Read "The Charwoman's Shadow" by Lord Dunsany online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
The work of the morning was to learn the correct application of the smooth philosopher's stone to the surfaces of metals that had been already so blended that they approached in texture and colour to the texture and colour of gold, and were thus already prepared to receive the changes to be given their element by the touch of the stone. "Without this preparation," the magician warned his pupil, "the change in the element is too violent, and has in former times not merely wrecked, but entirely transmuted, the houses of certain philosophers; whereby the world has lost such store of learning as may in no wise be estimated.
"Nor is it well to attempt the change of the element in too great a bulk at one time, as men have done when too greatly drawn by the lure of material things, seeking to change whole mountains; which, far from bringing them gold, has been the cause of volcanoes.