Read "Members of the Family" by Owen Wister online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
Force, as you may know, is like the King, and never dies. It endlessly transmits itself through the same or some other shape. Drop a stone in a pond, and the wave-rings may seem to expire as they widen, but they do not; through friction or impact or something, they merely become invisible. You can stop a cannon-ball, but you cannot kill its speed; its speed is immortal and undergoes instant resurrection, taking the new shape of heat. The cannon-ball becomes red hot and sends heat waves off into infinity. Scientific men have told you all this as they have told me, and judging from the delightful events which I shall proceed to narrate, I should not wonder if the scientific men were right.
I. THE STORING OF THE ENERGY