There was once upon a time a banker, a millionaire, who could reckon
his wealth not by millions only, but by hundreds of millions and more;
who was, in fact, so tremendously rich that he did not know what to
do with his money--a difficulty in which nobody had ever been before.
This man took it into his head to build a palace infinitely superior
to anything that had hitherto been seen. Marbles, carpets, gildings,
silk hangings, pictures, and statues--in fact, the whole mass of
common-place luxuries as one sees them even in the grandest royal
abodes, fell short of his magnificent pretensions. He was an intelligent
man, and thoroughly understood the respect due to his riches; and the
common fate of kings seemed to him far too shabby for the entertainment
of his dynasty, which he looked upon as very superior to all the
families of crowned heads in the world. In consequence he sent to the
four quarters of the globe for the most illustrious professors, the
most skilful engineers, the cleverest and most ingenious workmen in
every department; and giving them unlimited permission as to
expenditure? ordered them to adorn his palace with all the wonders of
science and human industry.
Science, and human industry, and unlimited means--what will they not
accomplish? No wonder that nothing was talked of for a hundred miles
around but the magic building--of which, by the way, I do not venture
to give you a description, because it would carry me too far away. Let
it suffice to say, that never Emperor of China, Caliph of Bagdad, or
Great Mogul had such a habitation as our banker, and for a very good
reason--he was twenty times as rich as any such gentry as I have named
ever were in their lives.
When all was finished one trifling flaw was discovered: the place was
not supplied with water. A spring-seeker, who was summoned to the
premises, could only discover a small subterranean watercourse, a sort
of zigzag pipe, formed by nature, between two beds of clay, in which
the rain of the neighborhood collected as in a sort of reservoir. The
water was neither very clear nor very plentiful, as you may imagine;
and the professor appointed to examine it, having begun by tasting it,
made a horrible face, and declared there was no use in proceeding any
further; for it had a stagnant flavor which would not be agreeable to
my lord.
To the amazement of every body, my lord jumped for joy when he heard
this unpleasant news. It was proposed to him to fetch water from a
river which flowed a few miles' distance off; but he would hear of
nothing of the sort. What he wanted was something new, unexpected,
impossible--that was his object throughout. He took a pen and drew up
at a sitting the following programme, which caused our poor professors
to open their eyes in dismay:--
1st. We will use the water on the premises.
2ndly. It shall flow night day and in all parts of the palace at once.
3rdly. There shall be plenty of it, and it shall be good.
The professors looked at each other for some time without speaking,
and the gravest of them, whose fortunes and characters had been long
ago established, suggested that they should simply give my lord and
his money the slip, and so teach him to make fools of people another
time!
But the youngsters, less easily discouraged, cried out against this
with one accord. They declared that the honor of science was at stake,
and that they ought to return impudence for impudence, by executing
to the letter the impertinent programme! At length, after much
discussion and many propositions made against all hope, and thrown
aside one after the other as impracticable, a sudden inspiration crossed
the brain of an engineer who had not yet spoken; and the following is
what he proposed:--
What prevented the water from being sweet and fit to drink, was the
want of movement and air. What had to be done, therefore, was to erect
a pump, but a pump provided with numberless small pipes, extending to
the watercourse in all directions, and so arranged that by means of
them it should be able to draw up the water from all the corners and
windings where it lay stagnating, and then forcing it forward into a
pipe terminating in a rose, like that of a watering-pot, whence it
should gush out to fall down in fine rain, into a reservoir in the
open air. From thence another action of the pump was to bring it back
well aerated, to send it once more into a large pipe with numerous
lesser ramifications, which should convey it into every corner of the
palace.
Up to this point all seemed practicable, but the hardest part had not
yet come. The great difficulty was how to supply this enormous
consumption with so slender a runnel of water as the one at their
disposal. But our engineer had provided for this by a stroke of genius.
Under each of the taps (always kept open), which were dispersed all
over the palace, he would place a small cistern, from the bottom of
which should go a pipe communicating with the body of the force-pump
which drew up the water from the original watercourse. By which means
the water which ran from the taps would be taken up again and go back
to feed the reservoir in the open air; whence it would again return
to supply the taps; and so on and on, the same water continually keeping
the game alive, as people call it. Have you not sometimes seen at a
circus or theatre a large army represented by a hundred supernumeraries,
who file in close columns before the audience, going out at one side
of the stage and coming in at the other, following close at each other's
heels indefinitely? By a similar artifice the engineer would change
his meagre little runnel into an inexhaustible fountain. The water
drawn up from the watercourse by each stroke of the pump would fully
compensate for what was used in its passage through the palace by the
inhabitants. Lastly, as it might sometimes happen that the said
inhabitants washed their hands under the taps, the water on its return
to the cisterns, was to pass through a series of small filters, in
order to cleanse it from any impurity it might have contracted by the
way. Always flowing, always limpid, it would soon lose every trace of
its original source, and might defy comparison with the water of any
river in the world!
A unanimous buzz of congratulations welcomed this plan, at once so
simple and so bold, and our professors thought their troubles were
over, but they were not at the end of their difficulties yet. When it
came to the actual erection of the machine, (naturally a most
complicated one, as it had to set a-going a quintuple system of
pipes--pipes from the water-course to the pump, pipes from the pump
to the reservoir, pipes from the reservoir to the pump, from the pump
to the taps, and from the taps to the pump again,)--our banker, who
had got amused and excited as they went on, conducted them to a small
dark closet, only a few square feet in size, concealed in a corner of
the large apartments, and informed them with a laugh that he had no
other place to offer them. Besides which, he made them understand that
on account of its situation, there could be no question of furnaces
or boilers being set up there (he detested equally coal-smoke, fires,
and explosions)--nor of workmen employed about the machine (it would
not be decent to have them going up and down the front staircase)--nor
above all, of the frightful brake-wheels always screeching and
grinding, the unwieldy pistons rising and falling with a noise
sufficient to give one the headache. He himself slept near the little
dark closet, and the slightest noise was fatal to his repose. Having
explained all this, the rich man curtly made his bow and retired.
For once our professors owned themselves beaten. They had come forward
quite proud of their invention, and now they were received, not with
ecstasies of delight, but with fresh demands, more ridiculous even
than the first. They were decidedly being mystified, and were preparing
in consequence to pack up and begone, furious, and swearing by all
their gods that they would never again expose science to see itself
disgraced by a purse-proud vulgarian's scorn; when, lo! happily, a
good fairy, the special friend of learned men, came passing by that
way. She raised her enchanted wand with the tip of her finger, and all
at once a little girl dressed in rags appeared in the midst of our
astonished professors. Without giving them time to recover themselves,
the child put her hand into the little patched waist of her dress, and
drew forth a rounded object, about the size of her closed fist from
which hung a quantity of tubes spreading in all directions.
"See!" cried she; "here is the machine your banker demands of you."
Picture to yourself a small closed bag, narrowing to a point at the
end, and separated within into two very distinct compartments by a
fleshy partition which went across the inside from the top to the
bottom. Such was the object held up by the little girl. Prom each of
these compartments issued a thick tube, ramifying into endless smaller
ones; and they were moreover each surmounted by a sort of pouch, into
which ran another tube, of the same description as the first. Each of
these four portions (the two compartments and their pouches) was in
constant but independent motion, distending and contracting alternately;
and by carefully examining the noiseless play of this singular machine,
(the walls of which were, by the magic power of the fairy, rendered
transparent to the bystanders,) the learned assembly were very soon
enabled to convince themselves, that it fulfilled all the
monstrousconditions exacted of them by the fantastic millionaire.
All was in movement together, I told you; but let us begin at one end.
The right-hand compartment and its pouch represented the first pump;
the pump employed to draw, by the same stroke, the water from the
stagnant channel, and that from the taps. It was perfectly easy to
distinguish the two systems of pipes, and how they united together at
the small pouch on their arrival. When this was distended, a vacuum
was created inside, which was instantly filled by the liquid from the
tube which ran into it, (do not ask me why or how; I will explain that
presently). When it contracted again, the liquid which had just entered
was not able to get back, being prevented from so doing by a very
ingenious and simple contrivance, which requires a brief explanation.
Take off the lock from your chamber-door, which opens inside; then,
standing outside, push against it with your shoulder, and you will get
in without any difficulty. But when you are in, try to push the door
open again with your shoulder in order to get outside into the passage,
and you will find that you will not be able to pass through, and this
simply because it does not open on that side.
Which was exactly what happened to the liquid in the pouch!
The door between the tube and the pouch only opened inwardly, and the
liquid finding itself pressed on all sides in proportion as the pouch
contracted more and more, and unable to return, was obliged at last
to make its way through another similar door which led to the large
compartment below. Here the same game recommenced. The compartment
which had distended itself to receive it, contracted in its turn, and
the liquid finding the road again barred behind it, had no choice but
to force its way through the tube which led to the air-reservoir.
Here commenced the work of the second pump,--the pump of the left
compartment. The little pouch, when distended, was filled by the liquid
from the reservoir, and then forced it forward into the large
compartment below, always by means of the same process. This compartment
again drove it, by a powerful contraction, into the large conducting
tube charged with the office of its general distribution throughout
the body. At the end of all which, it returned once more into the
right-hand pump as before, to pursue the same course again, &c., &c.
Thus, as you see, the whole mechanism turned upon two little points
of detail, of the simplest description possible; namely, first, on the
entrance-doors only opening on one side; and secondly, on the elastic
covers of the pouches and compartments distending and contracting
spontaneously. It was the prettiest thing in the world to see this
unpretending-looking little bag working thus, quite naturally, without
a suspicion that it was solving a problem which so many men, proud of
their science, had given up as hopeless. Certainly here was a machine
which made no noise! Once installed in its dark closet, it would have
been necessary to place your hand upon it to find out that it moved
at all. My lord could certainly sleep beside it without disturbance.
"How much do you want for it?" said they to the poor little beggar
girl. "Name your price; have no fear; we will pay you anything you
wish."
"I cannot give it to you," replied the child; "I need it too much
myself: IT IS MY HEART. Now that you have seen it, make another like
it, if you can." And she disappeared.
It is said that the engineer, who longed to see his idea carried out,
tried hard to construct a similar machine with gutta-percha and iron
wires, and to set it in motion by electricity. But history does not
tell us that he succeeded, and we have yet to ask ourselves whether
the richest man in the world, aided by the wisest men in the world,
could ever provide himself with a miracle of wonder, such as the,
ragged child had received as a free gift from the hands of a gracious
Creator.