es of sucking up liquids. What they do it by is
called cap--something."

"Capillary attraction, Harry," suggested Mr. Wilkinson.

"Yes, that's it; just as a sponge sucks up water, or a bit of lump-sugar
the little drop of tea or coffee left in the bottom of a cup. But I
mustn't say much more about this, or else you will tell me I am doing
something very much like teaching my grandmother to--you know what."

"Your grandmother, eh, young sharpshins?"

"No--I mean my uncle. Now, I'll blow the candle out, like Moses; not to
be in the dark, though, but to see into what it is. Look at the smoke
rising from the wick. I'll hold a bit of lighted paper in the smoke, so
as not to touch the wick. But see, for all that, the candle lights
again. So this shows that the melted wax sucked up through the wick is
turned into vapor; and the vapor burns. The heat of the burning vapor
keeps on melting more wax, and that is sucked up too within the flame,
and turned into vapor, and burnt, and so on till the wax is all used up,
and the candle is gone. So the flame, uncle, you see is the last of the
candle, and the candle seems to go through the flame into
nothing--although it doesn't, but goes into several things, and isn't it
curious, as Professor Faraday said, that the candle should look so
splendid and glorious in going away."

"How well he remembers, doesn't he?" observed Mrs. Wilkinson.

"I dare say," proceeded Harry, "that the flame of the candle looks flat
to you; but if we were to put a lamp glass over it, so as to shelter it
from the draught, you would see it is round, round sideways, and running
up to a peak. It is drawn up by the hot air; you know that hot air
always rises, and that is the way smoke is taken up the chimney. What
should you think was in the middle of the flame?"

"I should say, fire," replied Uncle Bagges.

"Oh, no! The flame is hollow. The bright flame we see is something no
thicker than a thin peel, or skin; and it doesn't touch the wick. Inside
of it is the vapor I told you of just now. If you put one end of a bent
pipe into the middle of the flame, and let the other end of the pipe dip
into a bottle, the vapor or gas from the candle will mix with the air
there; and if you set fire to the mixture of gas from the candle and
air in the bottle, it would go off with a bang."

"I wish you'd do that, Harry," said Master Tom, the younger brother of
the juvenile lecturer.

"I want the proper things," answered H