MINERS AND THEIR MINE
Notice the safety lamps in the men's caps, and the little railroad on which the cars of coal and ore travel, hauled by the useful mule.
So it is that by hard work and much danger we get coal for burning. Now, coal is dirty and heavy. A coal fire is hard to kindle and hard to put out, and the ashes are decidedly disagreeable to handle. And after all, we do not really burn the coal itself, but only the gas from it which results from the union of carbon and oxygen. In some places natural gas, as it is called, which comes directly from some storehouse in the ground, is used in stoves and furnaces and fireplaces for both heating and cooking; and perhaps before long gas will be manufactured so cheaply and can be used so safely and comfortably that we shall not have to burn coal at all, but can use gas for all purposes—unless electricity should take its place.
II
DOWN IN THE QUARRIES
When walking in the country one day I came to a beautiful pond by the side of the road. The water was almost as clear as air, and as I looked down into it, I could see that the bottom was made of granite. The farther shores were cliffs of clean granite thirty or forty feet high and coming down to the water's edge. The marks of tools could be seen on them, showing where blocks of stone had evidently been split off. I picked up a piece of the rock and examined it closely. It proved to be made up of three kinds of material. First, there were tiny sparkling bits of mica. In some places there are mica mines yielding big sheets of this curious mineral which is used in the doors of stoves and the little windows of automobile curtains. With the point of a knife the bits in my piece of granite could be split into tiny sheets as thin as paper. The second material was quartz. This was grayish-white and looked somewhat like glass. The third material was feldspar. This, too, was whitish, but one or two sides of each bit were flat, as if they had not been broken, but split. This is the most common kind of granite. There are many varieties. Some of them are almost white, some dark gray, others pale pink, and yet others deep red. It is found in more than half the States of the Union.
This quarry had been given up and allowed to fill with water; but it was a granite country, and farther down the road there was another, where scores of men were hard at work. This second quarry was part-way up a hill; or rather, it was a hill of granite which men were digging out and carrying away. When they began to open the quarry, much of the rock was covered with dirt and loose stones, and even the granite that showed aboveground was worn and broken and stained. This is called "trap rock." The easiest way to get rid of it is to blast with dynamite and then carry away the dirt and fragments. Next comes the getting out of great masses of rock to use, some of them perhaps long enough to make the pillars of a large building.
