The Savannah morning news., 1902-01-05

Bf"-s4geewfS SVl3~ %llhlS N@sa&aEkfD
of nothing but science-till a new slim
| illus came to me-"
Glenny stopped, and was silent for
| half a minute. The winking candle
| glittered on that strange yellow effigy,
and queer reflections danced on the
| dark walls
Except for its intellectual interests,
| my life has been bare and graceless to
an unimaginable degree" he went on
| at last. 81 hardly realized its colorless-
| ness myself till a woman came into
| tiff you will believe me-for the first
! time, Kearnahan never knew of my
| acquaintance with the Lesoirs. He
| wasn't in their class, and / would have
| felt it PROCLAMATION to mention Helen's
name in his brutal presence. She was
| the brightest thing that ever touched
my existence. Man, YOU must remem-
| Der what my life had been-the slums
and the gutter and the thieves hang
out till / was 90, and nothing but re-
| tortS and crucibles after that,
! Il couldn't see her often, but she
came to care for mel know she did.
| Them had been going on in a sort
| of golden dream-then 1 seemed to
wake up to the horror of my position.
| / was nothing better than a slave,
cut my throat sooner than have
dragged Helen into the net that held
| me, but rebellion meant the prison
| that would shut me off from her for
| ever.
II tried hard to break the cords, I
| plotted and planned till ] almost went
| gray, but 1 could find no opening for
| escape. Those waiting years of i'm
| prisonment-I couldn't dodge them.
| concluded that l had better lie low
| for a while and wait for an oppor-
tunity. To go up for trial meant
never to see her again. I knew that
| And now I've lost her forever and to
| all eternity" He ended his sentence
with sort of dry gasp.
We'll, / turned back hard to work,
| and moved out here. I needed a lab
oratory out of the reach of the jar
and vibration of a city. / was work.
| ing upon the production of low tenn
peratures, for we had an idea that by
the use of liquid air in some way steel
could be made as brittle as glass, and
| safe door could be cracked with a
hammer. 1t was interesting but l
presently stumbled upon a discovery
| that promised greater things yet,
nothing less than the production of
| the Absolute Zero.
| THAT, you must know, is the tenn
| perature at which all heat is absent.
| 1t is about 275 centrigrade, and has
never even been approached by science.
| A lump of matter at the Absolute
| Zero would be dead as no created
/ substance has ever been absolutely de-
| prived of energy of any sort It's
| atoms would only hold together by
mere inertia, and would be liable to
| be broken up by any shock I specu-
lated a good deal as to what form
| matter would assume in such a state
| 1t would be simply Matter, deprived of
| all it's attributes, and no more iron
j or earth than flesh or water. I could
not even decide whether it would be
visible or not.
81 had the underground cell built to
get as far from vibration as possible,
and moved the engine shed to a greater
| distance. You wouldn't understand
| my experiments if | described them,
| but l worked for two or three months
| before ! saw my way clear i had
| already obtained temperatures lower
| than had ever been before obtained
Liquid air 1 employed largely, but
| liquid air was boiling oil compared to
| some of the CHASTITY fluids I distilled
| under tremendous pressure and cold.
Two months ago | arranged my ap-
| paratus for the great attempt. That
stone trough in the floor was the cool
| ing-bo and l put half a dozen ordi-
nary bricks in it, locked the lid and
started the machinery. For an hour I
watched the self-registering thermom-
| eters go down. Down they went-2OO
degrees, 250 degrees, 265 degrees-and
then they ceased to work. l let the
| experiment go on for an hour more,
| and then held an electric bulb over the
| glass window in the lid and peeped in.
Just for a moment l saw the pile of
| bricks exactly as l had left them.
! Then, at the flash of light, they seemed
to move, to expand. to turn pale and
before realized the transformation
they were white as marble. and con-
| siderably larger. l raised the lid, but
| the gush of white vapor and awful
cold that came out drove me hurriedly
up the shaft in the lift. When the
place had warmed a little I returned.
Instead of the bricks l found half a
| dozen blocks of solid ice, brick-shaped,
| but nearly a third larger.
'T had half expected something of
! the sort. 1t had been a success. The
rays of the electric lamp had broken
up the atoms of dead matter into a
new molecular arrangement, which
| happened to be that of water. The in
| crease in bulk simply represented the
difference in the specific gravities of the
old and the new compounds.
"It was certainly the greatest scien-
tific feat of the century, and my state
| of excitement and triumph is hard to
| describe. Moreover, the practical pos
sibilities of the thing were enormous,
unlimited. If bricks could be turned to
water, stone could be turned to dia-
monds; ii was only a question of find
/ ing the right sort of shock to apply to
/ the deadened matter. So 1 devoted my
| self to the problem of ascertaining
what sort of shocks produced Certain
results, and l worked at it for weeks.
had the terminals OF an induction coil
run into the cold box, and used sparks
/ of different intensities as agents But
could not arrive at any accurate re-
suits; the chilled matter seemed to
take one turn as readily as another.
Lumps OF rock changed to ice or car
| bon readily, sometimes to lead. some
/ times to air, and once l nearly blew up
several thousand feet of a highly eX-
| pansive gas. But never got anything
of any intrinsic value.
Il had totally neglected Kearnahan's s
work for some time. and one morning
4 as / was at work in this dungeon I
was startled TO see him letting himself
/ down by the lift. It was the first
/ time he had ever visited my mountain
] laboratory, though he had written sew
| ersl times. / had almost forgotten
when I saw IN his hand a photograph
/ Of Helen Lesoir which had hung on
my wall upstairs
Devil Of a place you've got here.
/ he said. How about the work on chilled
Z 81. r.aN .f..f.s