generated in the stomach of a steam-engine, at any moment when the
vigilance of the engineer happens to be at fault, something is going
to be done. No safety-valve or fusible plug is adequate. The boiler
cannot be all safety-valve. The trouble is, the hammer is not more
likely to strike the first of its terrible series of blows on the
valve than anywhere else. A safety-valve, in good order, is a
sovereign precaution against the excess of an equally distributed
strain, but it is not an adequate protection against a shock or
unequal strain. The old-fashioned gaugecocks, which are by no means
to be dispensed with, reveal the state of the water in the boiler to
the watchful engineer about as surely as the stethoscope reveals to
the doctor the condition of his patient's lungs. A surer and more
convenient indication is the tubular glass gauge, on the fountain
principle, which in its best form is both trustworthy and durable.
No well-informed proprietor suffers his boiler to be without one;
but it is not a cure for carelessness. It is only a window for the
vigilant eye to look through, not the eye itself. Steam-boilers will
have to be constructed so that when the subsidence of the water
fails to check itself by enlarging the supply, it shall, before the
point of danger is reached, infallibly check the combustion, let off
the steam, and blow a whistle or ring a bell, which the proprietor
may, if he pleases, regard as the official death-knell of the
careless engineer. Human vigilance must not be superseded, but
fortified,--as in the case of the watchman watched by the tell-tale
clock. The steam-creature must be so constituted as to refuse to
work itself down to the zone where alone unequal strains are possible;
it must cry out in horror and strike work. Mechanically the solution
of the problem is easy, and the enhancement in cost of construction
will be nothing, compared to the risk of loss from these explosions.
With this guard against the deficiency of water, steam-power will
become the safest, as it is the most manageable, of all forces that
have hitherto been subsidized by the civilized man.
But there is one more improvement worth mentioning. We do great
injustice to our steam-slaves by the slovenly and unphilosophical
way in which we feed them. We take no hints from animal economy or
the laws of dietetics.
Our creature has no regular meals, especially if he is one of the
fast kind; but a grimy nurse stands by, and, opening his mouth every
few minutes, crams in a few spoonfuls of the black pudding. The
natural consequence is more or less indigestion and inequality of
strength. We have not yet taken full advantage of the laws of
combustion, or adapted our apparatus to the peculiarities of the
best and cheapest fuel. Nature manages more wisely in her machinery.
Combustion, the union of fuel with oxygen, ceases for want of air as
well as for want of fuel. In the case of fuels compounded of carbon
and hydrogen, if the air be withheld when the mass is in rapid
combustion, the heat will cause a portion of the fuel to pass off by
distillation, unconsumed, and this portion will be lost. But from
the best anthracite, which is nearly pure carbon concentrated, if
oxygen be entirely excluded, not much can distil away with any
degree of heat. The combustion of this fuel, therefore, admits of
very easy and economical regulation, by simply regulating the supply
of air. When the air is admitted at all, it should be admitted above
as well as below the fuel, so that the carbonic oxyde that is
generated in the mass may be burned, or converted into carbonic acid,
over the top. Why, then, should not the iron horse, before leaving
his stable, take a meal of anthracite sufficient to last him fifty
or one hundred miles? Let him swallow a ton at once, if he need it.
Before starting, let the temperature of the mass in the furnace be
got up to the point where the combustion will go on with sufficient
rapidity for the required speed by simply supplying air, which
should also be fed as hot as possible. This done, the engineer
throughout the trip will have perfect control of his force by means
of the steam-blast and air-openings. There will be no smoke nuisance,
the combustion being complete so far as it takes place at all.
There will be no need of loading the furnace with firebrick to
equalize the heat,--the mass of incandescent fuel serving that
purpose; and no waste or inequality will occur from opening the door
to throw in a cold collation.
What are we going to make? First, we are going to finish up, and
carry out into all desirable species, our great idea of an iron slave,
the illustrious Man Friday of our modern civilization. Whether we
put water, air, or ether into his aorta, as the medium of converting
heat into force, we shall at last have a safe subject, available for
all sorts of drudgery, that will do the work of a man without eating
more than half as much weight of coal as a man eats of bread and meat.
Next, carrying into all departments of human industry, in its
perfect development, this new creature, which has already, as a mere
infant, made so stupendous a change in some of them, we shall make
the human millions all masters, from being nearly all slaves. We
shall make both idleness and poverty nearly impossible. Human labor,
as a general thing, is a positive pleasure only when the hand and
brain work in concert. Hence, the more you increase well-devised and
efficient machinery, which requires and rewards intelligent
oversight and skilful direction, the more you increase the love of
labor. We have already manufacturing communities so well supplied
with tasks for brains and hands, that everybody works, or would do
so but for Circe and her seductive hollow-ware. We are beginning to
push machinery into agriculture, where it will have still greater
scope. With the means we now have, in the enormously increased
production of iron, our almost omnipresent and omnipotent
machine-shops, our railroads leading everywhere, another century, or
perhaps half of it, will see every arable rood of the earth and
every rood that can be made arable, ploughed, sowed, and the crops
harvested by iron horses, iron oxen, or iron men, under the free and
intelligent supervision of people who know how to feed, drive, doctor,
and make the most of them.
One island, which would hardly be missed from the map of the world,
so small that its rivers all fall into the sea mere brooks, with not
more than one-thirteenth as much coal as we have in the United States,
and perhaps not one-hundredth as much iron ore, by the use of
steam-driven machinery produces as much iron and perhaps weaves as
much cloth yearly as all the rest of the world. If it does not the
latter, it would do it, if it could find enough of the raw material
and paying customers. But agriculture, which supplies the raw
material, though it is the first and most universal form of human
labor, lags behind the world's present manufacturing power. One cause
of the late, and perhaps of the previous commercial revulsion, was
this disproportion. The more rapid enlargement of manufacturing
industry, multiplied in power by its machinery, caused the raw
material to rise in price and the manufactured article to fall, till
the operations could not be supported from the profits at the same
time that contracts were fulfilled with capitalists. Manufactures
must pause till agriculture overtakes. Steam-machinery applied to
agriculture is the only thing that can correct this disproportion,
and this is what we are going to make. The world is not to be much
longer dependent for its cotton on the compulsory labor of the Dark
Ages, nor for its flax and corn on blistered free hands or
overworked cattle. The laborer, in either section of our country,
will be transformed into an ingenious gentleman or lady, comfortably
mounted on a migratory steam-cultivator to direct its gigantic
energies,--or, at least, occasionally so occupied. Under this system,
it must be plain enough, to all persons prophetically inclined, that
the Northern valleys will greatly multiply their products, while the
Southern cotton-fields will whiten with heavier crops than human
chattelism ever produced, and the mountains of both latitudes, now
hardly notched with civilization, will roll down the wool of sheep
in clouds.
Finally, with important and fruitful mechanical ideas which the
world did not have twenty years ago, with machinery which no one
could have believed possible one hundred years ago, and which has,
since that time, quintupled the power of every free laborer in
Christendom, we are going to make man what his Creator designed him
to be,--always and everywhere a sub-creator. By the press we are
making the knowledge of the past the knowledge of the present, the
knowledge of one the knowledge of all. By the telegraph the senses
of sight and hearing are to be extended around the globe. If we do
not make ships to navigate the air, for ourselves, our wives, and
our little ones, it will not be because we cannot, but because, being
lords of land and sea, with power to traverse either with all
desirable speed, we are too wise to waste force either in beating
the air for buoyancy, battling with gravity like birds, on the one
hand, or in paddling huge balloons against the wind, on the other.
The steam-driven wheel leaves us no occasion to envy even that
ubiquitous denizen of the universe, the flying-fish. We have in it
the most economical means of self-transportation, as well as of
mechanical production. It only remains to make the most of it. This,
to be sure, will not be achieved without infinite labor and
innumerable failures. The mechanical genius of the race is like the
polypus anxiously stretching its tentacles in every direction, and
though frustrated thousands of times, it grasps something at last.
One of the most significant structures in the world, by the way, is
the United States Patent Office at Washington. No other building in
that novel city means a hundredth part as much, or shows so clearly
what the world's most cunning thoughts and hands are chiefly engaged
with. Not that the Patent Office contains so many miracles of
mechanical success; rather the contrary. Take a just appraisal of
its treasures, and you will regard it rather as the chief tomb in the
Père la Chaise of human hopes. What multitudes of long-nursed and
dearly-cherished inventions there repose in a common grave, useful
only as warnings to future inventors! One great moral of the survey
is, that inventive talent is shamefully wasted among us, for want of
proper scientific direction and suitable encouragement. The mind
that comprehends general principles in all their relations, and sees
what needs to be done and what is possible and profitable to be done,
is of necessity not the one to arrange in detail the means of doing.
The man of science and the mechanical inventor are distinct persons,
speaking of either in his best estate; and the maximum success of
machinery depends on their acting together with a better
understanding than they have hitherto had. It were less difficult
than invidious to point to living examples of the want of
cooperation and co-appreciation between our knowing and our doing men;
but, for the sake of illustrating our idea, we will run the risk of
quoting a minute from the proceedings of one of our scientific
societies, premising that we know nothing more of the parties than
we learn from the minute itself,--to wit, that one is, or was, an
ingenious mechanic, and the other a promoter of science.
"Dr. Patterson gave an account of an automaton speaking-machine
which Mr. Franklin Peale and himself had recently inspected. The
machine was made to resemble as nearly as possible, in every respect,
the human vocal organs; and was susceptible of varied movements by
means of keys. Dr. Patterson was much struck by the distinctness with
which the figure could enunciate various letters and words. The
difficult combination _three_ was well pronounced,--the _th_ less
perfectly, but astonishingly well. It also enumerated diphthongs,
and numerous difficult combinations of sounds. Sixteen keys were
sufficient to produce all the sounds. In enunciating the simple
sounds, the movements of the mouth could be seen. The parts were
made of gum elastic. The figure was made to say, with a peculiar
intonation, but surprising distinctness, 'Mr. Patterson, I am glad to
see you.' It sang, 'God save Victoria,' and 'Hail Columbia,'--the
words and air combined. Dr. Patterson had determined to visit the
maker of the machine, Mr. Faber, in private, in order to obtain
further interesting information; but, on the following day, Dr. P.
was distressed to learn, that, in a fit of excitement, he had
destroyed every particle of a figure which had taken him seventeen
years to construct."
It is quite probable that the world lost very little by the
destruction of this curious figure, whatever the nature or cause of
the "excitement" that led to it. All we have to say is, that it does
lose much, when the genius that can create such things is not set
upon the right tasks, and encouraged to success by the "high
consideration" of scientific men, who alone of all the world can
appreciate the difficulties it has to contend with. It is by setting
the right mechanical problems before the men who can make dumb matter
talk, that we are to bring about the resurrection of the black Titan
who has lain buried under the mountains for thousands of millenniums,
and constitute him the efficient sub-gardener of the world's Paradise
Regained.
* * * * *
SHIPWRECK
We who by shipwreck only find the shores
Of divine wisdom can but kneel at first,
Can but exult to feel beneath our feet,
That long stretched vainly down the yielding deeps,
The shock and sustenance of solid earth:
Inland afar we see what temples gleam
Through immemorial stems of sacred groves,
And we conjecture shining shapes therein;
Yet for a space 'tis good to wonder here
Among the shells and seaweed of the beach.
THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE.
EVERY MAN HIS OWN BOSWELL.
[Spring has come. You will find some verses to that effect at the
end of these notes. If you are an impatient reader, skip to them at
once. In reading aloud, omit, if you please, the sixth and seventh
verses. These are parenthetical and digressive, and, unless your
audience is of superior intelligence, will confuse them. Many people
can ride on horse-back who find it hard to get on and to get off
without assistance. One has to dismount from an idea, and get into
the saddle again, at every parenthesis.]
----The old gentleman who sits opposite, finding that spring had
fairly come, mounted a white hat one day, and walked into the street.
It seems to have been a premature or otherwise exceptionable
exhibition, not unlike that commemorated by the late Mr. Bayley.
When the old gentleman came home, he looked very red in the face,
and complained that he had been "made sport of." By sympathizing
questions, I learned from him that a boy had called him "old daddy,"
and asked him when he had his hat whitewashed.
This incident led me to make some observations at table the next
morning, which I here repeat for the benefit of the readers of this
record.
----The hat is the vulnerable point of the artificial integument. I
learned this in early boyhood. I was once equipped in a hat of
Leghorn straw, having a brim of much wider dimensions than were
usual at that time, and sent to school in that portion of my native
town which lies nearest to this metropolis. On my way I was met by a
"Port-chuck," as we used to call the young gentlemen of that locality,
and the following dialogue ensued.
_The Port-chuck_. Hullo, You-sir, did you know there was g-on-to
be a race to-morrah?
_Myself_. No. Who's g-on-to run, 'n'wher's't g-on-to be?
_The Port-chuck_. Squire Mico and Doctor Williams, round the brim
o' your hat.
These two much-respected gentlemen being the oldest inhabitants at
that time, and the alleged race-course being out of the question,
the Port-chuck also winking and thrusting his tongue into his cheek,
I perceived that I had been trifled with, and the effect has been to
make me sensitive and observant respecting this article of dress
ever since. Here is an axiom or two relating to it.
A hat which has been _popped_, or exploded by being sat down upon,
is never itself again afterwards.
It is a favorite illusion of sanguine natures to believe the contrary.
Shabby gentility has nothing so characteristic as its hat. There is
always an unnatural calmness about its nap, and an unwholesome gloss,
suggestive of a wet brush.
The last effort of decayed fortune is expended in smoothing
its dilapidated castor. The hat is the _ultimum moriens_ of
"respectability."
----The old gentleman took all these remarks and maxims very
pleasantly, saying, however, that he had forgotten most of his French,
except the word for potatoes,--_pummies de tare_.--_Ultimum moriens_,
I told him, is old Italian, and signifies _last thing to die_. With
this explanation he was well contented, and looked quite calm when I
saw him afterwards in the entry with a black hat on his head and the
white one in his hand.
----I think myself fortunate in having the Poet and the Professor
for my intimates. We are so much together, that we no doubt think
and talk a good deal alike; yet our points of view are in many
respects individual and peculiar. You know me well enough by this
time. I have not talked with you so long for nothing, and therefore
I don't think it necessary to draw my own portrait. But let me say a
word or two about my friends.
The Professor considers himself, and I consider him, a very useful
and worthy kind of drudge. I think he has a pride in his small
technicalities. I know that he has a great idea of fidelity; and
though I suspect he laughs a little inwardly at times at the grand
airs "Science" puts on, as she stands marking time, but not getting
on, while the trumpets are blowing and the big drums beating,--yet I
am sure he has a liking for his specialty, and a respect for its
cultivators.
But I'll tell you what the Professor said to the Poet the other day.--
My boy, said he, I can work a great deal cheaper than you, because I
keep all my goods in the lower story. You have to hoist yours into
the upper chambers of the brain, and let them down again to your
customers. I take mine in at the level of the ground, and send them
off from my doorstep almost without lifting. I tell you, the higher
a man has to carry the raw material of thought before he works it up,
the more it costs him in blood, nerve, and muscle. Coleridge knew
all this very well when he advised every literary man to have a
profession.
----Sometimes I like to talk with one of them, and sometimes with
the other. After a while I get tired of both. When a fit of
intellectual disgust comes over me, I will tell you what I have
found admirable as a diversion, in addition to boating and other
amusements which I have spoken of,--that is, working at my
carpenter's-bench. Some mechanical employment is the greatest
possible relief, after the purely intellectual faculties begin to
tire. When I was quarantined once at Marseilles, I got to work
immediately at carving a wooden wonder of loose rings on a stick,
and got so interested in it, that, when we were set loose, I
"regained my freedom with a sigh," because my toy was unfinished.
There are long seasons when I talk only with the Professor, and
others when I give myself wholly up to the Poet. Now that my
winter's work is over, and spring is with us, I feel naturally drawn
to the Poet's company. I don't know anybody more alive to life than
he is. The passion of poetry seizes on him every spring, he says,--
yet oftentimes he complains, that, when he feels most, he can sing
least.
Then a fit of despondency comes over him.--I feel ashamed, sometimes,--
said he, the other day,--to think how far my worst songs fall below
my best. It sometimes seems to me, as I know it does to others who
have told me so, that they ought to be _all best_,--if not in actual
execution, at least in plan and motive. I am grateful--he continued--
for all such criticisms. A man is always pleased to have his most
serious efforts praised, and the highest aspect of his nature get the
most sunshine.
Yet I am sure, that, in the nature of things, many minds must change
their key now and then, on penalty of getting out of tune or losing
their voices. You know, I suppose,--he said,--what is meant by
complementary colors? You know the effect, too, that the prolonged
impression of any one color has on the retina. If you close your
eyes after looking steadily at a _red_ object, you see a _green_
image.
It is so with many minds,--I will not say with all. After looking at
one aspect of external nature, or of any form of beauty or truth,
when they turn away, the _complementary_ aspect of the same object
stamps itself irresistibly and automatically upon the mind. Shall
they give expression to this secondary mental state, or not?
When I contemplate--said my friend, the Poet--the infinite largeness
of comprehension belonging to the Central Intelligence, how remote
the creative conception is from all scholastic and ethical formulae,
I am led to think that a healthy mind ought to change its mood from
time to time, and come down from its noblest condition,--never, of
course, to degrade itself by dwelling upon what is itself debasing,
but to let its lower faculties have a chance to air and exercise
themselves. After the first and second floor have been out in the
bright street dressed in all their splendors, shall not our humble
friends in the basement have their holiday, and the cotton velvet
and the thin-skinned jewelry--simple adornments, but befitting the
station of those who wear them--show themselves to the crowd, who
think them beautiful, as they ought to, though the people up stairs
know that they are cheap and perishable?
----I don't know that I may not bring the Poet here, some day or
other, and let him speak for himself. Still I think I can tell you
what he says quite as well as he could do it.--Oh,--he said to me,
one day,--I am but a hand-organ man,--say rather, a hand-organ. Life
turns the winch, and fancy or accident pulls out the stops. I come
under your windows, some fine spring morning, and play you one of my
_adagio_ movements, and some of you say,--This is good,--play us so
always. But, dear friends, if I did not change the stop sometimes,
the machine would wear out in one part and rust in another. How
easily this or that tune flows!--you say,--there must be no end of
just such melodies in him,--I will open the poor machine for you one
moment, and you shall look.--Ah! Every note marks where a spur of
steel has been driven in. It is easy to grind out the song, but to
plant these bristling points which make it was the painful task of
time.
I don't like to say it,--he continued,--but poets commonly have no
larger stock of tunes than hand-organs; and when you hear them
piping up under your window, you know pretty well what to expect.
The more stops, the better. Do let them all be pulled out in their
turn!
So spoke my friend, the Poet, and read me one of his stateliest songs,
and after it a gay _chanson_, and then a string of epigrams. All true,--
he said,--all flowers of his soul; only one with the corolla spread,
and another with its disk half opened, and the third with the
heart-leaves covered up and only a petal or two showing its tip
through the calyx. The water-lily is the type of the poet's soul,--
he told me.
----What do you think, Sir,--said the divinity-student,--opens the
souls of poets most fully?
Why, there must be the internal force and the external stimulus.
Neither is enough by itself. A rose will not flower in the dark, and
a fern will not flower anywhere.
What do I think is the true sunshine that opens the poet's corolla?--
I don't like to say. They spoil a good many, I am afraid; or at
least they shine on a good many that never come to anything.
Who are _they_?--said the schoolmistress.
Women. Their love first inspires the poet, and their praise is his
best reward.
The schoolmistress reddened a little, but looked pleased.--Did I
really think so?--I do think so; I never feel safe until I have
pleased them; I don't think they are the first to see one's defects,
but they are the first to catch the color and fragrance of a true
poem. Fit the same intellect to a man and it is a bow-string,--to a
woman and it is a harp-string. She is vibratile and resonant all over,
so she stirs with slighter musical tremblings of the air about her.--
Ah, me!--said my friend, the Poet, to me, the other day,--what color
would it not have given to my thoughts, and what thrice-washed
whiteness to my words, had I been fed on women's praises! I should
have grown like Marvell's fawn,--
"Lilies without; roses within!"
But then,--he added,--we all think, _if_ so and so, we should have
been this or that, as you were saying, the other day, in those
rhymes of yours.