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Page 6
Does not this seem like a spiritual force? Lodestone can impart its
qualities to hard steel without the impairment of its own power. There
is a giving that does not impoverish, and a withholding that does not
enrich.
Wherever there is need there is supply. The proper search with
appropriate faculties will find it. There are yet more things in
heaven and earth than are dreamed of in our philosophy.
THE FAIRY GRAVITATION
The Germans imagine that they have fairy kobolds, sprites, and gnomes
which play under ground and haunt mines. I know a real one. I will
give you his name. It is called "Gravitation." The name does not
sound any more fairylike than a sledge hammer, but its nature and work
are as fairylike as a spider's web. I will give samples of his helpful
work for man.
In the mountains about Saltzburg, south of Munich, are great thick beds
of solid salt. How can they get it down to the cities where it is
needed? Instead of digging it out, and packing it on the backs of
mules for forty miles, they turn in a stream of water and make a little
lake which absorbs very much salt--all it can carry. Then they lay a
pipe, like a fairy railroad, and gravitation carries the salt water
gently and swiftly forty miles, to where the railroads can take it
everywhere. It goes so easily! There is no railroad to build, no car
to haul back, only to stand still and see gravitation do the work.
How do they get the salt and water apart? O, just as easily. They ask
the wind to help them. They cut brush about four feet long, and pile
it up twenty feet high and as long as they please. Then a pipe with
holes in it is laid along the top, the water trickles down all over the
loose brush, and the thirsty wind blows through and drinks out most of
the water. They might let on the water so slowly that all of it would
be drunk out by the wind, leaving the solid salt on the bushes. But
they do not want it there. So they turn on so much water that the
thirsty wind can drink only the most of it, and the rest drops down
into great pans, needing only a little evaporation by boiling to become
beautiful salt again, white as the snows of December.
There are other minerals besides salt in the beds in the mountains,
and, being soluble in water, they also come down the tiny railroad with
musical laughter. How can we separate them, so that the salt shall be
pure for our tables?
The other minerals are less avaricious of water than salt, so they are
precipitated, or become solid, sooner than salt does. Hence with nice
care the other minerals can be left solid on the bushes, while the salt
brine falls off. Afterward pure water can be turned on and these other
minerals can be washed off in a solution of their own. No fairies
could work better than those of solution and crystallization.
MORE GRAVITATION
At Hutchinson, Kan., there are great beds of solid rock salt four
hundred feet below the surface. Men want to get and use two thousand
barrels a day. How shall they get it to the top of the ground? They
might dig a great well--or, as the miners say, sink a shaft--pump out
the water, go down and blast out the salt, and laboriously haul it up
in defiance of gravitation. No; that is too hard. Better ask this
strong gravitation to bring it up.
But does it work down and up? Did any one ever know of gravitation
raising anything? O yes, many things. A balloon may weigh as much as
a ton, but when inflated it weighs less than so much air; so the
heavier air flows down under and shoulders it up. When a heavy weight
and a light one are hung over a pulley, the light one goes up because
gravity acts more on the other. Water poured down a long tube will
rise if the tube is bent up into a shorter arm.
Exactly. So we bore a four-inch hole down to the salt and put in an
iron tube.
We do not care about the water. It is no bother. Then inside of this
tube we put a two-inch tube that is a few feet higher. Now pour water
down the small longer tube. It saturates itself with salt, and comes
flowing over the top of the shorter tube as easily as water runs down
hill. Multiply the wells, dry out the water, and you have your two
thousand barrels of salt lifted every day--just as easy as thinking!
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