The Story of Glass Part 10

"Before the days of clocks and watches," he began, "such gla.s.ses as these were much in use for telling the time. Throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries they had them in almost all the churches, that the officiating clergyman might be able to measure the length of his sermon."

Jean laughed.

"I wish they had them now," she declared mischievously.

"Sometimes I do," smiled Uncle Bob. "It is said the gla.s.ses were originally invented in Egypt. Wherever they came from, they certainly were a great convenience to those who had no other means of telling the time. Charlemagne, I have read, had a sand gla.s.s so large that it needed to be turned only once in twelve hours. Fancy how large it must have been. At the South Kensington Museum is a set of four large sand gla.s.ses evidently made to go together. Of course you have seen, even in our day, hour, quarter-hour, and minute gla.s.ses."

"I used to practice by an hour gla.s.s," Jean replied quickly. "At least it was a quarter-of-an-hour gla.s.s, and I had to turn it four times."

"It would be strange not to have clocks and watches, wouldn't it?"

reflected Giusippe as they walked back to the hotel.

"I guess it would!" Hannah returned emphatically. "The meals would never be on time."

"One advantage in that, my good Hannah, would be that n.o.body would ever be scolded because he was late," retorted Mr. Cabot humorously.

The three weeks allotted for the London visit pa.s.sed only too quickly, and surprisingly soon came the day when the travelers found themselves aboard ship and homeward bound.

Perhaps after all they were not altogether sorry, for despite the marvels of the old world there is no place like home. Hannah was eager to open the Boston house and air it; Jean rejoiced that each throb of the engine brought her nearer to her beloved doggie; Uncle Bob's fingers itched to be setting in place the Italian marbles he had ordered for the new house; and Giusippe waited almost with bated breath for his first sight of America, the country of his dreams.

But a great surprise was in store for every one of these persons as the mighty steamer left her moorings and put out of Liverpool harbor.

Across the deck came a vision, an apparition so unexpected that Jean and Giusippe cried out, and even Uncle Bob muttered to himself something which n.o.body could hear. The figure was that of a girl--a girl with wind-tossed hair who, with head thrown back, stopped a moment and looked full into the sunset.

It was Miss Ethel Cartright of New York, Giusippe's beautiful lady of Venice!

CHAPTER VII

AMERICA ONCE MORE

The voyage from Liverpool to Boston was thoroughly interesting to Giusippe. In the first place there was the wonder of the great blue sea--a sea so vast that the Italian boy, who had never before ventured beyond the ca.n.a.ls of the Adriatic, was bewildered when day after day the giant ship plowed onward and still, despite her speed, failed to reach the land. Sunlight flooded the water, twilight settled into darkness, and yet on every hand tossed that mighty expanse of waves.

Would a haven ever be reached, the lad asked himself; and how, amid that pathless ocean, could the captain be so sure that eventually he would make the port for which he was aiming? It was all wonderful.

Fortunately the crossing was a smooth one, and accordingly every moment of the voyage was a delight. What happy days our travelers pa.s.sed together! Miss Cartright was the jolliest of companions. She dressed dolls for Jean--dressed them in such gowns as never were seen, dainty French little frocks which converted the plainest china creature into a wee Parisian; she read aloud; she told stories; she played games.

Hannah surrendered unconditionally when, one morning after they had been comparing notes on housekeeping, the fact leaked out that Miss Cartright's mother had been a New Englander. That was enough!

"She has had the proper sort of bringing up," remarked Hannah, with a sigh of satisfaction. "She knows exactly how to pack away blankets and how to clean house as it should be done. She is a very unusual young woman!"

Coming from Hannah such praise was phenomenal.

Mr. Cabot seemed to think, too, that Miss Cartright possessed many virtues.

At any rate he enjoyed talking with her, and every evening when the full moon touched with iridescent beauty the wide, pulsing sea he would tuck the girl into her steamer chair and the two would stay up on deck until the clear golden ball of light had climbed high into the heaven.

So pa.s.sed the voyage.

Then as America came nearer Giusippe witnessed all the strange sights that heralded the approach to the new continent; he saw the lights dotting the coast; he watched steamers which were outward bound for the old world he had left behind; he strained his eyes to catch, through a telescope, the murky outlines of the land.

"Here is still another use to which gla.s.s is put, Giusippe," said Mr.

Cabot indicating with a gesture the red flash-light of a beacon far against the horizon. "Without the powerful reflectors, lenses, and prisms which are in use in our lighthouses many a vessel would be wrecked. For not only must a lighthouse have a strong light; it must also have a means of throwing that light out, and thereby increasing its effectiveness. Scientists have discovered just how to arrange prisms, lenses, and reflectors so the light will travel to the farthest possible distance. At Navasink, on the highlands south of New York harbor, stands the most powerful coast light in the United States. It equals about sixty million candle-power, and its beam can be seen seventy nautical miles away. The carrying of the light to such a tremendous distance is due to the strong reflectors employed in conjunction with the light itself. The largest lens, however, under control of the United States is on the headlands of the Hawaiian Islands. This is eight and three-quarters feet in diameter and is made from the most carefully polished gla.s.s. And by the way, among other uses that science makes of gla.s.s are telescopes, microscopes, and field-gla.s.ses, which are all constructed from flawlessly ground lenses.

Often it takes a whole year, and sometimes even longer, to polish a large telescope lens. Without this magnifying agency we should have no astronomy, and fewer scientific discoveries than we now have. The gla.s.ses people wear all have to be ground and polished in much the same fashion; opera gla.s.ses, magic lanterns, and every contrivance for bringing distant objects nearer or making them larger are dependent for their power upon gla.s.s lenses."

"Even when making gla.s.s I never dreamed it could be used for so many different purposes," answered Giusippe.

"I wish we had counted up, as we went along, how many things it is used for," Jean put in.

"We might have done so, only I am afraid you would have become very tired had we attempted it," laughed Uncle Bob. "In addition to optical gla.s.s there are still other branches of science that could not go on without gla.s.s in its various forms. Take, for instance, electricity. It would not be safe to employ this strange force without the protection of gla.s.s barriers to hedge in its dangerous current. Gla.s.s, as you probably know, is a non-conductor of electricity, and whenever we wish to confine its power and prevent it from doing harm we place a layer of gla.s.s between it and the thing to be protected. The gla.s.s checks the progress of the current. In all chemical laboratories, too, no end of gla.s.s test-tubes, thermometers, and crucibles are in demand for furthering research work. Science would be greatly hampered in its usefulness had it not recourse to gla.s.s in its manifold forms."

"What a wonderful material it is!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Jean. "I never shall see anything made of gla.s.s again without thinking of all it does for us."

"Be grateful, too, Jean, to the men who have discovered how to use it,"

replied Mr. Cabot gravely. "Certainly our mariners many a time owe their safety to just such warning beacons as the one ahead. We must ask the captain what light that is. Just think--to-morrow morning we shall wake up in Boston harbor and be at home again."

A hush fell on the party.

"I shall be dreadfully sorry to have Miss Cartright leave us and go to New York; sha'n't you, Uncle Bob?" said Jean at last, slipping her hand into that of the older woman who stood beside her. "Wouldn't it be nice, Miss Cartright, if you lived in Boston? Then I'd see you all the time--at least I would when I wasn't in Pittsburgh, and then Uncle Bob could see you, and that would be almost as good."

"Almost," echoed Uncle Bob.

"But you are coming to New York to see me some time, Jean dear," the girl said with her eyes far on the horizon. "You know your uncle has promised that when you go to Pittsburgh both you and Giusippe are to stop and visit me for a few days."

"Yes, I have not forgotten; it will be lovely, too," replied Jean.

"Still that is not like having you live where you can dress dolls all the time. Why don't you move to Boston? I am sure you would like it. We have the loveliest squirrels on the Common!"

Everybody laughed.

"I have been trying to tell Miss Cartright what a very nice place Boston is to live in," added Mr. Cabot softly.

"Well, we all will keep on telling her, and then maybe she'll be convinced," Jean declared.

So they parted for the night.

With the morning came the bustle and confusion of landing. Much of Uncle Bob's time was taken up with the inspection of trunks, and with helping Giusippe sign papers and answer the questions necessary for his admission to the United States. Then came the parting. They bade a hurried good-bye to Miss Cartright, whom Uncle Bob was to put aboard the New York train, and into a cab bundled Hannah, Giusippe, and Jean, in which equipage, almost smothered in luggage, they were rolled off to Beacon Hill.

Nothing could exceed Giusippe's interest in these first glimpses of the new country to which he had come. For the next few weeks he went about as if in a trance, struggling to adjust himself to life in an American city. How different it was from his beloved Venice! How sharp the September days with their early frost! How he missed the golden warmth of the sunny Adriatic and the familiar sights of home! During his journey through France and England the constant change of travel had carried with it sufficient excitement to keep him from being homesick; but now that he was settled for a time in Boston he got his first taste of what life in the United States was to be like. Not that he was disappointed; it was only that he felt such a stranger to all about him. The automobiles, subways, elevated roads, all confused his brain, and the dusty streets made his throat smart with dryness.

Daily, however, he became more and more accustomed to his surroundings, and when at last he ventured out alone and discovered that he could find his way back again his courage rose. Then he began going on errands for Hannah, and was proud and glad to be of use. He accompanied Uncle Bob to his office and arrived home alone in safety. Gradually the strangeness of his new home wore away. Every novel sight he beheld, every custom which was surprising to him, everything that he did not understand he asked a score of questions about. It was _why_, _why_, _why_, from morning until night. His questions, fortunately, were intelligent ones, and as he remembered with accuracy the answers given him and applied the knowledge thus gained to future conditions he made amazing headway in becoming Americanized. He got books and read them; he visited the churches, Library, and Art Museum. And when he saw how much of its beauty the New World had borrowed from the Old he no longer felt cut off from his Italian home.

Uncle Bob, in the meantime, had been forced to plunge so deeply into business that he had had little opportunity to aid his protege in these explorations. But one Sat.u.r.day noon he came home and announced that he was to treat himself to a half holiday.

"I am not going back to the office to-day," he declared. "Instead I intend to carry off you two young persons and show you something very beautiful, the like of which you will see nowhere else in all the world."

"What is it?" cried Jean and Giusippe.

"Oh, I'm not telling. Just you be ready directly after luncheon to go with me to Cambridge."