We are going to make acquaintance to-day with a new personage, who
well deserves our attention. It is the child of oxygen and carbon,
[Footnote: This is the name learned men have given to Charcoal.] though
not in the same way that you are the child of your parents.
To tell you how it is made is more than I am able. It is a _gas_,
or if you like the word better, it is an _air_; for when we say
"gas," we mean "air;" only it is always a different sort of air from
the air of the atmosphere, which learned people are not in the habit
of calling _gas_. I cannot, therefore, show you _carbonic acid_ itself,
for it cannot be seen any more than the air which fills an empty glass.
But I can tell you where there is some, and you even probably know it by
its effects, although you have never heard its name.
Do you remember, on your aunt's wedding-day, that there was a sparkling
wine called champagne, at the grand breakfast? You smile, so I conclude
somebody gave you a little to taste; and if so, you will remember how
sharp it felt to your tongue. Do you remember, too, how the cork flew
out when they were opening the bottle, and how the noise of the "pop!"
startled more little girls than one? It was _carbonic acid_ which
sent the cork flying in that wild way; the carbonic acid which was
imprisoned in the bottle, in desperately close quarters with the wine,
and which accordingly flew out, like a regular goblin, the moment the
iron wire which held down the cork was removed. What sparkled in the
glass, making that pretty white froth which phizzed so gently, as if
inviting you to drink, was the carbonic acid in the wine, making its
escape in thousands of tiny bubbles. What felt so sharp to your tongue
was the same carbonic acid, in its quality of acidity, for thence it
has its name; the word _acid_ being borrowed from a Latin word
signifying the sharp pungent taste, almost _fine-pointed_ as it
were, peculiar to all substances which we call _acids_.
It is carbonic acid also which causes the froth in beer and in new
wine when bottled. It is he who makes soda-water sparkle and sting the
tongue, and ginger-beer the same, if you happen to like it; and so far
you have no particular reason for thinking ill of him. But beware. It
is with him as with a good many others who have sparkling spirits, who
make conversation effervesce with gayety, and who are very seductive
in society when you have nothing else to do but to laugh over your
glass, but whose society is fatal to the soul which delivers itself
up to them. This charming carbonic acid is a mortal poison to any one
who allows it to get into his lungs.
You remember what a violent headache your servant suffered from the
other day after ironing all those clothes you had in the wash? She
owed that headache entirely to this work which she did for you. She
had remained too long standing over the coals over which her flat-irons
were being heated. You know already that when charcoal burns, it is
from the carbon uniting with the oxygen of the air; from this union
proceeds that mischievous child, carbonic acid gas, in torrents, and
the poor girl was ill, because she had breathed more of this than was
good for her health. Observe well, that the room-door was open to let
in the fresh air, and that there was a chimney, to allow the carbonic
acid to escape. It was on this account that she got off with only a
headache. Unhappily, there have sometimes been miserable people who,
weary of life, and knowing this, but not knowing or thinking about the
God who overrules every sorrow for good, have shut themselves up in
a room with a brazier of burning charcoal, after taking the fatal
precaution of stopping up every opening by which air could possibly
get in; and when at last, in such a case, uneasy friends have forced
open the well-closed door, they have found nothing within but a corpse.
Then, too, there are those frightful accidents of which we hear so
often, of workmen groping their way down into long disused wells, who
have died as they reached the bottom; or of sudden deaths in coal-pits.
In general these have been owing to the poor victims encountering the
long pent-up carbonic acid gas, whose poisonous breath blasted and
destroyed them at once.
You may well ask why I am telling you such horrible stories, and what
I am coming to with my carbonic acid? But you have more to do with it
than you think, dear child. You, and I, and everybody we meet, nay,
and the very animals themselves, since their machines are of the same
sort as ours, are all little manufactories of carbonic acid. The thing
is quite clear. Since there is a charcoal fire lit in every part of
our body, there always arises from the union of the oxygen brought by
the blood with the carbon it meets in our organs, that mischievous
child we have been talking about; and our throat is the chimney by
which he gets away. He would kill us outright were he to stop in the
house.
This is how it comes about: In proportion as the blood loses its oxygen,
it picks up in exchange the carbonic acid produced by combustion, so
that it is quite loaded with it by the time it returns to the lungs.
There it takes in a fresh supply of oxygen, and discharges at the same
time its overplus of carbonic acid, which is driven out of the body
by the contractions of the chest, pell-mell with the air which has
just been made use of in breathing. You are aware that this air is not
the same at its exit as at its entrance to the body, and that if you
try and breathe it over again it will no longer be of the same use to
you. That is because it has lost part of its oxygen and brings back
to you the carbonic acid which it had just carried off. If you take
it in a third time, it will be still worse for you; and in case you
should continue to persist--the oxygen always diminishing, and the
carbonic acid always increasing in quantity--the air which was at first
the means of your life will at last become the cause of your death.
Try, as an experiment, to shut yourself up in a small trunk, where no
fresh air can get in; or even in a narrow closely-shut closet, and you
will soon tell me strange news. There will be no occasion to light a
charcoal fire for you in there. Enough is kept burning in your own
little stove, and you will poison yourself.
You see now that the dreadful stories I was telling a short time ago
have something to do with you, and that it is a good thing to be warned
beforehand. And now tell me, when a hundred people--or I ought to say,
a hundred manufactories of carbonic acid--are crowded together for a
whole evening, sometimes for a whole night, in a space just big enough
to allow them to go in and come out; tell me, I say, if that is a sort
of thing which can be beneficial to the health of little girls whose
blood flows so fast, and who require so much oxygen; and whether, on
the contrary, it is not one's duty to keep them away from such scenes?
There may be amusement there, I know; but the best pleasures are those
for which one does not pay too dearly. I have seen the very wax lights
faint and turn pale all at once, in the very midst of those murderous
assemblies, as if to warn the imprudent guests that there was only
just time to open the windows.
And this reminds me of a point I had nearly forgotten. Wax-candles arc
like ourselves. In order to burn, they must have oxygen, and, like us,
they are extinguished by carbonic acid. But like us also--and indeed
to a greater extent, because they consume much more charcoal at
once--they manufacture carbonic acid. Hence that very illumination
which affords the company so much pleasure and pride is plainly an
additional cause of danger. Each of those wax-lights which is spread
around with such a prodigal hand, the only fear being that there may
not be enough of them, is a hungry intruder employed in devouring with
all his might the scanty amount of oxygen provided for the consumption
of the guests.
From each of those cheerful flames--the suns, as it were, of the festive
assembly--shoots out a strong jet of carbonic acid, contributing by
so much to swell out the already formidable streams of poisoned gas,
exhaled to the utmost extent by the dancers. And wait--there is still
something else I was forgetting. You dance. And I told you last time
at what cost you have to dance. You have to make the fire burn much
quicker than usual, that is, to consume a great deal more oxygen at
once, and so you double and treble the activity of the carbonic acid
manufacture: and this just at the moment when it would be so convenient
that it should go on as slowly as possible! After this, you need not
be surprised that people should look fagged and exhausted next morning.
What astonishes me is that they are not obliged to lie in bed
altogether, after treating their poor lungs to such an entertainment.
And even if you have spared your legs, you are not much better off,
as you are sure to find out in time, especially if the thing is repeated
too often.
When I told you just now that the dance of labor was worth as much as
the dance of the ball-room, was I right or wrong? What do you say
yourself?
I could repeat the same of theatres--places of entertainment specially
adapted for impoverishing the blood, and ruining the health of the
happy mortals who go there, evening after evening, to purchase at the
door the right of filling their lungs with carbonic acid, not to speak
of other poisons. You must see clearly that such places as those are
not fit for little lungs as dainty as yours; and this may help you to
submit with a good grace when you see people going there without you.
Grown-up people escape moreover, because the human machine possesses
a strange elasticity, which enables it to accommodate itself--one
scarcely knows how--to the sometimes very critical positions in which
its lords and masters place it without a thought. But to do this, it
is well that it should be thoroughly formed and established; for you
run a risk of injuring it for ever, if you misuse it too early in life.
Tell this to your dear schoolboy brother, when he wants to smoke his
cigar like a man. If his lungs could speak, they would call out to him
that it was very hard upon them, at their age, to be so treated, and
that he ought at any rate to wait till they had passed their
examinations!
But I must not get into a dispute with so important an individual, by
throwing stones into a garden which is not under my care. For you, my
dear child, the moral of this day's lesson--which to my mind is much
more alarming than a hobgoblin tale, since it concerns the realities
of every-day life--is clear; and it is this:
Seek your amusements as far as possible in the fresh air. In the summer,
when the lamp is lit, bid your mamma a sweet good-night, and go to
bed. In the winter do not wait till there is a great quantity of
carbonic acid in the room where the grown-up people are sitting, before
you retire to your own like a reasonable girl, anxious not to do
mischief to that valuable and indefatigable servant, the poor blood!
Not to mention that if she were to injure him too much, she would have
to bear his grumbling for the rest of her life. We cannot change him
as we change other servants.