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Little impalpable worlds were those soap-bubbles, with the big world depicted, in hues bright as imagination, on the nothing of their surface. It was curious to see how the passers-by regarded these brilliant fantasies, as they came floating down, and made the dull atmosphere imaginative about them.
This may have been weak self-justification; but, even yet, when I think of the way we began, and how the wave of "prosperity" rose and rose, by acts in themselves, so far as we could see, in every way praiseworthy; how with us, and with people engaged in like operations everywhere, the most powerful passions of society came to aid our projects; how the winds from the unknown, the seismic throbbings of the earth, and the very stars in their courses fought for us; and when, at last, these mightinesses turned upon us the cold and evil eye of their displeasure, how the heaped-up sea came pouring over here, trickling through there, and seeping under yonder, until our great dike toppled over in baleful tumult, "and all the world was in the sea"; how business, east, west, north, and south, went paralyzed with fear and distrust, and old concerns went out like strings of soap-bubbles, and shocks of pain and disease went round the world, and everywhere there was that hellish and portentous thing known to the modern world only, and called a "commercial panic": when I broadly consider these things, I am not vain enough seriously to blame myself.
'I don't care if I do with a Head on it, returned Yellow-cap, putting an emphasis on the 'Head. And when the ale was brought he arose, with a frown on his brow, and spoke to them in a bold voice as follows: 'Yes, I am your Head, for no one of you is so unreal as I. When I was a little boy I sat blowing soap-bubbles, and saw the Appanage of Royalty appear amidst the clouds of the wash-tub.
Now Mr Stoney has pointed out that the numerical results of experiments on gases render it probable that the mean distance of their particles at the ordinary temperature and pressure is a quantity of the same order of magnitude as a millionth of a millimetre, and Sir William Thomson has since shewn, by several independent lines of argument, drawn from phenomena so different in themselves as the electrification of metals by contact, the tension of soap-bubbles, and the friction of air, that in ordinary solids and liquids the average distance between contiguous molecules is less than the hundred-millionth, and greater than the two-thousand-millionth of a centimetre.
I could fill this page with sayings from the scene in question, all perfectly comprehensible without any account of the situation. Among them would be one of those; profound sayings which Wilde now and then threw off in his lightest moods, like opals among soap-bubbles. "In the world," says Dumby, "there are two tragedies. One is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it."
"Oh, North Wind!" he murmured, but the words vanished from his lips as he had seen the soap-bubbles that burst too soon vanish from the mouth of his pipe. The wind caught them, and they were nowhere. They couldn't get out at all, but were torn away and strangled.
When opened, the cellular tissue on the surface of the body beneath the skin is seen to be injected with air, as if a quantity of soap-bubbles were scattered over it, or a dishonest, awkward butcher had been trying to make it look fat. The fat is of a greenish-yellow color and of an oily consistence.
We might reply, first of all, with Brougham, Kirby and Spence, and others, that experiments with peas and soap-bubbles prove nothing; for the reason that in both cases the pressure produces only irregular forms, and in no wise explains the existence of the prismatic base of the cells.
"Well only for some things," answered she, feeling that Uncle Jack was taking a mean advantage in remembering her sayings, and bringing them up again. "Please go on," she added hastily. Uncle Jack winked at her very slowly and solemnly; then took a good puff at his cigar, and went on: "When they came up he was found to be blowing soap-bubbles!
Webster was then on the home-stretch, and it was shortly after this date that the incident I describe occurred. It was a time of wild Western speculation; towns and cities sprung into being as buoyantly as soap-bubbles, and often proved as perishing.
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