No sooner was I in some measure restored, and, favored by the change in the season, once more able to occupy my old gable-chamber, than I also began to provide myself with a little apparatus.  A small air-furnace with a sand-bath was prepared; and I very soon learned to change the glass alembics, with a piece of burning match-cord, into vessels in which the different mixtures were to be evaporated.  Now were the strange ingredients of the macrocosm and microcosm handled in an odd, mysterious manner; and, before all, I attempted to produce neutral salts in an unheard-of way.  But what, for a long time, kept me busy most, was the so-called Liquor Silicum (flint-juice), which is made by melting down pure quartz-flint with a proper proportion of alkali, whence results a transparent glass, which melts away on exposure to the air, and exhibits a beautiful clear fluidity.  Whoever has once prepared this himself, and seen it with his own eyes, will not blame those who believe in a maiden earth, and in the possibility of producing further effects upon it by means of it.  I had become quite skilful in preparing this Liquor Silicum; the fine white flints which are found in the Main furnished a perfect material for it:  and I was not wanting in the other requisites, nor in diligence.  But I wearied at last, because I could not but remark that the flinty substance was by no means so closely combined with the salt as I had philosophically imagined, for it very easily separated itself again; and this most beautiful mineral fluidity, which, to my greatest astonishment, had sometimes appeared in the form of an animal jelly, always deposited a powder, which I was forced to pronounce the finest flint dust, but which gave not the least sign of any thing productive in its nature from which one could have hoped to see this maiden earth pass into the maternal state.

Strange and unconnected as these operations were, I yet learned many things from them.  I paid strict attention to all the crystallizations that might occur, and became acquainted with the external forms of many natural things:  and, inasmuch as I well knew that in modern times chemical subjects were treated more methodically, I wished to get a general conception of them; although, as a half-adept, I had very little respect for the apothecaries and all those who operated with common fire.  However, the chemical “Compendium” of Boerhaave attracted me powerfully, and led me on to read several of his writings, in which (since, moreover, my tedious illness had inclined me towards medical subjects) I found an inducement to study also the “Aphorisms” of this excellent man, which I was glad to stamp upon my mind and in my memory.