Bellows Falls times. [volume] (Bellows Falls, Vt.) 1856-1965, 1873-01-24
4" The Man With a Secret"
From the Phrenolosical Journal

ed columns, setting forth with minute
particulars a most extraordinary state
ment. Our correspondent asks our opin'
ion of the matter. The slip from the
newspaper does not reveal the name OF
the place of publication, but we infer
from some advertisements on the back
that it is from the Taranika Herald, of
New Zealand. ...,.
The story, in brief, is that one Greg
ory Summerfeld discovered chemical
composition by means of which he could
burn up the world by setting the ocean
on fire. He met lawyer in California,
announced to him his possession of this
fearful agent, and demanded a million
dollars, declaring that if it were not soon
raised he would make the human race
rue it. He argued that planets had
been consumed; that the Bible said,
The earth shall burn as an oven, and
the elements melt with fervent heat, "
etc.; therefore, that it was possible that
chemical agent existed which would
set the world on fire. As the story goes
the lawyer, Mr.. Leonidas Parker, con-
suited with several eminent men in San
Francisco, and they privately went with
Summerteld and saw him burn up
small lake near San Francisco; and, be-
coming alarmed for the fate of the world
and its inhabitants, they tried to raise
the million dollars. They succeeded in
obtaining subscriptions for only FIVE hun
dred thousand dollars. They then held
consultation, and decided that man
with such secret ought not to go at
large, any way, and even if they made
him independently rich, the secret might
be let out, and they resolved that, though
they could raise and pay the money, such
man was too dangerous to live, and
that he should die and take the dread
ful chemical receipt with him.
Parker was selected to put Summer
field out of the way, and accepted the
terrible mission. On pretense of going
with Summerfield to New York to raise
the other half million, Parker and he
took passage ON the Pacific Railroad, and
when they approached place on the
mountains well known to Parker. called
Cape Horn, where the train passes a
preclpice more than thousand feet high,
Parker proposed to Summerfeld, in Or
der to get better view of it, to 90 out
on the platform of the car, and at the
proper moment he pushed him off. A
wild scream and mass of fragments op
the rocks below were the last of Sum-
merfeld, "The Man with Secret"
Parker, it is stated in the story, was
arrested, taken before grand jury, and
alter an hours conference with magis-
trate, lawyers, and jury, he was discarg-
ed. Parker gives this account as dy-
ing confession.
This is we'll told tory, and we sus-
pect it is the work of Bohemian i'm.
aglnation, woven around Cape Horn
preclpice as text. If such things had
happened since the Pacific railroad was
finished, the story would have been the
talk Of the civilized world. 1t is not so
good story as the celebrated Moon
Hoax" by Richard Adams Locke, in
1888; nevertheless it is we'll told.
The trouble is, the writer is lame in
his chemistry, if in nothing else. 1t is
we'll known that water may be decom.
posed by various means,-
/. By voltaic electricity, i. e., by pass
ing galvanic current from a moderate
sized battery through aciduated water,
bubbles of gas will be observed rising
from the platinum plates which termin-
ate the polar wires, and oxygen, perfect
ly pure, will be found rising from the
plate communicating with the positive
or copper pole, and hydrogen, equally
pure, rising from the negative or zinc
pole. The volume of the hydrogen will |
be found to be slightly over twice that
of oxygen-thus showing that oxygen
and hydrogen combine in proportions
of one of oxygen and two of hydrogen,
by bulk, to form water.
Therefore, when the gases are mixed
in these proportions and ignited by an
electric spark, they unite, with explosion,
and form water.
III. Water is also decomposed by heat, |
but a very small quantity of the mixed |
gases is evolved.
III. Water is decomposed by potassi
um, which. thrown upon the water, takes
hre spontaneously; and, uniting with
the oxygen, burns with beautiful pur-
pie fiame, sets the hydrogen free, and
leaves the alkaline solution.
~. Sodium will also decompose wa.
ter in the same way, but there are no
means known by which combustion of
large quantities of water could be effect.
ed.
1t would require an agent as much