"Take care you don't burn your fingers, or set anything on fire," said Mrs Wilkinson.

"Now, uncle," commenced Harry, having drawn his chair to the side of Mr. Bagges, "we have got our candle burning. Look down on the top of it, around the wick. See, it is a little cup full of melted wax. The heat of the flame has melted the wax just round the wick. The cold air keeps the outside of it hard, so as to make the rim of it. The melted wax in the little cup goes up through the wick to be burned, just as oil does in the wick of a lamp. What do you think makes it go up, uncle?"

"Why—why, the flame draws it up, doesn't it?"

"Not exactly, uncle. It goes up through little tiny passages in the cotton wick, because very, very small channels, or pipes, or pores, have the power in themselves of sucking up liquids. What they do it by is called capillary attraction;—just as a sponge sucks up water, or a bit of lump-sugar the little drop of tea or coffee left in the bottom of a cup.

"Now, I'll blow the candle out; not to be in the dark, but to find out what it is.—Look at the smoke rising from the wick. I'll hold a bit of lighted paper in the smoke so as not to touch the wick. But see, for all that, the candle lights again! So this shows that the melted wax sucked up through the wick is turned into vapour, and the vapour burns. The heat of the burning vapour keeps on melting more wax, and that is sucked up too within the flame, and turned into vapour and burned; and so on till the wax is all used up and the candle is gone. So the flame, uncle, you see, is the last of the candle; and the candle seems to go through the flame into nothing, although it doesn't, but goes into several things;—and isn't it curious, as Professor Faraday said, that the candle should look so splendid and glorious in going away?