CHILDREN'S COLUMN.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXXIII, Issue 10100, 8 April 1896, Page 3

CHILDREN'S COLUMN.

OBSCURING THE SUNSHINE OF LIFE There are persons in tho world who cask a shadow which is not deadly, but which is unmistakably depressing, I remember, one cold, clear Easter morning, going out after breakfast for a stroll. I was spending a few days at a friend's house in Yorkshire, in a district dotted over with industrial towns. As I looked around me I was conscious that the day, though fine enough, had little of brightness about it. A lark was going up into tho sky singing, but its song did nob sound very merry, for though the blue seomed trying to break through, there was adull, murky haze over heaven and earth. It was tho smoke of the innumerable factory chimneys, studding the face of the land. They made a great far-reaching canopy of smoke, and the shadow of that cloud robbed tho day of its brightness and the earth of its beauty. And is ib nob true that there aro persons wo meet who cast a depressing shadow— persons who soem to have a knack of taking the sunshine out of other people's lives ? Here, for example, is a big boy hard at work upstairs in the playroom. He has gob a beautiful little model yacht before him on the table, and he is dexterously laying on tho final coat of paint, planning in his mind the morrow's sailing match on the big pond. There is a tap at tho door, and in comes a little follow of eight with a pleading request that the big brother would " paint this loo." The toy in question is held up proudly ; ib \ hfts beon lowg w cbousheA possession. Cot • t&inly, it is not much to look at; one of i thoinaaisis Woken oK abort, ami anew bow■ ! spttt. \\vv4 bci\\ \vnptoi\ivid o\\t ot & svAto piece of firewood, while the rig is like that I pi no ship that ever sailed ; lout, sor alHhafc, ! it is dear to tho owner's heart.

The all brother looks down carelessly, brush in hand. " Pooh !" is the contemptuous comment, " that isn't worth a new coat of paint. Look at the wreck she is. What have you dona to hot bowsprit, and what d'ye call this?" giving the drooping, queer shaped sail a poke with the wet brush. " I should advise you to save up and buy a really decent ship. All the fellows would laugh at you ii you were to take that old thing up to the pond." lie turns to his task again, whistling to himself, quito headless that he has taken the sunshine out of the face and heart of the young pleader. Eight-year-old goes elowly out of the room. Ho looks down at the old boat he has treasured so long; it has yielded him many an hour of innocent enjoyment, for it always sailed well. But now he cad see nothing but its defects; its rusty colour, its ludicrous rig, its broken spars. All the pleasure of it is gone, spoiled by a few scornful words uttered almost at random.

Oh 1 big brothers, who read this, have a care in your contact with the younger ones ! It i? so easy to be scornful, so easy to depreciate, so easy to laugh them out of their interest in small pleasures and poor toys. But what right have you, from the height of your superior wisdom, to rob them thus ? Their dolls and playthings, their rhymes and games, may seem very absurd and worthless to you, but unless you can give them something else which they prize better, you have no right by contemptuous words to lowor and lessen the value of the old.

THE STORY OF A CHEMIST. There have beon heroes who were not precocious in their infancy, and great men whose boyhood gave little promise of a marvellous manhood. Sir Humphrey Davy became a great chemist, yet ho was such an ordinary boy that none of his toachers discerned in him the genius which made him one of the most successful scientific investigators of his age. At the ago of sixteen he was apprenticed to a druggist, who used to scold him as the idlest boy in town. The apprentice seemed more fond of swinging on tho gate and chaffing tho passers by than of, .grinding drugs .and making pills. ' £ ' ■ The boy, though ho neglected one kind 0! work, was not lazy. Ho converted tho apothecary's garret into a laboratory, and the good irmn knew that if his apprentice was not at tho irate, he was working destruction upstairs, whence often at) oxplosion would start the bottles pirouotting on their shelves.

When the druggist scut his approntico on an errand the boy sometimes would vex him by his long absence. For ho carried a geological hammer, and often returned with a pocket full of specimens which ho had chipped from the rocks. At twenty-two lie wont to London, and was hi illiterate that he had to ask a friend to write for him an acceptance of an invitation to dinner. The friend found a score of answers on the table, blotted and corrected, and Humphrey in a state of mingled perplexity and despair. Though illiterate, lie wrote poetry, conversed so as to delight his ciders in years and wisdom, and so pressed them in argument that one exclaimed, " Thou art tho most quibbling hand at a dispute I ever met with in my life!" Some men are remembered for one discovery, Mr. Gilbert, .1 ['resident of the Royal Society, is remembered for having discovered Humphrey Davy. Seeing him swing on the gate, ho was arrested by the intellect shining through the lad's faco. Conversation revealed that the boy was an amateur chemist and had a laboratory. .Mr. Gilbert opened hi* library to the boy, and subsequently secured iiim tho position of assitant to a Bristol chemist. Ho remained there until the celebrated Count Romford invited him to become assistant lecturer on chemistry at the Royal Institution in London.

Davy's personal appearance suggested anything but mental power. Ho was small, insignificant, round-shouldered, uncouth in manners, and very dogmatic. Wlion Count Kumford saw him, ho expressed regrot that he had so hastily invited him to become a lecturer of tho Royal Institution, and assigned to him tho smallest lecture-room. After the lecture, tho Count exclaimed, " Let this lad have free access to all the arrangements and helps the institution can afford." The theatre of tho institution was thrown open to him. His lectures took with the town. Jioblemen and duchesses, literary and scientific men, fashionable ladies and young missos, flocked to hear tho rustic youth—ho was only twenty-threo—whose natural eloquence, chemical knowledge, happy illustration, and fascinating experiments had created a now sensation in surfoiled London. Their inconso injured the man, but ib did not ruin the chemist. He set up for a man of fashion, and did become a prig. Bub ho loved his laboratory, and that passion kept his anxiety to shine in society subordinate to his ambition for scientific usefulness. Ho would work in the laboratory until there was no time to dress for tho dinnor to which some peer had invited him. In his luisto ho would put on a clean shirt over a soilod ono. From tho dinner he would go to a party, and return from it to his laboratory, where he would work till three or four in tho morning. A story is told which illustrates his dovotion to scionco and his frivolity. For several days he had boon working in the laboratory and attending parties, until ho woro several shirts on his back and as many pairs of stockings on his feot and calves, His proportions becamo so aldormanic that his friends woro alarmed, till Davy, snatching an hour for a change of dress, appeared but a shadow of his former greatness.