_ELECTRIC COOKING_
"Hurrah!" cried Jimmieboy, in ecstasy. "This is great, isn't it?"
"Pretty great," assented the Imp, proudly. "That is, unless you mean
large. If you mean it that way it isn't great at all; but if you mean
great like me, who, though very, very small, am simply tremendous as a
success, I agree with you. I like it here very much. The room is
extremely comfortable, and I do everything by electricity--cooking,
reading, writing--everything."
"I don't see how," said Jimmieboy.
"Oh, it's simply a matter of buttons and batteries. The battery makes
the electricity, I press the buttons, and there you are. You know what
a battery is, don't you?"
"Not exactly," said Jimmieboy. "You might explain it to me."
"Yes, I might if I hadn't a better way," replied the Imp. "I won't
explain it to you, because I can have it explained to you in another way
entirely, though I won't promise that either of us will understand the
explanation. Let's see," he added, rising from his chair and inspecting
a huge button-board that hung from the wall at the left of the room.
"Where's the Dictionary button? Ah, here--"
"The what?" queried the visitor, his face alive with wonderment.
"The Dictionary button. I press the Dictionary button, and the
Dictionary tells me whatever I want to know. Just listen to this."
The Imp pressed a button as he spoke, and Jimmieboy listened. In an
instant there was a loud buzzing sound, and then an invisible something
began to speak, or rather to sing:
"She's my Annie,
I'm her Joe.
Little Annie Rooney--"
"Dear me!" cried the Imp, his face flushing to a deep crimson. "Dear me,
I got the wrong button. That's my Music-room button. It's right next the
Dictionary button, and my finger must have slipped. I'll just turn
'Annie Rooney' off and try again. Now listen."
Again the Imp touched a button, and Jimmieboy once more heard the
buzzing sound, followed by a squeaking voice, which said:
"Battery is a noun--plural, batteries. In baseball the pitcher and
catcher is the battery; in electricity a battery is a number of Leyden
jars, usually arranged with their inner coatings connected, and their
outer coatings also connected, so that they may be all charged and
discharged at the same time."
"Understand that, Jimmieboy?" queried the Imp, with a smile, turning the
Dictionary button off.
"No, I don't," said Jimmieboy. "But I suppose it is all right."
"Perhaps you'd like an explanation of the explanation?" suggested the
Imp.
"If it's one I can understand, I would," returned Jimmieboy. "But I
don't see the use of explanations that don't explain."
"They aren't much good," observed the Imp, touching another button.
"This will make it clear, I think."
"The Dictionary doesn't say it," said another squeaking voice, in
response to the touch of the Imp on the third button; "but a battery is
a thing that looks like a row of jars full of preserves, but isn't, and
when properly cared for and not allowed to freeze up, it makes
electricity, which is a sort of red-hot invisible fluid that pricks your
hands when you touch it, and makes them feel as if they were asleep if
you keep hold of it for any length of time, and which carries messages
over wires, makes horse-cars go without horses, lights a room better
than gas, and is so like lightning that no man who has tried both can
tell the difference between them."
Here the squeaking voice turned into a buzz again, and then stopped
altogether.
"Now do you understand?" asked the Imp, anxiously.
"I think I do," replied Jimmieboy. "A battery is nothing but a lot of
big glass jars in which 'lectricity is made, just as pie is made in a
tin plate and custard is made in cups."
"Exactly," said the Imp. "But, of course, electricity is a great deal
more useful than pie or custard. The best custard in the world wouldn't
move a horse-car, and I don't believe anybody ever saw a pie that could
light up a room the way this is. It's a pretty wonderful thing,
electricity is, but not particularly good eating, and sometimes I don't
think it's as good for cooking as the good old-fashioned fire. I've had
pie that was too hot, and I've had pie that was too electric, and
between the two I think the too-hot pie was the pleasanter, though
really nothing can make pie positively unpleasant."
"So I have heard," said Jimmieboy, with an approving nod. "I haven't had
any sperience with pie, you know. That and red pepper are two things I
am not allowed to eat at dinner."
"You wouldn't like to taste some of my electric custard, would you?"
asked the Imp, his sympathies aroused by Jimmieboy's statement that as
yet he and pie were strangers.
"Indeed I would!" cried Jimmieboy, with a gleeful smile. "I'd like it
more than anything else!"
"Very well," said the Imp, turning to the button-board, and scratching
his head as if perplexed for a moment. "Let's see," he added. "What is
custard made of?"
"Custard?" said Jimmieboy, who thought there never could be any question
on that point. "It's made of custard. I know, because I eat it all up
when I get it, and there's nothing but custard in it from beginning to
end."
The Imp smiled. He knew better than that. "You are right partially," he
said. "But there aren't custard-mines or custard-trees or custard-wells
in the world, so it has to be made of something. I guess I'll ask my
cookery-book."
Here he touched a pink button in the left-hand upper corner of the
board.
"Milk--sugar--and--egg," came the squeaking voice. "Three-quarters of a
pint of milk, two table-spoonfuls of sugar, and one whole egg."
"Don't you flavor it with anything?" asked the Imp, pressing the button
a second time.
"If you want to," squeaked the voice. "Vanilla, strawberry, huckleberry,
sarsaparilla, or anything else, just as you want it."
Jimmieboy's mouth watered. A strawberry custard! "Dear me!" he thought.
"Wouldn't that be just the dish of dishes to live on all one's days!"
"Two teaspoonfuls of whatever flavor you want will be enough for one cup
of custard," said the squeaky voice, lapsing back immediately into the
curious buzz.
"Thanks," said the Imp, returning to the table and putting down the
receipt on a piece of paper.
"You're welcome," said the buzz.
"Now, Jimmieboy, we'll have two cup custards in two minutes," said the
Imp. "What flavor will you have?"
"Strawberry cream, please," said Jimmieboy, as if he were ordering
soda-water.
"All right. I guess I'll take sarsaparilla," said the Imp, walking to
the board again. "Now see me get the eggs."
He pressed a blue button this time. The squeaky voice began to cackle,
and in a second two beautiful white eggs appeared on the table. In the
same manner the milk, flavoring, and sugar were obtained; only when the
Imp signalled for the milk the invisible voice mooed so like a cow that
Jimmieboy looked anxiously about him, half expecting to see a soft-eyed
Jersey enter the room.
"Now," said the Imp, opening the eggs into a bowl, and pouring the milk
and flavoring and sugar in with them, and mixing them all up together,
"we'll pour this into that funnel over there, turn on the electricity,
and get our custard in a jiffy. Just watch that small hole at the end of
the funnel, and you'll see the custard come out."
"Are the cups inside? Or do we have to catch the custards in 'em as they
come out?" asked Jimmieboy.
"Oh, my!" cried the Imp. "I'm glad you spoke of that. I had forgotten
the cups. We've got to put them in with the other things."
The Imp rushed to the button-board, and soon had two handsome little
cups in response to his summons; and then casting them into the funnel
he turned on the electric current, while Jimmieboy watched carefully for
the resulting custards. In two minutes by the clock they appeared below,
both at the same time, one a creamy strawberry in hue, and the other
brown.
[Illustration: THE ELECTRIC CUSTARD.]
"It's wonderful!" said Jimmieboy, in breathless astonishment. "I wish I
had a stove like that in my room."
"It wouldn't be good for you. You'd be using it all day and eating what
you got. But how is the custard?"
"Lovely," said Jimmieboy, smacking his lips as he ate the soft creamy
sweet. "I could eat a thousand of them."
"I rather doubt it," said the Imp. "But you needn't try to prove it. I
don't want to wear out the stove on custard when it has my dinner still
to prepare. What do you say to listening to my library a little while?
I've got a splendid library in the next room. It has everything in it
that has ever been written, and a great many things that haven't. That's
a great thing about this electric-button business. Nothing is impossible
for it to do, and if you want to hear a story some man is going to tell
next year or next century you can get it just as well as something that
was written last year or last century. Come along."