Page images
PDF
EPUB

His brow clouded. Again, and, as it seemed, with emphasis, the difficulty of class. Difficult Impossible, was it not? Yet this was what he said :

"You will come again? And one day I will speak. Beatrice, Beatrice,-I am yours! Have it as you will-it shall all be as you will-but you know that you can never go away for good."

"If you are nice to me, very likely I shall come ever so many times. I can't stay very long to-night. There-my cup. Ah! you have got a piano? Whose is it?"-opening it "A Bechstein. Sit still there. I will play."

She tried the instrument a moment, first. Certain chords. Then, with turned head, she waited silently was making her choice. For, whatever it was, it would have to be from memory. There was not

a single music book.

It was a

In a minute, she had chosen. plunge into a weird wild dance. "You know whose that is ?"

[merged small][ocr errors]
[ocr errors][ocr errors][merged small]

"Polish. Xaver Scharwenka's. the same again, and then another. And they were played, and then she rose from the piano. My cloak, please. Thank you."

66

He went to the window curtain: listened for the rumble of the street, for all the city was about them-they two. But the noises of the town had ceased.

"Snowing fast!" he said, coming back from the red curtains. "Can you go?" "It is only two minutes' walk," she answered. "And I don't quite think I see them cheeking me. Besides, I will find some excuse or other for wet things. O! You think me mean. You don't approve of prevarications. But prevarications give me to you." Her smile would have melted mountains. "Thank you" -near the door. "I suppose I shall come back many times. Dick! I feel like it." He looked enraptured. She put her hand out, and he took it. Always respectful, reverential, he had had an angel's visit. From the Heavens, down into Orchard Street, what divine, undreamt of, guest!"O! but you worship me too much," she said. She brushed his cheek with her lips, and her hand stayed in his.

"You must come back many times," he almost gasped. For all his manhood yearned for her. And she was gone-and

gone as much as the last note of Scharwenka's wild music.

For she never came back. The voice. the figure's lines, the blonde head, and the eyes, and the mouth that was Cupid's bow

no'more in Richard Pelse's sitting-room. A flirt, was she? Heartless?-changeable? -a child? Who shall say? For weeks, he waited. Then, a short letter. "O! Dick: It is of no use, you know. You'll have to forgive me, because I was wrong and rash. Only, Dick, understand that it is all over. I could never do that again. If I say I owe Father and Mother something, you know I'm not a fraud—you know I mean it. After all, we should never have done together. Yet, I love you. Think of me kindly. Good-by!"

And she kept her word, and it was over. No lamplight welcomed her; nor fire gleamed for her; nor chairs were placed again on the cosey hearth, for two. And, in the closed piano, there slept, forever, Scharwenka's wild music.

IV.

But Pelse had to move from Orchard Street. Change of scene; change of people. And good-by-with all his heart

to the fashionable custom-to the inroads of the elegant who reminded him of Her, though with a difference. He must seek a new life, in some work-a-day quarter.

To be with the busy and the common-not with any chosen or privileged humanity, but just humanity nothing else. To be with people who really suffered; not with people who wanted hairdyes. So it was that when a long-established druggist of Islington passed away old and decrepit, with a business neglected and lessened, Richard Pelse come near the "Angel"-to the dingy shop you mounted into by two steep steps from the pavement

to the dingy shop with the small-paned, old-fashioned windows; with the little mahogany desk at which who stood at it commanded the prospect of the City Road. He sold the Orchard Street business; and, taking with him only the youngest and least qualified of his young men—and the china and the First Editions, to coax his thoughts to return again to these first loves -he established himself afresh, and did his own work. Gradually he was recognized as rather an exceptional person in the quarter. And his energy was great

enough to allow him, little by little, year by year, to build up a trade.

Things were slack in the forenoons, and a face sometimes depressed, sometimes preoccupied, looked out into the street; and Pelse would stand at his desk with bright eyes and clenched mouth, rapping a tune nervously, with the long lean fingers. After Islington's early dinner, important people were abroad-the people who lived in the squares on the west side of Upper Street and the wife of a City house agent, pompous and portly, patronized (with the breadth of the counter, and all that that conveyed, between them) a man whom Beatrice Image had once kissed. Acquaintance with these folk was strictly limited. The shopkeeper, refined and supersensitive, was not good enough company for the genteel.

But when evening came, he was wont to be too busy to think for an instant of his social place. The prescriptions brought to him were few, but the shop-and on Saturday night especially-was crowded by the smaller bourgeoisie, with their little wants; the maid of all work from the Liverpool Road arrived hurriedly in her cap, and was comforted; Mr. Pelse was the recipient of sorry confidences from the German clerks of Barnsbury. He was helpful and generous-kind to the individual and a cynic to the race. Late in the evening the gas flared in the little shop. Its shutters were just closed when the cheap playhouse, almost within sight, vomited forth its crowd, and loafers were many about the bars of the "Angel" and at the great street corner, and omnibus and tramcar followed each other still upon the long main roads. The night of the

second-rate suburb.

And that went on for years; and he was a bachelor with no relations; getting visibly older and thinner; and a shock of white hair crowned now the pale forehead, over the dark brilliance of the keen, quick eyes. Long ago he had read in the newspaper of the marriage of Miss Image-a day when he had been wondering where, of all places in the wide world, the one face might be ?

"Where is she now? What lands or skies Paint pictures in her friendly eyes?"

Then he had read of her marriage. Hers, at least, was a wound that had healed. His-but what sign was there

of wound at all? For in intervals of business he had come again to hug his First Editions. They knew him at book sales, at Sotheby's. He dusted his own Worcester carefully. Was it not of the best period?—with the “ square mark." As a contrast to his quarter's commonness, he had begun to cultivate the exquisite with the simple in his daily ways. His food was sometimes frugal, but it was cooked to perfection. When he allowed himself a luxury, for himself and one rare crony-an unknown artist of the neighborhood, discovered tardily; a professor of languages who understood literature; or a brother druggist whom business dealings caused him to know-it was nothing short of the best that he allowed himself: he admitted not the second rate he was an idealist still. The fruit with which just once or twice in summer or in autumn he regaled a pretty child, was not an apple or an orange, but grey-bloomed grapes, or a peach, quite flawless. The glass of wine which he brought out from the parlor cupboard to the weak old woman, accommodated with a chair, was a soft Madeira, or a sherry nearly as old as she was. It had known long voyages. It was East India, or it was Bristol Milk. Yes; he was fairly prosperous; and showed no sign of wound.

66

To

the

Even the collector" within him reasserted itself in novel enterprise. the Worcester, the Swansea, Nantgarw, the Chelsea, the First Editions, there came to be added bits that were faultless, of Battersea Enamel-casket and candlesticks, saltcellars, needle-case, and rose pink patch-box: best of all the dainty étui, with the rare puce ground. Yes he was prosperous.

Still, the nerves had been strained for many a year; and suddenly were shattered. Speechless, and one side stiffenedstricken now with paralysis-Mr. Pelse lay in the bedroom over the shop; understanding much, but making small sign to servant or assistant or medical man. His last view-before a second and a final seizurewas of the steady February rain; the weary London afternoon; the unbroken sky; the slate roofs, wet and glistening; the attic windows of the City Road. He had lived-it seemed to him- -so long. The Past-that moment of the Past, however vivid-might, one thinks, be quite forgotten.

66

Yet, wrapped in a soiled paper, in the pocket of his frock-coat, after death, they found a girl's likeness. My photograph, because I trust you!" she had said to him at Aix-les-Bains. And what was all the rest!

In all his thought, for all those years, she was his great dear friend. Once or twice he had held her beautiful handslooked at her eyes-been strong and happy in the magnetism of her presence.-Fortnightly Review.

DUST.

BY DR. J. G. MCPHERSON, F.R.S.E.

SOME of the most enchanting phenomena in nature are dependent for their very existence upon singularly unimportant things; and some phenomena that in one form or another daily attract our attention are produced by startlingly overlooked material. What is the agent that magically transforms the leaden heavens into the gorgeous afterglow of autumn, when the varied and evanescent colors chase each other in fantastic brilliancy? What is the source of the beautiful, brilliant, and varied coloring of the waters of the Mediterranean, or of the most extraordinary brilliant blue of the crystal waters of the tarns in the Cordilleras? What produces the awe-inspiring deep blue of the zenith in a clear summer evening, when the eye tries to reach the absolute? Whence come the gentle refreshing rain, the biting sleet, the stupefying fog, the chilling mist, the virgin snow, the glimmering haze, or the pelting hail? What raises water to the state of ebullition in the process of heat application for boiling? What is the source of much of the wound putrefaction, and the generation and spread of sickness and disease? What, in fact, is one of the most marvellous agents in producing beauty for the eye's gratification, refreshment to the arid soil, sickness and death to the frame of man and beast? That agent is dust.

And yet no significance is given to dust unless it appears in large and troublesome quantities. It requires the persistent annoyance of dust-clouds to excite any attention. Dust, however, demands to be noticed, even when not in that collected, irritating motion known in Scotland as stour. The dust-particles floating in the atmosphere or suspended in the water have a most important influence upon the imagination, as well as upon the comfort of man. Though so small that a microscope magnifying 1600 diameters is required to

discern them, they at times sorely tax the patience of the tidy housekeeper and the skill of the anxious surgeon. An æsthetic eye is charmed with their gorgeous transformation effects; yet some are more real emissaries of evil than poet or painter ever conceived.

Until the famous discovery made by Mr. John Aitken, of Falkirk, a few years ago, no one could reasonably account for the existence of rain. It was said by physicists that cloud-particles were attracted by the law of gravitation under certain conditions of temperature and pressure. But this famous experimentalist and observer found out that without dust there could be no rain; there would be nothing but continuous dew. Our bodies and roads would be always wet. There would be no need for umbrellas, and the housekeeper's temper would be sorely tried with the dripping walls.

A very easy experiment will show that where there is no dust there can be no fog. If common air be driven through a filter of cotton-wool into an exhausted glass receiver, the vessel contains pure air without dust, the dust having been seized by the cotton-wool. If a vessel containing common air be placed beside it, the eye is unable to detect any difference in the contents of the vessels, so very fine and invisible is the dust. If both vessels be connected with a boiler by means of pipes, and steam be passed into both, the observer will be astonished at the contrast presented. In the vessel containing common air the steam will be seen, as soon as it enters, rising in a close white cloud; then a beautiful foggy mass will fill the vessel, so dense that it cannot be seen through. On the other hand, in the vessel containing the filtered, dustless air the steam is not seen at all; thongh the eye be strained, no particles of moisture are

discernible; there is no cloudiness whatever. In the one case, where there was the ordinary air impregnated with invisible dust, fog at once appeared; whereas in the other case, the absence of the dust prevented the water-vapor from condensing into fog. Invisible dust, then, is required in the air for the production of fog, cloud, mist, snow, sleet, hail, haze, and rain, according to the temperature and pressure of the air.

The old theory of particles of watervapor combining with each other to form a cloud-particle is now exploded. Dust is required as a free-surface on which the vapor-particles will condense. The fine particles of dust in the air attract the vapor-particles and form fog-particles. When there is abundance of dust in the air, and little water-vapor present, there is an over proportion of dust-particles; and the fog-particles are, in consequence, closely packed, but light in form and small in size, taking the more flimsy appearance of fog. But if the dust-particles are fewer in proportion to the number of molecules of water-vapor, each particle soon gets weighted, becomes visible, and falls in mist or rain.

This can be shown by experiment. Let a jet of steam be passed into a glass receiver containing common air, and it will be soon filled with dense fog. Shut off the steam, and allow the fog to settle. The air again becomes clear. Admit more steam, and the water-particles will seize hold of the dust-particles that previously escaped. Fog will be formed, but it will not be so dense. Again, shut off the steam, and allow the fog to settle and the air to clear. Then admit some steam, and very likely the condensed vapor will fall as rain. If the experiment be often enough repeated, rain instead of fog will be formed, because there are comparatively few solid particles on which the moisture can condense. When, then, dust is present in large quantities, the condensed vapor produces a fog; there are so many particles of dust to which the vapor can adhere that each can only get a very small share-so small, in fact, that the weight of the dust is scarcely affected by the addition of the vapor-and the fog formed remains for a time suspended in the air, too light to fall to the ground. But when the number of dust-particles is fewer, each particle can take hold of a greater space

of the water-vapour, and mist-particles or even rain-particles will be formed.

This principle that every fog-particle has embosomed in it an invisible dust-particle led Mr. Aitken to one of the most startling discoveries of our day-the enumeration of the dust-particles of the air. Thirty years ago M. Pasteur succeeded in counting the organic particles in the air; these are comparatively few, whereas the number of inorganic particles is legion. Dr. Koch, Dr. Percy Frankland and others have devoted considerable attention to the enumeration of the micro-organisms in the air, and Mr. A. Wynter Blyth, the public analyst in London, has done good service in counting the micro-organisms in the different kinds of water in the vicinity. Marvellous as are the results, still the process was comparatively easy. By generating the colonies in a prepared gelatine, the number of microbes can be easily ascertained.

66

But to attempt to count the inorganic dust seemed almost equal in audacity to the scaling of the heavens. The numbering of the dust of the air, like the numbering of the hairs of the head, was considered as one of the prerogatives of the Deity. Yet Mr. Aitken has counted the gay motes that people the sunbeams." Though he could not enlarge the particles by a nutritive process, as in the case of the organic particles, he has been able to enlarge them by transferring them into fogparticles, so as to be within the possibility of accurate enumeration. His plan is to dilute a definite small quantity of common air with a fixed large quantity of filtered, dustless air, and allow the mixture to be super-saturated by water-vapor; the few particles of dust seize the moisture, become visible in drops, fall on a divided plate, and are there counted by means of a magnifying-glass.

The instrument employed by Mr. Aitken has taken various forms; in fact, he has so far improved it that it can be carried in the coat-pocket. But the original instrument, which we saw and used, is most easily described without the aid of diagrams. But, instead of his decimal system of measurements, we will use the ordinary system, that the dimensions may be more easily grasped by the general reader.

Into a common glass flask of carafe-shape, and flat-bottomed, of 30 cubic inches capacity, are passed two

small tubes, at the end of one of which is attached a square silver table, one inch long. A little water having been inserted, the flask is inverted, and the table is placed exactly one inch from the inverted bottom, so that the contents of the air above the table and below the bottom are one cubic inch. The observing table has been divided into a hundred equal squares, and is highly polished, with the burnishing all in one direction, so that during the observations it appears dark, when the fine mist-particles, falling on it, glisten opallike with the reflected light, in order that they may be more easily counted. The tube to which the silver table is attached is connected with two stop-cocks, one of which can admit a small measured portion of the air to be examined. The other tube in the flask is connected with an exhausting syringe, of 10 cubic inches capacity. Over the flask is placed a covering colored black in the inside. In the top of this cover is inserted a powerful magnifying-glass, through which the particles on the silver table can be easily seen and counted. A little to the side of this magnifier is an opening in the cover, through which light is concentrated on the silver table. This light, again, has had to pass through a spherical globe of water, in order to abstract the heat rays, which might vitiate the observations.

To perform the experiment, the air in the flask is exhausted by the syringe. The flask is then filled with pure filtered air. One-tenth of a cubic inch of the air to be examined is then introduced into the flask, and mixed with the 30 cubic inches of dustless air. After one stroke of the syringe this mixed air is made to occupy an additional space of 10 cubic inches; and this rarefying of the air so chills it that condensation of the water-vapor takes place on the dust-particles. The observer, looking through the magnifying-glass upon the silver table, sees the mist-particles fall like an opal shower on the table, and counts the number on a single square in two or three places, striking an average in his mind. Suppose the average number upon one of these squares were five, then on the whole table there would be 500; and these 500 mist-particles contain the 500 dustparticles which floated invisibly in the cubic inch of mixed air above the table. But, as there are 40 cubic inches of mixed air in the flask and syringe, the number of

dust-particles in the whole is 40 times 500 20,000; that is, there are 20,000 dust-particles in the small quantity of common air (one tenth of a cubic inch) which was introduced for examination; in other words, a cubic inch of that air contains 200,000 dust-particles-nearly a quarter of a million.

By this process Mr. Aitken has been able to count 7 millions of dust-particles in one cubic inch of the ordinary air of Glasgow. We counted with him 4 millions in a cubic inch of the air outside of the Royal Society Rooms, Princes Street, Edinburgh. Inside the Room, after the Fellows had met for two hours, on a winter evening-the fire and gas having been burning for a considerable time-we found 6 millions in a cubic inch of the air four feet from the floor; but near the ceiling no fewer than 57 millions were counted in the cubic inch. He counted in one cubic inch of air immediately above a Bunsen flame the fabulous number of 489 millions of dust-particles. The lowesi number he ever counted was at Lucerne, in Switzerland: 3500 in the cubic inch. On the summit of Ben Nevis the observer, using Mr. Aitken's apparatus, counted from 214,400 down to 840 in the cubic inch. But on the morning of the 21st of July last there was a most marvellous observation made. Though at the sea-level the wind was steady, and the thermometer did not vary, at the summit the wind suddenly veered round to the opposite direction of that below, blowing out of a cyclone, and the temperature rose ten degrees. In consequence the extraordinarily low mean of only 34 dust-particles to the cubic inch was observed.

We now come to the most pleasant of the investigations in connection with dust. The very brilliant sunsets which began in the autumn of 1883, and continued during successive seasons with gradually decreasing grandeur, have arrested the attention of the physicist as well as of the general observer. What is the cause of the brilliant coloring in these remarkable sunsets? What is the source of the immense wealth of the various shades of red which have been so universally admired? Gazing on a gorgeous sunset, the whole western heavens glowing with roseate hues, the observer sees the colors melting away before his eyes and becoming transformed into different hues. The clouds are of

« PreviousContinue »