They cannot go on
growing together; the quartz crystal is five times as thick, and
more than twenty times as strong[Footnote: Quartz is not much
harder than epidote; the strength is only supposed to be in some
proportion to the squares of the diameters.], as the epidote; but
he stops at once, just in the very crowning moment of his life,
when he is building his own summit! He lets the pale little film
of epidote grow right past him; stopping his own summit for it;
and he never himself grows any more.
LILY (after some silence of wonder). But is the quartz NEVER
wicked then?
L. Yes, but the wickedest quartz seems good-natured, compared to
other things. Here are two very characteristic examples; one is
good quartz, living with good pearl-spar, and the other, wicked
quartz, living with wicked pearl spar. In both, the quartz yields
to the soft carbonate of iron: but, in the first place, the iron
takes only what it needs of room; and is inserted into the planes
of the rock crystal with such precision that you must break it
away before you can tell whether it really penetrates the quartz
or not; while the crystals of iron are perfectly formed, and have
a lovely bloom on their surface besides. But here, when the two
minerals quarrel, the unhappy quartz has all its surfaces jagged
and torn to pieces; and there is not a single iron crystal whose
shape you can completely trace.
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