Benjamnin F. Butler, Butler's Book: Autobiography and Personal Reminiscences of Major-General Benjamin Butler

[59] chemical nomenclature, which gave name and place to all chemical substances in their relations to each other, and took them out of the unintelligible and incongruous diction which surrounded, hindered, and impeded all the work of the alchemists.

Static electricity, claimed to have been deduced by Franklin from heaven, and produced on earth by friction upon certain resinous and vitreous surfaces, seemed to me to be too evanescent, fitful, and uncontrollable (because one must use all or none of it at one time) to be of any effectiveness in the arts, or of substantial use to man-kind, save, as I was taught, as a remedy for controlling the nerves of delicate women.

I took great interest in that mysterious substance which made to quiver the leg of a dead frog lying on a copper plate when touched with a piece of zinc, and which could be produced in quantities sufficient for experimental use by means of the pile of Volta. This pile could readily be made in a student's room by building up plates of differently oxidizable metals with soft moistened porous mattings between them. It furnished power sufficient for electrical experiments in the same direction in which Davy, by a powerful battery of cells, was reducing into new combinations at will substances which had been hitherto deemed entirely simple and elementary. This substance, I believed, was the elective power of the future. At that time, so far as I knew, no thought of any connection between magnetism and galvanic electricity had occurred to the scientific mind. For nearly two years, I pursued my scientific studies. They were substantially outside of the course, because our professor of chemistry, Dr. Holmes, for reasons satisfactory to himself, did not think it worth while to give lectures on chemistry. Prof. George W. Keeley, however, gave us the fullest instructions on light and static electricity, by which I very much profited. I believe it was at that time that I first heard of Miss Sommerville's conceptions as to the polarization of light.

Of course, these studies did not advance my standing in my regular recitations, some of which I must confess were wretched. I remember one in geometry which called forth an animadversion and a reply, neither of which was proper, between teacher and pupil. The teacher took the chalk from me as I retired from the blackboard, and said, in the presence of the class, “Butler, you don't know ”