The New York herald. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1840-1920, 1873-01-06

The Superheated Steam Sensation.
'Do you believe in superheated steam 2"
threatens to become almost as much of col
loquialism as GLOW does your meerschaum
color Z" or "What's gold to-day p The re-
porter propounds it to the scientific professor
in something Of the same spirit in which
catechumen might ask free-thinker whether
he believed in Divine Providence This new
Frankenstein has been created in night, and
now every homestead is haunted with it. The
private skeleton that turks in every closet is
forgotten, and this ubiquitous spectre takes its
place. The conviction spreads that our old
friend steam has gone back on US, and that
henceforth we shall be obliged to place him
in the same category with fire, whose character
as good servant but bad master has long
been known. From the ruins of Talmage's
Tabernacle. and Barnums Museum, and the
Centre street confagration, and the Fifth
Avenue holocaust, and Days charred bijou, q
CHASTITY phantom has arisen whose name is
superheated steam. With liyid features and beat
ing heartwe take retrospect of our lives and
behold the vampire lying in wait for us at the
church, at the theatre, at the place Of bust
ness, in the very silence and seclusion of our
own homes. We detect him, with tho re-
lentless patience of malignity, biding his
time in the very appliances by which he
treacherously administered to our comforts and
Injuries, ensconcing himself in our pipes and
boilers, and threading the inmost recesses Of
our contingencies and dwellings, the more
effectually to blast us at some unexpected mo-
ment with his burning breath.
At first it was not unnatural for the average
intellect to suppose that superheated steam
was but myth of Fire Marshal McSpedon's
superheated imagination and had it been so
that official would certainly deserve all the
smart with which, he says, his mock and
shoulders have recently tingled But when
such an authority as Professor Plimpton
comes to his rescue, and when not only is the
existence of superheated steam demonstrated
to the satisfaction Of the least alert intellect,
but the conditions under which it is generated
are shown to be analogous TO those which.
might readily be antecedent to most of the
plainly set forth than the phantom becomes
as tangible as flesh and blood, and civiliza-
ton vents a sigh as deep as Milton tells
us nature gave when Eve became an apple
picker. With Plimpton's significant shake
of the head each house becomes q volcano,
every home Vesuvius. We look at our
steam pipes bias-eyed and turn the cold
shoulder to our boilers. We take deep in
SEPARATIONS Of disappointment and think con-
servatism not such o bad fellow after all, as we
pile the wood on the long-neglected hearth
and bring out once more our all-but-forgotten
stoves. We put the brake upon the wheels Of
progress, lay by the whip of ultraism and
throw away the radical spur. Who can soy.
we whisper to ourselves in still small voice,
but what one day the world will perish by
superheated steam? We have found at last,
we think, the foe in our household, and the
next thing to do is to GUST him.
Perhaps more than one Of us has suffered,
from time to time, from the caprices of
favorite servant who, after long years OF
faithful service, suddenly took new de-
parture in morals and eyinced psychological
eccentricities which by no means conduced to
the peace and economy OF tno household. Per-
haps, too, when we came to reflect upon out
own conduct we grew more lenient to OUT
erring domestic than we would otherwise have
been, and considered that had we not shown
too great familiarity here, or had we repressed
an undue partiality there, we should have been
gamer in the end, and not a sufferer. The
application will be anticipated. Possibly we
may use the same reasoning in respect to the
superheated steam question with as satisfac.
tory result. 1t is not our province or pur.
pose to explain why it is that humanity obtains
its wisdom through such bitter experience.
We leave such vagaries to the metaphysicians
and abstractionists believing that the answer
exists only in the realm Of what Herbert
Spencer would call the 'unknowable." 1t ia
enough to understand that the process through
which valuable knowledge is gained is gen.
orally painful This fact stares us in the face,
and the sooner we submit to be stared out Of
countenance by it and apply our eyes to better
purposes than that of Intellectually staring in
return the happier will be the result. The
superheated steam sensation is another illus
tration Of this truism. The only useful moral
of present deducible is that there is something
radically wrong in the application of the
principles by which many of our public and
private buildings are heated by steam. AT
such crisis as the present it is inevitable that
ignorance, prejudice and sordid self-interest
should equally clamor, and that the dispas-
sionate voice of truth should with difficulty be
heard. On the one hand we have the spec
tacle of q boiler inventor accusing the Fire
Marshal of absurdity and incapacity, and Mr..
Wizard of venality and selishness. On the
other we have the equally refreshing picture
of McSpedon deprecating public criticism
and tinglng beneath newspaper censure. Be-
tween the two arise the mild accents of science