“Quite well, thank you, Judy,” I answered. “Your uncle admits you to his workshop, then?”
“Yes, indeed. He would feel rather dull, sometimes, without me. Wouldn’t you, Uncle Stoddart?”
“Just as the horses in the field would feel dull without the gad-fly, Judy,” said Mr Stoddart, laughing.
Judy, however, did not choose to receive the laugh as a scholium explanatory of the remark, and was gone in a moment, leaving Mr Stoddart and myself alone. I must say he looked a little troubled at the precipitate retreat of the damsel; but he recovered himself with a smile, and said to me,
“I wonder what speech I shall make next to drive you away, Mr Walton.”
“I am not so easily got rid of, Mr Stoddart,” I answered. “And as for taking offence, I don’t like it, and therefore I never take it. But tell me what you are doing now.”
“I have been working for some time at an attempt after a perpetual motion, but, I must confess, more from a metaphysical or logical point of view than a mechanical one.”
Here he took a drawing from a shelf, explanatory of his plan.
“You see,” he said, “here is a top made of platinum, the heaviest of metals, except iridium—which it would be impossible to procure enough of, and which would be difficult to work into the proper shape. It is surrounded you will observe, by an air-tight receiver, communicating by this tube with a powerful air-pump. The plate upon which the point of the top rests and revolves is a diamond; and I ought to have mentioned that the peg of the top is a diamond likewise. This is, of course, for the sake of reducing the friction. By this apparatus communicating with the top, through the receiver, I set the top in motion—after exhausting the air as far as possible. Still there is the difficulty of the friction of the diamond point upon the diamond plate, which must ultimately occasion repose. To obviate this, I have constructed here, underneath, a small steam-engine which shall cause the diamond plate to revolve at precisely the same rate of speed as the top itself. This, of course, will prevent all friction.”
“Not that with the unavoidable remnant of air, however,” I ventured to suggest.