"Ah! that's just it! They didn't know how. They studied and studied to do that very thing; for if they could find an easy way to get the phosphorus out, they could make railway steel out of their own iron, and stop buying of Europe. Mr. Thomas, a young English chemist, did not believe what other folks said, who had tried experiments to get phosphorus out of iron: they said it could not be driven out by heat. So he and a friend of his set to work, with a little kettle, to try again. When iron ore is melted, the phosphorus has such an affinity for iron, that it will leave the stone, and go into the iron; or if there is any in the coal or limestone used, it will leave either of them to get into the iron. But Mr. Thomas and his friend found by experiment, that although the phosphorus had a greater affinity for iron than any thing else up to a very high temperature, yet, if the iron was heated up to twenty-five hundred degrees, it would leave the iron to go into limestone; and you must keep it at that heat until the limestone with the phosphorus in it was drawn off from the iron, or the phosphorus will go right back to the iron again. So, by a patent process which Mr. Thomas and Mr. Gilchrist invented, one of the principal things about which is the putting of a quantity of limestone into the furnace with the iron ore, as a bait to attract the phosphorus when it is heated to twenty-five hundred degrees, they can get pure iron in England out of very common ore, and so sell us railroad-steel a good deal cheaper than we can make it; and England does not have to send to Spain and other countries now, as it used to, for iron that has no phosphorus in it."
"That is a pretty good story, Prof. Tell us some more chemistry stories."
"No," said Mr. Le Bras: "we can't have Johnny teaching all the way to the Harbor. And you, young man, must begin to look up information in books, as Johnny has, without always troubling some one to tell you; and then you can begin to inform others of some things, and not always take the place of a learner. Pierre, you must begin to put this young man into a solid course of reading, where he will be gaining some information of value by his own efforts. Isn't he out of stories yet?—that is, don't he read any thing else?"
"I was intending to ask you pretty soon," replied Pierre, "if I hadn't better go into town and see if I can find some book of information. I have begun to have him read items of importance in the papers, but there is no suitable book at the cottage."
"Get him a book to-day, any thing you please, and I will foot the bill."
"Don't get me any thing awful dry, will you, Pierre?" said Felix. "If you do, I shall just read it without knowing a word I have read."
"I'll see to that. Perhaps I shall have to send to New York for what I want. But I think I can fix you, sir. I don't mean that you shall forget any thing you read that is worth remembering, even if I have to catechise you every day about it."
"Well, anyhow, I don't have to read but an hour a day," returned Felix; "and I guess I can stand it a while longer."
"That is all put on," said Pierre to Mr. Le Bras, in a low tone: "he is beginning to like his hour of reading in the morning; he told me so yesterday."
"And does he keep on improving?"