What do you think
of that from the coal-tar. When you have a new ribbon for your hat; or a
pretty red dress, or your grandmamma buys a new violet ribbon for her
cap, just ask if they are dyed with aniline colors; and if the answer is
"Yes," you may know that they came from the coal-tar. Besides the dyes,
we shall also have left naphtha, useful in making varnish, and various
oils that are used in more ways than I can stop to tell you, or you
would care now to hear. If your cousin Annie has a jet belt-clasp or
bracelet, and if you find in aunt Edith's box of old treasures an odd-
shaped brooch of jet, you may remember the coal again; for jet is only
one kind of lignite, which is a name for a certain preparation of coal.
But here is another surprise of a different kind. You have seen boxes of
hard, smooth, white candles with the name paraffin marked on the cover.
Should you think the black coal could ever undergo such a change as to
come out in the form of these white candles? Go to the factory where
they are made, and you can see the whole process; and then you will
understand one more of God's meanings for coal.
And all this time I have not said a word about how, while the great
forests lay under pressure for millions of years, the oils that were in
the growing plants (just as oils are in many growing plants now) were
pressed out, and flowed into underground reservoirs, lying hidden there,
until one day not many years ago a man accidentally bored into one.
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