Page:The American Boy's Handy Book edition 1.djvu/403

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370
Winter.

smoke-rings to the laughing crowd of fellow-travellers in the hotel office, was standing upon the threshold of a mighty mystery, experimenting with laws, and showing the action of the Image missingFig. 236.Lamp-Chimney Smoke-Box same forces that are supposed to have produced the wonderful rings around Saturn! Indeed, it is asserted that the broad, misty band of light which we see at night stretched across the heavens, and known to every boy as the milky-way, is nothing more nor less than a gigantic vortex ring, composed of millions of heavenly atoms. Some very learned men think that the secret of the whole universe, the origin of gravitation and electricity, are all locked up in the mystery which controls the formation and motion of a simple smoke-ring.

As Adrien Guebhard wisely remarks, in an interesting article upon this same subject, "Nothing is vulgar to one who knows how to see, and nothing indifferent to one who knows how to observe."

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