LESSON XXVI.

tar pauʼlin, a piece of tarred | chāf'ing-dish, a portable grate canvas made water-proof.

for coals.

GASES.

The air that we breathe is a mixture of gases. One of these is a gas that would kill us, if there was much of it in the air. But in good, pure air there is very little of it. And yet there is a great deal of it made all the time, and what is made mixes up with the air. Every fire makes it, and so does every burning candle and lamp, and gas-light. Your lungs are making it. Every time that you breathe out, you send forth some of this gas from your lungs into the air.

All animals are doing this, the smallest as well as the largest. The big elephant breathes out a good deal from his large lungs. The insect, that is so small that you can hardly see it, does its share. And though each little insect makes so little of this gas in its lungs, there are so many of them that they all together make a great deal more than all the elephants do. There are not many elephants, and they are found only in a few countries, but insects swarm everywhere.

But

What a quantity of this gas, then, goes into the air, from all the fires and lights, and breaths of animals! "Why does not the air become full of it?" you will ask. I will tell you. This gas flies about everywhere, and gets out of the way. how? Does it fly up above the air, and so get away from the earth? O, no. It is taken out of the air as fast as it becomes mixed with it; and by what do you think this is done? Look at a little leaf,

trembling in the breeze. It is drinking in some of this gas from the air that makes it tremble. It is not the sap alone that makes the leaf grow. It would not grow, unless it was fed, too, with gas by the air.

Every little pore in the leaf is sucking in some of this gas. All the leaves on plants and bushes and trees are doing this. Every spire of grass is doing it. A great many of these pores or mouths there are on every leaf. They are so small that you cannot see them, but they are large enough to suck in the fine gas.

This gas, after it is taken in by the leaves, is a gas no longer. It becomes a part of the solid leaf. Some of it goes down in the sap, and helps to make the stalk grow, if it is a plant, or the trunk, if it is a tree. So when you look upon a plant or a tree, you may think that perhaps some of your breath helped to make it grow. And when you see a stick of wood burning, you may think that some of your breath may be locked up in that wood, and will fly off into the air again in the flame.

But suppose that this gas when it is made is kept from flying off to the leaves. See what it will do to us. Sometimes people in their carelessness show what it will do. A woman once set a kettle of water over an open furnace, in which there was charcoal burning. The gas that I have told you about was pouring forth from the fire. This would do no harm if it were out of doors. But she had it in a close room, and the gas had no chance to escape. She soon became dizzy, and then fell down; and she would have died, if some one had not heard her fall, and opened the door and windows, to let the gas fly off to the leaves, and the pure,

fresh air come in to take its place: The good air soon brought her to herself; but it took a long time for her to get rid of all the poisoning effect of the gas.

A great many persons have been killed by this gas, by burning charcoal in an open furnace or a chafing-dish, to make a room warm. This has happened most often when a chamber has been warmed in this way, and persons have lain down to go to sleep. The gas makes them sleep more, and they sleep to death. If the furnace, instead of being in the middle of the room, were set in a fire-place, so that the gas could go up the chimney, no harm would. be done.

But this gas, I have told you, comes from lungs as well as from fires. Now, suppose that you had an air-tight India-rubber bag tied over your head, so that you would have to breathe the same air over and over again. What would happen? You would die in a very short time, even if the bag were a big one, and held a large quantity of air. But what is it that would kill you? This gas that your lungs would keep making all the time. There would be more and more of it in the bag every time that you breathed out; and when you breathed in, it would go back into your lungs. By going back into them, it would poison your blood, just as the same gas would if you were in a close room with burning charcoal.

I will tell you about some persons that were killed by the poison of their own breaths. Some years ago, a ship, called the Londonderry, set sail from Ireland, with a large number of poor emigrants on board. It was crowded very full, so that many of the passengers were most of the time on

deck. A heavy storm arose, and the emigrants were all ordered to go below into the cabin. The waves dashed over the vessel, and poured down into the cabin through an opening in the deck. The captain therefore ordered a tarpaulin to be nailed down over the opening. The air could not get through this tarred cloth; and so no fresh air could go down to the poor emigrants, and the poisonous gas, made in their lungs, could not escape.

Here they were, huddled together, breathing their own breaths over and over again. They were in great distress, and soon some of them died. They tried to make the captain and sailors hear their cries; but the noise of the wind and waves was too much for this. At length, one strong man punched a hole through the tarpaulin, and called for the captain and told him what was going on. The tarpaulin was pulled up, and the poor emigrants, men, women, and children, were found lying on one another in heaps. Many were dead, and many dying; but the fresh air coming in and driving out the gas, saved most of them.

Did you ever hear of the Black Hole of Calcutta, as it was called? This was a sort of cellar, with only a very small opening to let in the air and light. A long time ago, there were as many persons put in it as could possibly stand there. None but those who were close to the opening, could get any fresh air, and most of the prisoners died, poisoned by the gas that they breathed out from their lungs.

These are terrible examples of the bad effects of this gas, when there is too much of it in the air. They happen only once in a great while. But there is much mischief done by this gas in a small way

every day. Most people have their healths injured, and their lives shortened, by not taking enough care to have the gas from their lungs escape from their rooms, to fly away to the leaves. In this way, they have it acting upon them as a slow poison the most part of their lives.

WORTHINGTON HOOKER.

Spell and pronounce :-breathe, chimney, Calcutta, mixture, solid, dizzy, emigrants, cellar, tarred, asleep, breaths, gases, huddled, punched, instead, and furnace.

Synonyms.-effect-consequence; result; issue. help-assist; succhance-opportunity; way. mischief

cor; aid; serve; relieve.

harm; injury; hurt; damage.

GOLD ON THE HEARTH.

There would be a great party at the Red House on New Year's Eve, she knew; her husband would be smiling and smiled upon, hiding her existence in the darkest corner of his heart. But she would mar his pleasure: she would go in her dingy rags, with her faded face, once as handsome as the best, with her little child, that had its father's hair and eyes, and disclose herself to the squire as his eldest son's wife.

It is seldom that the miserable can help regarding their misery as a wrong inflicted by those who are less miserable. Mollie knew that the cause of