Mary.  I thought they always looked as if they were either in play or in mischief!  What trials have they?

L. Trials much like our own.  Sickness, and starvation; fevers, and agues, and palsy; oppression; and old age, and the necessity of passing away in their time, like all else.  If there’s any pity in you, you must come to-morrow, and take some part in these crystal griefs.

Dora.  I am sure we shall cry till our eyes are red.  L. Ah, you may laugh, Dora:  but I’ve been made grave, not once, nor twice, to see that even crystals “cannot choose but be old” at last.  It may be but a shallow proverb of the Justice’s; but it is a shrewdly wide one.

Dora (pensive for once).  I suppose it is very dreadful to be old!  But then (brightening again), what should we do without our dear old friends, and our nice old lecturers?

L. If all nice old lecturers were minded as little as one I know of;—­

Dora.  And if they all meant as little what they say, would they not deserve it?  But we’ll come—­we’ll come, and cry.

LECTURE 9.

CRYSTAL SORROWS

Working Lecture in Schoolroom.

L. We have been hitherto talking, children, as if crystals might live, and play, and quarrel, and behave ill or well, according to their characters, without interruption from anything else.  But so far from this being so, nearly all crystals, whatever their characters, have to live a hard life of it, and meet with many misfortunes.  If we could see far enough, we should find, indeed, that, at the root, all their vices were misfortunes:  but to-day I want you to see what sort of troubles the best crystals have to go through, occasionally, by no fault of their own.

This black thing, which is one of the prettiest of the very few pretty black things in the world, is called “Tourmaline.”  It may be transparent, and green, or red, as well as black; and then no stone can be prettier (only, all the light that gets into it, I believe, comes out a good deal the worse; and is not itself again for a long while).  But this is the commonest state of it,—­opaque, and as black as jet.

Mary.  What does “Tourmaline” mean?

L. They say it is Ceylanese, and I don’t know Ceylanese, but we may always be thankful for a graceful word, whatever it means

Mary.  And what is it made of?

L. A little of everything there’s always flint and clay, and magnesia in it, and the black is iron, according to its fancy, and there’s boracic acid if you know what that is and if you don’t, I cannot tell you today, and it doesn’t signify and there’s potash, and soda, and, on the whole, the chemistry of it is more like a mediaeval doctor’s prescription, than the making of a respectable mineral but it may, perhaps, be owing to the strange complexity of its make, that it has a notable habit which makes