“Do you not know,” replied my friend, “that reason and knowledge can find valuable uses even in those things which at first sight appear only hurtful? From quicksilver, also called mercury, a medicine is prepared, which, under the name of calomel, has helped to preserve many a life.”
“How strange!” I exclaimed; “medicine and poison, safety and danger, both from the same curious metal! But is it always a liquid like that?”
“Oh no!” replied the Thimble; “mixed with other metals, it becomes staid and quiet enough. Look at that beautiful mirror in the gilded frame, which reflects every object in the room. To what, think you, does it owe its beauty? To an amalgam (that is the title given to the mixture)—an amalgam of mercury and tin, which lines the glass at the back.”
“And makes it a pretty aid to vanity and folly,” said the broken-pointed Scissors, with bitterness. “If there is one thing which silly mortals like better than another, it is to look at their own faces in a glass.”
“If mercury has often ministered to vanity and folly,” said the Thimble, “I remember hearing of one curious instance where it served to mortify them both. A dashing lady, who was absurd enough to try to increase her beauty by covering her yellow complexion with a delicate coating of white paint, once visited a quicksilver mine. She must have felt it strange to find herself in that gloomy place, where the sickly miners, by the glare of torch-light, pursue their unwholesome occupation.”
“Because mercury is of that poisonous nature, that it is said that those employed to procure it seldom live longer than two years in the mine.”
“I should think that after learning that,” observed I, “the dashing lady would have a feeling of pain when next she looked in a mirror.”
“Probably she had,” replied the Thimble, “but from a different cause. While she had been examining the mine, she little thought of the strange effect which the mercury would have on the paint which covered her face. She entered the place white like a lily; she left it black like a negro!”
The idea of the poor lady with her black face mightily tickled the fancy of the Scissors, who wished that she had been there to see her. But my curiosity about the strange metal mercury was not quite satisfied yet.