"Thank you, young gentleman, I had rather be excused."

"Not close enough down to burn you, uncle; higher up. There--you
feel a stream of hot air; so something seems to rise from the candle.
Suppose you were to put a very long slender gas-burner over the flame,
and let the flame burn just within the end of it, as if it were a
chimney,--some of the hot steam would go up and come out at the top,
but a sort of dew would be left behind in the glass chimney, if
the chimney was cold enough when you put it on. There are ways of
collecting this sort of dew, and when it is collected it turns out to
be really water. I am not joking, uncle. Water is one of the things
which the candle turns into in burning,--water coming out of fire. A
jet of oil gives above a pint of water in burning. In some lighthouses
they burn, Professor Faraday says, up to two gallons of oil in a
night, and if the windows are cold the steam from the oil clouds the
inside of the windows, and, in frosty weather, freezes into ice."

"Water out of a candle, eh?" exclaimed Mr. Bagges. "As hard to get, I
should have thought, as blood out of a post. Where does it come from?"

"Part from the wax, and part from the air, and yet not a drop of
it comes either from the air or the wax. What do you make of that,
uncle?"

"Eh? Oh! I'm no hand at riddles. Give it up."

"No riddle at all, uncle. The part that comes from the wax isn't
water, and the part that comes from the air isn't water, but when put
together they become water. Water is a mixture of two things then.
This can be shown. Put some iron wire or turnings into a gun barrel