“You would have nothing but the dust-hole before you,” said the Scissors. I thought the remark very unpleasant.
“I almost wish that I had remained in my mine,” sighed I.
“Oh no,” said a soft voice beside me, and I remarked a beautiful little Thimble, of a metal unknown to me before, so bright, and white, and shining, that I felt at once that it was of superior nature.
“Would you wish,” she continued, “to lie useless, to be of no benefit to any? Has not man refined, formed, polished, improved you, and exerted the powers of his reason to render you an instrument of good?”
“What has man’s reason to do with us?” said I.
“I know not whether I can explain myself clearly,” replied the Thimble, “but I will endeavour to show you what I mean. Man has been gifted with a power called reason; by this he governs the world, by this he subdues creatures stronger than himself, and makes all things combine to serve him. He has discovered that iron possesses a strength which he may turn to valuable account. It would be endless labour to plough the fields, if the ground had to be torn up by the hand; it would be terrible work to reap the corn, if each blade had to be pulled off by the fingers. Man determined to aid his own weakness by the wonderful strength of iron. He made the ploughshare, and the furrows are turned up; he made the sickle, and the sheaves are gathered; huge trees, which he would never have had force to pull down, are laid low by a few strokes of his axe.”
“There is no doubt but that ours is the most useful metal by far,” said the Scissors, with something of a sneer. “Who would use ploughshares, or sickles, or axes of silver? Precious little work they would do!”
“I grant it,” said the Thimble, with perfect good-humour; “but we all have our place in the world, we all have some good purpose to fulfil. Zinc, lead, tin, arsenic, platina, nickel—”
“Stop, stop,” I exclaimed, overwhelmed with such a list; “I never knew there were so many metals before.”
