PROFESSOR VAN WAGENER'S EYE.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1247, 23 January 1896, Page 39

PROFESSOR VAN WAGENER'S EYE.

By W. L. Auden. ‘ There is one thing/ said the Colon®!, as we were walking alorg the Strand one oven--ing. ‘ in which London is behind the age, aM that is in the matter of electric lighting, 'lake my own town of New Berlinopolisville. It hasn’t more than fifty thousand inhabitants, but there isn’t a gas lamp in the whole place, except in a few houses. The streets and most of the houses are all lighted with electricity, and I shouldn’t be surprised to find when I get homo again that our people were doing all their cooking and house-warm-ing by electric tivai. Why yott Britishers still stick to gas as yo U do, is something that I can’t account for. ‘ Did I ever tell you about old Professor Van Wagener and his electric inventions e" Well, this locks like a respectable bar-room,, and, if you say so, we’ll step in and have a. little something, and I’ll tell you about the Professor. one of our most remarkable men, and though the general public doesn't know it, be did more for the cause of electricity than almost any man in America, except Edison. ‘About two years ago,’ began the ColoneL as be sipped his hot Scotch, and cried in vain; to tilt back on its imaginary hind-legs the' sofa on which we were sitting, ‘ Professor Van Wagener went crazy, as most folks thought, on the subject of electricity. Incandescent lamps were his particular style of lunacy j and he made up his mind that lie wouldn’t have any other style of light in his house. You see his sight was beginning to get a little dim, which made him dissatisfied with gas ; and then he had knocked over his kerosene lamp—paraffin, I believe you call it over hero, though I don’t see what right you have to invent new* names for things that we Americans have named —half a dozen times,, and had come so near to setting the house on fire, that he was anxious to get rid of kerosene altogether. Then, again, lie believed that electricity would be a good deal cheaper than gas, provided it was properly managed ; and I’m inclined to think that he was right.. Anyway, ho told Mrs Van Wagoner that he was going to furnish the house with incandescent lights, and that she might sell her kerosene lanips and her gas fixtures for what they would bring. ‘ Now thishyer Professor was not only an ingenious man, but he was a practical man, which is something that a Professor very seldom is. He saw that it was all a mistake to have lights fixed in one place, as gas-burners are, or to have them carried about by hand like ordinary lamps or candles. ‘ “ Peripatetic lamps are what we want,” said he, which, I suppose, means lamps fastened on the top of our heads, though I admit that I don’t know any German to speak of. So the Professor, as soon as he had taken the gas fixture out of the front hall, fitted an incandescent light on the top of the head of the housemaid, and supplied it from a storage battery that was concealed under the girl’s back hair. When there was no need for a light in the front hall it was left in darkness, but whenever anybody rang at the front door, the maid just turned up her light arid answered the bell. She was rather a pretty girl, and she made a fine effect with her lamp glowing on the top of her head, and lighting up her face in a way that would have made an ugly face pretty hard to bear. When she showed visitors into the parlour, she would walk in front of them, lighting the way ; and everybody declared that she was a long way superior to the best hall light that had ever been previously known.

‘ Then the Professor fitted a light in the inside of his silk hat, and cut openings in the hat to let the light shine through. In front of the hat was a window of plain glass; on the right side was one of green glass ; and on the left side one of red glass. You see, the Professor’s idea was that his lights would show which way he was heading when he went out on the street after dark.

‘ “ Any man who knows the rule of the road,” says he, “ will know by the colour of my lights which way I am heading, and can keep out of my way.” ‘ This was very convenient for the old gentleman, for, as I have said, his sffiht was rather dim, letting alone the fact that he had one glass eye ; and this being the case, he often ran into people, and horses, and things, when he was out after dark. He made a good deal of a sensation the first tune he appeared on our Broadway, with his headlight and his side-lights burning their brightest, and, as was natural, he had a pretty big crowd fol- •' lowing him. The policemen were a little doubtful about the thing at the start, for a policeman always thinks that anything that is new must be unlawful. However the Professor was so generally respected that even the policemen hesitated to club their ideas into his head.

‘ Professor Van Wagener bad a daughter who was middling popular with the young men aithough she did know an awful lot of mathematics and chemistry. Of course, her father fitted her, as he did everybody else in the house, with an electric head-light; but the girl wasn t very well pleased with it When a young man came to sec her, she would turn herself on and light him into the back parlour

tvhere they would sit together and talk. But tsomehow the young men never seemed to Jnake much progress after Miss Sallie was lighted by electricity. Whether it was that no i'cHow likes to have an electric light resting «n his shoulder, or whether it was because vheve was no way of turning the light down - till it would burn in a cosy subdued way, like {?us when it is turned down by an intelligent girl, I can't say ; but the result of the thing was that Sallie didn’t get a single offer from the day her father lit her up with the incandescent lamp. At first she begged him to lot her have a kerosene light, and when he wouldn’t do it she cried a good deal, and said that be wanted her to die an old maid. That’s what would probably have happened if it hadn’t been for the intelligence of a young 2nan who came to see her before the winter was quite over, and brought a candle with him every time. Sallie would light the candle, and then turn herself off for the rest of the evening, and she gathered in that young man the very second time he called at the house. 4 Professor Yan Wagener had a cat that he considered to be an animal of considerable taste for science, and nothing would satisfy him till ho had provided the cat with an electric head-light. He had considerable difficulty in fastening the light on the cat’s head, for, although she had always soemed to take a good deal of interest in watching him experimenting with different aort3 of things in his chemical laboratory, she drew the line at electricity and objected to being lighted up like the rest of the people in the house. However, the Professor wouldn’t listen to her; and the first night that the lamp, was in working order, he put the cat in the kitchen and told her to lay for mice. They do say that the next morning, when the housemaid came downstairs, she found about five thousand mice lying on the kitchen floor, too frightened to think of running away. The cat wag sitting up in the the room, with her head-light blazing away, and she paying not the least attention to the mice, but just licking her chops, and£saying to herself that after all there was considerable good in electricity. She never made the least attempt to catch the mice, considering that it wouldn’t be sportsmanlike to take advantage of their condition. The girl, she just gave one big scream, and then she got out of that kitchen and fainted dead away on the hall-floor, breaking her head-light in the fall, and creating a good deal of excitement in the house. The Professor came down and swept up the mice, and carried them out in a basket. They do say there was pretty near a bushel of them, but I don’t doubt that the thing was exaggerated. Anyhow the house was completely cleared of mice; and whether the Professor drowned his basketful, or just let them loose somewhere in the streec, I never knew. I suspect he let them loose, for that is what a scientific man would have been middling sure •to do.

' ‘ There was one person in the Professor’s family who didn’t like the electric light business. That was Mrs Van Wagener. ?he was a woman of a’great deal of character, people said, and, of course, we all know that when a woman is said to have a great deal of character, what is meant is that she can make "herself mighty disagreeable, and generally does it. Mrs Van Wagener always disliked her husband’s scientific habits. She used to say that some men were kept up late at night hy whisky, and some by science, but of the two she preferred the man who went in for whisky. Mrs Waterman, who lived next door to Mrs Van Wagener, had a husband who drank considerable whisky, and Mrs Van Wagener used to say to her, “My dear, don’t you grieve! When Waterman get 3 drunk, you know where he is, but when my husband gets to work in his laboratory I never know from one minute to another whether he is alive, and all in one piece, or whether ho has blown himself up, and is Hoatterod all over the country in mornamillion bits.’’ You see, the Professor had blown himself up a number of times, which made his wife a little prejudiced against chemistry, though he had never done himself any very great harm, except when he lost his eye. ‘ Well, as I was saying, Mrs Van Wagoner was mightily opposed to the electric light, and nothing could induce her to wear one on her head. She compromised by wearing a light fastened to her waist-belt, but she complained that it was of very little use when she wanted to read or sew. “ Gimme an oldfashioned kerosene lamp every time,” she used to say. “ Some day thishyer electricity will blow up and kill the whole of us.” By the way, did you ever notice that women always believe that electricity is liable 1o explode ? I remember when we had electric bells put into our house in New Berlinopolisvillo, my aunt, who kept house for me, used to warn the servants never to bring a lighted candle anywhere near the wires for fear of setting the electricity on firo and blowing up the house. -Say what you will for women, you can’t honestly think that they luivo scientific minds.

‘ There was one thing that; troubled the Professor. He had his electric light rigged up in the top of his hat, as I believe I told • you. This was all right when he took his walks abroad, but it wasn’t quite so convenient in the house. Every time the Professor wanted a light he had either to call the maid, or his daughter, or his wife, or else he had to put on his hat. Now he had a fashion of reading in bed, and he found it mighty awkward to go to bed with his hat on, which was what he had to do if he wanted a light to read by. One day a happy thought struck him, and he told his wife that he had solved the problem of his head-light at last. ‘A glass eye isn’t of very much use, except for show, and this was a reflection that had always annoyed the Professor, ever since he began to wear a glass eye. He now saw his way to make that eye useful, and to give himself the most convenient light that a man ever had. His idea was to make a glass eye with an incandescent fibre in the middle of it, and to run it by a storage battery in his waistcoat pocket. So he went to work, and, being a veiy ingenious workman, as well as a man brimful of science, he turned out a glass eye that couldn’t be distinguished from a natural one, so far as appearances w ent, and that had an electric light of six candle-power in the middle of it. ‘lt was the biggest success that the Professor had ever had. Wherever he went after dark, that eye was blazing away and bVhtim' up the path. When ha wanted to read there was his light in just the handiest place it could possikly have been, d he fine w'res that ran from it down to his waistcoat pocket were concealed under Ins hair, so that Eardly anybody would notice them ; and when wanted to put his light out or to turn it on, all ho had to do was to his toger and thumb into his pocker. Ikon tna operated like a dark lanthorn, for whenever the Professor wanted ,o <..un km wneneve l y ~n d without tumbling light oi- m a , ,11 Tia had to do for the button in his pocket, all h' 3l : , 3 to whltpytf his eye. The light wouhl keep on

burning behind the eyelid, but it -wouldn’t be bright enough to attract atttentioxi. ‘ The day the Professor got his new eyelight into working order, his wife wasn’t at home, having gone out to spend the day and the evening. He lit himself up early in the evening, and, keeping in his room, he wasn’t seen by anybody. When night, came he went to bad early, so a 3 to enjoy the luxury of reading in bed. He took the storage battery out of bis pocket, and put it under the pillow ; and when he had stretched himself out in bed, with a book in his hand ant his eye blazing away with six candle power, he was about the happiest man in all New Berlinopoiisville. He read and read until he began to get sleepy, and then he put down his book, and thought over a lot of scientific things, till lie accidentally fell asleep. 1 told you he could close the lid over the illuminated eye if ho wanted to, but as a rule lie didn’t close that lid, but slept with it wide open. Mrs Van Wagener came home in course of time, an i naturally went up to her bedroom. She was a strong-minded woman, who was about as likely to steal a sheep as to faint away, but j she admitted afterwards that when she entered the room and saw the Profes-or’s eye | blazing its level best, she came nearer dropping on tlie floor than she liai ever done before. However, she pulled herself together, and woke the Professor up. die never said just how she did it, but it's my idea that he was waked up suddener than a man was ever waked before, tihe told him that this time he had gone too far; that his illuminated eye was simply blasphemous, and tint she wouldn’t stay in the same house, and much less in the same room, with it. “ It’s bad enough for a man to sleep with a glass eye open,” says she, “but when it comes to an illuminated eye, it is more than any Christian , woman is called to bear.” i ‘ The Professor was ordered to turn his eye ! out at once, which he naturally did, being a ; small, as ivell as a peaceful, man ; and he | was told that he must never wear an illumi- I nated eye again. This didn’t suit him, for ho was proud of his new eye, and then there is no denying that it ivas a very convenient thing. So he said that he really couldn’t afford to give up one of the most important inventions of the age just because of a woman’s whim, and he stuck to his view of the case all through the night The next morning, Mrs Van Wagener went home to her mother, and brought a suit for a divorce I against the Professor on the ground of cruel j and inhuman treatment. Wh n the case j came on to be tried, the Professor was com- | pelled to show the practical working of his illuminated eye to the jury, and the3 r found a j verdict for’ the plaintiff without leaving their seats.

‘ The Professor didn’t seem to care very much about this, for the only tiling he did care much about was science, and now that he had his house to himself ho had nobody to interrupt him in his experiments. But lie never could go into the street with his eye lit up without causing a crowd to collect and follow him, and presently there was an injunction got out against him, forbidding him to wear his eye in public, on the ground that it constituted a nuisance, and led to breaches of tlie peace. The poor old gentleman got angry at this, and said he wouldn’t go into the street either by day or night ; and the consequence was that, not having any exercise, he took siek and died. Well, he was a mighty bright light of science, and it’s my opinion that some one else will take up his scheme of illuminated servant girls, and the like, and make a fortune out of it, though I’m willing to admit that I don’t believe that illuminated glass eyes will ever become popular.’ — The Idler.