I AM not very sorry,” observed I to the Thimble, “that careless Miss Lily has forgotten to replace our companion, Mrs. Scissors, in the box. Her manners are so sharp, her remarks so cutting, that I take little pleasure in her society.”
“She has a little speck of rust on her, I own,” quietly replied my philosophic friend; “but we must all learn to bear patiently with the weaknesses of others, and see that we keep our own metal bright.”
“You have no difficulty about that,” I observed.
“Pardon me,” answered the Thimble; “silver is not subject to rust, but it tarnishes, especially if exposed to impure, smoky air.”
“And was your origin as low as mine?” I inquired; “were you also dug from the earth?”
“I was dug out of a mine in Norway; I have been, like you, purified in a furnace, and exposed to heavy blows of the hammer.”
“I wonder how long it is,” exclaimed I, “since man first found out the use of metals, and employed them in making whatever he requires!”
“The use of metals was known before the time of the Flood, more than four thousand years ago. Tubal-Cain is the name of the first man who is recorded to have worked in metals.”
“Oh!” cried I, “how much I should like to know who it was who first invented needles!”
“I dare say that the invention is of early date,” replied the Thimble, “though the needles of ancient times were probably far inferior to the polished, delicate articles of which I see so fine a specimen before me. I have heard that needles were first manufactured in England by an Indian, in the reign of stout Harry the Eighth, upwards of three hundred years ago.”
“Well,” I exclaimed in admiration, “what it is to have a thimbleful of information! I shall always couple silver and knowledge together, the best metal and the best thing in the world!”
“Ah, there you are wrong!” said my bright companion; “there is a metal far more precious than silver, and a possession even more valuable than knowledge. What is learning compared to virtue! what is silver compared to gold!”
“Gold! what is that?” said I. You must remember that I was but a young needle, with little information, but eager to obtain more.
“Gold is what is called a perfect metal,” replied the Thimble; “it is injured by neither fire nor water, and it is reckoned of great value in the world. It is found chiefly in South America, California, and lately in the immense island of Australia.”
“And has it to submit to the hammer as well as we?” I inquired.
“It has much more wonderful power of enduring it than either silver or steel,” replied the Thimble. “It never breaks beneath the heaviest stroke, but it spreads itself out beneath it, and that to such an amazing extent that I have heard that a bit of gold not so large as a halfpenny can be beaten out into a wire a thousand miles long.”
I was not a little astonished to hear this, and I was still more so as the Thimble proceeded.
“Look around you, and, even in this room, you will see wonderful proofs of the malleability of gold—that is the name given to this curious property which it possesses. See the picture-frames glittering in the light, the shining pattern on the paper on the wall, the edge of all those gaily bound books; they owe their beauty to a layer of gold so thin that, though that metal is one of the heaviest known, the gentlest sigh would have blown the leaves away.”
“And is gold useful for anything but gilding?” said I.
“It is much used in various ways,” she replied; “amongst others, it was formerly much employed in medicine, and is now used in giving a fine red colour to glass.”
“And is this beautiful and wonderful metal also dug out of the earth?”
“It is procured in some places,” answered the Thimble, “by washing carefully sand drawn from the beds of some rivers, which is mixed with particles of gold; but it is chiefly found by digging.”
“Well, then,” cried I, rather triumphantly, “though silver and gold be both esteemed more perfect and more precious than iron and steel, man would have very little chance of gaining either of them without the help of a humbler metal! If silver be like knowledge, and virtue like gold, to what shall iron be compared.”
“To firm resolution,” said the Thimble thoughtfully, “without which man would acquire little of either.”