This book, while adapted to older persons, has been prepared with special reference to the needs and capacities of children from ten to twelve years of age. It is commended to teachers and parents with full confidence that they will find it useful, and that the children will be both interested and profited by its perusal.
A New England Kitchen One Hundred Years Ago 10
Cutting Sugar Cane in the Hawaiian Islands 98
A Man and His Wife Traveling on Horseback 191
Collision of the _Clermont_ and the Sloop 217
Alexander Bell Using a Long-Distance Telephone 288
[Illustration: A NEW ENGLAND KITCHEN ONE HUNDRED YEARS AGO.]
"All aboard!" cries the conductor, and slowly the long train draws out of the San Francisco station on its way to Chicago and the Atlantic coast. Three sleepers, two chair coaches, passenger, baggage, and mail cars, loaded with travelers, trunks, and pouches of letters and papers; we are familiar with the sight of these heavy cars and the puffing engine which draws them. But what makes the train move? What power is great enough to do this? It is the power of steam, and steam is made from water by means of fire.
[Illustration: A TRAIN LEAVING THE STATION.]
Now the long journey across the continent is over, and we are standing on the dock in New York City. Here we see the steamboat _Puritan_, thronged with passengers, ready to steam away from the wharf on its regular night trip to Fall River. For hours, perhaps, we have been watching the longshoremen as they have rushed back and forth, loading the great vessel with freight for New England. A few minutes later, as we see the majestic steamer, hundreds of feet long--larger than most city business buildings--slowly, but gracefully moving away from the dock, we say to ourselves, "Can it be that steam, caused by fire, has power enough to make the steamboat move through the water like this?"
While we watch the steamer glide around Castle Garden into East River, evening begins to come on; we must hasten uptown. As we pass along Broadway, lights flash out in the darkness and our thoughts are again turned to fire and steam. We have heard that the source of the electric light is in the dynamo, and that steam power is used to turn that great machine. The enormous engine, the mammoth boat, the brilliant light--all need the power of steam, and nothing but fire will produce this steam. What, then, is fire? and is its only use that of changing quiet, liquid water into powerful steam? Let us see.