Page:Lippincotts Monthly Magazine-40.djvu/620

602 and I suppose she had learned to find some places on the map. How she taught arithmetic must remain a mystery, for she certainly knew nothing of it. Yet I am not sure that her sweet manner, the soft inflections of her gentle voice, and the perfect purity of her English were not of better value to her pupils than anything a normal-school graduate could have taught them.

Milly taught for two or three years, and finally married a handsome, light-colored scamp, who made a business of fascination, and who had no other. Last winter I saw her again, after four years. Her husband had deserted her, and she had gone back to her mother with her child. The little girl in no respect resembles either her loving mother or her handsome ne'er-do-weel father, but has "reverted" to the strongly characteristic ugliness of her half-Indian grandmother. Perhaps it is just as well. I asked Milly why she did not go back to teaching, and she lifted her pathetic eyes—more pathetic now for the worn face in which they are framed—and said, with the soft lingering cadence of old, "I don't guess I know enough. I've forgotten all I used to know, and sometimes I almost think I never did know anything." Poor little Milly!

If you care to have the views of a practical engineer on the subject of "The Keely Motor Secret," I take pleasure in giving them to you, as follows:

I have seen Mr. Keely's motor in operation, and I am obliged to say as an engineer that in my judgment there is nothing particularly new in the entire subject. It is a reproduction of force by well-known means.

The shrouding of this Keely motor business in words and sentences void of rational meaning in order to surround the simplest facts with an air of mystery has been during the entire life of the undertaking one of the most amusing features of the scheme.

Boscovich's hypothesis of the constitution of matter, which may almost be considered the foundation of analytical mechanics, contains the very essence of the so-called Keely motor.

This motor is clearly nothing more nor less than the generation of an elastic condition of air, gas, or vapor produced by causing the molecules of the gas acted upon to vibrate violently in a containing vessel, and from thence it is allowed to escape in this strained condition in order to produce a development of power in any way that may be thought desirable.

The production of steam is a similar development of power,—viz.:

1. The vibration of water by means of a form of motion known as heat causes it to assume an elastic condition of vapor, and

2. The vibration of air, gas, or vapor by means of a form of motion known as sound causes it to assume an elastic condition.

There is not the slightest difference, scientifically speaking, in the two actions. Similar causes produce similar results.

The etheric vapor or ether, which is so much spoken of as a great discovery by Mr. Keely, was known and acknowledged before he was born. Unquestionably it pervades all space and all substances, and without its presence in space and matter the transmission of heat, light, sound, and electricity cannot be accounted for.

The old law of action and reaction being equal, contrary, and simultaneous is shown in the actual movement of Mr. Keely's motor, and were the law untrue, his machine, as I saw it, would remain perfectly stationary; neither does he produce something out of nothing, as stated by some of those interested with him, for