Kitabı oku: «Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850», sayfa 18

THE OLD WELL IN LANGUEDOC

The proof of the truth of the following statement, taken from the Courrier de l’Europe, rests not only upon the known veracity of the narrator, but upon the fact that the whole occurrence is registered in the judicial records of the criminal trials of the province of Languedoc. We give it as we heard it from the lips of the dreamer, as nearly as possible in his own words.

As the junior partner in a commercial house at Lyons, I had been traveling some time on the business of the firm, when, one evening in the month of June, I arrived at a town in Languedoc where I had never before been. I put up at a quiet inn in the suburbs, and, being very much fatigued, ordered dinner at once; and went to bed almost immediately after, determined to begin very early in the morning my visits to the different merchants.

I was no sooner in bed than I fell into a deep sleep, and had a dream that made the strongest impression upon me.

I thought that I had arrived at the same town, but in the middle of the day, instead of the evening, as was really the case; that I had stopped at the very same inn, and gone out immediately, as an unoccupied stranger would do, to see whatever was worthy of observation in the place. I walked down the main street, into another street, crossing it at right angles, and apparently leading into the country. I had not gone very far, when I came to a church, the Gothic portico of which I stopped to examine. When I had satisfied my curiosity, I advanced to a by-path which branched off from the main street. Obeying an impulse which I could neither account for nor control, I struck into the path, though it was winding, rugged, and unfrequented, and presently reached a miserable cottage, in front of which was a garden covered with weeds. I had no difficulty in getting into the garden, for the hedge had several gaps in it, wide enough to admit four carts abreast. I approached an old well, which stood solitary and gloomy in a distant corner; and looking down into it, I beheld distinctly, without any possibility of mistake, a corpse which had been stabbed in several places. I counted the deep wounds and the wide gashes whence the blood was flowing.

I would have cried out, but my tongue clove to the roof of my mouth. At this moment I awoke, with my hair on end, trembling in every limb, and cold drops of perspiration bedewing my forehead – awoke to find myself comfortably in bed, my trunk standing beside me, birds warbling cheerfully around my window; while a young, clear voice was singing a provincial air in the next room, and the morning sun was shining brightly through the curtains.

I sprung from my bed, dressed myself, and, as it was yet very early, I thought I would seek an appetite for breakfast by a morning stroll. I accordingly entered the main street, and went along. The farther I walked, the stranger became the confused recollection of the objects that presented themselves to my view. “It is very strange,” I thought; “I have never been here before; and I could swear that I have seen this house, and the next, and that other on the left.” On I went, till I came to the corner of a street, crossing the one down which I had come. For the first time, I remembered my dream, but put away the thought as too absurd; still, at every step, some fresh point of resemblance struck me. “Am I still dreaming!” I exclaimed, not without a momentary thrill through my whole frame. “Is the agreement to be perfect to the very end?” Before long, I reached the church, with the same architectural features that had attracted my notice in the dream; and then the high-road, along which I pursued my way, coming at length to the same by-path that had presented itself to my imagination a few hours before. There was no possibility of doubt or mistake. Every tree, every turn, was familiar to me. I was not at all of a superstitious turn, and was wholly engrossed in the practical details of commercial business. My mind had never dwelt upon the hallucinations, the presentiments, that science either denies, or is unable to explain; but I must confess, that I now felt myself spell-bound, as by some enchantment; and, with Pascal’s words on my lips, “A continued dream would be equal to reality,” I hurried forward, no longer doubting that the next moment would bring me to the cottage; and this really was the case. In all its outward circumstances, it corresponded to what I had seen in my dream. Who, then, could wonder that I determined to ascertain whether the coincidence would hold good in every other point? I entered the garden, and went direct to the spot on which I had seen the well; but here the resemblance failed – well, there was none. I looked in every direction; examined the whole garden, went round the cottage, which appeared to be inhabited, although no person was visible; but nowhere could I find any vestige of a well.

I made no attempt to enter the cottage, but hastened back to the hotel, in a state of agitation difficult to describe. I could not make up my mind to pass unnoticed such extraordinary coincidences; but how was any clew to be obtained to the terrible mystery?

I went to the landlord, and after chatting with him for some time on different subjects, I came to the point, and asked him directly to whom the cottage belonged that was on a by-road which I described to him.

“I wonder, sir,” said he, “what made you take such particular notice of such a wretched little hovel. It is inhabited by an old man with his wife, who have the character of being very morose and unsociable. They rarely leave the house – see nobody, and nobody goes to see them; but they are quiet enough, and I never heard any thing against them beyond this. Of late, their very existence seems to have been forgotten; and I believe, sir, that you are the first who, for years, has turned his steps to the deserted spot.”

These details, far from satisfying my curiosity, did but provoke it the more. Breakfast was served, but I could not touch it; and I felt that if I presented myself to the merchants in such a state of excitement, they would think me mad; and, indeed, I felt very much excited. I paced up and down the room, looked out at the window, trying to fix my attention on some external object, but in vain. I endeavored to interest myself in a quarrel between two men in the street; but the garden and the cottage preoccupied my mind; and, at last, snatching my hat, I cried, “I will go, come what may.”

I repaired to the nearest magistrate, told him the object of my visit, and related the whole circumstance briefly and clearly. I saw directly that he was much impressed by my statement.

“It is, indeed, very strange,” said he, “and after what has happened, I do not think I am at liberty to leave the matter without further inquiry. Important business will prevent my accompanying you in a search, but I will place two of the police at your command. Go once more to the hovel, see its inhabitants, and search every part of it. You may, perhaps, make some important discovery.”

I suffered but a very few moments to elapse before I was on my way, accompanied by the two officers, and we soon reached the cottage. We knocked, and after waiting for some time, an old man opened the door. He received us somewhat uncivilly, but showed no mark of suspicion, nor, indeed, of any other emotion, when we told him we wished to search the house.

“Very well, gentlemen; as fast, and as soon as you please,” he replied.

“Have you a well here?” I inquired.

“No, sir; we are obliged to go for water to a spring at a considerable distance.”

We searched the house, which I did, I confess, with a kind of feverish excitement, expecting every moment to bring some fatal secret to light. Meantime, the man gazed upon us with an impenetrable vacancy of look, and we at last left the cottage without seeing any thing that could confirm my suspicions. I resolved to inspect the garden once more; and a number of idlers having been by this time collected, drawn to the spot by the sight of a stranger with two armed men engaged in searching the premises, I made inquiries of some of them whether they knew any thing about a well in that place. I could get no information at first, but at length an old woman came slowly forward, leaning on a crutch.

“A well!” cried she; “is it the well you are looking after? That has been gone these thirty years. I remember, as if it were only yesterday, many a time, when I was a young girl, how I used to amuse myself by throwing stones into it, and hearing the splash they used to make in the water.”

“And could you tell where that well used to be?” I asked, almost breathless with excitement.

“As near as I can remember, on the very spot on which your honor is standing,” said the old woman.

“I could have sworn it!” thought I, springing from the place as if I had trod upon a scorpion.

Need I say, that we set to work to dig up the ground. At about eighteen inches deep, we came to a layer of bricks, which, being broken up, gave to view some boards, which were easily removed; after which we beheld the mouth of the well.

“I was quite sure it was here,” said the woman. “What a fool the old fellow was to stop it up, and then have so far to go for water!”

A sounding-line, furnished with hooks, was let down into the well; the crowd pressing around us, and breathlessly bending over the dark and fetid hole, the secrets of which seemed hidden in impenetrable obscurity. This was repeated several times without any result. At length, penetrating below the mud, the hooks caught an old chest, upon the top of which had been thrown a great many large stones; and after much effort and time, we succeeded in raising it to daylight. The sides and lid were decayed and rotten; it needed no locksmith to open it; and we found within, what I was certain we should find, and which paralyzed with horror all the spectators, who had not my pre-convictions – we found the remains of a human body.

The police-officers who had accompanied me now rushed into the house, and secured the person of the old man. As to his wife, no one could at first tell what had become of her. After some search, however, she was found hidden behind a bundle of fagots.

By this time, nearly the whole town had gathered around the spot; and now that this horrible fact had come to light, every body had some crime to tell, which had been laid to the charge of the old couple. The people who predict after an event, are numerous.

The old couple were brought before the proper authorities, and privately and separately examined. The old man persisted in his denial, most pertinaciously; but his wife at length confessed, that, in concert with her husband, she had once – a very long time ago – murdered a peddler, whom they had met one night on the high-road, and who had been incautious enough to tell them of a considerable sum of money which he had about him, and whom, in consequence, they induced to pass the night at their house. They had taken advantage of the heavy sleep induced by fatigue, to strangle him; his body had been put into the chest, the chest thrown into the well, and the well stopped up.

The peddler being from another country, his disappearance had occasioned no inquiry; there was no witness of the crime; and as its traces had been carefully concealed from every eye, the two criminals had good reason to believe themselves secure from detection. They had not, however, been able to silence the voice of conscience; they fled from the sight of their fellow-men; they trembled at the slightest noise, and silence thrilled them with terror. They had often formed a determination to leave the scene of their crime – to fly to some distant land; but still some undefinable fascination kept them near the remains of their victim.

Terrified by the deposition of his wife, and unable to resist the overwhelming proofs against him, the man at length made a similar confession; and six weeks after, the unhappy criminals died on the scaffold, in accordance with the sentence of the Parliament of Toulouse. They died penitent.

The well was once more shut up, and the cottage leveled to the ground. It was not, however, until fifty years had in some measure deadened the memory of the terrible transaction, that the ground was cultivated. It is now a fine field of corn.

Such was the dream and its result.

I never had the courage to revisit the town where I had been an actor in such a tragedy.

[From the Dublin University Magazine.]

SUMMER PASTIME

 
Do you ask how I’d amuse me
When the long bright summer comes,
And welcome leisure woos me
To shun life’s crowded homes;
To shun the sultry city,
Whose dense, oppressive air
Might make one weep with pity
For those who must be there?
 
 
I’ll tell you then – I would not
To foreign countries roam,
As though my fancy could not
Find occupance at home;
Nor to home-haunts of fashion
Would I, least of all, repair,
For guilt, and pride, and passion,
Have summer-quarters there.
 
 
Far, far from watering-places
Of note and name I’d keep,
For there would vapid faces
Still throng me in my sleep;
Then contact with the foolish,
The arrogant, the vain,
The meaningless – the mulish,
Would sicken heart and brain.
 
 
No – I’d seek some shore of ocean
Where nothing comes to mar
The ever-fresh commotion
Of sea and land at war;
Save the gentle evening only
As it steals along the deep,
So spirit-like and lonely,
To still the waves to sleep.
 
 
There long hours I’d spend in viewing
The elemental strife,
My soul the while subduing
With the littleness of life;
Of life, with all its paltry plans,
Its conflicts and its cares —
The feebleness of all that’s man’s —
The might that’s God’s and theirs!
 
 
And when eve came I’d listen
To the stilling of that war,
Till o’er my head should glisten
The first pure silver star;
Then, wandering homeward slowly,
I’d learn my heart the tune
Which the dreaming billows lowly,
Were murmuring to the moon!
 

R.C.

[From Dickens’s Household Words.]

THE CHEMISTRY OF A CANDLE

The Wilkinsons were having a small party, it consisted of themselves and Uncle Bagges, at which the younger members of the family, home for the holidays, had been just admitted to assist after dinner. Uncle Bagges was a gentleman from whom his affectionate relatives cherished expectations of a testamentary nature. Hence the greatest attention was paid by them to the wishes of Mr. Bagges, as well as to every observation which he might be pleased to make.

“Eh! what? you sir,” said Mr. Bagges, facetiously addressing himself to his eldest nephew, Harry – “Eh! what? I am glad to hear, sir, that you are doing well at school. Now – eh! now, are you clever enough to tell me where was Moses when he put the candle out?”

“That depends, uncle,” answered the young gentleman, “on whether he had lighted the candle to see with at night, or by daylight to seal a letter.”

“Eh! very good, now! ’Pon my word, very good,” exclaimed Uncle Bagges. “You must be Lord Chancellor, sir – Lord Chancellor, one of these days.”

“And now, uncle,” asked Harry, who was a favorite with the old gentleman, “can you tell me what you do when you put a candle out?”

“Clap an extinguisher on it, you young rogue, to be sure.”

“Oh! but I mean, you cut off its supply of oxygen,” said Master Harry.

“Cut off its ox’s – eh? what? I shall cut off your nose, you young dog, one of these fine days.”

“He means something he heard at the Royal Institution,” observed Mrs. Wilkinson. “He reads a great deal about chemistry, and he attended Professor Faraday’s lectures there on the chemical history of a candle, and has been full of it ever since.”

“Now, you sir,” said Uncle Bagges, “come you here to me, and tell me what you have to say about this chemical, eh? or comical; which? this comical chemical history of a candle.”

“He’ll bore you, Bagges,” said Mrs. Wilkinson. “Harry, don’t be troublesome to your uncle.”

“Troublesome! Oh, not at all. He amuses me. I like to hear him. So let him teach his old uncle the comicality and chemicality of a farthing rushlight.”

“A wax candle will be nicer and cleaner, uncle, and answer the same purpose. There’s one on the mantle-shelf. Let me light it.”

“Take care you don’t burn your fingers, or set any thing on fire,” said Mrs. Wilkinson.

“Now, uncle,” commenced Harry, having drawn his chair to the side of Mr. Bagges, “we have got our candle burning. What do you see?”

“Let me put on my spectacles,” answered the uncle.

“Look down on the top of the candle around the wick. See, it is a little cup full of melted wax. The heat of the flame has melted the wax just round the wick. The cold air keeps the outside of it hard, so as to make the rim of it. The melted wax in the little cup goes up through the wick to be burnt, just as oil does in the wick of a lamp. What do you think makes it go up, uncle?”

“Why – why, the flame draws it up, doesn’t it?”

“Not exactly, uncle. It goes up through little tiny passages in the cotton wick, because very, very small channels, or pipes, or pores, have the power in themselves of sucking up liquids. What they do it by is called cap – something.”

“Capillary attraction, Harry,” suggested Mr. Wilkinson.

“Yes, that’s it; just as a sponge sucks up water, or a bit of lump-sugar the little drop of tea or coffee left in the bottom of a cup. But I mustn’t say much more about this, or else you will tell me I am doing something very much like teaching my grandmother to – you know what.”

“Your grandmother, eh, young sharpshins?”

“No – I mean my uncle. Now, I’ll blow the candle out, like Moses; not to be in the dark, though, but to see into what it is. Look at the smoke rising from the wick. I’ll hold a bit of lighted paper in the smoke, so as not to touch the wick. But see, for all that, the candle lights again. So this shows that the melted wax sucked up through the wick is turned into vapor; and the vapor burns. The heat of the burning vapor keeps on melting more wax, and that is sucked up too within the flame, and turned into vapor, and burnt, and so on till the wax is all used up, and the candle is gone. So the flame, uncle, you see is the last of the candle, and the candle seems to go through the flame into nothing – although it doesn’t, but goes into several things, and isn’t it curious, as Professor Faraday said, that the candle should look so splendid and glorious in going away.”

“How well he remembers, doesn’t he?” observed Mrs. Wilkinson.

“I dare say,” proceeded Harry, “that the flame of the candle looks flat to you; but if we were to put a lamp glass over it, so as to shelter it from the draught, you would see it is round, round sideways, and running up to a peak. It is drawn up by the hot air; you know that hot air always rises, and that is the way smoke is taken up the chimney. What should you think was in the middle of the flame?”

“I should say, fire,” replied Uncle Bagges.

“Oh, no! The flame is hollow. The bright flame we see is something no thicker than a thin peel, or skin; and it doesn’t touch the wick. Inside of it is the vapor I told you of just now. If you put one end of a bent pipe into the middle of the flame, and let the other end of the pipe dip into a bottle, the vapor or gas from the candle will mix with the air there; and if you set fire to the mixture of gas from the candle and air in the bottle, it would go off with a bang.”

“I wish you’d do that, Harry,” said Master Tom, the younger brother of the juvenile lecturer.

“I want the proper things,” answered Harry. “Well, uncle, the flame of the candle is a little shining case, with gas in the inside of it, and air on the outside, so that the case of flame is between the air and the gas. The gas keeps going into the flame to burn, and when the candle burns properly, none of it ever passes out through the flame; and none of the air ever gets in through the flame to the gas. The greatest heat of the candle is in this skin, or peel, or case of flame.”

“Case of flame!” repeated Mr. Bagges. “Live and learn. I should have thought a candle flame was as thick as my poor old noddle.”

“I can show you the contrary,” said Harry. “I take this piece of white paper, look, and hold it a second or two down upon the candle flame, keeping the flame very steady. Now I’ll rub off the black of the smoke, and – there – you find that the paper is scorched in the shape of a ring; but inside the ring it is only dirtied, and not singed at all.”

“Seeing is believing,” remarked the uncle.

“But,” proceeded Harry, “there is more in the candle flame than the gas that comes out of the candle. You know a candle won’t burn without air. There must be always air around the gas, and touching it like to make it burn. If a candle hasn’t got enough air, it goes out, or burns badly, so that some of the vapor inside of the flame comes out through it in the form of smoke, and this is the reason of a candle smoking. So now you know why a great clumsy dip smokes more than a neat wax candle; it is because the thick wick of the dip makes too much fuel in proportion to the air that can get to it.”

“Dear me! Well, I suppose there is a reason for every thing,” exclaimed the young philosopher’s mamma.

“What should you say, now,” continued Harry, “if I told you that the smoke that comes out of a candle is the very thing that makes a candle light? Yes; a candle shines by consuming its own smoke. The smoke of a candle is a cloud of small dust, and the little grains of the dust are bits of charcoal, or carbon, as chemists call it. They are made in the flame, and burned in the flame, and, while burning, make the flame bright. They are burned the moment they are made; but the flame goes on making more of them as fast as it burns them; and that is how it keeps bright. The place they are made in, is in the case of flame itself, where the strongest heat is. The great heat separates them from the gas which comes from the melted wax, and, as soon as they touch the air on the outside of the thin case of flame, they burn.”

“Can you tell how it is that the little bits of carbon cause the brightness of the flame?” asked Mr. Wilkinson.

“Because they are pieces of solid matter,” answered Harry. “To make a flame shine, there must always be some solid – or at least liquid – matter in it.”

“Very good,” said Mr. Bagges – “solid stuff necessary to brightness.”

“Some gases and other things,” resumed Harry, “that burn with a flame you can hardly see, burn splendidly when something solid is put into them. Oxygen and hydrogen – tell me if I use too hard words, uncle – oxygen and hydrogen gases, if mixed together and blown through a pipe, burn with plenty of heat but with very little light. But if their flame is blown upon a piece of quick-lime, it gets so bright as to be quite dazzling. Make the smoke of oil of turpentine pass through the same flame, and it gives the flame a beautiful brightness directly.”

“I wonder,” observed Uncle Bagges, “what has made you such a bright youth.”

“Taking after uncle, perhaps,” retorted his nephew. “Don’t put my candle and me out. Well, carbon or charcoal is what causes the brightness of all lamps, and candles, and other common lights; so, of course, there is carbon in what they are all made of.”

“So carbon is smoke, eh? and light is owing to your carbon. Giving light out of smoke, eh? as they say in the classics,” observed Mr. Bagges.

“But what becomes of the candle,” pursued Harry, “as it burns away? where does it go?”

“Nowhere,” said his mamma, “I should think. It burns to nothing.”

“Oh, dear, no!” said Harry, “every thing – every body goes somewhere.”

“Eh! – rather an important consideration that,” Mr. Bagges moralized.

“You can see it goes into smoke, which makes soot, for one thing,” pursued Harry. “There are other things it goes into, not to be seen by only looking, but you can get to see them by taking the right means – just put your hand over the candle, uncle.”

“Thank you, young gentleman, I had rather be excused.”

“Not close enough down to burn you, uncle; higher up. There – you feel a stream of hot air; so something seems to rise from the candle. Suppose you were to put a very long, slender gas-burner over the flame, and let the flame burn just within the end of it, as if it were a chimney, some of the hot steam would go up and come out at the top, but a sort of dew would be left behind in the glass chimney, if the chimney was cold enough when you put it on. There are ways of collecting this sort of dew, and when it is collected it turns out to be really water. I am not joking, uncle. Water is one of the things which the candle turns into in burning – water, coming out of fire. A jet of oil gives above a pint of water in burning. In some lighthouses they burn, Professor Faraday says, up to two gallons of oil in a night, and if the windows are cold, the steam from the oil clouds the inside of the windows, and, in frosty weather, freezes into ice.”

“Water out of a candle, eh?” exclaimed Mr. Bagges. “As hard to get, I should have thought, as blood out of a post. Where does it come from?”

“Part from the wax, and part from the air, and yet not a drop of it comes either from the air or the wax. What do you make of that, uncle?”

“Eh? Oh! I’m no hand at riddles. Give it up.”

“No riddle at all, uncle. The part that comes from the wax isn’t water, and the part that comes from the air isn’t water, but when put together they become water. Water is a mixture of two things, then. This can be shown. Put some iron wire or turnings into a gun-barrel open at both ends. Heat the middle of the barrel red-hot in a little furnace. Keep the heat up, and send the steam of boiling water through the red-hot gun-barrel. What will come out at the other end of the barrel won’t be steam; it will be gas, which doesn’t turn to water again when it gets cold, and which burns if you put a light to it. Take the turnings out of the gun-barrel, and you will find them changed to rust, and heavier than when they were put in. Part of the water is the gas that comes out of the barrel, the other part is what mixes with the iron turnings, and changes them to rust, and makes them heavier. You can fill a bladder with the gas that comes out of the gun-barrel, or you can pass bubbles of it up into a jar of water turned upside down in a trough, and, as I said, you can make this part of the water burn.”

“Eh?” cried Mr. Bagges. “Upon my word. One of these days, we shall have you setting the Thames on fire.”

“Nothing more easy,” said Harry, “than to burn part of the Thames, or any other water; I mean the gas that I have just told you about, which is called hydrogen. In burning, hydrogen produces water again, like the flame of the candle. Indeed, hydrogen is that part of the water, formed by a candle burning, that comes from the wax. All things that have hydrogen in them produce water in burning, and the more there is in them, the more they produce. When pure hydrogen burns, nothing comes from it but water, no smoke or soot at all. If you were to burn one ounce of it, the water you would get would be just nine ounces. There are many ways of making hydrogen, besides out of steam by the hot gun-barrel. I could show it you in a moment by pouring a little sulphuric acid mixed with water into a bottle upon a few zinc or steel filings, and putting a cork in the bottle with a little pipe through it, and setting fire to the gas that would come from the mouth of the pipe. We should find the flame very hot, but having scarcely any brightness. I should like you to see the curious qualities of hydrogen, particularly how light it is, so as to carry things up in the air; and I wish I had a small balloon to fill with it and make go up to the ceiling, or a bag-pipe full of it to blow soap-bubbles with, and show how much faster they rise than common ones, blown with the breath.”

“So do I,” interposed Master Tom.

“And so,” resumed Harry, “hydrogen, you know, uncle, is part of water, and just one-ninth part.”

“As hydrogen is to water, so is a tailor to an ordinary individual, eh?” Mr. Bagges remarked.

“Well, now, then, uncle, if hydrogen is the tailor’s part of the water, what are the other eight parts? The iron-turnings used to make hydrogen in the gun-barrel, and rusted, take just those eight parts from the water in the shape of steam, and are so much the heavier. Burn iron turnings in the air, and they make the same rust, and gain just the same in weight. So the other eight parts must be found in the air for one thing, and in the rusted iron turnings for another, and they must also be in the water; and now the question is, how to get at them?”

“Out of the water? Fish for them, I should say,” suggested Mr. Bagges.

“Why, so we can,” said Harry. “Only instead of hooks and lines, we must use wires – two wires, one from one end, the other from the other, of a galvanic battery. Put the points of these wires into water, a little distance apart, and they instantly take the water to pieces. If they are of copper, or a metal that will rust easily, one of them begins to rust, and air-bubbles come up from the other. These bubbles are hydrogen. The other part of the water mixes with the end of the wire and makes rust. But if the wires are of gold, or a metal that does not rust easily, air-bubbles rise from the ends of both wires. Collect the bubbles from both wires in a tube, and fire them, and they turn to water again; and this water is exactly the same weight as the quantity that has been changed into the two gases. Now, then, uncle, what should you think water was composed of?”

“Eh? well – I suppose of those very identical two gases, young gentleman.”

“Right, uncle. Recollect that the gas from one of the wires was hydrogen, the one-ninth of water. What should you guess the gas from the other wire to be?”

“Stop – eh? – wait a bit – eh – oh! – why, the other eight-ninths, to be sure.”

“Good again, uncle. Now this gas that is eight-ninths of water is the gas called oxygen that I mentioned just now. This is a very curious gas. It won’t burn in air at all itself, like gas from a lamp, but it has a wonderful power of making things burn that are lighted and put into it. If you fill a jar with it – ”