A drop of water

Chapter I

Have you ever watched steam rising from the spout of a tea-kettle, Where does it come from? Where does it go? You say it comes from the water boiling in the kettle. But what makes the water boil? You tell me heat, of course, from the fire under it.

My small friend Ted had never thought much about steam or fire until the day he went camping with Uncle Bob and Daddy. Of course, he had seen Nora, the maid, light the gas stove and put a kettle of fresh water on it to boil. And he had seen Mother pour Daddy’s coffee steaming hot into his cup at breakfast. But just what happened to make the kettle boil or the cup of coffee give off steam he did not know. But he began to think about it the day they went camping.

It was a bright, cool day, just the day, Uncle Bob said, for the trout to bite. And Uncle Bob ought to know, for he went to college. And Daddy said that college boys knew everything there was to know—as well as a good deal that there wasn’t. Which Ted could not understand at all. Any more than he could understand why Daddy called Uncle Bob a college boy when he was just as tall as Daddy himself and could beat him any day at tennis.

But Uncle Bob was right about the trout. They found that out as soon as they had pushed their way through the woods to the trout stream and had unpacked their fishing-rods.

All afternoon the two men fished while Ted ran up and down along the stream. He climbed the slippery rocks to see where the sun looked down between the trees. He watched the clouds that went like flocks of sheep across the sky. But, chiefly, he gathered twigs and branches with which to build a fire to cook their supper.

It was a good supper. There were sandwiches which Mother had packed that morning in a basket. There was also bacon that curled up like paper in the pan. And there was coffee, which Daddy would not let Ted taste. But first of all there had to be a fire.

It took almost a whole afternoon to gather wood enough to build it. And then when Daddy had laid the sticks so carefully criss-cross it would not burn.

“Humph,” said Uncle Bob, “it didn’t seem damp.”

He struck a match and held it carefully in the hollow of his hand. A puff of wind came and blew it out.

Now Uncle Bob had been a Boy Scout leader and had taught the boys how to start a fire with one match. So he was a little ashamed when he had to strike a second and finally a third match before the fire would burn.

And all the while Ted was growing hungrier and hun¬ grier. Would supper never be ready?

He looked back at the path through the woods by which they had come. He wondered how many miles it was to Nora and the gas stove.

But at last the fire burned. And the bacon sizzled. And the coffee boiled. And they opened the basket of sandwiches. And then they had supper.

After that it began to grow dark. And Ted crept closer to Daddy while Uncle Bob told him stories about the Indians who once lived in those woods. They built campfires too. Only they had no matches. In fact no¬ body had matches in those days.

“But how could they build a fire without matches?” he asked.

And then Uncle Bob told him how they rubbed two pieces of wood together until they burned.

He told him other things too about the Indians; how the men went hunting and brought home game; how the women cooked the meat over the fire; how the little babies were wrapped up tight and strapped to their mother's backs or perhaps hung up in a tree to be out of the way. An Indian baby, it seemed, was called a pa¬ poose.

And all the time Ted listened the woods were grow¬ ing darker. The campfire made a ring of light. But out¬ side of that ring was just blackness. He looked up to where the smoke was going. It was no longer blue up there and there were no clouds like flocks of sheep. It was grey between the tree-tops and one star looked down as if it were watching them.

Ted shivered and crept still closer to Daddy.

“Cold?” said Daddy, and put his arm across Ted’s shoulder.

Ted shook his head. “No,” he answered. “That is, not much.” For he was afraid Daddy might take his arm away. He did not want that. But it would not do to say so.

He thought about his little bed at home. About this time Mother usually read to him. Then she tucked him under the covers and put the light out. Mother must be lonely to-night. He was sorry for her, so sorry, in fact, that he began to have a queer feeling in his throat. This would not do.

He winked his eyes rather fast and looked up at the sky. The star was still there watching them. Then he looked back toward the path through the woods. It was not there. There was nothing there but blackness.

He had wondered in the afternoon how many miles it was back to Nora and the gas stove. That was because he was hungry. He was not hungry now. But he still had that queer feeling in his throat. It seemed, too, that there were things you could want worse than you wanted your supper. One of them was your mother.

“I suppose,” he said, slowly, “we’re about one million miles from home.”

“One million!” Uncle Bob shouted. “Bless the boy, he doesn’t know what a million means.”

“Yes, I do,” said Ted. “It means all the miles there are,

“Well,” said Uncle Bob, “that’s not so far wrong. Be¬ cause if you were to start out and walk straight ahead, you could walk all the way around the earth and back again without walking a million miles. In fact the only way you could go a million miles straight ahead would be to fly up into the sky.”

“Yes, sir,” said Ted, politely. He was not listening very closely because there was such a rustling among the trees where the Indians were. And the star up above was winking at him.

And then Daddy was wrapping him in one of Uncle Bob’s army blankets. At least that was what they said it was. But he knew better. And anyway it wasn’t him¬ self they were wrapping. It was that little Indian pa¬ poose and Mother was putting that little Indian papoose into his own bed at home. And then—

And then it was morning. And the trees were green, not black. And the star was gone. And the sun was shining down between the tree-tops. And they had slept all night in the woods.

Chapter II

Ted was very busy one day in June. He was watch¬ ing the men put in coal. He liked to see them back the truck across the pavement, turn the handle which wound and wound until the body of the truck stood high up above the wheels, then, as it tipped over, help the coal to slide down the chute into the cellar.

It was queer that coal would burn. It looked like stone. And stone would not burn. For the little girl next door had an oven built of stone and in it she baked mud pies. Sometimes he helped her. Not because he cared about mud pies, but because Mother said he ought to be polite. And besides she was such a very little girl. And he knew that the stones got very hot. But they would not burn.

Coal, it seemed, was different. He had watched Daddy shoveling it into the furnace last winter, and he knew what a hot fire it made. He wondered where it came from. It came from somewhere on the cars for he had heard Daddy talk about a carload of coal. But where, he wondered.

He asked Mother but she was busy beating eggs for the pudding she would not let Nora make. So she just said, “From the mines, dear.” And went on beating eggs.

Now Ted wondered what “mines” meant. So that night he asked Daddy. And Daddy told him a long story. He could not remember it all but this much he did remember.

A great many years ago the earth was covered with plants and tall grasses and trees. Perhaps the trees looked a little like those along the trout stream where they had fished. But they were much older. And there were no people living on the earth then. Not even In¬ dians.

And after that the rivers spread out over the land in some places, and covered the plants and trees. And then the sand washed down by the rivers spread out, too, and left the plants and trees buried in the earth. Then they hardened into what we call coal.

No one knew that the coal was there until many years later when men began to dig it out and use it to burn in¬ stead of wood. They were still digging it in what they called “mines.”

This set Ted to thinking. You could light the gas stove and have a fire. You could gather wood and make a fire. Or you could heap up coal and keep a fire all winter in your furnace. And how glad you were to have a fire in winter.

And yet when summer came you wanted no fire at all. Indeed if you went outdoors and stood there bare¬ headed you were glad to hurry back into the house to get cool. It was very funny.

“Daddy,” said he, “wouldn’t it be fine if we could put the sunshine into a bottle in the summer when it’s too hot, and save it to use in the winter when it’s too cold? Then we wouldn’t need to buy coal.”

“Wouldn’t it?” said Daddy. “In fact that is such a good idea that nature thought of it long before we did. Only we don’t always know where to look for the bot¬ tles.”

Ted sat up very straight. “Do you know where to look for them, Daddy?” he cried. “Could I find any, do you think?”

“You found a good many in the woods, didn’t you, the day we went fishing?”

“In the woods? Bottles? Why no, Daddy, Truly I didn’t see a single one.” He wondered what Daddy could be thinking of.

“Didn’t you help us make a fire?”

“Yes, I gathered all the wood.” He was rather proud of this.

“I picked up a lot of twigs and branches, but I didn’t see any bottles.”

“The twigs and branches were the bottles—'bottles of sunshine.”

Ted’s eye9 grew big. What could Daddy mean?

“Listen, Ted. All the heat we have comes from the sun. The earth stores it up for us. The trees hold the sunshine and when we cut them down we can build a fire with them. Coal, which is made of buried trees, holds the sunshine and we make a fire of it. Gas, which we use in our gas stove, is just a part of the sunshine which the coal has stored up for us. All fire is bottled sun¬ shine. There is no heat which did not come at first from the sun.

This seemed very strange to Ted. “Gee, it must be hot up there,” he said. “We wouldn’t want to go very close to it, would we, Daddy? How close to it could we get, do you think, if we could fly up into the sky?”

“Well,” said Daddy, smiling, “the sun is more than ninety millions of miles away. So we wouldn’t run much risk of touching it if we did fly up into the sky.”

“Ninety millions of miles!” said Ted. Ninety was nine times as many fingers as there are on both hands. He had learned that in school. And a million miles was all the miles there are. At least that is what he and Uncle Bob thought. And the sun was that far away. It seemed farther than anything could be. So he just stopped think¬ ing about it.

Chapter III

Daddy had gone to the office the next morning and Nora was hanging up tea-towels in the yard when Mother quickly set down the bowl of roses she had picked and hurried into the kitchen. There was a queer smell in the air and a crackling sound.

“Nora,” she called, “your tea-kettle has boiled dry.”

Nora came running from the yard. She picked up the kettle just as Mother turned out the gas. They both looked at it. It was not hurt. But it still crackled and there was still a queer smell about it.

“Now think o’ that,” said Nora. “And me only gone a minute.”

“What happened, Mother?” asked Ted.

“The water boiled away.”

“Away where?”

“Why, away, dear. It just boiled away.”

That was one queer thing about Mother. She never answered questions like Daddy. She just kept saying one thing over again.

“Nora,” said Ted, when Mother had gone back to her roses, “where does water go to when it boils away?”

“Sure, darlin’ an’ I don’t know. Into the air, I guess. Did you never see steam on the windys when I’d be doin’ a bit o’ washing?”

“No,” said Ted. “What is steam?”

“Och, darlin’, go ask yer Daddy. Nora’s busy.”

Ted wanted to ask Daddy, but he had to wait until evening to do that. So instead he walked over to the stove again when Nora had left the room and began to watch the kettle.

Nora had filled it with fresh water and set it once more over the fire. It made a rumbling sound inside. After awhile a little white cloud came out of the spout. This must be what Nora called steam.

He took a holder and lifted the lid. There was no steam inside the kettle, just water boiling. And there was no steam in the room. Where had it come from ? Where did it go?

He looked more closely. Just at the mouth of the spout was a clear space, before the white cloud began. There was no steam there. He wondered why. He put his finger into the clear space to find out how it felt.

Then he must have screamed. For the next instant Nora came flying in from the yard and Mother from the living-room.

“Bless the child,” cried Nora, “he’s burned himself.”

And then Mother was holding him in her arms and Nora was hunting the baking-soda. When she found it they tied up his finger and it did not burn quite so much. But he did not go near the stove again.

That night with a clean, white bandage on his finger, he sat on Daddy’s knee and told him about it. “But there wasn’t any steam,” he said, “where I put my finger.

Daddy smiled. “Not that you could see/’ he said. “Water is a queer thing. Sometimes we can see it. Sometimes we can’t. Steam is just water in one of its forms. There are other forms too. Some day you must learn about them.”

“Tell me now,” he begged. “Tell me about steam, anyway.”

“Well,” said Daddy, “when water boils it does not stay in the kettle. It boils away.”

“That’s what Mother said. But where does it go?”

“Into the air. That is why you saw a cloud near the spout of the kettle. But the cloud does not form at once. Just at the mouth of the spout is a clear space before the cloud forms. This clear space is pure steam or va¬ por. It is as hot as boiling water. You found that out when you put your finger there. But because it is pure steam we cannot see it.

“When it reaches cooler air it is chilled and shrinks into a cloud. This floats in the dry air of the kitchen until it melts, just as sugar melts if you put it in water. When it melts we cannot see it. We call it gas or vapor. And because we cannot see it we say it is invisible.”

“In-vis-i-ble,” repeated Ted.

“Invisible?” said Uncle Bob, coming into the room at that moment. “What do you know about a big word like that ?”

“I know what it means,” said Ted, proudly. “A thing is invisible when you cannot see it.”

“Like what?” asked Daddy. “Tell Uncle Bob what happened to you this morning. ,,

“I burned my finger in the steam from the tea-kettle. I couldn’t see it. But—but I could feel it.

“I’ll bet you could,” said Uncle Bob.

And just then dinner was ready and they all went out to the table.

Chapter IV

It was not until after dinner that Ted began thinking again about steam. Uncle Bob had dropped a pile of books upon the table when he came in. They had pic¬ tures in them. Ted thought they were queer pictures, as he turned the leaves.

“What are they, Uncle Bob?” he asked.

“Steam engines, old man.”

“Steam engines?”

“Yes. Didn’t you know that steam could drive an engine ?”

“No,” said Ted. “What kind of engine?”

“A good many kinds. Steam can pull a train of cars. Steam can run a factory.”

“I don’t see how,” said Ted. He was thinking of Nora’s tea-kettle. It hadn’t seemed able to do anything except burn his fingers.

“Well,” said Uncle Bob, “you find out how when you go to college and study these books. Some day I’ll take you to the engineering building and show you the big

engines there. We have to learn how they are put to¬ gether.”

“How big are they?”

“Big enough, but not so big as the ones they really use —on steamships, for instance.”

“How big are they?”

Uncle Bob laughed, caught Ted round the waist and tossed him up to the ceiling, then set him down suddenly on a corner of the mantel.

“Listen, old man,” he said. “Some day you and I will board an ocean liner and find out. Do you know they build ships as long as a city block, that can carry thousands of people?”

“Gee,” said Ted, “I shouldn’t think there would be steam enough in all the world to run them.”

“How much steam is there in all the world, Uncle Bob?” he asked, suddenly.

Again Uncle Bob laughed.

“Once upon a time,” he said, “the whole world was covered with steam.”

“Covered with steam? How could people live with¬ out getting burned?”

“There were no people.”

“Not even Indians?”

“Not even Indians.”

“Then if there weren’t any people, how does anybody know anything about it?”

Uncle Bob set Ted down suddenly on the floor. He laughed more than ever.

“My child,” he said, “you will be a joy to your teachers as you grow up.”

Then, “Listen, Ted. This earth we live on was once a part of the sun.”

Ted thought that was a mistake. ‘T don’t see,” he said, “how it could get up there.”

“It didn’t get up there. It was there. It came from there.”

Ted still looked doubtful.

“Do you remember,” said Uncle Bob, “when you and Mother were making candy the other day, how Mother took the spoon out and twirled it so fast that some of the candy flew off and stuck fast to the stove?

“Well, that is what happened to the sun. It was whirl¬ ing so fast that a piece of it flew off and became the earth. And because the sun was very hot, the earth was very hot too. And because the sun was whirling so fast, the earth kept on whirling too.”

“Couldn’t it stop ?”

“No, it hasn’t stopped yet. And because it was so hot there could be no water on it, only steam. It was covered with steam which rose in thick clouds. When the clouds reached the cooler air above they turned into water which fell again.

“The earth gradually cooled off, however, by its con¬ stant turning, just as your spoonful of candy cooled when you waved it in the air. And so the steam, or vapor, hanging over it was also cooled until it became water and covered the earth like a great sea.

“As long as the earth was still hot, though, this water again boiled and again rose and fell in a great shower of rain. Thus rising and falling by turns, it filled the cracks and low places in the earth’s crust, and formed rivers and lakes.”

“Gee, Uncle Bob, that must have been some rain. How long did it last?”

“Nobody knows. But it must have been many thou¬ sands of years. And even when the earth was cool and the streams could flow, this rising and falling of the water did not stop.”

“Why not?”

“Because the heat of the sun still kept changing water into vapor.”

“How long did it do that?”

“Always. It is still doing it. Water still rises and becomes vapor. Then reaching cooler air it falls as rain.”

“Now ?”

“Right now.”

“But I never saw it.”

“Of course not. Didn’t you tell me that vapor was—?”

“Invisible,” shouted Ted.

“And that means ?”

“We cannot see it.”

“But you can see it sometimes, Ted. Some of it does not fall at once but stays in the air as clouds. And some¬ times these clouds, pushed by the wind, touch the tops of mountains and there form dew or fog or snow.”

“But snow isn’t water.”

i8

“It certainly is. And so is ice.”

Ted took a minute to think about this. He knew that ice melted very fast if you held it in your hand. And then it was water, to be sure.

“Ice is water in a solid form. Water is water in a liquid form. Steam is water in the form of gas or va¬ por. Can you remember that? Solid, liquid, gas or va¬ por.”

“Solid, liquid, gas or vapor,” repeated Ted. It was as hard to remember as “invisible.”

“Tell me some more about water,” he begged.

“Water?” Uncle Bob rose from his chair, tucked two fingers between the buttons of his vest and puffed up his chest the way the dean of the college always did when he was going to make a speech.

Ted laughed. He knew Uncle Bob was going to be funny.

“Water,” said Uncle Bob, “is the most useful thing we have. Wherever and in whatever form it reaches the earth, the earth welcomes it. It drinks it in. It holds it like a sponge. And so the hidden places are filled with it. It bubbles up as springs in the mountain. It flows through ravines in streams. These streams join each other and form rivers, which flow on to the sea.

“These rivers carry sand and earth along with them and thus build up new ground. They are always busy tearing down or building up and bringing life to plants and animals.

*9

“When they reach the ocean they are lost in its depths. But not for long. For nothing in nature is ever lost. The sun shining on the sea soon drinks up these drops of water again, and again scatters them over the earth. So that the ocean constantly receives water flowing into it from the land, and as constantly gives it back again into the air. This goes on without stopping and will go on forever.

“Nothing that we see or touch is ever destroyed. It may change its form; it may be separated into its parts; but it is still there. A plant in the autumn is killed by the frost; its leaves dry up and fall upon the ground. But the ground is so much the richer. And in springtime it will give back more beautiful flowers. A tree is cut down and burned, but the smoke of it rises into the sky. Just so all the water in the plant and in the tree is saved and goes up to mingle with the clouds.

“Go out into the garden some June morning and see the dew sparkling drop by drop on the roses. Those same drops may have formed the snow crunching under the tread of the Polar bear, or have slaked the thirst of a tiger on the burning sands of Africa. They may have furnished drink for the first living man; they may fur¬ nish drink again for our great-great-grandchildren. We may even meet them again ourselves in the ice over which we skate in December.

“Water is one of the commonest things we know. It is everywhere. We could not do without it. It causes the earth to be fruitful and give us food. It gives mois¬ ture to the air, without which we could not breathe. It is a part of all animals, all vegetables, and is even found in minerals. It flows across the earth finding its way into everything.

“It is our most wholesome drink. Indeed it is the chief part of everything we drink. We sail our boats on it. By it all parts of the country are brought together.

“It is the willing slave of man. In the form of steam, it gives us power. We use it to run our factories, to drive our trains. Thus it helps to give us all we have to eat or wear. It takes us everywhere. It helps to make of all the world one great family.

“Thus as solid, liquid, or gas, it is our greatest friend. Let us go on then and find out what water is, what it is made of, and what it can do for us?”

“Do you mean that, Uncle Bob?”

“Mean what?”

“Will you really tell me all about water some day?”

“Some day, perhaps.”

Chapter V

The little girl next door had set three of her dolls in a row along the hedge. It was a low hedge between the two yards. Ted could talk to the little girl over it. He wondered what the dolls were doing there. He took no interest in dolls but still he wondered.

He walked along the hedge until he came to the open¬ ing just where the hollyhocks began. There was not supposed to be an opening there. But that was where he always went when he had something to show to the little girl. And when you push very close to a hedge a good many times, and some one in a pink bonnet pushes very close to you on the other side, to see what you have to show, there soon comes to be an opening which is nobody’s fault.

Ted walked to this opening and stepped through to see what the dolls were doing. He found out. They were having a party. There was a table in front of them with a white cloth on it. And there was toy dishes and a vase of flowers in the middle, just as Mother always put flowers on the table.

And the little girl was coming from the house with something in her hand. She wore a pink bonnet as usual and also a pink dress. But it was a round kind of dress that stood out away from her and it had ruffles. It was not at all like the rompers she usually wore when she played in the yard.

There was something queer about her eyes too. It looked as if she had tears on the ends of her eyelashes. And she talked in jerks.

“Mother—went away,” she said. “She dressed me— before—she went. So I could—go driving—with Daddy —after lunch.”

“That’s nice,” said Ted.

“And she said—I could have—a party—but Jane—

won’t let me—have anything to eat.” Her voice went up in the air all of a sudden—something like the way a cat sounds when you step on its tail.

Ted jumped. “Don’t,” he cried. “Don’t do that.”

It made him feel like hitting something. Anyway it was silly to cry.

“You don’t have to have things to eat to have a party,” he told her.

“Yes, you do,” she said, looking at him with very wet eyes.

“Not real things, I mean.”

“But I want real things.”

“Make-believe things are just as good,” he said.

She still looked at him.

“Make-believe things are even better,” he went on, get¬ ting more and more in earnest. They never give you the—the stomach-ache.”

“Come on,” he said, “let’s get some sand—and water —and build a fire—and make some mud pies.”

“Will you?” she said and began jumping up and down.

“Sure.” And they went to work in a great hurry.

They piled up sand and brought water from the house in a tin-cup. Then they gathered some twigs from the dead branches underneath the apple-tree. Paper they got from the back porch, where Jane had laid a pile of newspapers.

They still needed matches. They watched their chance to get these. For they would not ask Jane for a thing. Not after she had said they could not have real things to eat.

It was some time before they could get to the matches, for Jane was scraping potatoes in the kitchen. After a while, however, she came into the yard and began talk¬ ing to Nora across the hedge.

Nora had just come out of the house with a pail of water and a broom. She was going to scrub the walk. It was a good time to get the matches while Nora and Jane were talking.