Chapter 85 Indoor Heating - 3

It seems as if our high-minded speech has lost all its power and has degenerated into meaningless nonsense, our lives have become so far removed from verbal symbols that metaphors and similes have to be so far-fetched to use The food elevator comes up from below, and the living room is too far away from the kitchen or workplace.Even eating is generally no more than a metaphor for eating a meal, as if only the savage lived so close to nature and truth that he could borrow metaphors from them.How did the scholars who lived in the Far Northwest Territories or the Isle of Man know the parliamentary gossip in the kitchen?

Only one or two of my guests had the courage to eat mush with me; but when they saw the danger approaching, they drew back, as if it might shake the house down.After cooking so much corn mush, the house is still standing. I didn't start mud walls until the weather was really cold, and for this reason, I took a small boat to the other side of the lake to get whiter fine sand.With such means of transport, I am glad to travel further, if necessary.During this time my house has been nailed with thin strips of wood on all sides.While nailing the battens I was glad I could drive a nail in with one hammer.I was more ambitious and wanted to get the mortar from the board to the wall quickly and beautifully.I remembered the story about a pompous guy.He wore nice clothes and used to walk around the village giving advice to the workers.One day he suddenly wanted to replace his theory with practice, so he rolled up his sleeves, took a board used by a mason, put mortar on it, and at last nothing went wrong, so he looked triumphantly at the slats above his head, It took a brave move to put the mortar on, and immediately made a fool of himself, dropping all the mortar back on his haughty chest.Again I admired the mortar, it repelled the cold so economically, so conveniently, it was smooth and beautiful, and I knew what accidents could happen to a plasterer.It amazes me how eagerly the bricks have sucked all the moisture out of the mortar before I plaster it, and how many buckets of water I have used to build a new fireplace.The previous winter I had experimented by firing a small amount of lime from a shell of our river called the Unio fluviatilis; so I already knew where to get the material.If I'm happy, maybe I'll walk a mile or two, find good limestone, and burn the lime myself.

By this time thin ice had formed in the sunken and shallowest depressions, days, and in some places weeks, before the entire lake would freeze.The first piece of ice is especially interesting, especially good, because it is hard, dark, and transparent, and the chances are better to observe the water in shallow places; Study the bottom of the lake comfortably, not two or three inches from you, like a picture behind a glass, when of course the water has always been calm.There were many grooves in the sand, through which several creatures had crawled, and again by the same route: as for the wreckage, there were here and there caddis shells formed of fine grains of white quartz.Perhaps they made the furrows, for the caddis worms were in the furrows, and though they made them, the furrows seemed too broad and large.The ice itself is the most interesting thing, though, and you'll have to study it at the earliest opportunity.If you looked at it very carefully on the morning after the freezing, you could see that the air bubbles which seemed to be in the middle of the ice were actually attached to the surface below the ice, and many more were rising from the bottom of the water; for The ice is still stronger and darker, so you can see the water through it.These bubbles are about one-eightieth to one-eighth of an inch in diameter and are so clear and so beautiful that you can see your own face reflected in these bubbles beneath the ice.Thirty or forty air bubbles can be counted in a square inch.There are also those inside the ice, narrow, oval, vertical, about half an inch long, and conical, with the top pointing upwards, often with a string of round beads of air bubbles in the case of freshly frozen ice , one on top of the other.But these air bubbles in the middle of the ice are not as numerous and not as visible as those attached below the ice.I often throw some stones to test the power of the ice. Those stones passing through the ice carry air down, forming a large and obvious white bubble below.One day, after forty-eight hours, I went back to the old place, and although the hole was covered with an inch of ice again, I saw that the big bubbles were still beautiful. You can see clearly.However, due to the warmth of Xiaoyangchun in the past two days, the ice is no longer transparent, the dark green of the mountains and waters, and the bottom of the water can be seen, but it is opaque and grayish white. The ice layer is twice as thick as before, but it is not as thick as before. sturdy.The heat greatly expands the air bubbles, and they condense together, but become irregular, no longer one on top of the other, often like silver coins poured out of a bag, piled up together, and some become thin slices, as if they only occupy one space. Tiny cracks.The beauty of ice has disappeared, and it is too late to study the bottom of the water.Curious as to where my large bubble occupied the fresh ice, I scooped up a block with medium-sized bubbles and turned it upside down.A new layer of ice has formed under and around the bubble, so the bubble is between two sheets of ice; it's all in the middle of the lower layer, but close to the upper layer, flat, maybe a bit like a lentil, rounded edges, A quarter of an inch deep and four inches in diameter; I was amazed to find that just below the bubble the ice melted regularly, like an upside-down saucer, and at the height of the central five-eighths of an inch, between the water and the bubble There is a thin dividing line between them, not more than one-eighth of an inch, and in many places small bubbles in this dividing line burst downward, and perhaps there is no bubble at all under the largest one, which is a foot in diameter. icy.It suddenly dawned on me that the small air bubbles attached to the ice I saw for the first time were now frozen into the ice, and each of them acted as a fire mirror to the ice below to varying degrees, trying to melt. ice cubes.There was a sound of melting ice and bursting, all of which were dried up by these small air bubbles.