AT HOME WITH ATOMS.
Dear Mr. Punch,—After listening to Sir Henry Roscoe's Address at the Free Trade Hall last evening, my brain feels very much like a "molecule on the eve of being broken into atoms," by the grandeur of the subject on which he discoursed, and as he so kindly told us this catastrophe "may be brought about not only by heat vibrations, but likewise by an electrical discharge at a comparatively low temperature," the present state of the weather rather adds to the anxiety I feel about the seat of my mental organisation. Still "there is a fundamental difference," he tells us, "between the question of separating the atoms in the molecule, and that of splitting up the atom itself," so that there seems to be a remote chance in any case of my preserving an atom or two of sound sense and intelligence in the midst of impending chaos, the more so, as "even the highest of terrestrial temperatures, that of the electric spark, has failed to shake any atom in two."
In the course of his address Sir H. Roscoe also said, "There is no such thing in nature as great or small." I was always considered the smallest in my family, and it seems difficult, though at the same time encouraging, to believe I am equal in physical quantities of height and weight to the other members. What such nice men say must be true—at any rate until something truer is found out. I shall therefore cherish the idea I have hitherto been under a delusion. Mind may have some inscrutable quality wherewith to balance Matter. I remember my tallest sister was the one who thought least. Mind and Matter are now so much mixed, that they may be interchangeable molecules; who knows? Sir H. Roscoe observed also that "heat is evolved by the clashing of the atoms." I felt how true that was when we twelve molecules quarrelled as children.
I think, Mr. Punch, for a woman, I have gathered a great deal of information in a few hours.
Yours truthfully,
The Better Half of Somebody.