried in their skins. it is not unreasonable to presume, that between the period of their death and that of their putrefaction, a time intervened in which the flesh might be only tender, and only sufficiently so to be served at table. add to this, that persons, who have eaten of fowls killed by our feeble imitation of lightning (electricity) and dressed immediately, have asserted, that the flesh was remarkably tender. the little utility of this practice has perhaps prevented its being much adopted. for though it sometimes happens, that a company unexpectedly arriving at a country-house, or an unusual conflux of travellers to an inn, may render it necessary, to kill a number of animals for immediate use; yet as travellers have commonly a good appetite, little attention has been paid to the trifling inconvenience of having their meat a little tough. as this kind of death is nevertheless more sudden, and consequently less severe, than any other, if this should operate as a motive with compassionate persons to employ it for animals sacrificed for their use, they may conduct the process thus: having prepared a battery of six large glass jars (each from 20 to 24 pints) as for the leyden experiment, and having established a communication, as usual, from the interior surface of each with the prime conductor, and having given them a full charge (which with a good machine may be executed in a few minutes, and may be estimated by an electrometer) a chain which communicates with the exterior of the jars must be wrapped round the thighs of the fowl; after which the operator, holding it by the wings, turned back and made to touch behind, must raise it so high that the head may receive the first shock from the prime conductor. the animal dies instantly. let the head be immediately cut off to make it bleed, when it may be plucked and dressed immediately. this quantity of electricity is supposed sufficient for a turkey of ten pounds weight, and perhaps for a lamb. experience alone will inform us of the requisite proportions for animals of different forms and ages. probably not less will be required to render a small bird, which is very old, tender, than for a larger one, which is young. it is easy to furnish the requisite quantity of electricity, by employing a greater or less number of jars. as six jars, however, discharged at once, are capable of giving a very violent shock, the operator must be very circumspect, lest he should happen to make the experiment on his own flesh, instead of that of the fowl. b. franklin. footnote: [92] this letter has no date, but the one to which it is an answer is dated may 1, 1773. _editor._ to m. dubourg. _in answer to some queries concerning the choice of glass for the leyden experiment._ _london, june 1, 1773._ sir, i wish, with you, that some chemist (who should, if possible, be at the same time an electrician) would, in pursuance of the excellent hints contained in your letter, undertake to work upon glass with the view you have recommended. by means of a perfect knowledge of this substance, with respect to its electrical qualities, we might proceed with more certainty, as well in making our own experiments, as in repeating those, which have been made by others in different countries, which i believe have frequently been attended with different success on account of differences in the glass employed, thence occasioning frequent misunderstandings and contrariety of opinions. there is another circumstance much to be desired with respect to glass, and that is, that it should not be subject to break when highly charged in the leyden experiment. i have known eight jars broken out of twenty, and at another time, twelve out of thirty-five. a similar loss would greatly discourage electricians desirous of accumulating a great power for certain experiments.--we have never been able hitherto to account for the cause of such misfortunes. the first idea which occurs is, that the positive electricity, being accumulated on one side of the glass, rushes violently through it, in order to supply the deficiency on the other side and to restore the equilibrium. this however i cannot conceive to be the true reason, when i consider, that a great number of jars being united, so as to be charged and discharged at the same time, the breaking of a single jar will discharge the whole; for, if the accident proceeded from the weakness of the glass, it is not probable, that eight of them should be precisely of the same degree of weakness, as to break every one at the same instant, it being more likely, that the weakest should break first, and, by breaking, secure the rest; and again, when it is necessary to produce a certain effect, by means of the whole charge passing through a determined circle (as, for instance, to melt a small wire) if the charge, instead of passing in this circle, rushed through the sides of the jars, the intended effect would not be produced; which, however, is contrary to fact. for these reasons, i suspect, that there is, in the substance of the glass, either some little globules of air, or some portions of unvitrified sand or salt, into which a quantity of the electric fluid may be forced during the charge, and there retained till the general discharge: and that the force being suddenly withdrawn, the elasticity of the fluid acts upon the glass in which it is inclosed, not being able to escape hastily without breaking the glass. i offer this only as a conjecture, which i leave to others to examine. the globe which i had that could not be excited, though it was from the same glass-house which furnished the other excellent globes in my possession, was not of the same frit. the glass which was usually manufactured there, was rather of the green kind, and chiefly intended for drinking-glasses and bottles; but the proprietors being desirous of attempting a trial of white glass, the globe in question was of this frit. the glass not being of a perfect white, the proprietors were dissatisfied with it, and abandoned their project. i suspected that too great a quantity of salt was admitted into the composition; but i am no judge of these matters. b. franklin. to miss stephenson. _concerning the leyden bottle._ _london, march 22, 1762._ i must retract the charge of idleness in your studies, when i find you have gone through the doubly difficult task of reading so big a book, on an abstruse subject, and in a foreign language. in answer to your question concerning the leyden phial.--the hand that holds the bottle receives and conducts away the electric fluid that is driven out of the outside by the repulsive power of that which is forced into the inside of the bottle. as long as that power remains in the same situation, it must prevent the return of what it had expelled; though the hand would readily supply the quantity if it could be received. your affectionate friend, b. franklin. appendix. no. 1[93]. _the early_ letters _of dr. franklin on electricity having been translated into french, and printed at paris; the abbé mazeas, in a letter to dr. stephen hales, dated st. germain, may 20, 1752, gives the following account (printed in the philosophical transactions) of the experiment made at marly, in pursuance of that proposed by mr. franklin, pages 227, 228._ sir, the philadelphian experiments, that mr. collinson, a member of the royal society, was so kind as to communicate to the public, having been universally admired in france, the king desired to see them performed. wherefore the duke d'ayen offered his majesty his country-house at st. germain, where m. de lor, master of experimental philosophy, should put those of philadelphia in execution. his majesty saw them with great satisfaction, and greatly applauded messieurs franklin and collinson. these applauses of his majesty having excited in messieurs de buffon, d'alibard, and de lor, a desire of verifying the conjectures of mr. franklin, upon the analogy of thunder and electricity, they prepared themselves for making the experiment. m. d'alibard chose for this purpose, a garden situated at marly, where he placed upon an electrical body a pointed bar of iron, of forty feet high. on the 10th of may, twenty minutes past two in the afternoon, a stormy cloud having passed over the place where the bar stood, those that were appointed to observe it, drew near, and attracted from it sparks of fire, perceiving the same kind of commotions as in the common electrical experiments. m. de lor, sensible of the good success of this experiment, resolved to repeat it at his house in the estrapade, at paris. he raised a bar of iron ninety-nine feet high, placed upon a cake of resin, two feet square, and three inches thick. on the 18th of may, between four and five in the afternoon, a stormy cloud having passed over the bar, where it remained half an hour, he drew sparks from the bar, like those from the gun barrel, when, in the electrical experiments, the globe is only rubbed by the cushion, and they produced the same noise, the same fire, and the same crackling. they drew the strongest sparks at the distance of nine lines, while the rain, mingled with a little hail, fell from the cloud, without either thunder or lightning; this cloud being, according to all appearance, only the consequence of a storm, which happened elsewhere. i am, with a profound respect, your most humble and obedient servant, g. mazeas. footnote: [93] see the paragraph between brackets, page 267. _a more particular account of the circumstances and success of this extraordinary experiment was laid before the royal academy of sciences at paris, three days afterwards, in a memorial by m. d'alibard, viz._ extrait d'un memoire de m. d'alibard, _lû à l'académie royale des sciences, le 13 mai, 1752._ "en suivant la route que m. franklin nous a tracée, j'ai obtenu une satisfaction complette. voici les préparatifs, le procédé & le succès. "1º. j'ai fait faire à marly-la-ville, située à six lieues de paris au milieu d'une belle plaine dont le sol est fort élevé, une verge de fer ronde, d'environ un pouce de diametre, longue de 40 pieds, & fort pointue par son extrémité supérieure; pour lui ménager une pointe plus fine, je l'ai fait armer d'acier trempé & ensuite brunir, au défaut de dorure, pour la préserver de la rouille; outre cela, cette verge de fer est courbée vers son extrémité inférieure en deux coudes à angles aigus quoiqu'arrondis; le premier coude est éloigné de deux pieds du bout inférieur, & le second est en sens contraire à trois pieds du premier. "2º. j'ai fait planter dans un jardin trois grosses perches de 28 à 29 pieds, disposées en triangle, & éloignées les unes des autres d'environ huit pieds; deux de ces perches sont contre un mur, & la troisieme est au-dedans du jardin. pour les affermir toutes ensemble, l'on à cloué sur chacune des entretoises à vingt pieds de hauteur; & comme le grand vent agitoit encore cette espéce d'édifice, l'on a attaché au haut de chaque perche de longs cordages, qui tenant lieu d'aubans, répondent par le bas à de bons piquets fortement enfoncés en terre à plus de 20 pieds des perches. "3º. j'ai fait construire entres les deux perches voisines du mur, & adosser contre ce mur une petite guerite de bois capable de contenir un homme & une table. "4º. j'ai fait placer au milieu de la guérite une petite table d'environ un demi-pied de hauteur; & sur cette table j'ai fait dresser & affermir un tabouret electrique. ce tabouret n'est autre chose qu'une petite planche quarrée, portée sur trois bouteilles à vin; il n'est fait de cette matiere que pour suppléer au defaut d'un gâteau de résine qui me manquoit. "5º. tout étant ainsi préparé, j'ai fait elever perpendiculairement la verge de fer au milieu des trois perches, & je l'ai affermie en l'attachant à chacune des perches avec de forts cordons de soie par deux endroits seulement. les premiers liens sont au haut des perches, environ trois pouces au-dessous de leurs extrémités supérieures; les seconds vers la moitié de leur hauteur. le bout inférieur de la verge de fer est solidement appuyé sur le milieu du tabouret electrique, où j'ai fait creuser un trou propre à le recevoir. "6º. comme il étoit important de garantir de la pluie te tabouret & les cordons de soie, parce qu'ils laisseroient passer la matiére électrique s'ils etoient mouillés, j'ai pris les précautions necessaires pour en empêcher. c'est dans cette vue que j'ai mis mon tabouret sous la guérite, & que j'avois fait courber ma verge de fer à angles aigus; afin que l'eau qui pourroit couler le long de cette verge, ne pût arriver jusques sur le tabouret. c'est aussi dans le même dessein que j'ai fait clouer sur le haut & au milieu de mes perches, à trois pouces au-dessus des cordons de soie, des especes de boîtes formées de trois petites planches d'environ 15 pouces de long, qui couvrent par-dessus & par les côtes une pareille longueur des cordons de soie, sans leur toucher. "il s'agissoit de faire, dans le tems de l'orage, deux observations sur cette verge de fer ainsi disposée; l'une étoit de remarquer à sa pointe une aigrette lumineuse, semblable à celle que l'on apperçoit à la pointe d'une aiguille, quand on l'oppose assez près d'un corps actuellement électrisé; l'autre étoit de tirer de la verge de fer des étincelles, comme on en tire du canon de fusil dans les expériences électriques; & afin de se garantir des piqûres de ces étincelles, j'avois attaché le tenon d'un fil d'archal au cordon d'une longue fiole pour lui servir de manche.... "le mercredi 10 mai 1752, entre deux & trois heures après midi, le nommé coiffier, ancien dragon, que j'avois chargé de faire les observations en mon absence, ayant entendu un coup de tonnerre assez fort, vole aussitôt à la machine, prend la fiole avec le fil d'archal, présente le tenon du fil à la verge, en voit sortir une petite étincelle brillante, & en entend le pétillement; il tire une seconde étincelle plus fort que la premiere & avec plus de bruit! il appelle ses voisins, & envoie chercher m. le prieur. celui-ci accourt de toutes ses forces; les paroissiens voyant la précipitation de leur curé, s'imaginent que le pauvre coiffier a été tué du tonnerre; l'allarme se répand dans le village: la grêle qui survient n'empêche point le troupeau du suivre son pasteur. cet honnête ecclésiastique arrive près de la machine, & voyant qu'il n'y avoit point de danger, met lui-même la main â l'oeuvre & tire de fortes étincelles. la nuée d'orage & de grêle ne fut pas plus d'un quart-d'heure à passer au zénith de notre machine, & l'on n'entendit que ce seul coup de tonnerre. sitôt que le nuage fut passé, & qu'on ne tira plus d'étincelles de la verge de fer, m. le prieur de marly fit partir le sieur coiffier lui-même, pour m'apporter la lettre suivante, qu'il m'ecrivit à la hâte." _je vous annonce, monsieur, ce que veus attendez: l'expérience est complette. aujourd'hui à deux heures 20 minutes après midi, le tonnerre a grondé directement sur marly; le coup a été assez fort. l'envie de vous obliger, & la curiosité m'ont tiré de mon fauteüil, où j'êtois occupé à lire: je suis allé chez coiffier, qui déja m'avoit dépêché un enfant que j'ai rencontré en chemin, pour me prier de veenir; j'ai doublé le pas à travers un torrent de grêle. arrivé à l'endroit où est placée la tringle coudée, j'ai présenté le fil d'archal, en evançant successivement vers la tringle, à un pouce & demi, ou environ; il est sorti de la tringle une petite colonne de fer bleuâtre sentant le soufre, qui venoit frapper avec une extrême vivacité le tenon du fil d'archal, & occasionnoit un bruit semblable à celui qu'on feroit en frappant sur la tringle avec une clef. j'ai répeté l'expérience au moins six fois dans l'espace d'environ quatre minutes, en présence de plusieurs personnes, & chaque expérience que j'ai faite a duré l'espace d'un pater & d'un_ ave. _j'ai voulu continuer; l'action du feu s'est ralentie peu à peu; j'ai approché plus près, & n'ai plus tiré que quelques étincelles, & enfin rien n'ai paru._ _le coup de tonnerre qui a occasionné cet événement, n'a été suivi d'aucun autre; tout s'est terminé par une abondance de grêle. j'étois si occupé dans le moment de l'expérience de ce que voyois, qu'ayant été frappé au bras un peu au-dessus du coude, je ne puis dire si c'est en touchant au fil d'archal ou à la tringle: je ne me suis pas plaint du mal que m'avoit fait le coup dans le moment que je l'ai reçu; mais comme la douleur continuoit, de retour chez moi, j'ai découvert mon bras en présence de coiffier, & nous avons apperçu une meurtrissure tournante autour du brass, semblable à celle que feroit un coup de fil d'archal, si j'en avois été frappé à nud. en revenant de chez coiffier, j'ai recontré m. le vicaire, m. de milly, et le maître d'école, à qui j'ai rapporté ce qui venoit d'arriver; ils se sont plaints tous les trois qu'ils sentoient une odeur de soufre qui les frappait davantage à mesure qu'ils s'approichient de moi: j'ai porté chez moi la même odeur, & mes domestiques s'en sont apperçus sans que je leur aye rien dit._ _voilà, monsieur, un récit fait à la hâte, mais naif & vrai que j'atteste, & vous pouvez assurer que je suis prêt à rendre témoignage de cet événement dans toutes les occasions. coiffier a été le premier qui a fait l'expérience & l'a répétée, plusieurs fois; ce n'est qu'à l'occasion de ce qu'il a vu qu'il m'a envoyé prier de venir. s'il étoit besoin d'autres témoins que de lui & de moi, vous les trouveriez. coiffier presse pour partir._ _je suis avec une respectueuse considération, monsieur, votre, &c. signé_ raulet, _prieur de marly. 10 mai, 1752._ "on voit, par le détail de cette lettre, que le fait est assez bien constaté pour ne laisser aucun doute à ce sujet. le porteur m'a assuré de vive voix qu'il avoit tiré pendant près d'un quart-d'heure avant que m. le prieur arrivât, en présence de cinq ou six personnes, des étincelles plus fortes & plus bruyantes que celles dont il est parlé dans la lettre. ces premieres personnes arrivant successivement, n'osient approcher qu'à 10 ou 12 pas de la machine; & à cette distance, malgré le plein soleil, ils voyoient les étincelles & entendoient le bruit.... "il résulte de toutes les expériences & observations que j'ai rapportées dans ce mémoire, & surtout de la dernière expérience faite à marly-la-ville, que la matiere du tonnerre est incontestablement la même que celle de l'électricité. l'idée qu'en a eu m. franklin cesse d'être une conjecture: la voilà devenue une réalité, & j'ose croire que plus on approfondira tout ce qu'il a publié sur l'électricité, plus on reconnoîtra combien la physique lui est redevable pour cette partie." _letter of mr. w. watson, f. r. s. to the royal society, concerning the electrical experiments in england upon thunder-clouds._ read dec. 1752. trans. vol. xlvii. gentlemen, after the communications, which we have received from several of our correspondents in different parts of the continent, acquainting us with the success of their experiments last summer, in endeavouring to extract the electricity from the atmosphere during a thunder-storm, in consequence of mr. franklin's hypothesis, it may be thought extraordinary, that no accounts have been yet laid before you, of our success here from the same experiments. that no want of attention, therefore, may be attributed to those here, who have been hitherto conversant in these enquiries, i thought proper to apprise you, that, though several members of the royal society, as well as myself, did, upon the first advices from france, prepare and set up the necessary apparatus for this purpose, we were defeated in our expectations, from the uncommon coolness and dampness of the air here, during the whole summer. we had only at london one thunder-storm; viz. on july 20; and then the thunder was accompanied with rain; so that, by wetting the apparatus, the electricity was dissipated too soon to be perceived upon touching those parts of the apparatus, which served to conduct it. this, i say, in general prevented our verifying mr. franklin's hypothesis: but our worthy brother, mr. canton, was more fortunate. i take the liberty, therefore, of laying before you an extract of a letter, which i received from that gentleman, dated from spital-square, july 21, 1752. "i had yesterday, about five in the afternoon, an opportunity of trying mr. franklin's experiment of extracting the electrical fire from the clouds; and succeeded, by means of a tin tube, between three and four feet in length, fixed to the top of a glass one, of about eighteen inches. to the upper end of the tin tube, which was not so high as a stack of chimnies on the same house, i fastened three needles with some wire; and to the lower end was soldered a tin cover to keep the rain from the glass tube, which was set upright in a block of wood. i attended this apparatus as soon after the thunder began as possible, but did not find it in the least electrified, till between the third and fourth clap; when, applying my knuckle to the edge of the cover, i felt and heard an electrical spark; and approaching it a second time, i received the spark at the distance of about half an inch, and saw it distinctly. this i repeated four or five times in the space of a minute, but the sparks grew weaker and weaker; and in less than two minutes the tin tube did not appear to be electrified at all. the rain continued during the thunder, but was considerably abated at the time of making the experiment." thus far mr. canton. mr. wilson likewise of the society, to whom we are much obliged for the trouble he has taken in these pursuits, had an opportunity of verifying mr. franklin's hypothesis. he informed me, by a letter from near chelmsford, in essex, dated august 12, 1752, that, on that day about noon, he perceived several electrical snaps, during, or rather at the end of a thunder-storm, from no other apparatus than an iron curtain rod, one end of which he put into the neck of a glass phial, and held this phial in his hand. to the other end of the iron he fastened three needles with some silk. this phial, supporting the rod, he held in one hand, and drew snaps from the rod with a finger of his other. this experiment was not made upon any eminence, but in the garden of a gentleman, at whose house he then was. dr. bevis observed, at mr. cave's, at st. john's gate, nearly the same phenomena as mr. canton, of which an account has been already laid before the public. trifling as the effects here mentioned are, when compared with those which we have received from paris and berlin, they are the only ones, that the last summer here has produced; and as they were made by persons worthy of credit, they tend to establish the authenticity of those transmitted from our correspondents. i flatter myself, that this short account of these matters will not be disagreeable to you; and am, with the most profound respect, your most obedient, humble servant, w. watson. no. 2. _remarks on the abbé nollet's letters to benjamin franklin, esq. of philadelphia, on electricity: by mr. david colden, of new york._ _coldenham, in new york, dec. 4, 1753._ sir, in considering the abbé nollet's letters to mr. franklin, i am obliged to pass by all the experiments which are made with, or in, bottles hermetically sealed, or exhausted of air; because, not being able to repeat the experiments, i could not second any thing which occurs to me thereon, by experimental proof. wherefore, the first point wherein i can dare to give my opinion, is in the abbé's 4th letter, p. 66, where he undertakes to prove, that the electric matter passes from one surface to another through the entire thickness of the glass: he takes mr. franklin's experiment of the magical picture, and writes thus of it. "when you electrise a pane of glass coated on both sides with metal, it is evident that whatever is placed on the side opposite to that which receives the electricity from the conductor, receives also an evident electrical virtue." which mr. franklin says, is that equal quantity of electric matter, driven out of this side, by what is received from the conductor on the other side; and which will continue to give an electrical virtue to any thing in contact with it, till it is entirely discharged of its electrical fire. to which the abbé thus objects; "tell me (says he), i pray you, how much time is necessary for this pretended discharge? i can assure you, that after having maintained the electrisation for hours, this surface, which ought, as it seems to me, to be entirely discharged of its electrical matter, considering either the vast number of sparks that were drawn from it, or the time that this matter had been exposed to the action of the expulsive cause; this surface, i say, appeared rather better electrised thereby, and more proper to produce all the effects of an actual electric body." _p._ 68. the abbé does not tell us what those effects were, all the effects i could never observe, and those that are to be observed can easily be accounted for, by supposing that side to be entirely destitute of electric matter. the most sensible effect of a body charged with electricity is, that when you present your finger to it, a spark will issue from it to your finger: now when a phial, prepared for the leyden experiment, is hung to the gun-barrel or prime-conductor, and you turn the globe in order to charge it; as soon as the electric matter is excited, you can observe a spark to issue from the external surface of the phial to your finger, which, mr. franklin says, is the natural electric matter of the glass driven out by that received by the inner surface from the conductor. if it be only drawn out by sparks, a vast number of them may be drawn; but if you take hold of the external surface with your hand, the phial will soon receive all the electric matter it is capable of, and the outside will then be entirely destitute of its electric matter, and no spark can be drawn from it by the finger: here then is a want of that effect which all bodies, charged with electricity, have. some of the effects of an electric body, which i suppose the abbé has observed in the exterior surface of a charged phial, are that all light bodies are attracted by it. this is an effect which i have constantly observed, but do not think that it proceeds from an attractive quality in the exterior surface of the phial, but in those light bodies themselves, which seem to be attracted by the phial. it is a constant observation, that when one body has a greater charge of electric matter in it than another (that is in proportion to the quantity they will hold) this body will attract that which has less: now, i suppose, and it is a part of mr. franklin's system, that all those light bodies which appear to be attracted, have more electric matter in them than the external surface of the phial has, wherefore they endeavour to attract the phial to them, which is too heavy to be moved by the small degree of force they exert, and yet being greater than their own weight, moves them to the phial. the following experiment will help the imagination in conceiving this. suspend a cork ball, or a feather, by a silk thread, and electrise it; then bring this ball nigh to any fixed body, and it will appear to be attracted by that body, for it will fly to it: now, by the consent of electricians, the attractive cause is in the ball itself, and not in the fixed body to which it flies: this is a similar case with the apparent attraction of light bodies, to the external surface of a charged phial. the abbé says, _p._ 69, "that he can electrise a hundred men, standing on wax, if they hold hands, and if one of them touch one of these surfaces (the exterior) with the end of his finger:" this i know he can, while the phial is charging, but after the phial is charged i am as certain he cannot: that is, hang a phial, prepared for the leyden experiment, to the conductor, and let a man, standing on the floor, touch the coating with his finger, while the globe is turned, till the electric matter spews out of the hook of the phial, or some part of the conductor, which i take to be the certainest sign that the phial has received all the electric matter it can: after this appears, let the man, who before stood on the floor, step on a cake of wax, where he may stand for hours, and the globe all that time turned; and yet have no appearance of being electrised. after the electric matter was spewed out as above from the hook of the phial prepared for the leyden experiment, i hung another phial, in like manner prepared, to a hook fixed in the coating of the first, and held this other phial in my hand; now if there was any electric matter transmitted through the glass of the first phial, the second one would certainly receive and collect it; but having kept the phials in this situation for a considerable time, during which the globe was continually turned, i could not perceive that the second phial was in the least charged, for when i touched the hook with my finger, as in the leyden experiment, i did not feel the least commotion, nor perceive any spark to issue from the hook. i likewise made the following experiment: having charged two phials (prepared for the leyden experiment) through their hooks; two persons took each one of these phials in their hand; one held his phial by the coating, the other by the hook, which he could do by removing the communication from the bottom before he took hold of the hook. these persons placed themselves one on each side of me, while i stood on a cake of wax, and took hold of the hook of that phial which was held by its coating (upon which a spark issued, but the phial was not discharged, as i stood on wax) keeping hold of the hook, i touched the coating of the phial that was held by its hook with my other hand, upon which there was a large spark to be seen between my finger and the coating, and both phials were instantly discharged. if the abbé's opinion be right, that the exterior surface, communicating with the coating, is charged, as well as the interior, communicating with the hook; how can i, who stand on wax, discharge both these phials, when it is well known i could not discharge one of them singly? nay, suppose i have drawn the electric matter from both of them, what becomes of it? for i appear to have no additional quantity in me when the experiment is over, and i have not stirred off the wax: wherefore this experiment fully convinces me, that the exterior surface is not charged; and not only so, but that it wants as much electric matter as the inner has of excess: for by this supposition, which is a part of mr. franklin's system, the above experiment is easily accounted for, as follows: when i stand on wax, my body is not capable of receiving all the electric matter from the hook of one phial, which it is ready to give; neither can it give as much to the coating of the other phial as it is ready to take, when one is only applied to me: but when both are applied, the coating takes from me what the hook gives: thus i receive the fire from the first phial at b, the exterior surface of which is supplied from the hand at a: i give the fire to the second phial at c, whose interior surface is discharged by the hand at d. this discharge at d may be made evident by receiving that fire into the hook of a third phial, which is done thus: in place of taking the hook of the second phial in your hand, run the wire of a third phial, prepared as for the leyden experiment, through it, and hold this third phial in your hand, the second one hanging to it, by the ends of the hooks run through each other: when the experiment is performed, this third phial receives the fire at d, and will be charged. [illustration: (of the experiment above)] when this experiment is considered, i think, it must fully prove that the exterior surface of a charged phial wants electric matter, while the inner surface has an excess of it. one thing more worthy of notice in this experiment is, that i feel no commotion or shock in my arms, though so great a quantity of electric matter passes them instantaneously: i only feel a pricking in the ends of my fingers. this makes me think the abbé has mistook, when he says, that there is no difference between the shock felt in performing the leyden experiment, and the pricking felt on drawing simple sparks, except that of greater to less. in the last experiment, as much electric matter went through my arms, as would have given me a very sensible shock, had there been an immediate communication, by my arms, from the hook to the coating of the same phial; because when it was taken into a third phial, and that phial discharged singly through my arms, it gave me a sensible shock. if these experiments prove that the electric matter does not pass through the entire thickness of the glass, it is a necessary consequence that it must always come out where it entered. the next thing i meet with is in the abbé's fifth letter, _p._ 88, where he differs from mr. franklin, who thinks that the whole power of giving a shock is in the glass itself, and not in the non-electrics in contact with it. the experiments which mr. franklin gave to prove this opinion, in his _observations on the leyden bottle_, p. 179, convinced me that he was in the right; and what the abbé has asserted, in contradiction thereto, has not made me think otherwise. the abbé, perceiving, as i suppose, that the experiments, as mr. franklin had performed them, must prove his assertion, alters them without giving any reason for it, and makes them in a manner that proves nothing. why will he have the phial, into which the, water is to be decanted from a charged phial, held in a man's hand? if the power of giving a shock is in the water contained in the phial, it should remain there though decanted into another phial, since no non-electric body touched it to take that power off. the phial being placed on wax is no objection, for it cannot take the power from the water, if it had any, but it is a necessary means to try the fact; whereas, that phial's being charged when held in a man's hand, only proves that water will conduct the electric matter. the abbé owns, _p._ 94, that he had heard this remarked, but says, why is not a conductor of electricity an electric subject? this is not the question; mr. franklin never said that water was not an electric subject; he said, that the power of giving a shock was in the glass, and not in the water; and this, his experiments fully prove; so fully, that it may appear impertinent to offer any more: yet as i do not know that the following has been taken notice of by any body before, my inserting of it in this place may be excused. it is this: hang a phial, prepared for the leyden experiment, to the conductor, by its hook, and charge it, which done, remove the communication from the bottom of the phial. now the conductor shews evident signs of being electrised; for if a thread be tied round it, and its ends left about two inches long, they will extend themselves out like a pair of horns; but if you touch the conductor, a spark will issue from it, and the threads will fall, nor does the conductor shew the least sign of being electrised after this is done. i think that by this touch, i have taken out all the charge of electric matter that was in the conductor, the hook of the phial, and water or filings of iron contained in it; which is no more than we see all non-electric bodies will receive: yet the glass of the phial retains its power of giving a shock, as any one will find that pleases to try. this experiment fully evidences, that the water in the phial contains no more electric matter than it would do in an open bason, and has not any of that great quantity which produces the shock, and is only retained by the glass. if after the spark is drawn from the conductor, you touch the coating of the phial (which all this while is supposed to hang in the air, free from any non-electric body) the threads on the conductor will instantly start up, and shew that the conductor is electrised. it receives this electrisation from the inner surface of the phial, which, when the outer surface can receive what it wants from the hand applied to it, will give as much as the bodies in contact with it can receive, or if they be large enough, all that it has of excess. it is diverting to see how the threads will rise and fall by touching the coating and conductor of the phial alternately. may it not be that the difference between the charged side of the glass, and the outer or emptied side, being lessened by touching the hook or the conductor; the outer side can receive from the hand which touched it, and by its receiving, the inner side cannot retain so much; and for that reason so much as it cannot contain electrises the water, or filings and conductor: for it seems to be a rule, that the one side must be emptied in the same proportion that the other is filled: though this from experiment appears evident, yet it is still a mystery not to be accounted for. i am in many places of the abbé's book surprised to find that experiments have succeeded so differently at paris, from what they did with mr. franklin, and as i have always observed them to do. the abbé, in making experiments to find the difference between the two surfaces of a charged glass, will not have the phial placed on wax: for, says he, don't you know that being placed on a body originally electric, it quickly loses its virtue? i cannot imagine what should have made the abbé think so; it certainly is contradictory to the notions commonly received of electrics _per se_; and by experiment i find it entirely otherwise: for having several times left a charged phial, for that purpose, standing on wax for hours, i found it to retain as much of its charge as another that stood at the same time on a table. i left one standing on wax from ten o'clock at night till eight the next morning, when i found it to retain a sufficient quantity of its charge, to give me a sensible commotion in my arms, though the room in which the phial stood had been swept in that time, which must have raised much dust to facilitate the discharge of the phial. i find that a cork-ball suspended between two bottles, the one fully and the other but little charged, will not play between them, but is driven into a situation that makes a triangle with the hooks of the phials: though the abbé has asserted the contrary of this, p. 101, in order to account for the playing of a cork-ball between the wire thrust into the phial, and one that rises up from its coating. the phial which is least charged must have more electric matter given to it, in proportion to its bulk, than the cork-ball receives from the hook of the full phial. the abbé says, p. 103, "that a piece of metal leaf hung to a silk thread and electrised, will be repelled by the bottom of a charged phial held by its hook in the air:" this i find constantly otherwise, it is with me always first attracted and then repelled: it is necessary in charging the leaf to be careful, that it does not fly off to some non-electric body, and so discharge itself when you think it is charged; it is difficult to keep it from flying to your own wrist, or to some part of your body. the abbé, p. 108, says, "that it is not impossible, as mr. franklin says it is, to charge a phial while there is a communication formed between its coating and its hook." i have always found it impossible to charge such a phial so as to give a shock: indeed, if it hang on the conductor without a communication from it, you may draw a spark from it as you may from any body that hangs there, but this is very different from being charged in such a manner as to give a shock. the abbé, in order to account for the little quantity of electric matter that is to be found in the phial, says, "that it rather follows the metal than the glass, and that it is spewed out into the air from the coating of the phial." i wonder how it comes not to do so too, when it sifts through the glass, and charges the exterior surface, according to the abbé's system! the abbé's objections against mr. franklin's two last experiments, i think, have little weight in them: he seems, indeed, much at a loss what to say, wherefore he taxes mr. franklin with having concealed a material part of the experiment; a thing too mean for any gentleman to be charged with, who has not shown as great a partiality in relating experiments, as the abbé has done. end of volume the first. j. cundee, printer, ivy-lane. index. a. _accent_, or emphasis, wrong placing of, a fault in modern tunes, ii. 345. _accidents_ at sea, how to guard against, ii. 172. _adams_, mr. matthew, offers the use of his library to franklin, i. 16. _addison_, franklin an assiduous imitator of, in his youth, i. 13. _advice_ to youth in reading, ii. 378. to emigrants to america, iii. 398. to a crafty statesman, 430. to a young tradesman, 463. to a young married man, 477. to players at chess, 490. _æpinus_, his hypothesis of magnetism, i. 412. _agriculture_ takes place of manufactures till a country is fully settled, iii. 107. the great business of america, 393. _air_, some of the properties of, ii. 226. its properties with respect to electricity, i. 204. properties of its particles, 205. ii. 1. its currents over the globe, i. 207. resists the electric fluid and confines it to bodies, 241. its effects in electrical experiments, 253. its elasticity not affected by electricity, 254. its friction against trees, 270, 323. has its share of electricity, 333. its electricity denser above than below, 335. in rooms, electrified positively and negatively, 353. attracts water, ii. 1. when saturated with water precipitates it, 2. dissolves water, and, when dry, oil, 4. why suffocating, when impregnated with oil or grease, _ibid._ supports water, 5, 46, 49. why less heated in the higher regions than near the earth's surface, 6. how it creates hurricanes, _ibid._ winds, 8. whirlwinds, 10. effects of heat upon, 50. its effects on the barometer, 92. condensed, supposed to form the centre of the earth, 119, 127. noxious, corrected by vegetation, 129. observations on the free use of, 213. rare, no bad conductor of sound, 337. fresh, beneficial effects of, in bed-rooms, iii. 495. _air-thermometer_, electrical, experiments with, i. 336. _albany_ plan of union, short account of, i. 127. its singular fate, 129. papers relating to, iii. 3. motives on which formed, 4. rejects partial unions, 6. its president and grand council, 9. election of members, 12. place of first meeting, 13. new election, _ibid._ proportion of members after three years, 15. meetings of the grand council and call, 16. allowance to members, 17. power of president and his duty, 18. treaties of peace and war, _ibid._ indian trade and purchases, 19. new settlements, 21. military establishments, 23. laws and taxes, 24, 26. issuing of money, 25. appointment of officers, 27. rejected in england, 29. _almanack._ _see poor richard._ _alphabet_, a new one proposed, ii. 357. examples of writing in it, 360. correspondence on its merits, 361. _amber_, electrical experiments on, i. 403. _america_, north, air of, drier than that of england and france, ii. 140. why marriages are more frequent there than in europe, 385. why labour will long continue dear there, _ibid._ argument against the union of the colonies of, under one government, 401. state of toleration there, 457. reflections on the scheme of imposing taxes on, without its consent, iii. 30. thoughts on the representation of, in the british parliament, 37. interest of great britain with regard to, 39. forts in the back settlements of, no security against france, 99. wars carried on there against the french, not merely in the cause of the colonies, 105. preference of the colonies of, to the west indian colonies, 113. great navigable rivers of, favourable to inland trade, 118. what commodities the inland parts of, are fitted to produce, 119. the productions of, do not interfere with those of britain, 123. union of the colonies of, in a revolt against britain, impossible but from grievous oppression, 132. reasons given for restraining paper-bills of credit there, 144. intended scheme of a bank there, described, 155. attempts of franklin for conciliation of britain with, 286. feeling of, as to britain, in may 1775, 346. conciliation of britain with, hopeless, 355. account of the first campaign of the british forces against, 357. application of, to foreign courts, for aid in its independence, 360. credit of, with that of britain, in 1777, compared, 372. true description of the interest and policy of, 391. information to those emigrating thither, 398. terms on which land may be obtained for new settlements there, 409. _americans_, their prejudices for whatever is english, i. 144. _anchor_, a swimming one proposed, ii. 181, 185. _ancients_, their experimental learning too often slighted, ii. 146. _anecdote_ of franklin's early spirit of enterprise, i. 11. of a swedish clergyman among the indians, iii. 386. of an indian who went to church, 389. _animal_ food, franklin's abstinence from, i. 20. return to, 47. humorous instance of abstinence from, 49. heat, whence it arises, ii. 79, 125. magnetism, detected and exposed, i. 150. _animalcules_, supposed to cause the luminous appearance of sea-water, ii. 89. _animals_, how to kill them by electricity, i. 415. _antifederalists_ of america, comparison of, to the ancient jews, iii. 410. _apprentices_ easier placed out in america than in europe, iii. 407. indentures of, how made in america, 408. _argumentation_, bad effects of, as a habit, i. 17. best method of, 22. _armies_, best means of supporting them, ii. 400. _armonica_, musical instrument so called, described, ii. 330. manner of playing on it, 334. _asbestos_, specimen of, sold by franklin to sir hans sloane, i. 60. letter relating to it, iii. 513. _astrology_, letter to the busy-body on, iii. 448. _atmosphere_ sometimes denser above than below, ii. 6. electrical, its properties, i. 294. _aurora borealis_ explained, i. 212. conjectures respecting, 257, ii. 69. query concerning, i. 293. b. _badoin_, mr. letters from, i. 314, 324. _ballads_, two, written by franklin in his youth, i. 16. _balls_ of fire in the air, remark concerning, ii. 337. _barometer_, how acted on by air, ii. 92. _barrels_ for gunpowder, new sort proposed, i. 376. _bass_, unnecessary in some tunes, ii. 343. _bathing_ relieves thirst, ii. 104. observations on, 211. _battery_, electrical, its construction, i. 193. _baxter_, mr. observations on his enquiry into the nature of the soul, ii. 110. _beccaria_, character of his book on electricity, i. 310. _beer_, not conducive to bodily strength, i. 62. _bells_, form in consecrating them at paris, i. 384. _belly-ache_, dry, lead a cause of, ii. 220. _bermuda_, little thunder there, i. 216. _bermudian_ sloops, advantages of their construction, ii. 173. _bernoulli_, mr. his plan for moving boats, ii. 179. _bevis_, dr. draws electricity from the clouds, i. 429. _bible_, anecdote of its concealment in the reign of mary, i. 7. travestied by dr. brown, 31. _bills_ of mortality, reasonings, formed on those for capital cities, not applicable to the country, ii. 383. _birth_, noble, no qualification in america, iii. 400. _bishops_, none in america, and why, ii. 456, 458. _black clothes_ heat more and dry sooner than white, ii. 108. not fit for hot climates, 109. _blacksmith_, trade of, hereditary in franklin's family, i. 4. _blindness_ occasioned both by lightning and electricity, i. 228. _boats_, difference of their sailing in shoal and deep water, ii. 160. management of, best understood by savages, 176. how rowed by the chinese, 177. methods of moving them by machinery, _ibid._ improvement of mr. bernoulli's plan for moving them, 179. proposal for a new mode of moving them, _ibid._ double, advantage of, 173, 174. one built by sir w. petty, _ibid._ _bodies_, electrified negatively, repel each other, ii. 294. effect of blunt, compared with pointed ones, i. 172, 223. _body_, human, specifically lighter than water, ii. 208. political and human, compared, iii. 115. _boerhaave_, his opinion of the propagation of heat, ii. 58. of steam from fermenting liquors, 59. _boiling_ water, experiments with, i. 332, 344, 345. pot, bottom of, why cold, 387. _bolton_, mr. experiment by, i. 346. _books_ read by franklin in his youth, i. 15, 18, 20, 21. _boston_, the birth-place of franklin, i. 8. why quitted by him in his youth, 27, its inhabitants decrease, ii. 210. preface to proceedings of the town meeting of, iii. 317. _boyle's_ lectures, effect of, on franklin, i. 79. _braddock_, general, defeat of, i. 131. _bradford_, printer at philadelphia, i. 34, 102. _brass_, hot, yields unwholesome steams, ii. 249 _brientnal_, joseph, a member of the junto club, i. 83. _brimstone_, when fluid, will conduct electricity, i. 256. _bristol waters_, an alledged fact concerning, ii. 95. _britain_, incapacity of, to supply the colonies with manufactures, ii. 386. _british empire_, an union of several states, iii. 310. _brown_, dr. acquaintance of franklin's, i. 30. travestied the bible, 31. _bubbles_ on the surface of water, hypothesis respecting, ii. 48. _buchan_, earl of, letter to, on the price of land for new settlements in america, iii. 409. _buildings_, what kind safest from lightning, i. 379. _bullion_, causes of its variation in price, iii. 153. _bunyan's_ voyages, a book early read by franklin, i. 15, 28. _bur_, cause of, round a hole struck through pasteboard, i. 280. _burnet_, governor, his attention to franklin in his youth, i. 44. _busy-body_, essays under the title of, i. 86. iii. 422. c. _cabinet-work_, veneered in england, shrinks and flies in america, ii. 140. _cables_, why apt to part when weighing anchor in a swell, ii. 167. this defect of, remedied, 168. _cabot_, sebastian, his commission from henry vii., iii. 348. _calvinism_, franklin educated in the principles of, i. 79. _campaign_ in america, account of the first, iii. 357. _canals_, observations on their depth, ii. 159. _canada_, importance of, to england, i. 136. visited by franklin, 147. its extent, iii. 20. pamphlet on the importance of, 89. easily peopled without draining britain, 139. _cancers_, specific for, i. 260, 261. _candles_ lighted by electricity, i. 176. distance at which the flame of, may be seen, ii. 90. _cann_, silver, a singular experiment on, i. 307. _canoes_ of the american indians, their advantages, ii. 176. _canton_, mr. john, experiments by, i. 286, 346. draws electricity from the clouds, 428. _capitals_, their use in printing, ii. 352. _caribbees_, possession of, only a temporary benefit, iii. 142. _carolina_, south, see _lightning_. _cavendish_, lord charles, his electrical experiments, i. 348. _cayenne_ would be a great acquisition to britain, iii. 140. _centre_ of the earth, hypothesis concerning, ii. 119, 127. _cessions_ from an enemy, on what grounds may be demanded, iii. 93. _chapel_, nickname for a printing house, i. 63. _character_, remarks on the delineation of, iii. 445. _charcoal-fires_, hurtful, ii. 235. _charging_ and discharging, in electricity, explained, i. 190. a number of bottles at once, how done, _ibid._ _charters_ of the colonies could not be altered by parliament, iii. 332. _chess_, morals of, iii. 488. not an idle amusement, _ibid._ teaches various virtues, 489. advice to those who play, 490. too intense an application to, injurious, 500. _chimnies_, different kinds of, enumerated, ii. 228. inconvenience of the old-fashioned ones, 229. defect of more modern ones, 230. have not long been in use in england, 277. staffordshire, described, 285. have a draft of air up and down, 289. may be used for keeping provisions in summer, 290. may be of use to miners, 291. funnels to, what the best, 292, 295. method of contracting them, 317. smoky. see _smoky_. _china_, provision made there against famine, ii. 407. _chinese_ wisely divide the holds of their vessels by partitions, ii. 171. how they row their boats, 177. their method of warming ground floors, 292. improvement in this method suggested, 293. their method of making large paper, 349. _circle_, magical, account of, ii. 327, 328. _cities_, spring water gradually deteriorates in, i. 163. do not supply themselves with inhabitants, ii. 384. _clark_, dr. of boston, quoted, on the instigation of the american indians against the english, iii. 95, 100, 102. _clothes_, wet, may preserve from lightning, i. 213. will relieve thirst, ii. 104. do not give colds, _ibid._ imbibe heat according to their colour, 108. white, most suitable for hot climates, _ibid._ _clothing_ does not give, but preserves, warmth, ii. 81. _clouds_, at land and at sea, difference between, i. 207. formed at sea, how brought to rain on land, 208. driven against mountains, form springs and rivers, 209. passing different ways, accounted for, 211. electrical, attracted by trees, spires, &c. 213. manner in which they become electrised, 257, 305. are electrised sometimes negatively and sometimes positively, 274, 277, 284, 292. electricity drawn from them, at marly, 420. by mr. cauton, 428. by dr. bevis, 429, by mr. wilson, _ibid._ how supported in air, ii. 5. how formed, 7. whether winds are generated or can be confined in them, 57. have little more solidity than fogs, _ibid._ _club_, called the junto, instituted by franklin, i. 82. rules of, ii. 366, 369. questions discussed in, 369. _coal_, sea, letter on the nature of, ii. 128. _cold_, why seemingly greater in metals than in wood, ii. 56, 77. sensation of, how produced, 57. only the absence of heat, 81. produced by chemical mixtures, _ibid._ evaporation. see _evaporation_. _colden_, mr. his remarks on abbé nollet's letters, i. 430. meteorological observations, ii. 51. observations on water-spouts, 53. _colds_, causes of, ii. 214, 230. _coleman_, william, a member of the junto club, i. 84, 89. _colica pictorum_, caused by lead, ii. 219. _collins_, john, an early friend of franklin's, i. 17, 27, 41, 43, 44. _collinson_, mr. some account of, iii. 514. _colonial_ governments in america of three kinds, iii. 50. _colonies_, the settlement of, does not diminish national numbers, ii. 391. their prosperity beneficial to the mother country, iii. 113. are intitled to distinct governments, 303. american, preferable to the west indies, _ibid._ not dangerous to britain, 132. aids to government, how given by, 225, 226. originally governed by the crown, independent of parliament, 291. not settled at the expence of britain, 348. _colonists_ in america, double their number in 25 years, iii. 113. from britain, their rights, 299. _colours._ see _clothes_. _comazants_, or corposants, are electrical appearances, i. 248. _commerce_, influence of, on the manners of a people, ii. 400. is best encouraged by being left free, 415. should not be prohibited in time of war, 417. by inland carriage, how supported, iii. 116. _common-sense_, by paine, franklin supposed to have contributed to, i. 148. _compass_, instances of its losing its virtue by lightning, i. 248. how to remedy the want of, at sea, ii. 191. _conductors_ of lightning, very common in america, i. 113. first suggestion of the utility of, 227. construction of, 358. particulars relating to, 377. of electricity, difference in the action of, 200, 303. which the most perfect, 253, 256. and non-conductors, other terms substituted for, _ibid._ of common fire, their properties and differences, ii. 76, 77. experiments on, ii. 77. _congress_, franklin appointed a delegate to, i. 146. proposed overture from, in 1775, iii. 347. _consecration_ of bells in france, form of, i. 384. _conspirators_, electrical, meaning of the term, i. 196. _controversy_, benefit of, iii. 92. _conversation_, advantage of useful topics of, at dinner, i. 12. _cook_, captain, circular letter concerning, iii. 515. copy of the voyages of, presented to franklin, by the admiralty, 517. cookery, at sea, generally bad, ii. 194. _copper_, manner of covering houses with, ii. 318, 320, 322. _copper_ plate printing-press, the first in america, constructed by franklin, i. 77. _corn_, ill policy of laying restraints on the exportation of, ii. 413, 418. _countries_, distant and unprovided, a plan for benefiting, ii. 403. _creation_, conjectures as to, ii. 118. _credit_, that of america and britain in 1777, compared, iii. 372. depends on payment of loans, 373. industry and frugality, 374. public spirit, 375. income and security, 376. prospects of future ability, _ibid._ prudence, 377. character for honesty, 378. is money to a tradesman, 464. _criminal_ laws, reflections on, ii. 439. _crooked_ direction of lightning explained, i. 316. _cutler_, circumstance that prevented franklin's being apprenticed to one, i. 14. _currents_ at sea, often not perceivable, ii. 185. _cyder_, the best quencher of thirst, ii. 195. d. _dalrymple_, mr. scheme of a voyage under his command to benefit remote regions, ii. 403. _damp_ air, why more chilling than dry air that is colder, ii. 56, 77. _dampier_, account of a water-spout by, ii. 33. references to his voyage, on the subject of water-spouts, 58. _dampness_ on walls, cause of, ii. 50. _day-light_, proposal to use it instead of candle-light, iii. 470. _deacon_, isaac, from an underling to a surveyor, becomes inspector general of america, i. 78. prognosticates the future eminence in life of franklin, _ib._ _death_ of franklin, i. 153. letter from dr. price on, iii. 541. of relatives, reflections on, 507. _deism_, effects on franklin of books written against, i. 79. _deluge_, accounted for, ii. 127. _denham_, a quaker, a friend of franklin's, i. 54. extraordinary trait of honesty of, to his creditors, 67. franklin's engagement with, as a clerk, 68, 70. _denmark_, the people of, not subject to colds, ii. 244. _denny_, governor, remarks on his official conduct in pensylvania, iii. 170. _desaquiliers_, his experiment on the vapour of hot iron, ii. 249. _dew_, how produced, i. 207. _dialogue_, between franklin and the gout, iii. 499. _dickenson_, mr. his remarks on the views of england in framing laws over the colonies, iii. 234. remarks on his conduct, 192. on his protest, 202. _discontented_ dispositions satirized, iii. 485. _discontents_ in america before 1768, causes of, iii. 225. _dissentions_ between england and america, letter on, iii. 310. _dissertation_, early one of franklin's, that he repented having written, i. 58. _disputation_, modesty in, recommended, i. 21. ii. 317. _disputes_ between franklin and his brother, to whom he was apprenticed, i. 24. _domien_, a traveller, short account of, i. 302. _drawling_, a defect in modern tunes, ii. 345. _dreams_, art of procuring pleasant ones, iii. 493. _dumas_, monsieur, letter to, on the aid wanted by america in her struggle for independence, iii. 360. _duna_ river, not to be confounded with the dwina, iii. 119, note. _dust_, how raised and carried up into the air, ii. 3. _duties_, moral, the knowledge of, more important than the knowledge of nature, ii. 95. _dutch_ iron stove, advantages and defects of, ii. 233. e. _early_ impressions, lasting effect of, on the mind, iii. 478. _earth_ will dissolve in air, ii. 2. dry, will not conduct electricity, i. 206. the, sometimes strikes lightning into the clouds, 274. grows no hotter under the summer sun, why, ii. 86. different strata of, 116. theory of, 117. _earthquakes_, general good arising from, ii. 116. how occasioned, 120, 128. _eaton_, in northamptonshire, residence of franklin's family, i. 3. _ebb_ and flood, explanation of the terms, ii. 100. _economical_ project, iii. 469. _edinburgh_, an ordinance there against the purchase of prize-goods, ii. 447. _education_ of women, controversy respecting, i. 17. _eel_, electrical, of surinam, i. 408, 409. _effluvia_ of drugs, &c. will not pass through glass, i. 243. _electrical_ air-thermometer described, i. 336, _et seq._ atmosphere, how produced, 221. how drawn off, 222. atmospheres repel each other, 294. repel electric matter in other bodies, _ib._ battery, its construction, 193. clouds, experiment regarding, 229. death, the easiest, 307. experiments, franklin's eager pursuit of, 104. made in france, 109. various, 182, 229, 254, 255, 261, 271, 278, 286, 294, 307, 327, 337, 348, 371, 434. fire, not created by friction, but collected, 173. passes through water, 202. loves water and subsists in it, 203. diffused through all matter, 205 visible on the surface of the sea, _ibid._ its properties and uses, 214, _et seq._ produces common fire, 214, 238, 356. has the same crooked direction as lightning, 315. fluid, its beneficial uses, 219. is strongly attracted by glass, 236. manner of its acting through glass hermetically sealed, 241. a certain quantity of, in all kinds of matter, 275. nature of its explosion, 280. chooses the best conductor, 281, 378. force, may be unboundedly increased, 251. horse-race, 334. jack for roasting, 197. kiss, its force increased, 177. kite, described, 268. machine; simple and portable one, described, 178. matter, its properties, 217, 294. party of pleasure, 202. phial, or leyden bottle, its phenomena explained, 179. shock, observations on, 182. effects of a strong one on the human body, 297, 306. spark, perforates a quire of paper, 195. wheel, its construction, 196. self-moving one, 198. _electricity_, summary of its progress, i. 104. positive and negative, discovered, 106. distinguished, 175. in a tourmalin, 370. does not affect the elasticity of the air, 254. its similarity to lightning, 288. its effects on paralysis, 401. of fogs in ireland, 405. supposed affinity between, and magnetism, 410. _electrics per se_ and non-electrics, difference between, i. 242, 258. _electrified_ bumpers described, i. 203. _electrisation_, what constitutes the state of, i. 218. various appearances of, 175. variety of, 176. _electrising_ one's self, manner of, i. 174. _elocution_, how best taught, ii. 374. _embassador_ from the united states to france, franklin appointed to the office of, i. 148. _emblematical_ design illustrative of the american troubles, iii. 371. _emigrants_ to america, advice to, iii. 398. _empire_, rules for reducing a great one, iii. 334. _england_, franklin's first arrival in, i. 55. second arrival in, as agent for the province of pensylvania, 134. third arrival in, as agent for the same province, 141. its air moister than that of america, ii. 140. decrease of population in, doubtful, 296. _english_, effect of the ancient manners of, ii. 399. language, innovations in, 351. _enterprises_, public, franklin's early disposition for, i. 10. _ephemera_, an emblem of human life, iii. 508. _epitaph_ on franklin's parents, i. 13. on himself, 155. _episcopalians_, conduct of the american legislature towards, ii. 455. _errors_ of franklin's early life, i. 45, 58, 61, 80, 97. _ether_, what, ii. 59. _evaporation_, cold produced by, i. 344, ii. 76, 83, 85. of rivers, effects of, 106. _examination_ of franklin before the house of commons, i. 142, iii. 245. before the privy council, 328. further particulars of, 551. _exchange_, rate of, between philadelphia and britain, iii. 252. _exercise_, should precede meals, iii. 493. _experiments_, to show the electrical effect of points, i. 171, 172. to prove the electrical state of the leyden phial, 182. of firing spirits by a spark sent through a river, 202. to show how thunder-storms produce rain, 209. on the clouds, proposed, 228. on drugs electrified, 243. on the elasticity of the air, 254. on the electric fluid, 255. by mr. kennersley, 261. on the electricity of the clouds, 271. for increasing electricity, 278. by mr. canton, 286. in pursuance of those of mr. canton, 294. on a silver cann, 307. on the velocity of the electric fluid, 327, 329, 330. for producing cold by evaporation, 344. on the different effects of electricity, 357. by lord charles cavendish, 348. on the tourmalin, 371. to show the utility of long pointed rods to houses, 389. on amber, 403 _et seq._ on the leyden phial, 434. on different coloured cloths, ii. 108, 109. on the sailing of boats, 160. _exportation_ of gold and silver, observations on, ii. 416. _exports_ to north america and the west indies, iii. 127, 128. to pensylvania, 129, 250. from ditto, 250. _eye_, retains the images of luminous objects, ii. 340. f. _facts_, should be ascertained before we attempt to account for them, ii. 96. _family_ of franklin, account of, i. 5. _et seq._ _famine_, how provided against in china, ii. 407. _fanning_, how it cools, ii. 87. _farmers_, remonstrance in behalf of, ii. 420. _federal_ constitution, speech on, iii. 416. _felons_, transportation of, to america, highly disagreeable to the inhabitants, iii. 235. _fermenting_ liquors, their steam deleterious, ii. 59. fire, not destroyed by water, but dispersed, i. 172. makes air specifically lighter, 206. exists in all bodies, 214. common and electrical, exist together, _ibid._ a region of, above our atmosphere, 257, ii. 124. many ways of kindling it, i. 356. exists in a solid or quiescent state in substances, _ibid._ ii. 80, 122. recovers its fluidity by combustion, _ibid._ is a fluid permeating all bodies, 76. conductors of, are also best conductors of the electric fluid, _ibid._ difference between, and electrical conductors, 77. how diffused through substances, 78. how generated in animated bodies, 79. theory of, 122. a fixed and permanent quantity of, in the universe, 123. its properties, 227. electrical, see _electrical_. _fire-companies_, numerous at philadelphia, i. 103. _fire-places_, pensylvanian, account of, ii. 225. large and open, inconvenient, 228. hollow backed, by gauger, 232. staffordshire, 285. an ingenious one for serving two rooms, 296. _fires_, at sea, how often produced, ii. 174. great and bright, damage the eyes and skin, 230. _fisheries_, value of those of newfoundland, iii. 452. _flame_, preserves bodies from being consumed while surrounding them, ii. 310, 311. _flaxseed_, amount of the exportation of from america to ireland, iii. 270. _flesh_, of animals, made tender by lightning and by electricity, i. 359, 414. _flies_, drowned in america, brought to life in england, ii. 223. _flood_ and ebb, explanation of the terms, ii. 100. _florence_ flask, when filled with boiling water, not chargeable with electricity, i. 332, 345. _fog_, great, in 1783, ii. 68. conjectures as to its cause, _ibid._ _fogs_, how supported in air, ii. 5. electricity of, in ireland, i. 405. _folger_, family-name of franklin's mother, i. 8. _foreigners_, the importation of, not necessary to fill up occasional vacancies in population, ii. 390. _forts_ in the back settlements, not approved of, iii. 99. _foster_, judge, notes on his argument for the impress of seamen, ii. 437. _foundering_ at sea, accidents that occasion it, ii. 169, 170. _fountain_, when electrified, its stream separates, i. 206. _fowls_, improperly treated at sea, ii. 193. _fragments_, political, ii. 411. _france_, its air moister than that of america, ii. 140. effects of its military manners, 399. _franklin_, derivation of the name, i. 4. genealogy of the family of, 5. _franks_, the improper use of, reprobated, ii. 435. _freezing_ to death in summer, possibility of, ii. 84. _french_ language, its general use, ii. 353. _frontiers_, in america, the attack of, the common cause of the state, iii. 109. _frugality_, advantages of, ii. 397. observance of, in america, iii. 374 _fruit-walls_, blacking them recommended, ii. 110. _fuel_, scarce in philadelphia, ii. 225. _fulling-mills_ in america, iii. 270. _fusion_, cold, of metals, supposed, i. 215. proves a mistake, 339. error respecting it acknowledged, 355. g. _galloway_, mr, preface to his speech, iii. 163. _garnish-money_, practice among printers of demanding it, i. 63. _gauger_, m. his invention for fire-places, ii. 232. _genealogy_ of the franklin family, i. 5. _german_ stoves, advantages and disadvantages of, ii. 234. _germany_, why the several states of, encourage foreign manufactures in preference to those of each other, iii. 118. note. _gilding_, its properties as a conductor, i. 201. the effects of lightning and of electricity on, 229. fails as a conductor after a few shocks, 231. _glass_, has always the same quantity of electrical fire, i. 191. possesses the whole power of giving a shock, 192, 247. in panes, when first used in an electrical experiment, 193, 194. great force in small portions of, 199. impermeable to the electric fluid, 234, 310. strongly attracts the electric fluid, 236. cannot be electrified negatively, _ibid._ its opposite surfaces, how affected, _ibid._ its component parts and pores extremely fine, 237. manner of its operation in producing electricity, _ibid._ its elasticity, to what owing, 239. thick, resists a change of the quantity of electricity of its different sides, 242. rod of, will not conduct a shock, _ibid._ when fluid, or red hot, will conduct electricity, 256. difference in its qualities, 301. error as to its pores, 302. will admit the electric fluid, when moderately heated, 345, 347. when cold retains the electric fluid, 346. experiments on warm and cold, 348. singular tube and ball of, 386. _glasses_, musical, described, ii. 330, _et seq._ _god_, saying in america respecting, iii. 401. _godfrey_, thomas, a lodger with franklin, i. 81. a member of the junto, 83. inventor of hadley's quadrant, _ibid._ wishes franklin to marry a relation of his, 95. _gold_ and silver, remarks on exportation of, ii. 416. _golden_ fish, an electrical device, i. 233. _government_, free, only destroyed by corruption of manners, ii. 397. _gout_, dialogue with that disease, iii. 499. _grace_, robert, member of the junto club, i. 84, 89. _gratitude_ of america, letter on, iii. 239. _greasing_ the bottoms of ships, gives them more swiftness, ii. 180. _greece_, causes of its superiority over persia, ii. 397. _greek_ empire, the destruction of, dispersed manufacturers over europe, iii. 122. _green_ and red, relation between the colours of, ii. 341. _greenlanders_, their boats best for rowing, ii. 176. _guadaloupe_, its value to britain over-rated, iii. 139. _gulph-stream_, observations on, ii. 186. whalers frequent its edges, _ibid._ long unknown to any but the american fishermen, _ibid._ how generated, 187. its properties, _ibid._ tornadoes and water-spouts attending it, accounted for, 188. how to avoid it, 197. nantucket whalers best acquainted with it, 198. thermometrical observations on, 199. journal of a voyage across, _ibid._ _gunpowder_, fired by electricity, i. 250. magazines of, how to secure them from lightning, 375. proposal for keeping it dry, 376. h. _habits_, effects of, on population, ii. 393. 394. _hadley's_ quadrant, by whom invented, i. 83, 95. _hail_, brings down electrical fire, i. 292. how formed, ii. 66. _hamilton_, mr. a friend of franklin's, i. 54, 88. _handel_, criticism on one of his compositions, ii. 345. _harmony_, in music, what, ii. 339. _harp_, effect of, on the ancient scotch tunes, ii. 340. _harry_, david, companion of franklin's, i. 72, 93. _hats_, summer, should be white, ii. 109. the manufacture of, in new england, in 1760, iii. 131. _health_ of seamen, captain cook's method of preserving it recommended, ii. 190. _heat_, produced by electricity and by lightning, i. 338, 339. better conducted by some substances than others, ii. 56, 58. how propagated, 58. the pain it occasions, how produced, 78. in animals, how generated, 79, 125. in fermentation, the same as that of the human body, 80. great, at philadelphia, in 1750, 85. general theory of, 122. _herrings_, shoals of, perceived by the smoothness of the sea, ii. 150. _hints_ to those that would be rich, iii. 466. _holmes_, robert, brother-in-law to franklin, i. 37, 71. _honesty_, often a very partial principle of conduct, ii. 430. _honours_, all descending ones absurd, iii. 550. _hopkins_, governor, his report of the number of inhabitants in rhode island, iii. 129. _horse-race_, electrical, i. 335. _hospital_, one founded by the exertions of franklin, i. 126. _hospitals_, foundling, state of in england and france, iii. 544*, 548*. _hospitality_, a virtue of barbarians, iii. 391. _houses_, remarks on covering them with copper, ii. 318, 320. many in russia covered with iron plates, 319. their construction in paris renders them little liable to fires, 321. _howe_, lord, letter from, to franklin, iii. 365. franklin's answer to, 367. _hudson's_ river, winds there, ii. 52, 59. _hunters_, require much land to subsist on, ii. 384. _hurricanes_, how produced, ii. 7. why cold in hot climates, _ibid._ _hutchinson_, governor, cause of the application for his removal, iii. 323. account of the letters of, 331, 551. _hygrometer_, best substances for forming one, ii. 136. mahogany recommended for forming one, 141. i. j. _jackson_, mr. remarks on population by, ii. 392. _jamaica_, its vacant lands not easily made sugar lands, iii. 140. _javelle_, his machinery for moving boats, ii. 177. _ice_ will not conduct an electric shock, i. 201. _ice-islands_, dangerous to shipping, ii. 176. _idleness_, the heaviest tax on mankind, ii. 411, iii. 454. encouraged by charity, ii. 422. reflections on, iii. 428. _jefferson_, mr. letter from, on the character of franklin, iii. 545. _jesuits_, hostility of the indians in america excited by, iii. 95. _ignorance_, a frank acknowledgment of, commendable, i. 308. _imports_ into pensylvania from britain before 1766, iii. 250. _impress_ of seamen, notes on judge foster's argument in favour of, ii. 437. _inarticulation_ in modern singing, censured, ii. 348. _increase_ of mankind, observations on, ii. 383, and _seq._ what prevented by, 386, 387. how promoted, 388, 389. further observations on, 393. _indemnification_, just ground for requiring cessions from an enemy, iii. 93. _independence_, soon acquired in america, iii. 402. _indian trade_ and affairs, remarks on a plan for the future management of, iii. 216. spirituous liquors the great encouragement of, 219. the debts from, must be left to honour, 220. not an american but a british interest, 275. _indians_, of north america, a number of, murdered, i. 139. often excited by the french against the english, iii. 95. list of fighting men in the different nations of, 221. difference of their warfare from that of europeans, 100. remarks concerning, 383. their mode of life, 384. public councils, 385. politeness in conversation, 386. rules in visiting, 388. _industry_, effects of franklin's, i. 85. the cause of plenty, ii. 396. essential to the welfare of a people, 411. relaxed by cheapness of provisions, 415. a greater portion of, in every nation, than of idleness, 396, 429, iii. 396. its prevalence in america, iii. 373. _inflammability_ of the surface of rivers, ii. 130. _inland_ commerce, instances of, iii. 120. _innovations_ in language and printing, ii. 351. _inoculation_, letter on the deaths occasioned by, ii. 215. success of, in philadelphia, 216, 217. _insects_, utility of the study of, ii. 93. _interrogation_, the mark of, how to be placed, ii. 356. _invention_, the faculty of, its inconveniences, i. 308. _inventions_, new, generally scouted, _ibid._ _journal_ of a voyage, crossing the gulph-stream, ii. 199. from philadelphia to france, 200, 201. from the channel to america, 202, _et seq._ _iron_ contained in the globe, renders it a great magnet, ii. 119. query whether it existed at the creation, 126. hot, gives no bad smell, 247. yields no bad vapours, 248. rods, erected for experiments on the clouds, i. 270. conduct more lightning in proportion to their thickness, 282. _islands_ far from a continent have little thunder, i. 216. _italic_ types, use of, in printing, ii. 355. _judges_, mode of their appointment in america, in 1768, iii. 23. _junto._ see _club_. k. _keimer_, a connection of franklin's, some account of, i. 35, 70, 93. _keith_, sir william, franklin patronized by, i. 39. deceived by, 54. character of, 57. _kinnersley_, mr. electrical experiments by, i. 261, _et seq._, 331. _kiss_, electrical, i. 177. _kite_ used to draw electricity from the clouds, i. 108. electrical, described, i. 268. _knobs_, not so proper as points, for conducting lightning, i. 359. l. _labour_, why it will long continue dear in america, ii. 385. its advantages, 427, 428. _land_, terms on which it may be obtained in america, by settlers, iii. 409. _landing_ in a surf, supposed practicable, how, ii. 154. tried without success, 155. _language_, remarks on innovations in, ii. 351, _et seq._ _laughers_, satyrized, iii. 425. _law_, the old courts of, in the colonies, as ample in their powers, as those in england, iii. 304. _law-expenses_, no discouragement to law-suits, iii. 270. _law-stamps_, a tax on the poor, iii. 269. _lead_, effects of, on the human constitution, ii. 219. _leaks_ in ships, why water enters by them most rapidly at first, ii. 109. means to prevent their being fatal, 170. _leather_ globe, proposed, instead of glass, for electrical experiments, i. 267. _left_ hand, a petition from, iii. 483. _leg_, handsome and deformed, humourous anecdote of, iii. 437. _legal_ tender of paper-money, its advantages, iii. 150. further remarks on, 151. _lending_ money, new mode of, iii. 463. _letter-founding_ effected by franklin in america, i. 74. _leutmann_, j. g. extract from his vulcanus famulans, ii. 298. _leyden_ bottle, its phenomena explained, i. 179. analysed, 192. experiment to prove its qualities, 245. when sealed hermetically, retains long its electricity, 345. _liberty_ of the press, observations on, ii. 463. abused, 465. of the cudgel, should be allowed in return, 467. _libraries_, public, the first in america set on foot by franklin, i. 99. are now numerous in america, 100. advantages of, to liberty, 101. _life_ and death, observations on the doctrines of, ii. 222. _light_, difference between that from the sun and that from a fire in electrical experiments, i. 173. difficulties in the doctrines of, i. 253. queries concerning, _ibid._ visibility of its infinitely small particles computed, ii. 90. new theory of, 122. _lighthouse-tragedy_, an early poem of franklin's, i. 16. _lightning_, represented by electricity, i. 176. drawn from the clouds, by a kite, 268. by an iron rod, _ibid._ reasons for proposing the experiment on, 304. its effects at newbury, 310. will leave other substances, to pass through metals, 312. communicates magnetism to iron, 314. objections to the hypothesis of its being collected from the sea, 318, 323. effects of, on a wire at new york, 326. on mr. west's pointed rod, 340, _et seq._ how it shivers trees, 359. effects of, on conductors in carolina, 361, 362, 364. does not enter through openings, 368. should be distinguished from its light, 369. an explosion always accompanies it, _ibid._ observations on its effects on st. bride's church, 374, 382. how to preserve buildings from, 377. personal danger from, how best avoided, 381. brought down by a pointed rod, in a large quantity, 389. how to prevent a stroke of, at sea, ii. 175. _linnæus_, instance of public benefit arising from his knowledge of insects, ii. 94. _london_, atmosphere of, moister than that of the country, ii. 139. _loyalty_ of america before the troubles, iii. 237. _luxury_, beneficial when not too common, ii. 389. definition of, 395, 425. extinguishes families, 395. not to be extirpated by laws, 401. further observations on, 425. _lying-to_, the only mode yet used for stopping a vessel at sea, ii. 181. m. _maddeson_, mr. death of, lamented, iii. 544*. _magazine_ of powder, how to secure it from lightning, i. 375. _magical_ circle of circles, ii. 327. picture, i. 195. square of squares, ii. 324. _magnetism_, animal, detected and exposed, i. 150. given by electricity, 248, 314. and electricity, affinity between, 410. supposed to exist in all space, ii. 119, 126. conjectures as to its effects on the globe, 120. enquiry how it first came to exist, 126. _mahogany_, expands and shrinks, according to climate, ii. 138. recommended for an hygrometer, 141. _mandeville_, franklin's acquaintance with, i. 39. _manners_, effects of, on population, ii. 393, _et seq._ letter to the busy-body on the want of, iii. 432. _manufactures_, produce greater proportionate returns than raw materials, ii. 410. founded in the want of land for the poor, iii. 107. are with difficulty transplanted from one country to another, 121. hardly ever lost but by foreign conquest, 122. probability of their establishment in america, 260. want no encouragement from the government, if a country be ripe for them, 405. _maritime_ observations, ii. 162. _marly_, experiments made at, for drawing lightning from the clouds, i. 421. _marriage_ of franklin, i. 97. _marriages_, where the greatest number take place, ii. 383. why frequent and early in america, 385. iii. 113, 403. early, letter on, iii. 475. _maryland_, account of a whirlwind there, ii. 61. of paper bills formerly issued there, iii. 155. its conduct in a french war, previous to the american troubles, defended, 262. _massachusets_ bay, petition of the inhabitants of, to the king, iii. 325. _matter_, enquiry into the supposed vis inertiæ of, ii. 110. man can neither create nor annihilate it, 123. _mawgridge_, william, member of the junto club, i. 84. _maxims_, prudential, from poor richard's almanack, iii. 453. _mazeas_, abbe, letter from, i. 420. _meal_, grain, &c. manner of preserving them good for ages, i. 376. ii. 190. _mechanics_, advantages of an early attention to, i. 14. _mediocrity_, prevalence of, in america, iii. 399. _melody_ in music, what, ii. 340. _men_, six, struck down by an electric shock, i. 306. _mercer_, dr. letter from, on a water-spout, ii. 34. _merchants_ and shopkeepers in america, iii. 394. _meredith_, hugh, companion of franklin, short account of, i. 72, 76, 89. _metalline_ rods, secure buildings from lightning, i. 281. either prevent or conduct a stroke, 310. _metals_, melted by electricity and by lightning, i. 215, 229. when melted by electricity, stain glass, 232. polished, spotted by electrical sparks, 253. feel colder than wood, why, ii. 56. _meteorological_ observations, ii. 1, 45, 66. _methusalem_ slept always in the open air, iii. 495. _mickle_, samuel, a prognosticator of evil, i. 81. _military_ manners, effects of, ii. 398, 399. power of the king, remarks on, iii. 307. _militia_ bill, franklin the author of one, i. 132. particular one, rejected by the governor of pensylvania, 100. iii. 157. _mines_, method of changing air in them, ii. 291. of rock salt, conjectures as to their formation, 92. _mists_, how supported in air, ii. 5. _modesty_ in disputation recommended, ii. 317. _money_, how to make it plenty, iii. 467. new mode of lending, 468. _moral_ principles, state of franklin's mind respecting, on his entering into business, i. 79. _morals_ of chess, iii. 488. _motion_, the communication and effects of, ii. 7, 8. of vessels at sea, how to be stopped, 181. _mountains_, use of, in producing rain and rivers, i. 208. why the summits of, are cold, ii. 6. conjecture how they became so high, 91. _music_, harmony and melody of the old scotish, ii. 338. modern, defects of, 343. _musical_ glasses described, ii. 330. n. _nantucket_ whalers best acquainted with the gulph-stream, ii. 198. _national_ wealth, data for reasoning on, ii. 408. three ways of acquiring, 410. _navigation_, difference of, in shoal and deep water, ii. 158. observations on, 195, 196. from newfoundland to new york, 197. inland, in america, iii. 118. _needle_ of a compass, its polarity reversed by lightning, i. 248, 325. of wood, circular motion of, by electricity, 332, 351. _needles_, magnetised by electricity, i. 148. and pins, melted by electricity, 249. _negatively_ electrised bodies repel each other, i. 294. _negroes_ bear heat better, and cold worse, than whites, ii. 86. _newbury_, effects of a stroke of lightning there, i. 310. _new-england_, former flourishing state of, from the issue of paper money, iii. 145. circumstances which rendered the restriction of paper money there not injurious, 148. abolition of paper currency there, 263. _newfoundland_ fisheries, more valuable than the mines of peru, iii. 452. _newspaper_, one sufficient for all america, in 1721, i. 23. instance of one set up by franklin at philadelphia, 86. _new-york_, effects of lightning there, i. 326. former flourishing state of, from the issue of paper-money, iii. 146. sentiments of the colonists on the act for abolishing the legislature of, 232. obtained in exchange for surinam, 349. _nollet_, abbé, franklin's theory of electricity opposed by, i. 113. remarks on his letters, 430. _non-conductors_ of electricity, i. 378. _non-electric_, its property in receiving or giving electrical fire, i. 193. _north-east_ storms in america, account of, ii. 68. _nurses_, office at paris for examining the health of, iii. 549*. o. _oak_ best for flooring and stair-cases, ii. 321. _ohio_, distance of its fort from the sea, iii. 119, note. _oil_, effect of heat on, ii. 4. evaporates only in dry air, _ibid._ renders air unfit to take up water, _ibid._ curious instance of its effects on water in a lamp, 142. stilling of waves by means of, 144, 145, 148, 150, 151, 154. _old_ man's wish, song so called quoted, iii. 546*. _onslow_, arthur, dedication of a work to, by franklin, iii. 59. _opinions_, vulgar ones too much slighted, ii. 146. regard to established ones, thought wisdom in a government, iii. 226. _orthography_, a new mode of, ii. 359. _osborne_, a friend of franklin's, i. 50, 53 _oversetting_ at sea, how it occurs, ii. 172. how to be prevented, _ibid._, 173. _outriggers_ to boats, advantages of, ii. 173. p. _packthread_, though wet, not a good conductor, i. 200. _paine's_ common sense, franklin supposed to have contributed to, i. 148. _paper_, how to make large sheets, in the chinese way, ii. 349. a poem, iii. 522. _paper-credit_, cannot be circumscribed by law, ii. 418. _paper-money_, pamphlet written by franklin on, i. 91. american, remarks and facts relative to, iii. 144. advantages of, over gold and silver, iii. 152. _papers_ on philosophical subjects, i. 169, _et seq._ ii. 1, _et seq._ on general politics, ii. 383, _et seq._ on american subjects, before the revolution, iii. 3, _et seq._ during the revolution, iii. 225, _et seq._ subsequent to the revolution, iii. 383, _et seq._ on moral subjects, iii. 421, _et seq._ _parable_ against persecution, ii. 450. _paradoxes_ inferred from some experiments, i. 262. _paralysis_, effects of electricity on, i. 401. _parliament_ of england, opinions in america, in 1766, concerning, iii. 254. _parsons_, william, member of the junto club, i. 83. _parties_, their use in republics, iii. 396. _party_ of pleasure, electrical, i. 202. _passages_ to and from america, how to be shortened, ii. 138. why shorter from, than to, america, 189. _passengers_ by sea, instructions to, ii. 192. _patriotism_, spirit of, catching, iii. 90. _peace_, the victorious party may insist on adequate securities in the terms of, iii. 96. _penn_, governor, remarks on his administration, iii. 183. sold his legislative right in pensylvania, but did not complete the bargain, 189. _pensylvania_, franklin appointed clerk to the general assembly of, i. 102. forms a plan of association for the defence of, 104. becomes a member of the general assembly of, 114. aggrievances of, iii. 50. infraction of its charter, 52. review of the constitution of, 59. former flourishing state of, from the issue of paper-money, 146. rate of exchange there, 154. letter on the militia bill of, 157. settled by english and germans, 162. english and german, its provincial languages, _ib._ pecuniary bargains between the governors and assembly of, 165. taxes there, 246, 251. number of its inhabitants, 249. proportion of quakers, and of germans, _ibid._ exports and imports, 250. assembly of, in 1766, how composed, 252. _pensylvanian_ fire-places, account of, ii. 223. particularly described, 235. effects of, 239. manner of using them, 241. advantages of, 243. objections to, answered, 247. directions to bricklayers respecting, 251. _peopling_ of countries, observations on, ii. 383, _et seq._ _perkins_, dr. letter from, on water-spouts, ii. 11. on shooting stars, 36. _persecution_, parable against, ii. 450. of dissenters, letter on, 452. of quakers in new england, 454. _perspirable_ matter, pernicious, if retained, ii. 50. _perspiration_, necessary to be kept up, in hot climates, ii. 86. difference of, in persons when naked and clothed, 214. _petition_ from the colonists of massachusets bay, iii. 325. of the left hand, 483. _petty_, sir william, a double vessel built by, ii. 174. _philadelphia_, franklin's first arrival at, i. 32. account of a seminary there, instituted by franklin, 116 to 127. state of the public bank at, iii. 551*. _phytolacca_, or poke weed, a specific for cancers, i. 261. _picture_, magical, described, i. 195. _plain_ truth, franklin's first political pamphlet, iii. 524. _plan_ for benefiting distant countries, ii. 403. for settling two western colonies, iii. 41. for the management of indian affairs, remarks on, 216. for improving the condition of the free blacks, 519. _planking_ of ships, improvement in, ii. 189. _pleurisy_, franklin attacked by, i. 71, 154. _plus_ and minus electricity, in the leyden bottle, i. 181. in other bodies, 185. _pointed_ rods, secure buildings from lightning, i. 283, 381. experiments and observations on, 388. objections to, answered, 395, 396. _points_, their effects, i. 170. property of, explained, 223. experiment showing the effect of, on the clouds, 283. mistake respecting, 310. _poke-weed_, a cure for cancers, i. 260, 261. _polarity_ given to needles by electricity, i. 248. _poles_ of the earth, if changed, would produce a deluge, ii. 127. _political_ fragments, ii. 411. _polypus_, a nation compared to, ii. 391. _poor_, remarks on the management of, ii. 418. the better provided for, the more idle, 422. _poor_ richard, maxims of, iii. 453. _pope_, criticism on two of his lines, i. 23. _population_, observations on, ii. 383. causes which diminish it, 386. occasional vacancies in, soon filled by natural generation, 390. rate of its increase in america, 385. iii. 113, 250, 254. why it increases faster there, than in england, iii. 255. _positions_ concerning national wealth, ii. 408. _positiveness_, impropriety of, ii. 318. _postage_, not a tax, but payment for a service, iii. 265. state of, in america, in 1766, 279. _post-master_, and deputy post-master general, franklin appointed to the offices of, i. 102, 127. _potts_, stephen, a companion of franklin's, i. 72, 84. _poultry_, not good at sea, ii. 193. _powder-magazines_, how secured from lightning, i. 375. _power_ to move a heavy body, how to be augmented, ii. 191. _pownall_, governor, memorial of, to the duke of cumberland, iii. 41. letter from, on an equal communication of rights to america, 243. constitution of the colonies by, 299. _preface_ to mr. galloway's speech, iii. 163. to proceedings of the inhabitants of boston, 317. _presbyterianism_, established religion in new england, ii. 454. _press_, account of the court of, ii. 463. liberty of, abused, 465. _pressing_ of seamen, animadversions on, ii. 437. _price_, dr. letter from, on franklin's death, iii. 541. _priestley_, dr. letter from, on franklin's character, iii. 547. _printers_ at philadelphia before franklin, i. 36. _printing_, franklin apprenticed to the business of, i. 15. works at it as a journeymen in england, 58, 62. in america, 35, 71. enters on the business of, as master, 78. observations on fashions in, ii. 355. _prison_, society for relieving the misery of, i. 151. not known among the indians of america, iii. 220. _privateering_, reprobated, ii. 436. further observations on, 446. article to prevent it, recommended in national treaties, 448. inserted in a treaty between america and prussia, 449. _proas_, of the pacific ocean, safety of, ii. 173. flying, superior to any of our sailing boats, 176. _produce_ of the inland parts of america, iii. 119. _products_ of america, do not interfere with those of britain, iii. 124. _prose-writing_, method of acquiring excellence in, i. 18. _protest_ against franklin's appointment as colonial agent, remarks on, iii. 203. _provisions_, cheapness of, encourages idleness, ii. 415. _prussian_ edict, assuming claims over britain, iii. 311. _public_ services and functions of franklin, i. 125. spirit, manifest in england, iii. 91. different opinion respecting it expressed, 375. _punctuality_ of america in the payment of public debts, iii. 373. _puckridge_, mr. inventor of musical glasses, i. 136. q. _quaker-lady_, good advice of one to franklin in his youth, i. 42. _quakers_, persecution of, in new england, ii. 454. proportion of, in pensylvania, iii. 249. _quebec_, remarks on the enlargement of the province of, iii. 20, note. _queries_ concerning light, i. 258. proposed at the junto club, ii. 366. from mr. strahan, on the american disputes, iii. 287. _questions_ discussed by the junto club, ii. 369. r. _rain_, how produced, i. 207. generally brings down electricity, 292. why never salt, ii. 32. different quantities of, falling at different heights, 133. _ralph_, james, a friend of franklin's, i. 50, 53, 54, 57, 60. _rarefaction_ of the air, why greater in the upper regions, ii. 6. _read_, maiden name of franklin's wife, i. 33, 37, 49, 54, 59, 70, 96. _reading_, franklin's early passion for, i. 15, 16. how best taught, ii. 372. advice to youth respecting, 378. _recluse_, a roman catholic one, in london, i. 65. _red_ and green, relation between the colours of, ii. 341. _regimen_, sudden alterations of, not prejudicial, i. 49. _religious_ sect, new one, intended establishment of, i. 48. _repellency_, electrical, how destroyed, i. 172. _representation_, american, in the british parliament, thoughts on, iii. 37, 243. _repulsion_, electrical, the doctrine of, doubted, i. 333. considerations in support of, 349. _revelation_, doubted by franklin in his youth, i. 79. _rhode-island_, purchased for a pair of spectacles, iii. 21. its population at three periods, iii. 129. _rich_, hints to those that would be, iii. 466. _ridicule_, delight of the prince of condé in, iii. 424. _rivers_, from the andes, how formed, i. 209. motion of the tides in, explained, ii. 96, 102. do not run into the sea, 105. evaporate before they reach the sea, 106. inflammability of the surface of, 130. _rods_, utility of long pointed ones, to secure buildings from lightning, i. 388. see farther. _iron._ _lightning._ _metalline._ _rome_, causes of its decline enquired into, ii. 398. political government of its provinces, iii. 136. _rooms_, warm, advantages of, ii. 249. do not give colds, ibid. _roots_, edible, might be dried and preserved for sea-store, ii. 190. _rosin_, when fluid, will conduct electricity, i. 256. _rousseau_, his opinion of tunes in parts, ii. 342. _rowing_ of boats, chinese method of, ii. 177. _rowley_, dr. franklin's obligations to, iii. 555*. s. _sailing_, observations on, ii. 163. _sails_, proposed improvements in, ii. 164, 166. _saint_ bride's church, stroke of lightning on, i. 374. _salt_, dry, will not conduct electricity, i. 258. rock, conjectures as to its origin, ii. 91. _saltness_ of the sea-water considered, _ib._ _savage_, john, a companion of franklin's, i. 72. _savages_ of north america, remarks on, iii. 383, _et seq._ _school_, sketch of one, for philadelphia, ii. 370. _scotch_ tunes, harmony of, and melody, ii. 338. _screaming_, a defect in modern tunes, ii. 345. _scull_, nicholas, member of the junto club, i. 83. _sea_, electrical qualities of its component parts, i. 205. opinion, that it is the source of lightning, considered, 269, 321, 322. supposed cause of its luminous appearance, ii. 88. from what cause, salt, 91. has formerly covered the mountains, _ib._ _sea-coal_, has a vegetable origin, ii. 128. prejudices against the use of, at paris, 278. _sea-water_, soon loses its luminous quality, i. 269. considerations on the distillation of, ii. 103. how to quench thirst with, 104. thermometrical observation on, 199, _et seq._ _security_, a just ground to demand cessions from an enemy, iii. 93. _separation_ of the colonies from britain, probability of, in 1775, iii. 356. _servants_ in england, the most barren parts of the people, ii. 395. _settlements_, new, in america, letter concerning, iii. 409. _settlers_ of british colonies, their rights, iii. 299. _sheep_, a whole flock killed by lightning, i. 415. _ships_, abandoned at sea, often saved, ii. 169. may be nicely balanced, 170. accidents to, at sea, how guarded against, 172. _shirley_, governor, letters to, on the taxation of the colonies, iii. 30. on american representation in the british parliament, 37. _shooting-stars_, letter on, ii. 36. _shop-keepers_ in america, iii. 394. _sides_ of vessels, the best construction of, ii. 172. _silver_ cann, experiment with, i. 307. vessels, not so easily handled as glass, when filled with hot liquors, ii. 57. _slavery_, society for the abolition of, i. 151. address to the public on the abolition of, iii. 517. _slaves_, not profitable labourers, ii. 386. diminish population, ii. 387. _slave-trade_, sentiment of a french moralist respecting, ii. 195. parody on the arguments in favour of, 450. _sliding-plates_ for smoky chimnies described, ii. 287. _slitting-mills_ in america, iii. 270. _small_, mr. alexander, letter from, i. 374. _smell_ of electricity, how produced, i. 244. _smoke_, principle by which it ascends, ii. 257. stove that consumes it, 296. the burning of, useful in hot-houses, 316. _smoky_ chimnies, observation on the causes and cure of, ii. 256. remedy for, if by want of air, 261, 262. if by too large openings in the room, 266, 268. if by too short a funnel, 269. if by overpowering each other, 270, 271. if by being overtopped, 271, 272. if by improper situation of a door, 273. if by smoke drawn down their funnels, 274, 275. if by strong winds, 275, 276. difficult sometimes to discover the cause of, 282. _smuggling_, reflections on, ii. 430. encouragement of, not honest, 432. _snow_, singular instance of its giving electricity, i. 373. _soap-boiler_, part of franklin's early life devoted to the business of, i. 10, 14. _societies_, of which franklin was president, i. 151. learned, of which he was a member, 135. _socrates_, his mode of disputation, i. 21. _songs_, ancient, give more pleasure than modern, ii. 342. modern, composed of all the defects of speech, 344. _soul_, argument against the annihilation of, iii. 548*. _sound_, best mediums for conveying, ii. 335. observations on, 336. queries concerning, 337. _sounds_ just past, we have a perfect idea of their pitch, ii. 340. _soup-dishes_ at sea, how to be made more convenient, ii. 195. _spain_, what has thinned its population, ii. 390. _specific_ weight, what, ii. 226. _spectacles_, double, advantages of, iii. 544*, 551*. _speech_, at algiers, on slavery and piracy, ii. 450. of mr. galloway, preface to, iii. 163. last of franklin, on the federal constitution, 416. _spelling_, a new mode of, recommended, ii. 359. _spheres_, electric, commodious ones, i. 178. _spider_, artificial, described, i. 177. _spirits_, fired without heating, i. 214, 245. linen wetted with, cooling in inflammations, ii. 87. should always be taken to sea in bottles, 175. _spots_ in the sun, how formed, i. 260. _squares_, magical square of, ii. 324. _staffordshire_ chimney, description of, ii. 285. _stamp-act_ in america stigmatized, iii. 228. letter on the repeal of, iii. 239. examination of franklin on, 245. _stars._ see _shooting_. _state_, internal, of america, iii. 291. _storms_, causes of, ii. 65. _stove_, dutch, its advantages and defects, ii. 233. german, ditto, 234. to draw downwards, by j. g. leutmann, 298. for burning pit-coal and consuming its smoke, 301, 304, 308. _strata_ of the earth, letter on, ii. 116. _strahan_, mr. queries by, on american politics, iii. 287. answer to the queries, 290. letter to, disclaiming his friendship, iii. 354. _stuber_, dr. continuator of franklin's life, i. 98. _studies_ of trifles, should be moderate, ii. 95. _stuttering_, one of the affected beauties of modern tunes, ii. 245. _sugar_, cruelties exercised in producing it, ii. 196. _sulphur_ globe, its electricity different from that of the glass globe, i. 265. _sun_, supplies vapour with fire, i. 207. why not wasted by expense of light, 259. effect of its rays on different coloured clothes, ii. 108. light of, proposed to be used instead of candlelight, iii. 470, 473. discovered to give light as soon as it rises, 471. _surfaces_ of glass, different state of its opposite ones, when electrised, i. 191, 238. _swimming_, skill of franklin in, i. 66. art of, how to be acquired, ii. 206 how a person unacquainted with it may avoid sinking, 208. a delightful and wholesome exercise, ii. 209, 211. advantage of, to soldiers, 210. inventions to improve it, _ibid._ 212. medical effects of, _ibid._ t. _tariffs_, not easily settled in indian trade, iii. 218. _tautology_, an affected beauty of modern songs, ii. 345. _taxation_, american, letters to governor shirley on, iii. 30. american, dr. franklin's examination on, iii. 246, 256. internal and external, distinguished, 259. on importation of goods and consumption, difference between, 266. _tea-act_, the duty on, in america, how considered there, iii. 261, 317, 319. characterized by mr. burke, 319, _note_. _teach_, or blackbeard, name of a ballad written by franklin in his youth, i. 16. _thanks_ of the assembly of pensylvania to franklin, iii. 214. _thanksgiving-days_ appointed in new england instead of fasts, iii. 392. _theory_ of the earth, ii. 117. of light and heat, 122. _thermometer_, not cooled by blowing on, when dry, ii. 87. electrical, described, and experiments with, ii. 336. _thermometrical_ observations on the gulph-stream, ii. 199. on the warmth of sea-water, 200. _thirst_, may be relieved by sea-water, how, ii. 105. _thunder_ and lightning, how caused, i. 209. seldom heard far from land, 216. comparatively little at bermuda, _ibid._ defined, 378. _thunder-gusts_, what, i. 203. hypothesis to explain them, 203, _et seq._ _tides_ in rivers, motion of, explained, ii. 96, 102. _time_, occasional fragments of, how to be collected, ii. 412. is money to a tradesman, iii. 463. _toads_ live long without nourishment, ii. 223. _toleration_ in old and new england compared, ii. 457. _torpedo_, how to determine its electricity, i. 408, 409. _tourmalin_, its singular electrical properties, i. 370. experiments on it, 371, 372. _trade_, pleasure attending the first earnings in, i. 81. should be under no restrictions, ii. 415. exchanges in, may be advantageous to each party, 418. inland carriage no obstruction, to, iii. 116. great rivers in america, favourable to, 118. bills of credit, in lieu of money, the best medium of, 156. will find and make its own rates, 219. _tradesman_, advice to a young one, iii. 463. _transportation_ of felons to america, highly disagreeable to the inhabitants there, iii. 235. _treaty_ between america and prussia, humane article of, ii. 449. _treasures_, hidden, search after, ridiculed, iii. 450. _trees_, dangerous to be under, in thunder-storms, i. 213. the shivering of, by lightning, explained, 359. why cool in the sun, ii. 87. _tubes_ of glass, electrical, manner of rubbing, i. 178. lined with a non-electric, experiment with, 240. exhausted, electric fire moves freely in, 241. _tunes_, ancient scotch, why give general pleasure, ii. 338. composed to the wire-harp, 341. in parts, rousseau's opinion of, 342. modern, absurdities of, 344, _et seq._ _turkey_ killed by electricity, i. 299. _turks_, ceremony observed by, in visiting, iii. 436. v. u. _vacuum_, torricellian, experiment with, i. 291. electrical experiment in, 317. _vapour_, electrical experiment on, i. 343. _vapours_ from moist hay, &c. easily fired by lightning, i. 215. cause of their rising considered, ii. 46, 49. _vanity_, observation on, i. 2. _varnish_, dry, burnt by electric sparks, i. 199. _vattel's_ law of nations, greatly consulted by the american congress, iii. 360. _vegetable_ diet, observed by franklin, i. 20. abandoned by franklin, why, 47. _vegetation_, effects of, on noxious air, ii. 129. _velocity_ of the electric fire, i. 319. _virtue_ in private life exemplified, iii. 427. _vernon_, mr. reposes a trust in franklin, which he violates, i. 44. _vis_ inertiæ of matter, observations on, ii. 110. _visits_, unseasonable and importunate, letter on, iii. 432. _unintelligibleness_, a fault of modern singing, ii. 345. _union_, albany plan of. see _albany_. _union_ of america with britain, letter on, iii. 239. _united_ states of america, nature of the congress of, iii. 550*. _voyage_, from boston to new york, i. 27. from new york to philadelphia, 28. from newfoundland to new york, remarks on, ii. 197. crossing the gulph stream, journal of, 199. from philadelphia to france, 200, 201. from the channel to america, 202. to benefit distant countries, proposed, 403. _vulgar_ opinions, too much slighted, ii. 146. w. _waggons_, number of, supplied by franklin, on a military emergency, i. 131. _war_, civil, whether it strengthens a country considered, ii. 399. observations on, 435. laws of, gradually humanized, _ib._ humane article respecting, in a treaty between prussia and america, ii. 449. french, of 1757, its origin, iii. 274. _warm_ rooms do not make people tender, or give colds, ii. 249. _washington_, early military talents of, i. 130. franklin's bequest to, 164. _water_, a perfect conductor of electricity, i. 201. strongly electrified, rises in vapour, 204. particles of, in rising, are attached to particles of air, 205. and air, attract each other, 206. exploded like gunpowder, by electricity, 358. expansion of, when reduced to vapour, _ib._ saturated with salt, precipitates the overplus, ii. 2. will dissolve in air, _ib._ expands when boiling, _ib._ how supported in air, 45. bubbles on the surface of, hypothesis respecting, 48. agitated, does not produce heat, 49, 96. supposed originally all salt, 91. fresh, produce of distillation only, _ib._ curious effects of oil on, 142. _water-casks_, how to dispose of, in leaky vessels, ii. 170. _water-spouts_, observations on, ii. 11. whether they descend or ascend, 14, 23, 38. various appearances of, 16. winds blow from all points towards them, 21. are whirlwinds at sea, _ib._ effect of one on the coast of guinea, 33. account of one at antigua, 34. various instances of, 38. mr. colden's observations on, 53. _watson_, mr. william, letter by, on thunder-clouds, i. 427. _waves_, stilled by oil, ii. 144, 145, 148. greasy water, 146. _wax_, when fluid will conduct electricity, i. 256. may be electrised positively and negatively, 291. _wealth_, way to, iii. 453. national, positions to be examined concerning, ii. 408. but three ways of acquiring it, 410. _webb_, george, a companion of franklin's, i. 72, 84, 86. _wedderburn_, mr. remarks on his treatment of franklin before the privy council, iii. 330, 332, notes; 550. _west_, mr. his conductor struck by lightning, i. 340. _western_ colonies, plan for settling them, iii. 41. _whatley_, mr. four letters to, iii. 543*. _wheels_, electrical, described, i. 196. _whirlwinds_, how formed, ii. 10. observations on, 20. a remarkable one at rome, 24. account of one in maryland, 61. _whistle_, a story, iii. 480. _white_, fittest colour for clothes in hot climates, ii. 109. _will_, extracts from franklin's, i. 155. _wilson_, mr. draws electricity from the clouds, i. 429. _wind_ generated by fermentation, ii. 59. _winds_ explained, ii. 8, 9, 48. the explanation objected to, 50, 51. observations on, by mr. colden, 52. whether confined to, or generated in, clouds, 57. raise the surface of the sea above its level, 188. effect of, on sound, 337. _winters_, hard, causes of, ii. 68. _winthrop_, professor, letters from, i. 373, 382. _wire_ conducts a great stroke of lightning, though destroyed itself, i. 282. _wolfe_, general, i. 136. _women_ of paris, singular saying respecting, as mothers, iii. 548*. _wood_, dry, will not conduct electricity, i. 172. why does not feel so cold as metals, ii. 56. _woods_, not unhealthy to inhabit, ii. 130. _woollen_, why warmer than linen, ii. 57, 81. _words_, to modern songs, only a pretence for singing, ii. 348. _wygate_, an acquaintance of franklin's, i. 66. _wyndham_, sir william, applies to franklin to teach his sons swimming, i. 69. transcriber's note italic text is denoted by _underscores_. obvious typographical errors and punctuation errors have been corrected after careful comparison with other occurrences within the text and consultation of external sources. for consistency and clarity, the pound abbreviation 'l.' has been italicized, so for example '123,321l.' has been replaced by '123,321_l._' in the etext. for consistency, the date and salutation at the beginning of each letter, and the closing and name at the end of each letter, have been put on separate lines (they were sometimes placed on the same line in the original printed text). a 'list of the plates' has been created and added in front of the errata. for consistency, all occurrences of 'abbe' have been replaced by 'abbé'. one occurrence of the oe ligature replaced by oe (l'oeuvre). text omitted by the editor may be indicated by '***', '****' or '----'. all the changes noted in the errata (pg xiv) have been applied to the text. except for those changes noted below, misspelling in the text, and inconsistent or archaic usage, have been retained. for example, compleat; cieling; inclose; watry; spunge; negociate; pensylvania; massachussets; newspaper, news-paper; farther, further. in addition: pg v. 'works af' replaced by 'works of'. pg vi. 'side the' replaced by 'side of the'. pg xiv. 'anology' replaced by 'analogy'. pg xiv. errata: '12 1:' replaced by '20 1:'. pg xiv. errata: '29 3:' replaced by '28 3:'. pg xiv. errata: '40 19:' replaced by '50 19:'. pg 5. 'frandfather' replaced by 'grandfather'. pg 48. 'oponent' replaced by 'opponent'. pg 74. 'tolera-manner' replaced by 'tolerable manner'. pg 102. 'over the the lives' replaced by 'over the lives'. pg 110. 'mary-la-ville' replaced by 'marly-la-ville'. pg 110. 'with a whom' replaced by 'with whom'. pg 131. 'a juncion with' replaced by 'a junction with'. pg 132. 'of governtment' replaced by 'of government'. pg 133. 'was appehensive' replaced by 'was apprehensive'. pg 139. 'in the goal' replaced by 'in the gaol'. pg 140. 'a num-of' replaced by 'a number of'. pg 142. 'be learned' replaced by 'he learned'. pg 144. 'stampt-act' replaced by 'stamp-act'. pg 170. 'in crouds' replaced by 'in crowds'. pg 173. 'o bright' replaced by 'of a bright'. pg 222. 'with mose ease' replaced by 'with more ease'. pg 242. 'yerhaps' replaced by 'perhaps'. pg 244. 'does nor burn' replaced by 'does not burn'. pg 263. 'powdered sulpur' replaced by 'powdered sulphur'. pg 305. 'satisfation' replaced by 'satisfaction'. pg 310. 'appear to to me' replaced by 'appear to me'. pg 318. the * * * asterisks denote text omitted by the editor. pg 356. 'and by electricty' replaced by 'and by electricity'. pg 358. 'above a a quarter' replaced by 'above a quarter'. pg 404. 'most of of the' replaced by 'most of the'. pg 406. 'silk handkercheif' replaced by 'silk handkerchief'. pg 418. 'and bottless' replaced by 'and bottles'. pg 424. 'è celle que' replaced by 'à celle que'. pg 424. 'piquûres' replaced by 'piqûres'. pg 426. 'évenénement' replaced by 'événement'. pg 440. 'and so dicharge' replaced by 'and so discharge'. index pg 4i. 'animalcnles' replaced by 'animalcules'. index pg 29i. 'relation batween' replaced by 'relation between'. the index covers all three volumes and was originally printed at the end of volume 1 only. it has been copied to the end of volume 2 and 3 as a convenience for the reader. the index had no page numbers in the original text; page numbers from 1i to 36i have been added for completeness. for clarity, some volume identifiers (i. or ii. or iii.) have been added, or removed, in the index. only references within this volume have been hyperlinked. the index has some references to page numbers with a *, eg 551*. these are valid references; the book printer inserted pages 543*-556* between pages 542 and 543 in vol iii. transcriber's note this is volume 3 of a 3-volume set. the other two volumes are also accessible in project gutenberg using http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/48136 and http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/48137. italic text is denoted by _underscores_. obvious typographical errors and punctuation errors have been corrected after careful comparison with other occurrences within the text and consultation of external sources. more detail can be found at the end of the book. the works of benjamin franklin, l.l.d. vol. 3. [illustration: (stalker sculptor.)] printed, for longman, hurst, rees & orme, paternoster row, london. the complete works, in philosophy, politics, and morals, of the late dr. benjamin franklin, now first collected and arranged: with memoirs of his early life, written by himself. in three volumes. vol. iii. london: printed for j. johnson, st. paul's church-yard; and longman, hurst, rees, and orme, paternoster-row. 1806. james cundee, printer, london. contents. vol. iii. papers on american subjects before the revolutionary troubles. _page._ albany papers; containing, i. reasons and motives on which the plan of union for the colonies was formed;--ii. reasons against partial unions;--iii. and the plan of union drawn by b. f. and unanimously agreed to by the commissioners from new hampshire, massachusett's bay, rhode island, new jersey, maryland, and pensylvania, met in congress at albany, in july 1754, to consider of the best means of defending the king's dominions in america, &c. a war being then apprehended; with the reasons or motives for each article of the plan 3 albany papers continued. i. letter to governor shirley, concerning the imposition of direct taxes upon the colonies, without their consent 30 ii. letter to the same; concerning direct taxes in the colonies imposed without consent, indirect taxes, and the albany plan of union 31 iii. letter to the same, on the subject of uniting the colonies more intimately with great britain, by allowing them representatives in parliament 37 plan for settling two western colonies in north america, with reasons for the plan, 1754 41 report of the committee of aggrievances of the assembly of pensylvania, dated feb. 22, 1757 50 an historical review of the constitution and government of pensylvania, from its origin; so far as regards the several points of controversy which have, from time to time, arisen between the several governors of that province, and their several assemblies. founded on authentic documents 59 the interest of great britain considered, with regard to her colonies, and the acquisitions of canada and guadaloupe 89 remarks and facts relative to the american paper-money 144 to the freemen of pensylvania, on the subject of a particular militia-bill, rejected by the proprietor's deputy or governor 157 preface by a member of the pensylvanian assembly (dr. franklin) to the speech of joseph galloway, esq. one of the members for philadelphia county; in answer to the speech of john dickinson, esq. delivered in the house of the assembly of the province of pensylvania, may 24, 1764, on occasion of a petition drawn up by order, and then under the consideration of the house, praying his majesty for a royal, in lieu of a proprietary government 163 remarks on a late protest against the appointment of mr. franklin as agent for this province (of pensylvania) 203 remarks on a plan for the future management of indian affairs 216 papers on american subjects during the revolutionary troubles. causes of the american discontents before 1768 225 letter concerning the gratitude of america, and the probability and effects of an union with great britain; and concerning the repeal or suspension of the stamp act 239 letter from governor pownall to dr. franklin, concerning an equal communication of rights, privileges, &c. to america by great britain 243 minutes to the foregoing, by dr. franklin 244 the examination of dr. franklin before the english house of commons, in february, 1766, relative to the repeal of the american stamp act 245 attempts of dr. franklin for conciliation of great britain with the colonies 286 queries from mr. strahan 287 answer to the preceding queries 290 state of the constitution of the colonies, by governor pownall; with remarks by dr. franklin 299 concerning the dissentions between england and america 310 a prussian edict, assuming claims over britain 311 preface by the british editor (dr. franklin) to "the votes and proceedings of the freeholders, and other inhabitants of the town of boston, in town-meeting assembled according to law (published by order of the town), &c." 317 account of governor hutchinson's letters 322 rules for reducing a great empire to a small one, presented to a late minister, when he entered upon his administration 334 state of america on dr. franklin's arrival there 346 proposed vindication and offer from congress to parliament, in 1775 347 reprobation of mr. strahan's parliamentary conduct 354 conciliation hopeless from the conduct of great britain to america 355 account of the first campaign made by the british forces in america 357 probability of a separation 358 letter to monsieur dumas, urging him to sound the several courts of europe, by means of their ambassadors at the hague, as to any assistance they may be disposed to afford america in her struggle for independence 360 letter from lord howe to dr. franklin 365 dr. franklin's answer to lord howe 367 comparison of great britain and america as to credit, in 1777 372 papers, descriptive of america, or relating to that country, written subsequent to the revolution. remarks concerning the savages of north america 383 the internal state of america; being a true description of the interest and policy of that vast continent 391 information to those who would remove to america 398 concerning new settlements in america 409 a comparison of the conduct of the ancient jews, and of the antifederalists in the united states of america 410 final speech of dr. franklin in the late federal convention 416 papers on moral subjects and the economy of life. the busy-body 421 the way to wealth, as clearly shown in the preface of an old pensylvania almanack, intitled, poor richard improved 453 advice to a young tradesman 463 necessary hints to those that would be rich 466 the way to make money plenty in every man's pocket 467 new mode of lending money 468 an economical project 469 on early marriages 475 effect of early impressions on the mind 478 the whistle 480 a petition to those who have the superintendency of education 483 the handsome and deformed leg 485 morals of chess 488 the art of procuring pleasant dreams 493 dialogue between franklin and the gout 499 on the death of relatives 507 the ephemera an emblem of human life 508 appendix, no. i.--containing papers proper for insertion, but omitted in the preceding volumes. letter to sir hans sloane 513 letter to michael collinson, esq. 514 letter respecting captain cook 515 an address to the public, from the pensylvania society for promoting the abolition of slavery, and the relief of free negroes, unlawfully held in bondage 517 plan for improving the condition of the free blacks 519 paper: a poem 523 plain truth; or, serious considerations on the present state of the city of philadelphia, and province of pensylvania 524 four letters to mr. whetley 543* appendix, no. ii.--containing letters by several eminent persons, illustrative of dr. franklin's manners and character. letter from the late dr. price to a gentleman in america 543 letter from mr. thomas jefferson to the late dr. william smith, of philadelphia 545 letter from the late dr. joseph priestly 547 _errata._ _page._ _line._ 24 8 from the bottom: for day, read lay. 39 6, for iuppose, read suppose. 60 5 from the bottom: for cruger, read stuber. 449 7 from the bottom: for pleiads, read pleiades. papers on american subjects before the _revolutionary troubles_. [_the papers under the present head, of american politics before the troubles, in the volume of dr. franklin's works, printed for johnson in 1799, from which they are nearly all taken, were divided into two parts, as if distinct from each other, viz. papers on american subjects before the troubles; and papers on subjects of provincial politics. as we can see no grounds for this distinction, we have brought them together, and have placed them in the order of their dates, conceiving such to be the natural order of papers furnishing materials for history._] papers on american subjects, before the _revolutionary troubles_. albany papers. _containing_, i. _reasons and motives on which the_ plan _of_ union _for the_ colonies _was formed_;--ii. _reasons against partial unions_;--iii. _and the plan of union drawn by b. f. and unanimously agreed to by the commissioners from new hampshire, massachusett's bay, rhode island, new jersey, maryland, and pensylvania[1], met in congress at albany, in july 1754, to consider of the best means of defending the king's dominions in america, &c. a war being then apprehended; with the reasons or motives for each article of the plan._ b. f. was one of the four commissioners from pensylvania[2]. i. _reasons and motives on which the plan of union was formed._ the commissioners from a number of the northern colonies being met at albany, and considering the difficulties that have always attended the most necessary general measures for the common defence, or for the annoyance of the enemy, when they were to be carried through the several particular assemblies of all the colonies; some assemblies being before at variance with their governors or councils, and the several branches of the government not on terms of doing business with each other; others taking the opportunity, when their concurrence is wanted, to push for favourite laws, powers, or points, that they think could not at other times be obtained, and so creating disputes and quarrels; one assembly waiting to see what another will do, being afraid of doing more than its share, or desirous of doing less; or refusing to do any thing, because its country is not at present so much exposed as others, or because another will reap more immediate advantage; from one or other of which causes, the assemblies of six (out of seven) colonies applied to, had granted no assistance to virginia, when lately invaded by the french, though purposely convened, and the importance of the occasion earnestly urged upon them; considering moreover, that one principal encouragement to the french, in invading and insulting the british american dominions, was their knowledge of our disunited state, and of our weakness arising from such want of union; and that from hence different colonies were, at different times, extremely harassed, and put to great expence both of blood and treasure, who would have remained in peace, if the enemy had had cause to fear the drawing on themselves the resentment and power of the whole; the said commissioners, considering also the present incroachments of the french, and the mischievous consequences that may be expected from them, if not opposed with our force, came to an unanimous resolution,--_that an union of the colonies is absolutely necessary for their preservation_. the manner of forming and establishing this union was the next point. when it was considered, that the colonies were seldom all in equal danger at the same time, or equally near the danger, or equally sensible of it; that some of them had particular interests to manage, with which an union might interfere; and that they were extremely jealous of each other; it was thought impracticable to obtain a joint agreement of all the colonies to an union, in which the expence and burthen of defending any of them should be divided among them all; and if ever acts of assembly in all the colonies could be obtained for that purpose, yet as any colony, on the least dissatisfaction, might repeal its own act and thereby withdraw itself from the union, it would not be a stable one, or such as could be depended on: for if only one colony should, on any disgust withdraw itself, others might think it unjust and unequal that they, by continuing in the union, should be at the expence of defending a colony, which refused to bear its proportionable part, and would therefore one after another, withdraw, till the whole crumbled into its original parts. therefore the commissioners came to another previous resolution, viz. _that it was necessary the union should be established by act of parliament_. they then proceeded to sketch out a _plan of union_, which they did in a plain and concise manner, just sufficient to show their sentiments of the kind of union that would best suit the circumstances of the colonies, be most agreeable to the people, and most effectually promote his majesty's service and the general interest of the british empire. this was respectfully sent to the assemblies of the several colonies for their consideration, and to receive such alterations and improvements as they should think fit and necessary; after which it was proposed to be transmitted to england to be perfected, and the establishment of it there humbly solicited. this was as much as the commissioners could do[3]. * * * * * ii. _reasons against partial unions._ it was proposed by some of the commissioners, to form the colonies into two or three distinct unions; but for these reasons that proposal was dropped even by those that made it: [viz.] 1. in all cases where the strength of the whole was necessary to be used against the enemy, there would be the same difficulty in degree, to bring the several unions to unite together, as now the several colonies; and consequently the same delays on our part and advantage to the enemy. 2. each union would separately be weaker than when joined by the whole, obliged to exert more force, be oppressed by the expence, and the enemy less deterred from attacking it. 3. where particular colonies have _selfish views_, as new york with regard to indian trade and lands; or are less exposed, being covered by others, as new jersey, rhode island, connecticut, maryland; or have particular whims and prejudices against warlike measures in general, as pensylvania, where the quakers predominate; such colonies would have more weight in a partial union, and be better able to oppose and obstruct the measures necessary for the general good, than where they are swallowed up in the general union. 4. the indian trade would be better regulated by the union of the whole than by partial unions. and as canada is chiefly supported by that trade, if it could be drawn into the hands of the english (as it might be if the indians were supplied on moderate terms, and by honest traders appointed by and acting for the public) that alone would contribute greatly to the weakening of our enemies. 5. the establishing of new colonies westward on the ohio and the lakes (a matter of considerable importance to the increase of british trade and power, to the breaking that of the french, and to the protection and security of our present colonies,) would best be carried on by a joint union. 6. it was also thought, that by the frequent meetings-together of commissioners or representatives from all the colonies, the circumstances of the whole would be better known, and the good of the whole better provided for; and that the colonies would by this connection learn to consider themselves, not as so many independent states, but as members of the same body; and thence be more ready to afford assistance and support to each other, and to make diversions in favour even of the most distant, and to join cordially in any expedition for the benefit of all against the common enemy. these were the principal reasons and motives for forming the plan of union as it stands. to which may be added this, that as the union of the ******* the remainder of this article is lost. iii. _plan of a proposed union of the several colonies of massachusett's bay, new hampshire, connecticut, rhode island, new york, new jersey, pensylvania, maryland, virginia, north carolina, and south carolina, for their mutual defence and security, and for extending the british settlements in north america, with the reasons and motives for each article of the plan [as far as could be remembered.]_ it is proposed--that humble application be made for an act of parliament of great britain, by virtue of which one general government may be formed in america, including all the said colonies, within and under which government each colony may retain its present constitution, except in the particulars wherein a change may be directed by the said act, as hereafter follows[4]. president general, and grand council. _that the said general government be administered by a president general, to be appointed and supported by the crown; and a grand council, to be chosen by the representatives of the people of the several colonies met in their respective assemblies._ it was thought that it would be best the president general should be supported as well as appointed by the crown; that so all disputes between him and the grand council concerning his salary might be prevented; as such disputes have been frequently of mischievous consequence in particular colonies, especially in time of public danger. the quit-rents of crown-lands in america might in a short time be sufficient for this purpose.--the choice of members for the grand council is placed in the house of representatives of each government, in order to give the people a share in this new general government, as the crown has its share by the appointment of the president-general. but it being proposed by the gentlemen of the council of new york, and some other counsellors among the commissioners, to alter the plan in this particular, and to give the governors and council of the several provinces a share in the choice of the grand council, or at least a power of approving and confirming or of disallowing the choice made by the house of representatives, it was said: "that the government or constitution proposed to be formed by the plan, consists of two branches; a president general appointed by the crown, and a council chosen by the people, or by the people's representatives, which is the same thing. "that by a subsequent article, the council chosen by the people can effect nothing without the consent of the president general appointed by the crown; the crown possesses therefore full one half of the power of this constitution. "that in the british constitution, the crown is supposed to possess but one third, the lords having their share. "that this constitution seemed rather more favorable for the crown. "that it is essential, to english liberty, [that] the subject should not be taxed but by his own consent, or the consent of his elected representatives. "that taxes to be laid and levied by this proposed constitution will be proposed and agreed to by the representatives of the people, if the plan in this particular be preserved: "but if the proposed alteration should take place, it seemed as if matters may be so managed, as that the crown shall finally have the appointment not only of the president general, but of a majority of the grand council; for seven out of eleven governors and councils are appointed by the crown: "and so the people in all the colonies would in effect be taxed by their governors. "it was therefore apprehended, that such alterations of the plan would give great dissatisfaction, and that the colonies could not be easy under such a power in governors, and such an infringement of what they take to be english liberty. "besides, the giving a share in the choice of the grand council would not be equal with respect to all the colonies, as their constitutions differ. in some, both governor and council are appointed by the crown. in others, they are both appointed by the proprietors. in some, the people have a share in the choice of the council; in others, both government and council are wholly chosen by the people. but the house of representatives is every where chosen by the people; and therefore, placing the right of choosing the grand council in the representatives is equal with respect to all. "that the grand council is intended to represent all the several houses of representatives of the colonies, as a house of representatives doth the several towns or counties of a colony. could all the people of a colony be consulted and unite in public measures, a house of representatives would be needless: and could all the assemblies conveniently consult and unite in general measures, the grand council would be unnecessary. "that a house of commons or the house of representatives, and the grand council, are thus alike in their nature and intention. and as it would seem improper that the king or house of lords should have a power of disallowing or appointing members of the house of commons;--so likewise, that a governor and council appointed by the crown should have a power of disallowing or appointing members of the grand council (who, in this constitution, are to be the representatives of the people.) "if the governors and councils therefore were to have a share in the choice of any that are to conduct this general government, it should seem more proper that they chose the president-general. but this being an office of great trust and importance to the nation, it was thought better to be filled by the immediate appointment of the crown. "the power proposed to be given by the plan to the grand council is only a concentration of the powers of the several assemblies in certain points for the general welfare; as the power of the president general, is of the powers of the several governors in the same points. "and as the choice therefore of the grand council by the representatives of the people, neither gives the people any new powers, nor diminishes the power of the crown, it was thought and hoped the crown would not disapprove of it." upon the whole, the commissioners were of opinion, that the choice was most properly placed in the representatives of the people. election of members. _that within [___] months after the passing such act, the house of representatives, that happen to be sitting within that time, or that shall be especially for that purpose convened, may and shall choose members for the grand council, in the following proportion, that is to say,_ massachussett's bay 7 new hampshire 2 connecticut 5 rhode island 2 new york 4 new jerseys 3 pennsylvania 6 maryland 4 virginia 7 north carolina 4 south carolina 4 --- 48 it was thought, that if the least colony was allowed two, and the others in proportion, the number would be very great and the expence heavy; and that less than two would not be convenient, as a single person, being by any accident prevented appearing at the meeting, the colony he ought to appear for would not be represented. that as the choice was not immediately popular, they would be generally men of good abilities for business, and men of reputation for integrity; and that forty-eight such men might be a number sufficient. but, though it was thought reasonable, that each colony should have a share in the representative body in some degree, according to the proportion it contributed to the general treasury: yet the proportion of wealth or power of the colonies is not to be judged by the proportion here fixed; because it was at first agreed, that the greatest colony should not have more than seven members, nor the least less than two: and the settling these proportions between these two extremes was not nicely attended to, as it would find itself, after the first election from the sums brought into the treasury, as by a subsequent article. place of first meeting. --_who shall meet for the first time at the city of philadelphia pensylvania, being called by the president-general as soon as conveniently may be after his appointment._ philadelphia was named as being the nearer the centre of the colonies, where the commissioners would be well and cheaply accommodated. the high-roads, through the whole extent, are for the most part very good, in which forty or fifty miles a day may very well be and frequently are travelled. great part of the way may likewise he gone by water. in summer time, the passages are frequently performed in a week from charles town to philadelphia and new york; and from rhode island to new york through the sound, in two or three days; and from new york to philadelphia, by water and land, in two days, by stage boats and wheel-carriages that set out every other day. the journey from charles town to philadelphia may likewise be facilitated by boats running up chesapeak bay three hundred miles. but if the whole journey be performed on horseback, the most distant members (viz. the two from new hampshire and from south carolina) may probably render themselves at philadelphia in fifteen or twenty days; the majority may be there in much less time. new election. _that there shall be a new election of the members of the grand council every three years; and on the death or resignation of any member, his place shall be supplied by a new choice at the next silting of the assembly of the colony he represented._ some colonies have annual assemblies, some continue during a governor's pleasure; three years was thought a reasonable medium, as affording a new member time to improve himself in the business, and to act after such improvement; and yet giving opportunities, frequent enough, to change him, if he has misbehaved. proportion of members after the first three years. _that after the first three years, when the proportion of money arising out of each colony to the general treasury can be known, the number of members to be chosen for each colony shall from time to time, in all ensuing elections, be regulated by that proportion (yet so as that the number to be chosen by any one province be not more than seven, nor less than two.)_ by a subsequent article it is proposed, that the general council shall lay and levy such general duties, as to them may appear most equal and least burthensome, &c. suppose, for instance, they lay a small duty or excise on some commodity imported into or made in the colonies, and pretty generally and equally used in all of them; as rum perhaps, or wine; the yearly produce of this duty or excise, if fairly collected, would be in some colonies greater, in others less, as the colonies are greater or smaller. when the collector's accounts are brought in, the proportions will appear; and from them it is proposed to regulate the proportion of representatives to be chosen at the next general election, within the limits however of seven and two. these numbers may therefore vary in course of years, as the colonies may in the growth and increase of people. and thus the quota of tax from each colony would naturally vary with its circumstances; thereby preventing all disputes and dissatisfactions about the just proportions due from each; which might otherwise produce pernicious consequences, and destroy the harmony and good agreement that ought to subsist between the several parts of the union. meetings of the grand council, and call. _that the grand council shall meet once in every year, and oftener if occasion require, at such time and place as they shall adjourn to at the last preceding meeting, or as they shall be called to meet at by the president general on any emergency; he having first obtained in writing the consent of seven of the members to such call, and sent due and timely notice to the whole._ it was thought, in establishing and governing new colonies or settlements, regulating indian trade, indian treaties, &c. there would be every year sufficient business arise to require at least one meeting, and at such meeting many things might be suggested for the benefit of all the colonies. this annual meeting may either be at a time or place certain, to be fixed by the president general and grand council at their first meeting; or left at liberty, to be at such time and place as they shall adjourn to, or be called to meet at by the president general. in time of war it seems convenient, that the meeting should be in that colony, which is nearest the seat of action. the power of calling them on any emergency seemed necessary to be vested in the president general; but that such power might not be wantonly used to harass the members, and oblige them to make frequent long journies to little purpose, the consent of seven at least to such call was supposed a convenient guard. continuance. _that the grand council have power to choose their speaker; and shall neither be dissolved, prorogued, nor continued sitting longer than six weeks at one time, without their own consent or the special command of the crown._ the speaker should be presented for approbation; it being convenient, to prevent misunderstandings and disgusts, that the mouth of the council should be a person agreeable, if possible, both to the council and president general. governors have sometimes wantonly exercised the power of proroguing or continuing the sessions of assemblies, merely to harass the members and compel a compliance; and sometimes dissolve them on slight disgusts. this it was feared might be done by the president general, if not provided against: and the inconvenience and hardship would be greater in the general government than in particular colonies, in proportion to the distance the members must be from home, during sittings, and the long journies some of them must necessarily take. members' allowance. _that the members of the grand council shall be allowed for their service ten shillings sterling per diem, during their session and journey to and from the place of meeting; twenty miles to be reckoned a day's journey._ it was thought proper to allow _some_ wages, lest the expence might deter some suitable persons from the service;--and not to allow _too great_ wages, lest unsuitable persons should be tempted to cabal for the employment, for the sake of gain. twenty miles was set down as a day's journey, to allow for accidental hinderances on the road, and the greater expences of travelling than residing at the place of meeting. assent of president general and his duty. _that the assent of the president general be requisite to all acts of the grand council; and that it be his office and duty to cause them to be carried into execution._ the assent of the president general, to all acts of the grand council was made necessary, in order to give the crown its due share of influence in this government, and connect it with that of great britain. the president general, besides one half of the legislative power, hath in his hands the whole executive power. power of president general and grand council. treaties of peace and war. _that the president general, with the advice of the grand council, hold or direct all indian treaties in which the general interest of the colonies may be concerned; and make peace or declare war with indian nations._ the power of making peace or war with indian nations is at present supposed to be in every colony, and is expressly granted to some by charter, so that no new power is hereby intended to be granted to the colonies. but as, in consequence of this power, one colony might make peace with a nation that another was justly engaged in war with; or make war on slight occasions without the concurrence or approbation of neighbouring colonies, greatly endangered by it; or make particular treaties of neutrality in case of a general war, to their own private advantage in trade, by supplying the common enemy; of all which there have been instances--it was thought better, to have all treaties of a general nature under a general direction; that so the good of the whole may be consulted and provided for. indian trade. _that they make such laws as they judge necessary for regulating all indian trade._ many quarrels and wars have arisen between the colonies and indian nations, through the bad conduct of traders, who cheat the indians after making them drunk, &c. to the great expence of the colonies both in blood and treasure. particular colonies are so interested in the trade as not to be willing to admit such a regulation as might be best for the whole; and therefore it was thought best under a general direction. indian purchases. _that they make all purchases, from indians for the crown, of lands not now within the bounds of particular colonies, or that shall not be within their bounds when some of them are reduced to more convenient dimensions._ purchases from the indians, made by private persons, have been attended with many inconveniences. they have frequently interfered, and occasioned uncertainty of titles, many disputes and expensive law-suits, and hindered the settlement of the land so disputed. then the indians have been cheated by such private purchases, and discontent and wars have been the consequence. these would be prevented by public fair purchases. several of the colony charters in america extend their bounds to the south sea, which may be perhaps three or four thousand miles in length to one or two hundred miles in breadth. it is supposed they must in time be reduced to dimensions more convenient for the common purposes of government[5]. very little of the land in those grants is yet purchased of the indians. it is much cheaper to purchase of them, than to take and maintain the possession by force: for they are generally very reasonable in their demands for land[6]; and the expence of guarding a large frontier against their incursions is vastly great; because all must be guarded, and always guarded, as we know not where or when _to expect them_[7]. new settlements. _that they make new settlements on such purchases, by granting lands in the king's name, reserving a quit-rent to the crown for the use of the general treasury._ it is supposed better that there should be one purchaser than many; and that the crown should be that purchaser, or the union in the name of the crown. by this means the bargains may be more easily made, the price not inhanced by numerous bidders, future disputes about private indian purchases, and monopolies of vast tracts to particular persons (which are prejudicial to the settlement and peopling of country) prevented; and the land being again granted in small tracts to the settlers, the quit-rents reserved may in time become a fund for support of government, for defence of the country, ease of taxes, &c. strong forts on the lakes, the ohio, &c. may, at the same time they secure our present frontiers, serve to defend new colonies settled under their protection; and such colonies would also mutually defend and support such forts, and better secure the friendship of the far indians. a particular colony has scarce strength enough to extend itself by new settlements, at so great a distance from the old: but the joint force of the union might suddenly establish a new colony or two in those parts, or extend an old colony to particular passes, greatly to the security of our present frontiers, increase of trade and people, breaking off the french communication between canada and louisiana, and speedy settlement of the intermediate lands. the power of settling new colonies is therefore thought a valuable part of the plan, and what cannot so well be executed by two unions as by one. laws to govern them. _that they make laws for regulating and governing such new settlements, till the crown shall think fit to form them into particular governments._ the making of laws suitable for the new colonies, it was thought, would be properly vested in the president general and grand council; under whose protection they will at first necessarily be, and who would be well acquainted with their circumstances, as having settled them. when they are become sufficiently populous, they may by the crown be formed into complete and distinct governments. the appointment of a sub-president by the crown, to take place in case of the death or absence of the president general, would perhaps be an improvement of the plan; and if all the governors of particular provinces were to be formed into a standing council of state, for the advice and assistance of the president general, it might be another considerable improvement. raise soldiers and equip vessels, &c. _that they raise and pay soldiers and build forts for the defence of any of the colonies, and equip vessels of force to guard the coasts and protect the trade on the ocean, lakes[8], or great rivers; but they shall not impress men in any colony, without the consent of the legislature._ it was thought, that quotas of men, to be raised and paid by the several colonies, and joined for any public service, could not always be got together with the necessary expedition. for instance, suppose one thousand men should be wanted in new hampshire on any emergency; to fetch them by fifties and hundreds out of every colony, as far as south carolina, would be inconvenient, the transportation chargeable and the occasion perhaps passed before they could be assembled; and therefore, that it would be best to raise them (by offering bounty-money and pay) near the place where they would be wanted, to be discharged again when the service should be over. particular colonies are at present backward to build forts at their own expence, which they say will be equally useful to their neighbouring colonies; who refuse to join, on a presumption that such forts _will_ be built and kept up, though they contribute nothing. this unjust conduct weakens the whole; but the forts being for the good of the whole, it was thought best they should be built and maintained by the whole, out of the common treasury. in the time of war, small vessels of force are sometimes necessary in the colonies to scour the coast of small privateers. these being provided by the union will be an advantage in turn to the colonies which are situated on the sea, and whose frontiers on the land-side, being covered by other colonies, reap but little immediate benefit from the advanced forts. power to make laws, lay duties, &c. _that for these purposes they have power to make laws, and lay and levy such general duties, imports, or taxes, as to them shall appear most equal and just (considering the ability and other circumstances of the inhabitants in the several colonies,) and such as may be collected with the least inconvenience to the people; rather discouraging luxury, than loading industry with unnecessary burthens._ the laws which the president general and grand council are impowered to make _are such only_ as shall be necessary for the government of the settlements; the raising, regulating, and paying soldiers for the general service; the regulating of indian trade; and laying and collecting the general duties and taxes. (they should also have a power to restrain the exportation of provisions to the enemy from any of the colonies, on particular occasions, in time of war.) but is it not intended that they may interfere with the constitution and government of the particular colonies; who are to be left to their own laws, and to lay, levy, and apply their own taxes as before. general treasurer and particular treasurer. _that they may appoint a general treasurer and particular treasurer in each government when necessary; and from time to time may order the sums in the treasuries of each government into the general treasury; or draw on them for special payments, as they find most convenient._ the treasurers here meant are only for the general funds, and not for the particular funds of each colony, which remain in the hands of their own treasurers at their own disposal. money how to issue. _yet no money to issue but by joint orders of the president general and grand council; except where sums have been appropriated to particular purposes, and the president general is previously impowered by an act to draw for such sums._ to prevent misapplication of the money, or even application that might be dissatisfactory to the crown or the people, it was thought necessary, to join the president general and grand council in all issues of money. accounts. _that the general accounts shall be yearly settled and reported to the several assemblies._ by communicating the accounts yearly to each assembly, they will be satisfied of the prudent and honest conduct of their representatives in the grand council. quorum. _that a quorum of the grand council, impowered to act with the president general, do consist of twenty-five members; among whom there shall be one or more from a majority of the colonies._ the quorum seems large, but it was thought it would not be satisfactory to the colonies in general, to have matters of importance to the whole transacted by a smaller number, or even by this number of twenty-five, unless there were among them one at least from a majority of the colonies; because otherwise, the whole quorum being made up of members from three or four colonies at one end of the union, something might be done that would not be equal with respect to the rest, and thence dissatisfactions and discords might rise to the prejudice of the whole. laws to be transmitted. _that the laws made by them for the purposes aforesaid shall not be repugnant, but, as near as may be, agreeable to the laws of england, and shall be transmitted to the king in council for approbation as soon as may be after their passing; and if not disapproved within three years after presentation, to remain in force._ this was thought necessary for the satisfaction of the crown, to preserve the connection of the parts of the british empire with the whole, of the members with the head, and to induce greater care and circumspection in making of the laws, that they be good in themselves and for the general benefit. death of the president general. _that in case of the death of the president general, the speaker of the grand council for the time being shall succeed, and be vested with the same powers and authorities, to continue till the king's pleasure be known._ it might be better, perhaps, as was said before, if the crown appointed a vice president, to take place on the death or absence of the president general; for so we should be more sure of a suitable person at the head of the colonies. on the death or absence of both, the speaker to take place (or rather the eldest king's-governor) till his majesty's pleasure be known. officers how appointed. _that all military commission officers, whether for land or sea-service, to act under this general constitution, shall be nominated by the president general; but the approbation of the grand council is to be obtained, before they receive their commissions. and all civil officers are to be nominated by the grand council, and to receive the president general's approbation before they officiate._ it was thought it might be very prejudicial to the service, to have officers appointed unknown to the people, or unacceptable, the generality of americans serving willingly under officers they know: and not caring to engage in the service under strangers, or such as are often appointed by governors through favour or interest. the service here meant, is not the stated settled service in standing troops; but any sudden and short service, either for defence of our own colonies, or invading the enemies country; (such as, the expedition to cape breton in the last war; in which many substantial farmers and tradesmen engaged as common soldiers under officers of their own country, for whom they had an esteem and affection; who would not have engaged in a standing army, or under officers from england.)--it was therefore thought best, to give the council the power of approving the officers, which the people will look upon as a great security of their being good men. and without some such provision as this, it was thought the expence of engaging men in the service on any emergency would be much greater, and the number who could be induced to engage much less; and that therefore it would be most for the king's service and general benefit of the nation, that the prerogative should relax a little in this particular throughout all the colonies in america; as it had already done much more in the charters of some particular colonies, viz. connecticut and rhode island. the civil officers will be chiefly treasurers and collectors of taxes; and the suitable persons are most likely to be known by the council. vacancies how supplied. _but in case of vacancy by death, or removal of any officer civil or military under this constitution, the governor of the province in which such vacancy happens may appoint, till the pleasure of the president general and grand council can be known._ the vacancies were thought best supplied by the governors in each province, till a new appointment can be regularly made; otherwise the service might suffer before the meeting of the president general and grand council. each colony may defend itself on emergency, &c. _that the particular military as well as civil establishments in each colony remain in their present state, the general constitution notwithstanding; and that on sudden emergencies any colony may defend itself, and lay the accounts of expence thence arising before the president general and general council, who may allow and order payment of the same, as far as they judge such accounts just and reasonable._ otherwise the union of the whole would weaken the parts, contrary to the design of the union. the accounts are to be judged of by the president general and grand council, and allowed if found reasonable: this was thought necessary to encourage colonies to defend themselves, as the expence would be light when borne by the whole; and also to check imprudent and lavish expence in such defences.[9] footnotes: [1] the reader must be informed here, that this plan was intended for all the colonies; but, commissioners from some of them not attending (from causes which i cannot specify) their consent to it was not, in this respect, universally expressed. governor pownall, however, says, "that he had an opportunity of conversing with, and knowing the sentiments of the commissioners appointed by their respective provinces, to attend this congress, to which they were called by the crown; of learning from their experience and judgment, the actual state of the american business and interest; and of hearing amongst them, the grounds and reasons of that american union, which they then had under deliberation, and transmitted the plan of to england;" and he adds, in another place, "that the sentiments of our colonies were collected in an authentic manner on this subject in the plan proposed by dr. franklin, and unanimously agreed to in congress." see governor pownall's administration of the british colonies. vol. i. p. 13. edit. 4, 1774, and vol. ii. p. 86. b. v. [2] "mr. [since governor] hutchinson was one of the commissioners for massachusetts bay." governor pownall as above, vol. ii. p. 144. "thomas pownall, esq.; brother to john pownall, esq.; one of the secretaries to the board of trade, and afterwards governor of the massachusetts, was upon the spot." history of the british empire in north america, p. 25. b. v. [3] dr. davenant was so well convinced of the expediency of an union of the colonies, that he recites, at full length, a plan contrived, as he says, with good judgment for the purpose. davenant, vol. i. p. 40, 41, of sir c. whitworth's edition. b. v. [4] the reader may perceive, by the difference of the type, which is the text of the plan, and which the _reasons and motives_ mentioned in the title. they are thus consolidated for his convenience. the editor has taken one or two farther liberties in _transposing_ these albany papers; but the sense remains as before. b. v. [5] mr. baron m----, in page 200 of his account of the proceedings at quebec, for obtaining an assembly, has the following hint: "the vast enlargement of the province of quebec by adding to it a new territory that contains, according to lord hillsborough's estimation, of it, five hundred and eleven millions of acres (that is, more land than spain, italy, france, and germany put together, and most of it good land) is a measure that would require an ample discussion."----that the reader may not suspect that these dimensions were convenient for uncommon purposes of government, i shall quote the motives assigned upon this occasion by the act regulating the government of quebec. "by the arrangements made by the royal proclamation, a very large extent of [outlying] country, within which there were several colonies and settlements of the subjects of france, who claimed to remain therein under the faith of the said treaty, was left without any provision being made for the administration of civil government therein:" _i. e._ a few indian traders were a pretext for this appropriation of a tract of country, which, according to the minister's estimate, was more than thirteen times larger than england and wales united, nearly one hundred and twenty eight times larger than jamaica, almost one-eighth part of europe, and considerably more than one-thirty-eighth part of the whole habitable earth (comparing it with the several calculations in the political survey of great britain, by dr. campbell, and in that of jamaica, by mr. long.) "now _all_ the inhabitants of the province of quebec," says this very act, "amounted at the conquest to above sixty-five thousand [only,] professing the religion of the church of rome, and enjoying an established form of constitution and system of laws." b.v. [6] "dr. franklin (says mr. kalm the swede,) and several other gentlemen, frequently told me, that a powerful indian, who possessed rhode island, had sold it to the english for a pair of spectacles: it is large enough for a prince's domain, and makes a peculiar government at present. this indian knew how to set a true value upon a pair of spectacles: for undoubtedly if those glasses were not so plentiful, and only a few of them could be found, they would, on account of their great use, bear the same price with diamonds." see kalm's travels into north america, vol. i. p. 386, 387. "at the time when the swedes first arrived, they bought land at a very inconsiderable price. for a piece of baize, or a pot full of brandy, or the like, they could get a piece of ground, which at present would be worth more than 290_l._ sterling." ib. vol. ii. p. 118.--the truth is, that the indians considered their lands as mere _hunting-manors_, and not as farms. b. v. [7] to guard against the incursions of the indians, a plan was sent over to america (and, as i think, by authority) suggesting the expediency of clearing away the woods and bushes from a tract of land, a mile in breadth, and extending along the back of the colonies. unfortunately, besides the large expence of this undertaking (which, if one acre cost 2_l._ sterling, and six hundred and forty acres make a square mile, is 128,000_l._ _first cost_ for every 100 miles) it was forgotten, that the indians, like other people, knew the difference between day and night, and that a mile of advance and another of retreat were nothing to the celerity of such an enemy.--this plan, it is said, was the work of dean tucker; and possibly might contain many other particulars. the plans of doctor franklin and governor pownall appear much more feasible. b. v. [8] "according to a plan which had been proposed by governor pownall, and approved of by congress."--administration of the colonies, vol. ii. p. 143. b. v. [9] this plan of union, it will appear from the next page, was rejected; and another proposed to be substituted by the english minister, which had for its chief object, the taking power from the _people_ in the colonies in order to give it to the _crown_. b. v. albany papers continued. i. letter _to governor shirley, concerning the imposition of direct taxes upon the colonies, without their consent_.[10] _tuesday morning._ sir, i return you the loose sheets of the plan, with thanks to your excellency for communicating them. i apprehend, that excluding the people of the colonies from all share in the choice of the grand council will give extreme dissatisfaction; as well as the taxing them by act of parliament, where they have no representation. it is very possible, that this general government might be as well and faithfully administered without the people, as with them; but where heavy burdens are to be laid upon them, it has been found useful, to make it as much as possible their own act; for they bear better, when they have, or think they have, some share in the direction; and when any public measures are generally grievous, or even distasteful, to the people, the wheels of government move more heavily. footnote: [10] these letters to governor shirley first appeared in the london chronicle for feb. 6-8, 1766, with an introduction signed _a lover of britain_. in the beginning of the year 1776, they were republished in almon's remembrancer, with an additional prefatory piece, under the signature of _a mourner over our calamities_.--i shall explain the subject of them in the words of one of these writers. "the albany plan of union was sent to the government here for approbation: had it been approved and established by authority from hence, english america thought itself sufficiently able to cope with the french, without other assistance; several of the colonies having alone, in former wars, withstood the whole power of the enemy, unassisted not only by the mother-country, but by any of the neighbouring provinces.--the plan, however, was not approved here; but a _new one_ was formed instead of it; by which it was proposed, that 'the governors of all the colonies, attended by one or two members of their respective councils, should assemble, and concert measures for the defence of the whole, erect forts where they judged proper, and raise what troops they thought necessary, with power to draw on the treasury here for the sums that should be wanted, and the treasury to be reimbursed by a _tax laid on the colonies by act of parliament_.'--this _new plan_ being communicated by governor shirley to a gentleman of philadelphia (dr. franklin) then in boston (who hath very eminently distinguished himself, before and since that time, in the literary world, and whose judgment, penetration, and candor, as well as his readiness and ability to suggest, forward, or carry into execution, every scheme of public utility, hath most deservedly endeared him, not only to our fellow-subjects throughout the continent of north america, but to his numberless friends on this side the atlantic) occasioned the following remarks from him, which perhaps may contribute in some degree to its being laid aside. as they very particularly show the then sentiments of the americans on the subject of a parliamentary tax, before the french power in that country was subjected, and before the late restraints on their commerce; they satisfy me, and i hope they will convince your readers (contrary to what has been advanced by some of your correspondents) that those particulars have had no share in producing the present opposition to such a tax, nor in disturbances occasioned by it, which these papers indeed do almost prophetically foretel. for this purpose, having accidentally fallen into my hands, they are communicated to you by one who is, not _partially_, but in the _most enlarged sense_, "a lover of britain." b. v. ii. letter _to the same; concerning direct taxes in the colonies imposed without consent, indirect taxes, and the albany plan of union_. _wednesday morning._ sir, i mentioned it yesterday to your excellency as my opinion, that excluding the people of the colonies from all share in the choice of the grand council would probably give extreme dissatisfaction, as well as the taxing them by act of parliament, where they have no representation. in matters of general concern to the people, and especially where burdens are to be laid upon them; it is of use to consider, as well what they will be apt to think and say, as what they ought to think: i shall therefore, as your excellency requires it of me, briefly mention what of either kind occurs to me on this occasion. first, they will say, and perhaps with justice, that the body of the people in the colonies are as loyal, and as firmly attached to the present constitution, and reigning family, as any subjects in the king's dominions. that there is no reason to doubt the readiness and willingness of the representatives they may choose, to grant from time to time such supplies for the defence of the country, as shall be judged necessary, so far as their abilities will allow. that the people in the colonies, who are to feel the immediate mischiefs of invasion and conquest by an enemy, in the loss of their estates, lives, and liberties, are likely to be better judges of the quantity of forces necessary to be raised and maintained, forts to be built and supported, and of their own abilities to bear the expence than the parliament of england, at so great a distance. that governors often come to the colonies merely to make fortunes, with which they intend to return to britain; are not always men of the best abilities or integrity; have many of them no estates here, nor any natural connections with us, that should make them heartily concerned for our welfare; and might possibly be fond of raising and keeping up more forces than necessary, from the profits accruing to themselves, and to make provision for their friends and dependents. that the counsellors in most of the colonies, being appointed by the crown, on the recommendation of governors, are often persons of small estates, frequently dependent on the governors for offices, and therefore too much under influence. that there is therefore great reason to be jealous of a power, in such governors and councils, to raise such sums as they shall judge necessary, by drafts on the lords of the treasury, to be afterwards laid on the colonies by act of parliament, and paid by the people here; since they might abuse it, by projecting useless expeditions, harassing the people, and taking them from their labour to execute such projects, merely to create offices and employments, and gratify their dependents, and divide profits. that the parliament of england is at a great distance, subject to be misinformed and misled by such governors and councils, whose united interests might probably secure them against the effect of any complaint from hence. that it is supposed an undoubted right of englishmen, not to be taxed but by their own consent, given through their representatives: that the colonies have no representatives in parliament. that to propose taxing them by parliament, and refuse them the liberty of choosing a representative council, to meet in the colonies, and consider and judge of the necessity of any general tax, and the quantum, shows a suspicion of their loyalty to the crown, or of their regard for their country, or of their common sense and understanding; which they have not deserved. that compelling the colonies to pay money without their consent, would be rather like raising contributions in an enemy's country, than taxing of englishmen for their own public benefit. that it would be treating them as a conquered people, and not as true british subjects. that a tax laid by the representatives of the colonies might be easily lessened as the occasions should lessen; but, being once laid by parliament under the influence of the representations made by governors, would probably be kept up, and continued for the benefit of governors; to the grievous burthen and discontentment of the colonies, and prevention of their growth and increase. that a power in governors, to march the inhabitants from one end of the british and french colonies to the other, being a country of at least one thousand five hundred miles long, without the approbation or the consent of their representatives first obtained to such expeditions, might be grievous and ruinous to the people, and would put them upon a footing with the subjects of france in canada, that now groan under such oppression from their governor, who for two years past has harrassed them with long and destructive marches to ohio. that if the colonies in a body may be well governed by governors and councils appointed by the crown, without representatives; particular colonies may as well, or better be so governed; a tax may be laid upon them all by act of parliament for support of government; and their assemblies may be dismissed as an useless part of the constitution. that the powers proposed by the albany plan of union, to be vested in a grand council representative of the people, even with regard to military matters, are not so great, as those which the colonies of rhode island and connecticut are entrusted with by their charters, and have never abused; for by this plan, the president general is appointed by the crown, and controls all by his negative; but in those governments, the people choose the governor, and yet allow him no negative. that the british colonies bordering on the french are properly frontiers of the british empire; and the frontiers of an empire are properly defended at the joint expence of the body of the people in such empire:--it would now be thought hard by act of parliament to oblige the cinque ports or sea coasts of britain, to maintain the whole navy, because they are more immediately defended by it, not allowing them at the same time a vote in choosing members of the parliament; and, as the frontiers of america bear the expence of their own defence, it seems hard to allow them no share in voting the money, judging of the necessity and sum, or advising the measures. that besides the taxes necessary for the defence of the frontiers, the colonies pay yearly great sums to the mother-country unnoticed:--for 1. taxes paid in britain by the landholder or artificer must enter into and increase the price of the produce of land and manufactures made of it; and great part of this is paid by consumers in the colonies, who thereby pay a considerable part of the british taxes. 2. we are restrained in our trade with foreign nations; and where we could be supplied with any manufacture cheaper from them, but must buy the same dearer from britain, the difference of price is a clear tax to britain. 3. we are obliged to carry a great part of our produce directly to britain; and where the duties laid upon it lessen its price to the planter, or it sells for less than it would in foreign markets, the difference is a tax paid to britain. 4. some manufactures we could make, but are forbidden, and must take them of british merchants: the whole price is a tax paid to britain. 5. by our greatly encreasing the demand and consumption of british manufactures, their price is considerably raised of late years; the advantage is clear profit to britain, and enables its people better to pay great taxes; and much of it being paid by us, is clear tax to britain. 6. in short, as we are not suffered to regulate our trade, and restrain the importation and consumption of british superfluities (as britain can the consumption of foreign superfluities) our whole wealth centers finally amongst the merchants and inhabitants of britain; and if we make them richer, and enable them better to pay their taxes, it is nearly the same as being taxed ourselves, and equally beneficial to the crown. these kind of secondary taxes, however, we do not complain of, though we have no share in the laying or disposing of them: but to pay immediate heavy taxes, in the laying, appropriation, and disposition of which, we have no part, and which perhaps we may know to be as unnecessary as grievous, must seem hard measure to englishmen, who cannot conceive, that by hazarding their lives and fortunes in subduing and settling new countries, extending the dominion, and increasing the commerce of the mother-nation, they have forfeited the native rights of britons; which they think ought rather to be given to them, as due to such merit, if they had been before in a state of slavery. ---these, and such kinds of things as these, i apprehend, will be thought and said by the people, if the proposed alteration of the albany plan should take place. then the administration of the board of governors and council so appointed, not having the representative body of the people to approve and unite in its measures, and conciliate the minds of the people to them, will probably become suspected and odious; dangerous animosities and feuds will arise between the governors and governed; and every thing go into confusion. perhaps i am too apprehensive in this matter; but having freely given my opinion and reasons, your excellency can judge better than i, whether there be any weight in them, and the shortness of the time allowed me will i hope in some degree excuse the imperfections of this scrawl. with the greatest respect and fidelity, i have the honour to be your excellency's most obedient, and most humble servant, b. franklin. iii. letter _to the same, on the subject of uniting the colonies more intimately with great britain, by allowing them representatives in parliament_. _boston, dec. 22, 1754._ sir, since the conversation your excellency was pleased to honour me with, on the subject of _uniting the colonies_ more intimately with great britain, by allowing them _representatives in parliament_, i have something further considered that matter, and am of opinion, that such an union would be very acceptable to the colonies, provided they had a reasonable number of representatives allowed them; and that all the old acts of parliament restraining the trade or cramping the manufactures of the colonies be at the same time repealed, and the british subjects _on this side the water_ put, in those respects, on the same footing with those in great britain, till the new parliament, representing the whole, shall think it for the interest of the whole to re-enact some or all of them: it is not that i imagine so many representatives will be allowed the colonies, as to have any great weight by their numbers; but i think there might be sufficient to occasion those laws to be better and more impartially considered, and perhaps to overcome the interest of a petty corporation, or of any particular set of artificers or traders in england, who heretofore seem, in some instances, to have been more regarded than all the colonies, or than was consistent with the general interest, or best natural good. i think too, that the government of the colonies by a parliament, in which they are fairly represented, would be vastly more agreeable to the people, than the method lately attempted to be introduced by royal instruction; as well as more agreeable to the nature of an english constitution, and to english liberty; and that such laws, as now seem to bear hard on the colonies, would (when judged by such a parliament for the best interest of the whole) be more cheerfully submitted to, and more easily executed. i should hope too, that by such an union, the people of great britain, and the people of the colonies, would learn to consider themselves, as not belonging to different communities with different interest, but to one community with one interest; which i imagine would contribute to strengthen the whole, and greatly lessen the danger of future separations. it is, i suppose, agreed to be the general interest of any state, that its people be numerous and rich; men enow to fight in its defence, and enow to pay sufficient taxes to defray the charge; for these circumstances tend to the security of the state, and its protection from foreign power. but it seems not of so much importance, whether the fighting be done by john or thomas, or the tax paid by william or charles. the iron manufacture employs and enriches british subjects, but is it of any importance to the state, whether the manufacturer lives at birmingham or sheffield, or both; since they are still within its bounds, and their wealth and persons still at its command? could the goodwin sands be laid dry by banks, and land equal to a large country thereby gained to england, and presently filled with english inhabitants, would it be right to deprive such inhabitants of the common privileges enjoyed by other englishmen, the right of vending their produce in the same ports, or of making their own shoes; because a merchant or a shoemaker, living on the old land, might fancy it more for his advantage to trade or make shoes for them? would this be right, even if the land were gained at the expence of the state? and would it not seem less right, if the charge and labour of gaining the additional territory to britain had been borne by the settlers themselves? and would not the hardship appear yet greater, if the people of the new country should be allowed no representatives in the parliament enacting such impositions? now i look on the colonies as so many countries gained to great britain, and more advantageous to it, than if they had been gained out of the seas around its coasts, and joined to its lands; for being in different climates, they afford greater variety of produce, and materials for more manufactures; and being separated by the ocean, they increase much more its shipping and seamen: and, since they are all included in the british empire, which has only extended itself by their means; and the strength and wealth of the parts is the strength and wealth of the whole; what imports it to the general state, whether a merchant, a smith, or a hatter, grow rich in old or new england? and if, through increase of people, two smiths are wanted for one employed before, why may not the _new_ smith be allowed to live and thrive in the _new_ country, as well as the _old_ one in the _old_? in fine, why should the countenance of a state be _partially_ afforded to its people, unless it be most in favour of those who have most merit? and if there be any difference, those who have most contributed to enlarge britain's empire and commerce, increase her strength, her wealth, and the numbers of her people, at the risque of their own lives and private fortunes in new and strange countries, methinks ought rather to expect some preference. with the greatest respect and esteem, i have the honour to be your excellency's most obedient and humble servant, b. franklin. _plan for settling two western colonies in north america, with reasons for the plan, 1754[11]._ the great country back of the apalachian mountains, on both sides the ohio, and between that river and the lakes is now well known, both to the english and french, to be one of the finest in north america, for the extreme richness and fertility of the land; the healthy temperature of the air, and mildness of the climate; the plenty of hunting, fishing, and fowling; the facility of trade with the indians; and the vast convenience of inland navigation or water-carriage by the lakes and great rivers, many hundred of leagues around. from these natural advantages it must undoubtedly (perhaps in less than another century) become a populous and powerful dominion; and a great accession of power, either to england or france. the french are now making open encroachments on these territories, in defiance of our known rights; and, if we longer delay to settle that country, and suffer them to possess it,--these _inconveniences and mischiefs_ will probably follow: 1. our people, being confined to the country between the sea and the mountains, cannot much more increase in number; people increasing in proportion to their room and means of subsistence. (see the observations on the increase of mankind, &c. vol. ii.) 2. the french will increase much more, by that acquired room and plenty of subsistence, and become a great people behind us. 3. many of our debtors, and loose english people, our german servants, and slaves, will probably desert to them, and increase their numbers and strength, to the lessening and weakening of ours. 4. they will cut us off from all commerce and alliance with the western indians, to the great prejudice of britain, by preventing the sale and consumption of its manufactures. 5. they will both in time of peace and war (as they have always done against new england) set the indians on to harrass our frontiers, kill and scalp our people, and drive in the advanced settlers; and so, in preventing our obtaining more subsistence by cultivating of new lands, they discourage our marriages, and keep our people from increasing; thus (if the expression may be allowed) killing thousands of our children before they are born. ---if two strong colonies of english were settled between the ohio and lake erie, in the places hereafter to be mentioned,--these advantages might be expected: 1. they would be a great security to the frontiers of our other colonies; by preventing the incursions of the french and french indians of canada, on the back parts of pensylvania, maryland, virginia, and the carolinas; and the frontiers of such new colonies would be much more easily defended, than those of the colonies last mentioned now can be, as will appear hereafter. 2. the dreaded junction of the french settlements in canada with those of louisiana would be prevented. 3. in case of a war, it would be easy, from those new colonies, to annoy louisiana, by going down the ohio and mississippi; and the southern part of canada, by sailing over the lakes; and thereby confine the french within narrower limits. 4. we should secure the friendship and trade of the miamis or twigtwees (a numerous people, consisting of many tribes, inhabiting the country between the west end of lake erie, and the south end of lake hurons, and the ohio) who are at present dissatisfied with the french, and fond of the english, and would gladly encourage and protect an infant english settlement in or near their country, as some of their chiefs have declared to the writer of this memoir. further, by means of the lakes, the ohio, and the mississippi, our trade might be extended through a vast country, among many numerous and distant nations, greatly to the benefit of britain. 5. the settlement of all the intermediate lands, between the present frontiers of our colonies on one side, and the lakes and mississippi on the other, would be facilitated and speedily executed, to the great increase of englishmen, english trade, and english power. the grants to most of the colonies are of long narrow slips of land, extending west from the atlantic to the south sea. they are much too long for their breadth; the extremes at too great a distance; and therefore unfit to be continued under their present dimensions. several of the old colonies may conveniently be limited westward by the allegeny or apalachian mountains; and new colonies formed west of those mountains. a single old colony does not seem strong enough to extend itself otherwise than inch by inch: it cannot venture a settlement far distant from the main body, being unable to support it: but if the colonies were united under one governor-general and grand council, agreeable to the albany plan, they might easily, by their joint force, establish one or more new colonies, whenever they should judge it necessary or advantageous to the interest of the whole. but if such union should not take place, it is proposed that two charters be granted, _each_ for some considerable part of the lands west of pensylvania and the virginian mountains, to a number of the nobility and gentry of britain; with such americans as shall join them in contributing to the settlement of those lands, either by paying a proportion of the expence of making such settlements, or by actually going thither in person, and settling themselves and families. that by such charters it be granted, that every actual settler be intitled to a tract of [___] acres for himself, and [___] acres for every poll in the family he carries with him; and that every contributor of [___] guineas be intitled to a quantity of acres, equal to the share of a single settler, for every such sum of [___] guineas contributed and paid to the colony treasurer; a contributor for [___] shares to have an additional share _gratis_; that settlers may likewise be contributors, and have right of land in both capacities. that as many and as great privileges and powers of government be granted to the contributors and settlers, as his majesty in his wisdom shall think most fit for their benefit and encouragement, consistent with the general good of the british empire; for extraordinary privileges and liberties, with lands on easy terms, are strong inducements to people to hazard their persons and fortunes in settling new countries; and such powers of government as (though suitable to the circumstances, and fit to be trusted with an infant colony) might be judged unfit, when it becomes populous and powerful; these might be granted for a term only; as the choice of their own governor for ninety-nine years; the support of government in the colonies of connecticut and rhode island (which _now_ enjoy that and other like privileges) being much less expensive, than in the colonies under the immediate government of the crown, and the constitution more inviting. that the first contributors to the amount of [___] guineas be empowered to choose a treasurer to receive the contribution. that no contributions be paid till the sum of [___] thousand guineas be subscribed. that the money thus raised be applied to the purchase of the lands from the six nations and other indians, and of provisions, stores, arms, ammunition, carriages, &c. for the settlers; who, after having entered their names with the treasurer, or person by him appointed to receive and enter them, are, upon public notice given for that purpose, to rendezvous at a place to be appointed, and march in a body to the place destined for their settlement, under the [charge] of the government to be established over them. such rendezvous and march however not to directed, till the number of names of settlers entered, capable of bearing arms, amount at least to [___] thousand. ---it is apprehended, that a great sum of money might be raised in america on such a scheme as this; for there are many who would be glad of any opportunity, by advancing a small sum at present, to secure land for their children, which might in a few years become very valuable; and a great number it is thought of actual settlers might likewise be engaged (some from each of our present colonies) sufficient to carry it into full execution by their strength and numbers; provided only, that the crown would be at the expence of removing the little forts the french have erected in their incroachments on his majesty's territories, and supporting a strong one near the falls of niagara, with a few small armed vessels, or half-galleys to cruize on the lakes. * * * * * ---for the security of this colony in its infancy, a small fort might be erected and for some time maintained at buffalonic on the ohio, above the settlement; and another at the mouth of the hioaga, on the south side of lake erie, where a port should be formed, and a town erected, for the trade of the lakes.--the colonists for _this settlement_ might march by land through pensylvania. ---the river siotha, which runs into the ohio about two hundred miles below logs town, is supposed the fittest seat for the _other colony_; there being for forty miles on each side of it and quite up to its heads a body of all rich land; the finest spot of its bigness in all north america, and has the particular advantage of sea-coal in plenty (even above ground in two places) for fuel, when the woods shall be destroyed. this colony would have the trade of the miamis or twigtwees; and should, at first, have a small fort near hock-kockin, at the head of the river; and another near the mouth of wabash. sandoski, a french fort near the lake erie, should also be taken; and all the little french forts south and west of the lakes, quite to the mississippi, be removed, or taken and garrisoned by the english.--the colonists for this settlement might assemble near the heads of the rivers in virginia, and march over land to the navigable branches of the kanhawa, where they might embark with all their baggage and provisions, and fall into the ohio, not far above the mouth of siotha. or they might rendezvous at will's creek, and go down the mohingahela to the ohio. the fort and armed vessels at the strait of niagara would be a vast security to the frontiers of these new colonies against any attempts of the french from canada. the fort at the mouth of the wabash would guard that river, the ohio, and cutava river, in case of any attempt from the french of mississippi. (every fort should have a small settlement round it; as the fort would protect the settlers, and the settlers defend the fort and supply it with provisions.) ---the difficulty of settling the first english colonies in america, at so great a distance from england, must have been vastly greater, than the settling these proposed new colonies: for it would be the interest and advantage of all the present colonies to support these new ones; as they would cover their frontiers, and prevent the growth of the french power behind or near their present settlements; and the new country is nearly at equal distance from all the old colonies, and could easily be assisted from all of them. and as there are already in the old colonies many thousands of families that are ready to swarm, wanting more land; the richness and natural advantage of the ohio country would draw most of them thither, were there but a tolerable prospect of a safe settlement. so that the new colonies would soon be full of people; and from the advantage of their situation, become much more terrible to the french settlements, than those are now to us. the gaining of the back indian trade from the french, by the navigation of the lakes, &c. would of itself greatly weaken our enemies:--it being now their principal support, it seems highly probable, that in time they must be subjected to the british crown, or driven out of the country. such settlements may better be made now, than fifty years hence, because it is easier to settle ourselves, and thereby prevent the french settling there as they seem now to intend, than to remove them when strongly settled. if these settlements are postponed, then more forts and stronger, and more numerous and expensive garrisons must be established, to secure the country, prevent their settling, and secure our present frontiers; the charge of which may probably exceed the charge of the proposed settlements, and the advantage nothing near so great. the fort at oswego should likewise be strengthened, and some armed half-gallies, or other small vessels, kept there to cruise on lake ontario, as proposed by mr. pownall in his paper laid before the commissioners at the albany treaty[12]. if a fort was also built at tirondequat on lake ontario and a settlement made there near the lake side, where the lands are said to be good, (much better than at oswego;) the people of such settlements would help to defend both forts on any emergency[13] footnotes: [11] for the occasion which produced this plan, see what follows. i apprehend it was given to governor pownall, 1754, for the purpose of being inserted in his memorial; but this point of anecdote i cannot sufficiently ascertain. "extract of a memorial drawn up by order of, and presented to his royal highness the duke of cumberland, 1756, by t. pownall. "in other parts of our frontier, that are not the immediate residence and country of indians, some other species of barrier should be thought of, of which nothing can be more effectual than a barrier colony: but even this cannot be carried ... into execution and effect, without the previous measure of _entrepã´ts_ in the country between us and the enemy.... all mankind must know, that no body of men, whether as an army, or as an emigration of colonists, can march from one country to another, through an inhospitable wilderness, without magazines; nor with any safety, without posts communicating among each other by practicable roads, to which to retire in case of accidents, repulse, or delay. "it is a fact, which experience evinces the truth of, that we have always been able to outsettle the french; and have driven the indians out of the country more by settling than fighting; and that whenever our settlements have been wisely and completely made, the french, neither by themselves nor their dogs of war, the indians, have been able to remove us. it is upon this fact i found the propriety of the measure of settling a barrier colony in those parts of our frontiers, _which are not the immediate residence or hunting-grounds of our_ indians. this is a measure that will be effectual; and will not only in time pay its expence, but make as great returns as any of our present colonies do; will give a strength and unity to our dominions in north america; and give us possession of the country, as well as settlement in it. but above all this, the state and circumstances of our settlements render such a measure not only proper and eligible, but absolutely necessary. the english settlements, as they are at present circumstanced, are absolutely at a stand; they are settled up to the mountains: and in the mountains there is no where together land sufficient for a settlement large enough to subsist by itself, and to defend itself, and preserve a communication with the present settlements. "if the english would advance one step further, or cover themselves where they are, it must be at once, by one large step over the mountains, with a numerous and military colony. where such should be settled, i do not take upon me to say: at present i shall only point out the measure and the nature of it, by inserting two schemes, one of mr. franklin's, the other of your memorialist; and if i might indulge myself with scheming, i should imagine that two such were sufficient, and only requisite and proper: one at the back of virginia, filling up the vacant space between the five nations and southern confederacy, and connecting, into one system, our barrier; the other somewhere in the cohass or connecticut river, or wherever best adapted to cover the new england colonies. these, with the little settlements mentioned above in the indian countries, complete my idea of this branch." see governor pownall's administration of the colonies. vol. ii. p. 228-231, 5th edition. the reader must carry along with him a distinction between the plans of dr. franklin and governor pownall here referred to. the first (which is before him) is particular, and proposes a plan for _two_ settlements in the unlocated lands to the westward of pensylvania and the virginian mountains, and is totally silent with respect to a settlement in new england: the other treats of the mode of settling new colonies in north america in general, leaving the precise situation to be in some measure pointed out by the foregoing extract. the copy from which this paper is printed, has appearances of being rather incorrectly taken from the original. b. v. [12] see his work above quoted, vol. ii. p. 234. _et seq._ and p. 179. _et seq._ b. v. [13] this whole proposal was neglected, though the french thought a considerable settlement very practicable, in order to get at the ohio. see governor pownall, vol. ii. p. 236. dr. franklin also failed in another proposal for settling to the south of the ohio. b. v. _report of the committee of aggrievances of the assembly of pensylvania, dated feb. 22, 1757[14]._ in obedience to the order of the house, we have drawn up the heads of the most important aggrievances that occur to us, which the people of this province with great difficulty labour under; the many infractions of the constitution (in manifest violation of the royal grant, the proprietary charter, the laws of this province, and of the laws, usages, and customs of our mother-country) and other matters; which we apprehend call aloud for redress. they are as follow: _first_, by the royal charter (which has ever been, ought to be, and truly is, the principal and invariable fundamental of this constitution) king charles the second did give and grant unto william penn, his heirs and assigns, the province of pensylvania; and also to him and his heirs, and his or their _deputies_ or lieutenants, free, full, and absolute power, for the good and happy government thereof, to make and enact any laws, "according to their best discretion; by and with the advice, assent, and approbation of the _freemen_ of the said country, or of their delegates or deputies;" for the raising of money, or any other end appertaining to the public state, peace, or safety of the said country. by the words of this grant, it is evident, that full powers are granted to the _deputies_ and lieutenants of william penn and his heirs, to concur with the people in framing laws for their protection and the safety of the province, according to their best discretion; independent of any instructions or directions they should receive from their _principals_. and it is equally obvious to your committee, that the _people_ of this province and their representatives were interested in this royal grant; and by virtue thereof have an original right of legislation inherent in them; which neither the proprietors nor any other person whatsoever can divest them of, restrain, or abridge, without manifestly violating and destroying the letter, spirit, and design of this grant. nevertheless we unfortunately find, that the proprietaries of this province, regardless of this sacred fundamental of our rights and liberties, have so abridged and restricted their late and present _governor's_ discretion in matters of legislation, by their illegal, impracticable, and unconstitutional instructions and prohibitions; that no bill for granting aids and supplies to our most gracious sovereign (be it ever so reasonable, expedient, and necessary for the defence of this his majesty's colony, and safety of his people) unless it be agreeable thereto, can meet with his approbation: by means whereof the many considerable sums of money which have been offered for those purposes, by the assemblies of this province (ever anxious to maintain his honour and rights,) have been rejected; to the great encouragement of his majesty's enemies, and the imminent danger of the loss of this colony. _secondly_, the representatives of the people in general assembly met, by virtue of the said royal grant, and the charter of privileges granted by the said william penn, and a law of this province, have right to, and ought to enjoy all the powers and privileges of an assembly, according to the rights of the free-born subjects of england, and as is usual in any of the plantations in america: [also] it is an indubitable and now an incontested right of the commons of england, to _grant aids_ and supplies to his majesty in any manner they think most easy to themselves and the people; and they [also] are the sole judges of the _measure_, _manner and time_ of granting and raising the same. nevertheless the proprietaries of this province, in contempt of the said royal grant, proprietary charter, and law of their colony, designing to subvert the fundamentals of this constitution, to deprive the assembly and people of their rights and privileges, and to assume an arbitrary and tyrannical power over the liberties and properties of his majesty's liege subjects, have so restrained their governors by the _despotic instructions_ (which are not to be varied from, and are particularly directory in the framing and passing of money-bills and supplies to his majesty, as to the mode, measure, and time) that it is impossible for the assembly, should they lose all sense of their most essential rights, and comply with those instructions, to grant sufficient aids for the defence of this his majesty's province from the common enemy. _thirdly_, in pursuance of sundry acts of general assembly, approved of by the crown, [and] a natural right inherent in every man antecedent to all laws, the assemblies of this province have had the power of _disposing_ of the _public_ monies, that have been raised for the encouragement of trade and support of government, by the interest money arising by the loan of the bills of credit and the excise. no part of these monies was ever paid by the _proprietaries_, or ever raised on their estates; and therefore they can have no pretence of right to a voice in the disposition of them. they have ever been applied with prudent frugality to the honour and advantage of the public, and the king's immediate service, to the general approbation of the people: the credit of the government has been preserved, and the debts of the public punctually discharged. in short, no inconveniencies, but great and many advantages have accrued, from the assembly's prudent care and management of these funds. yet the proprietaries resolved to deprive the assemblies of the power and means of _supporting an agent_ in england, and of prosecuting their complaints and remonstrating their aggrievances, when injured and oppressed, to his majesty and his parliament: and to rob them of this natural right (which has been so often approved of by their gracious sovereign) have, by their said instructions, prohibited their governor from giving his assent to any laws emitting or re-emitting any paper-currency or bills of credit, or for raising money by excise or any other method; unless the governor or commander in chief for the time being, by clauses to be inserted therein, has _a negative in the disposition_ of the monies arising thereby; let the languishing circumstances of our trade be ever so great, and a further or greater medium be ever so necessary for its support. _fourthly_, by the laws and statutes of england, the chief rents, honours, and castles of the crown are taxed, and _pay their proportion_ to the supplies that are granted to the king for the defence of the realm and support of government: his majesty, the nobility of the realm, and all the british subjects, do now actually contribute their proportion towards the defence of america in general, and this province in particular: and it is in a more especial manner the duty of the _proprietaries_ to pay their proportion of a tax, for the immediate preservation of their own estates, in this province. to exempt therefore any part of their estates from their reasonable part of this necessary burthen, it is unjust as it is illegal, and as new as it is arbitrary. yet the proprietaries, notwithstanding the general danger to which the nation and its colonies are exposed, and great distress of this province in particular, by their said instructions, have prohibited their governors from passing laws for the raising supplies for its defence; _unless_ all their located, unimproved, and unoccupied lands, quit-rents, fines, and purchase monies on interest (the much greater part of their enormous estates in this colony) are expressly exempted from paying any part of the tax. _fifthly_, by virtue of the said royal charter, the proprietaries are invested with a power of doing every thing "which unto a compleat establishment of justice, unto courts and tribunals, forms of judicature, and manner of proceedings, do belong." it was certainly the import and design of this grant, that the courts of judicature should be formed, and the _judges_ and officers thereof hold their commissions, in a manner not repugnant, but agreeable to the laws and customs of england: that thereby they might remain free from the influence of persons in power, the rights of the people might be preserved, and their properties effectually secured. that the guarantee, william penn (understanding the said grant in this light) did, by his original frame of government, covenant and grant with the people, that the judges and other officers should hold their commissions during their _good behaviour, and no longer_. notwithstanding which, the governors of this province have, for many years past, granted all the commissions to the judges of the king's bench or supreme court of this province, and to the judges of the court of common pleas of the several counties, to be held during their _will and pleasure_; by means whereof, the said judges being subject to the influence and directions of the proprietaries and their governors, their favourites and creatures, the laws may not be duly administered or executed, but often wrested from their true sense; to serve particular purposes, the foundation of justice may be liable to be destroyed; and the lives, laws, liberties, privileges, and properties of the people thereby rendered precarious and altogether insecure; to the great disgrace of our laws, and the inconceivable injury of his majesty's subjects. your committee further beg leave to add, that besides these aggrievances, there are other hardships the people of this province have experienced, that call for redress.--the _inlistment of servants, without the least satisfaction_ being made to the masters, has not only prevented the cultivation of our lands, and diminished the trade and commerce of the province, but is a burthen extremely unequal and oppressive to individuals. and should the practice continue, the consequence must prove very discouraging to the further settlement of this colony, and prejudicial to his majesty's future service.--justice, therefore, demands, that satisfaction should be made to the masters of such inlisted servants; and that the right of masters to their servants be confirmed and settled.--but as those servants have been inlisted into his majesty's service for the general defence of america, and not of this province only, but all the colonies, and the nation in general, have and will receive equal benefit from their service; this satisfaction should be made at the expence of the nation, and not of the province only. that the people now labour under _a burthen of taxes_, almost insupportable by so young a colony, for the defence of its long-extended frontier, of about two hundred miles from new jersey to maryland; without either of those colonies, or the three lower counties on delaware, contributing their proportion thereto; though their frontiers are in a great measure covered and protected by our forts. and should the war continue, and with it this unequal burthen, many of his majesty's subjects in this province will be reduced to want, and the province, if not lost to the enemy, involved in debt, and sunk under its load. that notwithstanding this weight of taxes, the assemblies of this province _have given to the general service_ of the nation, five thousand pounds to purchase provisions for the troops under general braddock; 2,985_l._ 0_s._ 11_d._ for clearing a road by his orders; 10,514_l._ 10_s._ 1_d._ to general shirley, for the purchasing provisions for the new england forces; and expended the sum of 2,385_l._ 0_s._ 2â½_d._ in supporting the inhabitants of nova scotia; which likewise we conceive ought to be a national expence. and that his majesty's subjects, the merchants and insurers in england, as well as the merchants here and elsewhere, did during the last, and will during the present war, greatly suffer in their property, trade, and commerce, by the _enemy's privateers_ on this coast, and at our capes, unless some method be fallen on to prevent it. wherefore your committee are of opinion, that the commissioners intended to be sent to england[15], to solicit a memorial and redress of the many infractions and violations of the constitution; should also have it in charge, and be instructed to represent to our most gracious sovereign and his parliaments, the several unequal burthens and hardships before-mentioned;--and endeavour to procure satisfaction to the masters of such servants as have been inlisted, and the right of masters to their servants established and confirmed;--and obtain a repayment of the said several sums of money, some assistance towards defending our extensive frontier, and a vessel of war to protect the trade and commerce of this province. submitted to the correction of the house. _feb. 22, 1757._ footnotes: [14] the english colony-governments seem to have been considered as of three sorts. first, _provincial_ governments; where the constitution originally depends on the king's commission, and instructions given to his governors; and the assemblies, held under that authority, have their share in making local ordinances not repugnant to english law. next, _proprietary_ governments; where a district of country is given by the crown to individuals, attended with certain legislative powers in the nature of a fief; with a provision for the sovereignty at home, and also for the fulfilment of the terms and end of the grant. lastly, _charter_ governments, where the fundamentals of the government are previously prescribed and made known to the settlers, being in no degree left subject to a governor's commission or proprietor's will. (see blackstone, vol. i. introd. ⧠4.)--good faith however to mankind seemed to require, that the constitutions, once begun under the provincial or proprietary governments, should remain unaltered (except for improvement) to the respective settlers, equally as in charter-governments. b. v. [15] dr. franklin was afterwards appointed to present this address, as agent for the province of pensylvania, and departed from america for the purpose in june 1757. see his life, vol. i. p. 134. while in england, the more effectually to accomplish the business upon which he was sent, he wrote the article that follows in the next page, entitled an historical review, &c. _editor._ _an historical review of the constitution and government of pensylvania, from its origin; so far as regards the several points of controversy which have, from time to time, arisen between the several governors of that province, and their several assemblies. founded on authentic documents._ those who would give up _essential liberty_, to purchase a little _temporary safety_, deserve neither _liberty_ nor _safety_. griffiths, 1759[16]. dedication. to the right honourable arthur onslow, speaker of the honourable house of commons. sir, the subject of the following sheets is an unhappy one: the controversy between the proprietaries and successive assemblies of pensylvania: a controversy which has often embarrassed, if not endangered the public service: a controversy which has been long depending, and which still seems to be as far from an issue as ever. our blessed saviour reproaches the pharisees with laying heavy burdens on men's shoulders, which they themselves would not stir with a single finger. our proprietaries, sir, have done the same; and, for the sake of the commonwealth, the province has hitherto submitted to the imposition: not indeed, without the most strenuous endeavours to lay the load equally, the fullest manifestations, and the strongest protestations against the violence put upon them. having been most injuriously misrepresented and traduced in print, by the known agents and dependents of those gentlemen their fellow subjects, they at last find themselves obliged to set forth an historical state of their case, and to make their appeal to the public upon it. with the public opinion in their favour, they may with the more confidence lift up their eyes to the wisdom of parliament and the majesty of the crown, from whence alone they can derive an effectual remedy. to your hands, sir, these papers are most humbly presented, for considerations so obvious, that they scarce need any explanation. the roman provinces did not stand more in need of patronage than ours: and such clients as we are would have preferred the integrity of cato to the fortune of cã¦sar. the cause we bring is in fact the cause of all the provinces in one: it is the cause of every british subject in every part of the british dominions: it is the cause of every man who deserves to be free every where. the propriety, therefore, of addressing these papers to a gentleman, who, for so many successive parliaments, with so much honour to himself and satisfaction to the public, has been at the head of the commons of great britain, cannot be called in question. you will smile, sir, perhaps, as you read the references of a provincial assembly to the rights and claims of parliament; but we humbly conceive, it will be without the least mixture of resentment; those assemblies having nothing more in view, than barely to establish their privileges on the most rational and solid basis they could find, for the security and service of their constituents. and you are humbly besought, sir, not to think the worse of this address, because it has been made without your permission or privity. nobody asks leave to pay a debt: every briton is your debtor, sir: and all we have said, or can say, is but a poor composition for what we owe you. you have conferred as much honour on the chair you fill, as the chair has conferred on you. probity and dignity are your characteristics. may that seat always derive the same lustre from the same qualities! this at least ought to be our prayer, whether it is or not within our expectations. for the province of pensylvania, as well as in my own private capacity, i have the honour to be, with the most profound respect, sir, your most obedient humble servant, the editor. introduction. to obtain an infinite variety of purposes by a few plain principles is the characteristic of nature. as the eye is affected so is the understanding: objects at distance strike it according to their dimensions, or the quantity of light thrown upon them; near, according to their novelty or familiarity as they are in motion or at rest. it is the same with actions. a battle is all motion; a hero all glare: while such images are before us, we can attend to nothing else. solon and lycurgus would make no figure in the same scene with the king of prussia; and we are at present so lost in a military scramble on the continent next us, in which it must be confessed we are deeply interested, that we have scarce time to throw a glance towards america, where we have also much at stake, and where, if any where, our account must be made up at last. we love to stare more than to reflect, and to be indolently amused at our leisure, than to commit the smallest trespass on our patience by winding a painful tedious maze, which would pay us in nothing but knowledge. but then as there are some eyes that can find nothing marvellous but what is marvellously great, so there are others equally disposed to marvel at what is marvellously little; and who can derive as much entertainment from this microscope in examining a mite, as dr. ---in ascertaining the geography of the moon, or measuring the tail of a comet. let this serve as an excuse for the author of these sheets, if he needs any, for bestowing them on the transactions of a colony, till of late hardly mentioned in our annals; in point of establishment one of the last upon the british list, and in point of rank one of the most subordinate, as being not only subject, in common with the rest, to the crown, but also to the claims of a _proprietary_, who thinks he does them _honour_ enough in governing them by _deputy_; consequently so much further removed from the royal eye, and so much the more exposed to the pressure of self-interested _instructions_. considerable, however, as most of them, for happiness of situation, fertility of soil, product of valuable commodities, number of inhabitants, shipping, amount of exportations, latitude of rights and privileges, and every other requisite for the being and well-being of society, and more considerable than any of them all for the celerity of its growth, unassisted by any human help but the vigour and virtue of its own excellent constitution. a father and his family, the latter united by interest and affection, the former to be revered for the wisdom of his institutions and the indulgent use of his authority, was the form it was at first presented in. those who were only ambitious of repose found it here; and as none returned with an evil report of the land, numbers followed: all partook of the leaven they found: the community still wore the same equal face: nobody aspired: nobody was oppressed: industry was sure of profit, knowledge of esteem, and virtue of veneration. an assuming _landlord_, strongly disposed to convert free tenants into abject vassals, and to reap what he did not sow, countenanced and abetted by a few desperate and designing dependents, on the one side; and on the other, all who have sense enough to know their rights, and spirit enough to defend them, combined as one man against the said landlord and his encroachment in the form it has since assumed. and surely a nation born to liberty like this, bound to leave it unimpaired as they received it from their fathers in perpetuity to their heirs, and interested in the conservation of it in every appendix to the british empire, the particulars of such a contest cannot be wholly indifferent. on the contrary, it is reasonable to think, the first workings of power against liberty, and the natural efforts of unbiassed men to secure themselves against the first approaches of oppression, must have a captivating power over every man of sensibility and discernment amongst us. liberty it seems thrives best in the woods. america best cultivates what germany brought forth. and were it not for certain ugly comparisons, hard to be suppressed, the pleasure arising from such a research would be without alloy. in the feuds of florence recorded by machiavel, we find more to lament and less to praise. scarce can we believe the first citizens of the ancient republics had such pretensions to consideration, though so highly celebrated in ancient story. as to ourselves, we need no longer have recourse to the late glorious stand of the french parliament to excite our emulation. it is a known custom among farmers, to change their corn from season to season, for the sake of filling the bushel: and in case the wisdom of the age should condescend to make the like experiment in another shape, from hence we may learn, whither to repair for the proper species. it is not however to be presumed, that such as have long been accustomed to consider the colonies in general as only so many dependencies on the council board, the board of trade, and the board of customs; or, as a hot-bed for causes, jobs and other pecuniary emoluments, and as formed as effectually by _instructions_ as by _laws_, can be prevailed on to consider those patriot rustics with any degree of respect. but how contemptibly soever these gentlemen may talk of the colonies, how cheap soever they may hold their assemblies, or how insignificant the planters and traders who compose them, truth will be truth, and principle, principle, notwithstanding. courage, wisdom, integrity, and honour are not to be measured by the place assigned them to act in, but by the trials they undergo and the vouchers they furnish: and if so manifested, need neither robes or titles to set them off. contents. list of governors of pensylvania, and dates of the several charters, &c. of that province. abstract of the charter granted to william penn. certain conditions or concessions of mr. penn to the first adventurers in, and settlers of, pensylvania. mr. penn's first frame of government. his reservation of quit rents. his second frame of government. the province of pensylvania and the territory of the three lower counties united by his management. remonstrance of a subsequent assembly against the said union. motives of the planters, assigned by the said assembly, for accepting the second frame of government. mr. penn's return to england, and appointment of commissioners to administer the government. disorders which ensued during his absence. captain blackwell's government. the government assumed into the lands of the crown in 1693, and administered by colonel fletcher, governor of new york. he declares the constitution of mr. penn's government, and that of their majesties, to be directly opposite to each other. he menaces the assembly with an annexion of their province to that of new york. protestation against passing of bills, amended by the governor and council, without the previous assent of the assembly to those amendments, and of money-bills before grievances have been redressed. remonstrance to mr. penn concerning this period. the governor admits the principles of the quakers, not to carry arms, or levy money to make war; and solicits a supply to feed the hungry and clothe the naked (indians). the assembly insist on their right to appropriate as well as to raise money. the government of william markham, esq. a new act of settlement or frame of government. the government resumed by mr. penn. the province purged from the odium of favouring pirates, and carrying on an illicit trade. a new model of elections agreed to. the assembly formed thereon dissolved. another assembly called upon another model, to meet at newcastle instead of philadelphia. aids granted for the proprietary-governor, in exchange for a conformation of property. an aid of 350_l._ sterling to the crown on this account. mr. penn's plausible speech to a new assembly. three of the requisitions they made to him, with his answers and their replies. a breach between the province and the territory. the last charter of privileges, which, under the royal charter, is _now_ the rule of government. it is unanimously rejected by the freemen of the territory. mr. penn's departure for england. andrew hamilton, esq. deputy-governor, in vain endeavours to unite the territory with the province. john evans, esq. succeeds hamilton, and makes the like endeavour, also in vain. controversy between him and the assembly concerning the bill to confirm the charter. nine several heads of complaint entered in the minutes of the assembly, as the ground of a representation to the proprietary; being the representation several times before cited. the remainder of that representation. a copy of it demanded by the governor and refused by the assembly. the latter make a merit of having forborne to make their representation public. the governor obtains an assembly to his wish, by undue practices. animosities between lloyd, speaker of the assembly, and logan, secretary to the governor and council. the governor censures the proprietary's charter of property. the draughtman's defence of it. the governor declares the proprietary's high resentment of the assembly's representation. the assembly's reply. the governor refers to the charter of privileges as the only rule of government. the assembly complains of infractions made in it. their representation to the proprietary against the governor. logan impeached by the assembly. an unanimous vote of thanks to the proprietary for recalling evans. general view of gookin's government. assembly's character of themselves. a proprietary-governor a wretched thing. artful conduct of governor keith. mr. penn's death. the province left in the hands of trustees. logan, one of those trustees, obtains a majority in the council against the governor. logan makes a voyage to england, and returns with private instructions to keith, which keith communicates to the assembly. the governor and assembly in concert pay no regard to the said instructions. a controversy in print, between the governor and logan thereon. a breach between the governor and speaker. the province in a state of tranquillity for nine years under his administration. a pathetic reflection on the melancholy case of governors recalled. pensylvania easy to be governed, if well governed. private instructions from the proprietary in two several instances declared void. the proprietary of pensylvania too inconsiderable here at home to be a patron to the province, and too unsizeably great there. the proprietaries the sole purchasers of indian lands:--the people at the sole expence of indian affairs:--treaties and purchases concomitant. the quit-rents of pensylvania, paid to the proprietary, first demanded and granted to defray the charge of government. notwithstanding which the people now pay taxes for that purpose, and the proprietaries insist on holding their estates tax-free. paper-money first issued in pensylvania. precautions taken to secure it from depreciation. mr. penn's trustees averse to the said issue, till a provision was made, at the expence of the province, to render his heirs gainers by it. room left in the constitution of the province for self defence by force of arms, though the use of arms was not consistent with the principles of quakers. in consequence of complaints to parliament, of the mischiefs arising from excessive issues of paper-money by the eastern governments (that is to say those of new england) a general instruction was sent to _all_ the governors of north america, not to give their assent to any farther bills of that nature, without a suspending clause, till his majesty's pleasure should be known. the assembly grants money in aid of the expedition against carthagena. the governor inlists indented servants upon that occasion; and the assembly apply the money they had given to indemnify the masters. they give 3,000_l._ towards the public service, to be applied as his majesty should direct. also another sum of 4,000_l._ to furnish necessaries to the troops in louisburgh. and yet another sum of 5,000_l._ towards the intended expedition against canada in the year 1746, by an addition of the like sum to their paper currency, and notwithstanding the above instruction, the governor gave his assent to the bill for that purpose. the proprietaries of pensylvania oppose the bill brought into parliament for restraining the northern colonies from issuing paper bills of credit, and make a merit of it in the province. the assembly call upon the proprietaries to contribute to the expence of indian affairs, which they decline. the assembly's representation thereon. a bill for increasing the provincial paper-currency in proportion to the increase of the province, by an addition of 20,000_l._ thereto. rejected by the governor for being unseasonably timed. and petitioned by the inhabitants. a message from the governor (hamilton) preparing the house to expect incursions from the french among the indians in alliance with them, and requiring assistance on their behalf. the answer of the proprietaries to the representation of the assembly concerning the expence of indian affairs. the assembly's message sent to the governor, together with the currency-bill he had before rejected. another message to him concerning indian affairs, and notifying a present of condolence to the twigtwee tribe. governor's message, importing his assent to the currency-bill, with a suspending clause. resolution of the assembly not to accept this clause, with their reasons. a note of regret, that some temperament had not been found out at home, to prevent the controversy, which was now on the point of breaking out. remonstrance of the assembly against the said clause. the governor's message of adherence thereto. the assembly's reply. their reply to the proprietary's answer to the representation on indian expences. unanimous resolution of the assembly concerning the necessity of a remission of their paper-currency. lord holdernesse's letter and other papers laid before them, together with a written message from the governor thereon. the assembly's answer, accompanied with their currency-bill. the governor rejects it; but offers to pass a bill for striking a farther sum on a proper fund for sinking the same in a few years. the assembly prudently avail themselves of the cautions in lord holdernesse's letter concerning _undoubted limits_, to decline taking any part in the broil, till the government of virginia, as first concerned, should set the first example. the governor revives the old controversy concerning the paper-money instruction. declares in another paper he had _undoubted assurance_, that part of his majesty's dominions _within_ his government was at that time invaded, and demands supplies to arm the province, &c. the assembly demur, and desire a short adjournment. the governor not only persists in his former declaration, but maintains, that the case was the same, whether the invasion of the enemy was made in virginia or pensylvania. the assembly adjourn to may 6, and are assembled by the governor april 2, in order to lay before them papers from governor dinwiddie; and demand a supply. debates in the assembly on the _quantum_, and a new adjournment. another session, and a message from the governor, accompanied with intelligence, that the french were before the fort built by the virginians on the ohio; with dispatches and a proposition from the governors of boston and new york, for an union of the colonies, &c. a joint bill for granting an aid of 10,000_l._ to the king, and 20,000_l._ for replacing torn and ragged bills, offered. amendments proposed by the governor. unanimously rejected by the assembly, and for what reasons. the governor's reply. a reflection thereon. resolutions of the assembly. and message to the governor before their adjournment. they are re-convened by special summons on the occasion of washington's defeat, and required to form chearful and vigorous resolutions for dislodging the enemy, in concurrence with virginia. the proceedings of the commissioners at albany laid before them. they prepare and present a bill for striking 35,000_l._ in bills of credit, and the rest for replacing defective bills. which the governor evades for want of sufficient powers to pass it. governor morris's arrival at philadelphia, and first speech to a new assembly. the assembly's answer and adjournment. being assembled again, a letter from sir thomas robinson, secretary of state, is laid before them; and the governor in his speech requires them to raise and keep up a considerable body of troops. they present a bill for raising 40,000_l._ on the former plan; half of this sum for the public service; with a message, expressing their concern at a paragraph in the secretary of state's letter, by which it appeared their conduct had not been fairly represented at home. the old instruction, and an opinion of the attorney-general's, pleaded by the governor in bar of his assent, unless the money was raised in a five-years fund. a letter from sir thomas robinson to the governor of pensylvania, dispatched at the same time with others of similar tendency to the other governors of the northern colonies. which the governor, in his comment upon it, endeavours to narrow the application of, to pensylvania only. a message from the assembly, fully demonstrating, that pensylvania was not comprehended in the instruction insisted upon; and that in case it was, the present emergency was one of those, which, according to the very letter of that instruction, might be provided for notwithstanding: also desiring a sight of the instructions he himself had received from his principals. a second message, in which they call upon the governor to give his assent to the bill, as what would answer all the purposes recommended to them in sir thomas robinson's letter. the governor's reply, declining the bill as before; because the supply might be otherwise raised, and evading the communication of his instructions. the assembly's rejoinder, justifying the requisition they made of his instructions; and intimating, that an appeal to the crown was the only method left them of being continued in the use and benefit of their birthright, and charter liberties. the governor questions their right to have these instructions laid before them, and endeavours to put them beside their point, by magnifying the preparations of the french, &c. the assembly order the papers which had passed between the proprietaries and them to be printed, which till then they had avoided. their unanimous resolutions concerning the proprietary instructions, in which they declare it as their opinion, that the said instructions were the principal if not the sole obstruction to their bill: also the most essential points contained in their reply to the governor's charges against them. a brief of the governor's sur-rejoinder. some general remarks. the assembly make their appeal to the crown, inform the governor thereof, signify their inclination to adjourn till may, and give his instructions the _coup de grace_. the governor's expostulatory message thereon. he demands a copy of their minutes; they order him one when the printed copies were _finished_, and adjourn. upon braddock's arrival in virginia, they are re-assembled by special summons: the demands made by message on that occasion. the governor reprimands them for having published sir thomas robinson's letter in their minutes, and for not delivering him a copy of those minutes so soon as he had required them. the assembly's answer thereto. orders and counter-orders to the printer of these minutes. two messages from the governor; one communicating a design of general shirley to build a fort _within the limits_ of his majesty's territories near _crown point_, to which the assembly is required to contribute; and the other, notifying first the arrival of braddock's forces, and then the expectations entertained at home, that the colonies would raise an additional number of forces, furnish provisions, &c. all terminated with a kind of menace of the resentment of his majesty and the parliament, in case of a disappointment. _twenty five thousand pounds_ granted to the king's use, to be raised by an emission of paper-bills to the same amount, and to be sunk by an extension of the excise for ten years. refused by the governor, on the old pretence of a contrary instruction. a provision demanded for the expence of an indian treaty. a memorial to the assembly from mr. quincy, a commissioner from the government of massachusett's bay, expressing both his concern, that the governor could not be induced to pass the said money-bill, and his acknowledgments of the _chearfulness_ shown by them in granting 10,000_l._ for victualling the forces to be employed in new england; being part of the money so granted; and urging them to find out some other means of rendering their purpose effectual. the assembly resolve to raise the said sum on the credit of the province. another paper of acknowledgment from the said mr. quincy. the governor refuses to return the said bill to the assembly; informs them the french had fitted out fifteen sail of the line, with six thousand land forces, and calls upon them to put the province into a state of defence, as the enemy could not be ignorant how plentiful and defenceless it was; yet advises a short adjournment. they meet again, and a squabble arising between them about a bill merely provincial, he revives the former controversy. the assembly's spirited answer to this captious message. a remark thereon. they are re-assembled. a hardy assertion, concerning the paper-money act passed by governor thomas, refuted by a fact. an acknowledgment from the officers of the regular forces of certain presents made to them by the assembly. the governor's message to the assembly, said to be founded on a representation of general braddock's, requiring them to enable him to furnish the said general with provisions under proper convoys, &c. &c. the assembly desire to have the general's letter laid before them, which the governor declines, and thereby occasions a new controversy. the assembly send up two other bills; one of 10,000_l._ for exchanging old bills, and one of 15,000_l._ for the king's use, on the model of that formerly passed by governor thomas, and confirmed at home by the royal authority, since the instruction so often cited had been sent to the said governor. such amendments offered to it by the governor, as he could not but be pre-convinced would not be allowed. the assembly adjourn till september; but are again convoked in july, on occasion of braddock's defeat. the governor's speech. the assembly vote an aid of 50,000_l._ by a tax on all real and personal estates. the governor makes a pompous offer in the proprietary's name, of certain lands west of allegheny mountains, to such adventurers as would fight for them, and calls upon the assembly to afford some assistance to such as should accept the same. a remonstrance which certain inhabitants of certain places were induced to present to the assembly. the address of the assembly to the governor. their 50,000_l._ money-bill returned, with an amendment, by which the whole _proprietary estate_ was to be _exempted_ from tax. the message of the assembly to the governor on that occasion, desiring his reasons for that exemption. the governor's reply, containing four curious reasons. the assembly's rejoinder, refuting those reasons. other papers which passed between them at the same crisis. the residue of braddock's troops being recalled from the frontiers, notwithstanding an application of the assembly to the governor requesting their continuance, he calls upon the house to provide for the security of the back-inhabitants. a remark thereon. the governor alarms and embarrasses them with petitions from certain persons requiring to be armed; _intelligence_ of indians actually set out, to fall upon their frontiers; recommendations to provide by law against exporting provisions to the enemy, as a requisite to facilitate the reduction of louisburgh; and _demands_ of all manner of _things_ for the assistance of colonel dunbar, who, by orders from general shirley, was again to proceed towards fort duquesne. a proposal from certain gentlemen of philadelphia to subscribe 500_l._ in lieu of the proprietary proportion of the tax in question, and upon a presumption that the proprietaries would honourably reimburse them. the assembly send up their bill to the governor again, together with the said proposal, as containing by implication an acknowledgment that the tax was founded in equity, and also a farther security to the governor, in case he should give his assent to the bill. their message to the governor, correcting his manner of stating the louisburgh point, and observing, that all required of them from new england was to prolong the excellent laws they had already made. some seasonable remarks. the governor's verbal answer to the assembly's message concerning the money-bill, adhering to his amendment. he contends for a militia. the assembly order 1,000_l._ if so much remain in their treasury, to arm the back-inhabitants. they signify their purpose to adjourn, and refer the affair of a militia-bill to a new assembly. their proceedings at the next meeting: the governor demands an additional supply of provision to be sent to albany, at the requisition of governor phipps, for the use of the forces of massachusett's bay: and another supply for the provisional troops of connecticut and rhode island, which he was _informed_ were raised in addition to those already employed in the reduction of crown-point. the assembly apply for a sight of phipps's letter, which is refused. the old controversy renewed. a new one concerning the roads opened at the expence of the province for the convenience of the king's forces, which is carried on with much acrimony on both sides. as a last effort for the public service the assembly authorize by vote a loan, or voluntary subscription, of 10,000_l._ to be raised in a fortnight, and refer the lenders to the next assembly for payment. an apology for the length of this treatise; and a brief state of the province at this period. the new assembly, after a session of four days, suffered to adjourn themselves without proceeding to business, for want of having the intelligence then in the governor's hands in due form imparted to them. being re-convoked, the governor informs them, that a party of french and indians had passed the mountains, and were encamped within eight miles of the capital, and, after a liberal intermixture of upbraidings and self-sufficiencies, demands a supply; premising, that it might be raised by an emission of any sum in paper, provided funds were found for sinking it in five years, &c. a reference to the only act of parliament extant, and that an ineffectual one, to prevent the oppressions practised by provincial governors. politics of various kinds, and from various quarters, presented to the assembly. the assembly reduce and rectify the matter of alarm communicated by the governor; and advise such measures as might reclaim the indians, &c. a new message concerning the depredations of the indians. _sixty thousand pounds_ granted, to be struck in bills of credit, which were to be sunk by a tax of _six-pence_ in the pound; and a poll-tax of _ten shillings_ a head, yearly, for four years; which the governor refuses, and talks of _setting off_ for the back counties. a new message, reporting, that the susquehanna indians had offered their service to the province, provided it was accepted without delay. two messages from the assembly to the governor; the first concerning peace with the indians, and the money bill; the other an answer to his concerning the susquehanna indians. they send up a bill for regulating the indian trade. the famous kentish petition to the house of commons, in 1701, outdone by the mayor of philadelphia, and one hundred and thirty three other inconsiderates, in a demand on their assembly to constitute a militia forthwith. a petition of certain of the people called quakers, for peaceable measures. progress of the controversy concerning the bill, which the governor offers to pass with a suspending clause. resolutions of the assembly hereupon. message from the governor concerning another indian massacre, and demanding an immediate supply, &c. another from the assembly to him, justifying their bill both in matter and manner. they send him up a militia bill. the governor's invective against their whole conduct. he passes the militia bill, under the specific declaration that it was an improper one. he communicates to the assembly a discussion of indian affairs, as prepared by his council; calls upon them to provide for a swarm of french banished out of nova scotia; and signifies, that the proprietaries had sent an order upon their receiver-general, for 5000_l._ as a free gift to the public. another remonstrance from the mayor of philadelphia and his posse. the assembly's reply to the governor's invective, which for the present they declined making use of. the answer they did make use of. parley between the speaker and twenty-nine petitioners, or rather prescribers to the assembly. unanimous resolutions concerning the right of granting supplies to the crown; and a new money bill, out of which the proprietary estate was excepted, in consideration of the late grant of 5000_l._ the assembly's message to the governor, explaining the use and pressing the dispatch of the indian trade bill. the governor's evasive answer. his message desiring the advice of the house. the assembly's answer. their message relative to the complaint of the shawanese indians. their resolution concerning the indian trade bill; also concerning irregular and improper petitions. they adjourn; and two months after re-assemble by special summons. the governor's message on that occasion. the message of the assembly in regard to the inlisting purchased servants. general shirley's letter of acknowledgment for a voluntary present of clothing sent by the province to his troops. the assembly remind the governor of the indian trade bill. he returns it with amendments; as also their bill for extending the excise. they adhere to their bills and assign their reasons. the governor goes to newcastle and the assembly adjourn. sir william johnson's treaty with the six nations laid before them at their next meeting. the governor appearing strongly inclined to involve the province in a war with the delawares and shawanese, some of the people called quakers petition for specific measures. the governor on the other hand alarms the house with an account of a number of people coming in a body to make _demands_ upon them. their unanimity on that occasion. the governor takes advantage of this incident to declare war against the said two indian nations. he also demands farther supplies, and intimates, that certain indians, long subsisted by the province, were retiring in discontent, &c. the assembly's answer. the return made by the governor. the resolutions of the assembly concerning a plan of military operations communicated to them by the governor. they adjourn and are re-assembled. the governor's message to them from a place called _harris's ferry_. a petition of the association companies in philadelphia, concerning the insufficiency of the militia law. the reply of the assembly to the governor's message, accompanied with a bill for prohibiting provisions. another session, and two other messages from the governor, who was still posted at harris's ferry. a money bill ordered, but postponed on the receipt of intelligence from sir charles hardy and sir william johnson, that the delawares and shawanese were disposed to renew their alliance. the governor proclaims a suspension of arms. the assemblies' message to him, in which they again press him to pass the indian trade bill; he promises to reconsider it; and a second time calls upon them to make some (additional) provision for his support. six members desire leave upon the adjournment to quit their seats, and at the next session present a written paper to the house as a testimonial thereof. the resignation accepted and new writs issued. the governor's message notifying the appointment of lord loudoun to be commander in chief in america; as also the act of parliament for raising a regiment of foreigners; recommending particularly, that the masters of such indented servants as should engage in the service might be indemnified; and that, as by the expiration of an act passed in the lower counties, the pensylvanian act, lately passed, would expire also, they would prepare a proper bill for continuing the embargo, &c. the assembly's reply; in which they show, the governor had invalidated the acts of all the other colonies by the law he had passed in the lower counties. their message concerning the excise and indian trade bills; and his answer, that he would not recede from his amendments because of his proprietary instruction. the instruction itself. a remark; and the resolution of the house on the said instruction. an act for emitting 4000_l._ in bills of credit, on behalf of the proprietaries, to supply so far the public occasions, till their receiver-general should be enabled by his receipts to make good their order. an act, for striking and issuing the sum of 40,000_l._ for the king's use, sent up to the governor. his message concerning an attack to be apprehended from the indians about harvest time. the assembly's answer. a bill to permit the exportation of provisions for the king's service, notwithstanding the act of prohibition. the governor's evasive conduct in relation thereto. the assembly apprise him, july 5, of their intention to adjourn till august 2; and are told that he has no objection. notwithstanding which, he re-assembles them a fortnight afterwards, in the midst of their harvest, under the pretence of continuing the prohibition act. petition of the merchants in relation to the embargo. the assembly's answer to the governor's message. another message to him concerning the preamble to the 4000_l._ bill on behalf of the proprietaries. the governor's answer. he sends down another preamble, which is not relished; refuses to pass the excise bill, and expunges the clause in the 40,000_l._ bill for taxing the proprietary estate. his message concerning indian affairs, and the expence of conducting them. the assembly's answer. the governor's reply. a parting compliment from general shirley to the province. a new session, and the governor's message thereon. the assembly's answer. governor morris is superseded by governor denny. the governor complimented on his arrival. the first speech a continuation of the old system. the business of the assembly at a stand for a few days. their address; and message, requesting copies of his proprietary instructions. certain of the said instructions communicated. a short comment upon them. a message to the governor. the governor's answer. a bill prepared for striking the sum of 60,000_l._ for the king's use, to be sunk by an excise. a conference on the said bill. the assembly's answer to the governor's objections. the governor's answer, signifying, that he _would not_ give his assent to it. resolutions of the assembly after a _protest_ against the _instructions_, and a _salvo_ for their own _rights_, to prepare a new bill. a new bill prepared and passed. a brief apology for the conduct of the assembly on this occasion. a remonstrance voted. conclusion; with a testimonial of commodore sprag in behalf of the assembly. an appendix, containing sundry original papers relative to the several points in controversy between the governors and assemblies of pensylvania, viz. 1. the representation of the assembly to the proprietaries, requesting them to bear a proportionable part of indian expences. 2. the proprietaries' answer; and assembly's remarks thereon. 3. a message from governor morris, containing his additional arguments to show the _unreasonableness_ of taxing the proprietary estate for its defence, and in support of the restrictions he was under in that respect. 4. the assembly's answer thereto. 5. the governor's reply. 6. the assembly's rejoinder. [note. _in the above four messages great part of the points in dispute between the proprietaries and people of the province are fully litigated; and the perusal of them is necessary to those who would have a thorough knowledge of the controversy._] 7. the speaker of the pensylvanian assembly's paper of authorities relating to the rights of the commons over money-bills, and in support of the 50,000_l._ bills passed by the assembly, so far as it relates to the taxing the proprietary estate within that province. 8. report of a committee of assembly on the proprietary _instructions_ relative to _money-bills_; clearly demonstrating, that though the proprietaries would at length appear to be willing to have their estates taxed in common with other estates, yet that were laws passed pursuant to these instructions, much the greatest part of their estate would be exempted, and that the sums necessary to be granted for his majesty's service in that province could not possibly be raised thereby, &c. &c. _a paper of importance._ 9. mr. thomas penn's estimate of the _value_ of the proprietary estate in pensylvania, upwards of twenty years ago; with remarks thereon, showing its prodigious increase since that time, the profits arising to the house of penn from their indian purchases, and the huckstering manner in which they dispose of lands to the king's subjects in that province. 10. a specimen of the anonymous abuses continually published against the inhabitants of pensylvania, by the proprietaries and their agents, with mr. w. franklin's refutation thereof. 11. some remarks on the conduct of the last and present governor, with regard to their employing the provincial forces as _regulars_, rather than as _rangers_; and showing the secret reason why that province is at present without a _militia-law_, notwithstanding the several bills which have been lately passed by the assembly for that purpose. 12. an account of sundry sums of money paid by the province for his majesty's service, _since the commencement of the present troubles in america_. 13. an extract from an original letter of mr. logan, containing, among other things, his opinion of the proprietary right to the government of the three delaware counties; and which serves to account for the particular favour shown that government from time to time. footnote: [16] this is the title of an octavo volume, consisting of nearly five hundred pages closely printed. it was written, as mentioned in the preceding note, while dr. franklin was in england as agent for the province of pensylvania, to further the ends of his mission, by removing the unfavourable impressions which had taken place to the prejudice of the pensylvanians: and "it must be confessed," as a reviewer of the work observes, "they had in our author a most zealous and able advocate. his sentiments are manly, liberal, and spirited; his style close, nervous, and rhetorical. by a forcible display of the oppressions his clients have sustained, he inclines us to pity their condition; by an enumeration of their virtues he endeavours to remove the idea, which many have entertained, of their unimportance, and, abstracted from their consideration in a political light, they claim our regard by reason of their own personal merits." interesting however as the controversy between the governors and the assembly of pensylvania may have been at the time, it is too little so now to justify the insertion of so voluminous an account of it in the present collection, and we shall content ourselves therefore with extracting the dedication, preface, and contents. it is singular, that neither the editor of dr. franklin's works, whom we have designated by the letters b. v.; nor dr. stuber, the continuator of his life, should have mentioned this publication. the work is indeed anonymous, but it is so well known to have been dr. franklin's, that in the common library catalogue of the british museum it is ranked under his name. _editor._ _the interest of great britain considered, with regard to her colonies, and the acquisitions of canada and guadaloupe[17]._ i have perused with no small pleasure the letter addressed to two great men, and the remarks on that letter. it is not merely from the beauty, the force and perspicuity of expression, or the general elegance of manner conspicuous in both pamphlets, that my pleasure chiefly arises; it is rather from this, that i have lived to see subjects of the greatest importance to this nation publicly discussed without party views, or party heat, with decency and politeness, and with no other warmth, than what a zeal for the honour and happiness of our king and country may inspire; and this by writers, whose understanding (however they may differ from each other) appears not unequal to their candour and the uprightness of their intention. but, as great abilities have not always the best information, there are, i apprehend, in the remarks, some opinions not well founded, and some mistakes of so important a nature, as to render a few observations on them necessary for the better information of the public. the author of the letter, who must be every way best able to support his own sentiments, will, i hope, excuse me, if i seem officiously to interfere; when he considers, that the spirit of patriotism, like other qualities good and bad, is catching; and that his long silence since the remarks appeared has made us despair of seeing the subject farther discussed by his masterly hand. the ingenious and candid remarker, too, who must have been misled himself before he employed his skill and address to mislead others, will certainly, since he declares he _aims at no seduction_[18], be disposed to excuse even the weakest effort to prevent it. and surely, if the general opinions that possess the minds of the people may possibly be of consequence in public affairs, it must be fit to set those opinions right. if there is danger, as the remarker supposes, that "extravagant expectations" may embarrass "a virtuous and able ministry," and "render the negotiation for peace a work of infinite difficulty[19];" there is no less danger that expectations too low, through want of proper information, may have a contrary effect, may make even a virtuous and able ministry less anxious, and less attentive to the obtaining points, in which the honour and interest of the nation are essentially concerned; and the people less hearty in supporting such a ministry and its measures. the people of this nation are indeed respectable, not for their numbers only, but for their understanding and their public spirit: they manifest the first, by their universal approbation of the late prudent and vigorous measures, and the confidence they so justly repose in a wise and good prince, and an honest and able administration; the latter they have demonstrated by the immense supplies granted in parliament unanimously, and paid through the whole kingdom with chearfulness. and since to this spirit and these supplies our "victories and successes[20]" have in great measure been owing, is it quite right, is it generous to say, with the remarker, that the people "had no share in acquiring them?" the mere mob he cannot mean, even where he speaks of the madness of the people; for the madness of the mob must be too feeble and impotent, armed as the government of this country at present is, to "overrule[21]," even in the slightest instances, the virtue "and moderation" of a firm and steady ministry. while the war continues, its final event is quite uncertain. the victorious of this year may be the vanquished of the next. it may therefore be too early to say, what advantages we ought absolutely to insist on, and make the _sine quibus non_ of a peace. if the necessity of our affairs should oblige us to accept of terms less advantageous than our present successes seem to promise us; an intelligent people, as ours is, must see that necessity, and will acquiesce. but as a peace, when it is made, may be made hastily; and as the unhappy continuance of the war affords us time to consider, among several advantages gained or to be gained, which of them may be most for our interest to retain, if some and not all may possibly be retained; i do not blame the public disquisition of these points, as premature or useless. light often arises from a collision of opinions, as fire from flint and steel; and if we can obtain the benefit of the _light_, without danger from the _heat_ sometimes produced by controversy, why should we discourage it? supposing then, that heaven may still continue to bless his majesty's arms, and that the event of this just war may put it in our power to retain some of our conquests at the making of a peace; let us consider, [1. _the security of a dominion, a justifiable and prudent ground upon which to demand cessions from an enemy._] _whether we are_ to confine ourselves to those possessions only _that were "the objects for which we began the war[22]."_ this the remarker seems to think right, when the question relates to "_canada, properly so called_; it having never been mentioned as one of those objects, in any of our memorials or declarations, or in any national or public act whatsoever." but the gentleman himself will probably agree, that if the cession of canada would be a real advantage to us; we may demand it under his second head, as an "_indemnification_ for the charges incurred" in recovering our just rights; otherwise, according to his own principles, the demand of guadaloupe can have no foundation.--that "our claims before the war were large enough for possession and for security too[23]," though it seems a clear point with the ingenious remarker, is, i own, not so with me. i am rather of the contrary opinion, and shall presently give my reasons. but first let me observe, that we did not make those claims because they were large enough for security, but because we could rightfully claim no more. advantages gained in the course of this war may increase the extent of our rights. our claims before the war contained _some_ security; but that is no reason why we should neglect acquiring _more_, when the demand of more is become reasonable. it may be reasonable in the case of america, to ask for the security recommended by the author of the letter[24], though it would be preposterous to do it in many other cases. his proposed demand is founded on the little value of canada to the french; the right we have to ask, and the power we may have to insist on an indemnification for our expences; the difficulty the french themselves will be under of restraining their restless subjects in america from encroaching on our limits and disturbing our trade; and the difficulty on our parts of preventing encroachments, that may possibly exist many years without coming to our knowledge. but the remarker "does not see why the arguments, employed concerning a security for a peaceable behaviour in canada, would not be equally cogent for calling for the same security in europe[25]." on a little farther reflection, he must i think be sensible, that the circumstances of the two cases are widely different.--_here_ we are separated by the best and clearest of boundaries, the ocean, and we have people in or near every part of our territory. any attempt to encroach upon us, by building a fort even in the obscurest corner of these islands, must therefore be known and prevented immediately. the aggressors also must be known, and the nation they belong to would be accountable for their aggression. in america it is quite otherwise. a vast wilderness, thinly or scarce at all peopled, conceals with ease the march of troops and workmen. important passes may be seized within our limits, and forts built in a month, at a small expence, that may cost us an age, and a million, to remove. dear experience has taught this. but what is still _worse_, the wide extended forests between our settlements and theirs, are inhabited by barbarous tribes of savages, that delight in war, and take pride in murder; subjects properly neither of the french nor english, but strongly attached to the former by the art and indefatigable industry of priests, similarity of superstitions, and frequent family alliances. these are easily, and have been continually, instigated to fall upon and massacre our planters, even in times of full peace between the two crowns; to the certain diminution of our people and the contraction of our settlements[26]. and though it is known they are supplied by the french, and carry their prisoners to them, we can, by complaining, obtain no redress; as the governors of canada have a ready excuse, that the indians are an independent people, over whom they have no power, and for whose actions they are therefore not accountable. surely circumstances so widely different may reasonably authorise different demands of security in america, from such as are usual or necessary in europe. the remarker however thinks, that our real dependance for keeping "france or any other nation true to her engagements, must not be in demanding securities which no nation whilst _independent_ can give; but on our own strength and our own vigilance[27]." no nation that has carried on a war with disadvantage, and is unable to continue it, can be said, under such circumstances, to be _independent_; and while either side thinks itself in a condition to demand an indemnification, there is no man in his senses, but will, cã¦teris paribus, prefer an indemnification, that is a cheaper and more effectual security than any other he can think of. nations in this situation demand and cede countries by almost every treaty of peace that is made. the french part of the island of st. christophers was added to great britain in circumstances altogether similar to those in which a few months may probably place the country of canada. farther security has always been deemed a motive with a conqueror to be less moderate; and even the _vanquished_ insist upon security as a reason for demanding what they acknowledge they could not otherwise properly ask. the security of the frontier of france _on the side of the netherlands_ was always considered in the negotiation, that began at gertrudenburgh, and ended with that war. for the same reason they demanded and had cape breton. but a war, concluded to the advantage of france, has always added something to the power, either of france, or the house of bourbon. even that of 1733, which she commenced with declarations of her having no ambitious views, and which finished by a treaty, at which the ministers of france repeatedly declared, that she desired nothing for herself, in effect gained for her lorrain, an indemnification ten times the value of all her north american possessions. in short, security and quiet of princes and states have ever been deemed sufficient reasons, when supported by power, for disposing of rights; and such disposition has never been looked on as want of moderation. it has always been the foundation of the most general treaties. the security of germany was the argument for yielding considerable possessions there to the swedes: and the security of europe divided the spanish monarchy by the partition-treaty, made between powers who had no other right to dispose of any part of it. there can be no cession that is not supposed at least, to increase the power of the party to whom it is made. it is enough that he has a right to ask it, and that he does it not merely to serve the purposes of a dangerous ambition. canada, in the hands of britain, will endanger the kingdom of france as little as any other cession; and from its situation and circumstances cannot be hurtful to any other state. rather, if peace be an advantage, this cession may be such to all europe. the present war teaches us, that disputes arising in america may be an occasion of embroiling nations; who have no concerns there. if the french remain in canada and louisiana, fix the boundaries as you will between us and them, we must border on each other for more than fifteen hundred miles. the people that inhabit the frontiers are generally the refuse of both nations, often of the worst morals and the least discretion; remote from the eye, the prudence, and the restraint of government. injuries are therefore frequently, in some part or other of so long a frontier, committed on both sides, resentment provoked, the colonies first engaged, and then the mother countries. and two great nations can scarce be at war in europe, but some other prince or state thinks it a convenient opportunity to revive some ancient claim, seize some advantage, obtain some territory, or enlarge some power at the expence of a neighbour. the flames of war, once kindled, often spread far and wide, and the mischief is infinite. happy it proved to both nations, that the dutch were prevailed on finally to cede the new netherlands (now the province of new york) to us at the peace of 1674; a peace that has ever since continued between us, but must have been frequently disturbed, if they had retained the possession of that country, bordering several hundred miles on our colonies of pensylvania westward, connecticut and the massachusetts eastward. nor is it to be wondered at, that people of different language, religion, and manners, should in those remote parts engage in frequent quarrels; when we find, that even the people of our _own colonies_ have frequently been so exasperated against _each other_, in their disputes about boundaries, as to proceed to open violence and bloodshed. [2. _erecting forts in the back settlements, almost in no instance a sufficient security against the indians and the french; but the possession of canada implies every security, and ought to be had, while in our power._] but the remarker thinks _we shall be_ sufficiently _secure in america, if we "raise english forts at such passes as may at once make us respectable to the french and to the indian nations[28]."_ the security desirable in america may be considered as of three kinds. 1. a security of possession, that the french shall not drive us out of the country. 2. a security of our planters from the inroads of savages, and the murders committed by them. 3. a security that the british nation shall not be obliged, on every new war, to repeat the immense expence occasioned by this, to defend its possessions in america. forts, in the most important passes, may, i acknowledge, be of use to obtain the _first_ kind of security: but as those situations are far advanced beyond the inhabitants, the expence of maintaining and supplying the garrisons will be very great even in time of full peace, and immense on every interruption of it; as it is easy for skulking-parties of the enemy, in such long roads through the woods, to intercept and cut off our convoys, unless guarded continually by great bodies of men.--the _second_ kind of security will not be obtained by such forts, unless they were connected by a wall like that of china, from one end of our settlements to the other. if the indians, when at war, marched like the europeans, with great armies, heavy cannon, baggage, and carriages; the passes through which alone such armies could penetrate our country, or receive their supplies, being secured, all might be sufficiently secure; but the case is widely different. they go to war, as they call it, in small parties; from fifty men down to five. their hunting life has made them acquainted with the whole country, and scarce any part of it is impracticable to such a party. they can travel through the woods even by night, and know how to conceal their tracks. they pass easily between your forts undiscovered; and privately approach the settlements of your frontier inhabitants. they need no convoys of provisions to follow them; for whether they are shifting from place to place in the woods, or lying in wait for an opportunity to strike a blow, every thicket and every stream furnishes so small a number with sufficient subsistence. when they have surprised separately, and murdered and scalped a dozen families, they are gone with inconceivable expedition through unknown ways; and it is very rare that pursuers have any chance of coming up with them[29]. in short, long experience has taught our planters, that they cannot rely upon forts as a security against indians: the inhabitants of hackney might as well rely upon the tower of london, to secure them against highwaymen and housebreakers.--as to the _third_ kind of security, that we shall not, in a few years, have all we have now done, to do over again in america, and be obliged to employ the same number of troops, and ships, at the same immense expence, to defend our possessions there, while we are in proportion weakened here: such forts i think, cannot prevent this. during a peace, it is not to be doubted the french, who are adroit at fortifying, will likewise erect forts in the most advantageous places of the country we leave them; which will make it more difficult than ever to be reduced in case of another war. we know by the experience of this war, how extremely difficult it is to march an army through the american woods, with its necessary cannon and stores, sufficient to reduce a very slight fort. the accounts at the treasury will tell you, what amazing sums we have necessarily spent in the expeditions against two very trifling forts, duquesne, and crown point. while the french retain their influence over the indians, they can easily keep our long extended frontier in continual alarm, by a very few of those people; and with a small number of regulars and militia, in such a country, we find they can keep an army of ours in full employ for several years. we therefore shall not need to be told by our colonies, that if we leave canada, however circumscribed, to the french, "we have done nothing[30];" we shall soon be made sensible _ourselves_ of this truth, and to our cost. i would not be understood to deny, that even if we subdue and retain canada, some _few forts_ may be of use to secure the goods of the traders, and protect the commerce, in case of any sudden misunderstanding with any tribe of indians: but these forts will be best under the care of the colonies interested in the indian trade, and garrisoned by their provincial forces, and at their own expence. their own interest will then induce the american governments to take care of such forts in proportion to their importance, and see that the officers keep their corps full, and mind their duty. but any troops of ours placed there, and accountable here, would, in such remote and obscure places, and at so great a distance from the eye and inspection of superiors, soon become of little consequence, even though the french were left in possession of canada. if the four independent companies, maintained by the crown in new york more than forty years, at a great expence, consisted, for most part of the time, of faggots chiefly; if their officers enjoyed their places as sinecures, and were only, as a writer[31] of that country styles them, a kind of military monks; if this was the state of troops posted in a populous country, where the imposition could not be so well concealed; what may we expect will be the case of those, that shall be posted two, three, or four hundred miles from the inhabitants, in such obscure and remote places as crown point, oswego, duquesne, or niagara? they would scarce be even faggots; they would dwindle to mere names upon paper, and appear no where but upon the muster-rolls. now _all the kinds_ of security we have mentioned are obtained by subduing and _retaining_ canada. our present possessions in america are secured; our planters will no longer be massacred by the indians, who, depending absolutely on us for what are now become the necessaries of life to them (guns, powder, hatchets, knives, and clothing) and having no other europeans near, that can either supply them, or instigate them against us; there is no doubt of their being always disposed, if we treat them with common justice, to live in perpetual peace with us. and with regard to france, she cannot, in case of another war, put us to the immense expence of defending that long extended frontier; we shall then, as it were, have our backs against a wall in america; the sea coast will be easily protected by our superior naval power: and here "our own watchfulness and our own strength" will be properly, and cannot but be successfully employed. in this situation, the force, now employed in that part of the world, may be spared for any other service here or elsewhere; so that both the offensive and defensive strength of the british empire, on the whole, will be greatly increased. but to leave the french in possession of canada, _when it is in our power to remove them, and depend_ (as the remarker proposes) _on our own_ "strength and watchfulness[32]" _to prevent the mischiefs that may attend it, seems neither safe nor prudent_. happy as we now are, under the best of kings, and in the prospect of a succession promising every felicity a nation was ever blessed with; happy too in the wisdom and vigour of every part of the administration; we cannot, we ought not to promise ourselves the uninterrupted continuance of those blessings. the safety of a considerable part of the state, and the interest of the whole, are not to be trusted to the wisdom and vigour of _future administrations_; when a security is to be had more effectual, more constant, and much less expensive. they, who can be moved by the apprehension of dangers so remote, as that of the future independence of our colonies (a point i shall hereafter consider) seem scarcely consistent with themselves, when they suppose we may rely on the wisdom and vigour of an administration for their safety.--i should indeed think it less material whether canada were ceded to us or not, if i had in view only the security of _possession_ in our colonies. i entirely agree with the remarker, that we are in north america "a far greater continental as well as naval power;" and that only cowardice or ignorance can subject our colonies there to a french conquest. but for the same reason i disagree with him widely upon another point. [3. _the blood and treasure spent in the american wars, not spent in the cause of the colonies alone._] i do not think, that our "blood and treasure has been expended," as he intimates, "_in the cause of the colonies_," and that we are "making conquests for _them_[33];" yet i believe this is too common an error. i do not say, they are altogether unconcerned in the event. the inhabitants of them are, in common with the other subjects of great britain, anxious for the glory of her crown, the extent of her power and commerce, the welfare and future repose of the whole british people. they could not therefore but take a large share in the affronts offered to britain; and have been animated with a truly british spirit to exert themselves beyond their strength, and against their evident interest. yet so unfortunate have they been, that their virtue has made against them; for upon no better foundation than this have they been supposed the authors of a war, carried on for their advantage only. it is a great mistake to imagine, that the american country in question between great britain and france is claimed as the property of any _individuals or public body in america_; or that the possession of it by great britain is likely, in any lucrative view, to redound at all to the advantage of any person there. on the other hand, the bulk of the inhabitants of north america are _land-owners_, whose lands are inferior in value to those of britain, only by the want of an equal number of people. it is true, the accession of the large territory claimed before the war began (especially if that be secured by the possession of canada) will tend to the increase of the british subjects faster, than if they had been confined within the mountains: yet the increase within the mountains only would evidently make the comparative population equal to that of great britain much sooner than it can be expected, when our people are spread over a country six times as large. i think this is the only point of light in which this question is to be viewed, and is the only one in which any of the colonies are concerned.--no colony, no possessor of lands in any colony, therefore wishes for conquests, or can be benefitted by them, otherwise than as they may be a means of _securing peace on their borders_. no considerable advantage has resulted to the colonies by the conquests of this war, or can result from confirming them by the peace, but what they must enjoy in common with the rest of the british people; with this evident drawback from their share of these advantages, that they will necessarily lessen, or at least prevent the increase of the value of what makes the principal part of their private property [their land]. a people, spread through the whole tract of country on this side the mississippi, and secured by canada in our hands, would probably for some centuries find employment in agriculture, and thereby free us at home effectually from our fears of american manufactures. unprejudiced men well know, that all the penal and prohibitory laws that ever were thought on will not be sufficient to prevent manufactures in a country, whose inhabitants surpass the number that can subsist by the husbandry of it. that this will be the case in america soon, if our people remain confined within the mountains, and almost as soon should it be unsafe for them to live beyond, though the country be ceded to us, no man acquainted with political and commercial history can doubt. manufactures are founded in poverty: it is the multitude of poor without land in a country, and who must work for others at low wages or starve, that enables undertakers to carry on a manufacture, and afford it cheap enough to prevent the importation of the same kind from abroad, and to bear the expence of its own exportation.--but no man, who can have a piece of land of his own, sufficient by his labour to subsist his family in plenty, is poor enough to be a manufacturer, and work for a master. hence, while there is land enough in america for our people, there can never be manufactures to any amount or value. it is a striking observation of a very _able pen_[34], that the natural livelihood of the thin inhabitants of a forest country is hunting; that of a greater number, pasturage: that of a middling population, agriculture; and that of the greatest, manufactures; which last must subsist the bulk of the people in a full country, or they must be subsisted by charity, or perish. the extended population, therefore, that is most advantageous to great britain, will be best effected, because only effectually secured, by our possession of canada. so far as the _being_ of our present colonies in north america is concerned, i think indeed with the remarker, that the french there are not _"an enemy to be apprehended[35];"_--but the expression is too vague to be applicable to the present, or indeed to any other case. algiers, tunis, and tripoli, unequal as they are to this nation in power and numbers of people, are enemies to be still apprehended; and the highlanders of scotland have been so for many ages, by the greatest princes of scotland and britain. the wild irish were able to give a great deal of disturbance even to queen elizabeth, and cost her more blood and treasure than her war with spain. canada, in the hands of france, has always stinted the growth of our colonies, in the course of this war, and indeed before it, has disturbed and vexed even the best and strongest of them; has found means to murder thousands of their people, and unsettle a great part of their country. much more able will it be to starve the growth of an infant settlement. canada has also found means to make this nation spend two or three millions a year in america; and a people, how small soever, that in their present situation, can do this as often as we have a war with them, is, methinks, "an enemy to be apprehended." our north american colonies are to be considered as the _frontier of the british empire_ on that side. the frontier of any dominion being attacked, it becomes not merely "the cause" of the people immediately attacked (the inhabitants of that frontier) but properly "the cause" of the whole body. where the frontier people owe and pay obedience, there they have a right to look for protection: no political proposition is better established than this. it is therefore invidious, to represent the "blood and treasure" spent in this war, as spent in "the cause of the colonies" only; and that they are "absurd and ungrateful," if they think we have done nothing, unless we "make conquests for them," and reduce canada to gratify their "vain ambition," &c. it will not be a conquest for _them_, nor gratify any vain ambition of theirs. it will be a conquest for the _whole_; and all our people will, in the increase of trade, and the ease of taxes, find the advantage of it. should we be obliged at any time, to make a war for the protection of our commerce, and to secure the exportation of our manufactures, would it be fair to represent such a war, merely as blood and treasure spent in the cause of the weavers of yorkshire, norwich, or the west; the cutlers of sheffield, or the button-makers of birmingham? i hope it will appear before i end these sheets, that if ever there was a national war, this is truly such a one: a war in which the interest of the whole nation is directly and fundamentally concerned. those, who would be thought deeply skilled in human nature, affect to discover self-interested views every where at the bottom of the fairest, the most generous conduct. suspicions and charges of this kind meet with ready reception and belief in the minds even of the multitude, and therefore less acuteness and address, than the remarker is possessed of, would be sufficient to persuade the nation generally, that all the zeal and spirit, manifested and exerted by the colonies in this war, was only in "their own cause," to "make conquests for themselves," to engage us to make more for them, to gratify their own "vain ambition." but should they now humbly address the mother-country in the terms and the sentiments of the remarker; return her their grateful acknowledgments for the blood and treasure she had spent in "their cause;" confess that enough had not been done "for them;" allow that "english forts, raised in proper passes, will, with the wisdom and vigour of her administration," be a sufficient future protection; express their desires that their people may be confined within the mountains, lest [if] they are suffered to spread and extend themselves in the fertile and pleasant country on the other side, they should "increase infinitely from all causes," "live wholly on their own labour" and become independent; beg therefore that the french may be suffered to remain in possession of canada, as their neighbourhood may be useful to prevent our increase, and the removing them may "in its consequences be even dangerous[36]:"--i say, should such an address from the colonies make its appearance here (though, according to the remarker, it would be a most just and reasonable one) would it not, might it not with more justice be answered:--we understand you, gentlemen, perfectly well: you have only your own interest in view: you want to have the people confined within your present limits, that in a few years the lands you are possessed of may increase tenfold in value! you want to