"Why Cannot You Consume Your Own Smoke?" I Asked A Gentleman There.
"Fuel Is So Cheap That It Would Not Pay," He Answered.
His idea of
the advantage of consuming smoke was confined to the question of its
paying as a simple operation in itself.
The consequent cleanliness
and improvement in the atmosphere had not entered into his
calculations. Any such result might be a fortuitous benefit, but
was not of sufficient importance to make any effort in that
direction expedient on its own account. "Coal was burned," he said,
"in the founderies at something less than two dollars a ton; while
that was the case, it could not answer the purpose of any iron-
founder to put up an apparatus for the consumption of smoke?" I did
not pursue the argument any further, as I perceived that we were
looking at the matter from two different points of view.
Everything in the hotel was black; not black to the eye, for the eye
teaches itself to discriminate colors even when loaded with dirt,
but black to the touch. On coming out of a tub of water my foot
took an impress from the carpet exactly as it would have done had I
trod barefooted on a path laid with soot. I thought that I was
turning negro upward, till I put my wet hand upon the carpet, and
found that the result was the same. And yet the carpet was green to
the eye - a dull, dingy green, but still green.
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