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T and T are the terminals to which the current is brought, and the current for an ordinary incandescent lamp passed through the circuit of this little boiler instead of the lamp, will boil a pint of water in ten or fifteen minutes.

The electric current may also be employed substance. for heating purposes. It will light a lamp or boil an egg with very little trouble. Fig. 4, for example, represents an electric lamplighter, of a very simple and handy sort. The wires conveying the current are brought to the terminals T T, and when the lamp L is pushed home against the press-button B, the electric circuit is thereby completed, and the current flows through the fine spiral of platinum wire w, heating it to whiteness, and lighting the lamp. On withdrawing the lamp again, the press-button breaks the circuit, and the wire w cools, but the lamp, of course, remains lighted.

By using a larger wire of German silver instead of platinum, and bending it into a hollow coil surrounding a sheet-iron pan, the incandescence of the wire produced by the electric current overcoming the internal resistance to its passage through the metal, can be made to develop a sufficient amount of heat to boil a quantity of water placed in the pan. Fig. 5 is a water-boiler of this kind, with part of the outer side removed to show the coil of incandescent wire w surrounding the inner pan, or water vessel. The wire w is carefully insulated from the sides of the vessel, and

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Fig. 5.

The passage of the current through carbon rods is also a source of heat as it is of light; and an electric kettle can be made by providing it with a stout copper bottom, and causing a pointed carbon rod to abut against it. The current is then passed through the rod to the metal bottom of the kettle, from which it is led away, and in traversing the junction between the carbon point and the copper it heats the carbon red-hot, and makes, as it were, a fire beneath the kettle. Gridirons on the same principle have also been constructed.

The intensely high temperature of the voltaic arc produced between two carbon points, kept a little apart, has been employed by Dr. C. W. Siemens to fuse the most refractory substances, such as cold steel, platinum, and fireclay. Siemens' "electric furnace" is illustrated in Fig. 6. Although not a household apparatus, at least in its present form, it shows what can be done in the way of electric heating. It consists of a plumbago crucible c, into which are inserted two carbon rods A B, the upper of which, A, is suspended from a balance beam G, while the lower B is let in through the bottom of the crucible. The current brought to these rods by the wires w w forms.the luminous arc by vaulting across the air-space between them and vaporising the carbon. The temperature of the arc so obtained is the hottest known on earth, and reaches over 2,000° centigrade. Hence if cast steel or other refractory substance is put into the crucible, it is rapidly melted. Inasmuch, however, as the upper carbon wastes away, and the air-gap, or arc, becomes wider, the current each turn is insulated from the rest, either falls off, and the temperature would be by air or plaster of Paris, or other infusible lowered, were it not for the correcting

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Fig. 4.

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beam G. Part of the current is "shunted" through the solenoid by wires w w, and when the arc becomes too wide and resisting, more current seeks the bye-path through the solenoid, and the result is that the iron core E is sucked up by magnetic attraction into the solenoid, and then the balance beam is tilted, and the carbon a dipped farther down into the crucible, re-establishing the old width of the arc, and preserving the high temperature within the crucible. To make the action of the regulator easy, the core E is partly plunged in a well F of viscous liquid, such as glycerine.

With such a furnace Dr. Siemens melted eight pounds of cold platinum in fifteen minutes, and nearly the same quantity of broken files were fused in a like time. The current was derived from an ordinary Siemens machine, such as is used for feeding electric lamps.

In another paper we shall give some further details of the employment of Electricity in our Homes.

PEARLA:

Or, the World after an Esland.

BY M. BETHAM-EDWARDS, AUTHOR OF "KITTY," "A WINTER WITH THE SWALLOWS," ETC.

CHAPTER XI.-THE SUITORS.

Thappened that, immediately after the dinner party, Garland was summoned away on business, the nature of which he did not disclose to his children, and remained absent for several weeks. Pearla and her son were therefore left more completely to themselves than they had as yet been. To Geoff it was a superlatively happy time, and no wonder; he had plenty of money at command, material gratification in abundance, and little to be called a check upon his own inclinations. The lad was, indeed, going through an ordeal from which the finest, strongest natures could hardly escape unharmed. He still worked daily under a tutor, it is true, but there are tutors and tutors, and Geoff's present instructor too readily condoned shortcomings and offences in the son of a rich, beautiful, and amiable lady, who must, he reasoned, wish him to be happy above everything.

One day as Pearla sat alone thinking of her boy, wondering how she could make him grow up good, and strong, and wise, like Durham and Garland, the curate's card was brought in, with a request that he might see her on business.

By all means, show Mr. Ashleigh in," was Pearla's prompt reply.

The curate's visits, in consequence of the rector's advanced age, were too frequent to call for comment; and Pearla encouraged him to come to the house oftener, perhaps, than was prudent. She liked him for his unpretending goodness, his fellow-feeling for the poor, his resignation. To his appeals for aid she ever gave ready response.

Hardly had her visitor seated himself than he began in a rather dejected voice.

"Your son, Lady Auriol-will you permit me to have a little confidential talk about Geoff?"

“Oh,” Pearla cried with inexpressible dismay in look and voice, "I hope you bring me no evil report of my boy!"

"Of the young, madam, we must expect evil rather than good report," said the curate sadly. "Your son may be even less predisposed to the infection of wrong-doing than other lads, but he is unhappily much more beset by temptation

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"I feel-I know that I cannot guide him as I ought to do," Pearla said, greatly distressed. "Oh! why did Mr. Durham leave us?"

"Mr. Durham's authority being withdrawn, the boy naturally takes undue advantage of his newly acquired liberty. Permit me to say, Lady Auriol, that you give him too much. In your over-anxiety for the satisfaction of

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the body you do not take sufficient thought | panions who by virtue of their very inferiority for the soul." And the curate spoke so solemnly, so sorrowfully-that Pearla felt awed.

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"He is over-indulged," she replied bitterly, almost despairingly self-reproachful. will grow idle, effeminate, dissolute. may God forgive me!" And tears streamed down her cheeks as she added, "Mr. Ashleigh, what have you to tell me about my boy? Whatever it may be, the blame is mine."

"Say not so, dear lady," said the clergyman, now speaking soothingly, encouragingly. "You have but acted as any other fond mother would do, similarly placed; and the mischief is not past cure. Geoff is a mere | child as yet, and, in spite of juvenile peccadilloes, may grow into the Christian gentleman. I pray constantly for him.”

"I am sure you do," Pearla said very gratefully. "But conceal nothing. I am bound to know all. I am his mother!" "It grieves me to pain you," Mr. Ashleigh went on; "but there are duties not to be shirked, however arduous. I must then inform you that upon the last occasion when you supposed your son to be taking tea and innocent recreation at my house he absented himself of this I have substantial prooffor the company of less reputable associates." Pearla listened with a pale face and a growing wonderment of sorrow in her sweet eyes. Was this the measureless, matchless filial love of which she had dreamed in her island home-this the chrysolite without a flaw, the unpurchasable treasure she had by anticipation hugged to her heart, saying with a mother's proud passion, "Mine, all and solely mine!"

She looked at the interlocutor imploringly, silently urging him to say what else he had to say, and begone-to leave her to her shame, her tears, her sorrows.

But the best friends can often ill measure each other's words; how then should the merest acquaintances and ordinary frequenters together? The curate had still much more to discourse of, and was wanting in that fine, rare tact which tells one human being when another would fain be rid of his company, or, in other words, alone.

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can be lorded over. I perfectly understand that Geoff should prefer amusing himself with young roughs of the town to a humdrum tête-à-tête with myself."

"But something must be done," Pearla cried, rousing herself. "Geoff shall not be left to himself a day longer than I can help. I will write at once to Mr. Durham, and entreat him to return.'

Mr. Ashleigh was silent for a moment, his face saying that such a step would be hardly necessary.

"Mr. Durham is my son's trustee, and was his father's most valued friend and adviser," Pearla added explanatorily. "If I can only induce him to come back to us, for a time, all would yet be well."

"And if not, madam," said the clergyman timidly, pensively, but nevertheless with a certain dignified sincerity that went to Pearla's heart; "if not, there are others equally, I may still say, more, devoted to your son's interest and your own, who would esteem it the proudest privilege of their lives to be taken into your confidence-their greatest earthly happiness to become your best friend-protector-husband."

"I am more than grateful," Pearla cried, rising from her seat, thrilling at the sound of the front-door being opened and shut. It must be Geoff, she thought, all her senses abnormally alert, all her nerves highly strung. Oh, to be alone with him—to get the next quarter of an hour over! "Pray believe how beholden I am to you for such kind interest in us both. But I live for my boy only," she said, and he felt that it was the mother, not the woman, who spoke thus with tears on her pale cheeks and anguish in her voice. He went away, meekly and sadly, wondering what manner manner of men were those who obtained the affections of such women as Pearla, yet with that mixture of pride and resignation that even lent dignity and pathos to his uncomely looks and shabby appearance. He was habituated to disillusions and disappointments-here was but one more added to the sum.

Pearla sank into a chair, thinking of him no longer, Geoff filling her heart, her inner vision, her expectancy. But a second time she was doomed to feverish delay. A card was now handed in bearing the colonel's name, with the pencilled request of a few minutes' interview.

"Certainly," was the careless answer, Pearla's thoughts being entirely centred upon Geoff and Geoff's future.

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