8. Volunteer work:

a. Explain, with blackboard drawings, how a
b. Explain how a gas engine works.

c. Find how much heat is wasted in the best
locomotives of to-day.

d. Tell how an electric dynamo works.

9. What is the chief difference between this sele lowing poem, "The Song of Steam"?

ADDITIONAL READINGS.

- I. "The Story of the

Darrow, Boys' Own Book of Inventions, 194-211. the Locomotive," R. Holland, Historic Inventions. Engine," A. Williams, How It Works, 13-43. bustion Engine," ibid., 87-111. 5. "Coal-Ally of try," W. J. Showalter, in National Geographic Maga 6. "Steam in Captivity," H. Thompson, Age of 7. "The Fathers of Electricity," ibid., 194-219. F. Starr, Some First Steps in Human Progress, 13-29

4. THE SONG OF STEAM

GEORGE WASHINGTON CUTTER

Harness me down with your iron ban
Be sure of your curb and rein,
For I scorn the strength of your puny
As a tempest scorns a chain.
How I laughed as I lay concealed fro
For many a countless hour,

At the childish boasts of human migh
And the pride of human power!

When I saw an army upon the land,
A navy upon the seas,
Creeping along, a snail-like band,

Or waiting the wayward breeze;

When I marked the peasant faintly reel
With the toil that he daily bore,
As he feebly turned the tardy wheel,
Or tugged at the weary oar;

When I measured the panting courser's speed,
The flight of the carrier dove,

As they bore the law a king decreed,

Or the lines of impatient love,

I could but think how the world would feel,
As these were outstripped afar,

When I should be bound to the rushing keel,
Or chained to the flying car.

Ha ha! ha! they found me at last,

They invited me forth at length,

And I rushed to my throne with a thunder blast,
And laughed in my iron strength!
Oh, then ye saw a wondrous change
On the earth and ocean wide,
Where now my fiery armies range,
Nor wait for wind or tide!

In the darksome depths of the fathomless mine
My tireless arm doth play,

Where the rocks ne'er saw the sun's decline
Or the dawn of. the glorious day;
I bring earth's glittering jewels up
From the hidden caves below,
And I make the fountain's granite cup
With a crystal gush o'erflow.

I blow the bellows, I forge the steel,
In all the shops of trade;

I hammer the ore and turn the wheel

Where my arms of strength are made;

Once this process was very slow and expensive. The steel tool used in cutting out other tools would get red-hot and lose its "temper," so that it could not cut. Then the worker would lose his temper, too! For he had to stop, resharpen his tools, and waste a great deal of time. Chemists added certain rare metals to the iron that makes ordinary steel, and as a result we have "high-speed steel."

High-speed steel is so expensive that tools are tipped with only a fraction of an inch of it, in much the same way that our finest gold pens are tipped with iridium, to keep them from wearing out. This steel tip is many times as efficient as ordinary steel. Without high-speed steel we could not have cheap typewriters, farm implements, and automobiles; for this product has revolutionized the whole metal industry.

In your medicine-chest, there probably is a little tube containing a substance which is antiseptic, and which solidifies when exposed to air. If you cut your finger or tear away a hang-nail, you apply a little of this substance, and it forms a skinlike covering. That substance is collodion.

Now somewhere near your tube of collodion you may have something made of celluloid, perhaps an eyeshade or a paper cutter. In warm weather especially, you must have noticed that anything made of celluloid smells a good deal like something else you keep handy — camphor. That will not seem strange when I tell you how we came to have celluloid.

In 1863 a boy named John Wesley Hyatt was working as a printer in Albany, New York. He saw an advertisement offering ten thousand dollars for a substitute for ivory billiard balls, and he began to experiment with the hope of getting this reward.

One day, when his fingers were raw from handling type, he went to a cupboard for some collodion to heal his hurts. The bottle containing the collodion had tipped over, and the contents had run out and solidified. When young Hyatt pulled away a little of the stuff from the shelf, he was struck by the fact that it was tough and elastic, and that gave him

an idea. He began experiments, trying to make billiard balls out of collodion.

Presently he heard that some Englishmen had been trying to make camphor and collodion unite to form a solid. The Englishmen had not succeeded, because they had attempted to get the two substances to unite by adding various other substances to them. But Hyatt simply put a mixture of collodion and camphor into a hot press, and out of the press came a semitransparent solid, which he called celluloid. It was hard, light, tough, and could be dyed any color, polished, heated, pressed, stamped, molded, or blown into various shapes.

Innumerable things are made of celluloid: cards and card cases, cuff and collar buttons, cups, drawer knobs, chessmen, piano keys, penholders, spectacle frames, political campaign buttons, hairpins, mirror backs, toy animals, and so on. Young Hyatt's accident with collodion has proved to be the basis of industries worth millions of dollars a year.

Your camera film is made of it. Purses, belts, and leather cushions are often covered with it. Many leather substitutes are made of collodion on canvas.

Years ago the wearing of purple indicated royal birth, for the purple dye was so expensive that none but those "born to the purple" could own it. To-day you can consider anything dyed with purple as a symbol of the marvelous development in our chemical industries.

The original Tyrian or imperial purple of ancient times was secreted by a small sea-snail, found on the eastern coast of the Mediterranean. Behind the head of this snail is a small sac which contains a single drop of a whitish liquid, which when exposed to the air and sunlight becomes first green, then blue, then purple. To get an ounce of the dye the ancients had to extract the liquid from the sacs of at least twelve thousand snails. That is why it cost so much to wear imperial purple.

Modern chemists have learned the chemical constituents

I manage the furnace, the mill, the mint,

I carry, I spin, I weave,

And all my doings I put into print

On every Saturday eve.

I've no muscles to weary, no brains to decay,
No bones to be laid on the shelf,

And soon I intend you may go and play,

While I manage the world myself.

But harness me down with your iron bands,
Be sure of your curb and rein,

For I scorn the strength of your puny hands
As the tempest scorns the chain.

CLASS ACTIVITIES

1. Why does the poet use the same four lines to begin and to end the poem?

2. Explain the chief difference between "The Song of Steam" and "How Men Made Heat Work." How are the two selections alike?

3. Tell what is needed in order to bind steam to a keel or to bind it to a car.

4. Name the inventions using steam for power which have altered the conditions pictured in the second and third stanzas.

5. How does steam perform the various feats mentioned in the fifth and sixth stanzas? Name different inventions through which these feats are accomplished.

6. Which plays the more important part in your community steam or electricity?

7. For a volunteer. Write a poem entitled "The Song of Electricity." 8. Read again the "Ode to Fire" on p. 57. Does it tell truly what we owe to fire? Tell why you are better able to answer this question now than when you first read the poem.