204 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



certain group of teachers, and throw the whole blame on the " deprav- 

 ity of human nature." True, it is not conducive to delicacy of feeling 

 or to accuracy of scientific perception to toil for hours together in the 

 Cimmerian gloom of the coal mine. Very little idea can be formed, 

 by forty-nine fiftieths of the population of this country, of the cost of 

 human toil at which their houses are kept warm and bright. Espe- 

 cially when the coal is worked in thin beds is the toil of the miner all 

 but intolerable. In some instances he actually lies full length on the 

 floor of the working, clad in nothing but a scanty pair of drawers, 

 working with his pick a little in advance of his head as he lies. Nor 

 does he cast off the badge of toil when he returns to the light of day. 

 The other day a colonel in the army, a man deeply interested in all 

 mechanical and scientific improvement, who was staying in one of the 

 great mining centers, happened to go to a public establishment in the 

 town in order to take a Turkish bath. While he was waiting for his 

 room, two miners came out, who had been enjoying that unusual lux- 

 ury. " I say, Jack," said one of them, " Moll won't know me. She 

 never saw my skin white." His wife had never seen him washed, ex- 

 cept his face. This may be an extreme case ; as in some of the "Welsh 

 districts the " tubbing " of the men on the Saturday night takes place 

 before the doors of their houses. But we give the incident as it actu- 

 ally occurred. 



But pass all this. Let us attribute to the miner as extravagant a 

 perversity of nature as the most zealous missionary can insist upon 

 he is at all events something better than a beast. Even a beast has 

 the instinct of self-preservation. In man it is, there can be no denial, 

 usually the very keenest of his instincts. And whatever the miner 

 may know, and of whatever he may be ignorant, from his first appren- 

 ticeship underground he has had held up to his imagination the fear- 

 ful and ever-present peril of the fire-damp. Abuse him as we may 

 and for our own part we should be very sorry to speak of him in any 

 terms but those of cordial respect we have not got a single step on 

 our journey toward the solution of the question, What makes him run 

 a risk that he knows to be hazardous ? 



Reader, have you ever been underground not for amusement or 

 out of curiosity, but in the discharge of your duty ? If so, have you 

 ever been alone underground, in a solitary point of the workings ? 

 And, if so, have you ever, by any accident, found yourself left in total 

 darkness. The writer has had this experience, and it is one that leads 

 him to speak with somewhat more of human sympathy for the collier 

 than might be natural for a literary man who is not also a workman. 



The oppression of utter darkness on the human organization is ter- 

 rible. And hardly less than the oppression of utter darkness is the 

 irritation produced by inadequate light. When, as they begin to 

 number seven times seven years, the gradual diminution in the focal 

 length of the vision often suffers a rather rapid increase, persons who 



