Rather staggered by this request, which savored somewhat of the ruder style of badinage, and the very last thing we expected from the decorous gentleman of science, we replied, with just a shade of hauteur:
"Sir?"
"Put your knuckle to his nose."
"Really, I do not comprehend you."
"Put your finger to his nose and you will get a shock."
All this time Little Pickle was sliding and slithering up and down the rug in a manner highly calculated to wear out that costly piece of furniture.
"You perceive," continued spectacles, in an explanatory way, "that he has slippers on his feet. By keeping his feet in close contact with the rug, and rubbing them violently up and down, he generates electricity in his body to such an extent that he can transmit quite a sensible shock to another person.[A] Now try!"
We tried. Tick! A most unmistakable spark passed from the nose of L. P. to our knuckle.
The guests now began to crowd round, applying their knuckles to the poor boy's nose to that extent that it grew quite red, which, combined with a trifling unsteadiness his legs acquired from the unusual exertion, gave the dear boy quite a groggy appearance. Indeed, we observed his mother soon after draw him towards her and, stooping down, whisper something in his ear, at which he colored up, shook his head, and replied quickly, "No, only lemonade."
The scientific person, who was really a very amiable gentleman after all, taught us during the evening to make quite a curious little toy—to wit, a miniature camera. Having enlisted the services of Little Pickle, he procured a small pill-box, a minute fragment about half an inch square of broken looking-glass, and a fragment of beeswax. He first bored a small hole in the centre of the lid of the pill-box and another in the side; he then, with the aid of the beeswax, stuck the piece of the mirror across the bottom of the box at an angle of forty-five degrees to the axis of the disc of the box, so that by looking through one hole he could see objects through the other hole, thus enabling a person to look behind him. We feel that this description is not very clear, and yet for the life of us we do not know how to make it clearer. The best plan for the reader will be to look well at the diagrams showing the inside and outside of the camera, get the wax, glass, and pill-box, and then potter about with them till he gets it right.