| Show 0 I BATCH O ASBESTOS STORIES Man With a Mine of Information Astonishes tonishes Another New York Times An elderly man with a gray mustache mus-tache looked up from a plate of spaghetti spa-ghetti which he was eating in a restaurant tauranf and spoke to three others Say ho said what do you people know about asbestos Two of his companions nreserved a modest silence but the third who was a little man spoke upI up-I know all about asbestos he said Do eh queried the man with the spaghetti on his plate Then how longs been in use Well said the little man hesitatingly hesitat-ingly praps thirty years I Youre away off Of course you did not know that Charlemagne had an asbestos as-bestos tablecloth Whos Charlemagne Well said the elderly man Charlemagne Charle-magne was king of the Franks and emperor em-peror of the Romans about 1100 years ago He was a great fighter and owned own-ed an asbestos tablecloth Dont believe i said the little man I never heard of asbestos until the centennial Well Charlemagne had the cloth all right saId the elderly man He used I to astonish his friends from the interior inter-ior by throwing the tablecloth into the fire after dinner and of course it didnt burn Asbestos became quite fashionable after that for towels and napkins I saved laundry bills All a mans wife had to do was to throw the weeks wash into the stove and it I came out as clean a chalk Say said the little man incredulously incredu-lously do you think you can string me like that 7 Its so declared the elderly man But of course you never heard that Benjamin Franklin had an asbestos purse No had he asked the little man with 3 sneer Of course he had He took i over to England with him and sold i to a man in Bloomsbury London for a big sumI I suppose said the little man with a wink that the Englishman was 3 friend of yours and that you know his name No replied the first man I never saw him but he was called Sir Hans Sloane and he had a museum man Dime museum 7 grinned the little manNot Not a bit of i smiled the elderly man goodnaturedly I was a sure enough museum and as a mate I of fact i constituted the nucleus of the British Museum I dare say that Eon I jamm Franklins asbestos purse is there yet The little man looked a little crestfallen I crest-fallen but the elderly man consoled himDont I Dont worry he said there are lots of people besides yourpelf who are shy on knowledge regarding asbestos I wasnt much used during recent centuries cen-turies In 1C7G an asbestos handkerchief handker-chief was shown to the Royal fcoeii ry as a great curiosity by Dr Plot who j had bought itfrom a traveler on his I return from China They called it salamanders sal-amanders wool Dr PIt saturated the handkerchief with oil and threw it into I a fierce charcoal fire The oil Inmed I oi off but the handkerchief remiippj Intact I I in-tact The Fellows of the society were much interested and were not jrrpatlv I surprised when the price of asbestos in Chinese Tartary was quoted at 400 a Chinese ell which isnt much more than an English yard Its hkely that the > rice had risen since the lays of the ancients for those old fellyws had big sheets of asbestos AvhiiM they wound around corpsss before ciemating thorn thornThats Thats a long time ago sail the little man sententiously Well continued the eldeily man if vou want to come down to later years there was a book published in London forty years giving ago accounts ac-counts among other things 3f remarkable remark-able experiments previously made at mac Milan in Italy by the Chevalier Al dini who had used asbestos in 1 the construction con-struction of a suit of firep0f armor I The coverings for arms Ipjs l and boav were of heavy cloth which had open I soaked in a strong solution of alum The helmet irauntlets nml < 3tinl intrs were of asbestos auntet Then there was an overdress covering the body thighs and feet of wire gauze twenty meshes to the inch With this armor on iu < n stood on a big gridiron over a blazing fire for ten minutes and bunM thoir heads in piles of burning hay and shavings shav-ings but nevertheless they came out unharmed They also handled bars of whitehot iron and did other things which seemed ruite miraculous lat was over forty years ago Well said the little man its harl to believe that for several hundreds or thousands of years the world was ro full of chums that there wasnt loom for a man smart enough to utilize asbestos as-bestos On the whole I guess I goon go-on doubting All right returned the elderly man Ive got 5000 that says Im right Perhaps your doubtare strong enough to uphold a bet of 10 against IfS But the little man wouldnt bet |
