As Lee cranked the machine into a swift whirl, the other boys stood well back, but looked with all their eyes. Like a showman putting his charges through their stunts, Lee put all his crude, homemade apparatuses through their paces.
“He’s doing it! He’s ketching lightning, like they said!” whispered Tony Zita as sparks leaped and crackled across the metal points set in brass so close to the wheel.
He showed his Leyden Jar “that you stored electricity in just like pouring molasses in a bucket, then shot it out again on a wire what sparks!”
He exhibited his Voltaic Pile, a crude stack of broken bits of iron and pieces of a copper pot and squares of old flannel wet in salt water that, as Lem Hicks admiringly put it, “without no rubbing together of things—without no nothing doing at all except piling up of wet iron and copper—just went ahead and made this here electricity!”
“Gosh A’mighty,” Lem exclaimed, “that’s a smart thing! Wish I could fix up something like it oncet!”
Jimmy Bobb didn’t have so much to say. He just looked, taking it in and storing it away in his eager hungering brain.
Then Lee opened a wall cupboard and brought out his latest treasures—the things he had prepared especially to show Jimmy Bobb what electricity could do. He came back to the group now, bearing the piece of broken pipestem in his hand. It was a clear, yellowish piece of stem, with a pretty sheen to it. Lee handed it to Jimmy, along with a rag of flannel cloth.
“Rub the yellow stuff with the cloth,” he ordered. “Rub hard.”
Jimmy’s legs might be feeble, but his arms were strong. He put in some sharp, vigorous rubs, his face excited but withal mystified. He didn’t know what it was all about, but he was making a try at it.
“Now that’s enough.” As he spoke, Lee scattered some downy feathers on the table. “Reach the yellow piece out, somewhere near the feathers,” he went on, “and see what’ll happen.”