“I wish you would try it, father,” said Rollo; “you can uncover the coals in the kitchen, and find fire enough.”
“Well,” said his father, “I will.”
His father accordingly rose from his seat, and asked Rollo to go into the kitchen, and get the shovel, and bring it to the medicine closet. While Rollo was getting the shovel, his father went to the closet, and took down a little jar half filled with sulphur. When Rollo brought him the shovel, he took out a little of the sulphur upon the point of his knife, and laid it upon the shovel. He also took a small piece of paper, and laid it upon the shovel by the side of the sulphur. Rollo then led the way to the kitchen, followed by his father with the shovel, and his mother came behind.
They opened the coals a little, and placed the shovel upon them. Jonas and Dorothy looked on with great interest, wondering what they were going to do. The sulphur began to melt almost immediately after the shovel was placed upon the coals; and, in a very short time, Rollo observed a faint blue spot on the place where the sulphur had been lying.
“There,” said his father, “see what a small flame.”
“Yes,” said Rollo; “it is nothing but a little blue spot.”
“And the paper is just as whole and white as ever it was.”
“Let us wait till the paper gets hot enough to burn.”
“I don’t think it would ever get hot enough to burn,” replied his father, “over such a fire as that. I must light it in the lamp.” So he waited a few minutes until the sulphur was entirely consumed, for he said that he did not wish to have any of the fumes get into the room; and then he dropped the paper off from the shovel down upon the hearth, and Rollo picked it up. His father lighted it in the lamp, and then placed it upon the shovel to see it burn, in order that Rollo might compare the magnitude of the flame which was produced with that of the sulphur. Of course, such a small piece of paper did not make a large flame, but it was four or five times as large as that produced by the sulphur.
“Now the question is,” said Mr. Holiday, “which is most inflammable,—the sulphur, because it inflames most easily, or the paper, because it makes the greatest flame when it does take fire?”