Chapter II: Part 2

He led the way to a group of semi-detached buildings in rear of the principal works, and there Paul saw great bins of horns, the different sizes and varieties carefully assorted, the total number so vast that the immense pile in the open yard began to look small in contrast.

At one of the bins a boy was loading a wheelbarrow, and when he pushed his load along a plank track through one of the passage-ways Mr. Sanford and his nephew followed. As the passage opened into another building, the barrow was reversed and its load deposited in a receptacle a few feet lower.

In this room only a single man was employed, and the peculiar character of his work at once attracted the attention of Paul. In a small frame before him was suspended a very savage-looking circular saw, running at a high rate of speed. The operator caught one of the great horns by its tip, gave it a turn through the air before his eyes, seized it in both hands and applied it to the saw. With a sharp hiss the keen teeth severed the solid tip from the body of the horn, and another movement trimmed away the thin, imperfect parts about the base. The latter fell into a pile of refuse at the foot of the frame, the tip was cast into a box with others; the horn, if large, was divided into two or more sections, a longitudinal slit sawn in one side, and the sections thrown into a box.

"This man," said Mr. Sanford, "receives large pay and many privileges, on account of the danger and unpleasant nature of his task. He has worked at this saw for about forty years, and in that time has handled, according to his record, some twenty-five millions of horns, or over two thousand for every working day. He has scarcely a whole finger or thumb upon either hand--many of them are entirely gone; but most of these were lost during his apprenticeship. The least carelessness was rewarded by the loss of a finger, for the saw cannot be protected with guards, as in lumber-cutting."

Paul watched the skilful man with the closest interest, shuddering to see how near his hands passed and repassed to the merciless saw-teeth as he sent a ceaseless shower of parts of horns rattling into their respective boxes. Before he left the spot Paul took a pencil and made an estimate.

"Why, uncle," he said, "to cut so many as that, he must saw over three horns every minute for ten hours a day. I wouldn't think he could handle them so fast."

Then, as he saw how rapidly one horn after another was finished, he drew forth his little watch and found that the rugged old sawyer finished a horn every ten seconds with perfect ease.

"Would you like to learn this trade?" the old fellow asked. He held up his hands with the stumps of fingers and thumbs outspread; but Paul only laughed and followed his uncle.

They watched a boy wheeling a barrow-load of the horns as they came from the saw, and beheld them placed in enormous revolving cylinders, through which a stream of water was running, where they remained until pretty thoroughly washed. Being removed from these, they were plunged into boilers ranged along one side of the building, filled with hot water.

"Here they are heated," said Mr. Sanford, "to clear them from any adhering matter that the cold water does not remove, and partially softened, ready for the next operation."

From the hot water the horns were changed to a series of similar caldrons at the other side of the room, filled with boiling oil. Paul noticed that when the workmen lifted the horns from these vats their appearance was greatly changed, being much less opaque, and considerably plastic, opening readily at the longitudinal cut made by the saw. As the horns were taken from the oil they were flattened by unrolling, and placed between strong iron clamps which were firmly screwed together, and put upon long tables in regular order.

"Now I begin to see how it is done," Paul said, though he was thinking all the time of questions that he would ask his uncle when there were no workmen by to overhear.

"The oil softens the horn," said Mr. Sanford, "and by placing it in this firm pressure and allowing it to remain till it becomes fixed, the whole structure is so much changed that it never rolls again. Some combs, you will notice, are of a whitish, opaque color, like the natural horn, while others have a smooth appearance, are of amber color, and almost transparent. The former are pressed between cold irons and placed in cold water, while the others are hot-pressed, it being 'cooked' in a few minutes. These plates of horn may be colored; and there are a great many 'tortoise-shell' combs and other goods sold which are only horn with a bit of color sprinkled upon it.

"The solid tips of the horns, and all the pieces that are worth anything cut off in making the combs, are made up into horn jewelry, chains, cigar-holders, knife-handles, buttons, and toys of various kinds. These trinkets are generally colored more or less, and many a fashionable belle, I suppose, would be surprised to know the amount of money paid for odd bits of horn under higher sounding names. But the horn is tough and serviceable, at any rate, and that is more than can be said of many of the cheats we meet with in life."

The next room, in contrast with all they had passed through previously, was neat and had no repulsive odors. Here the sheets of horn as they came from the presses were first cut by delicate circular saws into blanks of the exact size for the kind of combs to be made, after which they were run through a planer, which gave them the proper thickness.

"What do you mean by 'blanks'?" Paul asked, as his uncle used the term.

"You can look in the dictionary to find its exact meaning," was the answer. "But you will see what it is in practice at this machine."

They stepped to another part of the room; and here Paul saw the "blanks" placed in the cutting-machine standing over a hot furnace, where, after being softened by the heat, they were slowly moved along, while a pair of thin chisels danced up and down, cutting through the centre of the blank at each stroke. When it had passed completely through, an assistant took the perforated blank and pulled it carefully apart, showing two combs, with the teeth interlaced. After separation they were again placed together to harden under pressure, when the final operations consisted of bevelling the teeth on wheels covered with sand-paper, rounding the backs, rounding and pointing the teeth; after which came the polishing, papering and putting in boxes.

"I suppose they go all over the country," said Paul as he glanced into the shipping-room.

"Much further than that," was the reply. "We never know how far they go; for the wholesale dealers, to whom the combs are shipped from the manufactory, send them into all the odd corners of the earth. Every little dealer must sell combs, and in the very nature of the business they frequently pass through a great many hands before reaching the user, so at the last price is many times what the makers received for them. I suppose it often happens that horns which have been sent thousands of miles to work up are returned to the very regions from which they came, in some other form, increased very many fold in value by their long journey. Or a horn may come from the remoter parts of South America to be wrought here in Massachusetts, and then be shipped from point to point till it reaches some remote corner of Africa, Spain, or Siberia, as an article of barter. And even different parts of the same horn may be at the same moment decking the person of a New York dandy and unsnarling the tangled locks of a Russian Tchuktch."

While Paul was watching the deft fingers of the girls who filled the boxes and affixed the labels, his uncle stepped through a door communicating with the office, and soon returned with three elegant pocket-combs.

"One of these," he said, "represents a horn which came from _pampas_ of Buenos Ayres; this one, in the original, dashed over the boundless plains of Texas; and here is another, toughened by the hot, short summers and long, bitter winters of Canada. Take them with you in memory of this cheerless rainy day."

Paul could not help a little sigh as he thought again of the pleasures he had enjoyed in anticipation; but still he answered bravely, "Thank you; never mind the rain, dear uncle. All the New York boys go off in the woods when they get away from home; but not many of them ever heard how combs are made, and I don't suppose a quarter of them even know what they are made of. I can tell them a thing or two when I get home."

IN THE GAS-WORKS.

Philip and Kitty were curled up together on the lounge in the library, reading Aldrich's "Story of a Bad Boy." It was fast growing dark in the corner where they were, for the sun had gone down some time before, but they were all absorbed in Tom Bailey's theatricals, and did not notice how heavy the shadows were getting around them. Papa came in by-and-by.

"Why, little folks, you'll spoil your eyes reading here; I'd better light the gas for you," and he took out a match from the box on the mantle.

"O, let me, please," cried Philip, jumping up and running to the burner. So he took the match, and climbed up in a chair with it. Scr-a-tch! and the new-lit jet gave a glorified glare that illuminated everything in the room, from the Japanese vase on the corner bracket to the pattern of the rug before the open fire. But as Philip turned it off a little it grew quieter, and finally settled down into a steady, respectable flame. Philip always begged to light the gas. It had not been long introduced in the little town where he lived, and the children thought it a very fine thing to have it brought into the house, and secretly pitied the boys and girls whose fathers had only kerosene lamps.

"Why can't you blow out gas, just as you do a kerosene light?" asked Kitty, presently, leaving the Bad Boy on the lounge, and watching the bright little crescent under the glass shade.

"Because," explained papa, "unless you shut it off by turning the little screw in the pipe, the gas will keep pouring out into the room all the time, and if it isn't disposed of by being burned up, it will mix with the air and make it poisonous to breathe. A man at the hotel here, a few nights ago, blew out the gas because he did not know any better, and was almost suffocated before he realized the trouble and opened his window."

"And where does the gas come from in the first place?" pursued Kitty.

"Why, from the gas-works, of course," said Philip in a very superior way, for he was a year the elder of the two. "That brick building over by Miller's Hill--don't you know--that we pass in going to Aunt Hester's."

"I know that as well as you do, Philip Lawrence," said Kitty with some dignity. "What I wanted to know was what it's made out of. What is it, papa?"

"Out of coal," said papa. "They put the coal in ovens and heat it till the gas it contains is separated from the other parts of the coal, and driven off by itself. Then it is purified and made ready for use."

"Out of coal? How funny! I wish I could see all about it," said Philip, looking more interested.

"And so do I wish I could," added Kitty.

"I don't see why it cannot be done," said papa. "If you really care to see it, and won't mind a few bad smells, I will ask Mr. Carter to-morrow morning, when he can take you around and explain things."

The next day when Mr. Carter was asked about it, he said, "O, come in any day you like. About three in the afternoon would be a good time, because we are always newly-filling the retorts then." This sounded very nice and imposing to the children, and at three the next afternoon they started out with papa. The gas-house certainly did smell very badly as they drew near it, and dainty Kitty sniffed in considerable disgust. Philip suggested that perhaps she had better not go in after all; he didn't believe girls ever did go into such places. And upon that Kitty valiantly declared she did not mind it a bit, and sternly set her face straight.

Mr. Carter met them at the door. "You are just in time to see the retorts opened," said he, and led the way directly into a large and very dingy room, along one side of which was built out a sort of huge iron cupboard with several little iron doors. The upper ones were closed tight, but some of the lower ones were open a crack, and a very bright fire could be seen inside. Everything around was dirty and gloomy, and these gleams of fire from the little iron doors made the place look weird and ghostly. Long iron pipes reached from each of the upper doors up to one very large horizontal pipe or cylinder near the ceiling overhead. This cylinder ran the whole length of the room, and, at its farther end, joined another iron pipe which passed through the wall.

"Those are the furnace-doors down below," said Mr. Carter to the children. "What you see burning inside of them is coke. Coke is what is left of the coal after we have taken the gas and tar out of it. The upper doors open into the retorts, or ovens, that we fill every five hours with the coal from which we want to get gas. Each retort holds about two hundred pounds, and from that amount we get a thousand cubic feet of gas."

"Is it just common coal;" asked Kitty, "like what people burn in stoves?"

"Not exactly. It is a softer kind, containing more of a substance called hydrogen than the sorts that are generally used for fuel. Several different varieties are used: 'cherry,' 'cannel,' 'splint,' and so on, and they come from mines in different parts of England and Scotland, chiefly. Glasgow, Coventry and Newcastle send us a great deal."

Philip started as if a bright idea had struck him. "Is that what people mean when you're doing something there's no need of, and they say 'you're carrying coals to Newcastle?'"

"Yes. You see such an enterprise would be absurd. Just notice the man yonder with the long iron rod! He is going to open one of the retorts, take out the old coal--only it is now coke--and put in a fresh supply."

A workman in a grimy, leather apron loosened one of the retort doors, and held up a little torch. Immediately a great sheet of flame burst out, and then disappeared.

He took the door quite off, and there was a long, narrow oven with an arched top, containing a huge bed of red-hot coals.

"What a splendid place to pop corn!" exclaimed Kitty.

Papa laughed. "You would find it warm work," said he, "unless you'd a very long handle to your corn-popper." And Kitty thought so too, as she went nearer the fiery furnace.

"You see," said Mr. Carter, "these red-hot coals have been changed a great deal by the heat. They have given up all their gas and tar, and are themselves no longer coal, but _coke_. We shovel out this coke and use it as fuel in the furnaces down below to help heat up the next lot. Then new coal is put into the retorts, and they are closed up with iron plates, like that one lying ready on the ground."

"It's all muddy 'round the edge," observed Kitty.

"Yes, that paste of clay is to make it air-tight. The heat hardens the clay very quickly, so all the little cracks around the edge are plastered up. When the coal is shut up in the ovens, or retorts, the heat, as I just told you, divides it up into the different substances of which it is made; that is, into the coke which you have seen, a black, sticky liquid called tar, the illuminating gas, and more or less ammonia, sulphur, and other things that must be got rid of. Almost all these things are saved and used for one purpose or another, though they may be of no use to us here. If we have more coke than we ourselves need it is sold for fuel. The coal-tar goes for roofing and making sidewalks, or sometimes (though you wouldn't think it possible, as you look at the sticky, bad-smelling, black stuff) in the manufacture of the most lovely dyes, like that which colored Miss Kitty's pink ribbon. The ammonia is used for medicine and all sorts of scientific preparations, in bleaching cloth, and in the printing of calicoes and cambrics."

"When the materials of the coal are separated as I told you in the retorts, most of the tar remains behind, and is drawn off; but some gets up the pipes. That large, horizontal cylinder is always nearly half full of it. The gas, which is very light, you know, rises through the upper pipes leading from the retorts, and bubbles up through the tar in the bottom of the cylinder. Then it passes along the farther end of the cylinder, and into the condensing pipes."

He opened a door, and they went through into the next room. Here the large pipe which came through the wall of the room they had just left, led to a number of clusters of smaller pipes that were jointed and doubled back and forth upon each other, cob-house fashion.

"When the gas goes through these pipes," said Mr. Carter, "it gets pretty well cooled down, for the pipes are kept cold by having so great an amount of surface exposed to draughts of air around them. And when the gas is cooled the impurities are cooled too, so that many of them take a liquid form and can be drawn off."

The next room they entered had a row of great, square chests on each side, as they walked through.

"These are the purifiers," explained Mr. Carter again. "They are boxes with a great many fan-like shelves inside, projecting out in all directions, and covered thickly with a paste made of lime."

"Lime like what the masons used when they plastered the new kitchen?" asked Philip.

"About the same thing. The boxes are made air-tight, and the gas enters the first box at one of the lower corners. Then before it can get through the connecting-pipe into the next box, it has to wind its way around among these plates coated with lime. This lime takes up the sulphur and other things that we do not want in the gas, and so by the time it gets through all the boxes it is quite pure and fit to use."

Then the party all went into the room where the gas was measured. It was a little office with a queer piece of furniture in it; something that looked like a very large drum-shaped clock, with several different dials or faces. This, Mr. Carter said, was the metre or measurer, and by looking at the dials it could be told exactly how much gas was being made every day.

"As soon as the gas gets through the purifiers," said he, "it comes, by an iron pipe, in here, and is made to pass through and give an account of itself before any of it is used. And now I suppose you would like to know how it does report its own amount, wouldn't you?"

Philip and Kitty both were sure they did want to know, so he sketched a little plan of the metre on a piece of paper, and then went on to explain it:

"This shows how the metre would look if you could cut it through in the middle. The large drum-shaped box A. A. is hollow, and filled a little more than half way up with water. Inside it is a smaller hollow drum, B. B. so arranged as to turn easily from right to left, on the horizontal axis C. This axis is a hollow pipe by which the gas comes from the purifiers to enter the several chambers of the metre in turn, through small openings called valves. The partitions P. P. P. P. divide the drum B. B. into--let us say--four chambers, 1, 2, 3, 4, all of the same size, and capable of holding a certain known amount of air or gas. The chamber 1 is now filled with gas, 3 with water, and 2 and 4 partly with gas and partly with water. The valves in the pipe C are so arranged that the gas will next pour into the chamber 2. This it does with such force as to completely fill it, lifting it quite out of the water and into the place that 1 had occupied before. Then as 1 is driven over to the place which 4 had occupied, the gas with which it was filled passes out by another pipe and off to the large reservoir you will see by and by, its place being filled with water. At the same time 4 is driven around to the place of 3, and 3 to that of 2. The water always keeps the same level, and simply waits for the chambers to come round and down to be filled.

"Next, 3, being in the place of 2, receives its charge of gas from the entrance pipe, is in turn lifted up into the central position, and sends all the other chambers around one step further. And when the drum gets completely around once, so that the chambers stand in the same places as at first, you know each chamber must have been once filled with gas and then emptied of it. If then we know that each chamber will hold, say two and a half cubic feet of gas, we are sure that every time the drum has turned fully around it has received and sent off four times two and a half feet, or ten feet in all. Now we connect the axis C with a train of wheel-work, something like that in a clock, and this wheel-work moves the pointers on the dials in front, so that as the gas in passing in and out of the chambers turns the drum on the axis, it turns the dial pointers also.

"The right hand dial marks up to one hundred. While its pointer is passing completely around once, the pointer on the next dial (which marks up to one thousand) is moving a short space and preserving the record of that one hundred; and then the first pointer begins over again. The two pointers act together just like the minute and hour hands on a clock. Then the next dial marks up to ten thousand, and acts in turn like an hour-hand to the thousands' dial as a minute-hand, and so on. You see each dial has its denominations, 'thousands,' 'hundred thousands,' or whatever it may be, printed plainly below it. And now, when we want to read off the dials, we begin at the left, taking in each case the last number a pointer _has passed_, and read towards the right, just as you have learned to do with any numbers in your 'Eaton's Arithmetic.' There is one thing more to remember, however; the number you read means not simply so many cubic feet of gas but so many hundred cubic feet."

Philip and Kitty immediately set to work to read the dials on the office metre, and found that they were not now so very mysterious.

"But how do you know how much people use?" asked Philip. "There is something like this metre, only smaller, down cellar at home, and a man came and looked at it the other day, to see how much gas had been burned in the house he said, when I asked him what he was going to do."

"The metre you have at home works in the same way as this," said Mr. Carter, "and the dial-plates are read in the same way. But the gas that your little metre registers is only that which you take from the main supply-pipe, to light your parlors and bed-rooms.

"When a stream of gas from the main enters the house, it has to pass through the metre the very first thing, before any of it is used; and each little metre keeps as strict an account of what passes through from the main to the burners, as the large one here in the office does of that which passes from the purifiers to the reservoir. But there is this difference between the two: the gas keeps pouring through the office metre as long as we keep making it in the retorts, but it passes through your metre at home only just as long as you keep drawing it off at the burners. So if we find by looking at the metre that 5450 feet have passed through during a given time, we send in our bill to your papa for that amount, knowing it must have been burned in the house.

"But most likely the metre doesn't say anything directly about 5450. It says, perhaps, 11025. 'How can that be?' you would think. 'We haven't burned so much as that,' and you haven't--during this one quarter. But after the metre had been inspected at the end of the last quarter, the pointers did not go back to the beginning of the dials and start anew; they kept right on from the place where they were, so that 11025 is the amount you paid for last time and the amount you want to pay for this time, lumped together. Now this is what we do. We turn to our books and see how much you were charged with last time, and subtracting that record from the present record leaves the amount you have used since the last time of payment.

"Then suppose another case. Your metre registers only as far as 100,000. At the end of the last quarter it marked 97850; now it records but 3175. How would you explain that, master Philip?"

Philip looked puzzled a moment, and then said,

"I should think it must have finished out the hundred thousand and begun over again."

"Exactly. And to find the amount for this quarter you would add together the remainder of the hundred thousand (2150) and the 3175, and get 5325, the real record. But I guess you've had arithmetic enough for the present, so we'll go out now and see the gasometer, or gas reservoir."

They all went out of doors then, papa, Mr. Carter, Philip and Kitty, across a narrow court-yard. There was a huge, round box, or drum, with sides as high as those of the carriage-house at home, but with no opening anywhere, "like a great giant's bandbox," thought Kitty. Four stout posts, much taller still than the "bandbox" itself, were set at equal distances around it, and their extremities were joined by stout beams which passed across over the top of the gasometer.

As the children went up nearer to it, they saw it was made of great plates of iron firmly riveted together, and that it did not rest on the ground, as they had supposed, but in the middle of a circular tank of water.

"After the gas has been made and purified and measured," said Mr. Carter, "it is brought by underground pipes into this gasometer, and from here drawn off by other pipes into the houses. The weight of this iron shell bearing down upon the gas, gives pressure or force enough to drive the gas anywhere we wish."

"But why do you put the--the iron thing in water, instead of on the ground?" asked Kitty.

"So as to make it air-tight, and give it a chance to move freely up and down. Of course if the iron shell were empty its own weight would make it sink directly to the bottom of the water-tank and stay there. But gas, you know, is so much lighter than common air that it always makes a very strong effort to rise higher and higher, carrying along whatever encloses it. You saw that illustrated in the balloon that went up last Fourth of July. Now, as the gas from the works pours into the reservoir from beneath, it is strong enough to lift the iron box up a little in the water. Of course that gives a little more room. Then as more gas comes in to take up this room, the gasometer keeps on rising slowly. We make sure of its not rising above the water and letting the gas leak out, by means of the beams you see stretched across above it. They are all ready to hold it down in a safe position if the need should come.

"On the other hand, as the people in town draw off the gas to burn, the gasometer would, of course, tend to sink down gradually. So we have the water-tanks made deep enough to allow for every possible necessity in that direction. In very cold weather we keep the water from freezing by passing a current of hot steam into it. If it should ever freeze, the gasometer might as well be on the ground, for it could not move up and down, or be trusted to keep the gas from leaking out around the edges. With these precautions, however, we know it is perfectly trustworthy."

"I saw it one morning early, when I was out coasting on the hill," said Philip, "and it wasn't more than half as high as it is now."

"A great deal had been drawn off during the night and we had not been making any more during the time to take its place."

"Does it ever get burned out too much?"

"No, there's no danger of it. We make enough to allow a good large margin above what we expect will be used."

The children looked about a little longer, and then, with good-byes and many thanks to Mr. Carter, walked home again with papa, over the crisp, hard snow.

Next week Philip had a composition to write at school. He took "Gas" for his subject, and wrote:

"Gas that you burn is made out of soft coal. They put it in Ovens
and cook it until it is not coal any longer. The Ovens are so hot
you cant go anywhare near them but the men do With poles and big
lether aprons. I would not like to shovle in the coal. I would
rather have a Balloon. They use two or three tons every day. it
makes coke and Tar and the gas that goes up the pipes. They make
the gas clean and mesure it in a big box of water, and tell how
much there is by looking at the clock faces in front. Then it goes
into a big round box made of iron and then we burn it. but I do not
like to smell of it. you must not blow it out for if you do you
will get choked. This is all I Remember about gas.

"PHILIP RAYMOND LAWRENCE."

RACING A THUNDER-STORM.

If it had been a yacht in which we were speeding along at the rate of a trifle over a mile per minute, we should have "taken our reckoning," "hove the log," or done something nautical, and the captain would doubtless have reported in regular sea-faring terms that we were off Oil City with Lake Chautauqua so and so many knots on our port quarter.

But it wasn't a yacht, nor a schooner, nor a Conestoga wagon, lightning express or catamaran, in which we were travelling neck and neck with one of the wildest looking storm clouds of hot mid-summer.

No. It was--can you guess it? Yes, a _balloon_.

And this is how it all came about:

Fourth of July came upon the _fifth_ that year, (because of some strange oversight on the part of the folks who first hit upon the plan of dividing time into weeks, somehow the Fourth will, every once in a while, strike Sunday.)

At least it did in Cleveland; and although they were a day late, the Clevelanders determined to have a big time. So they had sent for Prof. Samuel A. King, an aeronaut of distinction. Balloonists, you know, are nearly always called "Professors"--why this is so I don't _profess_ to know. And Prof. King had arrived in Cleveland a few days before, bringing his great balloon, the "Buffalo."

Early upon the morning of the 5th he was on hand with the helpless monster all in a heap tied about with ropes, mixed up with netting and sand-bags, and supplemented with a big basket which looked a good deal like an inverted straw hat made for some huge giant.

The netting was carefully spread out on the Nicholson pavement in the centre of the pretty square that you will remember if you have ever been in Cleveland. The bags were filled from a wagon-load of sand and hitched with snap-catches about the edges. So they stood about in a circle. Then the aerostat, as the great bag is called, was unrolled and spread evenly over this. An oiled-muslin tube was tied to the neck, and its other extreme to a gas main in a hole which some of the workmen had dug for the purpose.

Next the gas was turned on. The bag began to rise, looking at first like ever so many young whales all huddled together. The men now began, under the Professor's direction, to pull the netting over to hold the bag down. The sand-bags were brought closer and set along on either side of the tube. The bag now began to grow round and plump. Groups of lookers-on kept growing, too, until all the square was alive with them. The helpers kept walking around the swelling globe, changing the bags to lower strands of the netting; and so it continued until by two o'clock the balloon was full--that is, allowance was made only for expansion when the balloon should have reached the clouds.

Every few moments the breeze would sway the monster to and fro, and it seemed chafing to break away. Soon after, the basket was tied upon the ring, and into this a great heap of sand-bags was piled, and a lot of ropes, an anchor, an aneroid, thermometer, compass and other accessories tied into the rigging or outside of the basket.

How grandly she stood there, the vast dome towering above the trees, her amber sides bright with decorations and her shapely globe held in leash by the white network--but bless me! here's more than four pages used up, and we haven't started yet.

At precisely four o'clock the Professor's cheery voice was heard all through the square as he sang out, "All aboard!" And his eight companions responded as soon as they could get through the dense crowd that surged on every side.

Now the sole remaining rope which held us to the earth was gripped by a score of eager men.

The order came, "Let go!" The basket was raised a few feet and then settled slowly back. This made the crowd laugh.

"Throw out two bags!" cried the Professor.

Then--then how grandly we lifted! How the cannon roared and bands added their noise to the shouts of the hundred thousand people whose faces were all turned toward our little wicker car!

The writer was sand-man, and following orders, he let out the contents of another bag which fell in a swift gray stream plump down into the midst of a little group of young ladies who were seated on a house-top.

If it happens that _this book_ reaches that family, opportunity is now taken to apologize to those young ladies for thus pouring sand down the backs of their necks.

Well, we sailed along grandly, soon leaving the city far behind--I forgot to say that just as we were leaving, a darkey in a white apron came through the crowd bringing us a hamper of good things. What an appetite this keen upper air gave us, to be sure! We ate and drank and toasted everything and everybody.

Pretty soon one of the boys said, (we were all newspaper men, and spoke of each other as "boys"):

"Listen a moment!"

And we all held our breaths. What supreme silence! the gentle sighing of the wind among the trees a mile below, the barking of dogs, or subdued shouts of excited villagers, was all we could hear--but hark!

We were approaching a small town. In the square, through the gathering twilight, we could discern a crowd, and now there came to us, refined by distance, the familiar notes, played by the village band, of "Up in a balloon, boys!"

We passed over the village, and the Professor pulled the valve cord gently, so we dropped towards the place and cheered in reply.

"Now let's give them a song," said the Professor.

So he began, and we came in on the chorus:

"Oh! 'twas old Sam Simons,
And young Sam Simons,
Old Sam Simons' son:
Now young Sam Simons
Is old Sam Simons,
For old Sam Simons is gone."

I wish the editor would only give me room to tell you about the scores of funny things that happened that afternoon; but after all, the real adventures happened the next day. So I can only speak briefly of the pretty carrier-pigeons we loosed, which flew swiftly back to Cleveland, bearing our messages to the newspapers--short notes only, to be sure, wrapped about their slender legs, and which appeared in the papers the following morning. One of these I find in the scrap-book before me, for it was returned to me some weeks afterwards. It reads:

"_We've just eaten supper out of our hamper, unhampered by any
fears as to breakfast. Supper above the clouds is what I call high
living. We can see you yet, but you are only a smoky stain upon the
shore of Lake Erie. The Professor says we are to go into camp and
then continue trip to-morrow. Good-night._"

It would never do, either, to forget the plucky dog which ran after our drag-rope as it trailed along the ground when we were quite near the earth, and held on with his teeth though we pulled him along over the stubble on his back, and never let go until we had jerked him plumb over a fence.

I've been in all sorts of camps--military camps, hunting camps and camp meetings, but never dreamed of such a thing as a _balloon camp_ before! By the help of some farmers we filled the great basket with stones and then pitched a tent and made a fire at a safe distance. Lines were run to trees in three directions, loosely to give the balloon "play" in case of much wind, and then we all lay down in our blankets and tried to sleep.

At the very first signs of dawn we were up, and there she stood in the still air just like a vision. At sunrise a hospitable farmer invited us to breakfast, and wasn't it good? I'll never forget that coffee.

By eight o'clock quite a large number of country folks had reached the field. Teams were hitched all along the fences. Now the Professor announced that as he wished to make a long trip that day, he should carry plenty of ballast and so could allow only two persons with him. It had been agreed that we should draw cuts, and this was done good-naturedly. The

choice fell upon a photographer, and the writer.

We were sorry indeed to leave our companions behind us, but there was no help for it. So we took our seats in the basket, said good-by, and were off.

Now we went up! _up!_ UP! passing through a thin cloud that made everything below look dim and distant. We were in the region where _November spends the summer_. Whew! how chilly it was. We wrapped our overcoats and blankets close about us and our teeth chattered. Then we rubbed our hands and faces. Why! how queerly they looked and felt.

"Ha! ha! look at the Professor's face. Why! there _ain't a wrinkle left_!" said the photographer.

And so it proved. The aneroid told us that we were over three miles from the ground, and the atmosphere was so diminished in pressure that the internal forces of the body pressed outward and made the skin full and smooth.

One of yesterday's party had provided some large envelopes with long red tails of tissue paper to drop into towns, and we wrote messages and enclosed them in some of these, putting sand in one end, and launched them. We watched them as they shot hither and yon in their swift flight toward the earth. The chance finder was requested to send the contents to the nearest telegraph office, but we never heard from any of them, save one.

About noon we found by comparing our maps with the streams below that we had passed into Pennsylvania; and not long afterwards we descried Oil City set upon the creek, with all its hills covered with derricks and oil tanks.

Speaking of Oil City, reminds me of a rather funny incident: For a couple of years I had been in correspondence with a young man who resided there, and who was also a journalist. His name and mine were just the same. I had promised faithfully to stop and see him at any time chance might bring me near his home. I took one of the envelopes and wrote a _regret_, dropping it over the city. It was picked up in the road and handed to him, but he always insisted that I had broken my promise unreasonably.

At the rate in which Oil City was left behind we knew our pace was very rapid, though to us it all seemed like a dead calm, for we kept just even with the wind.

The Professor said we could reach New England by midnight if the wind held and it didn't grow cloudy; but alas! for the past hour we had been watching a little fleecy nebulous bit of mist that seemed, like a spirit, to spring from the nothingness of the blue ether, growing constantly, and attracting other cloudlets which came toward it from all quarters of the heavens and were swallowed up. A growing, whirling wall of pearly gray mounted and spread its shadow over half the earth.

We threw out sand and mounted above it. Then it arose toward us again. It seemed as though we could reach our hands into its surging depths. Over went seats, baskets, the tent--everything we could spare, and I'm not sure the Professor didn't glare at one of his companions with malicious and deadly intent.

The truth rushed upon us that we were racing with a storm.

It was of vital importance to keep in the sun, for the moment the shadows below could place their chilly spell upon our steed, the gas would chill and condense, and we would drop! drop! swiftly to the earth. At last it came, and we knew it was inevitable. Below us we could hear the crashing of thunder reverberating away into the depths of the black storm masses, and the lightnings every moment lit the weird scene with a grandeur but few mortals have ever witnessed. For a brief moment we hung suspended like Mahomet's coffin in the centre of a great cave of pearl. Shall I ever forget that glimpse of heavenly splendor? A single shaft of sunlight broke through its walls and then died like the last ray of hope. Then downward we rushed! A mile nearer earth within the first minute! As the air grew denser we fell more gradually. Our long drag-rope was out, weighing perhaps three hundred pounds. Now we were closely enshrouded by leaden clouds. The rain ran down the bag in rivulets and trickled upon our heads.

"Look, oh look!" cried the Professor.

We were now below the storm, and along its dense ceiling could see its broad extent. We were above the mountains. No towns nor even houses could be discovered, only dense forests, through which the gale howled as among the rigging of a ship upon a winter sea.

Very quickly our drag-rope touched the tree-tops and began to glide among the swaying pines.

"Hold on at life-ropes!" shouted the Professor, knife in hand.

In another instant the basket gave a dreadful surge; a mass of pine boughs swept about our heads, followed by a strong jerk. The Professor had cut the cord which bound the anchor coil. The anchor had dropped and caught among the limbs. We were safe! No! not yet.

The line must be shortened so we could clear the tree-tops. All three tugged at the rope. Then other lashings were made while the great aerostat plunged about like a wounded leviathan. We were eighty feet from the ground. Two of us found it convenient to go down the drag-rope, but the poor Professor, tall and heavy, preferred to try the tree. This was wet and slippery, as well as full of projecting points of broken branches. About twenty feet from the ground the Professor's clothes caught. He was in a great dilemma.

Amid a good deal of laughter we managed to liberate him, and as he reached the ground he exclaimed: "Well, of all the scrapes I was ever in, this is about the meanest!"

But help came even here. Far down the slope we heard a shout, which you may be sure was quickly answered. Then, after a while, the bushes parted and a half-score of woodsmen carrying gleaming axes ran to our aid. They were all thoroughly wet, like ourselves.

"What can we do for you?" they asked.

"Cut down half a dozen of these pines. I want to save the balloon," answered the aeronaut.

Then you should have seen the chips fly! Down came the trees, one after the other, and finally the one to which our steed was lashed. The gas soon escaped through great holes torn by the limbs, and our gallant craft was robbed of its power. Standing upon one of the fallen trees I made the sketch you see before you.

We found upon inquiring that we had landed in Potter county, Pennsylvania; and consulting our watches, found we had travelled one hundred and twenty-five miles in about two hours.

We were made comfortable at a lumberman's cabin,

and managed to get out of the woods in a couple of days where we could telegraph to our friends.

It cannot be denied that after the excitement had passed we felt very much like an old farmer who listened to our adventures. He said:

"Mebbe some folks prefer to travel in a flying Beelzebub, but I'm willin' to git along in a buck-board with a good road to put my feet agin when I git off."

_You'll_ say, now, "I guess that race was enough for you!" But you're wrong; for I've had several trips since; and now you've a perfect right to retort, "Well! you are a bigger _balloonatic_ than I took you for."

Perhaps you're right.

AUGUST'S "'SPERIMENT."

August _was_ rather a troublesome boy. Generous and jolly,--his playmates called him a firstrate good fellow, but older people complained that he was curious, meddlesome, and always "cluttering round."

But here is mamma's opinion:

"August was born to be busy. He is inventive too. He asks questions to gain information, and he handles things to see how they are made."

"What is he tinkering at now, mamma?" asked Tom. "He has got hold of an old, old book, full of _f ss_, and all yellow; he's rigged two pans in a barrel, and bought a naptha lamp, and locked us all out of the attic."

"And he just came in with a covered basket, mamma," said Katie, "carrying it ever so carefully. I was jumping rope in the hall, and he asked me not to joggle. What do you suppose he was doing, mamma?"

"Suppose we wait till he tells us," said mamma, smiling.

"He's only trying some of his 'speriments," said wise little Robbie, aged five.

After the children went out, mamma took up her work and sat down by the window, watching the three outside, and waiting for her oldest boy, August, who presently came to take her into his confidence.

"Mamma, I am trying an experiment."

"And is that something new, August?" with an encouraging smile.

"But the _kind_ is new, mamma. Did you ever hear of Réaumur?"

"Who wrote that curious old book on the art of hatching fowls by artificial incubation? Yes, August."

"Then will you come and see, mamma, what _I_ have begun to do?"

He led the way, two steps at a time, to the attic. When they reached the door, August drew from his pocket a key, and unlocked it and led his mother in.

A flour-barrel stood in the centre of the floor, closely covered. August removed the cover, and lifted up a piece of carpet. His mother looked in.

Within the barrel was suspended a large, deep pan, resting on three iron cleats. This pan was partly filled with hot water, and floating on the water was another pan--a shallow one--which contained a layer of sand an inch deep. Over this was spread a piece of linen cloth, and in the cloth thirty-six large Brahma eggs lay closely packed. In the center stood a neat thermometer.

"You have made your arrangements very neatly, August," said mamma. "Of course I do not understand them exactly."

"Well, you see, mamma, this shallow pan gets its heat from the water beneath it. I put that in hot, and keep it just right with this lamp."

Saying which, he knelt in front of the barrel, and opened a neat little door, fitted with a brass knob and hinges.

Stooping down and looking in, his mother saw on a tall flower-pot, which stood upside down, a naptha safety-lamp sending forth a small, steady flame.

"That keeps the temperature about equable;" said August, "but I have another lamp, larger than this, to use in case my incubator grows too cool."

"When did you set them?" asked mamma.

"This morning."

"To-day is the first of March: then if no accident happens, and the eggs are good, you expect them to hatch on the twenty-first?"

"Yes, mamma, and the eggs are all right because I told Grandma I wanted some _very_ fresh, and she saved them for me."

"Did Grandma know of your experiment?"

"Oh! no, mamma. Not a soul but you knows about it; and I want you to keep the secret until we know how it will turn out."

"Very well!" said mamma; "but if you lock the door you had better leave the key with me in case anything should happen. I will look at your incubator occasionally while you are at school."

August gave his mother a grateful look--he felt so encouraged by her sympathy.

"How warm do you keep the eggs?" she asked as he carefully replaced the carpet and cover.

"Réaumur says at 32°, that is about 103 1-2 Fahrenheit.[A]"

"Must the eggs be kept at that temperature all the time?"

"No, only through the first week. The second it is a little less and the third still less."

"There is the luncheon-bell, dear; we must go down or the children will be trooping up here. I hope, my boy, that you will succeed."

"If I don't I shall try again," said August. Then, taking a final look to see that the thermometer and lamp were all right, he locked the room and they went down.

He paid several visits to the attic during the day and evening, finding on each occasion that all worked well and steadily. Before going to bed he refilled the lamp, so the supply of naptha shouldn't be exhausted; then he went to sleep and dreamed all night of eggs and chickens.

In the morning he was up and at his incubator before any one else was stirring. The thermometer indicated that the eggs were a trifle cool, so he turned up the wick of the lamp. Before going to church he turned the eggs. This he did twice daily, being careful not to jar them. The incubator worked well all day and all night.

The next day was Monday and he had his school duties to attend to. He left everything in good order, took the attic key to his mother, and went off to school full of confidence.