Rensselaer Union, Volume 6, Number 16, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 8 January 1874 — Air and Light. [ARTICLE]

Air and Light.

Did you ever think of the difference between air and light, in the way they come to us? You cannot catch the sunbeam in you/fingers; you cannot shut it up; you cannot even feel it. It seems as thin, as intangible, as the air itself. Yet the air penetrates everything; it creeps through; it glides under; it goes behind. There is no escaping it; while the sunbeam is turned aside by every obstacle. What if light moved as air does, instead of only in straight lines? Do you see what would happen? There would be no shadow; no escape anywhere from the piercing brightness. Tne thick green leaves would not turn it aside; there would be no coolness of the woods; no “shadow of a great rock in a thirsty land;” no use at all for hat-brims or sunumbrellas. Some One seems to have planned very wisely and kindly, in this one little law of light, to keep us all comfortable and happy. Then thei sunbeam itself, though it looks like a simple gleam of brightness, isireally a bundle of different colors tied "up together, and each color has a different office to perform. The artist can separate the ray into its original -colors, and- letting them fall upon his prepared plate, will show you that it is only one or two of the darkest rays that have anything to do with printing his wonderful sun-pictures.— Little Corporal.