“Mamma, please, will you lay down the hem for me?” said Lily.
Page [27].
“Nay,” replied the Thimble gaily, “I have not numbered one half of them,—
“Manganese, cobalt, rhodium,
Copper, potassium, sodium—”
“Who ever such names bestowed on ’em?
Such long names I hold in odium!”
cried I.
“There’s rhyme, but not reason,” laughed the Thimble.
“If it is hard to number up the metals,” I observed, “how impossible must it be to count all the uses to which they are put!”
“Impossible indeed,” said the Thimble. “Man avails himself every day, every hour, of the treasures which he has won from the mine—for