THE DIVING BELL; OR, PEARLS TO BE SOUGHT FOR.

With Tinted Illustrations.

BY UNCLE FRANK,

AUTHOR OF "A PEEP AT OUR NEIGHBORS," "WILLOW LANE STORIES," "THE DIVING BELL," ETC. ETC.

BOSTON: PHILLIPS, SAMPSON & CO. PUBLISHERS.

CONTENTS.

ILLUSTRATIONS.

THE NAME OF MY BOOK.

The reader, perhaps, as he turns over the first pages of this volume, is puzzled, right at the outset, with the meaning of my title, The Diving Bell. It is plain enough to Uncle Frank, and possibly it is to you; but it may not be; so I will tell you what a diving bell is, and then, probably, you can guess the reason why I have given this name to the following pages.

If you will take a common glass tumbler, and plunge it into water, with the mouth downwards, you will find that very little water will rise into the tumbler. You can satisfy yourself better about this matter, if, in the first place, you lay a cork upon the surface of the water, and then put the tumbler over it.

Did you ever try the experiment? Try it now, if you never have done so, and if you have any doubt on the subject.

You might suppose, that the cork would be carried down far below the surface of the water. But it is not so. The upper side of the cork, after you have pressed the tumbler down so low that the upper end of it is even below the surface of the water—the upper side of the cork is not wet at all.

"And what is the reason of this, Uncle Frank?"

I will tell you. There is air in the tumbler, when you plunge it into the water. The air stays in the vessel, so that there is no room for the water.

"Oh, yes, sir; I see how that is. But I see that a little water finds its way into the tumbler, every time I try the experiment. How is that?"

You can press air, the same as you can press wood, or paper, or cloth, so that it will go into a smaller space than it occupied before yon pressed it. Did you ever make a pop-gun?

"Oh, yes, sir, a hundred times."

Well, when you send the wad out of the pop-gun, you do it by pressing the air inside the tube. Now if your tumbler was a hundred or a thousand times as large, the air would prevent the water from coming in, just as it does in this instance. Suppose I had dropped a purse full of gold into a very deep river, and it had sunk to the bottom. Suppose I could not get it in any other way but by going down to the bottom after it. I could go down to that depth, and live there for some time, by means of a diving bell made large enough to hold me, precisely in the same way that a bird might go down to the bottom of a tub of water, in a tumbler, and stand there with the water hardly over his feet. There is a good deal of machinery about a diving bell, it is true. But I need not take up much time in describing it. It is necessary for the man to breathe, of course, while he is in the diving bell; and as the air it contains is soon rendered impure by breathing, fresh air must be introduced into the bell by means of a pump, or in some other way. I am not very familiar with the necessary machinery,

to tell the truth. I never explored the bottom of a river in this way, and I think it will be a long time before I make such a voyage.

The diving bell has been used for a good many useful purposes—to lay the foundations of docks and the piers of bridges; to collect pearls at Ceylon, and coral at other places.

I am not sure but the diving bell is getting somewhat out of use now. People have found out another way of groping along on the bottom of rivers and seas. They do it frequently, I believe, by means of a kind of armor made of India rubber. But so far as my book is concerned, it is of no consequence whether the diving bell is out of use or not. I shall use the title, at all events.

If, after my account of the diving bell, you still ask why I choose to give such a name to the budget I have prepared for you, I can answer your question very easily.

I think you will find something worth looking at in the budget—not pearls, or pieces of coral, or lost treasures, exactly, but still something which will please you, and something which, when you get hold of it, will be worth keeping and laying up in some snug corner of your memory box. I say when you get hold of it; for the valuable things I have for you do not all lie on the surface. You will have to search for them a little. That is, you will have to think. When you have read one of my stories, or fables, you may find it necessary to stop, and ask yourself "What does Uncle Frank mean by all this?" In other words, you will have to use the diving bell, and see if you can't hunt up something in the story or the fable, which will be useful to you, and which will make you wiser and better. Now you see why I have called my book The Diving Bell, don't you?

THINKING AND LAUGHING.

It is Uncle Frank's notion, that it is a good thing to laugh, but a better thing to think. A great many people, however, old as well as young, and young as well as old, live and die without thinking much. They lose three quarters of the benefit they ought to get from reading, and from what they see and learn as they go through the world, by never diving below the surface of things. I don't suppose it is so with you. I hope not, at all events. If it is so, then you had better shut up this book, and pass it over to some young friend of yours, who has learned to think, and who loves to read books that will help him about thinking. No, on the whole, you needn't do any such thing. Just read the book—read it through. Perhaps you will get a taste for such reading, while you are going through the book.

I must tell you an anecdote just here. You will not refuse to read that, at any rate.

Not long ago I was in a book store, looking over some new books which I saw on the counter, when a fine-looking boy, who appeared to be about nine years old, came in. He had a shilling in his hand, and said he wanted to buy a book.

"But what book do you want?" one of the clerks asked.

The boy could not tell what it was exactly. But it was a "funny book"—he was sure of that—and it cost a shilling.

Well, it finally turned out that the book which the little fellow wanted was a comic almanac—a book filled with miserable pictures—pictures of men and beasts twisted into all sorts of odd shapes—and vulgar jokes, and scraps of low wit.

"Will you let me look at it?" I asked the little boy as the clerk handed the book to him.

"Yes, sir," said he.

I took the almanac, and turned over some of its leaves. There was not a particle of information in the book, except what related to the sun, and moon, and stars, and that formed but a small portion of the volume. "My son," said I, pleasantly, "what do you buy this book for?"

"To make me laugh," said he.

"But is that all you read books for—to find something to laugh at?" I inquired.

"No, sir," he replied, "but then this book is so funny. Giles Manly has got one, and"—he hesitated.

"He has a great time over it," I interrupted, to which the little boy nodded, as much as to say,

"Yes, sir, that's it."

"Did your father send you after this book?" I asked.

"No, sir."

"Did your mother tell you to get it?"

"No, sir. But my mother gave me a shilling, and told me I might buy just such a book as I liked."

"Well, my son," said I, "look here. You have heard Giles read some of the funny things in this almanac, have you not?"

"Yes, sir."

"And you've seen some of the pictures?"

"Yes, sir, all of them."

"Then you know pretty well what the book is?"

"Yes, sir, all about it, and that's what makes me want to buy it."

"Well, you have a right to buy just such a book as you want. But if I were in your place, I would not buy that book; and I'll tell you why. There's a good deal of fun in it, to be sure. No doubt you would laugh over it, if you had it. But you can't learn anything from it. Come, now, I'll make a bargain with you. Here's a book"—I handed him one of the Lucy books, written by Mr. Jacob Abbott—"which is worth a dozen of that. This will make you laugh some, as well as the other book; and it will do much more and better than that. It will set you to thinking. It will instruct, as well as amuse you. It will sow some good seeds in your mind, and your heart, too. It will teach you to be a thinker as well as a reader. It costs a little more than that almanac, it is true. But never mind that. If you'll take this book, and give the gentleman your shilling, I'll pay him the rest of the money. Will you do it? Will you take the Lucy book, and leave the funny almanac?"

He hesitated. He hardly knew whether he should make or lose by the trade.

"If you will do so," I continued, "and read the book, when you get through with it, you may come to my office in Nassau street, and tell me how you was pleased with it. Then, if you say that you did not like Mr. Abbott's book so well as you think you would have liked the book with the funny pictures, and tell me that you made a bad bargain, I'll take back the Lucy book, and give you the almanac in the place of it."

That pleased the little fellow. The bargain was struck. Mr. Abbott's book was bought, and the boy left the store, and ran home.

I think it was about a week after that, or it might have been a little longer, that I heard my name spoken, as I was sitting at my desk. I turned around, and, sure enough, there was the identical boy with whom I had made the trade at the book store.

"Well, my little fellow," I said, "you've got sick of your bargain, eh?" "No, sir," he said, "I'm glad I made it;" and he proceeded to tell me his errand. It seemed that he had been so pleased with the book, that he "wanted a few more of the same sort," as the razor strop man says; and his father had told him that he might come to me, ask me to get all the Lucy books for him.

Now you see how it was with that little fellow, before he read the book I gave him. He had got the notion that a child's book could not be amusing—could not be worth reading—unless it was filled with such nonsense as there was in the "funny book" he called for. He had not got a taste for reading anything else. As soon as he did get such a taste, he liked that kind of reading the best; because, besides making him laugh a little now and then, it put some thoughts into his head—gave him some hints which would be worth something to him in after life.

Now, I presume there are a great many boys and girls, who love to read such nonsense as one finds in comic almanacs, and books like "Bluebeard," and "Jack the Giant Killer," but who, like the youth I met in the book store, could very easily learn to like useful books just as well, and better too, if they would only take them up, and read them.

Why, my little friends, a book need not be dull and dry, because it is not all nonsense. Uncle Frank don't mean to have a long face on, when he writes for young people. He believes in laughing. He likes to laugh himself, and he likes to see his young friends laugh, too, sometimes.

I hope, indeed, that you will find this little book amusing, as well as useful; though I should be very sorry if it were not useful, as well as amusing.

THE SCHEMING SPIDER.

A FABLE FOR MANY IN GENERAL, AND A FEW IN PARTICULAR.

GENIUS IN THE BUD.

Genius, in its infancy, sometimes puts on a very funny face. The first efforts of a painter are generally rude enough. So are those of a poet, or any other artist. I have often wished I might see the first picture that such a man as Titian, or Rubens, or Reynolds, or West, ever drew. It would interest me much, and, I suspect, would provoke a smile or two, at the expense of the young artists.

History does not often transmit such sketches to the world. But I wish it would. I wish the picture of the sheep that Giotto was sketching, when Cimabue, one of the greatest painters of his age, came across him, could be produced. I would go miles to see it. And I wish West's mother had carefully preserved, for some public gallery, the picture that her son Benjamin made of the little baby in the cradle. You have heard that story, I dare say.

Benjamin, you know, showed a taste for drawing and painting, when he was a very little boy. His early advantages were but few. But he made the most of these advantages; and the result was that he became one of the first painters of his day, and before he died, he was chosen President of the Royal Society in London. How do you think he made his colors? You will smile when you hear that they were formed with charcoal and chalk, with an occasional sprinkling of the juice of red berries. His brush was rather a rude one. It was made of the hair he pulled from the tail of Pussy, the family cat. Poor old cat! she lost so much of her fur to supply the young artist with brushes, that the family began to feel a good deal of anxiety for her pussyship. They thought her hair fell off by disease, until Benjamin, who was an honest boy, one day informed them of their mistake. What a pity that the world could not have the benefit of one of the pictures that West painted with his cat-tail brush.

And then, what a treat it would be, to get hold of the first rhymes that Watts and Pope ever made. I believe that Watts had been rhyming some time when he got a fatherly flogging for this exercise of his genius, and he sobbed out, between the blows,

That couplet was not his first one, by a good deal. The habit, it would seem, had taken a pretty strong hold of him, when the whipping drew that out of him.

It seems to me that the childhood and early youth of a genius are more interesting than any riper periods of his life; or rather, that they become so, when time and circumstances have developed what there was in the man, and when from the stand-point of his fame in manhood, we look back upon his early history. What small beginnings there have been to all the efforts of those who have made themselves masters of the particular art to which they have directed their attention.

I wonder what kind of a thing Washington Irving's first composition was. There must have been a first one; and, without doubt, it was a clumsy affair enough. If I were going to write his history, I would find those who knew him when he was a mere child, and I would pump from them as many anecdotes about his little scribblings as I possibly could, and I would print them, lots of them. I hardly think I could do the reader of his biography a better service.

I wonder what his first experience was with the editors. These editors, by the way, are often very troublesome to the young sprig of genius. Placed, as they are, at the door of the temple of fame, they often seem to the unfledged author the most disobliging, iron-hearted men in the world. He could walk right into the temple, and make himself perfectly at home there, if they would only open the door. So he fancies; and he wonders why the barbarians don't see the genius sticking out, when he comes along with his nicely-written verses, and why they don't just give him, at once, a ticket of admission to the honors of the world. "These editors are slow to perceive merit," he says to himself.

Your old friend Uncle Frank once set himself up for a genius. Don't laugh—pray, don't laugh. I was young then, and as green as a juvenile gosling. Age has branded into me a great many truths, which, somehow or other, were very slow in finding their way to my young mind. The notion that I am a genius does not haunt me now, and a great many years have passed since such a vision flitted across my imagination. But I will tell you how I was cooled off, once on a time, when I got into a raging fever of authorship, and was burning up with a desire to make an impression on the world. I had written some verses—written them with great care, and with ever so many additions, subtractions, and divisions. They were perfect, at last—that is, I could not make them any more perfect—and off they were posted to the editor of the village newspaper. I declare I don't remember what they were about. But I dare say, they were "Lines" to somebody, or "Stanzas" to something; and I remember they were signed "Theodore Thinker," in a very large, and as I then thought, a very fair hand.

"Well, did the editor print them, Uncle Frank?"

Hold on, my dear fellow. You are quite too fast. As I said, when the lines to somebody or something were sent to the editor, I was in a perfect fever. I could hardly wait for Wednesday to come, the day on which the paper was to be issued—the paper which was to be the medium of the first acquaintance of my muse with "a discerning public."

"Well, how did you feel when the lines were printed?"

When they were printed! Alas, for my fame! they were not printed at all. The editor rejected them. "Theodore's lines," said he—the great clown! what did he know about poetry?—"Theodore's lines have gone to the shades. They possessed some merit,"—some merit! that's all he knows about poetry; the brute!—"but not enough to entitle them to a place. Still, whenever age and experience have sufficiently developed his genius,"—mark the smooth and oily manner in which the savage knocks a poor fellow down, and treads on his neck—"whenever age and experience have sufficiently developed his genius, we shall be happy to hear from him again."

If you can fancy how a man feels, when he is taken from an oven, pretty nearly hot enough to bake corn bread, and plunged into a very cold bath, indeed—say about forty degrees Fahrenheit—you can form some idea of my feelings when I read that paragraph in the editorial column, under the notice "To correspondents."

I am inclined to think there are a great many little folks climbing up the stairs of the stage of life, who verily believe that genius has got them by the hand, leading them along, but who, in fact, are not a little mistaken. It is rather important that one should know whether he has any genius or not; and if he has, in what particular direction he will be likely to distinguish himself.

I don't believe in the old-fashioned notion that people all come into the world with minds and tastes so unlike, that, if you educate one ever so carefully, he never will make a poet, or a painter, or a musician, as the case may be; while the other will be a master in one of these branches, with scarcely any instruction. But I do believe there is a great difference in natural capacities for a particular art; and that some persons learn that art easily, while others learn it with difficulty, and could, perhaps, never excel in it, if they should drive at it for a life-time.

Ralph Waldo, a boy who lived near our house, when I was a child, was the sport of all the neighborhood, on account of the high estimate in which he held his talent at drawing pictures. Now it so happened that Ralph's pictures, to say the least, were rather poor specimens of the art. Some of them, according to the best of my recollection, would never have suggested the particular animal or thing for which they were made, if they had not been labeled, or if Ralph had not called them by name.

Such dogs and cats, such horses and cows, such houses and trees, such men and women, were never seen since the world began, as those which figured on his slate. And yet he thought a great deal of his pictures. How happy it used to make him, when some of the boys in the neighborhood, perhaps purely out of sport, would say, "Come, Ralph, let's see you make a horse now." With what zeal he used to set himself about the task of making a horse. When it was done, and ready for exhibition, though it was a perfect scare-crow of a thing, he used to hold it up, with ever so much pride expressed in the rough features of his face, as if it were an effort worthy of being hung up in the Academy of Design, or the Gallery of Fine Arts.