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"Yes; the blanket went down, but the speculum was not in it, or we should have heard it fall." "Not if it was all wrapped up in that there blanket, sir." "I tell you we should," cried Tom, in his angry despair. "You don't know how heavy it was. What shall I do? What will uncle say?"
You may fit up your dogmatic scientist with a 300-diameter microscope, and with a telescope with a six-foot speculum, but neither near nor far can he get a trace of that great driving power.
Then Huggins attacked the subject again in 1876, when the 18-inch speculum of the Royal Society had come into his possession, using prisms of Iceland spar and lenses of rock crystal; and this time with better success. A photograph of the spectrum of Vega showed seven strong lines. Still he was not satisfied. He waited and worked for three years longer.
"You remember how the silvery surface was covered with a greyish powder?" "Yes, thickly," said Tom. "That had no business there, and it would not have been if I had been more careful to remember everything. When I took the speculum glass out of the silvering bath, I ought to have deluged it with pure water till all that greyish powder was washed away, then it would have been fairly bright."
But if you take a piece of Smooth Steel, and therewith Burnish a part of it, which may be presently done, you shall find that Part will Lose its Whiteness, and turn a Speculum, looking almost every where Dark, as other Looking-glasses do, which may not a little confirm our Doctrine.
By this time Uncle Richard was sufficiently recovered to walk about; and, beckoning Tom to him, he took his arm and went into the workshop, where the silvered piece of speculum lay shattered; and in addition to the windows being broken, the bench was split from end to end, and a table and stools knocked over. "Look at the speculum, Tom. Is it hurt?"
Somewhat about the time that Herschel set about polishing his first speculum, Pierre Louis Guinand, a Swiss artisan, living near Chaux-de-Fonds, in the canton of Neuchâtel, began to grind spectacles for his own use, and was thence led on to the rude construction of telescopes by fixing lenses in pasteboard tubes. Failure only stimulated him to enlarge their scale.
"It seems I lost it, uncle. I haven't seen it, I think, since I had it to put a wedge under that leg of the stool." "And when was that?" "As far as I can remember, uncle, it was the day or the day before the speculum was broken. I fancy I left it on the window-sill or bench." "Plain as a pike-staff, my dear Maxted," said Uncle Richard, clapping the Vicar on the shoulder.
"Now, Tom, the glass," said Uncle Richard sharply; and, taking a couple of little pieces of wood, he placed them in the tray at the sides, and then seizing the piece of broken glass speculum with the tips of the fingers of each hand, he quickly immersed the polished face in the fourfold solution, letting one side go in first, and then the rest of the face, till the glass rested about half an inch deep in the tray, its face being perfectly covered all over.
"Now then, how do you feel ready for one hour's more grinding at the speculum, or shall we leave it till to-morrow?" "I want to finish it, and see the moon," said Tom sturdily, as he rolled up his sleeves a little more tightly. "Let's get on, uncle, and finish it." "Or get an hour nearer," said Uncle Richard; and they went down and ground till Mrs Fidler summoned them to their meal.
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