“And yet,” said I, “there is one of the most extraordinary products of human genius and skill,—­an object which combines the useful and the beautiful to an extent which hardly any simple form of mechanism can pretend to rival.  Do you notice how, while everything else has gone to smash, that wheel remains sound and fit for service?  Look at it merely for its beauty.

“See the perfect circles, the outer and the inner.  A circle is in itself a consummate wonder of geometrical symmetry.  It is the line in which the omnipotent energy delights to move.  There is no fault in it to be amended.  The first drawn circle and the last both embody the same complete fulfillment of a perfect design.  Then look at the rays which pass from the inner to the outer circle.  How beautifully they bring the greater and lesser circles into connection with each other!  The flowers know that secret,—­the marguerite in the meadow displays it as clearly as the great sun in heaven.  How beautiful is this flower of wood and iron, which we were ready to pass by without wasting a look upon it!  But its beauty is only the beginning of its wonderful claim upon us for our admiration.  Look at that field of flowering grass, the triticum vulgare,—­see how its waves follow the breeze in satiny alternations of light and shadow.  You admire it for its lovely aspect; but when you remember that this flowering grass is wheat, the finest food of the highest human races, it gains a dignity, a glory, that its beauty alone could not give it.

“Now look at that exquisite structure lying neglected and disgraced, but essentially unchanged in its perfection, before you.  That slight and delicate-looking fabric has stood such a trial as hardly any slender contrivance, excepting always the valves of the heart, was ever subjected to.  It has rattled for years over the cobble-stones of a rough city pavement.  It has climbed over all the accidental obstructions it met in the highway, and dropped into all the holes and deep ruts that made the heavy farmer sitting over it use his Sunday vocabulary in a week-day form of speech.  At one time or another, almost every part of that old wagon has given way.  It has had two new pairs of shafts.  Twice the axle has broken off close to the hub, or nave.  The seat broke when Zekle and Huldy were having what they called ‘a ride’ together.  The front was kicked in by a vicious mare.  The springs gave way and the floor bumped on the axle.  Every portion of the wagon became a prey of its special accident, except that most fragile looking of all its parts, the wheel.  Who can help admiring the exact distribution of the power of resistance at the least possible expenditure of material which is manifested in this wondrous triumph of human genius and skill?  The spokes are planted in the solid hub as strongly as the jaw-teeth of a lion in their deep-sunken sockets.  Each spoke has its own territory in the circumference, for which it is responsible.  According to the load the vehicle