"Oh, yes, moderation!" said Sophia.

"But his friends began to prate to him about the shameful way he had been jilted by Cecilia, and, by constantly reiterating the same thing, they at last succeeded in persuading him that he was an ill-used man.

His self-esteem being roused by this silly chatter, he began to affect a ridiculous desolation, and to perpetrate all manner of outrageous extravagances."

"Bad friends," remarked Willis, "are like sinking ships; they drag you down to their own level."

"The first absurd thing he did was to purchase a yacht, and when a storm arose that forced the hardy fishermen to take shelter in port, he went out to sea, and it is quite a miracle that he escaped drowning. Then, if there were a doubtful scheme afloat, he was sure to take shares in it. Nothing delighted him more than to go up in a balloon; he would have gladly swung himself on the car outside if the proprietor had allowed him."

"I have often seen balloons in the air," remarked Willis, "but I could never make out their dead reckoning."

"A balloon," replied Ernest, "is nothing more than an artificial cloud, and its power of ascension depends upon the volume of air it displaces.

"Very good, Master Ernest, so far as the balloon itself is concerned; but then there is the weight of the car, passengers, provisions, and apparatus to account for."

"Hydrogen gas, used in the inflation of balloons, is forty times lighter than air. If a balloon is made large enough, the weight of the car and all that it contains, added to that of the gas, will fall considerably short of the weight of the air displaced by the machine."

"I suppose it rises in the air just as an empty bottle well corked rises in the water?"

"Very nearly. Air is lighter than water; consequently, any vessel filled with the one will rise to the surface of the other. So in the case of balloons. The gas, in the first place, must be inclosed in an envelope through which it cannot escape. Silk prepared with India-rubber is the material usually employed. As the balloon rises, the gas in the interior distends, because the air becomes lighter the less it is condensed by its superincumbent masses; hence it is requisite to leave a margin for this increase in the volume of the gas, otherwise the balloon would burst in the air."

"If a balloon were allowed to ascend without hindrance where would it stop?"

"It would continue ascending till it reached a layer of air as light as the gas; beyond that point it could not go."

"And if the voyagers do not wish to go quite so far?"

"Then there is a valve by which the gas may be allowed to escape, till the weight of the machine and its volume of air are equal, when it ceases to ascend. If a little more is permitted to escape, the balloon descends."

"And should it land on the roof of a house or the top of a tree, the voyagers have their necks broken."

"That can only happen to bunglers; there is not the least necessity for landing where danger is to be apprehended. When the aeronaut is near the ground, and sees that the spot is unfavorable for debarkation, he drops a little ballast, the balloon mounts, and he comes down again somewhere else."

"The fellow that made the first voyage must have been very daring."

"The first ascent was made by Montgolfier in 1782, and he was followed by Rosiers and d'Arlandes."

"With your permission, father," said Ernest, "I will claim priority in aerial travelling for Icarus, Doedalus, and Phaeton."

"Certainly; you are justified in doing so. Gay-Lussac, a philosophic Frenchman, rose, in 1804, to the height of seven thousand yards."

"He must have felt a little giddy," remarked Jack.

"Most of the functions of the body were affected, more or less, by the extreme rarity of the air at that height. Its dryness caused wet parchment to crisp. He observed that the action of the magnetic needle diminished as he ascended, sounds gradually ceased to reach his ear, and the wind itself ceased to be felt."

"That, of course," remarked Ernest, "was when he was travelling in the same direction and at the same speed."

"Well," said Jack, "we can find materials here for a balloon; the ladies have silk dresses, there is plenty of India-rubber--we used to make boots and shoes of it; hydrogen gas can be obtained from a variety of substances. What, then, is to prevent us paying a visit to some of Ernest's friends in the skies?"

"Unfortunately for your project, Jack, no one has discovered the art of guiding a balloon; consequently, instead of finding yourself at _Cassiope_, you might land at _Sirius_, where your reception would be somewhat cool."

"But what became of Herbert?" inquired one of the ladies.

"Singularly enough, he escaped all the dangers he so recklessly braved, and all the bad speculations he embarked in turned out good.

Somehow or other, the moment he took part in a desperate scheme it became profitable."

"Ah!" exclaimed Sophia, "his victim, like a guardian angel, continued to watch over him."

"When the cholera appeared in England, he was sure to be found where the cases were most numerous. He followed up the pest with so much pertinacity and publicity, that it was no unusual thing to find it announced in the newspapers that Philipson and the cholera had arrived in such and such a town."

"The bane and the antidote," remarked Jack.

"If Cecilia had been one of those women who delight in horse-racing, fox-hunting, opera-boxes, and public executions, she would have been highly amused to see her old friend's name constantly turning up under such extraordinary circumstances."

"Is she not dead, then?" inquired Sophia, with astonishment,

"It appears that her wounds were not mortal," quietly replied her mother.

"Besides," observed Jack, "there are human frames so constituted that they can bear an immense amount of cutting and slashing. So in the case of animals; there, for instance, is the fresh-water polypus--if you cut this creature lengthwise straight through the middle, a right side will grow on the one half and a left side on the other, so that there will be two polypi instead of one. The same thing occurs if you cut one through the middle crosswise, a head grows on the one half and a tail on the other, so that you have two entire polypi either way."

"And you may add," observed Ernest, "since so interesting a subject is on the _tapis_, that if two of these polypi happen to quarrel over their prey, the largest generally swallows the smallest, in order to get it out of the way; and the latter, with the exception of being a little cramped for space, is not in the slightest degree injured by the operation."

"And does that state of matters continue any length of time?"

"The polypus that is inside the other may probably get tired of confinement, in which case it makes its exit by the same route it entered; but, if too lazy to do that, it makes a hole in the body of its antagonist and gets out that way. But, what is most curious of all, these processes do not appear to put either of the creatures to the slightest inconvenience."

"I am quite at a loss to make you all out," said Sophia.

"Well, my child," replied her mother, "you should not close up your ears in the middle of a story."

"Cecilia, or rather Mrs. Lindsey, however," continued Wolston, "was a pious, painstaking, simple-minded woman, who devoted her whole attention to her domestic duties. Notwithstanding her fortune, she did not neglect the humblest affairs of the household, and thought only of making her husband pleased with his home. When she was told of the vagaries of Philipson, she prayed in private that he might be led from his evil ways, and could not help thanking Providence that she was not the wife of such a dreadful scapegrace."

"I should think so," remarked Mrs. Becker.

"At last, Herbert Philipson astonished even his own companions by a crowning act of folly. There was then a young woman in Bristol, of good parentage, but an unmitigated virago; her family were thoroughly ashamed of her temper and her exploits. They allowed her to have her own way, simply for fear that, through contradiction, she might plunge herself into even worse courses than those she now habitually followed. In short, she was the talk and jest of the whole town."

"What a charming creature!" remarked Mrs. Becker.

"No servant of her own sex could put up with her for two days together; she styled everybody that came near her fools and asses, and did not hesitate to strike them if they ventured to contradict her.

She got on, however, tolerably well with ostlers, stable-boys, cabmen, and such like, because they could treat her in her own style, and were not ruffled by her abuse."

"How amiable!" exclaimed Mrs. Wolston.

"Herbert heard of this young person, and, through a fast friend of his own, obtained an introduction to her, and on the very first interview he offered her his hand. He was known still to be a wealthy man, so neither the lady herself nor anybody connected with her made the slightest objection to the match, thinking probably that, if there were six of the one, there were at least half a dozen of the other."

"They ought to have gone to Bedlam, instead of to church," said Willis; "that is my idea."

"Nevertheless, they went to church; and, after the marriage, Cecilia sought and obtained an introduction to the lady, and, whether by entreaties or by her good example, I cannot say; be this as it may, the unpromising personage in question became one of the best wives and the best mothers that ever graced a domestic circle--in this respect even excelling the pattern Cecilia herself; and, what is still more to the purpose, she succeeded in completely reforming her husband. When I left England there was not a more prosperous merchant, nor a more estimable man in the whole city of Bristol, than Herbert Philipson."

"From which we may conclude," remarked Mrs. Becker, "it is always advisable to have angels for friends."