"Again the steeples, the tower, and the long, narrow, dirty river
filled the prospect, and the bright sun of a charming day lightened up
the western sky That was all, except to say 'thanks and good-bye,' and
descend the stairs. There were 417 of them stairs, and before I
reached the bottom I was dizzy, faint, seasick, and filled with a
decoction of tickle, so that I had to shut my eyes and rest from my
labors.
"Thus ends the trip which filled my anticipatory imagination as the
waters fill the sea, but which resolved itself in realization to a
simple, childlike faith in the fixtures on the wire, and in the skill
and competence of the man who guided them. MONSIEUR X."
* * * * *
BLUE GLASS SCIENCE.
There is nothing more reassuring in these days, when new "isms" of the
scientists are slowly sapping the foundations of cherished beliefs,
than to remember that, after all, the much vaunted dicta of Nature are
yet opposable by the sound operations of honest common sense. See for
example how one of our evening dailies, tossing the dogmas of
so-called science contemptuously aside, evolves such profoundly
original thoughts as these, to explain the lucid blue glass theory of
General Pleasonton: "The blue glass presents an obstruction to the
sun's rays which can only be penetrated by one of the seven primary
rays--the blue ray; the remaining six rays, travelling with the
velocity of 186,000 miles a second, falling upon the blue glass, are
suddenly arrested; the impact evolves upon the surface of the glass
friction, heat, electricity and magnetism; the heat expands the
molecules of the glass, and a current of electricity and magnetism
passes through it into the room; this current, falling upon animal or
vegetable life within, stimulates it to unusual vigor.
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