atters. Do you understand philosophy?"

2. "To what branch of philosophy do you allude, sir?"

"To the only branch there is."

"But you are aware that philosophy is divided into different kinds; as,
natural, moral, and intellectual."

"Nonsense! philosophy is philosophy, and means the study of the reasons
and causes of the things which we see, whether it be applied to a crazy
man's dreams, or the roasting of potatoes. Have you attended to it?"

"Yes, to a considerable extent, sir."

3. "I will put a question or two, then, if you please. What is the reason
of the fact, for it is a fact, that the damp breath of a person blown on a
good knife and on a bad one, will soonest disappear from the well-tempered
blade?"

"It may be owing to the difference in the polish of the two blades,
perhaps." replied Locke.

4. "Ah! that is an answer that don't go deeper than the surface," rejoined
Bunker, humorously. "As good a thinker as you evidently are, you have not
thought on this subject, I suspect. It took me a week, in all, I presume,
of hard thinking, and making experiments at a blacksmith's shop, to
discover the reason of this. It is not the polish; for take two blades of
equal polish, and the breath will disappear from one as much quicker than
it does from the other, as the blade is better. It is because the material
of the blade is more compact or less porous in one case than in the other.

5. "In the first place, I ascertained that the steel was, made more
compact by being hammered and tempered, and that the better it was
tempered the more compact it would become; the size of the pores being
made, of course, less in the same proportion. Well, then, I saw the reason
I was in search of, at once. For we know a wet sponge is longer in drying
than a wet piece of green wood, because the pores of the first are bigger.
A seasoned or shrunk piece of wood dries quicker than a green one, for the
same reason.

6. "Or you might bore a piece of wood with large gimlet holes, and another
with small ones, fill them both with water, and let them stand till the
water evaporated, and the difference of time it would take to do this
would make the case still more plain. So with the blades: the vapor
lingers longest on the worst wrought and tempered one, because the pores,
being larger, take in more of the wet particles, and require more time in
drying."

7. "Your theory is at least a very ingenious one," observed Locke, "and I
am remi