478 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



could be done only by the exercise of a good deal of skill and patience. 

 A great deal of vexation and trial of nerves and temper has been saved 

 to the world by the invention of matches, and the comforts of our homes 

 increased in many ways. Perhaps, therefore, the comparison I sug- 

 gested between friction-matches and Sunday-schools is not so incon- 

 gruous as it may at first seem. 



There were some devices known in those days for obtaining a light 

 or fire artificially, but they wore inconvenient, somewhat expensive, 

 and not in general use. The tinder-box was one of them. 



A gentleman not much older than myself told me not long since 

 that when he was in college one of his classmates was rich in the pos- 

 session of a tinder-box by means of which he could strike a light and 

 a fire in case of emergency, and he gave me a humorous account of the 

 process of striking a light, involving considerable skill, much patience, 

 and, as he said, some swearing. 



A great many boys have been taught in Sabbath-schools not to 

 swear, but a great many more have doubtless, by the use of friction- 

 matches, escaped numerous occasions and temptations to swear, and 

 wives have no doubt by this invention been saved from innumerable 

 scoldings for not covering up the fire properly at night. 



There is one curious fact about matches which I do not remember 

 to have seen mentioned. We speak of them as a recent invention, but 

 they are only an improvement upon a very old invention. Travelers 

 among savages have generally, if not universally, found that they 

 possessed the art of procuring fire when they wished, by rubbing two 

 pieces of wood together till the heat generated by the friction between 

 them caused one of them to take fire. It is described as a pretty crude 

 way of working, calling for considerable skill and some labor and pa- 

 tience. Perhaps the date of the invention may go back to the earliest 

 use of fire by man. Yet the invention itself is essentially that which 

 we practice when we strike a match. "SVe rub the match upon another 

 substance, and the heat generated by the friction between the two 

 causes the match to take fire. The improvement which the civilized 

 man has made upon the invention of his savage ancestor is to coat the 

 end of a piece of wood with a little composition of matter which takes 

 fire at a lower temperature than the wood itself, and burns more rap- 

 idly. Simple as the improvement is, it took the world a long time to 

 get it, and its inventor made a most important contribution to the 

 comforts of man. 



I was forcibly impressed a few years ago with the value to the 

 uncivilized man of the simplest inventions of the civilized man, as I 

 watched an Indian at Lake Superior at work upon a birch-bark canoe. 

 He had for tools only a knife, a hammer, and an awl, but I suppose 

 he must have used a hatchet to procure the wood and bark of which 

 the canoe was built. It was slow work even with these tools, and it 

 was difficult to believe that he could have built the vessel with the 



