Page images
PDF
EPUB

The brickmaker makes them. Children have seen that soft and blueish clay which is used to

draw out grease. There are large spaces of ground covered with this clay: water is mixed with the clay, which makes it soft, like the dough of which bread is made. People go to the place where so much of this clay is found; they make what is called a brick yard, and place in it a very large kind of oven; the oven is called a brick kiln, and is made to bake bricks.

Bread is

Bricks are made like little loaves. put into pans to bake; clay is put into little wooden boxes called moulds. If you look at bricks you will see that they are all alike; the clay put into the box takes the shape of the box, then it is taken out, and baked till the bricks are red and hard. The bricks are then sold to persons who want them.

Mortar is made of lime, sand, and the hair of animals; the hair which is scraped from hides is put into the mortar. Lime is at first stones. The lime stones are burned in a great fire till they become that white substance, which you perhaps have seen. The lime is put into barrels

and sold.

The beams of the house were once large trees. The tree is cut off with an axe from the root, all the branches are cut off, the bark is cut off, and the round trunk is made square. These square logs are called timber. Some logs are sawed into boards, these are fastened together with nails.

Glass is made of sand and potashes, melted together. The squares of glass used in windows are called panes, which means squares. They

are cut with a diamond. A knife will not cut glass.

The laborer, the brickmaker, the bricklayer or mason, the carpenter or man who works on wood, the glazier, the painter, the locksmith, the blacksmith, who furnishes hinges and nails, all work upon a house.

EXPLANATIONS.

The top of a house is the roof.

The lowest part of the house is the basement. The lowest part of a thing-that part on which the upper parts rest, is the base or basis.

The door of a house has sometimes a little roof projecting over it; this little roof is supported by pillars; this is a portico. Sometimes the half of a pillar is set flatly against a house, not to support any thing, but to make the house look better. These half pillars are called pilasters.

The top of the pillar is the capital.

The foot or base of the pillar is the pedestal. The post which stands on the pedestal is the shaft.

The little pillars or posts which are set at the end of the stairs are commonly called banisters. -Banister is not the right name, it should be baluster; all the balusters together make a balustrade.

Sometimes the ceiling of a room is flat; sometimes it is hollowed like the inside of an egg shell; this is a vaulted ceiling.

Houses, churches, or any kind of buildings, are edifices.

The art of building houses, churches, &c. is architecture.

The person who lays out the plan of a house, as a lady draws out a pattern on a piece of paper, is an architect.

Capital not only means the top of a pillar, it means the top or head of any thing. That part of a thing which is of the greatest importance is the capital part. That city in which the laws are enacted is the capital.

Money is sometimes called capital.

The round top of a building is called a dome. Dome sometimes means house.

Domestic means belonging to a house; the animals which live about a house are domestic animals. Servants are domestics, or people belonging to the family in the house.

Cupola.-A little building raised on the roof of another building.

Spire. The top of a steeple which is tall and pointed.

SALT.

THE salt which we eat on our meat is found almost every where. The water of the great ocean contains salt. People collect a great quantity of water, and place it so that the water evaporates and leaves the salt.

Take

A child could make salt in this way. some salt water in a saucer, set it in the sun;

16* •

the water will dry up in time, and leave little particles of salt sticking about the saucer.

Some countries are very far from the sea, but in these countries there are mines of salt. God knew that salt would preserve many things which men would want to keep, and that it would make their food taste agreeably; so he has given it to all parts of our world, that men might have it every where.

Coffee is the seed of a plant. Good cuffee comes from Arabia, and from the West India Islands.

Tea is the leaves of a plant.

Molasses and sugar, are made from the juice of the sugar cane. Sugar cane is a kind of grass; it has stalks much larger and taller than our grass; when these stalks are ground in a mill the juice runs out. People boil the juice and make of it molasses and sugar. Sugar cane grows in hot countries. We in the United States send ships with things which grow in our country to the warm country of the West Indies, and to some other places where there is Lugar, and our ships bring back sugar and coffee, and other things which grow in those countries. Sugar cane grows in Louisiana.

The things which are sent away in our ships are called exports. The things which are brought back are imports.

Sugar and salt are in little pieces called crystals. All things which can be melted, and which grow hard when they are cooled, have shapes of their own called crystals. The

same substance always forms crystals of the same shape. The crystals of water, which are snow, are white like salt; but the pieces, or crystals of snow are not shaped like the little crystals of salt. The crystals of salt are not like the crystals of sugar. We cannot perceive the exact shapes of these crystals without a microscope.

THE SENSES.

SEEING, hearing, smelling, tasting, feeling, are the senses; God has provided for the gratification of all these senses. His goodness may indeed be perceived in all that he has made; but in nothing more than in those enjoyments which cannot be bought with money, and which the rich and the poor equally possess. The beautiful colors of the clouds, the animals, the flowers, and the minerals, are given to every eye. The colors of the rainbow are, red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet.

There are agreeable sounds produced by every moving thing. The water as it runs, the wind as it blows, the trees as they wave their branches, the birds and every harmless animal, and particularly the voices of men, convey delightful sounds to the ear.

[ocr errors]

Some substances have disagreeable smells: these are designed to inform us that too much of them, inhaled too long, might hurt us. God has given some sweet odors to refresh and please us. Odor, is what is commonly called

« PreviousContinue »