The Sisters Brothers

As they wait for the sky to darken so that they can try out the formula again, Warm tells Eli his life story. The son of a German immigrant, Hermann Warm was born in 1815 in Massachusetts. His mother fled the strangeness and abusiveness of his father, an amateur inventor who had “unnatural habits” (265). After his father committed suicide, Warm lived with his mother for a while before he too became abusive and left. He then began a life of destitution, crime, and alcoholism. After being drunkenly conscripted into the militia, Warm met a Lieutenant Colonel interested in chemistry. In exchange for assisting the officer, Warm got to use the laboratory for his own projects. That’s when he developed the gold finding formula.

When it grows dark, Eli, Charlie, and Warm pour two barrels of the formula into the water, while the partially injured Morris waits in a tree to stir the formula with a branch. Against the wishes of Warm, Charlie attempts to pour the third, and last, barrel into the water as well. In the process, Charlie trips and spills some of it, burning his hand. The men watch as the formula takes effect, making the previously invisible flakes of gold “as distinct as the stars in the sky” (282).