"Well, I'd like to see him do it, before I believe it."
"I'll do it when we get home, to-night, if you will give me five cents, and papa will get me some acid to do it with, when he goes into town. The kind of acid I want will cost five cents."
"All right! here's your five cents," replied Felix, taking the amount from his pocket-book.
"After you have seen it proved that sugar is like charcoal, perhaps you can believe more easily that a diamond is. The particles of carbon in a diamond are packed very closely together, and in such a way as to reflect the rays of light beautifully, and separate them like a prism, when it is cut right. It is so hard, that it is not easy to burn it,—that is, to separate the particles by heat, and make them combine with the oxygen in the air,—but it will burn up if subjected to very strong heat indeed. There's no danger of your diamond burning up, though, Julia, even though you should drop it into the fire by accident; for a fire in a stove wouldn't be hot enough."
"I'm glad of that," replied Julia.
"I don't see as chemistry does so very much good," remarked Felix: "it only tells you about things; it don't make any thing."
"O Felix!" exclaimed Johnny: "there are hardly any of the arts that can be carried on without chemicals, or things chemists have learned how to make; and some of the most useful discoveries in the world have been made by chemists."
"Tell him about the way they learned how to make Bessemer steel out of common iron, as an example, Johnny," said Pierre.
"Well. You see, Felix, they can't make Bessemer steel out of iron that has much phosphorus in it; and most of the iron in the world has a good deal of phosphorus in it; and about all in our country and England has. So the English had to buy the pure iron in Spain, or some other country, and bring it over at a great cost, to make Bessemer steel of."
"Why didn't they take the phosphorus out of the iron?"