Among the Forces by Henry White Warren

H >> Henry White Warren >> Among the Forces

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8

Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this
file which includes the original illustrations.
See 15807-h.htm or 15807-h.zip:
(http://www.gutenberg.net/dirs/1/5/8/0/15807/15807-h/15807-h.htm)
or
(http://www.gutenberg.net/dirs/1/5/8/0/15807/15807-h.zip)

AMONG THE FORCES

Thou madest him to have dominion over the works of
THY hands.--Psalm viii, 6

by

HENRY WHITE WARREN, LL.D.

One of the Bishops of the Methodist Episcopal Church
Author of "Recreations in Astronomy," "The Bible in the World's
Education," etc.

New York: Eaton & Mains
Cincinnati: Curts & Jennings

1898

[Frontispiece: Old Faithful Geyser.]

E. I. W.

Eximia Inter Vires.

CONTENTS

Why Written
The Man Who Needed 452,696 Barrels of Water
The Sun's Great Horses
Old Sun Help
Moon Help
More Moon Help
Star Help
Help from Insensible Seas
The Fairy Gravitation
More Gravitation
The Fairy Pulls Great Loads
The Fairy Draws Greater Loads
The Fairy Works a Pump Handle
The Help of Inertia
One Plant Help
Gas Help
Natural Affection of Metals
Natural Affection Between Metal and Liquid
Natural Affection of Metal and Gas
Hint Help
Creations Now in Progress
Some Curious Behaviors of Atoms
Mobility of Seeming Solids
The Next World to Conquer
Our Enjoyment of Nature's Forces
The Matterhorn
The Grand Canon of the Colorado River.
The Yellowstone Park Geysers
Sea Sculpture
The Power of Vegetable Life
Spiritual Dynamics
When This World is Not

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Old Faithful Geyser . . . . Frontispiece
Breaking Waves
Incline at Mauch Chunk
The Head of the Toboggan Slide.
The Big Trees
The Matterhorn
The Punch Bowl, Yellowstone Geysers.
Formation of the Grotto Geyser
Bee-Hive Geyser
Pulpit Terrace and Bunsen Peak
"The Breakers," Santa Cruz, Cal.
The Work and the Worker, Santa Cruz, Cal.
Yellow Chili Squash in Harness
Squash Grown Under Pressure
A Natural Bridge, Santa Cruz, Cal.
An Excavated Arch, Santa Cruz, Cal
A Double Natural Arch, Santa Cruz, Cal.
A Triple Natural Arch, Santa Cruz, Cal.
Remains of a Quadruple Natural Arch
Arch Remains, Side Wall Broken

AMONG THE FORCES

WHY WRITTEN

Fairies, fays, genii, sprites, etc., were once supposed to be helpful
to some favored men. The stories about these imaginary beings have
always had a fascinating interest. The most famous of these stories
were told at Bagdad in the eleventh century, and were called _The
Arabian Nights' Entertainment_. Then men were said to use all sorts of
obedient powers, sorceries, tricks, and genii to aid them in getting
wealth, fame, and beautiful brides.

But I find the realities of to-day far greater, more useful and
interesting, than the imaginations of the past. The powers at work
about us are far more kindly and powerful than the Slave of the Ring or
of the Lamp.

The object of writing this series of papers about applications of
powers to the service of man, their designed king, is manifold. I
desire all my readers to see what marvelous provision the Father has
made for his children in this their nursery and schoolhouse. He has
always been trying to crowd on men more helps and blessings than they
were willing to take. From the first mist that went up from the Garden
the power of steam has been in every drop of water. Yet men carried
their burdens. Since the first storm the swiftness and power of
lightning have been trying to startle man into seeing that in it were
speed and force to carry his thought and himself. But man still
plodded and groaned under loads that might have been lifted by physical
forces. I have seen in many lands men bringing to their houses water
from the hills in heavy stone jars. Gravitation was meant to do that
work, and to make it leap and laugh with pearly spray in every woman's
kitchen. The good Father has offered his all-power on all occasions to
all men.

I desire that the works of God should keep their designed relation to
thought. He says, Consider the lilies; look into the heavens; number
the stars; go to the ant; be wise; ask the beasts, the fowl, the
fishes; or "talk even to the earth, and it showeth thee."

Every flower and star, rainbow and insect, was meant to be so
provocative of thought that any man who never saw a human book might be
largely educated. And every one of these thoughts is related to man's
best prosperity and joy. He is a most regal king if he achieve the
designed dominion over a thousand powerful servitors.

It is well to see that God's present actual powers in full play about
us are vastly beyond all the dreams of Arabian imagination. It leads
us to expect greater things of him hereafter. That human imagination
could so dream is proof of the greatness of its Creator. But that he
has actually surpassed those dreams is prophecy of more greatness to
come.

I desire that my readers of this generation shall be the great thinkers
and inventors of the next. There are amazing powers just waiting to be
revealed. Draw aside the curtain. We have not yet learned the A B C
of science. We have not yet grasped the scepters of provided dominion.
Those who are most in the image and likeness of the Cause of these
forces are most likely to do it.

THE MAN WHO NEEDED 452,696 BARRELS OF WATER

A man once had a large field of wheat. He had toiled hard to clear the
land, plow the soil, and sow the seed. The crop grew beautifully and
was his joy by day and by night. But when it was just ready to head
out it suddenly stopped growing for want of moisture. It looked as if
all his hard work would be in vain. The poor farmer thought of his
wife and children, who were likely to starve in the coming winter. He
shed many tears, but they could not moisten one little stalk.

Suddenly he said, "I will water it myself." The field was a mile
square, and it needed an inch of water over it all. He quickly figured
out that there were 27,878,400 square feet in a square mile. On every
twelve square feet a cubic foot of water was needed. A cubic foot of
water weighs sixty-two and a third pounds. Hence it would require
74,754 tons of water. To draw this amount 74,754 teams, each drawing a
ton, would be required. But they would tramp the wheat all down.
Besides, the nearest water in sufficient quantity was the ocean, one
thousand miles away over the mountains. It would take three months to
make the journey. And, worse than all else, the water of the ocean is
so salt that it would ruin the crop.

[Illustration: Breaking Waves.]

Alas! there were three impossibilities--so many teams, so many
miles, so long time--and two ruins if he could overcome the
impossibilities--trampling down the wheat and bringing so much salt.
Alas, alas! what could he do but see the poor wheat die of thirst and
his poor wife and children die of hunger?

Suddenly he determined to ask the sun to help him. And the sun said he
would. That was a very little thing for such a great body to do. So
he heated the air over the ocean till it became so thirsty that it
drank plenty of water, choosing only the sweet fresh water and leaving
all the salt in the ocean. Then the warm air rose, because the heat
had expanded it and made it lighter, and the other air rushed down the
mountains all over that side of the continent to take its place. Then
the warm air went landward in an upper current and carried its load of
water in great piles and mountains of clouds; it lifted them over the
great ranges of mountains and rained down its thousands of tons of
sweet water a thousand miles from the sea, so gently that not a stalk
of wheat was trampled down, nor was a single root made acrid by any
taste of brine.

Besides the precious drink the sun brought the most delicate food for
the wheat. There was carbonic acid, that makes soda water so
delicious, besides oxygen, that is so stimulating, nitrogen, ammonia,
and half a dozen other things that are so nutritious to growing plants.

Thus the wheat grew up in beauty, headed out abundantly, and matured
perfectly. Then the farmer stopped weeping for laughter, and in his
joy he remembered to thank, not the sun, nor the wind, but the great
One who made them both.

THE SUN'S GREAT HORSES

There was once a man who had thousands of acres of mighty forests in
the distant mountains. They were valueless there, but would be
exceedingly valuable in the great cities hundreds of miles away, if he
could only find any power to transport them thither. So he looked for
a team that could haul whole counties of forests so many miles. He saw
that the sun drew the greatest loads, and he asked it to help him. And
the sun said that was what he was made for; he existed only to help
man. He said that he had made those great forests to grow for a
thousand years so as to be ready for man when he needed them, and that
he was now ready to help move them where they were wanted.

So he told the man who owned the forest that there was a great power,
which men called gravitation, that seemed to reside in the center of
the earth and every other world, but that it worked everywhere. It
held the stones down to the earth, made the rain fall, and water to run
down hill; and if the man would arrange a road, so that gravitation and
the sun could work together, the forest would soon be transported from
the mountains to the sea.

So the man made a trough a great many miles long, the two sides coming
together like a great letter V. Then the sun brought water from the
sea and kept the trough nearly full year after year. The man put into
it the lumber and logs from the great forests, and gravitation pulled
the lumber and water ever so swiftly, night and day, miles away to the
sea.

How I have laughed as I have seen that perpetual stream of lumber and
timber pour out so far from where the sun grew them for man. For the
sun never ceased to supply the water, and gravitation never ceased to
pull.

This man who relentlessly cut down the great forests never said, "How
good the sun is!" nor, "How strong is gravitation!" but said
continually, "How smart I am!"

OLD SUN HELP

Holland is a land that is said to draw twenty feet of water. Its
surface is below sea level. Since 1440 they have been recovering land
from the sea. They have acquired 230,000 acres in all. Fifty years
ago they diked off 45,000 acres of an arm of the sea, called Haarlem
Meer, that had an average depth of twelve and three quarters feet of
water, and proposed to pump it out so as to have that much more fertile
land. They wanted to raise 35,000,000 tons of water a month a distance
of ten feet, to get through in time. Who could work the handle?

The sun would evaporate two inches a year, but that was too slow. So
they used the old force of the sun, reservoired in former ages. Coal
is condensed sunshine, still keeping all the old light and power. By a
suitable engine they lifted 112 tons ten feet at every stroke, and in
1848, five years after they began to apply old sun force, 41,675 acres
were ready for sale and culture.

The water that accumulates now, from rain and infiltration, is lifted
out by the sun force as exhibited in wind on windmills. They
groaningly work while men sleep.

The Netherlandish engineers are now devising plans to pump out the
Zuyder Zee, an area of two thousand square miles. There is plenty of
power of every kind for anything, material, mental, spiritual. The
problem is the application of it. The thinker is king.

This is only one instance of numberless applications of old sun force.
In this country coal does more work than every man, woman, and child in
the whole land. It pumps out deep mines, hoists ore to the surface,
speeds a thousand trains, drives great ships, in face of waves and
winds, thousands of miles and faster than transcontinental trains. It
digs, spins, weaves, saws, planes, grinds, plows, reaps, and does
everything it is asked to do. It is a vast reservoir of force, for the
accumulation of which thousands of years were required.

MOON HELP

At Foo-Chow, China, there is a stone bridge, more than a mile long,
uniting the two parts of the city. It is not constructed with arches,
but piers are built up from the bottom of the river and great granite
stringers are laid horizontally from pier to pier. I measured some of
these great stone stringers, and found them to be three feet square and
forty-five feet long. They weigh over thirty tons each.

How could they be lifted, handled, and put in place over the water on
slender piers? How was it done? There was no Hercules to perform the
mighty labor, nor Amphion to lure them to their place with the music of
his golden lyre.

Tradition says that the Chinese, being astute astronomers, got the moon
to do the work. It was certainly very shrewd, if they did. Why not
use the moon for more than a lantern? Is it not a part of the "all
things" over which man was made to have dominion?

Well, the Chinese engineers brought the great granite blocks to the
bridge site on floats, and when the tide lifted the floats and stones
they blocked up the stones on the piers and let the floats sink with
the outgoing tide. Then they blocked up the stones on the floats
again, and as the moon lifted the tides once more they lifted the
stones farther toward their place, until at length the work was done
for each set of stones.

Dear, good moon, what a pull you have! You are not merely for the
delight of lovers, pleasant as you are for that, but you are ready to
do gigantic work.

No wonder that the Chinese, as they look at the solid and enduring
character of that bridge, name it, after the poetic and flowery habit
of the country, "The Bridge of Ten Thousand Ages."

MORE MOON HELP

Years ago, before there were any railroads, New York city had thousands
of tons of merchandise it wished to send out West. Teams were few and
slow, so they asked the moon to help. It was ready; had been waiting
thousands of years.

We shall soon see that it is easy to slide millions of tons of coal
down hill, but how could we slide freight up from New York to Albany?

It is very simple. Lift up the lower end of the river till it shall be
down hill all the way to Albany. But who can lift up the end of the
river? The moon. It reaches abroad over the ocean and gathers up
water from afar, brings it up by Cape Hatteras and in from toward
England, pours it in through the Narrows, fills up the great harbor,
and sets the great Hudson flowing up toward Albany. Then men put their
big boats on the current and slide up the river. Six hours later the
moon takes the water out of the harbor and lets other boats slide the
other way.

New York itself has made use of the moon to get rid of its immense
amount of garbage and sewage. It would soon breed a pestilence, and
the city be like the buried cities of old; but the moon comes to its
aid, and carries away and buries all this foul breeder of a pestilence,
and washes all the harbor and bay with clean floods of water twice a
day. Good moon! It not only lights, but works.

The tide in New York Harbor rises only about five feet; up in the Bay
of Fundy it ramps, rushes, raves, and rises more than fifty feet high.

In former times men used to put mill wheels into the currents of the
tides; when they rushed into little bays and salt ponds they turned the
wheels one way; when out, the other.

STAR HELP

"We for whose sake all Nature stands,
And stars their courses move."

Do the stars, that are so far away and seem so small, send us any help?
Assuredly. Nothing exists for itself. All is for man.

Magnetism tells the sailor which way he is going. Stars not only do
this, when visible, but they also tell just where on the round globe he
is. A glance into their bright eyes, from a rolling deck, by an
uneducated sailor, aided by the tables of accomplished scholars, tells
him exactly where he is--in mid Atlantic, Pacific, Indian, Arctic, or
Antarctic Ocean, or at the mouth of the harbor he has sought for
months. We lift up our eyes higher than the hills. Help comes from
the skies.

This help was started long since, with providential foresight and care.
Is he steering by the North Star? A ray of guidance was sent from that
lighthouse in the sky half a century before his need, that it might
arrive just at the critical time. It has been ever since on its way.

The stars give us, on land and sea, all our reliable standards of time.
There is no other source. They are reliable to the hundredth part of a
second.

The Italian physicians, in their ignorance of the origin of a disease,
named it the influenza, because they imagined that it came from the
influence of the stars. No! There is nothing malign in the sweet
influences of the Pleiades.

The stars are of special use as a mental gymnasium. On their lofty
bars and trapezes the mind can swing itself higher and farther than on
any other material thing. Infinity and omnipotence are factors in
their problems. They also fill the soul of the rapt beholder with
adoring wonder. They are the greatest symbols of the unweariableness
of the power and of the minuteness of the knowledge of God. He calleth
all their millions by name, and for the greatness of his power not one
faileth to come.

Number the stars of a clear Eastern sky, if you are able. So
multitudinous and enduring shall the influence of one good man be.

HELP FROM INSENSIBLE SEAS

Suppose one has been at sea a month. He has tacked to every point of
the compass, been driven by gales, becalmed in doldrums. At length
Euroclydon leaps on him, and he lets her drive. And when for many days
and nights neither sun nor stars appear, how can he tell where he is,
which way he drives, where the land lies?

There is an insensible ocean. No sense detects its presence. It has
gulf streams that flow through us, storms whose waves engulf us, but we
feel them not. There are various intensities of its power, the north
end of the world not having half as much as the south. There are two
places in the north half of the world that have greater intensity than
the rest, and only one in the south. It looks as if there were
unsoundable depths in some places and shoals in others.

The currents do not flow in exactly the same direction all the time,
but their variations are within definite limits.

How shall we detect these steady currents when wind and waves are in
tumultuous confusion? They are always present. No winds blow them
aside, no waves drench their subtle fire, no mountains make them
swerve. But how shall we find them?

Float a bit of magnetic ore in a pail of water, or suspend a bit of
magnetized steel by a thread, and these currents make the ore or needle
point north and south. Now let waves buffet either side, typhoons
roar, and maelstroms whirl; we have, out of the invisible, insensible
sea of magnetic influence, a sure and steady guide. Now we can sail
out of sight of headlands. We have in the darkness and light, in calm
and storm, an unswerving guide. Now Columbus can steer for any new
world.

Does not this seem like a spiritual force? Lodestone can impart its
qualities to hard steel without the impairment of its own power. There
is a giving that does not impoverish, and a withholding that does not
enrich.

Wherever there is need there is supply. The proper search with
appropriate faculties will find it. There are yet more things in
heaven and earth than are dreamed of in our philosophy.

THE FAIRY GRAVITATION

The Germans imagine that they have fairy kobolds, sprites, and gnomes
which play under ground and haunt mines. I know a real one. I will
give you his name. It is called "Gravitation." The name does not
sound any more fairylike than a sledge hammer, but its nature and work
are as fairylike as a spider's web. I will give samples of his helpful
work for man.

In the mountains about Saltzburg, south of Munich, are great thick beds
of solid salt. How can they get it down to the cities where it is
needed? Instead of digging it out, and packing it on the backs of
mules for forty miles, they turn in a stream of water and make a little
lake which absorbs very much salt--all it can carry. Then they lay a
pipe, like a fairy railroad, and gravitation carries the salt water
gently and swiftly forty miles, to where the railroads can take it
everywhere. It goes so easily! There is no railroad to build, no car
to haul back, only to stand still and see gravitation do the work.

How do they get the salt and water apart? O, just as easily. They ask
the wind to help them. They cut brush about four feet long, and pile
it up twenty feet high and as long as they please. Then a pipe with
holes in it is laid along the top, the water trickles down all over the
loose brush, and the thirsty wind blows through and drinks out most of
the water. They might let on the water so slowly that all of it would
be drunk out by the wind, leaving the solid salt on the bushes. But
they do not want it there. So they turn on so much water that the
thirsty wind can drink only the most of it, and the rest drops down
into great pans, needing only a little evaporation by boiling to become
beautiful salt again, white as the snows of December.

There are other minerals besides salt in the beds in the mountains,
and, being soluble in water, they also come down the tiny railroad with
musical laughter. How can we separate them, so that the salt shall be
pure for our tables?

The other minerals are less avaricious of water than salt, so they are
precipitated, or become solid, sooner than salt does. Hence with nice
care the other minerals can be left solid on the bushes, while the salt
brine falls off. Afterward pure water can be turned on and these other
minerals can be washed off in a solution of their own. No fairies
could work better than those of solution and crystallization.

MORE GRAVITATION

At Hutchinson, Kan., there are great beds of solid rock salt four
hundred feet below the surface. Men want to get and use two thousand
barrels a day. How shall they get it to the top of the ground? They
might dig a great well--or, as the miners say, sink a shaft--pump out
the water, go down and blast out the salt, and laboriously haul it up
in defiance of gravitation. No; that is too hard. Better ask this
strong gravitation to bring it up.

But does it work down and up? Did any one ever know of gravitation
raising anything? O yes, many things. A balloon may weigh as much as
a ton, but when inflated it weighs less than so much air; so the
heavier air flows down under and shoulders it up. When a heavy weight
and a light one are hung over a pulley, the light one goes up because
gravity acts more on the other. Water poured down a long tube will
rise if the tube is bent up into a shorter arm.

Exactly. So we bore a four-inch hole down to the salt and put in an
iron tube.

We do not care about the water. It is no bother. Then inside of this
tube we put a two-inch tube that is a few feet higher. Now pour water
down the small longer tube. It saturates itself with salt, and comes
flowing over the top of the shorter tube as easily as water runs down
hill. Multiply the wells, dry out the water, and you have your two
thousand barrels of salt lifted every day--just as easy as thinking!

We want a steady, unswerving force that will pull our clock hands with
an exact motion day and night, year in and year out. We hang up a
string, and ask gravitation to take hold and pull. We put on some lead
or brass for a handle, to take hold of. It takes hold and pulls,
unweariedly, unvaryingly, and ceaselessly.

It turns single water-wheels with a power of more than twelve hundred
horses.

It holds down houses, so that they are not blown away. It was made to
serve man, and it works without a grumble.

Thus the higher force in nature always prevails over the lower, and the
greater amount over the less amount of the same force. What is the
highest force?

THE FAIRY PULLS GREAT LOADS

Far back in the hills west of Mauch Chunk, Pa., lie great beds of coal.
They were made under the sea long ages ago, raised up, roofed over by
the Allegheny Mountains, and kept waiting as great reservoirs of power
for the use of man.

But how can these mountains be gotten to the distant cities by the sea?
Faith in what power can say to these mountains, "Be thou removed far
hence, and cast into the sea?" It is easy.

Along the winding sides of the mountains have been laid two rails like
steel ribbons for a dozen miles, from the coal beds to water and
railroad transportation. Put a half dozen loaded cars on the track,
and with one man at the brake, lest gravitation should prove too
willing a helper, away they go, through the springtime freshness or the
autumn glory, spinning and singing down to the point of universal
distribution.

[Illustration: Incline at Mauch Chunk.]

On one occasion the brake for some reason would not work. The cars
just flew like an arrow. The man's hair stood up from fright and the
wind. Coming to a curve the cars kept straight on, ran down a bank,
dashed right into the end of a house and spilled their whole load in
the cellar. Probably no man ever laid in a winter's supply of coal so
quickly or so undesirably.

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8