The History of a Mouthful of Bread Part 16

Now, run if you dare! And, to tell you the truth, it would be a great pity if you did _not_ dare; for our good G.o.d has made little children for running. They have nimbler blood than we older grandfathers, more elastic lungs, and consequently more oxygen to spend at a time. But you must confess that it is a great pity we should run all our lives as many people do, without having the slightest idea of these admirable contrivances, thanks to which we are enabled to do it. We can run all the same, it is true, without the knowledge, the little child as easily as the little roebuck, which sets a similar machine in motion. But it is no use talking about the little roebuck; it cannot learn what G.o.d has done for it, but the little child can, if he will. Furthermore, there is nothing to be really alarmed about, for those great commotions only occur when we have committed excess; and it is a very good thing, in a general way, for the blood to give us a stroke of his lash from time to time. I told you lately that the fire which sets the organs to work is life; and it is no misfortune to be a little more alive than usual.

Besides which, this increased activity of the internal fire does not serve us in running only. Every time that a man makes an effort; every time he lifts a weight, or handles a tool, the blood rushes forward to deluge the muscles that are thus called into play; the heart beats more quickly, and the air streams in greater abundance into the lungs. Look at a man chopping wood. If the log resists too much, if for a minute or two the man has to strike blow after blow without stopping, you will soon see him panting for breath, just as if he had been running a race.

On the other hand, he will have gained something from chopping his log besides the right of warming himself before it at the fire. Blood does not carry fire only into the muscles; he supplies them with nourishment also, does he not? Every drop of blood deposits its little offering as it goes by, and consequently the greater the number that pa.s.s along, the richer is the harvest for the muscle. Look, accordingly, at the laboring cla.s.ses. How much healthier and stronger they are than those who do not work! I speak, of course, of working with one's limbs generally; for those poor girls who work from morning to night, sitting on their chairs, are none the better for it, but, on the contrary, worse. There are also certain worthy fellows who, like myself at the present moment, drive a pen over sheets of paper for half a day at a time, whose muscles never get any bigger for it, that is quite clear. Moreover, one condition has to be fulfilled, which unhappily is not always done. The more people labor, the more they ought to eat. To you, who have just been looking at the drama that is performed in the body every time a muscle is set in motion, this is obvious enough. There is no fire without smoke, says the proverb. It would have been much better to have said,--there is no fire without fuel;--and the fuel for our fire is, as you know, what we eat. Try if you can get one stove to burn more brightly than another, if you have put less fuel into it. Yet, alas! this is what many poor wretches are obliged to do but too often; and then the blood, instead of feeding their muscles, consumes them, for the reasons I gave, in telling you the story of Bernard Palissy.

Think of this, oh my dear child, when you are grown up, and never grudge those who work for you their proper share of food.

Here I see many other lessons crowding up, out of what you have just learnt.

And first Nature herself, taken as you find her, shows you that manual labor is, for us, a most beneficial condition of existence; that it brings about a re-doubling, an exaltation of life; and that consequently, we have no need to look down upon those who gain their bread, as we word it, by the sweat of their brows. I told you this before, in speaking of the hand, which is of so much more use to those people than to you; and I repeat it now for another reason, viz.: because labor elevates him who undertakes it, and creates a real physical n.o.bility. Barbarians in old times, who knew nothing n.o.ble nor grand but war, despised labor, and left it to their slaves; so much so, that the name _servile labor_, _i.e._ the labor of slaves, has stuck to it in some places. As for war, the lot of the ancient n.o.bility, I scarcely dare to say much against it, however much I should like to do so on some accounts. For, after all, so long as there are ruffians to trample on the weak, one is only too glad to find brave men ready to risk their lives in keeping such rascals down: so long as there are wolves, we must needs keep shepherds' dogs. But in spite of everything, the best that can be said in favor of war is, that it remains a sad but inevitable necessity, and that to get rid of it, more is wanting than the wish. What a contrast to labor--that contest of Man with Nature;--that merciful and fruitful war, where victories are not estimated like other victories, by the number of the slain, but which, on the contrary, scatters fresh life around it as it spreads; fresh life in the laborer himself, by the very act of work, fresh life around him without, by the fruits that work produces!

Between the man who dies in slaying others, and the man who keeps others alive by living longer himself, it seems cruel to make invidious comparisons; but if it be just to honor the first out of respect for the cause he has defended, whenever that cause is respectable--it is, to say the least of it, not less just to do equal honor to the second.

But let us come down from these philosophic heights, and return to you, dear child; to you, who have nothing to do with war, its ma.s.sacres or its laurels.

It is true, however, that you have nothing to do either, with chopping wood, and I am not asking you to undertake any such thing. But in the life of a woman, from the time of her childhood upwards, a thousand things arise for the hands to do, and the question is, how often you are likely to feel ashamed of not sending for the servants to do them?

Avoid this false and fatal idea as much as possible. The work of the hands dishonors no one; it is honorable. To cast it aside altogether is to make yourself smaller instead of greater; to deprive yourself of one of the glories and the joys of life. If a good thing is set before you at dinner, do you send for the servants to eat it? If an occasion arises for making the blood circulate more rapidly in your veins, and of increasing the strength and life with, in you into the bargain, why make _them_ a present of it? Especially when it cannot be an agreeable present considering that good servants have plenty of such opportunities from morning to night every day.

There was once upon a time a Persian prince staying in Paris, who was taken to a very fas.h.i.+onable ball, that he might see a specimen of European civilization. I am not talking about a prince in the "Arabian Nights;" mine lived, I believe, in the time of Louis Philippe. The beautiful dancers wheeled round, their eyes brilliant with pleasure, in the arms of elegant cavaliers; one would have said that the whole of this airy troop, swaying to and fro in time to the lively flourishes of the music, was animated by one soul; everything seemed full of joy in that large and splendidly lit hall, and mothers secretly envied their daughters as they pa.s.sed and re-pa.s.sed before them. Our oriental alone scanned with a disdainful eye this youthful enjoyment.

When it was ended,--"How is this?" said he to his conductor; "did you not tell me that I was to see here the most distinguished families of Paris?"

"Certainly," replied the other; "among those young ladies who were just now dancing before you, there were at least twenty of the grandest heiresses of France."

"Young ladies who dance! Come, come! In my country we have dancers, but they are paid for it. Our wives are never permitted to dance themselves. That is all very well for the common people!"

Remember, when needful, the contempt of this Persian prince, my dear child; and let me beg of you, work for yourself. The dance of labor is worth quite as much as that of the ball-room, when you give your heart to it. It is even worth more, very often; and next time I will tell you why.

LETTER XXV.

CARBONIC ACID.

We are going to make acquaintance to-day with a new personage, who well deserves our attention. It is the child of oxygen and carbon, [Footnote: This is the name learned men have given to Charcoal.] though not in the same way that you are the child of your parents.

To tell you how it is made is more than I am able. It is a _gas_, or if you like the word better, it is an _air_; for when we say "gas," we mean "air;" only it is always a different sort of air from the air of the atmosphere, which learned people are not in the habit of calling _gas_. I cannot, therefore, show you _carbonic acid_ itself, for it cannot be seen any more than the air which fills an empty gla.s.s.

But I can tell you where there is some, and you even probably know it by its effects, although you have never heard its name.

Do you remember, on your aunt's wedding-day, that there was a sparkling wine called champagne, at the grand breakfast? You smile, so I conclude somebody gave you a little to taste; and if so, you will remember how sharp it felt to your tongue. Do you remember, too, how the cork flew out when they were opening the bottle, and how the noise of the "pop!"

startled more little girls than one? It was _carbonic acid_ which sent the cork flying in that wild way; the carbonic acid which was imprisoned in the bottle, in desperately close quarters with the wine, and which accordingly flew out, like a regular goblin, the moment the iron wire which held down the cork was removed. What sparkled in the gla.s.s, making that pretty white froth which phizzed so gently, as if inviting you to drink, was the carbonic acid in the wine, making its escape in thousands of tiny bubbles. What felt so sharp to your tongue was the same carbonic acid, in its quality of acidity, for thence it has its name; the word _acid_ being borrowed from a Latin word signifying the sharp pungent taste, almost _fine-pointed_ as it were, peculiar to all substances which we call _acids_.

It is carbonic acid also which causes the froth in beer and in new wine when bottled. It is he who makes soda-water sparkle and sting the tongue, and ginger-beer the same, if you happen to like it; and so far you have no particular reason for thinking ill of him. But beware. It is with him as with a good many others who have sparkling spirits, who make conversation effervesce with gayety, and who are very seductive in society when you have nothing else to do but to laugh over your gla.s.s, but whose society is fatal to the soul which delivers itself up to them. This charming carbonic acid is a mortal poison to any one who allows it to get into his lungs.

You remember what a violent headache your servant suffered from the other day after ironing all those clothes you had in the wash? She owed that headache entirely to this work which she did for you. She had remained too long standing over the coals over which her flat-irons were being heated. You know already that when charcoal burns, it is from the carbon uniting with the oxygen of the air; from this union proceeds that mischievous child, carbonic acid gas, in torrents, and the poor girl was ill, because she had breathed more of this than was good for her health. Observe well, that the room-door was open to let in the fresh air, and that there was a chimney, to allow the carbonic acid to escape. It was on this account that she got off with only a headache. Unhappily, there have sometimes been miserable people who, weary of life, and knowing this, but not knowing or thinking about the G.o.d who overrules every sorrow for good, have shut themselves up in a room with a brazier of burning charcoal, after taking the fatal precaution of stopping up every opening by which air could possibly get in; and when at last, in such a case, uneasy friends have forced open the well-closed door, they have found nothing within but a corpse.

Then, too, there are those frightful accidents of which we hear so often, of workmen groping their way down into long disused wells, who have died as they reached the bottom; or of sudden deaths in coal-pits.

In general these have been owing to the poor victims encountering the long pent-up carbonic acid gas, whose poisonous breath blasted and destroyed them at once.

You may well ask why I am telling you such horrible stories, and what I am coming to with my carbonic acid? But you have more to do with it than you think, dear child. You, and I, and everybody we meet, nay, and the very animals themselves, since their machines are of the same sort as ours, are all little manufactories of carbonic acid. The thing is quite clear. Since there is a charcoal fire lit in every part of our body, there always arises from the union of the oxygen brought by the blood with the carbon it meets in our organs, that mischievous child we have been talking about; and our throat is the chimney by which he gets away. He would kill us outright were he to stop in the house.

This is how it comes about: In proportion as the blood loses its oxygen, it picks up in exchange the carbonic acid produced by combustion, so that it is quite loaded with it by the time it returns to the lungs.

There it takes in a fresh supply of oxygen, and discharges at the same time its overplus of carbonic acid, which is driven out of the body by the contractions of the chest, pell-mell with the air which has just been made use of in breathing. You are aware that this air is not the same at its exit as at its entrance to the body, and that if you try and breathe it over again it will no longer be of the same use to you. That is because it has lost part of its oxygen and brings back to you the carbonic acid which it had just carried off. If you take it in a third time, it will be still worse for you; and in case you should continue to persist--the oxygen always diminis.h.i.+ng, and the carbonic acid always increasing in quant.i.ty--the air which was at first the means of your life will at last become the cause of your death.

Try, as an experiment, to shut yourself up in a small trunk, where no fresh air can get in; or even in a narrow closely-shut closet, and you will soon tell me strange news. There will be no occasion to light a charcoal fire for you in there. Enough is kept burning in your own little stove, and you will poison yourself.

You see now that the dreadful stories I was telling a short time ago have something to do with you, and that it is a good thing to be warned beforehand. And now tell me, when a hundred people--or I ought to say, a hundred manufactories of carbonic acid--are crowded together for a whole evening, sometimes for a whole night, in a s.p.a.ce just big enough to allow them to go in and come out; tell me, I say, if that is a sort of thing which can be beneficial to the health of little girls whose blood flows so fast, and who require so much oxygen; and whether, on the contrary, it is not one's duty to keep them away from such scenes?

There may be amus.e.m.e.nt there, I know; but the best pleasures are those for which one does not pay too dearly. I have seen the very wax lights faint and turn pale all at once, in the very midst of those murderous a.s.semblies, as if to warn the imprudent guests that there was only just time to open the windows.

And this reminds me of a point I had nearly forgotten. Wax-candles arc like ourselves. In order to burn, they must have oxygen, and, like us, they are extinguished by carbonic acid. But like us also--and indeed to a greater extent, because they consume much more charcoal at once--they manufacture carbonic acid. Hence that very illumination which affords the company so much pleasure and pride is plainly an additional cause of danger. Each of those wax-lights which is spread around with such a prodigal hand, the only fear being that there may not be enough of them, is a hungry intruder employed in devouring with all his might the scanty amount of oxygen provided for the consumption of the guests.

From each of those cheerful flames--the suns, as it were, of the festive a.s.sembly--shoots out a strong jet of carbonic acid, contributing by so much to swell out the already formidable streams of poisoned gas, exhaled to the utmost extent by the dancers. And wait--there is still something else I was forgetting. You dance. And I told you last time at what cost you have to dance. You have to make the fire burn much quicker than usual, that is, to consume a great deal more oxygen at once, and so you double and treble the activity of the carbonic acid manufacture: and this just at the moment when it would be so convenient that it should go on as slowly as possible! After this, you need not be surprised that people should look f.a.gged and exhausted next morning.

What astonishes me is that they are not obliged to lie in bed altogether, after treating their poor lungs to such an entertainment.

And even if you have spared your legs, you are not much better off, as you are sure to find out in time, especially if the thing is repeated too often.

When I told you just now that the dance of labor was worth as much as the dance of the ball-room, was I right or wrong? What do you say yourself?

I could repeat the same of theatres--places of entertainment specially adapted for impoveris.h.i.+ng the blood, and ruining the health of the happy mortals who go there, evening after evening, to purchase at the door the right of filling their lungs with carbonic acid, not to speak of other poisons. You must see clearly that such places as those are not fit for little lungs as dainty as yours; and this may help you to submit with a good grace when you see people going there without you.

Grown-up people escape moreover, because the human machine possesses a strange elasticity, which enables it to accommodate itself--one scarcely knows how--to the sometimes very critical positions in which its lords and masters place it without a thought. But to do this, it is well that it should be thoroughly formed and established; for you run a risk of injuring it for ever, if you misuse it too early in life.

Tell this to your dear schoolboy brother, when he wants to smoke his cigar like a man. If his lungs could speak, they would call out to him that it was very hard upon them, at their age, to be so treated, and that he ought at any rate to wait till they had pa.s.sed their examinations!

But I must not get into a dispute with so important an individual, by throwing stones into a garden which is not under my care. For you, my dear child, the moral of this day's lesson--which to my mind is much more alarming than a hobgoblin tale, since it concerns the realities of every-day life--is clear; and it is this:

Seek your amus.e.m.e.nts as far as possible in the fresh air. In the summer, when the lamp is lit, bid your mamma a sweet good-night, and go to bed. In the winter do not wait till there is a great quant.i.ty of carbonic acid in the room where the grown-up people are sitting, before you retire to your own like a reasonable girl, anxious not to do mischief to that valuable and indefatigable servant, the poor blood!

Not to mention that if she were to injure him too much, she would have to bear his grumbling for the rest of her life. We cannot change him as we change other servants.

LETTER XXVI.

ALIMENTS OF COMBUSTION.

We have spent a very long time, my dear child, over the little fire, which goes on burning secretly in every one of us, quietly devouring what little girls eat with such a good appet.i.te, quite unsuspicious of what they are doing it for. However, if I mean to finish the history of our mouthful of bread, I must push on to its last chapter.

The _whole_ of what we eat is not burnt, as you may easily suppose; for, if it were, what would the blood have left to feed the body with, and to repair in due proportion the continual destruction or waste which goes on in our organs? Our food, or "_aliments_" as the general collection of different sorts of food is called, are divided into two very distinct sets: some, which are destined to be burnt, and which are called _aliments of combustion_; others, which are destined to nourish the body, and which are called _aliments of nutrition_. I have to tell you now about these last, and you will find their history by no means uninteresting.

Learned men having detected, beyond the possibility of a doubt, the existence of these two sorts of aliments, one is tempted to think they ought to have made it known to the cooks, and that ever since so important a discovery, the dishes on all well-regulated tables should have been arranged accordingly; aliments of combustion on one side, aliments of nutrition on the other. It cannot be enough merely to give your guests a treat; you ought to provide them with everything necessary for the proper fulfilment of the claims within; and if you give some nothing but combustibles, leaving the others no share of fuel, how will they be able to manage? n.o.body thinks about this, however; not even cooks, to begin with, who, as far as fire is concerned, find they have had quite enough to do with it in their cooking; and as for the guests, when they have had their dinner they go away satisfied, as a matter of course, quite as well provided for as if the mistress of the house had made her calculations, pen in hand, while writing out the bill of fare, with a view to combustion and nutrition. Now, how is that?

It is because the two sorts of aliments are, for the most part, met with together in everything we eat, so that we swallow them at once in one mouthful; and have therefore no need to trouble ourselves further on the subject. There is our bit of bread, for instance. What is bread made of? Of flour. Bread, then, must contain all that was previously in the flour. Very good. Now I will teach you how to discover in flour the aliment of combustion on the one hand, and the aliment of nutrition on the other.

Take a handful of flour, and hold it under a small stream of water; knead it lightly between your fingers. The water will be quite white as it leaves it, carrying away with it a fine powder, which you could easily collect if you were to let the water run into a vase, where the powder would soon settle to the bottom. That powder is starch--the same starch as washerwomen use for starching linen, and which our grandfathers employed in powdering their wigs. You had some put on your own hair one day when you were dressed up as a court-lady of olden time. Now, starch is an excellent combustible. People have succeeded, by means which I will not offer to detail here, in ascertaining almost exactly what it is made of, and they have found in it three of our old acquaintances, oxygen, hydrogen, and carbon, combined together in such proportions that 100 ounces of starch contain as follows:

Ounces.

Carbon 45 Hydrogen 6 Oxygen 49 --- 100 I give you the calculation in round numbers, so as not to burden your memory with fractions; and I will do the same with the other sums I shall have to go through to-day, this being, let me tell you, an arithmetical day. Besides, I could scarcely take upon myself to warrant the absolute correctness of those very precise fractions people sometimes go into. Even our learned friends squabble now and then as to which is right or wrong over the 100th part of a grain, more or less, in making out their balance, and you and I will not offer to decide between them. I always think we have accomplished wonders in getting even _near_ the mark, and with their permission we will stop there.

Starch, then, of whose weight carbon const.i.tutes nearly one-half, is of course a first-rate combustible. Indeed, one may almost consider it the parent, as it were, of at least half our aliments of combustion, for if (in consequence of a certain operation, which nature has the power of performing for herself, in certain circ.u.mstances) it loses a portion of its carbon, so that there remain but 36 ounces of it in the 100 of starch, our starch is turned into something else; now can you guess what that something is? Neither more nor less than _sugar_!

Witness the grand manufactories at Colmar, in France, where bags of starch are converted into casks of syrup by a process of nature alone; so that the inhabitants of the neighborhood sweeten their coffee at breakfast with what might have been made into rolls, had it been left alone. And this is not all. Give back this starch-sugar into the hands of Nature once more by putting it into certain other conditions, and a new process begins in it. About a third of its carbon will unite itself, of its own accord, with the two-thirds of its oxygen, so as to make carbonic acid, (you are acquainted with that gentleman now) which shall fly off and away, and there will remain--what do you think?--_Alcohol_, that other combustible we talked about, and which burns even better than sugar and starch, since in a hundred ounces it contains as follows:--

Ounces.

Carbon 53 Hydrogen 13 Oxygen 34 --- 100

All this astonishes you. What would you say then if I were to tell you that your pocket-handkerchief is composed of entirely the same materials as starch, and in the same proportions too, and that if a chemist were to take a fancy, by way of a joke, to make you a tumbler of sugar and water, or a small gla.s.s of brandy out of it, he could do so if he chose. Wonders are found, you see, in other places besides fairy tales; and since I have begun this subject I will go on to the end. Know then that from the log on the fire, to the back of your chair, everything made of wood, is in pretty nearly the same predicament as your pocket-handkerchief; and if people are not in the habit of making casks of syrup and kegs of brandy out of the trees they cut down in the woods, it is only, I a.s.sure you, because such sugar and brandy would cost more to make than other sorts, and would not be so good in the end. Should some one ever invent and bring to perfection an economical process for doing it thoroughly well, sugar-makers and spirit-distillers will have to be on their guard!