Jacob Abbott

“ So saying, Rollo approached the hollyhocks, and put both his hands up slowly to the flower which the bee was in. He then very carefully gathered together the edges of the flower, so as to enclose and imprison the bee. He then gently broke off the stem of the flower, and held it up to Henry’s ear, to let him hear the bee buzz within.
“Now,” said Rollo, “I wish I had a little bee-hive. I would put him in, and perhaps he would make some honey in there.”
“Do you think he would?” said Henry.
“Yes,” replied Rollo, “I have no doubt he would; bees always make honey in bee-hives.” ”

“ Then he rubbed them once or twice upon the end of Jonas’s magnet, saying,
“There, you see I use both of these needles alike. Of course the eyes have both the same magnetisms. Now you will find that when I put one of them upon the float, and then bring the eyes together, they will repel each other; but an eye and a point will attract. So two points will repel.”
“But you have not magnetized the points,” said Rollo’s mother.
“Yes,” said his father. “When we magnetize one end, the other end becomes magnetized, itself, in the contrary way.” ”

“ Hereupon, Jonas came up to the table to see what was the matter. Each of the boys told his story.
“Now we are in pretty trouble,” said Jonas; “we thought we were going to have a fine lecture; instead of that, there are two boys to be punished, and wet paper to be dried.”
“Punished?” said Rollo.
“Yes,” said Jonas, “Nathan for touching the sand-box, and you for touching him.”
“Why, he was pouring out all the sand,” said Rollo, “and I was only trying to stop him.”
“Yes, but you know,” said Jonas, “that you had no right to stop him by violence. That always makes the difficulty worse.” ”

“ Henry and Rollo looked upon him with an expression of ludicrous gravity and perplexity.
“What are you laughing at?” said Rollo.
Jonas could hardly control himself sufficiently to speak; but presently he succeeded in asking Rollo if he supposed that bees would make honey there.
“Certainly I do,” said Rollo, with a positive air. “Why should they not? They don’t care what shape their hive is, or what it is made of, and this flower-pot is as good as any thing else. There! there! see, Henry,” he exclaimed, interrupting himself, [Pg 121] and pointing down to the flower-pot, “one is coming out.” ”

“ That’s no way to mark a shadow.”
[Pg 17]
“It isn’t a shadow,” said Lucy.
“Yes, it is,” said Rollo.
“No,” said Lucy; “a shadow is dark, and this is bright.”
“Yes,” said Rollo, “this is a bright shadow; some shadows are bright, and some are dark.”
“O Rollo!” said Lucy; and she turned away from him, a little out of humor.
The truth was, that Rollo and Lucy were getting decidedly into a dispute. From the sublime heights of practical astronomy, they had fallen, by a sad and very rapid descent, to a childish altercation. ”

“ The next day, Jonas sawed off the ends of both stakes where they projected beyond the junction; and then Rollo said he would watch the clock all day, and mark the place where the shadow came each hour, and drive a little stake down. “Then,” said he, “our dial will be done.”
“But what do you suppose is the reason,” said Rollo, “that we must make it point to the North Star more than to any other?”
“I don’t know,” said Jonas, “unless it is because the North Star is the only one that keeps always in the same place. The rest move round and round every day. ”

“ But now he said to Rollo,
“I could let you have all the books of prints and engravings I have got, and see them all at one time, and that would be giving you Aladdin’s lamp, exactly, so far as my pictures are concerned.”
“Well,” said Rollo, clapping his hands.
“But then, in a short time, you would get tired of looking at them; you would become satiated, and would in fact spoil the whole pleasure by attempting to enjoy it too fast. But then I think it would perhaps do you good.” ”

“ Mary had said it would, until it struck her hand, and there it stopped and remained at rest.
“What did you stop it for?” said Rollo.
“So that we could see and attend to one part of the phenomenon at a time,” said Mary; “that is, the descent of the pebble. You see the attraction of the earth causes the pebble to go down if it can, and the confinement of the string prevents its going down in any other way than in that curve or arc. For the string keeps it always just its own length from the branch, and so that makes the curved line the arc of a circle.” ”

“ Rollo then asked his father why it was that a post, which pointed to the North Star, would bring a shadow any more regularly to the hour marks, than an upright one would; but he said that Rollo did not know enough, yet, to understand the explanation, even if he were to try to explain it. “Therefore,” said he, “you must wait until you study astronomy before you can expect to understand it; but you can now, in the mean time, make such a dial, if you wish to do it.”
Rollo did wish to do it very much. He accordingly told Jonas all that his father had said. ”

“ That is the way that boys always sharpen wedges.”
“Why do they?” asked Rollo.
“I suppose it is because it is easier to cut away at the edges, and so they get more off there. Now you had better get your wedge as true, and perfect, and smooth as you can, before you saw it off. It will be a great deal pleasanter to work with a good wedge than with a poor one, and so you had better take pains with it, and make as perfect a one as you can, if you make any.”
“But, Jonas,” said Rollo, “I can smooth it and finish it, after I get it sawed off.” ”

“ So thus, it seems, that Jonas has got a sort of a dial?”
“Why, it only tells him what o’clock it [Pg 97] is at one hour in the day,” said Rollo. “But I think he might make it do for all the afternoon and forenoon.”
“How?” inquired his father.
“Why, all he has got to do is to watch some day when it is nine o’clock, and ten o’clock, and so on, every hour; and then make a line where the shadow comes every hour, just as he did for twelve o’clock. Then he will have marks for every hour in the day, and when the shadow comes along to these marks, one after another, he will know what time it is.” ”

“ A piece of cork may oscillate differently from a piece of stone.”
“Yes,” said Rollo, “it will oscillate slower.”
“We must not decide,” said Mary, “in our own minds, before we try the experiment. We must leave our minds free to observe the facts, and wait until we make the experiment, before we come to any conclusion, or else we shall not be good experimenters.”
“Why not?” said Rollo.
“Because,” said Mary, “when persons make up their minds beforehand what the facts will be, they are very apt not to observe fairly. ”

“ JONAS’S DIAL.
That evening, Rollo told his father about his hour-glass, and also about Jonas’s noon line. His father said it was very difficult to draw a meridian line.
“O no, father,” said Rollo; “Jonas has drawn one, and he told me how, and it was a very easy way.”
“Yes,” said his father, “it is easy to draw something which you can call a noon mark; but it is a very difficult and delicate operation to do it with any considerable degree of exactness.” ”

“ And just so, when they saw it up into boards, the boards will all split lengthwise, from end to end, for this is the way the channels and fibres all lie; but it won’t split across, for that would be across all the fibres, and the wood is made very strong in that direction, and it is well it is so.”
“Why?” said Rollo.
“Because, if trees would split across, as easily as they do up and down, the first good [Pg 79] wind would blow down all the forests in the world.”
“O, Jonas!” exclaimed Rollo, “all the forests in the world?”
“Yes,” replied Jonas, “if the wind blew all over the world.” ”

“ Rollo held the flower, with the bee imprisoned in it, safely in his fingers.
“O, I can catch plenty more. I could catch a whole hive of them, in time.”
“But I don’t believe they will stay and work in your hive,” said Henry. “They will all fly off and go home to where they belong.”
“No,” said Rollo, “I will plug up the hole, and keep them shut in until they get used to it. When they get wonted to the new hive, they will stay there, after that, I know. That’s the way they do with doves.”
“But you won’t have any queen bee,” said Henry. “Bees won’t work without a queen bee. ”

“ So good observers or experimenters always take care to keep their minds free and unbiassed.”
“Well,” said Rollo, “and what else is [Pg 172] there that the oscillations may depend upon?”
“The length of the string,” replied Mary.
“O yes,” said Rollo, “it may depend upon that.”
“Let us see,” continued Mary. “There are three experiments we have already proposed; a large and a small pebble; a pebble and a cork; a long and a short string; and now there is one more,—a long and short arc.” ”

“ He asked Dorothy to get another saucer full of water, while he prepared another float. Then he put the magnetized needle upon the new float, leaving the unmagnetized one upon the old float. They both looked almost precisely alike, each upon its own little disc of cork in its saucer of water.
“There,” said he, “you cannot see any difference between them; but there is a great deal of difference between them; for one is only a common needle of steel, but [Pg 153] the other has its two extremities magnetic in opposite ways.” ”

“ So Rollo stood in the door way, waiting to hear what Jonas had to say about the beetle, but evidently quite impatient to go.
“If you make your wedges of hard wood, it will not be necessary to have iron rings to your beetle, because it will not get battered much, in driving wooden wedges. Now you must go to the wood pile, and look out a piece of round wood, about as large round as my arm, and bore a hole in it.”
“A hole in it!” said Rollo.
“Yes, a small auger hole, to put the handle into. ”

“ He and Rollo went out into the garden to look at the establishment, and found every thing as they had left it the night before. Rollo felt quite confident of the success of his experiment. The only thing that gave him any uneasiness was the want of a queen bee. He and Henry were just speculating upon the expediency [Pg 119] of sending in a bumble-bee instead, for a king, when their attention was arrested by hearing Jonas calling Rollo. They looked up, and saw him standing at the garden gate. ”

“ There may be a good many little differences that we do not observe. But if the size of the stone would cause any difference in the vibrations, I should think it would make a much greater difference, for one is twice as big as the other.”
“Let us try a very big stone,” said Rollo.
“Well,” said Mary.
So Rollo got a stone as large as an orange, which was as heavy a one as Mary thought the thread would hold; and Mary suspended that from the branch of the tree, and then swung it in company with the two others. ”

“ Rollo began to rake off the leaves with his fingers, and then sat down, and went to digging a hole in the sand. It was very dry upon the top, but on digging down a little way, he found it damp, and so it would hold together pretty well, and he could pat it into any shape. A load of clean sand makes a very good place for children to play in, in a corner of a yard.
Rollo sat down on one side of the sand-garden, and Nathan on the other, and both [Pg 85] busied themselves in digging and building little houses. ”

“ One of the drollest of all of Rollo’s experiments was his plan for getting a bee-hive.
One day, he was in the garden with a playmate of his, named Henry, who lived not very far from his father’s house.
In the back part of the garden were some tall hollyhocks growing. They were in full flower. Hollyhocks are very tall. They grow up in a straight stem, as high as a man’s head, with leaves and flowers from top to bottom.
The flowers are large, and shaped somewhat like a cup, or rather a wine-glass, and bees often go into them to get honey. ”

“ Then he brought the same end of the bar, first to the point, and then to the eye of the unmagnetic needle, and it attracted them both; so it was evident that there was a considerable difference, in reality, between the condition of the two, though there was no difference in external appearance.
“Now you see, from all this,” added Rollo’s father, “that when a magnet touches a piece of steel, like a needle, it immediately makes it a magnet itself; that is, it makes the two ends magnetic, one having one kind of magnetism, and the other the other kind ”

“ Then, again, the post of the barn door is not exactly upright.”
“I thought they always made door posts exactly upright,” said Rollo.
“They do make them as nearly upright as they can, with the common carpenters’ instruments; but they are not exact. To set a post of any kind, with great precision, perpendicular to the horizon, would require very expensive mathematical instruments, and very laborious and nice observations. Then, again, if the clock had been exact, and the post perfectly upright, Jonas could [Pg 96] not have marked the place of the shadow exactly. ”

“ Then Rollo’s father reversed the magnet again; that is, he brought the smaller end towards the needle as at first. The point of the needle was now attracted, that is, drawn towards the magnet; and then when he changed it again, and brought the large end to the needle, it was always repelled; that is, driven away again.
“Now you see,” he said, “that the small end of the magnet attracts the point of the needle, and the large end drives it away. That shows that the magnetism in the two ends is of two different kinds. ”

“ He accordingly poised a needle carefully upon a cork, as his father had done in his lecture, and put it in a basin of water upon the platform. But he did not succeed very well. The needle would always swing round, and turn its point towards the garden gate; but Rollo knew very well that the garden gate was not north from the platform. He remembered that the North Star was over the barn, for he and Jonas had noticed it particularly when they had made the dial. ”

“ After a few oscillations, however, the large stone began to gain a little upon the other, and seemed to be moving faster. Presently it had gained half an oscillation, i. e. when the large one was moving forward, the small one would be coming back.
[Pg 175]
“The big one moves the fastest,” said Rollo.
“Not much,” said Mary.
“No,” said Rollo, “not much.”
“And I don’t think it is owing to the difference in the bigness of the stones.”
“What else can it be?” said Rollo. “They are exactly alike in all other respects.”
“Not exactly,” said Mary. ”