“None whatever. Observe the dasher.”
With that he jerked off the cover and lifted out the part referred to.
“It is armed with flanges, which revolve between the projecting knives, or plates, fastened to the sides of the tub. They thoroughly agitate the milk, which is thrown from one to the other, and never allowed to rest. The effects are truly wonderful. The exertion is the minimum; the results are the maximum. No more sour cream; no more rancid butter. A child can produce a pound of butter from a quart of milk in the short space of a minute and a half.”
By this time, between the revolving of the wheels and the man’s incomprehensible conversation, I was in a dazed state, and may not remember accurately his statements. I was only clear on one point, and that was that the Duplex Elliptic Milk Converter, although evidently the perfection of science, was too grand for my wants.
“Have you nothing simpler?” I inquired, faintly.
“Nothing can be simpler,” was the decided response; “here you have a crank; there, a few iron wheels; inside, the dasher. The price is moderate; one that would do the work of a dairy would be only fifty dollars. That amount could be saved in a summer.”
“I should like to inquire farther,” I hastily answered; and, hurrying down stairs, in spite of remarks about acids and oxygen, nitrogen, caseine, and a dozen other scientific compounds, I escaped from the store. There is always a dreadful feeling of shame connected with not purchasing when one enters a store and asks for an article. It seems as though you were getting credit and making a display on false pretenses. The manner of the attendant suggests a doubt of your honesty, and any little compliments he may have paid you are manifestly taken back at once, and contempt usurps the place of esteem.
After pausing to recover my breath and my courage, I entered the nearest place of a similar character and made the same inquiry.
“Yes, sir; we have a churn of a most approved and successful description. There,” he continued, as the clerk brought me face to face with a still stranger-looking machine, more like the walking-beam of a steam-engine than my early recollections of a churn, “there you have simplicity itself. In it you go back to first principles. You wind up a spring—”
“A spring!” I exclaimed.