Wafer

“ We think we are right in classing among the Fine Arts one of the prettiest, and not the least useful inventions of the present period: we allude to what are denominated Medallion Wafers. These are Seals of a particular composition, which, being stuck on letters, perform the office of wax or wafer in a very elegant fashion. ”

“ Wafers.—When and where were wafers invented? They were no new discovery when Labat saw some at Genoa in 1706; but from a passage in his Voyages d'Espagne et Italie, published in 1731, it would appear that they were even then unknown in France. A writer in the Quarterly Review says:
"We have in our possession letters with the wafers still adhering, which went from Lisbon to Rome twenty years before that time ”

“ Fastening our attention for the moment on surface water waves, the first question we shall ask ourselves is—What is a wave? If we take our station on a high cliff looking down on the sea, on some clear day, when the wind is fresh, we see the waves on its surface like green rounded ridges racing forward, and it appears at first sight as if these elevations were themselves moving masses of water. ”

“ The crest of a wave falls over a portion of air, imprisoning it for a moment, and the mingled air and water of different densities prevent the light of the sun or sky from going straight down into the black depths and being lost, but by being reflected and turned back it shows like beautiful white lace, constantly created and dissolved with a thousandfold more beauty than any that ever came from human hands. ”

“ The needles of ice which form in cold weather on the surface of the water are excellent natural wavelet-breaks. Generally, every cause hindering the formation of wavelets appeases the agitation of the waves. Thus a rain, every drop of which breaks a ripple, calms the sea to a certain extent. Sailors know this. Billows have been fought against with ordinary wave-breaks. Wavelets may be destroyed by employing light bodies, ripples with dust, microscopic ripples with an infinitely fine powder. A liquid will serve the end admirably. Oil is the best of all agents for the purpose. ”

“ The web is bound upon the beam, the reed separates the threads of the warp, the woof is threaded through them by the sharp shuttles which their busy fingers ply, and when shot through the threads of the warp, the notched teeth of the hammering slay beat it into place. They speed on the work with their mantles close girt about their breasts and move back and forth their well-trained hands, their eager zeal beguiling their toil. ”

“ So a wave rises, catches the light, transmits its motion, and sinks back into sea. So a plant ascends from clay, unfolds its leaves to light and air, flowers, seeds, and becomes clay again. Only, the wave has no knowledge ”

“ We are led, therefore, to infer that, even when agitated by waves, each particle of water never moves far from its position when at rest, and that the real movement of the water is something very different from its apparent motion. If we place on the surface of water a number of corks or pieces of paper, and then watch them as a wave passes over them, we shall notice that the corks or bits of paper rise and fall successively, that is, one after the other, and not all together. ”

“ It is that all space is filled with what we may call an ocean of æther, which can be tossed into waves and ripples just as the air we breathe is traversed in all directions by aerial vibrations, and the restless sea by waves and ripples on the water-surface. ”

“ The quick moan of her pinions cleaving the air is the first sound that steals on the new sense, and stirs the dead vast of silence that weighs upon his being. And now myriad soft wavelets of the infinite ocean follow—breaking gently over him—the whisper of quivering leaves to the caressing zephyr, the low tremble of the forest-chords, and the deep booming of great waves afar off ”

“ They resemble, therefore, the waverers: for the wavering are neither withered nor green, being neither living nor dead. For as their blades, on seeing the sun, were withered, so also the wavering, when they hear of affliction, on account of their fear, worship idols, and are ashamed of the name of their Lord. ”

“ Beneath it lay the sea, like a copper shield, smooth and glowing, seething like a boiling caldron, with its level foam, for the long, low-rolling billows lifted themselves but lazily from Ocean's breast, and assumed no distinctness of form or motion. Not the faintest breeze came to relieve the stifling closeness of the atmosphere, or lift the collapsed sail, or furled flag, that clung around our mast. The air shimmered visibly around us, as though undergoing some transformation from the heat, some culinary process, through which it was to be rendered unfit for human lips to breathe. ”

“ Now fill a wine-glass or tumbler with the lime-water thus made, and blow through the liquid with a glass tube, a piece of new tobacco-pipe, or a clean straw, and in the course of a minute or so—as the magicians say—“the water will be turned into milk.” By means of this pastime “Wise Men” can ascertain which young ladies are in love and which young gentlemen are not. With a shrewd guess they present, as a test, a glass of lime-water to the one and of pure water to the other, with unerring effect. ”

“ Against the all-pervading shimmering light our own forms stand out distinct of an intense and velvety blackness, yet the blades of the oars that cleave the melted sapphire of the water, the tips of our fingers that dabble in the celestial liquid, appear as if coated with tiny globules of silver. ”

“ He held up between his forefinger and thumb a crystal tube, filled to its seal with something that looked like green sawdust.
"The world, the sceptical world, shall know the hell you are preparing for them." ”

“ Every breaking wave had its summit illuminated by a light similar to that of phosphorus, and the sides of the vessel, coming in contact with the sea, were strongly marked by a luminous line. Great bodies of light moved in the water along our side, sometimes slower, sometimes quicker ”

“ The fallacy of our sensations may be easily shown by taking two basins, placing in one some water at 100 deg., in another some water at as low a temperature as can easily be procured—hold the right hand in one, the left in the other, for a few minutes, and then mix them, and place both hands in the mixture; it will feel quite cold to the hand that had been in the hotter water, and hot to the other. ”

“ Conceive now a medium having similar properties, but incomparably rarer than air, and we have a medium such as we may conceive the æther to be, a fluid as regards the motion of the earth and planets through it, an elastic solid as regards the small vibrations which constitute light. Perhaps we should get nearer to the true nature of the æther by conceiving a medium bearing the same relation to air that thin jelly or glue water bears to pure water. ”

“ The vapors inclosed in dark caverns in vain seek a passage by which they may escape. The heavier earth, inflated by the force of the compressed vapors, expands like a bladder filled with air, or like a goat-skin. ”

“ Up came a second wave. The lulling of the wind gave the waves a chance to gather force and height. This one curled fairly over my head and, looking up and over my shoulder at the great, green, foam-streaked wall of water, I thought my last minute above the surface had come!
It broke. I can remember nothing at all of the ensuing few moments. I only know that I was smothered, drowned, completely overwhelmed by the deluge of water that came inboard. The force of it burst open the slide of the hatch and barrels of water flooded into the cabin. The Wavecrest settled. ”

“ The vapor is taken from the surface water; the surface water thereby becomes more salt, and, under certain conditions, heavier; when it becomes heavier, it sinks; and hence we have, due to the salts of the sea, a vertical circulation, viz., a descent of heavier — because salter and cooler water from the surface, and an ascent of water that is lighter — because it is not so salty from the depths below. ”

“ The weaver’s loom is very simple, having a fly and treadles like ours, but no beam; and the warp, fastened to a stone, is drawn along the ground as wanted. The shuttle is passed by the hand. When close at work, they are said to weave from twenty to thirty fathoms of cloth a day. ”

“ If a glass vessel containing water, in which a couple of fish are put, be placed under the receiver, upon exhausting the air the fish will be unable to keep at the bottom of the glass owing to the expansion of the air within their bodies, contained in the air bladder. ”

“ If we could see the particles of the air in the concert-room, and fasten our attention upon any one of them, we should see it executing a most complicated motion under the combined action of these air-wave-producing instruments. We should be fascinated by the amazing dance of molecules to and fro and from side to side, as the medley of waves of compression or rarefaction embraced them and drove them hither and thither in their resistless grasp. ”

“ The waves generated in the ether by the swinging atoms of luminous bodies are of different lengths and amplitudes. The amplitude is the width of swing of the individual particles of the wave. In water waves it is the hight of the crest above the trough, while the length of the wave is the distance between two consecutive 257crests. The aggregate of waves emitted by the sun may be broadly divided into two classes, the one class competent, the other incompetent, to excite vision. ”

“ But while they lived, always submerged, always beneath the wave. Beneath the wave they might have powerful roots, stronger than iron; they might be tenacious and dangerous in their soft waving within the flood. ”

“ All eyes are fixed upon the object, as trembling and tossing amid the boiling white waves it survives the roughest waters. One breaker past and it will have reached the object of its mission. But being partly filled with water and striking a sunken rock, that next wave sends it hurling to the bottom. ”

“ We have seen, above, that the waves of spot-waxing and spot-waning are not all alike in shape and extent. Whenever, then, a wave more marked than usual came, we should expect to find it borrowing, so to speak, both in trough and crest, from the waves on either side. It would require but a year or so either way to make the wave range over fourteen years ”

“ Little by little, the fascination of this tremendous thing, of this black and stony sea which once was fire and lava, which is now rock, but still is lava, still is fire inside, seems to fascinate all of us, even the most timid. ”

“ Looking down from the brink opposite, masses of dense white vapor conceal the seething volume of fallen water below, from which feathery columns of spray like those described, rainbow-covered and the source of ceaseless showers, perpetually ascend far up into the air. ”

“ We see a wave a quarter of a mile off, then a few hundred yards nearer in, then just offshore; we seem to have been watching the same travelling mass of water—there has been no appreciable change in mass or in shape—yet all the while the original beat has taken on a flowing series of liquid bodies, bodies so alike, so much the same, that our eye will individualize them and follow them in—the third wave, we say, or the second wave behind the great wave. ”

“ When vapor obstructs light it is owing to impurities contained in it, to currents of varying densities, or wave motions, or to a mechanical mixture of condensed water and air, whereby multitudes of tiny globular water surfaces are produced. ”

“ At this point I rebelled—I ground my teeth resolutely—my face flushed to the temples—I could willingly have stricken that audacious scrutinizer in the face with my clinched hand, and he knew it! How coarse coarseness makes us, even when most disinclined to it naturally! ”

“ A Whale on Fire!
Perhaps we have drifted too far adown the currents of the ocean. From our digression let us return to out special “Waifs.” We left them making preparations to roast the shark-flesh,—not in single steaks, but in a wholesale fashion,—as if they had intended to prepare a “fish dinner” for the full crew of a frigate.
As already stated, fuel they had in sufficiency; or, at all events, the best of oil, that would serve as such. The spermaceti could not be readily kindled, nor its blaze kept up, without wicks. ”

“ The waves which spread round a central point when a stone is thrown into the water, give one the idea that the water which forms the wave really moves towards the observer. But it is not so, as may be readily proved by placing on the surface a floating body, which we shall find is but little, if at all, influenced by the undulations of the water. ”

“ The fire was extinguished in the only possible manner, by cutting it away from the decks, letting it gently down upon them, deluging it, so that our mast lay charred and blackened after its bath of sea-water, like a mighty serpent stretched along the ship, from stem to stern, and wrapped loosely in its shrouds. ”

“ The warp is not rolled round a beam, as in our looms, but kept at its extreme length, and the farther end is made fast to a large stone or heavy substance, which is gradually drawn towards the weaver as he progresses in his work. ”

“ Gigantic apparitions arise across the world of water, wavering like shadows on the clouds. Steel-clad, clothed in skins, casqued in steel, their winged heads bend and nod and move against the clouds. And even they are changing as clouds change shape. I see steel limbs turn red and naked. ”

“ I had fortunately in my younger days spent many hours in the workshops of weavers and other artisans, and therefore I understood more than might have been expected of their various crafts.
Paste or size was required to smear over the threads; but we could not spare floor for such a purpose, and I used isinglass, which kept the warp moist perfectly well, and spared us the necessity of setting up the loom in a damp uncomfortable place, which has often to be done to prevent the over-drying of the web. ”