This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1906 edition. Excerpt: ...when they burn it. After this, harder and blacker we grew, and straightway stepped from plant to rock land, or from the Vegetable to the Mineral world. "Look at me! I am the first of the true line. House People call me Cannel Coal. Am I not glossy like jet, that is also a kinsman? When 1 feel the touch of your ...
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This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1906 edition. Excerpt: ...when they burn it. After this, harder and blacker we grew, and straightway stepped from plant to rock land, or from the Vegetable to the Mineral world. "Look at me! I am the first of the true line. House People call me Cannel Coal. Am I not glossy like jet, that is also a kinsman? When 1 feel the touch of your magic torch, see how quickly I give back my stored sunshine in an oily tongue of flame! "But though I have stored much carbon there are others of my family, all older than I, who hold more. Two brothers I have, --Soft Coal that House People burn in locomotives, and Hard Coal that makes the steady kitchen fires. Two cousins also I have, the first named Black Lead, that House People know quite intimately, --using it in their pencils and making it speak their thoughts." "To be sure," cried Anne, "I never thought of it; but lead is very like coal. What is the other cousin? I think it must be ink." "No, the other, the rarest, the one that has made all the changes and is the farthest away from wood, is the Diamond." "The Diamond! That beautiful jewel in mother's ring? How can that be, King Coal, when all the rest of the family are sooty and can be burned, and the diamond is so clear and white and hard that mother wrote my name and Tommy's on the study window with hers?" "Ask Wabeno how it came to be so clear and pure; but this I know, that it will burn away even as I myself, if fierce magic heat is blown upon it, and nothing be left but a pinch of ashes! "Besides all these, many other things were boiled from us as we lay buried, for the astral oil you burn is only coal juice and our mass unearthed by Heart of Man yields priceless dyes and drugs and medicines, that were all drawn from...
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