Green-Mountain freeman. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1844-1884, 1872-07-24
Che family Circle.
The Miracles of Chemistry.
BY REV. \. L. BRAKEMAN, A. NJ.

BY REV. n. L. BRAKEMAN, a. NJ.
Come with me, reader, and together we
will spend an interesting, pleasing, and
profitable hour. Our minds shall trace
some Of the movings of matter, and we
will behold, with amazement and delight,
a few Of the wonder workings of nature
and art With becoming humility and
modesty, we will look only into " little
things =" With Ruskin we will ponder the
/" Ethics Of the Dust and with Silliman
or Draper or Brewster, we will mark some
of the marvellous transformations Of the re-
tort and the crucible That our lesson
may be the more impressive, it shall have
all the advantages of contrast; it shall
- bring a clean thing out of an unclean
it shall make the offensive pleasing, the re-
pusive attractive, and fl i the material with
spiritual instruction.
Here we are, let Us suppose, in the man
featuring part of a great city; here are
the glass works, paper-mills, cotton facto
ries, gas-works, machine-shops, etc, and
here flows, Extensively odorous. the dark,
polluted sluggish stream, which slowly bears
10 the great river the slime and blackness
and filth of them all Now with your chem
lists lade, dip from its dirty depths little
of all it contains, and Fastening to more
attractive and congenial spot, let US sit
down and carefully analyze our repulsiye
half-pint of the very essence Of HGetlHeSS,
and we will strangely find 1t containing the
elements of purity and beauty.
What have we here First | see dang
ling over the edge of your dipper some
bits of cotton cloth. 0, how filthy
Then here is a gill or more Of water, equal
" impure: and here IS some sand here Is
a little charcoal in the form Of soot-how
it has blackened every thing around IT,
here is an ounce or so OF clay and last
and most offensive and de6ling of alb,
here is some eoal-tar from the gas-works
-inky, pitchy, and in every way repulsive
This is all " exquisite enough, " say you,
such as it Is " And now for the mira
cles of chemistry" 80
Take that filthy rag to the paper-mil
youder, and there, with a ton Of like ma
terial, it shall pa IS through process which
will bring it out nice, smooth, clean paper,
white as the snow or, 1t shall be ruled.
stamped, tinted, enameed, gilded TO suit
the most fastidious taste of lady, lover
poet, historian, diplomat, prince, or presi-
dent Aud now, pause and contemplate.
What a work is here; what a g resurrec-
ton scene to the polluted fabric how
c4anged its vile body - how like a mira
Gle seems the transformation
And this gill of the extract Of all
impurity why, you have only to con-
dense and exhale 1t and see, it again dis
tills in the bright dew-drop, rests in the
CLASSY lake. or sparkles in the limpid
stream, or flows in the pure fountain, or
cryst.lizes in the snow fake, or congeals
into ice How welcome now to the wake.
full eye, the aching head, the parched lips,
the burning thirst From filth to purl-
ty-now rottenness, and now life and
health-how marvellous the change
Next, see this sand, how deiled, insight
ly, and worthless Reduced to its original
self, it is an acid-oue part silicon, and
three parts oxygen then again it becomes
a clear, white earth. pure and hard; then
quartz, opaline in nature, form, and
name-the menilte, the common, the fire,
and, at last, the precious odal pre-
senting peculiar play of mingled coIors
and delicate tints and then II Is esteemed
gem, beautiful to the eye, precious in
value, and an ornament to royalty From
an acid to an opal-from the sewer to the
scepter What wondrOus transition
Shall we say miraculous?
And this SCOT local dust), blackening
almost indelibly wherever it falls-so light,
50 worthless now-how marvellous the
changes through which it shall pass, how
high aud noble the destiny to which it as
pires Passing it's primary stages, we see /
1T become a monometric crystal, Of ebony
hue. But it rests not here. 1t struggles
upward aud onward toward light and pu-
rity, " till, at last, it comes out clear and
bright, and the hardest thing in the world
and for the blackness it had, it obtained in
exchange the power of rejecting all the
rays of the sun at once, and in the most
vivid blaze that any solid thing can shoot. "
Aud our dirty coal-dust, changing its form
has become diamond, the most valuable /
and precious of earth's rare and costly |
than gold. What
transition from the black dust to the .
bright diamond Is not this a miracle?
This yielding clay, too, has a future
of which one a stranger to its ma
ture and susceptibilit'es would not
dream Like the sand, it becomes, in
one form, a clear, white earth; and then
in the hand of the skilled workman, and
by the help of fire, it becomes the finest
porcelain, and is kept in the parlors of
the rich, the palaces of kings, and in the
eapitols of nations. But it has other as
holds fellowship with the
the micas, the scopolites, etc.
A gain, it becomes emery, or corundum, or
ldamantine spar. And again, in its mu-
.ations, it is by unseen hands strangely /
nodded into sapphirine crystals, of hexa- {
yonal form and now, by turns, becomes :
part of the amethyst, the ruby, the beryl,
md, at last, the real sapphire and in this |
$, next to the diamond, the hardest, most I
lurable, most precious gems. From soft f
lirt to adamantine sapphires? This is T
doings, " and it is marvellous in
'ur eyes" is it not t
And last, but not least, is this BLACK, a
enacious, dcdling, detestable coal-tar.
surely no good thing no clean thing, can
ONE of this? Let us see. Placing it in
be retort, and distiIling it, we find it con-
aims a number of novel substances, with =
ovel names. One of these is called 5
henyl, and based upon this are two 9TH a
and carbolic acid-both val o