CHAPTER VII.
THE LIVELY METAL.
WHAT was that extraordinary metal,” cried I, “which I took for a ball of silver, till I saw the drops running about on the carpet?”
“Ha! ha!” laughed the spiteful old Scissors, which, speck of rust and all, had been replaced in the box, “you never saw the solemn philosopher, Mrs. Thimble, ever cutting a dance like that!”
“The lady called it quicksilver,” I observed. “Was it, then, no relation of my friend?”
“Relation!” again exclaimed the Scissors; “a relation that would eat her, rim, top, and all; make holes for her knowledge to run out of! Quicksilver is a dangerous neighbour.”
“Dangerous both to metal and to man,” quietly rejoined my learned companion. “Its power can dissolve both silver and gold; and to the human species it acts as a powerful poison.”
“I wonder that they do not leave it alone, if it does such mischief,” said I.
“Do you not know,” replied my friend, “that reason and knowledge can find valuable uses even in those things which at first sight appear only hurtful? From quicksilver, also called mercury, a medicine is prepared, which, under the name of calomel, has helped to preserve many a life.”
“How strange!” I exclaimed; “medicine and poison, safety and danger, both from the same curious metal! But is it always a liquid like that?”
“Oh no!” replied the Thimble; “mixed with other metals, it becomes staid and quiet enough. Look at that beautiful mirror in the gilded frame, which reflects every object in the room. To what, think you, does it owe its beauty? To an amalgam (that is the title given to the mixture)—an amalgam of mercury and tin, which lines the glass at the back.”
“And makes it a pretty aid to vanity and folly,” said the broken-pointed Scissors, with bitterness. “If there is one thing which silly mortals like better than another, it is to look at their own faces in a glass.”
“If mercury has often ministered to vanity and folly,” said the Thimble, “I remember hearing of one curious instance where it served to mortify them both. A dashing lady, who was absurd enough to try to increase her beauty by covering her yellow complexion with a delicate coating of white paint, once visited a quicksilver mine. She must have felt it strange to find herself in that gloomy place, where the sickly miners, by the glare of torch-light, pursue their unwholesome occupation.”
“Why should it be unwholesome?” I asked.
“Because mercury is of that poisonous nature, that it is said that those employed to procure it seldom live longer than two years in the mine.”
“I should think that after learning that,” observed I, “the dashing lady would have a feeling of pain when next she looked in a mirror.”
“Probably she had,” replied the Thimble, “but from a different cause. While she had been examining the mine, she little thought of the strange effect which the mercury would have on the paint which covered her face. She entered the place white like a lily; she left it black like a negro!”
The idea of the poor lady with her black face mightily tickled the fancy of the Scissors, who wished that she had been there to see her. But my curiosity about the strange metal mercury was not quite satisfied yet.
“What was the use of that instrument hung on the wall, where the quicksilver lay in its little glass ball, till Master Eddy broke its prison and set it free?”
“That instrument is called a thermometer. It is employed to measure the heat of the weather.”
“I cannot imagine how it can do that.”
“It is the nature of mercury to expand—that is, grow bigger—whenever it is exposed to heat. At the top of the glass ball there is a slender glass tube. When the weather is warm, the mercury swells; and the ball being too small to hold it, it is forced up the tube to a greater or less height, according to the amount of the heat.”
“Then, if plunged into boiling water, the mercury would rise very high indeed.”
“And plunged into ice it would sink very low.”
“Would it ever squeeze itself down into a solid?” said I.
“You mean, would it freeze as water does? It requires very, very intense cold to freeze mercury; but it is not impossible to do it. I have heard the master of the shop in which I lay unsold for years, who was himself something of a philosopher, and from whose conversation with others I have learned the little that I know,—I have heard him say that he has seen quicksilver frozen quite hard, so that even a medal was made of it; but it was not from the mere effect of winter weather.”
“And, of course, if any one had put the medal into his warm pocket, it would have begun to run about again directly. The best way to keep it quiet seems to be to make an am—— What did you call its mixture with some other metal?”
“Amalgam,” replied the Thimble.
“Ah, yes! behind the mirror is an amalgam of quicksilver and tin.”
“Like energy united with common sense.”
“And taught to reflect,” added the Scissors.