1894 Eliza E. McNaughton

I have wealth that cannot fly. in Fancy-land;

l have friends that cannot die, in Fancy-land:

I have gems of every hue.

Love the truest or the true.

Cures that all my pains subdue. in Fancy-land.

Strange how cobwebs change to lace in Fancy-land.

Graceless rafters have a grace in Fancy-land;

Tattered curtains, stained and old.

Brightest crimson hues unfold.

Under cornices of gold, in Fancy-land.

Now there may be lay minds who, reading thus far, will wonder that an achievement of producing bubbles, even bubbles of extra endurance, is worth the telling. Such are to be speedily enlightened. In science bubbles, or soap films. which is their technical name, play a very important part.

They are valuable in many experiments. Commenting on Mrs. McNaughton’s bubbles, Prof. Dorms says: “Durable soap films or bubbles are desirable for many scientific experiments‐thus for exhibiting endosmose and exosmose of gases, as suggested by Prof. John W. Draper or to illustrate the laws of light, as proposed by Plateau, Tyndall and others.

“Or to show the great speed of light as compared with sound by filling a soap bubble with two volumes of hydrogen and one volume or oxygen, then throwing an electric light through the bubble, to exhibit. it on a screen in a remote part of the lecture room previously darkened. On exploding the mixed gases, the bubble disappears; from a remote part of the room the sound is heard after the picture of the bubble has vanished.

"I have given up illustrating my lectures with soap films, owing to their fragile nature. Although I have tried every preparation that has been suggested. Mrs. MacNaughton’s succeeds where all others have failed for my purposes."

These bubbles aid, too, in meteorological experiments on slight currents of air and photographing them in various positions; their use, indeed, is of value in so many departments of scientific experiment that chemists have spent time and labor to increase their durability by even a fraction of a minute. Until now, the most enduring soap bubble known to science, it is said, has lived but a minute and a half. Mrs. MacNaughton’s bubbles, any of them, lasts four minutes, and many have reached the advanced age, for a soap bubble, of six.

But it was not science or a desire to assist "chemists in their experiments which prompted Mrs. MacNaughton in her search for abiding bubbles. And what did prompt her will be to women the most interesting part of the invention.

Besides being a poet and writer of stories and sketches that have found their way into print under excellent auspices, Mrs. MacNaughton is a most devoted mother. Two bonny lads gladden the home in Phenix and live in the atmosphere of fancy and poetic imagination which is theirs by inheritance and environment. From babyhood both of the boys, but especially the younger, have shown an inordinate fondness, even for children, for playing with soap bubbles. Hours of nursery happiness have been created with the aid of pipe and bowl of soap suds, the young mother sharing with her small sons in the pleasure, the three surrounding the pretty sport with many light and dainty fancies.

When the younger boy was about two years old, all sport was stopped in the happy home and all fancy put to flight by an illness which attacked him, threatening his life. A soreness of the mouth had extended to the stomach and bowels producing serious irritation. For days he hovered on the brink of the grave. At the crisis of the trouble the physician in charge did not hesitate to say that the devoted mother had turned the scale in the little patient's favor by her incessant care. For twenty-one hours, without stopping more than a few moments at a time, she walked the floor, carrying her boy to keep him from crying with the pain which racked his tender frame. A burst of sobs would have been fatal, the mother was told, and she bravely took the challenge.

Up and down she paced with him, hugged in her arms, resting over her shoulder, or held close against her throat; crooning to him, smiling at him, coaxing him, soothing him, anything to keep him from breaking into a cry. Shoes and slippers, finest kid and softest wool, were, one pair after another, discarded from her swollen, aching feet, and the last few hours she walked in silk stockings, over fluffy rugs that alone made the pain of her self-imposed pilgrimage bearable. But at last the child dropped into a peaceful slumber that indicated a favorable turn, and the mother rested with him.

Mrs. MacNaughton always felt that her little boy’s sickness was caused by the poison of impure soaps which he had taken into his system in his continuous bubble playing.

Like any child, he would frequently “draw in." instead of " blow out.” and would swallow some of the lather.

In his convalescence, which was long and tedious, he fretted much for his coveted toy, and it was to satisfy him without doing him further harm that his mother pondered over a formula for benign bubbles.

Her boy was running about again long before she found what she sought. Experiments, lasting nearly three years, were necessary to achieve her final success. But her perseverance and application were at last rewarded, and a preparation discovered that makes a bubble whose elements are perfectly harmless and whose durability is destined to have a profound effect upon the world of science.

“As to its harmlessness,”caught the inventor, “a child could drink a quart of the mixture and suffer nothing from the dose.”

The tenacity of these patent bubbles is as remarkable as their longevity. They resist considerable force, and Mrs. MacNaughton has taken advantage of this to imply her invention in a pretty parlor game, in which the bubbles are bowled about with a small flannel-covered paddle shaped bat. True to her artistic fancies, the designer makes her pipes for the game of pinkish clay, the bowl being an inverted harebell, and the jars are wrought in the same fanciful shape.

But the vista of Mrs. MacNaughton's air castles has not yet been fully opened. A great development of their use lies in the direction of the kindergarten. How delighted Froebel would have been with them, and how quick to seize their value for his work! And some of his followers are equally pleased, and see in their employment in the physical culture of the little circle members a solution of what is always more or less of a problem‐how exercise may be prolonged without monotony. With the light wool-covered paddles in each extended hand the bubble is tossed lightly back and forth, the child interest held in its retention between them and his fancy attracted and pleased by the dancing balls of color and light.