ctricity. Well,
suppose I have a bit of iron in America, with an electric battery in
Ireland, or _vice versa_--"

"W'ot's wicey wersa, Mr Wright?"

"Oh, it means the terms being changed--turned the other way, you know--
back to the front, as it were--in short, I mean the battery being in
America and the bit of iron in Ireland."

"Well, well, who'd a thought there was so much in wicey wersa; but go
on, Mr Wright."

"Now, you must suppose," continued Robin, "that a needle, like the
mariner's compass needle, hangs beside my bit of iron, close to it, and
that a wire, or conductor of electricity, connects the iron with my
electric battery in Ireland. Well, that makes a magnet of it, and the
suspended needle, being attracted, sticks to it. Then I disconnect the
wire from my battery by touching a handle, the bit of iron ceases to be
a magnet, and the needle was free. Again I connect the battery, and the
needle flies to the remagnetised bit of iron. Thus, as fast as I
choose, I can make the needle wag, and by a simple arrangement we can
make it wag right or left, so many beats right or left, or alternately,
representing letters. By varying the beats we vary the letters, and
thus spell out our messages. Now, do you understand it?"

"I ain't quite sure that I does," replied Vulcan; "I've got a hazy
notion that by touchin' and removin' the touch from a conductor,
connecting and disconnecting wires and batteries, you can make
electricity flow just as you let on or stop water by turnin' a
stopcock--"

"Not exactly," interrupted Robin, "because, you see, electricity does
not really flow, not being a substance."

"Not a substance, sir! w'y, w'ot is it then?"

"Like light and sound, it is merely an effect, an influence, a result,"
answered Robin. "We only use the word _flow_, and talk of electricity
as a fluid, for convenience' sake."

"Well, w'otever it is or isn't," continued the puzzled Vulcan, gazing at
vacancy for a few seconds, "when you've set it agoin'--or set agoin' the
things as sets it agoin'--you make a suspended needle wag, and when you
stop it you make the needle stop waggin', and by the way in which that
there needle wags you can spell out the letters o' the alphabit--so many
wags to the right bein' one letter, so many wags to the left bein'
another letter, an' so on,--so that, what between the number o' wags an'
the direction o' the waggin's, you--you come for to--there, I'm lost
again, an' I must go