‘That is quite right,’ said his father; ‘by the pressure of the atmosphere. I am glad, Harry, that you know, that the air presses upwards, as well as downwards, and sideways, and in all directions.’
‘Father,’ said Lucy, ‘will you be so good, as to try that experiment again?’
‘Here you see the card remains close to the bottom of the glass,’ said their father.
‘But, father, the glass is not full,’ said Lucy.
‘Yes, it is full,’ said Harry; ‘though it is not quite full of water, it is full of water and air.’
‘I left it so on purpose,’ said his father.
‘Now I will hold it to the fire, and you will see what will happen.’
In less than half a minute, they saw the card drop off, and the water fall on the hearth.
‘What is the cause of that?’ said his father.
‘The heat of the fire swells, or expands the air that is in the glass over the water, and forces it and the card downwards,’ said Harry.
‘There was also a little steam formed,’ said Lucy.
‘There was,’ said her father. ‘Now let us take care, and not be late at breakfast this morning.
The children went to tell their mother of this last experiment, which pleased them particularly.
As soon as Harry and Lucy had finished their lessons this day, they went into what they now called ‘their wood-room,’ and sawed the provision of wood for the evening fire; and, this day, Harry’s father lent him a little hatchet, for a few minutes, while he stood by, to see whether Harry would be able to use it, without hurting himself. Harry split half a dozen billets of wood, and begged, that, as he had done no mischief to himself or to any body, or any thing else, he might have the hatchet the next day, to split the wood in the same manner. But his father said —
‘It is not likely that I should have time to stand by to-morrow, to see you split wood, though I happened to have leisure just now; and I cannot yet trust you with the hatchet, when you are alone. But, Lucy, what makes you look so blue? You look as if you were very cold; I thought you had warmed yourself with sawing.’
‘No, father, because I have not been sawing. Harry had the saw — You know that two of us could not use the saw at the same time? and so I had nothing to do but to give him the wood when he wanted it, or to hold it for him when he was sawing; and that, you know, father, was very cold work. That is what makes me look so blue, I suppose.’
‘Well, to-morrow you shall saw, and I will hold the wood,’ said Harry, or we will take it by turns, that will be better; you shall begin, and saw one stick through, and I will hold the wood; then I will saw, and you shall hold the wood; that will be fair, will not it, father? — Quite just — I must be just, to be sure.’
‘Yes,’ said his father. ‘In your code of laws, for the children on Mount Pilate, do not forget that — Nobody can govern well, that is not just.’
‘That’s true,’ said Harry, looking very thoughtful—’ Now, which must I put first, honesty or justice?’
‘I think,’ said Lucy, and she paused.
‘What do you think, my dear,’ said her father.
‘I was going to say, that I thought, that honesty is only a sort of justice.’
‘You thought very rightly, my dear. It is so.’
‘And what are you thinking of, yourself, may I ask you, father,’ said Lucy; ‘for you looked at the saw, as if you were thinking something more about our sawing.’
‘I was so,’ answered her father—’ I was just thinking of a way, by which you could both saw together, with the same saw.’
‘How, father?
‘Invent the way for yourself, my dear.’
‘Invent, father? — can I invent?’ said Lucy.
‘Yes, my dear; I do not know of any thing that should hinder you. To invent, you know, means — what does it mean, Lucy?’
‘It means — to invent means to — think.’ said Lucy; ‘but that is not all it means; for I think, very often, without inventing any thing — It means to contrive.’
‘And what does to contrive mean.’
‘It means to make a contrivance for doing any thing — O, father, you are going to ask me what a contrivance means — stay, I will begin again — to invent, means to think of, and to find out a new way of doing something, that you want to do.’
‘Well, now try, if you can, to invent some way of using this saw, so that you and your brother could work with it at the same time. Harry, think of it too; and whichever thinks of any thing first, speak.’
‘Father,’ said Harry, ‘I recollect the day we went to the farmer, who lives on the hill, Farmer Snug, as Lucy and I called him, our seeing two men sawing in a sort of pit.’
‘I remember it.’ cried Lucy; ‘and father told me it was called a sawpit.’
‘And one of the men stood on a board, that was across the top of the pit, and the other man stood at the bottom of the pit, and they had a kind of saw, that was fixed upright, perpendicularly, this way, in a sort of frame, and one of the men pulled it up, and the other pulled it down, through the wood they were sawing. Now, if Lucy and I had such a place to saw in, or if I stood upon something very high, and we had another handle to this saw—’
‘But, brother,’ interrupted Lucy, ‘what would be the use to us, of pulling the saw up and down that way; if we had but a handle at each end of this saw, why could not we saw with it, pulling it backwards and forwards, just as we stand now, without any thing more?’
‘Very true, Lucy,’ said her father, ‘now you have found out, or invented, a kind of saw, which was invented long ago by some one else, and which is at present in common use — it is called a cross-cut saw: I will get you a cross-cut saw. Now put on your hats; I am going to walk, to see Farmer Snug, as you call him, about some business of my own, and you may both come with me.’
Harry and Lucy got themselves ready in a minute, and ran after their father, who never waited for them. When they came to the farmer’s house, while their father was talking to the farmer about his business, they ran to the sawpit, in hopes of seeing the men sawing; but no men were at work there. As they returned they heard the sound of men sawing in a shed near the house, and they looked into the shed, as they passed, and they found two men sawing the trunk of a tree across, with something like the sort of saw, which Lucy had described to her father. They went back to Farmer Snug’s to tell this to their father: but he was busy talking, and they did not interrupt him. While he was engaged with the farmer, Harry and Lucy amused themselves by looking at every thing in the parlour and kitchen of this cottage. There was one thing in the parlour, which they had never seen before — Over the chimney-piece hung a glass vial bottle, in which there was a sort of wooden cross, or reel, on which thread was wound. This cross was much wider than the mouth or neck of the bottle; and Harry and Lucy wondered how it could ever have been got into the bottle. As they were examining and considering this, their father and the farmer, having now finished their business, came up to them.
‘Ah! you’ve got that there curious thing, that reel in the bottle,’ said the farmer; ‘it has puzzled my wife, and many a wiser person; now, master and miss, do you see, to find out how that reel, thread and all, was got, or, as I say, conjured into the bottle. And I don’t doubt, but I might ha’ puzzled myself over it a long time, as well as another, if I had not just been told how it was done.’
‘O, how I wish I had been by!’ cried Harry.
‘And I too!’ said Lucy—’ Pray how was it done, sir?’ —
‘Why, master, — Why, miss, you see, just this way, very ready —— The glass was, as it were — before it come to be a bottle like at all — was taken, and just blown over it, from a man’s mouth with fire and a long pipe — so I was told.’
Harry and Lucy stood looking up in the man’s face, endeavoring to understand what he said; but, as Farmer Snug had not the art of explaining clearly, it was not easy to comprehend his descriptions.
‘Then I
will tell you what, master,’ said the farmer, growing impatient at finding that he could not explain himself; ‘it is an unpossibility to make a body comprehend it rightly, except they were to see it done, and the man who did it is in our market down here hard by — He is a travelling kind of a strange man, who does not speak English right at all, not being an Englishman born, poor man! — no fault of his! so, if you think well of it, sir, I will bid him, when I go betimes to market, call at your house to-morrow, — he is going about the country, to people’s houses — he blows glass, and mends weather glasses, and sells ‘mometers and the like.’
‘Weather glasses! — barometers!’ said Harry — O, pray, father, do let him come!’
‘Thermometers — he sells thermometers too!’ cried Lucy, ‘O pray father, let him come!’ Their father smiled, and said, that he should be obliged to Farmer Snug, if he would desire this man to call in the morning, at half past eight o’clock, — if he could. The family usually breakfasted at nine.
So much for the pleasures of this morning. This evening, Harry and Lucy’s father and mother were reading to themselves; and the children entertained themselves with putting in some more stars into their map of the sky: and they looked at the great celestial globe, which their mother had uncovered for them, and they learned the names of the signs of the Zodiac, and the months to which they belong. Lucy showed these to Harry, and said, ‘Mother does not know them all herself; let us get them by heart and surprise her.’ Accordingly they learnt them, with some little difficulty.
After they had learnt these, Harry and Lucy refreshed themselves, by playing a game at jack straws, or, as some call them, spillikens. Lucy had taken off almost all the straws, without shaking one, and, according to the rules of the game, would, consequently have been victorious; but, unluckily, a sudden push backward of her father’s chair shook her elbow, shook her hand, shook jack-straw, just as she was lifting him up, and he fell! Harry, clapping his hands, exclaimed —
‘There! — you shook! — you shook! — you’ve lost.’
Lucy looked at her brother, and smiled.
‘She has lost the game,’ said her mother; ‘ but she has won a kiss from me, for her good humor.’
Lucy, indeed, bore the loss of her game very good humoredly; and, when she went to wish her father and mother good night, they both kissed her and smiled upon her.
‘The barometer-man is to come to-day, father, at half after eight, and it is half after seven now, father — Will you get up,’ said Harry.
‘The man who can show us how the reel was put into the bottle,’ added Lucy—’Will you not get up, father?’
Their father rose and dressed himself; and, as he was dressed by eight o’clock, they had half an hour to spare, before the time when this much expected man was appointed to come.
‘Why should we waste this half hour, Harry?’ said his father; ‘ let us go on with what we were talking of yesterday morning. Do you recollect the experiments we tried yesterday.’
‘Certainly, father,’ said Harry; ‘you mean the experiments you showed us, with the burning tow and the turpentine, to make an empty space — a vacuum, I remember, you called it — in the tumbler, that we might see whether the water would rise and fill the place, which the air had filled — Yes, father, I remember all this perfectly.’
‘And I remember the experiment you tried with the roll of tape, father, which you put under the glass — When you unrolled the tape and pulled it gently from under the tumbler, the water went up, and took the place of the tape that was unrolled.’
‘But, father!’ cried Harry, ‘I have thought of something! — I want to ask you a question, father.’
‘Ask it, then, my dear; but you need not begin, by telling me that you want to ask a question.’
‘What I want to say, father, is this—’
‘Think first, my boy, and, when you clearly know what you mean to say, speak; and begin without that foolish preface of what I want to say is this.’
‘What I want,’ Harry began from habit, but stopped himself and began again —
‘Would the water run up into a very high vessel, father, as well as it ran into the tumbler, if you suppose that some of the air, in the high vessel, were taken out of it?’
‘Yes,’ answered his father: ‘If the vessel were as high as the room, in which we are, the water would remain in it, if it were quite emptied of air.’
Harry asked, if it would stay in the vessel, were it as high as the house.
‘No, it would not,’ answered his father; ‘because the pressure of the atmosphere is not sufficient to hold up the weight of such a column of water, as could be contained in a pipe forty feet high; though it is sufficient to support or sustain, or hold up, the water that could be contained in a pipe thirty-four feet high. Harry said he did not understand this.
‘I am not surprised at that,’ said his father; ‘for you are not used to the words pressure of the atmosphere, or column of water, and to other words which I make use of. But,’ continued his father, if we had a pipe forty feet long, with cocks such as are in tea-urns, fitted well into each end of it, and if the pipe were placed upright against a wall, with the bottom of it in a tub of water, and if the lower cock were shut, and if the upper cock were opened, the pipe might, by means of a tundish, or tunnel, be filled with water. Now, Harry, if the lower cock were open, what would happen?’
‘The water would run out at the bottom,’ answered Harry, ‘and would overflow the tub.’
‘True,’ said his father.
‘But now suppose the pipe were filled again with water; and if the cock at the top were shut and the cock at the bottom opened, under water, would the water in the pipe run out.’
‘No, it would not,’ said Harry; ‘the pressure of the atmosphere, at the bottom of the pipe, would prevent it from falling out.’
‘That would be the case.’ said his father, ‘if the pipe was only thirty-three or thirty-four feet high; but this pipe is forty feet high, so that the water in six feet of the top of the pipe would run out; and, if this were let to run out very gently, the water in the remaining thirty-three or thirty-four feet would continue supported by the pressure of the atmosphere on the water in the tub.’
‘Father,’ said Lucy, ‘there is a tub of water in the area under the window in my room; and this would be a fine way of raising water up into my room, without the trouble of carrying it up stairs.’
‘My dear, that is an ingenious thought,’ said her father; ‘but you are mistaken — I will not attempt at present to tell you exactly how—’
‘Here is the barometer man, father!’ interrupted Lucy—’ I saw an odd little man, with a box under his arm, go by the window.
Hark! — There he is, knocking at the door.’
The man was shown into a room, which was called the workshop. He was a little, thin man, with a very dark complexion, large black eyes, and, as the children observed, had something ingenious and good-natured in his countenance, though he was ugly. Though he could not speak English well, he made them understand him, by the assistance of signs. He began to open his box, and to produce some of his things; but Harry’s father asked him to rest himself after his walk, and ordered that he should have breakfast brought to him.
Harry and Lucy despatched their breakfast with great expedition; they thought that their father and mother were unusually slow in eating theirs, and that their father drank an uncommon number of dishes of tea; but at last he said—’No more, thank you, my dear’ — and putting aside the newspaper he rose, and said —
‘Now, children, now for the barometer-man, as you call him.’
‘Mother! — mother! — pray come with us!’ said the children; they took her by the hand, and they all went together.
‘Now, mother, you shall see what Farmer Snug described to us yesterday,’ said Lucy.
‘No — what he could not describe to us yesterday, you mean,’ said Harry—’ How a reel or a kind of wooden cross, mother, is put into a
bottle, or how the bottle is made or blown over the reel — I do not understand it quite, yet.’
‘So I perceive, my dear,’ said his mother, smiling; ‘for I have seen the whole process accomplished with a piece of wire.’
‘But this man will show it to us, mother,’ said Lucy. ‘And I generally understand what I see, though I often do not understand what I hear.’
Alas! to Harry’s and Lucy’s great disappointment, this man, when they had, with some difficulty, made him understand what they wanted, told them, that he could not blow a bottle over a reel, such as they had seen at the farmer’s.
This was a sad disappointment! — and, what Harry thought still worse, the man had sold all his barometers. However, he had some little thermometers, and Lucy’s mother bought one for her, and gave it to her. Lucy colored all over her face, and her eyes sparkled with pleasure, when her mother put it into her hand, and Harry was almost as glad as she was.
‘Is it really for me! — for my own, mother! — I will take care and not break it. Harry, we can hang it up in our wood-room, and see every day how cold, or how hot the room is, before and after we begin to work — and we can try such a number of nice experiments.’
‘Pray, sir,’ said Lucy to the man, ‘how do you make these thermometers?’
The man said he would show her, and he took out of his box some long tubes of glass, and a long brass pipe, and a lamp. It was a lamp with which he could melt glass. When he had lit his lamp, it made a large flame, which he blew with a brass pipe, that he held in his mouth. Her father told her, that this pipe was called a blow-pipe. With it the man blew the flame of the lamp, and directed it to one of the glass tubes, which he held in his other hand. In a little time, the heat began to melt the glass, and it melted into a round ball; this he heated again in the flame of the lamp, and, when the glass was soft and melting, he closed that end of the pipe, and it looked like a lump of melted glass; then he blew air with his mouth in through the other end of the glass pipe, till the air blown withinside of the pipe reached the end, which was melting; and, the air being strongly blown against it, it swelled out into a bubble of melted glass, and thus made the bulb of a thermometer-tube. He left it to cool very slowly, and when it was cool, it became hard and was a perfect thermometer-tube.
Complete Novels of Maria Edgeworth Page 355