seem to be nearing what I can only call the death of matter. Pure
metals undergo molecular changes which cannot yet be defined, but which
entirely alter their characteristics as we know them. Tensile strength,
electrical resistance, in fact, the whole character of the metal as we
are acquainted with it, appears to change. At −200°, for instance, iron
becomes as good an electrical conductor as copper, while it is more
than probable that at the zero of absolute temperature, if not before,
the electrical resistance of all metals reaches its zero point. The
alloys do not follow the same rule, being much less affected. Carbon
is a strange exception, its electrical resistance increasing with cold
and decreasing with heat. The effect upon colors is also remarkable,
and opens up a wide field for experiment and investigation. In fact,
the most marked and immediate effect of my experiments will appear, I
think, in the field of magneto-optics. You have seen a red oxide of
mercury turn yellow when cooled to the temperature of liquid oxygen,
and regain its original color upon returning to the temperature of
the air. In the same way, sulphur becomes white. Bichromate of potash
becomes also white. A solution of iodine in alcohol becomes colorless,
as does ferric chloride, a deep red at the temperature of the air. They
all regain their colors upon returning to the ordinary temperature.
At these low temperatures chemical action ceases, as you have seen.
I supposed the rule was invariable, but found that a photographic
plate placed in liquid oxygen was still acted upon by energy from the
outside, and at even −200° C. was sensitive to light.
“The effect upon bacterial life is also not what one would expect.
Though it is destroyed by boiling in water, a temperature of 100°
C., it can still endure unaffected a degree of cold much greater in
proportion. I have submitted putrefying blood, milk, seeds, etc., for
the space of an hour, to a temperature of −182° C., but found that they
afterwards went on putrefying or germinating as the case happened to
be. This is interesting in one way, as it gives color to Lord Kelvin’s
suggestion that the first life might have been brought to this planet
by a seed-bearing meteorite, though it does not explain,” he added
with a smile, “how the meteorite was originally equipped with seeds.
It shows, however, that spores may live upon a planet through long
periods of low temperature. In the phenomena of diminishing electrical
resistance and its final disappearance, I look for much new light upon
the mystery of electricity itself. The changes in the characteristics
of metals already observed enlock lessons whose scope we have not yet
begun to measure. In fact,” said he, “for a long time to come I shall
confine myself to the many fields of research which the temperatures
already attained have opened up.”
Concerning the zero of absolute temperature, Professor Dewar
was disinclined to theorize. As to its being the temperature of
inter-stellar space, he has not yet come to any final conclusion,
though he expressed the view that the strange white and shining night
clouds which have puzzled the astronomers were composed of carbonic
acid gas frozen solid. Nor does he yet, despite the temperatures
reached, see how the zero is to be attained. He, like the Arctic
explorers of the past, has reached a point beyond which no appliances
of modern science can carry him. The mysteries which cluster about
this point are so many, however, that the efforts to reach it will be
untiring from this time forth. That its discovery will be a key to
many unsolved problems in electricity, in matter, in light, and the
great inscrutable mystery of life itself, is not to be doubted. This
is an age of constant change in scientific conceptions and traditions,
every marked advance in any one science tending to cause more or less
of a readjustment of existing views in every other. Science has long
been editing the Book of Genesis with an unsparing pen, and with the
attainment of the zero of absolute temperature the command “Let there
be light” may take on a meaning which the profoundest philosopher or
scientist of the present time cannot remotely conceive.
THE HOUSE WITH THE TALL PORCH.
BY GILBERT PARKER.
No one ever visited at it except the little chemist, the avocat and
Medallion; and Medallion, though merely an auctioneer, was the only
one on terms of intimacy with its owner, an old seigneur who for many
years had never stirred beyond the limits of his little garden. At rare
intervals he might be seen sitting in the large stone porch which gave
overweighted dignity to the house, itself not very large. An air of
mystery surrounded the place: in summer the grass was rank, the trees
seemed huddled together in gloom about the house, the vines appeared
to ooze on the walls, and at one end, where the window-shutters were
always closed and barred, a great willow drooped and shivered; in
winter the stone walls showed naked and grim among the gaunt trees and
furtive shrubs.
None who ever saw the seigneur could forget him--a tall figure with
stooping shoulders; a pale, deeply-lined, clean-shaven face; and a
forehead painfully white, with blue veins showing; the eyes handsome,
penetrative, brooding, and made indescribably sorrowful by the dark
skin around them. There were those in Pontiac, such as the curé, who
remembered when the seigneur was constantly to be seen in the village;
and then another person was with him always, a young, tall youth, his
son. They were fond and proud of each other, and were religious and
good citizens in a high-bred, punctilious way. Then the seigneur was
all health and stalwart strength. But one day a rumor went abroad that
the seigneur had quarrelled with his son because of the wife of Farette
the miller. No one outside knew if the thing was true, but Julie, the
miller’s wife, seemed rather to plume herself that she had made a
stir in her little world. Yet the curious habitants came to know that
the young man had gone, and after a good many years his having once
lived there was almost a tradition. But the little chemist remembered
whenever he set foot inside the tall porch; the avocat was kept in mind
by papers which he was called upon to read and alter from time to time;
the curé never forgot, because when the young man went he lost not one
of his flock, but two; and Medallion, knowing something of the story,
had it before him with gradually increasing frequency; besides, he
had wormed a deal of truth out of the miller’s wife. He knew that the
closed, barred rooms were the young man’s; and he knew, also, that the
old man was waiting, waiting, in a hope which he never even named to
himself.
One day the silent old housekeeper came rapping at Medallion’s door,
and simply said to him, “Come--the seigneur!” Medallion went, and
for hours sat beside the seigneur’s chair, while the little chemist
watched and sighed softly in a corner, now and again rising to feel
the sick man’s pulse and to prepare a draught. The housekeeper
hovered behind the high-backed chair, and when the seigneur dropped
his handkerchief--now, as always, of the exquisite fashion of a past
century--put it gently in his hand, and he would incline his head ever
so gently, and wipe his pale, dry lips with it.
Once when the little chemist touched his wrist, his dark eyes rested on
him with inquiry, and he said: “How long?”
It was useless trying to shirk the persistency of that look. “Ten
hours, perhaps, sir,” he said with painful shyness.
The seigneur seemed to draw himself up a little, and his hand grasped
his handkerchief tightly for an instant; then he said: “So long? Thank
you.” Then, after a little, his eyes turned to Medallion, and he
seemed about to speak, but still kept silent. His chin dropped on his
breast, and for a time he was motionless and shrunken; but still there
was a strange little curl of pride--or disdain--to his lips. At last
he drew up his head, his shoulders heavily came erect to the carved
back of the chair, where, strange to say, the stations of the cross
were figured, and he said with a cold, ironical voice: “The angel of
patience has lied.”
The evening wore on, and there was no sound save the ticking of the
clock, the beat of rain upon the windows, and the deep breathing of the
seigneur. Presently he started, his eyes opened wide, and his whole
body seemed to listen. “I heard a voice,” he said.
“No one spoke, my master,” said the housekeeper.
“It was a voice without,” he said.
“Monsieur,” said the little chemist, “it was the wind in the eaves.”
His face was almost painfully eager and sensitively alert. “Hush,” he
said, “I hear a voice in the tall porch.”
“Sir,” said Medallion, laying a hand respectfully on his arm, “it is
nothing.”
With a light on his face and a proud, trembling energy, he got to his
feet. “It is the voice of my son,” he said. “Go, go, and bring him in.”
[Illustration]
No one moved. But he was not to be disobeyed. His ears had been
growing keener as he neared the subtle atmosphere of that brink where
a man strips himself to the soul for a lonely voyaging, and he waved
the woman to the door. “Wait,” he said, as her hand fluttered at the
handle, “take him to another room. Prepare a supper such as we used to
have. When it is ready I will come. But listen, and obey me. Do not
tell him that I have but half a dozen hours of life. Go, and bring him
in.”
It was as he said. She found the son, weak and fainting, fallen within
the porch, a worn, bearded man, returned from failure and suffering and
the husks of evil. They clothed him and cared for him, and strengthened
him with wine, while the woman wept over him, and at last set him at
the loaded, well-lighted table. Then the seigneur came in, leaning his
arm very lightly on that of Medallion, with a kingly air, and, greeting
his son before them all as if they had parted yesterday, sat down. For
two hours they sat there, and the seigneur talked gayly, with a color,
and his fine eyes glowing; at last he rose, lifted his glass, and said:
“The angel of patience is wise: I drink to my son.” He was about to say
something more, but a sudden whiteness passed over his face. He drank
off the wine and, as he put the glass down, shivered, and fell back in
his chair. “Three hours short, chemist,” he said, and smiled, and was
still--forever.
STRANGER THAN FICTION.
THE BRONTËS AL FRESCO. THE BRONTËS AND THE GHOSTS. THE DEVIL AND THE
POTATO BLIGHT. THE GREAT BRONTË FIGHT.
BY DOCTOR WILLIAM WRIGHT.
I.
THE BRONTËS AL FRESCO.
I proceed with this chapter in the first person, though the story came
to me at second-hand. My tutor, the Reverend W. McAllister, narrated it
to me, in the words in which he had heard it from a youthful cousin,
and I am able to give it almost in the same words and in the form in
which I wrote it out as an exercise in composition.
The scene described does not, however, rest on the authority of Mr.
McAllister or his friend, but on the testimony of all who knew the
Brontës in their home life. The same scene has been described to me
by old men whose memory extended back to matters in the last century,
and quite recently, when visiting the place, an aged neighbor pointed
out the exact spot where he himself had witnessed the Brontës engaged
in their amusements. The story is so characteristic that I give it _in
extenso_, and with all details, as I got it:
“In 1824 I made my first great journey out into the big world,
accompanied by my elder brother. I was then very young. The nature of
our business obliged us to go on foot, and the distance traversed was
two or three miles.
“Our errand brought us into the midst of the Brontës, and as we had to
remain there six or seven hours, I had an opportunity of seeing, under
various aspects, that extraordinary and unique family, whose genius
came to be revealed a few years later by three little girls, on English
soil.
“I first saw a group of the Brontë brothers together. I think there
were six of them, and they were marching, in step, across a field
towards a level road. Their style of marching, and whole appearance,
arrested my attention. They were dressed alike, in home-spun and
home-knitted garments, that fitted them closely, and showed off to
perfection their large, lithe, and muscular forms. They were all over
six feet high, but, with their close-fitting apparel and erect bearing,
they appeared to me to be men of gigantic stature. They bounded lightly
over all the fences that stood in their way, all springing from the
ground and alighting together, and they continued to march in step
without an apparent effort, until they reached the public road, and
then they began, in a business-like way, to settle conditions, in
preparation for a serious contest.
“A few men and boys watched the little group of Brontës timorously,
from a distance, but curiosity drew my brother and myself close up to
where they were assembled. They did not seem to notice us, or know that
we were present, but proceeded with a match of rolling a large metal
ball along the road. The ball seemed to be about six pounds weight,
and the one who could make it roll furthest along the road would be
declared the winner.
“The contest was to them an earnest business. Every ounce of elastic
force in the great, muscular frames was called into action, and there
was a profusion of strange, strong language that literally made my
flesh to creep, and my hair to stand on end. The forms of expression
which they used were as far from commonplace as anything ever written
by the gifted nieces; and as the uncles’ lives were on a lower plane
of civilization, and their scant education had not reduced their
tongues to the conventional forms of speech, they gave utterance to
their thoughts with a pent-up and concentrated energy never equalled in
rugged force by the novelists.
“I had never seen men like the Brontës, and I had never heard language
like theirs. The quaint conceptions and glowing thoughts and ferocious
epithets that struggled for utterance, at the unlettered lips of the
Irish Brontës, revealed the original quarry from which the vicar’s
daughters chiselled the stones for their artistic castle-building, and
disclosed the original fountain from which they drew their pathos and
passion. Similar fierce originality and power are felt to be present
in everything produced by the English Brontës, but in their case the
intensity of energy is held in check by the Branwell temperament, and
kept under restraint by education and culture.
“The match over, and the sweep-stakes secured, the brothers returned
to their harvest labor as they went, clearing, like greyhounds, every
fence that stood in their way. At that time no fame attached to the
Brontë name, but the men that I had come upon were so different from
the local gentry, farmers, flax-dressers, and such like people, who
lived around them, that I became, all at once, deeply interested in
them.
“From a distance I watched their shining sickles flashing among the
golden grain, and caught snatches of song, which I afterwards found to
be from Robert Burns. My interest, however, in the Brontës was shared
by no one. They were then neither prophets nor heroes in their own
country, and they were regarded with a kind of superstitious dread by
their neighbors, rather than with interest or curiosity.
“Young as I then was, I persevered with my inquiries, and my curiosity
was rewarded. I learned that the Brontës had a brother a clergyman in
England, ‘a fine gentleman,’ then on a visit with them, and that the
Brontë family were in the habit of holding an open-air concert every
favorable afternoon in a secluded glen below their house. I remember
wondering if the clergyman ever broke out in the vigorous vernacular
of his kith and kin, but I was especially interested in the open-air
concert.
“My brother and I, by the nature of our errand, could not return home
till late in the evening, and as we were at leisure we made up our
minds to assist at the concert. On pretence of gathering blackberries
we explored the glen and discovered the place. No one would accompany
us, and we were told, with looks of terror, that it would be at our
peril if we went to the concert, as the brothers had ‘the black art,’
and were, above all men, to be avoided. We resolved notwithstanding to
go as spectators, and waited with impatience till the day’s work should
be over.
“About six o’clock a horn was blown, and the reapers suddenly dropped
their sickles and strolled down leisurely to the concert glen. We had
already preceded them, and taken our places on a high ridge bordering
the glen, in a thicket of low brushwood.
“Three sisters were the first to arrive on the scene. They brought
a spinning-wheel, a supply of oat-bread and buttermilk, and a green
satchel which contained a violin. The men sat astride the trunk of
a prostrate tree, and disposed of their afternoon collation in an
incredibly short space of time, one wooden bowl, or _noggin_, supplying
milk to each.
“Scarcely had the frugal meal been ended when one of the brothers began
to thrum the fiddle, and quick as lightning two of the sisters and the
other brothers were whirling and spinning airily over the grass. The
other sister was busily plying her spinning-wheel and watching the
moving scene. In turns each of the sisters took her place at the wheel,
and the one relieved instantly plunged into the mazes of the dance.
“The girls were tall, like their brothers, and picturesque in their
red tippets. Like their brothers, they were handsome and graceful.
They were mature maidens, but they had not lost their elegant figures,
or their fresh white and red complexions. Their homemade dresses,
though of plain woollen material and simply made, fitted them well,
and were in perfect harmony with their rustic surroundings. Their hair
hung in ringlets round their shoulders, and they moved with unconscious
gracefulness, whirling over the greensward as if they scarcely touched
it, or mazing through a ‘country dance’ or an ‘eight-part reel,’ or
waltzing round and round in a manner to make the onlooker giddy.
“There was nothing in the whole performance suggestive of the rough
peasant, or the country clown. All was exquisite grace and courtesy.
The musician was also relieved from time to time, each of the brothers
taking his turn at the violin.
“The scene was of the most weird and romantic character. The place
selected for the family dance was in a secluded widening of the glen,
down which flows a little stream that makes a murmuring noise as it
tumbles over stones, and among the roots of alder and willow. It was
wide enough to give full scope for extended galops, and sufficient for
all the exigencies of Sir Roger de Coverley. The ground was thickly
carpeted with grass, and surrounded by large trees with overhanging
branches. The trees were festooned with ivy and honeysuckle. Sweetbrier
and wild roses overflowed the hedges in great profusion, and ‘Flowering
Sally,’ in pink bunches, fringed the brook.
“The sun was sinking in the west, throwing dark shadows down the sides
of the Newry mountains, and shedding a pale glory on Slieve Donard and
the other lofty peaks of the Mourne range. Close by stood the Knock
Hill, generally sombre and unpicturesque, but on that occasion it
glowed in the parting rays. The little valley, as it dipped downward,
opened out to the west, and through the opening the setting sun poured
a rich flood of light on the animated groups, mating each dancer with
a long, dark shadow, and doubling the number of figures that tripped
lightly over the grass.
“As the sun dropped behind the ridge of Armagh the concert came to an
end, after a long bout of Scotch jigs, in which two and two in a row
danced opposite to each other, chased by their tall, unearthly shadows.
The closing scene was a great effort of endurance, but none seemed to
weary, and with a few skips into the air, the arms raised in curves
above the head, and the fingers being made to crack, all was still.
“There were four spectators of this wonderful family gathering--my
brother and myself, a goat that was quietly barking a tree beside us,
and pausing occasionally to look at the frantic display, and, on the
other side of the valley from where we were, the clergyman brother,
who walked to and fro, in solemn black, apparently in meditation, and
taking no notice of the gleeful recreation of his brothers and sisters.
“There was no dawdling when the dance was over. Each of the brothers
bowed with an air of gallantry to each of the sisters, and then one
of the brothers caught up the spinning-wheel, and, poising it on his
shoulder, strode up the homeward side of the glen. All followed smartly
and disappeared, in company with the sober figure in black.
“We slipped out of the bower where we had sat entranced, and hurried
homeward, with feelings of uncertainty as to the reality of things, in
the gathering darkness.”
This is the most complete account I have ever heard of the
summer-evening concerts held by the Brontës. Others had often seen
these large-limbed, sinewy children of Anak dancing on the green with
their flying shadows; but they had failed to appreciate the sylphlike
motions of the maidens, or the stately curvetting of the gigantic
brothers, and looked on the whole exhibition as something uncanny, and
as tending to confirm the popular belief that the Brontës had dealings
with the powers of the nether world.
The unique forms and forceful language of the Brontës were lost
on their commonplace neighbors, who looked on them as strange and
dangerous people. In fact, they were not regarded with much favor by
the people of the district, from whom they carefully held aloof; and
the belief that they were in league with the devil received a certain
amount of confirmation, as we shall see by and by.
When I first began to take an interest in the Brontës I was admonished,
in a mysterious manner, to have nothing to do with such people. I was
advised to keep out of their way, lest I should hear their odious
language, and it was even hinted that they might in some Satanic way do
me bodily harm.
I am bound to say that matters in this respect have not altered
much since for the better. My attempts, recently, to get accurate
information on special points, regarding the Brontës and their ways,
have been looked upon as a kind of craze, out of which, I have been
assured, I was never likely to reap much credit. And even educated
people, when replying to my inquiries on matters of fact, have
sometimes felt called on to remind me that I was taking much pains with
regard to a dangerous and outlandish family.
In fact, the Brontës paid the penalty for being a little cleverer than
the people with whom they came in contact, and with whom they never
associated. The Brontës looked down on the people of their own rank
in life, and permitted no familiarities of any kind; and the only
person who ever joined in their dances, as far as is known, was Farmer
Burns. As they held aloof from everybody, they were only known by their
strange language and odd ways. Imagination filled up the unknown, and
gossips, as usual, made the most of every little circumstance. The fact
that Mrs. Brontë had once been a Catholic prejudiced in no small degree
the minds of Protestants against the children.
The clergyman’s presence in no way restrained the mirthful exuberance
of the dancers. Before he left home he was always one of the party, and
on his visits from college and from his living he often joined in their
mirth, as formerly. But on the occasion referred to by Mr. McAllister
he seemed uninterested in the familiar scene.
He was probably thinking of his precocious little women, Maria and
Elizabeth, whom he had left at Cowan Bridge school a month before; or
his heart may have been in the Haworth vicarage with the motherless
little girls, Charlotte, Emily, and Anne, who were under the care of
their prim maiden aunt. Even then the children were wise beyond their
years, though, in their narrow world, they had scarcely begun to
accumulate the experience which enabled them to give local form and
color to their father’s stories.
II.
THE DEVIL AND THE POTATO BLIGHT.