Chambers's Journal of Popular Literature, Science, and Art, No. 707, July 14, 1877

'It was a dastardly trick!' I exclaimed with indignation, bidding the man good-bye.

Another speaking acquaintance of mine was an old man whose duty consisted in sweeping down the steps which were submerged at high-tide, but quite bare at low-water. I had often seen him at work cleansing from mud and silt step by step as the tide receded; and now it occurred to me that from the nature of his occupation he, of all others, must work at the most irregular hours. It was a dull wintry morning, but the old man was working cheerfully at his accustomed task, which, as the water was getting low, was very nearly completed. He was pale and thin, but had that air of decent respectability which happily is often seen in the very humblest classes.

I opened the conversation in true English fashion by a remark on the weather, asking his opinion as to the probability of rain.

'Snow more likely,' he answered laconically, but quite civilly.

'I daresay you are right,' was my reply, 'for I should think you are one of the weather-wise people.'

'Ought to be, if there's anything learned in being always twelve hours in the four-and-twenty out of doors all seasons,' was the rejoinder.

'Rather hard work for you, my man,' I said sympathisingly.

'I don't complain. There's lighter work to be sure, but there's some that's a deal heavier; and after being at it so many years, maybe it comes easier to me than it would to another. I was only fifty-five when I began, and now I'm seventy-three.'

'And is it necessary that you should work all the six hours that the tide is ebbing?' I asked, really desiring the information.

'Quite necessary,' he replied, descending a step, and plying his broom vigorously as he spoke. 'Why, if I did not begin at the beginning and go on regularly, the mud would harden, and I should have to drag up buckets of water to wash the steps with. And gentlefolks want nice clean steps going to the boats.'

'I suppose you are glad when your work does not happen to be in the dead of the night?' I observed.

'I don't know that I care. It is the change in the time that makes the variety in the work. And sometimes on fine nights, when the stars are blinking and winking, or the moon floating in the sky, with the clouds rushing along as if every now and then they were washing her face – I think things and feel things as I don't at other times. I think it is a mistake for people always to sleep of nights, I do.'

'I suppose you depend on some one to call you up at the turn of the tide?' I said inquiringly. 'No; I don't,' replied the old man, with a shake of his head. 'I tried that at first, but it didn't answer. I daresay Larkins might do it; but it was before he took to the business of knocking at doors; and the man I trusted to made mistakes or else forgot, and didn't wake me right, and I very nearly lost the place; and ever since I have trusted to myself.'

'Then how do you manage?' I said.

'That is just what I don't know, except that it seems to me it is managed for me. I only know that if it is high-water in the deadest hour of the night, I always do wake. It is just as if something said: "Look alive; time's up;" and sure enough it always is. I often wonder at it; but I have come to think that wondering is of no more use than wondering at the tides coming up so surely, and the new moons shining just as they are expected, and the stars all keeping their places so safely. O sir, some folks, no doubt, are very learned, but there's a deal more in the world than people can ever make out.'

'Do you know, my friend, that you are speaking the thoughts of one of the greatest of men?' I exclaimed, reflecting on Hamlet's words to Horatio.

'Am I? What did he say?' was the rejoinder.

'He said,' I exclaimed, '"there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in our philosophy."'

'Well, he was right, whoever he was,' exclaimed the old man, with a sort of innocent satisfaction at his own corroboration of a great man's words. 'And what's more, I think the world would be a worse place than it is if we had nothing left to wonder at.'

'I heartily agree with you,' was my reply.

'And there's more to wonder at than even the stars and the tides,' continued the sweeper, 'and that's the ways of men, the good and the bad that's in the most of us. But then I do think we river-side people see more than others, what with the partings and meetings going on; and now and again the dead bodies that come to shore, and sometimes the miserable despairing people who would drown themselves if they weren't hindered. Well, it's these things that set me wondering and thinking, and that make the working hours pass quickly, especially at night.'

'You seem a bit of a philosopher,' I said admiringly.

'What's that?' cried the old man.

'It means lover of wisdom,' I replied; 'and he is happy who can justly lay claim to the title. My friend, we must have another talk another day.'

'Well, sir, you'll always find me here according to the tide; leastways unless I am ill again, as I was last year.'

'How was that?' I asked.

'Well, I don't quite know myself,' the old man answered, 'for I don't remember much about it. When they found the steps neglected, some of the wharf people came to look after me, and then they took me off to the hospital, where I was for a matter of six weeks. You see, sir, since my poor old missus died I am all alone, for my grandson went to sea; his father is a soldier; and my daughter has been in service these thirty years; so I had no one to go for a doctor or give me a drink of water.'

'Oh, that was very sad,' I exclaimed.

'Well, it was rather hard lines; but you see no one knew how I was taken; and when they found me, folks were mighty good to me, and they gave me back my place when I got well; so I ought not to complain.'

The boat by which I travel was now nearing the pier, and I stepped on board, with a friendly nod to the old man, reflecting with some sympathy on the many such stories which doubtless, if we knew them, would serve to swell

'The short and simple annals of the poor.'

FROTH

Children sometimes ask, and men and women need not be ashamed to ask, why is froth always white or nearly white, whatever may be the colour of the liquid underneath it? To answer the question, we shall have to determine what froth really is in itself, and how it is formed.

Take a filled ale-jug, or the well-known 'pewter' of a tavern or public-house, and pour out gently into a glass: scarcely any froth is produced. Pour out the self-same liquor from the self-same vessel in a stream several inches high, and you produce a foaming 'head,' which to the eye seems to be a substance quite different from ale or beer. Open a bottle of lemonade or ginger-beer, of soda-water or seltzer-water, and pour out the contents into a glass; the formation of froth is so rapid and abundant that the glass appears full when it really contains but a small quantity of liquid. Open a bottle of Bass's ale or of Guinness's stout; the froth is still more opaque and pronounced. Look at a cup of tea or coffee soon after the sugar has been added; there will often be seen a small covering of froth on the surface, which froth, if not actually white, is much more so than the liquid beneath. Watch the movements of the paddle-wheels of a steamer; the water thrown back from them is covered with foam of dazzling whiteness, the intensity of the white increasing with the rapidity of the wheel's motion.

In all these cases, and in multitudes of like kind, the froth seems to result from agitation; a quiescent liquid seldom presents symptoms of this nature. But agitation alone would not do it. Supposing it were possible for human beings to live, or for pints of ale to exist, without air, there would be no such thing as froth. In pouring out ale or other liquid, the falling stream becomes mingled with a portion of the atmospheric air which surrounds us; and it also buries, as it were, the air contained in the apparently empty glass: the result is, a mixture of ale and air, instead of ale only. Under ordinary circumstances, liquids contain as much air as they are capable of absorbing; the additional quantity is expelled. But how? It cannot rise in a body to the surface, but divides into minute spherical portions or air-bubbles, which ascend to the top of the liquid on account of their levity or comparative lightness.

This, however, is not all; if it were, the bubbles would burst directly they come to the surface, and froth would not have an opportunity of forming. Cohesion comes into action, the cohesion between the particles of every liquid. The bubbles of air, as they rise from the body of the ale, beer, or other liquid, are able to penetrate between the particles; but when they arrive at the surface they encounter a film of liquid cohesive enough to restrain for a time their final escape into the atmosphere. Froth consists of bubbles, each a tiny globular portion of air, bounded on the upper surface by an exceedingly thin film of liquid; the bubbles retain this position and condition until the struggle ends as a victory for one of the belligerents. The ascensive power of the air within the bubble overcomes the cohesive power of the liquid film or covering, and 'the bubble bursts' – our beverage loses its frothy 'head.' The length of time that elapses before the air escapes by the bursting of the bubble depends chiefly on the viscidity of the liquid. If we pour ale into one vessel and water into another, from equal heights, we shall find that the former will present a frothy surface, the latter a more instantaneous sparkling appearance; the power of retention being greater in the former instance than in the latter. In other words, ale having a greater specific gravity than water, and also greater viscidity, the bubble formed has a thicker coating, and requires a longer time for its disrupture. Taking the round of all the 'frothy headings,' we find the same rule prevail. In the spray from the paddle of a steamboat, in the froth on the surface of beverages, in the sparkles on a cup of tea, the air is in the first place entangled among the particles of liquid, and thus forms bubbles in the struggle to escape. Although carbonic acid may, in regard to physical properties, be ranked as a kind of air, the formation of froth in effervescing liquids is slightly different.

But why is froth white? Porter, ale, tea, coffee, champagne, water, differ very considerably in colour; yet in all of these, when froth is produced it is white. This appears to be due to the reflection of the light from the outer surface of the several bubbles. When the surface is thus broken up, we have a cluster of little spheres, each of which presents a reflection to the eye from some part of its surface; and as there may be tens of thousands of these in a very small space, the effects become united, and are recognised as a whiteness. It is simply an aggregation of small effects to produce one more conspicuous. If the bubbles are large, then fewer of them can be contained in a given area; consequently the number of convex reflecting surfaces is smaller, and the united effect less brilliant – in other words, less white.

But it may still be asked by some of us, how is it that the froth of a reddish liquid, such as beer, is white? The phenomena of reflected light must again be appealed to for the means of solving this problem. The colour of a liquid (not its froth) is determined by the transmitted light, not the reflected. If liquor be contained in a transparent glass vessel held between the eye and the light, and we look through it, the eye receives the light transmitted by the liquid, and deems the colour of that light to be the colour of the liquid itself; but if we pour the liquor into an open vessel, and look obliquely at the surface, we shall find that the colour does not deviate much from whiteness, whatever the transmitted colour may be. The liquid, whatever be its body colour, is when agitated broken up into detached portions at its surface by the formation of bubbles, and each bubble reflects to the eye a portion of the light which falls upon it. Consequently, if this reflected light is nearly white in all cases, the resulting assemblage of bubbles, generally known as froth, must always appear white or nearly white. We can easily understand the greater yellowness of the froth on strong Dublin stout than that on pale Burton ale; the more tenacious liquor forms a thicker and consequently less clearly reflecting bubble than that on the more limpid.

A CITY WEED

I passed a graveyard in a London street,
Where 'stead of songs of birds, the hoarse sad cries
Of wretched men echoed from morn to night.
Locked were its gates, and rows of iron bars
Fenced in God's Acre from tired wanderers' feet.
All broken lay the slabs which love had raised;
But on a mound where fell a patch of light,
A Bindweed grew; and on its flowers, with eyes
O'erflowing with a wintry rain of tears,
A pale-faced, miserable woman gazed,
Heart-sick with longings for the nevermore,
And faint with memories of bygone years:
A breezy common with a heaven of stars,
And lovers parting at a cottage door.

notes

1

Since writing the above, information has come to hand concerning the real fate of this submarine craft. When the civil war was over, divers were sent down; they fished up the enemy-destroying and self-destroying torpedo-boat, which was found, with its dead crew in it, underneath a Federal ship, which it had sunk by bursting a hole in the hull.