Arthur May Mowry

“ These famous instances and many more that could be added to them would seem to indicate that life in a lighthouse, with the mind constantly running out to the sea, becoming familiar with the storms that rise, and observing the dash of the waves and the roar of the wind—life inured to hardship, but shut up within the safe keeping of the solid walls of the little tower high above the raging waves—it would seem that such a life is calculated to give courage, strength, and fortitude, and to endue the heart with a heroic forgetfulness of self. ”

“ Another form of fuel is even more necessary than coal and wood. In the winter we warm our rooms so that we may not suffer from the cold; but the stove does not warm us when out of doors. Then we put on our heavy winter wraps, but these give us no warmth: they merely keep in the heat of the body or keep out the cold blasts of the wind. We all know that the body is warm of itself; that there is something within us that produces heat, like a fire. When our fingers become chilled by the frosty air we may warm them with our breath. ”

“ No invention in ancient or modern times has wrought such a revolution—a revolution in all business, in commerce, [Pg 277] trade, manufacturing and the mechanic arts, in politics, government, and in religious affairs. It is not given to mortal man to comprehend the greatness, to duly appreciate the grandeur, or to measure the utility of this remarkable invention. Over the mountains, through the valleys, under the seas flies the electric current, conveying all-important items of news from place to place, from country to country, from continent to continent. ”

“ In this country, covered with forests, were there only wild animals? Were there no human beings: no men, nor women, nor children? No white men lived in New England; the city of New York had not even been thought of; Baltimore and Savannah were impassable forests; and the great West was only a hunting ground. But the red men or American Indians did live in this country and were its only owners. ”

“ A school history should set forth such facts, and in such an order, as to show the progress of civilization. The great lessons of history are found in that line of events in the past which exhibits the progress of mankind—the uplift of humanity. The record of no other country can present a more startling array of forward movements and upward tendencies than that of our own land, and in no one direction does this upward movement appear quite so clearly as in the line of inventions.
Man's efforts are, first, to overcome nature. ”

“ Boats and ships of all kinds, steamers great and small, sail away from one shore [Pg 96] of the vast sea to the opposite shore, or along the coast, all in comparative safety because of the various beacon lights.
Indeed, is not the lighthouse itself a great lesson in morals? Every one of us—every one of the seventy million people of the United States has a part in the lighthouse. It is we, the people, who are furnishing the government with its resources, and it is the great government of our country that builds the lighthouses to warn mariners of danger. ”

“ Therefore the food-fuel must provide not only heat but also the different materials of which the body is made. One kind of food is necessary for the bones, another for the blood, another for the flesh, and another for the nerves. Thus while in studying common fuel we have only to learn about wood, either in the form of trees or pressed into the form of coal, in studying food-fuel we find that the kinds are almost numberless. Meat and vegetables, fish and fruit, roots and nuts, in their infinite varieties, are all included in the word food. ”

“ But all these stories of the fire of the gods and the way in which human beings were able to get hold of this priceless blessing we now know to be only myths. Students of early history are agreed that all men, everywhere, and at all times, have had the knowledge and the use of fire. Great differences exist between civilized and uncivilized people; the savages of interior Africa seem almost to belong to a different species of being from the cultured people of Europe and America; but all are able to warm themselves and to cook their food by means of burning fuel. ”

“ The sun does much more for us than send us its heat-rays: all day long we rejoice in the bright sunshine. But at night, when the sun has set, we ask for artificial light. How shall we get it? How did our ancestors obtain it?
We have in our day the electric light; we can use illuminating gas; kerosene is easily obtained; if necessary, we can resort to candles. Yet there was a time when the electric light had not been discovered. Earlier still, gas had not been made and kerosene was not known. Indeed, long, long ago even candles had not been seen by men. ”

“ We must now leave George to a further study of farm life and farm work. So far he has only examined tools and machinery. He has learned from experience, however, that a modern farmer has much more than this to learn, and much work to do that cannot be done by machinery. He realizes that much study is needed to make a successful farmer. He finds that nearly every State in the Union has one or more agricultural colleges, and that the United States does its share in giving aid and information to farmers. He still desires to be a farmer, but he is glad that it is a modern farmer that he must be. ”

“ The mammoth fireplaces, sending much heat up the chimney and much smoke into the room, have given way to the stoves and furnaces that render life comfortable. No longer is it necessary to freeze our backs while roasting our faces. Cranes, pot-hooks and trammels, and Dutch ovens are chiefly to be seen in museums, and the kitchen range saves the cook much needless labor. Nowadays we seldom find the fires out on a winter's morning and the water frozen in the pitcher. Instead of hastening through the cold and the snow to a neighbor to borrow fire, we simply "strike a match." ”

“ The Stockton and Darlington Railway was three years in process of construction, and the day of its opening, September 27th, 1825, was an important one in the history of travel. Imagine that first train load—the locomotive, guided by Stephenson himself, six freight cars, a car carrying "distinguished guests," twenty-one coal cars crammed with passengers, and six more freight cars all loaded. Ahead of the train, or procession, as it might be called, rode a man on horseback, carrying a flag bearing the motto, "The private risk is the public benefit." ”

“ If the air which enters the body is foul, the fire feels the effect and our health is injured. If the lungs are filled with water or anything else which keeps out the air, the fire goes out and life is lost.
The fuel which we call food is just as necessary for the fire in our body as is wood or coal for the fire in the stove. Three times a day or oftener we take this food-fuel into our bodies; thus we keep the fire steadily burning which makes us warm and keeps us alive.
On the other hand, fuel for the body must be very different from fuel for a stove. In the stove heat alone is wanted ”

“ Thus lived the American Indians or red men three or four hundred years ago, and thus they would probably be living to-day if Columbus or some one else had not discovered America; if the English, the French, and the Spaniards had not come across the ocean; if farms and villages, towns and cities had not sprung up all over the country; if the white men had not taken much of the land over which the Indians had roamed for centuries; and if the Indians had not learned much from the white men which has greatly changed their conditions. ”

“ It would almost seem that man in his effort to create light has kept step with his own development. The first light was produced from the simplest substances, solids: wood on the hearth, the pitch-pine knot, and the candle. Then followed light produced from liquids: olive oil, whale oil, refined petroleum. Afterward the inventive genius of man extracted from coal an invisible gas which would burn and give a bright, clear light. ”

“ Our country occupies, all things considered, the best portion of the world. This includes the Atlantic slope, the great Mississippi basin, and the Pacific slope, and our whole territory, except our new colonial possessions, lies within the north temperate zone. We therefore have a great variety of soil and climate; the soil is the most fertile and the climate the most salubrious of the whole earth. We have an almost infinite variety of productions and our people are engaged in the entire round of human industries. ”

“ It will be seen that we are thus using to-day for lighting purposes occasionally the candle, quite largely the kerosene lamp, and to a great extent in towns and cities the gaslight, and best of all—the cleanest, the neatest, giving the brightest light, requiring the least attention from the consumer, and manifesting the highest development of man's inventive [Pg 89] genius thus far—the electric light. Here at present man's invention in this direction has stopped. What the next step will be, no one can tell.
Slowly through the ages man has been developing. ”

“ What powers have we found used in transportation up to a hundred years ago? First there was human power, either walking or plying oars or paddles. This energy is limited; walking is necessarily a slow process, and rowing is seldom a rapid mode of travel. Then came horse power, used first to carry travelers or goods and later to draw carriages and wagons, conveying passengers and freight. Horse power is superior to human power both in speed and in endurance, but it also has its limits and often fails at important times. ”

“ The use of coal for heating purposes is so familiar to every one nowadays that probably few have ever thought about the time when it was unknown. Coal was as plentiful three thousand years ago as it is now. Layers and beds of the fuel existed just under the surface of the ground, and in many places cropped out through it. But the stones were merely "black rocks," and the idea that rocks would burn was too absurd to occur to any one. We may well wonder how it was first discovered that coal would burn. ”

“ Civilized man has better arrangements for kindling his fire, better means of obtaining more good from it, and better ways for avoiding the smoke and other unpleasant features than has uncivilized man. A savage would not understand the modern chimney nor a kitchen range. He would be utterly at a loss to comprehend our modes of heating by the hot-air furnace or the coils of steam pipes. The forest provides him with all the wood that he needs for his fire, and he has little or no knowledge of coal or oil or gas. ”

“ There is coal enough underground to last for many centuries. It used to be said that England was the great coal-mining country, for her coal fields are nearly as extensive as those of all the rest of Europe. But the United States has a supply of coal that will apparently be hardly diminished when that of the British Islands is entirely used. The single State of Pennsylvania has a greater store of coal than all Europe, and her part is less than one-tenth of the stock of coal in the United States.
Even if the forests of the entire country should be destroyed, we should not want for fuel. ”

“ There is much evidence showing that while inventions greatly diminish the amount of labor necessary to accomplish a certain result, on the other hand they open up new lines of industry which fully compensate laborers for the loss which would otherwise fall upon them. It is to be noted also that, in our country at least, the wages of laborers have increased in the period during which labor-saving machines have been invented.
The modern sewing machine is an inestimable blessing to a family. ”

“ As this coal was brought in vessels to the metropolis it received the name of "sea-coal," and it was thus called for several centuries.
How strange it is that opposition always arises to every new thing! People are always to be found who think that anything with which they are not familiar cannot be good. So it was in London. A cry began to arise that the use of coal was injurious to health. The coal was soft or bituminous, and burned with considerable flame and a dense smoke. ”

“ The cinders filled the cars in the old days; the air within was always bad; the candles gave more smoke than light; and in winter, the stoves at the end of the cars gave no heat in the center."
"Yes, all that is changed," replied the younger man. "Spark arresters keep out the cinders; the overhead ventilators give us good air; bright light, almost like that of day, surrounds us in the evening; and, when wanted, the engine supplies steam in pipes running the entire length of the car, which gives even and ample heat." ”

“ But since Columbus set sail from Spain, since John Cabot first saw the shores of this continent, since John Smith made friends with the Indians in Virginia, and William Bradford guided the lives of the Pilgrims at Plymouth, discoveries and inventions have changed most of our habits and customs as well as our surroundings. The methods of heating our houses and cooking our food have altered greatly, and we cannot fail to be interested in comparing the simple wood fires of long ago with the complex ways in which heat is now evenly distributed wherever it is wanted. ”

“ If we read the history of the world, and especially the story of the earlier life of the different nations and peoples, we shall find that fire was considered by them all to be one of the greatest blessings belonging to man. They thought that the gods whom they worshipped also treasured fire. The Romans offered sacrifices to Vesta, the goddess of the fireplace, and it was the duty of the vestal virgins to keep a fire always burning on her altar. ”

“ The sulky plow is easier for the horses than the common plow; it makes furrows of different depths; and it has a seat for the farmer. Sometimes several plowshares are placed side by side and drawn by a large number of horses. This is called a gang plow. Steam and wind and water and even electricity are coming into use to furnish power for plows, in place of the animal power of horses.
"Well, Uncle Ben," said George one evening, "now I understand something about plowing and tillage. The next thing a farmer does in the spring is to plant his potatoes and corn, is it not?" ”

“ Rising higher and higher, man soars above all solids, liquids, and gases, and with a sudden bound leaps almost out of the realm of matter and produces the electric light, which is merely a form of motion. How clearly the progress of man, his elevation, his civilization, his increased conveniences and luxuries of life are made to appear in this study of his methods of obtaining artificial light! ”

“ But the wind is fickle; it does not always blow; it frequently blows from the wrong direction; it often blows too much. Human power, horse power, wind power, each was insufficient or unsatisfactory, and the time was ripe for some power stronger and less fickle to produce more rapid transportation.
When the necessity of a new power became great, the needed energy and a way to use it were soon found. Near the close of the eighteenth century a number of men, unacquainted with each other's ideas, began to experiment with steam as a means for propelling vessels. ”