BLACK DIAMONDS. 337 



BLACK DIAMOiSTDS. 



By M. F. MAUEY. 



AS we sit by our firesides and peer into the glowing coals, or watch 

 the bright jets of flame spring into existence to throw their 

 cheery light into the room, making weird, fantastic shadows on the 

 wall, and bringing with them such comforting cheer to our senses of 

 sight and feeling, we are often brought into very reflective moods, es- 

 pecially if we are sitting in the twilight, while the cold wind is whis- 

 tling, and the sharp snow and hail of winter are cUcking against the 

 windows. But how very few think, or care to know, whence comes 

 this black substance that adds so much to the comfort and ease and 

 luxury of life ! Yet an account of its uses and its history and the 

 story of its formation are instructive in the extreme, and as interesting 

 as those two great subjects of the day — the telephone and the pho- 

 nograph. Why the former excites so little comment, and the latter so 

 much, can be easily explained, for we were born and raised with the 

 blessings and comforts of the one, and they are of such every-day 

 occurrence as not to excite attention ; while the others, though less 

 beneficial to the race, are so new and startling in their wonders, that 

 they at once claim our thoughts and make us eager to learn of them 

 and their progress. 



There is no one substance in all Nature that has done more to ame- 

 liorate the condition of mankind, to build up the pride and strength of 

 nations, to convert the world from barbarity to civilization, or add more 

 to our ease and luxury, than this black and uninviting-looking mineral. 

 Through its agency in producing the motive power for machinery 

 in the steam-engine, the wUd places of the earth are penetrated, men 

 have ready and quick transit thereto, all the benefits of civilization 

 flow in, cities spring up, the husbandman has facilities for sending his 

 surplus produce to the markets of the world, and wasfe places are made 

 to blossom like the rose. Those nations that possess it in the greatest 

 abundance and purity are those that rise the most rapidly to the high- 

 est and mightiest positions ; for it is the mainspring of all manufactures, 

 and it carries the products of such to the consumers in distant coun- 

 tries, across the trackless waste of waters, with a certainty and speed 

 unattainable by any other means ; it enables nations to stretch forth 

 their armies and navies with such promptness that insults are fol- 

 lowed by speedy retribution, and invasion met or guarded against. 

 The light for our homes and cities, the most beautiful and delicate 

 dyes for clothing fabrics, and the ink that prints our books and papers 

 to scatter knowledge through the world, all come from the products 

 of its distillation. In all the power exercised by it, it works greater 

 wonders than the magician's wand in the "Arabian Nights;" in its 



VOL. XIT. — 22 



