movement of the body, showing plainly that they were caused by her: even if this could for a moment be doubted, after a second request from us that she would leave the table, and suffer us to hear so much as a single rap when she was not there, which she again refused to do. In short, I feel some difficulty in conveying an accurate notion of the extremely clumsy nature of the whole exhibition—far, very far, below the performances of a strolling conjuror at a country fair. Those who may consider this statement an exaggeration can easily satisfy themselves (provided they go without any parti pris, either on one side or the other, and are only anxious, like myself, to discover the truth), on applying at 21 or 22, Red Lion Street, Bloomsbury, for an interview with the celebrated medium, Mrs. Marshall—and her niece.
I write this woman’s name in full (perfectly regardless of the “spirits” which she may summon up for my destruction), and I append my own name and address, from the same sense of duty which has induced me to trouble the Editor of Once a Week with this short article. When we reflect on the number of weak minds which are being still further weakened by attendance on the séances of Mrs. Marshall, and others of her class; on the well-authenticated instances of ladies of rank regulating their course of life, and physicking their children, according to the directions of spirits of Red Lion Street manufacture; on the abominable profanity and wickedness of a piece of jugglery by which feeble imaginations are brought to conceive that a dead father, husband, or child, is dancing on the table to an air from the Traviata; it becomes obviously the duty of the sane part of society to stand forth and expose the delusion. Of Mr. Home, the highest living professor of his art, I have said nothing, simply because I know nothing. It would afford me, however, great pleasure to be favoured by a séance with him; and if convinced by his experiments, I would (with the permission of my friend, the Editor) record my conversion, and the grounds on which it was based, in this journal. Should Mr. Home be—as I have no reason for denying—in contact with the spiritual world, he will thank me for exposing one at least of the pretenders, who, independently of the harm which they do to mankind at large, are throwing very serious discredit, and a degree of suspicion which he himself will admit to be unavoidable, on the art or mystery of which he is so distinguished a professor.
John Delaware Lewis. 16, King Street, St. James’s.
PIPES OF PAPER.
Many are the uses to which the generic name of pipe applies. Water pipes, gas pipes, sewer pipes, drain pipes, warming pipes, ventilating pipes, organ pipes, medical pipes, blowpipes, reed pipes, tobacco pipes, pipe sticks, petticoat piping, and the pipes that Tom Pipes, one of Smollett’s heroes, played on as boatswain. My present dealing is with water pipes, which, after ranging through many varieties of material, are now being constructed of—paper.
Our earliest pipes for water were made of lead, like the bullets in the nursery ballad, from facility of manufacture, but necessarily they were of small size, owing to their facility of collapse. When the early water companies first laid pipes for general supply under the surface of the streets of London, no better materials could be found than the bolls of trees—birch and elm being the favourites,—which, in lengths of nine to twelve feet, were bored out to a diameter of about six inches,—one end hooped, and the other trimmed conically, so that each joint resembled the connection known as “spigot and faucet.” Extraordinary was the duration of these pipes, but they ultimately went out of use because their diameter was unequal to the constantly increasing supply demanded by the public.
And so water engineers took to cast-iron as the next material. The annunciation of this called forth many denouncers of the unheard-of new-fangled novelty, amongst all classes, but more especially amongst the washerwomen, who beheld therein the downfall of their trade from the universal iron-moulding of every article of personal, bed, or table, apparel. But the engineers persevered, and the soap-bubbles burst, which was not the case with the pipes. Cast-iron pipes then became an enormous manufacture, and were the subject matter of many patents, the problem being how to cast them thinnest, while containing the requisite strength. In their application to rain-water purposes, where no pressure had to be guarded against, marvellous was the thinness achieved—so thin that they seemed to be formed of two thin skins with nothing between, sometimes disintegrating in the acidulated smoke atmosphere of London in the course of two seasons. A new difficulty in the foundry was to keep the core central, so as to preserve an equal thickness of the metal,—a difficult thing, when the total thickness was less than the eighth part of an inch. One inventor resorted to a plan of forming these pipes without central cores, substituting for them a violent whirling movement of the mould, whereby the molten metal was flying by centrifugal action against the sides of the mould. But it does not appear to have been successful on the large manufacturing scale.
In France “iron is iron,” and every kind of scheme, save importing it from England, is resorted to to economise its use. So a certain M. Chameroy invented a plan of making water pipes of thin sheet iron, rivetted together like the funnels of common stoves. The insides he coated with mineral pitch to a beautifully smooth surface, and the outside with the same pitch mixed with small gravel pebbles. The iron was thus hermetically sealed against the action of oxygen. On each end of each pipe was cut a screw, one male and the other female, and they were connected just like wrought iron gas tubing. Pipes of this description have been in use in Paris for many years, successfully. But want of stiffness to prevent collapse is a practical difficulty, unless for small uses.
In England the system of “pot pipes,” or pipes of earthenware, have been largely introduced for drainage purposes. These pipes will stand sufficient pressure in each length, but they cannot be