AN ELEC-TRICK.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 5961, 28 August 1897, Page 1

AN ELEC-TRICK.

[By Eobert Barr.] (Detroit Free Press.) This electric incident was related to me by an American citizen of credit and renown, who recently crossed the Atlantic on one of the crack liners. The chief habitut of the smoking-room was president of a largo electric lighting company in America. He was a somewhat confident individual, as most successful and wealthy men get to be in time, and there was no question but he knew a good deal about electricity, as well as about a number of other things. There is always somebody in a steamer smoking-room who protends to universal knowledge, and on this pai ticular trip this particular man seemed to fill the office of general instructor. This is a vory useful function to perform, and it results in the spreading of knowledge, so that the others who take an expensive steamship trip get more for their money than mere board and lodging and tho consciousness of travelling so many hundred miles a day ; yet such is the ingratitude of humanity that some people resent the instruction thus flung abroad, and the man who knows absolutely everything is rarely popular with his fellow passengers, especially if he is a little strenuous in his self-assertion. The electrical expert had little patience with anyone who did not believe that electricity was not shortly going to run the whole world. If anyone ventured an opinion to the contrary, the expert promptly floored him with statistics and scientific assertions that not many, at the moment, were able to controvert, and as there was no library of electrical books on board it was difficult to hold one's own against the president of the electric lighting company. "In a very few years," said the president loudly one evening, " the man who has no electricity in his house will be accounted a fool." " When you monopolists succeed in supplying it cheaper than gas," put in one of the listeners, " then it will be time for the rest of us to consider it." "Ifs cheaper than gas now," said tho president, "if you take into account the candle power it gives and the absence of the many disadvantages of gas. Perhaps you may not know that a gas jet consumes as much oxygen in a room as fifteen persons. The moment gas is lighted in a room everyone begins to breathe vitiated air, which becomes more and more vitiated as time goes on. Then there is the heat, which in a warm summer climate like ours is very important ; gas jets raise the temperature in a room to an unbearable extent, while electricity is absolutely cool." All this was reiterated night after night when dinner was over until some of the passengers became rather tired of the subject of electricity. There was among the passengers one quiet man from Boston, who, strange as it may appear, coming from such a cultured city, had no information to bestow upon his fellow mortals. He was a silent man, who enjoyed his cigar, and kept pretty much to himself. Nevertheless, like all other frequenters of the smoking-room he was compelled during the voyage to take in a good deal of electricity. However, he made no complaint, but kept right on saying nothing till one evening, a few days before landing, he entered the smoking-room somewhat later than the others, who were all seated there, while the president of the electrical company, as usual, was holding forth upon the blessings that electricity would ultimately bestow upon this world. The Boston man took a cigar from his pocket and meditatively bit the end off it, paying no attention to the conversation so largely monopolised by the electrical magnate. He wandered absent-mindedly to one of the wall brackets which held an electrical lighted globe on its end, and putting his cigar between his lips attempted to light it at the electric lamp as a man would at a candle. A ripple of amusement ran round the smoking-room as the man from Boston endeavoured to light his cigar at the frosted globe. "Now look at that," said the president in a whisper. "Would you imagine that any intelligent man living in America today would not know better than try to light his cigar at an incandescent light ?" " Oh, it's all right," said another. "He's a man who doesn't talk much, but thinks a good deal, and he has forgotten himself for the moment." But just as this man was speaking a red glow came round the . end of the cigar, a puff of smoke came out of the Bostonian's mouth, and he forthwith sat quietly down as if he had done the most ordinary thing in the world ; opened his book and went on reading, paying no attention to the buzz of exclamations that rose up around him. The jaw of the president of the electric lighting company dropped, and he stared at the unconscious Bostonian as if the man had unexpectedly come aboard in midocean. . The Boston man was a frigid, unsociable person, who never addressed a remark to a fellow passenger, so no one in the smoking room had the courage to ask him what kind of cigars he smoked, or how he succeeded in lighting an ordinary cigar at an electric light. Even the New Torker seemed afraid to tackle the man from Massachusetts, in spite of the merciless comments of the others on the heatgiving qualities of electricity which began to make his life a burden. Many tried to light their cigars at the lamp, but none succeeded except the impassive Bostonian, who never took the slightest notice of the curiosity which his cigar-lighting accomplishment invariably aroused. On the last night of the voyage, when after dinner the Boston man came into tho smoking-room and lit his cigar as usual, the New Torker could stand it no longer. "I bog your pardon, sir," he said, " but I'd give a hundred dollars to know how you do that." " How I do what ? " asked the Bostonian coldly. " How you light your cigar." " I light my cigar, sir," replied the Bostonian calmly, "in auy way that seems to mo handiest. If I have a match in my pocket I strike it and light my cigar, if there is an electric globe handy I light it there. Why do you ask ? " "Would you mind lighting ono of my cigars at that globe ?" asked the electrician. " Thank you ; I never smoke any cigars but my own." " Well, what I want to know is," said tho other, "' how you manage to light it at the electrio globe ?" " Oh, that is very simple," said the man from Boston. "As is well known by every intelligent person, electricity gives out a great deal of heat, and added to that vitiates tho atmosphere in a way that a gas jet would never condescend to do. Electricity has many objectionable qualities, but has one good point ; you can always light your cigar at it." "Oh, that's all very well," replied the other, "but you've had your fun, and now if you'll let us havo the secret of it I'll stand the champagne for the crowd." " Done," said the Bostonian, so taking a cigar from his case, he, with a penknife, made a deep cavity in the business end of it, preserving tho powdered tobacco that came out of the hole. Then he struck one of those fusees which smokers use out of doors in windy weather, and after it flamed out and left a red hot globe, he inserted this burning cylinder in the cavity in the end of the cigar and broke off the stem, covering it up with the powdered tobacco,

so that the cigar looked to all intents and purposes like any other cigar. " There," he said, " that will keep fire in the end of it for ten or fifteen minutes. If during that period you draw on the ond of the cigar it will shortly after light up completely. I never performed this fusee operation in tho smoking room because the fumes are obnoxious except out of doors. And now, as dry champagne has many points more interesting to discuss than dry electricity, you may order up a few bottles if everybody is ready for a drink. And I may add for the benefit of you unsophisticated New Torkers that I have always succeeded in getting the champagne out of this trick whenever I have crossed the ocean, although, alas, nearly everybody outside New Tork knowß how it is done."