ELEMENTAL T MA ONETISM. 265 
guage a certain grace and mastery, which practice can 
alone impart. Let overy movement be made with care, and 
avoid slovenliness from the outset. Experiment, as I have 
said, is the language by which we address Nature, and 
through which she sends her replies; in the use of this 
language a lack of straightforwardness is as possible, and 
as prejudicial, as in the spoken language of the tongue. 
If, therefore, you wish to become acquainted with the 
truth of Nature, you must from the first resolve to deal 
with her sincerely. 
Now remove your needle from its loop, and draw it 
from eye to point along one of the ends of the magnet; 
res u spend it, and repeat your former experiment. You 
now find that each extremity of the magnet attracts one 
end of the needle, and repels the other. The simple 
attraction observed in the first instance, is now replaced 
by a dual force. Repeat the experiment till you have 
thoroughly observed the ends which attract and those 
which repel each other. 
Withdraw the magnet entirely from the vicinity of your 
needle, arid leave the latter freely suspended by its fiber. 
Shelter it as well as you can from currents of air, and if 
you have iron buttons on your coat, or a steel penknife in 
your pocket, beware of their action. If you work at night, 
beware of iron candlesticks, or of brass ones with iron rods 
inside. Freed from such disturbances, the needle takes np 
a certain determinate position. It sets its length nearly 
north and south. Draw it, aside and let it go. After 
several oscillations it will again come to the same position. 
If you have obtained your magnet from a philosophical in- 
strument maker, you will see a mark on one of its ends. Sup- 
posing, then, that you drew your needle along the end 
thus marked? and that the point of your needle was the 
last to quit the magnet, you will find that the point turns 
to the south, the eye of the needle turning toward the 
north. Make sure of this, and do not take the statement 
on my authority. 
Now take a second darning-needle like the first, and 
magnetize it in precisely the same manner; freely suspended 
it also will turn its eye to the north and its point to the 
south. Your next step is to examine the action of the two 
needles which you have thus magnetized upon each other. 
Take one of them in your hand, and leave the other sus^ 
