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Frictional Electricity, by Max Adeler

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Frictional Electricity
by Max Adeler, 1905



I HAPPENED to visit the accident ward of St. Paracelsus' Hospital because a
friend of mine who is interested in the Flower Mission asked me to stop there
during my afternoon walk and give a few flowers to the sufferers.
When I had arranged the last half-dozen of the roses in a vase upon the little
stand by the bedside of one bruised and battered patient, he looked at me
gratefully, and said:
"Oh, thank you, sir! And would you mind, sir, stopping for a bit of talk? I'm so
lonely and miserable."
I sat upon the chair by the bed and with my hand smoothed the counterpane, while
the the patient asked me:
"Do I really look like a burglar, sir, do you think?"
I hesitated to reply as I examined his face. It was really covered with
bandages, but his nose seemed swollen and there were bruises about both eyes.
"I don't wonder you don't like to speak your mind when you see me here a broken
wreck, smashed all up and not looking a bit like myself, sir. But if you would
see me well and strong and all fixed up for going to church you'd say right off
that I don't favor no burglar in looks."
I asked the unfortunate man his name.
"Mordecai Barnes, sir, and I'm a journeyman plumber, sir, with a good character
and don't take no second place in that business with no man. How did I get here?
What banged me all up into a shame and a disgrace like this? Well, I'll tell
you, sir, if you have the patience to listen, for it does me good to talk who
has been used so hard, and can get no attention from the nurses or nobody in
this here asylum. Do you understand about frictional electricity, sir? No? I
thought not; and well had it been for me, for this shattered hulk that you see
a-lying here, if I had never heard of it neither! I'll tell you how it was, sir.
My mate, George Watkins, and there ain't no better man nowheres if you go clear
round the globeЧ George Watkins is one of these men with inquiring minds, always
a-hungering for knowledge, and so George off he goes week after week to the
lectures up at the Huxley Institute. You know it; in that yallow building over
by Nonpareil Square. And George often he told me about the wonderful things he
learned there, and among others he was fond of explaining to me about frictional
electricity.
"It seems, sir, for you may not know it any more'n I knowed it until George
explained it to me, that there's three different kinds of electricity. There's
the kind you make with a steam engine, and the kind you make with acid, and the
kind you make with friction. Well, sir, would you believeЧ or, let me say first,
have you ever rubbed a black cat on the back in a dark room and seen the sparks
fly? Of course, and, sir, I know it's almost beyond belief, but, positive, they
told George Watkins, my mate, up at the Huxley Institute, that them sparks and
the aurora borealis that you see sometimes a-lighting up the heavens is one and
the same thing! Wonderful, isn't it, sir, that Science should discover that a