Page:Ballantyne--The Battery and the Boiler.djvu/125

 and removin' the touch from a conductor, connecting and disconnecting wires and batteries, you can make electricity flow just as you let on or stop water by turnin' a stopcock—"

"Not exactly," interrupted Robin, "because, you see, electricity does not really flow, not being a substance."

"Not a substance, sir! w'y, w'ot is it then?"

"Like light and sound, it is merely an effect, an influence, a result," answered Robin. "We only use the word flow, and talk of electricity as a fluid, for convenience' sake."

"Well, w'otever it is or isn't," continued the puzzled Vulcan, gazing at vacancy for a few seconds, "when you 've set it agoin'—or set agoin' the things as sets it agoin'—you make a suspended needle wag, and when you stop it you make the needle stop waggin', and by the way in which that there needle wags you can spell out the letters o' the alphabit—so many wags to the right bein' one letter, so many wags to the left bein' another letter, an' so on,—so that, what between the number o' wags an' the direction o' the waggin's, you—you come for to—there, I 'm lost again, an' I must go in for another spell wi' the sledge, so we 'll have to tackle the subject another time, Mr. Wright."

Thus speaking, Vulcan seized the ponderous hammer in his powerful grasp and proceeded to