WHAT MAKES THE TROLLEY CAR GO.

WHAT MAKES THE TROLLEY CAR GO.By WILLIAM BAXTER, Jr., C. E.III.Note.—Figs. 28 and 32 are reproductions of photographs kindly furnished by the General Electric Company, while for the view of car, Fig. 30, we are indebted to Colonel N. H. Heft, chief electrical engineer of the New York, New Haven, and Hartford Railroad.Although the electric railway has been introduced throughout the civilized world with the most remarkable rapidity, replacing cable as well as horse roads, there has always been a strong opposition to the use of the overhead trolley, and in some places, as, for instance, the city of New York, this opposition has been so strong as to prevent the introduction of the system until some other means of conveying the current to the moving cars was devised. Many attempts have been made to solve this problem, and the patents taken out on such devices can be numbered by the hundred and possibly by the thousand. Inventors in this field, however, have not met with all the encouragement they could desire, owing to the fact that, notwithstanding opposition, the overhead trolley has been permitted in all but about three or four of the larger cities of this country, and the greater portion of those of other countries. The principal well-founded objection that can be raised against the trolley is that it is unsightly and destroys the appearance of the street, but those who are opposed to it also claim that it is dangerous, and that underground or surface systems would not be. As a matter of fact it is not dangerous, and there is nothing on record to show that it is. Many persons have been run over by trolley cars, but this is no fault of the overhead trolley; it is due to the fact that street railroads are permitted to run cars through crowded streets at a speed that is too great for safety. Underground conduit cars running at the same speed would run over just as many people. In accusing the trolley of being dangerous it is sought to prove that the current flowing in the wire can do harm; but the history of the numerous roads in existence shows that, so far as human beings are concerned, the trolley current is not fatal, although it can give a decidedly unpleasant shock, such as one would not care to experience the second time. There isjust as great, if not greater, liability of obtaining shocks from underground systems as from the trolley, therefore the only real gain that can be made by their use is in the artistic sense. From a financial point of view no underground system so far devised can compare with the overhead trolley; but if any one should devise anything hereafter that can be constructed at the same expense and will not cost more for maintenance it will undoubtedly find an extensive application. Until such a perfect solution of the problem makes its appearance the field for these devices will be confined to cities like New York and Washington, where the overhead trolley is not permitted.Every system of conductors that dispenses with the overhead wire is called by the layman an underground trolley, but, properly speaking, these systems may be divided into surface and subsurface conductors. Both of these may again be divided into exposed and inclosed conductors, and also into continuous and sectional conductors. Finally, we may designate the various modifications as mechanical, electrical, and magnetic, the mechanical being those that accomplish the result by purely mechanical means, the electrical being those that employ electrical devices, and the magnetic those that depend for their action upon the attraction of magnets. The principal difficulties that the inventors in this field have to contend with are the cost of construction and the effective insulation of conductors. With the overhead trolley the current flows out from the power house to the cars through wires carried on poles, and the poles are themselves good insulators; but to make the work doubly sure the conductors are secured to glass insulators, which are practically perfect. The current returns to the power house through the ground and the track rails. As it is easier for the current to circulate in a short path than in a long one, there is a continual tendency for it to jump from the overhead wire through the insulation to the ground, but this is effectually prevented by the very perfect character of the insulation. When the outgoing and incoming wires are both placed upon or underground the strain upon the insulation is very much increased, for then instead of the two lines being separated by fifteen or twenty feet of pole, which is a very fair insulator, they are separated by only a few inches of earth or perhaps metal, the first of which is a fairly good conductor, while the last is a nearly perfect one. It is evident, therefore, that the insulation proper in an underground or surface system must be of the highest order. If the conduits in which the wires are located could be kept perfectly dry, there would be no difficulty in obtaining insulation that would withstand the strain it is subjected to; but rain in summer and snow in winter will attimes cover the tracks and fill the conduits, hence the securing of perfect insulation presents great difficulties. The manner in which inventors have sought to surmount the obstacles can be made clear by the aid of a few illustrations of typical designs.Fig. 25.—Underground Conduit with Protecting Shield for the Conductor.Fig. 25 shows one of the forms of a class of underground conduits belonging to the inclosed conductor type. The track rails are supported upon the outer ends of large castings,F F, commonly called yokes. These are made of such size that the portion below the opening which incloses the conduit may be of sufficient depth to afford the requisite strength to properly support the track. The conductor that carries the current is located atfand is insulated from the casingj, which forms the lower half of the conduit, by the standsg. From the car a bar,P, which is called a plow, projects downward through the slot between the rails,k k, and on its end is spread out into a fork,d, which carries a pulley,e. When this pulley is in contact with the conductorfthe current passes through the plowPto the motors upon the car, and thence to the track rails and back to the power house.As the yokesF Fand the conduit casingjare made of iron and are in metallic connection with the track rails, it is evident that if the conduits should fill with water to the depth of the wirefthe current would pass directly to the rails, and thus would avoid the longer path through the motors. To prevent this occurrence, the sides of the conduit are inclosed with the sheet-iron coversc c, which nominally are in the position shown by the dotted linesi i.The plow is also provided with the armsb b, upon the ends of which are mounted small wheelsa a, and these run upon tracks attached to the coversc c. As is shown in the figure, the wheelsa a, running upon the tracks attached to the coversc c, cause the latter to spread out to the position in which they are shown. This spreading, as can be readily understood, only takes place for a short distance ahead and behind the plow, but at all other parts of the conduit the sides assume the positioni i, and thus close the conduit and exclude the water.It can be easily seen that some difficulty would be encountered in making a tight joint ath h, and also that the opening and closing of the sides might not operate as perfectly in practice as upon paper, but it does not follow from these facts that the design is not practical; it simply illustrates that there are many minor difficulties to be overcome in order that complete success may be attained. Many designs operating upon this principle have been patented, and in some of them a great amount of ingenuity is displayed.Fig. 26.—Underground Conduit with Inclosed Conductor.Fig. 26 illustrates another type of inclosed conductor which at a first glance appears to be far superior to that just described, but upon closer investigation it is found to be not wholly free from objections that are difficult to overcome. The yokeF F, as in the design just described, is made wide enough to support upon its outer ends the track railsR R, and is cut away in the middle to an outline conforming with the shape of the conduit. The conductor that carries the current is located atd, being supported by the standse. An elastic tubefis provided, which is water-tight and thus excludes moisture from its interior, within which the conductordis located. On the top of tubefa flexible railbis secured, and this connects with studsc, which are within the tube, as clearly shown in the drawing, and so situated that they may be forced down into contact withd. Normally these studs are separated fromd, but when the car comes along, the wheela, mounted upon the end of plowP, flattens the tubefand thus forces one or more of the studscinto contact withd. The distance between the studscis such that at least two will always be in contact withd, thus insuring a continuous electrical connection with the motors so long as the plow is depressed.The first impression upon looking at this design would be that it is entirely free from objections; for if we assume that the tubefis made of rubber, we can see it in our mind's eye springing up after the plow passes by and thus separating the contactscfromd, and at the same time yielding freely to the pressure of the wheela. All of this is true, but rubber is not very durable when under such exposed conditions, and to maintain a length of several miles of it in a perfect state for even two or three years could not reasonably be expected; and if it became necessary to renew the tube oftener than this the cost of maintenance would be entirely too great. There is another objection, however, which is more serious, and that is that the conduit will gradually fill up with dirt, and this pressing against the rubber tube would force it out of shape, and thus cause the contactscto bear permanently upond, or else to become so far displaced that they would not touch it when depressed by the plow.As the rubber tube can not be depended upon, inventors have sought to improve the construction by using sheet steel and making the tube flatter and much wider, so that a section of it would present an outline much resembling an elliptic carriage spring. Such a construction will meet the requirements as to strength and the retention of the contactscin their proper position; but steel expands when warm and contracts when cooled, therefore a long tube would be stretched so much in winter that it might pull apart, while in summer it would be compressed and tend to buckle up and thus be forced out of place. These difficulties can be overcome by providing expansion joints at suitable intervals, so that they are not necessarily proof of the impracticability of devices based upon the principles involved in this design; they simply serve to forcibly bring to mind the fact that the path of the inventor of underground systems is not strewn with roses, no matter in what direction he may turn to find a solution of the problem.Fig. 27.—Underground Conduit with Exposed Conductors.The object in the designs Figs. 25 and 26 is to shield the conductor so that it will remain dry should the conduit be filled or partiallyfilled with water. If water could be excluded from the conduit, the casingj c c, in the first figure, and the tubef, in the second one, would not be required, for there is no difficulty in providing an insulating support that will hold the conductor firmly in place and at the same time prevent the escape of the current; but as soon as moisture collects upon the surfaces of the insulating supports it acts as a conductor, and thus renders the insulation of little value. If water runs into the conduit in such quantities as to come in contact with the conductor, then the effect of the insulation is entirely destroyed; the aim of the inventors, therefore, is to provide means for preventing the accumulation of water or moisture around the conducting wire. It can be readily seen that the shorter the conductor the easier it is to protect it, and this fact has given rise to the development of a great number of designs classified as sectional conductors. In these, two conductors are used, one of whichis continuous and so situated and insulated that it can not under any conditions be reached by either moisture or water. The other conductor is made in lengths that vary all the way from fifteen to two or three hundred feet. Normally, these short sections are not connected with the circuit—they are dead, as it is called—but when the car comes along, the plow, by acting upon suitable mechanism, establishes a connection between the continuous conductor and the portion of the sectional conductor that is directly under it, and in this way the current passes to the car. As soon as the car passes beyond a section of the sectional conductor, the connection between it and the continuous wire is broken automatically. Some of these arrangements depend upon mechanical devices, such as levers that are struck by the plow and thereby move a switch that closes a connection between the section and the continuous conductor, but in most instances the switch is operated by a magnet, which may be carried by the car or may be arranged so as to be energized as the car approaches it. Designs of this last type come under the head of electrically operated sectional conductor systems. There are other arrangements in which a magnet carried by the car attracts iron levers suitably disposed along the conduit, and these levers close switches that connect the section of conductor under the car with the continuous one. As the levers are actuated by the magnet, they only hold the switch closed while the latter passes overthem; thus the electrical connection is made and broken as the car moves along.Fig. 28.—View of Street Railway Lines in Washington operated by Underground Conductor of Type shown in Fig. 27.Most of the designs in which sectional conductors are used can be placed much nearer to the surface of the street than the types illustrated in Figs. 25 and 26, and this is a decided advantage, as it greatly reduces the cost of construction. Any system that requires an underground conduit, with the yokesF Fto support the track, can only be used by roads upon which the traffic is very great, for the cost of construction would be such as to prohibit its use under any other conditions, no matter how successful its operation might be. For small roads with moderate traffic the question of first cost is of paramount importance, and the only system that can offer a satisfactory solution of the problem for these is one that does not require an underground conduit.Fig. 29.—Cross-section of Railway Track provided with Third-rail Conductor.Although many patents have been taken out for systems similar to those described in the foregoing, nothing has been done practically with any of them except in an experimental way. Some are in operation on small roads in out-of-the-way places, being intended principally to illustrate the practicability of the system and thus assist in promoting its introduction elsewhere, but the system that has been adopted in a commercial way is one in which no attempt is made to shield the conductor from moisture and water, and for its successful operation dependence is placed entirely upon the proper drainage of the conduit. This system is well illustrated in Fig. 27. The plowPcarries upon its end two brushes,b b, which are insulated from each other. These brushes rub against the conductorsa a, which are made of bars of channel iron and are well insulated from the yokesF Fand the conduit casing to which they are attached by means of the supportsc c. In the construction shown in the figure the current comes from the generator through one of theabars and returns through the other, but both bars can be used to conduct the current from the generator, in which case the return can be effected through the track rails, just as in the designs already considered. If both the barsa aare used to convey the current from the power house the insulation betweenthe brushesb bis not required. To avoid the accumulation of water in the conduit the drainGis provided with outletsd, located at suitable points.Although this system is the simplest that can be devised for use in streets or public highways its construction is very costly, so much so that it can only be used in cities where the traffic is so great as to require the running of cars on short headway; and, furthermore, it can not be operated with any degree of success except in municipalities where there is a good sewage system. During the summer months it is liable to be more or less impaired by heavy showers, but the trouble in such cases is only temporary. In winter time snowstorms are liable to affect it in the same way, especially if, after a heavy fall, a warm wave comes along and produces a rapid thaw.From the fact that no attempt whatever is made to protect the conductors, one would naturally suppose that every time there is a rain the road would be compelled to shut down; for, as the slot through which the plow travels is open, water can enter the conduit with the greatest freedom, and, in trickling down the sides, would be caught to some extent upon the bracketsc c, and thus make its way over to the channel barsa a, and thereby destroy the insulation. Practice, however, shows that this action does not take place, at least not so often as to produce any serious trouble. The roads that are operated by electricity in New York, and also the lines of the Capital Traction Company, of Washington, D. C., employ this system, and they have been in operation a sufficient length of time to fully demonstrate that the difficulties actually developed by the action of the elements are not of a formidable character. On one occasion the Sixth Avenue road, in New York, was compelled to stop its cars for a short time just after a severe snowstorm, but the failure was not due to impairment of the insulation, according to the statements of the officials of the company, but to the fact that the melted snow froze upon the track and caused the wheels to slip around without sending the car ahead. The fact that other roads in New York, belonging to the same company, are being equipped with the system, is proof that, upon the whole, its practical operation is regarded as satisfactory; but it is very evident that it is not the final solution of the problem. A system to be a decided success must cost very little more than the ordinary overhead trolley, and its construction must be such that it will not easily get out of order. If it is not inexpensive it will not come into use except in places where the authorities will not permit the overhead wires. A surface or underground system ought to be more durable than the overhead, as the wires are notliable to be injured by high winds or the accumulation of ice and snow; and, furthermore, as the conductors are below the ground the danger of burning out motors and generators by lightning would be eliminated, and this is a serious matter with all trolley roads, especially in cities. Country roads do not suffer so much from lightning, because when there is a heavy thunderstorm the generators are stopped and the trolley poles are pulled away from the wire, the cars remaining stalled on the track until the storm passes over. This course can not be pursued by city roads, for the passengers feel that, lightning or no lightning, they must reach their destination, therefore the cars must continue to run and take their chances. Lightning, however, does not strike trolley lines as often in cities as in the open country, owing to the fact that there are so many iron buildings and roofs to attract it in other directions.Fig. 30.—View of a Section of the New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad, equipped with the Third-rail system.Fig. 28 shows the appearance of the street surface when an underground system such as is illustrated in Fig. 27 is used. This figure is a photograph of the Capital Traction Company's lines in Washington. After looking at this picture one can not deny that the appearance of the streets of a city is greatly improved when the overhead wires are removed, but underground systems which require a plow to run in a groove are not without objection, for the groove forms a dangerous trap into which the narrow-tired wheels of light wagons can readily drop, and the toes and heels of horseshoescan be caught. Thus, unless the slot can be dispensed with the greater beauty overhead is obtained at the expense of increased danger on the street surface. There are quite a number of underground conductor systems in which the slot is not used, the current being conveyed to the car by contact made with plates set at suitable intervals between or along the sides of the tracks, and on a level with the street surface. Many of these arrangements appear to be quite practical, but none of them can attract the attention of railroad managers unless it can be constructed at a reasonable cost.Fig. 31.—Cross-section ofRailway Track, showing aModification of theThird-rail System.About two years ago the New York, New Haven, and Hartford Railroad published a report of the performance of a branch line that was equipped with electric motors, the current being conveyed to them by means of a third rail. Some of the sensational dailies at once took the matter up and heralded the third rail to the public as something entirely new and sure to supersede the trolley. Now, as a matter of fact, the third rail is one of the oldest arrangements that have been used, and was in daily operation in Baltimore in 1886. It is a very cheap system and well adapted to roads owning the right of way or running upon elevated tracks, but could not be used on public highways or streets. The third-rail system in its simplest form is shown in Fig. 29, which represents a section through the roadbed. The logArepresents a tie or sleeper, andc care the track rails, whilebis the third rail through which the current passes to the motors. Between the railband the tieAis placed a piece of insulating material,a, of such dimensions as may be necessary. If the track is high above the surrounding ground, so as to not be submerged when there is a heavy fall of rain,amay be thin, but otherwise it must be of sufficient thickness to raise the rail above the high-water mark. The car is provided with a wheel or brush to bear upon the railb.This is the construction used upon the New York, New Haven, and Hartford Railroad, as can be seen from Fig. 30, which is a photograph of a section of the road. The third rail, it will be seen, is raised but slightly from the ties, just about as shown in Fig. 29. One objection to this construction is that persons and animals can receive shocks by touching the center rail and one of the side ones at the same time, as, for example, by standing with one foot on each. Such shocks would not prove fatal to men, as the currents used for railway work are not of a sufficiently high electro-motive force to produce death, but the shock is nevertheless very severe. Horses and cattle would be killed outright, as these animals are not able to withstand as strong a shock as human beings. To render the third-rail system safer, and also to improve the insulation of the conducting rail, the construction illustrated in Fig. 31 has been devised. The only difference between it and Fig. 29 is that the railb, instead of resting upon the ties between the tracks, is carried upon a side supportc cand is housed in with boardsa a. To take the current from it a wheel is mounted upon a shaft projecting from the side of the car truck.Fig. 32—Electric Locomotive on the Buffalo and Lockport Railway.From the foregoing brief description of the essential features of the several systems devised for conveying current to the moving car by means of conductors placed underground or upon the surface, it can be seen that while the result can be accomplished in many ways, and is actually accomplished in a number of instances, nothing has been brought forward so far that is as free from objection as the simple trolley, if we disregard the unsightliness of the latter. It is this unsightliness that has created a demand for something else, but the substitutes, while capable of doing the work, are far more costly and can not be said to be as reliable under all conditions of weather.The sphere of action of the electric-railway motor is not confined to street railways or suburban transit, but extends to the legitimate domain of the steam locomotive. In many places electric locomotives are used to move freight trains made up of cars of the largest capacity, this same work having been done formerly by steam locomotives. In the city of Baltimore, the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad uses electric locomotives, of greater capacity than any steam locomotives so far made, to draw trains through the tunnel that passes under the city. The general appearance of an electric locomotive can be judged from Fig. 32, which shows an engine of average size at the head of a long freight train.MM. Bertaux and G. Yver are quoted, inLa Nature, as relating in their travels in Italy that between Benevento and Foggia, where the railway passes through a tract of wheat fields, a falcon was observed closely accompanying the train. He would graze the windows, fly over the roofs of the cars and turn, and keep constantly dashing down to the ground by the side of the track. A habitual traveler on the road remarked that he had observed this habit of the bird several times a week. The crafty hawk had observed that the eddy made by the train as it rushed through the air overcame the small birds and made them an easy prey, and it had learned to take advantage of the fact. It was also remarked that this particular train, which was the "fast train," was the only one the bird thus pursued.A SURVIVAL OF MEDIÆVAL CREDULITY.By Professor E. P. EVANS.One of the crassest and most impudent and yet most successful frauds of modern times is that recently practiced by Leo Taxil and his associates on the papal hierarchy in their pretended exposures of the Freemasons and the Satanic rites performed by this secret fraternity. On April 20, 1884, Leo XIII issued an encyclical letter in which he divides the human race "into two diverse and adverse classes" (in partes duas diversas adversasque): "the kingdom of God on earth—namely, the true Church of Jesus Christ"—and "the realm of Satan." All who are not members of the former belong to the latter, so that there is no alternative between being a good Catholic or a worshiper of the devil. His Holiness then proceeds to show that the headquarters of Satanism are the lodges of the Freemasons, a fact, he adds, fully recognized by his predecessors, who have never ceased to expose and denounce the diabolical character and flagitious aims of these archenemies of the Christian faith. The detailed description of the organization of this order, its devilish purposes, and the horrible crimes committed in order to accomplish them are very queer reading in an official document emanating from an infallible ecclesiastical authority at the close of the nineteenth century. On August 20, 1894, Leo XIII published a decree of the Inquisition putting under ban "Odd Fellows, Sons of Temperance, and Knights of Pythias" as "synagogues of Satan," and excluding them from the sacraments of the Church.It is no wonder that such an exhibition of credulity, which excited the astonishment of many a Romanist and made all intelligent and unprejudiced persons smile and shrug their shoulders, should have suggested to an arrant wag and incorrigible player of practical jokes like Leo Taxil (pseudonym of Gabriel Jogand) the idea of appealing to this peculiar passion on a grand scale and seeing to what extent the "mother Church" could be led into fraud, as Milton says, like "Eve, our credulous mother." In tracing the development of this audacious plot through all its stages and perceiving by what silly tales and transparent deceptions the Holy Father permitted himself to be duped, one can hardly refrain from exclaiming, in the words of Ben Jonson:"Had you no quirkTo avoid gullage, sir, by such a creature?"Leo Taxil was born at Marseilles on March 21, 1854, and was therefore thirty years of age when he entered upon this career ofintrigue and mystification. From his childhood he had been educated in strictly Roman Catholic schools, and everything was done by his pious parents and teachers to render him sound in the faith. Long before arriving at man's estate he had thrown off these influences and cast in his lot with unbelievers, although he continued to go to mass, confession, and communion. While a pupil in the Catholic College of St. Louis, at Marseilles, he was strongly attracted to the political views of the radical party as set forth in Rochefort'sLanterne, and soon began to write for the press; in 1871 he joined the editorial staff ofEgalité, and published for two years a humoristic journal—La Marotte(Fool's Bauble). It is not necessary to give a detailed sketch of this man's life. Suffice it to say that he was violently anticlerical, and was repeatedly fined and imprisoned for articles insulting to the Church and to ecclesiastical dignitaries. On December 29, 1881, at Montpellier, he was condemned to pay a fine of sixty-five thousand francs for publishing a book entitled The Secret Amours of Pius IX. He appealed from this decision, and, after repeated efforts, succeeded in having the indictment quashed. A new edition appeared in 1885, and was announced by large placards, in the center of which was a medallion of the Pope's head, encircled with the heads of a bevy of beautiful women, forming, according to the author, a fitting halo for his Holiness. We may add that the sensational revelations contained in this book, as well as in the Scandalous History of the Orléans and similar works, are for the most part mere figments of the imagination recorded as facts, for the purpose of mystifying a credulous public. In 1880 he founded a "Society of Freethinkers," which, with its numerous branches, numbered in a few years about seventeen thousand members. The remarkable success of this movement was due in a great measure to the energy with which he advocated it in the columns of theRépublique Anti-Clericale, of which he was the editor.Perhaps the most comical episode in his strange career is his pretended repentance, resulting in the return of this black sheep to the fold of the Catholic Church. In his Confessions the arrant renegade relates how, on April 3, 1885 (April 1st would have been a more appropriate date), while engaged in writing a book on Joan of Arc designed to excite animosity against the clergy, his fell purpose was suddenly shaken by strong compunctions, and soon a fearful agitation convulsed his whole being. His description of his contrition and self-reproaches is quite sensational and thrilling, and shows rare talent as an actor, if we only bear in mind that the whole thing was a farce. "I burst into sobs. 'Pardon me, O God!' I cried out in a voice choked with tears. 'Pardonmy many blasphemies! Pardon all the evil I have wrought!' I passed the night in prayer, and resolved on the next day to seek absolution for my sins." He retired from the editorship of theRépublique Anti-Clericale, and handed in his resignation at a meeting of the "Anti-Clerical League," of which he was the founder and hitherto the most active member, when he had the satisfaction of being denounced by the presiding officer as a comedian and scoundrel. No one of his former colleagues believed in his sincerity, and yet every one was puzzled to understand the strategic purpose of this retrograde movement. The general impression was that he had been bribed. "You can't fool us by your abjuration!" they exclaimed. "The fact is, you have received a large sum of money from the Vatican." He does not seem to have attempted to refute these charges, nor did he permit them to divert him from the execution of his deep-laid plot. With hypocritical humility, he made full confession to the papal nuncio in Paris, Monsignore Di Rende, who, after subjecting him to several days' penance, embraced him with joy and released him from all excommunications and ecclesiastical censures.Taxil now began to issue his Complete Revelations concerning Freemasonry, in four volumes, the ostensible object of which was to expose the secret and sacrilegious rites of this order as an organized system of devil-worship, thus confirming by the testimony of an eyewitness the assertions of the Popes, and proving that their decrees and decisions on this point had been bulls in the ecclesiastical and not in the Irish sense of the term. This work, although a mere tissue of fabrications, was greeted by the Catholic press and priesthood with exultation, as an authentic narration containing positive and irrefutable proofs of the diabolic character of the Masonic mysteries. The members of this fraternity, says Taxil, regard the God of the Catholics as an evil principle—a crafty, jealous, and cruel genius, a supernal tyrant, and archenemy of human happiness. Opposed to him is Lucifer, the good genius, the perennial source of virtue and wisdom, the spirit of freedom, and the friend of mankind. For this reason, in the high-grade lodges Lucifer, the reputed father of Cain, Canaan, and Hiram, is adored, under different names indicative of the Supreme Being, as the God of Nature, and the great architect of the universe. In short, while modern freethinking is atheistic and begets a skepticism which, even when not denying God, does not care for him, Freemasonry is essentially a Satanic cult. These words give the sum and substance of the supposititious disclosures which excited such intense joy in the clerical camp. In 1887, when Taxil was received in solemn audience by Leo XIII, "My son," asked the Pope, "what dost thoudesire?" "Holy Father, to die this moment at thy feet were for me the highest bliss," replied the kneeling penitent. "Not so," was the benignant response of the successor of St. Peter; "thy life is still very useful in combats for the faith." His Holiness then pointed to Taxil's writings on the shelves of his library, declaring that he had read them all through with extreme satisfaction, and encouraged him to continue his exposures of these satellites of Satan and their abominations. Taxil left the Vatican with the papal benediction and with the firm conviction that he could devise no better means of currying favor with the Apostolic See than by inventing tales about the homage paid by the Freemasons to the devil, and determined to work this rich vein to its utmost capacity. He also came to the conclusion that he could imagine nothing so absurd that it would not be received in Catholic circles as authentic and indorsed by infallible authority.His work had an immense pecuniary success, and thus attained the chief object which he had in view. More than one hundred thousand copies of the original French edition were sold, and it was translated into English, German, Italian, and Spanish. This result is not so surprising, if we remember that nearly all the bishops and other clergy of the Catholic Church acted as voluntary and extremely zealous agents for the diffusion of these Revelations, which they seemed to regard as a new apocalypse designed to unveil the mysteries of Babylon and disclose the present doings of Satan and dominion of antichrist. Of the utterly apocryphal character of the Revelations they do not appear to have entertained the slightest suspicion, although the hoax was clearly perceptible to every unprejudiced mind. The German translation by the Jesuit Father Gruber, which appeared at Freiburg, in Switzerland, and at Paderborn, in Westphalia, omitted the volume entitled The Masonic Sisters, on account of the indecency of its contents, although accepted as true and deemed especially damaging to the Masonic fraternity. However desirable it might be to tear away the mask of philanthropy from the face of Freemasonry and let the world see its devilish features, it was thought best not to outrage the moral sense of the community by uncovering "the filthiness of the hellish crew."In 1892 Taxil's coadjutor, Dr. Bataille (a pseudonym of Dr. Karl Hacks, a German from the Rhineland), began to issue a serial publication, entitled The Devil in the Nineteenth Century, purporting to embody the results of his observations as ship's surgeon during his travels in various countries, and especially in the Orient, where he had opportunities of studying Satanism in its diverse manifestations. He begins by referring to the encyclical letterHumanum genus, already cited, in which Leo XIII divides the human race into worshipers of God and worshipers of Satan, and then proceeds to adduce facts proving the correctness of this classification. It is, in reality, a bold burlesque of the papal circular, as, indeed, it was intended to be, and would doubtless have been laughed at for a time as a clever persiflage, if the dignitaries of the Church had not taken it seriously, as they were expected to do. Dr. Hacks confessed to an "interviewer," in 1897, that no sooner had he read the pontifical circular in question than he saw in it "a rare opportunity to coin money out of the crass credulity and boundless stupidity of the Catholics. It needed only a Jules Verne to clothe these extravagant fancies in an attractive garb. I resolved to play the part of this Jules Verne. Strangely enough, the same idea occurred to others. I therefore joined forces with Leo Taxil and a few friends, and began to publish The Devil in the Nineteenth Century, the success of which is well known.... I had traversed many lands and got up marvelous stories, the scenes of which were laid in remote regions, which I was sure no one would visit in order to test the truth of my assertions." Besides, he counted on the silliness of the persons with whom he had to deal, and felt certain that if he should tell them he had been fooling them they would not believe him, but would remain convinced that all his inventions were strictly true. He could not conceive of a body of ecclesiastics as ready to discard a belief which served their turn, however evident its absurdity might be to other minds. "Sometimes I fabricated the most incredible stories, as, for example, that of the serpent inditing prophecies with its tail on the back of Sophia Walder, or that of the demon, who, in order to marry a Freemason, transformed himself into a young lady, and played the piano evenings in the form of a crocodile. My colleagues were aghast, and exclaimed, 'You'll spoil the whole joke with your nonsense.' 'Bah!' I replied. 'Let me be, and you will see!'" And they did see how eagerly such gross falsehoods were accepted as positive facts. Protestants without exception are denounced as godless apostates. Every Lutheran is a Luciferian in disguise. Singapore, he says, like every British colony, is settled by knaves, footpads, and all sorts of criminals. The Protestant Englishman is, at the bottom, an embodiment of scoundrelism coupled with Satanism. There is a strangely infernal element in the social life at Singapore. "The British matrons and even the maidens are incarnations of vice and godlessness. The young English woman dedicates all her charms and intelligence to the service of Satan, whose apostle and agent she is; cursed by God, she is the dearly beloved paramour of Lucifer; a woman only in name,she is in fact absolutely infernal—an actual deviless." Hacks asserts that in a Presbyterian church at Singapore he discovered a secret tabernacle for the worship of Satan. The pastor opened the door, and there was a Baphomet, with all the Palladistic (Satanic) apparatus—goblet, host, and dagger—standing before his eyes.Albert Pike, Grand Master of the Freemasons in Charleston, S. C., is called the "Satanic Pope," and is said to have a telephone invented and operated by devils, whereby instantaneous communication is possible between the seven principal directorates at Charleston, Rome, Berlin, Washington, Montevideo, Naples, and Calcutta. He has also a magic bracelet, by means of which he can summon Lucifer at any moment. "One day Satan took Pike gently in his arms and made a trip with him to Sirius, traversing the whole distance in a few minutes. After exploring the fixed star, he was brought back safe and sound to his room in Washington." Whether he found the star as hot and scorching as its name implies is not stated. Hacks discovered, under the cliffs of Gibraltar, mysterious caverns with laboratories in which devils prepared microbes for generating and diffusing epidemics. He was politely received by Tubal-Cain, the director of the establishment, who addressed him in pure Parisian French, from which we may infer that this is the language of the lower regions. On his departure Hacks was presented with a small vial, the contents of which would suffice to produce a fearful epidemic of cholera. No less an authority than Professor Bautz, of the Prussian Academy at Münster, tells us that the volcanoes are the flues of hell, and it was probably this contribution to the topography of Tartarus that led Hacks to look for the devil's workshop in the cavities of mountains, which, however, being used for infernal purposes, would hardly be what Milton calls "umbrageous grots and caves of cool recess."[8]The following may be cited as a specimen of the manner in which historical events were perverted by Hacks to subserve his purpose: Before the capture of Rome by the Italian troops in 1870, a secret meeting of Freemasons was held in Milan, at which Riboli, Cucchi, and General Cadorna were present, and the revolutionarydeliberations were rendered piquant by dreadful blasphemies. Thus General Cadorna, a renegade priest, parodied the consecration of the host with a piece of bread, which he finally threw into the fire with the words, "In honor of Lucifer!" Thereupon Lucifer rose up in person through the floor, gazed benignantly for a moment on his faithful followers, and said, "The moment is come for firing the third salvo of cannon." A month later General Cadorna entered Rome through the breach of the Porta Via. In Luciferian lingo, the first salvo was the Reformation and the second the French Revolution, while the third victory of Satan was the overthrow of the Pope's temporal power.Hacks relates that in Freiburg, Switzerland, there was a Masonic temple of Satan hewn in a rock and provided with altars and all the paraphernalia of this cult. There men and women assembled in the costume worn by our first parents before the fall. Attached to the lodge was a brothel, the scene of the most disgusting debaucheries. One altar, in the form of a triangle with an image of the demon Baphomet, was used for stabbing the body of Christ, in the form of consecrated wafers, with a dagger. At this altar, too, was said the so-called "black mass," an invention of the Grand Master Holebrook and Albert Pike, of Charleston. During this service hymns were sung to Satan. The consecrated wafers were procured by Miss Lucia Claraz, of Freiburg, who stole them while pretending to partake of the communion, and passed the night before committing the theft in the wildest orgies. This incredibly foolish story was published in theMoniteur de Rome, against which Miss Claraz, a lady "piously inclined and morally irreproachable," according to the testimony of the Bishop of Freiburg, brought suit for defamation. The court sentenced the editor, Monsignore Vöglin, to a fine of twenty-five thousand lire and four years' imprisonment.These examples suffice to show the wretched stuff which Hacks hashed up for the edification of the clerical and the entertainment of the carnal-minded public. Even the silly statement that he saw a gigantic tree bow down before Sophia Walder, the predestined great-grandmother of antichrist, and present her with a bouquet, did not shake the faith of the true believers. The editor of theRevue Mensuelledeclared, in 1894, that Dr. Bataille had really made all these discoveries on his travels, and that his honesty and sincerity were beyond question. This was the attitude of the whole clerical press almost without exception, as well as of abbots, bishops, cardinals, and the highest dignitaries of the Church. Even as late as July, 1897, when the imposture had been exposed and confessed, a Parisian Catholic journal continued to regard "the mystificationas more apparent than actual, and the documents adduced as chiefly authentic"; so difficult is it for minds thus constituted, with the rational faculties dwarfed and stunted by being constantly kept in the leading strings of credulity, to recognize the falsity of what they wish or are told to believe.Another of Taxil's confederates was Domenico Margiotta, according to his own account a native of Palmi, in southern Italy, and professor of literature and philosophy. His principal work, Adriano Lemmi, Supreme Head of the Freemasons, published in French in 1894, gives a long list of his titles, designed to impress the public by indicating his high position in the Masonic order. Hacks calls him a "Member of the Sovereign Sanctuary of the Oriental Rite of Memphis and Mizraim," a purely fictitious designation. This cunning device was also crowned with complete success, and caused the fabricated disclosures to be hailed with enthusiasm. Here, exclaimed the clerical journals, we have "not an apprentice or novice like Taxil, but one of the highest dignitaries of universal Freemasonry and Luciferianism, who is initiated and instructed in all its mysteries and occult observances," being apparently ignorant of the fact that Taxil was in the main the real author of the book.One of the most common accusations brought against the Freemasons is that of desecrating the host by stabbing it with a dagger. A German Catholic journal, The Pelican,[9]affirms that not only Masonic devil worshipers, but also Jews, infidels, and heretics in general commit this sacrilege in order to show their deadly hatred of Christianity. In proof of this charge, the following "historical fact" is published in the number for July, 1897: Several consecrated wafers were once stolen by Jews from a church at Langenses, in Silesia, and, after being pierced through with knives, were hidden in the forest. They were discovered by a Polish nobleman, whose four horses, as he was driving by, suddenly kneeled down and refused to go on, although he beat themwith his whip. He then descended from the carriage, and soon found the wafers covered with blood. They were carried back with solemn ceremony to the church, which became a place of pilgrimage with a wonder-working pyx. What a hardened and hopeless skeptic a man must be, who is not convinced by conclusive evidence of this kind, when even horses bear witness to the truth by their genuflections!Still more sensational was the part played in this spicy comedy by Miss Diana Vaughan, whom Taxil introduced to the public as a descendant of the Rosicrucian alchemist and Oxford professor Thomas Vaughan, and who was said to have in her possession a copy of the written pact with Satan, signed by her ancestor on March 25, 1645. The young lady claimed to have been born in Paris on February 29, 1874. The fact that there was no February 29th in the year 1874 would make this date an impossible natal day for ordinary mortals, but a person with Luciferian blood in her veins would naturally take no note of the divisions of time as recorded in human calendars; for, according to Taxil, her forbear was the goddess Astarte, who appeared to Thomas Vaughan on a summer night in 1646, while he was sojourning among the American Indians, in all her marvelous beauty, bringing with her a bed surrounded with flames and attended by little demons bearing flowers. She approached Vaughan and put a wedding ring on his finger, and eleven days later gave birth to a daughter named Diana, from whom the Miss Diana Vaughan in question traced her descent. Several instances of similar commerce with incarnate demons are said to have occurred in the history of her family, so that she inherited a strong Satanic taint; even her own mother was guilty of the same criminal conduct. Her inherited qualities were carefully fostered by education, inasmuch as she was brought up by her father and uncle on strictly Luciferian principles. One day, when her instructors were praising Cain and Judas as ideals of excellence, she expressed some doubt of the superior worthiness of the fratricide and venal traitor. This dangerous unbelief was attributed to angelical possession, and it was soon ascertained that the archangel Raphael was the cause of the lapse from Luciferianism. Recourse was had to exorcism, the whole process of which, as described by Taxil, is a clever travesty of the ceremonial prescribed by the Romish Church for the expulsion of evil spirits. The dance performed by the father and uncle on this occasion consisted of the same saltatory movements that are executed by the "procession of jumpers" every year at the grave of St. Willibord, in Echternach, Luxemburg.[10]Devil's ointment took the place of holy oil, and theexorcism ended with the sacrifice of a black hen; thereupon "Raphael" went out of her, and simultaneously with his exit all the panes of glass in the house were broken into fragments and fell to the ground with a tremendous crash. The marvel is that bishops and priests accepted this ridiculous story as an authentic and edifying narration, instead of rejecting it with horror and disgust as a palpable burlesque of their own approved methods of casting out demons, and particularly of theExorcismus in Satanam et Angelos Apostatas, composed by Leo XIII and issued by him November 19, 1890. It is evident that Taxil had this document in his eye, and intended to hold it up to derision; to calm the fears of the simple-minded, who were puzzled and perplexed by the striking resemblance of diabolic orgies to divine ordinances, he explained it on the general principle that "Satan is the ape of God."After being freed from the influence of Raphael, Diana was placed under the tutelage of Asmodeus, who, as her guardian devil, watched over her, shielding her from bodily harm and helping her to resist the wiles of angels. One day when she was wandering in the woods she was attacked by negroes, but Asmodeus came to her rescue, and bore her safely to her home through the air. Another time he caught her mettlesome courser by the bridle as he was running away, and when the chief of Garibaldi's staff, Bordone, insulted her, Asmodeus twisted his neck so that his face looked backward. For three weeks he was obliged to take a retrospective view of life and of his own conduct, when Diana, in the kindness of her heart, set his head right again. On these occasions the tutelar demon usually appeared in the form of a fine young gentleman, and emitted an aroma of balsam, which seems to have been as inseparable from him as is the scent of musk from a modern dude or modish dame. He spoke of her as his bride, and often took her on pleasure trips to paradise, purgatory, and other remote regions; once when she was greatly depressed, because her Luciferian rival, Sophia Walder, had got the better of her, he consoled her by making an excursion with her to Mars, where they rode on Schiaparelli's canals, sailed on the Sea of the Sirens, and strolled like pygmies among the gigantic inhabitants of that planet.[To be concluded.]Contrary to the common supposition that the astronomy of the ancients was based exclusively on the geocentric hypothesis, Mr. G. H. Bryan says in Nature: "Schiaparelli has shown that Heraclitus Ponticus, a disciple of Plato, had already accepted the theory that the sun is the center of the orbit of the planets, while the earth is the center of the universe and of the lunar and solar rotations—a theory substantially that of Tycho."

WHAT MAKES THE TROLLEY CAR GO.By WILLIAM BAXTER, Jr., C. E.III.Note.—Figs. 28 and 32 are reproductions of photographs kindly furnished by the General Electric Company, while for the view of car, Fig. 30, we are indebted to Colonel N. H. Heft, chief electrical engineer of the New York, New Haven, and Hartford Railroad.Although the electric railway has been introduced throughout the civilized world with the most remarkable rapidity, replacing cable as well as horse roads, there has always been a strong opposition to the use of the overhead trolley, and in some places, as, for instance, the city of New York, this opposition has been so strong as to prevent the introduction of the system until some other means of conveying the current to the moving cars was devised. Many attempts have been made to solve this problem, and the patents taken out on such devices can be numbered by the hundred and possibly by the thousand. Inventors in this field, however, have not met with all the encouragement they could desire, owing to the fact that, notwithstanding opposition, the overhead trolley has been permitted in all but about three or four of the larger cities of this country, and the greater portion of those of other countries. The principal well-founded objection that can be raised against the trolley is that it is unsightly and destroys the appearance of the street, but those who are opposed to it also claim that it is dangerous, and that underground or surface systems would not be. As a matter of fact it is not dangerous, and there is nothing on record to show that it is. Many persons have been run over by trolley cars, but this is no fault of the overhead trolley; it is due to the fact that street railroads are permitted to run cars through crowded streets at a speed that is too great for safety. Underground conduit cars running at the same speed would run over just as many people. In accusing the trolley of being dangerous it is sought to prove that the current flowing in the wire can do harm; but the history of the numerous roads in existence shows that, so far as human beings are concerned, the trolley current is not fatal, although it can give a decidedly unpleasant shock, such as one would not care to experience the second time. There isjust as great, if not greater, liability of obtaining shocks from underground systems as from the trolley, therefore the only real gain that can be made by their use is in the artistic sense. From a financial point of view no underground system so far devised can compare with the overhead trolley; but if any one should devise anything hereafter that can be constructed at the same expense and will not cost more for maintenance it will undoubtedly find an extensive application. Until such a perfect solution of the problem makes its appearance the field for these devices will be confined to cities like New York and Washington, where the overhead trolley is not permitted.Every system of conductors that dispenses with the overhead wire is called by the layman an underground trolley, but, properly speaking, these systems may be divided into surface and subsurface conductors. Both of these may again be divided into exposed and inclosed conductors, and also into continuous and sectional conductors. Finally, we may designate the various modifications as mechanical, electrical, and magnetic, the mechanical being those that accomplish the result by purely mechanical means, the electrical being those that employ electrical devices, and the magnetic those that depend for their action upon the attraction of magnets. The principal difficulties that the inventors in this field have to contend with are the cost of construction and the effective insulation of conductors. With the overhead trolley the current flows out from the power house to the cars through wires carried on poles, and the poles are themselves good insulators; but to make the work doubly sure the conductors are secured to glass insulators, which are practically perfect. The current returns to the power house through the ground and the track rails. As it is easier for the current to circulate in a short path than in a long one, there is a continual tendency for it to jump from the overhead wire through the insulation to the ground, but this is effectually prevented by the very perfect character of the insulation. When the outgoing and incoming wires are both placed upon or underground the strain upon the insulation is very much increased, for then instead of the two lines being separated by fifteen or twenty feet of pole, which is a very fair insulator, they are separated by only a few inches of earth or perhaps metal, the first of which is a fairly good conductor, while the last is a nearly perfect one. It is evident, therefore, that the insulation proper in an underground or surface system must be of the highest order. If the conduits in which the wires are located could be kept perfectly dry, there would be no difficulty in obtaining insulation that would withstand the strain it is subjected to; but rain in summer and snow in winter will attimes cover the tracks and fill the conduits, hence the securing of perfect insulation presents great difficulties. The manner in which inventors have sought to surmount the obstacles can be made clear by the aid of a few illustrations of typical designs.Fig. 25.—Underground Conduit with Protecting Shield for the Conductor.Fig. 25 shows one of the forms of a class of underground conduits belonging to the inclosed conductor type. The track rails are supported upon the outer ends of large castings,F F, commonly called yokes. These are made of such size that the portion below the opening which incloses the conduit may be of sufficient depth to afford the requisite strength to properly support the track. The conductor that carries the current is located atfand is insulated from the casingj, which forms the lower half of the conduit, by the standsg. From the car a bar,P, which is called a plow, projects downward through the slot between the rails,k k, and on its end is spread out into a fork,d, which carries a pulley,e. When this pulley is in contact with the conductorfthe current passes through the plowPto the motors upon the car, and thence to the track rails and back to the power house.As the yokesF Fand the conduit casingjare made of iron and are in metallic connection with the track rails, it is evident that if the conduits should fill with water to the depth of the wirefthe current would pass directly to the rails, and thus would avoid the longer path through the motors. To prevent this occurrence, the sides of the conduit are inclosed with the sheet-iron coversc c, which nominally are in the position shown by the dotted linesi i.The plow is also provided with the armsb b, upon the ends of which are mounted small wheelsa a, and these run upon tracks attached to the coversc c. As is shown in the figure, the wheelsa a, running upon the tracks attached to the coversc c, cause the latter to spread out to the position in which they are shown. This spreading, as can be readily understood, only takes place for a short distance ahead and behind the plow, but at all other parts of the conduit the sides assume the positioni i, and thus close the conduit and exclude the water.It can be easily seen that some difficulty would be encountered in making a tight joint ath h, and also that the opening and closing of the sides might not operate as perfectly in practice as upon paper, but it does not follow from these facts that the design is not practical; it simply illustrates that there are many minor difficulties to be overcome in order that complete success may be attained. Many designs operating upon this principle have been patented, and in some of them a great amount of ingenuity is displayed.Fig. 26.—Underground Conduit with Inclosed Conductor.Fig. 26 illustrates another type of inclosed conductor which at a first glance appears to be far superior to that just described, but upon closer investigation it is found to be not wholly free from objections that are difficult to overcome. The yokeF F, as in the design just described, is made wide enough to support upon its outer ends the track railsR R, and is cut away in the middle to an outline conforming with the shape of the conduit. The conductor that carries the current is located atd, being supported by the standse. An elastic tubefis provided, which is water-tight and thus excludes moisture from its interior, within which the conductordis located. On the top of tubefa flexible railbis secured, and this connects with studsc, which are within the tube, as clearly shown in the drawing, and so situated that they may be forced down into contact withd. Normally these studs are separated fromd, but when the car comes along, the wheela, mounted upon the end of plowP, flattens the tubefand thus forces one or more of the studscinto contact withd. The distance between the studscis such that at least two will always be in contact withd, thus insuring a continuous electrical connection with the motors so long as the plow is depressed.The first impression upon looking at this design would be that it is entirely free from objections; for if we assume that the tubefis made of rubber, we can see it in our mind's eye springing up after the plow passes by and thus separating the contactscfromd, and at the same time yielding freely to the pressure of the wheela. All of this is true, but rubber is not very durable when under such exposed conditions, and to maintain a length of several miles of it in a perfect state for even two or three years could not reasonably be expected; and if it became necessary to renew the tube oftener than this the cost of maintenance would be entirely too great. There is another objection, however, which is more serious, and that is that the conduit will gradually fill up with dirt, and this pressing against the rubber tube would force it out of shape, and thus cause the contactscto bear permanently upond, or else to become so far displaced that they would not touch it when depressed by the plow.As the rubber tube can not be depended upon, inventors have sought to improve the construction by using sheet steel and making the tube flatter and much wider, so that a section of it would present an outline much resembling an elliptic carriage spring. Such a construction will meet the requirements as to strength and the retention of the contactscin their proper position; but steel expands when warm and contracts when cooled, therefore a long tube would be stretched so much in winter that it might pull apart, while in summer it would be compressed and tend to buckle up and thus be forced out of place. These difficulties can be overcome by providing expansion joints at suitable intervals, so that they are not necessarily proof of the impracticability of devices based upon the principles involved in this design; they simply serve to forcibly bring to mind the fact that the path of the inventor of underground systems is not strewn with roses, no matter in what direction he may turn to find a solution of the problem.Fig. 27.—Underground Conduit with Exposed Conductors.The object in the designs Figs. 25 and 26 is to shield the conductor so that it will remain dry should the conduit be filled or partiallyfilled with water. If water could be excluded from the conduit, the casingj c c, in the first figure, and the tubef, in the second one, would not be required, for there is no difficulty in providing an insulating support that will hold the conductor firmly in place and at the same time prevent the escape of the current; but as soon as moisture collects upon the surfaces of the insulating supports it acts as a conductor, and thus renders the insulation of little value. If water runs into the conduit in such quantities as to come in contact with the conductor, then the effect of the insulation is entirely destroyed; the aim of the inventors, therefore, is to provide means for preventing the accumulation of water or moisture around the conducting wire. It can be readily seen that the shorter the conductor the easier it is to protect it, and this fact has given rise to the development of a great number of designs classified as sectional conductors. In these, two conductors are used, one of whichis continuous and so situated and insulated that it can not under any conditions be reached by either moisture or water. The other conductor is made in lengths that vary all the way from fifteen to two or three hundred feet. Normally, these short sections are not connected with the circuit—they are dead, as it is called—but when the car comes along, the plow, by acting upon suitable mechanism, establishes a connection between the continuous conductor and the portion of the sectional conductor that is directly under it, and in this way the current passes to the car. As soon as the car passes beyond a section of the sectional conductor, the connection between it and the continuous wire is broken automatically. Some of these arrangements depend upon mechanical devices, such as levers that are struck by the plow and thereby move a switch that closes a connection between the section and the continuous conductor, but in most instances the switch is operated by a magnet, which may be carried by the car or may be arranged so as to be energized as the car approaches it. Designs of this last type come under the head of electrically operated sectional conductor systems. There are other arrangements in which a magnet carried by the car attracts iron levers suitably disposed along the conduit, and these levers close switches that connect the section of conductor under the car with the continuous one. As the levers are actuated by the magnet, they only hold the switch closed while the latter passes overthem; thus the electrical connection is made and broken as the car moves along.Fig. 28.—View of Street Railway Lines in Washington operated by Underground Conductor of Type shown in Fig. 27.Most of the designs in which sectional conductors are used can be placed much nearer to the surface of the street than the types illustrated in Figs. 25 and 26, and this is a decided advantage, as it greatly reduces the cost of construction. Any system that requires an underground conduit, with the yokesF Fto support the track, can only be used by roads upon which the traffic is very great, for the cost of construction would be such as to prohibit its use under any other conditions, no matter how successful its operation might be. For small roads with moderate traffic the question of first cost is of paramount importance, and the only system that can offer a satisfactory solution of the problem for these is one that does not require an underground conduit.Fig. 29.—Cross-section of Railway Track provided with Third-rail Conductor.Although many patents have been taken out for systems similar to those described in the foregoing, nothing has been done practically with any of them except in an experimental way. Some are in operation on small roads in out-of-the-way places, being intended principally to illustrate the practicability of the system and thus assist in promoting its introduction elsewhere, but the system that has been adopted in a commercial way is one in which no attempt is made to shield the conductor from moisture and water, and for its successful operation dependence is placed entirely upon the proper drainage of the conduit. This system is well illustrated in Fig. 27. The plowPcarries upon its end two brushes,b b, which are insulated from each other. These brushes rub against the conductorsa a, which are made of bars of channel iron and are well insulated from the yokesF Fand the conduit casing to which they are attached by means of the supportsc c. In the construction shown in the figure the current comes from the generator through one of theabars and returns through the other, but both bars can be used to conduct the current from the generator, in which case the return can be effected through the track rails, just as in the designs already considered. If both the barsa aare used to convey the current from the power house the insulation betweenthe brushesb bis not required. To avoid the accumulation of water in the conduit the drainGis provided with outletsd, located at suitable points.Although this system is the simplest that can be devised for use in streets or public highways its construction is very costly, so much so that it can only be used in cities where the traffic is so great as to require the running of cars on short headway; and, furthermore, it can not be operated with any degree of success except in municipalities where there is a good sewage system. During the summer months it is liable to be more or less impaired by heavy showers, but the trouble in such cases is only temporary. In winter time snowstorms are liable to affect it in the same way, especially if, after a heavy fall, a warm wave comes along and produces a rapid thaw.From the fact that no attempt whatever is made to protect the conductors, one would naturally suppose that every time there is a rain the road would be compelled to shut down; for, as the slot through which the plow travels is open, water can enter the conduit with the greatest freedom, and, in trickling down the sides, would be caught to some extent upon the bracketsc c, and thus make its way over to the channel barsa a, and thereby destroy the insulation. Practice, however, shows that this action does not take place, at least not so often as to produce any serious trouble. The roads that are operated by electricity in New York, and also the lines of the Capital Traction Company, of Washington, D. C., employ this system, and they have been in operation a sufficient length of time to fully demonstrate that the difficulties actually developed by the action of the elements are not of a formidable character. On one occasion the Sixth Avenue road, in New York, was compelled to stop its cars for a short time just after a severe snowstorm, but the failure was not due to impairment of the insulation, according to the statements of the officials of the company, but to the fact that the melted snow froze upon the track and caused the wheels to slip around without sending the car ahead. The fact that other roads in New York, belonging to the same company, are being equipped with the system, is proof that, upon the whole, its practical operation is regarded as satisfactory; but it is very evident that it is not the final solution of the problem. A system to be a decided success must cost very little more than the ordinary overhead trolley, and its construction must be such that it will not easily get out of order. If it is not inexpensive it will not come into use except in places where the authorities will not permit the overhead wires. A surface or underground system ought to be more durable than the overhead, as the wires are notliable to be injured by high winds or the accumulation of ice and snow; and, furthermore, as the conductors are below the ground the danger of burning out motors and generators by lightning would be eliminated, and this is a serious matter with all trolley roads, especially in cities. Country roads do not suffer so much from lightning, because when there is a heavy thunderstorm the generators are stopped and the trolley poles are pulled away from the wire, the cars remaining stalled on the track until the storm passes over. This course can not be pursued by city roads, for the passengers feel that, lightning or no lightning, they must reach their destination, therefore the cars must continue to run and take their chances. Lightning, however, does not strike trolley lines as often in cities as in the open country, owing to the fact that there are so many iron buildings and roofs to attract it in other directions.Fig. 30.—View of a Section of the New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad, equipped with the Third-rail system.Fig. 28 shows the appearance of the street surface when an underground system such as is illustrated in Fig. 27 is used. This figure is a photograph of the Capital Traction Company's lines in Washington. After looking at this picture one can not deny that the appearance of the streets of a city is greatly improved when the overhead wires are removed, but underground systems which require a plow to run in a groove are not without objection, for the groove forms a dangerous trap into which the narrow-tired wheels of light wagons can readily drop, and the toes and heels of horseshoescan be caught. Thus, unless the slot can be dispensed with the greater beauty overhead is obtained at the expense of increased danger on the street surface. There are quite a number of underground conductor systems in which the slot is not used, the current being conveyed to the car by contact made with plates set at suitable intervals between or along the sides of the tracks, and on a level with the street surface. Many of these arrangements appear to be quite practical, but none of them can attract the attention of railroad managers unless it can be constructed at a reasonable cost.Fig. 31.—Cross-section ofRailway Track, showing aModification of theThird-rail System.About two years ago the New York, New Haven, and Hartford Railroad published a report of the performance of a branch line that was equipped with electric motors, the current being conveyed to them by means of a third rail. Some of the sensational dailies at once took the matter up and heralded the third rail to the public as something entirely new and sure to supersede the trolley. Now, as a matter of fact, the third rail is one of the oldest arrangements that have been used, and was in daily operation in Baltimore in 1886. It is a very cheap system and well adapted to roads owning the right of way or running upon elevated tracks, but could not be used on public highways or streets. The third-rail system in its simplest form is shown in Fig. 29, which represents a section through the roadbed. The logArepresents a tie or sleeper, andc care the track rails, whilebis the third rail through which the current passes to the motors. Between the railband the tieAis placed a piece of insulating material,a, of such dimensions as may be necessary. If the track is high above the surrounding ground, so as to not be submerged when there is a heavy fall of rain,amay be thin, but otherwise it must be of sufficient thickness to raise the rail above the high-water mark. The car is provided with a wheel or brush to bear upon the railb.This is the construction used upon the New York, New Haven, and Hartford Railroad, as can be seen from Fig. 30, which is a photograph of a section of the road. The third rail, it will be seen, is raised but slightly from the ties, just about as shown in Fig. 29. One objection to this construction is that persons and animals can receive shocks by touching the center rail and one of the side ones at the same time, as, for example, by standing with one foot on each. Such shocks would not prove fatal to men, as the currents used for railway work are not of a sufficiently high electro-motive force to produce death, but the shock is nevertheless very severe. Horses and cattle would be killed outright, as these animals are not able to withstand as strong a shock as human beings. To render the third-rail system safer, and also to improve the insulation of the conducting rail, the construction illustrated in Fig. 31 has been devised. The only difference between it and Fig. 29 is that the railb, instead of resting upon the ties between the tracks, is carried upon a side supportc cand is housed in with boardsa a. To take the current from it a wheel is mounted upon a shaft projecting from the side of the car truck.Fig. 32—Electric Locomotive on the Buffalo and Lockport Railway.From the foregoing brief description of the essential features of the several systems devised for conveying current to the moving car by means of conductors placed underground or upon the surface, it can be seen that while the result can be accomplished in many ways, and is actually accomplished in a number of instances, nothing has been brought forward so far that is as free from objection as the simple trolley, if we disregard the unsightliness of the latter. It is this unsightliness that has created a demand for something else, but the substitutes, while capable of doing the work, are far more costly and can not be said to be as reliable under all conditions of weather.The sphere of action of the electric-railway motor is not confined to street railways or suburban transit, but extends to the legitimate domain of the steam locomotive. In many places electric locomotives are used to move freight trains made up of cars of the largest capacity, this same work having been done formerly by steam locomotives. In the city of Baltimore, the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad uses electric locomotives, of greater capacity than any steam locomotives so far made, to draw trains through the tunnel that passes under the city. The general appearance of an electric locomotive can be judged from Fig. 32, which shows an engine of average size at the head of a long freight train.MM. Bertaux and G. Yver are quoted, inLa Nature, as relating in their travels in Italy that between Benevento and Foggia, where the railway passes through a tract of wheat fields, a falcon was observed closely accompanying the train. He would graze the windows, fly over the roofs of the cars and turn, and keep constantly dashing down to the ground by the side of the track. A habitual traveler on the road remarked that he had observed this habit of the bird several times a week. The crafty hawk had observed that the eddy made by the train as it rushed through the air overcame the small birds and made them an easy prey, and it had learned to take advantage of the fact. It was also remarked that this particular train, which was the "fast train," was the only one the bird thus pursued.

By WILLIAM BAXTER, Jr., C. E.

Note.—Figs. 28 and 32 are reproductions of photographs kindly furnished by the General Electric Company, while for the view of car, Fig. 30, we are indebted to Colonel N. H. Heft, chief electrical engineer of the New York, New Haven, and Hartford Railroad.

Although the electric railway has been introduced throughout the civilized world with the most remarkable rapidity, replacing cable as well as horse roads, there has always been a strong opposition to the use of the overhead trolley, and in some places, as, for instance, the city of New York, this opposition has been so strong as to prevent the introduction of the system until some other means of conveying the current to the moving cars was devised. Many attempts have been made to solve this problem, and the patents taken out on such devices can be numbered by the hundred and possibly by the thousand. Inventors in this field, however, have not met with all the encouragement they could desire, owing to the fact that, notwithstanding opposition, the overhead trolley has been permitted in all but about three or four of the larger cities of this country, and the greater portion of those of other countries. The principal well-founded objection that can be raised against the trolley is that it is unsightly and destroys the appearance of the street, but those who are opposed to it also claim that it is dangerous, and that underground or surface systems would not be. As a matter of fact it is not dangerous, and there is nothing on record to show that it is. Many persons have been run over by trolley cars, but this is no fault of the overhead trolley; it is due to the fact that street railroads are permitted to run cars through crowded streets at a speed that is too great for safety. Underground conduit cars running at the same speed would run over just as many people. In accusing the trolley of being dangerous it is sought to prove that the current flowing in the wire can do harm; but the history of the numerous roads in existence shows that, so far as human beings are concerned, the trolley current is not fatal, although it can give a decidedly unpleasant shock, such as one would not care to experience the second time. There isjust as great, if not greater, liability of obtaining shocks from underground systems as from the trolley, therefore the only real gain that can be made by their use is in the artistic sense. From a financial point of view no underground system so far devised can compare with the overhead trolley; but if any one should devise anything hereafter that can be constructed at the same expense and will not cost more for maintenance it will undoubtedly find an extensive application. Until such a perfect solution of the problem makes its appearance the field for these devices will be confined to cities like New York and Washington, where the overhead trolley is not permitted.

Every system of conductors that dispenses with the overhead wire is called by the layman an underground trolley, but, properly speaking, these systems may be divided into surface and subsurface conductors. Both of these may again be divided into exposed and inclosed conductors, and also into continuous and sectional conductors. Finally, we may designate the various modifications as mechanical, electrical, and magnetic, the mechanical being those that accomplish the result by purely mechanical means, the electrical being those that employ electrical devices, and the magnetic those that depend for their action upon the attraction of magnets. The principal difficulties that the inventors in this field have to contend with are the cost of construction and the effective insulation of conductors. With the overhead trolley the current flows out from the power house to the cars through wires carried on poles, and the poles are themselves good insulators; but to make the work doubly sure the conductors are secured to glass insulators, which are practically perfect. The current returns to the power house through the ground and the track rails. As it is easier for the current to circulate in a short path than in a long one, there is a continual tendency for it to jump from the overhead wire through the insulation to the ground, but this is effectually prevented by the very perfect character of the insulation. When the outgoing and incoming wires are both placed upon or underground the strain upon the insulation is very much increased, for then instead of the two lines being separated by fifteen or twenty feet of pole, which is a very fair insulator, they are separated by only a few inches of earth or perhaps metal, the first of which is a fairly good conductor, while the last is a nearly perfect one. It is evident, therefore, that the insulation proper in an underground or surface system must be of the highest order. If the conduits in which the wires are located could be kept perfectly dry, there would be no difficulty in obtaining insulation that would withstand the strain it is subjected to; but rain in summer and snow in winter will attimes cover the tracks and fill the conduits, hence the securing of perfect insulation presents great difficulties. The manner in which inventors have sought to surmount the obstacles can be made clear by the aid of a few illustrations of typical designs.

Fig. 25.—Underground Conduit with Protecting Shield for the Conductor.

Fig. 25.—Underground Conduit with Protecting Shield for the Conductor.

Fig. 25.—Underground Conduit with Protecting Shield for the Conductor.

Fig. 25 shows one of the forms of a class of underground conduits belonging to the inclosed conductor type. The track rails are supported upon the outer ends of large castings,F F, commonly called yokes. These are made of such size that the portion below the opening which incloses the conduit may be of sufficient depth to afford the requisite strength to properly support the track. The conductor that carries the current is located atfand is insulated from the casingj, which forms the lower half of the conduit, by the standsg. From the car a bar,P, which is called a plow, projects downward through the slot between the rails,k k, and on its end is spread out into a fork,d, which carries a pulley,e. When this pulley is in contact with the conductorfthe current passes through the plowPto the motors upon the car, and thence to the track rails and back to the power house.

As the yokesF Fand the conduit casingjare made of iron and are in metallic connection with the track rails, it is evident that if the conduits should fill with water to the depth of the wirefthe current would pass directly to the rails, and thus would avoid the longer path through the motors. To prevent this occurrence, the sides of the conduit are inclosed with the sheet-iron coversc c, which nominally are in the position shown by the dotted linesi i.The plow is also provided with the armsb b, upon the ends of which are mounted small wheelsa a, and these run upon tracks attached to the coversc c. As is shown in the figure, the wheelsa a, running upon the tracks attached to the coversc c, cause the latter to spread out to the position in which they are shown. This spreading, as can be readily understood, only takes place for a short distance ahead and behind the plow, but at all other parts of the conduit the sides assume the positioni i, and thus close the conduit and exclude the water.

It can be easily seen that some difficulty would be encountered in making a tight joint ath h, and also that the opening and closing of the sides might not operate as perfectly in practice as upon paper, but it does not follow from these facts that the design is not practical; it simply illustrates that there are many minor difficulties to be overcome in order that complete success may be attained. Many designs operating upon this principle have been patented, and in some of them a great amount of ingenuity is displayed.

Fig. 26.—Underground Conduit with Inclosed Conductor.

Fig. 26.—Underground Conduit with Inclosed Conductor.

Fig. 26.—Underground Conduit with Inclosed Conductor.

Fig. 26 illustrates another type of inclosed conductor which at a first glance appears to be far superior to that just described, but upon closer investigation it is found to be not wholly free from objections that are difficult to overcome. The yokeF F, as in the design just described, is made wide enough to support upon its outer ends the track railsR R, and is cut away in the middle to an outline conforming with the shape of the conduit. The conductor that carries the current is located atd, being supported by the standse. An elastic tubefis provided, which is water-tight and thus excludes moisture from its interior, within which the conductordis located. On the top of tubefa flexible railbis secured, and this connects with studsc, which are within the tube, as clearly shown in the drawing, and so situated that they may be forced down into contact withd. Normally these studs are separated fromd, but when the car comes along, the wheela, mounted upon the end of plowP, flattens the tubefand thus forces one or more of the studscinto contact withd. The distance between the studscis such that at least two will always be in contact withd, thus insuring a continuous electrical connection with the motors so long as the plow is depressed.

The first impression upon looking at this design would be that it is entirely free from objections; for if we assume that the tubefis made of rubber, we can see it in our mind's eye springing up after the plow passes by and thus separating the contactscfromd, and at the same time yielding freely to the pressure of the wheela. All of this is true, but rubber is not very durable when under such exposed conditions, and to maintain a length of several miles of it in a perfect state for even two or three years could not reasonably be expected; and if it became necessary to renew the tube oftener than this the cost of maintenance would be entirely too great. There is another objection, however, which is more serious, and that is that the conduit will gradually fill up with dirt, and this pressing against the rubber tube would force it out of shape, and thus cause the contactscto bear permanently upond, or else to become so far displaced that they would not touch it when depressed by the plow.

As the rubber tube can not be depended upon, inventors have sought to improve the construction by using sheet steel and making the tube flatter and much wider, so that a section of it would present an outline much resembling an elliptic carriage spring. Such a construction will meet the requirements as to strength and the retention of the contactscin their proper position; but steel expands when warm and contracts when cooled, therefore a long tube would be stretched so much in winter that it might pull apart, while in summer it would be compressed and tend to buckle up and thus be forced out of place. These difficulties can be overcome by providing expansion joints at suitable intervals, so that they are not necessarily proof of the impracticability of devices based upon the principles involved in this design; they simply serve to forcibly bring to mind the fact that the path of the inventor of underground systems is not strewn with roses, no matter in what direction he may turn to find a solution of the problem.

Fig. 27.—Underground Conduit with Exposed Conductors.

Fig. 27.—Underground Conduit with Exposed Conductors.

Fig. 27.—Underground Conduit with Exposed Conductors.

The object in the designs Figs. 25 and 26 is to shield the conductor so that it will remain dry should the conduit be filled or partiallyfilled with water. If water could be excluded from the conduit, the casingj c c, in the first figure, and the tubef, in the second one, would not be required, for there is no difficulty in providing an insulating support that will hold the conductor firmly in place and at the same time prevent the escape of the current; but as soon as moisture collects upon the surfaces of the insulating supports it acts as a conductor, and thus renders the insulation of little value. If water runs into the conduit in such quantities as to come in contact with the conductor, then the effect of the insulation is entirely destroyed; the aim of the inventors, therefore, is to provide means for preventing the accumulation of water or moisture around the conducting wire. It can be readily seen that the shorter the conductor the easier it is to protect it, and this fact has given rise to the development of a great number of designs classified as sectional conductors. In these, two conductors are used, one of whichis continuous and so situated and insulated that it can not under any conditions be reached by either moisture or water. The other conductor is made in lengths that vary all the way from fifteen to two or three hundred feet. Normally, these short sections are not connected with the circuit—they are dead, as it is called—but when the car comes along, the plow, by acting upon suitable mechanism, establishes a connection between the continuous conductor and the portion of the sectional conductor that is directly under it, and in this way the current passes to the car. As soon as the car passes beyond a section of the sectional conductor, the connection between it and the continuous wire is broken automatically. Some of these arrangements depend upon mechanical devices, such as levers that are struck by the plow and thereby move a switch that closes a connection between the section and the continuous conductor, but in most instances the switch is operated by a magnet, which may be carried by the car or may be arranged so as to be energized as the car approaches it. Designs of this last type come under the head of electrically operated sectional conductor systems. There are other arrangements in which a magnet carried by the car attracts iron levers suitably disposed along the conduit, and these levers close switches that connect the section of conductor under the car with the continuous one. As the levers are actuated by the magnet, they only hold the switch closed while the latter passes overthem; thus the electrical connection is made and broken as the car moves along.

Fig. 28.—View of Street Railway Lines in Washington operated by Underground Conductor of Type shown in Fig. 27.

Fig. 28.—View of Street Railway Lines in Washington operated by Underground Conductor of Type shown in Fig. 27.

Fig. 28.—View of Street Railway Lines in Washington operated by Underground Conductor of Type shown in Fig. 27.

Most of the designs in which sectional conductors are used can be placed much nearer to the surface of the street than the types illustrated in Figs. 25 and 26, and this is a decided advantage, as it greatly reduces the cost of construction. Any system that requires an underground conduit, with the yokesF Fto support the track, can only be used by roads upon which the traffic is very great, for the cost of construction would be such as to prohibit its use under any other conditions, no matter how successful its operation might be. For small roads with moderate traffic the question of first cost is of paramount importance, and the only system that can offer a satisfactory solution of the problem for these is one that does not require an underground conduit.

Fig. 29.—Cross-section of Railway Track provided with Third-rail Conductor.

Fig. 29.—Cross-section of Railway Track provided with Third-rail Conductor.

Fig. 29.—Cross-section of Railway Track provided with Third-rail Conductor.

Although many patents have been taken out for systems similar to those described in the foregoing, nothing has been done practically with any of them except in an experimental way. Some are in operation on small roads in out-of-the-way places, being intended principally to illustrate the practicability of the system and thus assist in promoting its introduction elsewhere, but the system that has been adopted in a commercial way is one in which no attempt is made to shield the conductor from moisture and water, and for its successful operation dependence is placed entirely upon the proper drainage of the conduit. This system is well illustrated in Fig. 27. The plowPcarries upon its end two brushes,b b, which are insulated from each other. These brushes rub against the conductorsa a, which are made of bars of channel iron and are well insulated from the yokesF Fand the conduit casing to which they are attached by means of the supportsc c. In the construction shown in the figure the current comes from the generator through one of theabars and returns through the other, but both bars can be used to conduct the current from the generator, in which case the return can be effected through the track rails, just as in the designs already considered. If both the barsa aare used to convey the current from the power house the insulation betweenthe brushesb bis not required. To avoid the accumulation of water in the conduit the drainGis provided with outletsd, located at suitable points.

Although this system is the simplest that can be devised for use in streets or public highways its construction is very costly, so much so that it can only be used in cities where the traffic is so great as to require the running of cars on short headway; and, furthermore, it can not be operated with any degree of success except in municipalities where there is a good sewage system. During the summer months it is liable to be more or less impaired by heavy showers, but the trouble in such cases is only temporary. In winter time snowstorms are liable to affect it in the same way, especially if, after a heavy fall, a warm wave comes along and produces a rapid thaw.

From the fact that no attempt whatever is made to protect the conductors, one would naturally suppose that every time there is a rain the road would be compelled to shut down; for, as the slot through which the plow travels is open, water can enter the conduit with the greatest freedom, and, in trickling down the sides, would be caught to some extent upon the bracketsc c, and thus make its way over to the channel barsa a, and thereby destroy the insulation. Practice, however, shows that this action does not take place, at least not so often as to produce any serious trouble. The roads that are operated by electricity in New York, and also the lines of the Capital Traction Company, of Washington, D. C., employ this system, and they have been in operation a sufficient length of time to fully demonstrate that the difficulties actually developed by the action of the elements are not of a formidable character. On one occasion the Sixth Avenue road, in New York, was compelled to stop its cars for a short time just after a severe snowstorm, but the failure was not due to impairment of the insulation, according to the statements of the officials of the company, but to the fact that the melted snow froze upon the track and caused the wheels to slip around without sending the car ahead. The fact that other roads in New York, belonging to the same company, are being equipped with the system, is proof that, upon the whole, its practical operation is regarded as satisfactory; but it is very evident that it is not the final solution of the problem. A system to be a decided success must cost very little more than the ordinary overhead trolley, and its construction must be such that it will not easily get out of order. If it is not inexpensive it will not come into use except in places where the authorities will not permit the overhead wires. A surface or underground system ought to be more durable than the overhead, as the wires are notliable to be injured by high winds or the accumulation of ice and snow; and, furthermore, as the conductors are below the ground the danger of burning out motors and generators by lightning would be eliminated, and this is a serious matter with all trolley roads, especially in cities. Country roads do not suffer so much from lightning, because when there is a heavy thunderstorm the generators are stopped and the trolley poles are pulled away from the wire, the cars remaining stalled on the track until the storm passes over. This course can not be pursued by city roads, for the passengers feel that, lightning or no lightning, they must reach their destination, therefore the cars must continue to run and take their chances. Lightning, however, does not strike trolley lines as often in cities as in the open country, owing to the fact that there are so many iron buildings and roofs to attract it in other directions.

Fig. 30.—View of a Section of the New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad, equipped with the Third-rail system.

Fig. 30.—View of a Section of the New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad, equipped with the Third-rail system.

Fig. 30.—View of a Section of the New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad, equipped with the Third-rail system.

Fig. 28 shows the appearance of the street surface when an underground system such as is illustrated in Fig. 27 is used. This figure is a photograph of the Capital Traction Company's lines in Washington. After looking at this picture one can not deny that the appearance of the streets of a city is greatly improved when the overhead wires are removed, but underground systems which require a plow to run in a groove are not without objection, for the groove forms a dangerous trap into which the narrow-tired wheels of light wagons can readily drop, and the toes and heels of horseshoescan be caught. Thus, unless the slot can be dispensed with the greater beauty overhead is obtained at the expense of increased danger on the street surface. There are quite a number of underground conductor systems in which the slot is not used, the current being conveyed to the car by contact made with plates set at suitable intervals between or along the sides of the tracks, and on a level with the street surface. Many of these arrangements appear to be quite practical, but none of them can attract the attention of railroad managers unless it can be constructed at a reasonable cost.

Fig. 31.—Cross-section ofRailway Track, showing aModification of theThird-rail System.

Fig. 31.—Cross-section ofRailway Track, showing aModification of theThird-rail System.

Fig. 31.—Cross-section ofRailway Track, showing aModification of theThird-rail System.

About two years ago the New York, New Haven, and Hartford Railroad published a report of the performance of a branch line that was equipped with electric motors, the current being conveyed to them by means of a third rail. Some of the sensational dailies at once took the matter up and heralded the third rail to the public as something entirely new and sure to supersede the trolley. Now, as a matter of fact, the third rail is one of the oldest arrangements that have been used, and was in daily operation in Baltimore in 1886. It is a very cheap system and well adapted to roads owning the right of way or running upon elevated tracks, but could not be used on public highways or streets. The third-rail system in its simplest form is shown in Fig. 29, which represents a section through the roadbed. The logArepresents a tie or sleeper, andc care the track rails, whilebis the third rail through which the current passes to the motors. Between the railband the tieAis placed a piece of insulating material,a, of such dimensions as may be necessary. If the track is high above the surrounding ground, so as to not be submerged when there is a heavy fall of rain,amay be thin, but otherwise it must be of sufficient thickness to raise the rail above the high-water mark. The car is provided with a wheel or brush to bear upon the railb.

This is the construction used upon the New York, New Haven, and Hartford Railroad, as can be seen from Fig. 30, which is a photograph of a section of the road. The third rail, it will be seen, is raised but slightly from the ties, just about as shown in Fig. 29. One objection to this construction is that persons and animals can receive shocks by touching the center rail and one of the side ones at the same time, as, for example, by standing with one foot on each. Such shocks would not prove fatal to men, as the currents used for railway work are not of a sufficiently high electro-motive force to produce death, but the shock is nevertheless very severe. Horses and cattle would be killed outright, as these animals are not able to withstand as strong a shock as human beings. To render the third-rail system safer, and also to improve the insulation of the conducting rail, the construction illustrated in Fig. 31 has been devised. The only difference between it and Fig. 29 is that the railb, instead of resting upon the ties between the tracks, is carried upon a side supportc cand is housed in with boardsa a. To take the current from it a wheel is mounted upon a shaft projecting from the side of the car truck.

Fig. 32—Electric Locomotive on the Buffalo and Lockport Railway.

Fig. 32—Electric Locomotive on the Buffalo and Lockport Railway.

Fig. 32—Electric Locomotive on the Buffalo and Lockport Railway.

From the foregoing brief description of the essential features of the several systems devised for conveying current to the moving car by means of conductors placed underground or upon the surface, it can be seen that while the result can be accomplished in many ways, and is actually accomplished in a number of instances, nothing has been brought forward so far that is as free from objection as the simple trolley, if we disregard the unsightliness of the latter. It is this unsightliness that has created a demand for something else, but the substitutes, while capable of doing the work, are far more costly and can not be said to be as reliable under all conditions of weather.

The sphere of action of the electric-railway motor is not confined to street railways or suburban transit, but extends to the legitimate domain of the steam locomotive. In many places electric locomotives are used to move freight trains made up of cars of the largest capacity, this same work having been done formerly by steam locomotives. In the city of Baltimore, the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad uses electric locomotives, of greater capacity than any steam locomotives so far made, to draw trains through the tunnel that passes under the city. The general appearance of an electric locomotive can be judged from Fig. 32, which shows an engine of average size at the head of a long freight train.

MM. Bertaux and G. Yver are quoted, inLa Nature, as relating in their travels in Italy that between Benevento and Foggia, where the railway passes through a tract of wheat fields, a falcon was observed closely accompanying the train. He would graze the windows, fly over the roofs of the cars and turn, and keep constantly dashing down to the ground by the side of the track. A habitual traveler on the road remarked that he had observed this habit of the bird several times a week. The crafty hawk had observed that the eddy made by the train as it rushed through the air overcame the small birds and made them an easy prey, and it had learned to take advantage of the fact. It was also remarked that this particular train, which was the "fast train," was the only one the bird thus pursued.

A SURVIVAL OF MEDIÆVAL CREDULITY.By Professor E. P. EVANS.One of the crassest and most impudent and yet most successful frauds of modern times is that recently practiced by Leo Taxil and his associates on the papal hierarchy in their pretended exposures of the Freemasons and the Satanic rites performed by this secret fraternity. On April 20, 1884, Leo XIII issued an encyclical letter in which he divides the human race "into two diverse and adverse classes" (in partes duas diversas adversasque): "the kingdom of God on earth—namely, the true Church of Jesus Christ"—and "the realm of Satan." All who are not members of the former belong to the latter, so that there is no alternative between being a good Catholic or a worshiper of the devil. His Holiness then proceeds to show that the headquarters of Satanism are the lodges of the Freemasons, a fact, he adds, fully recognized by his predecessors, who have never ceased to expose and denounce the diabolical character and flagitious aims of these archenemies of the Christian faith. The detailed description of the organization of this order, its devilish purposes, and the horrible crimes committed in order to accomplish them are very queer reading in an official document emanating from an infallible ecclesiastical authority at the close of the nineteenth century. On August 20, 1894, Leo XIII published a decree of the Inquisition putting under ban "Odd Fellows, Sons of Temperance, and Knights of Pythias" as "synagogues of Satan," and excluding them from the sacraments of the Church.It is no wonder that such an exhibition of credulity, which excited the astonishment of many a Romanist and made all intelligent and unprejudiced persons smile and shrug their shoulders, should have suggested to an arrant wag and incorrigible player of practical jokes like Leo Taxil (pseudonym of Gabriel Jogand) the idea of appealing to this peculiar passion on a grand scale and seeing to what extent the "mother Church" could be led into fraud, as Milton says, like "Eve, our credulous mother." In tracing the development of this audacious plot through all its stages and perceiving by what silly tales and transparent deceptions the Holy Father permitted himself to be duped, one can hardly refrain from exclaiming, in the words of Ben Jonson:"Had you no quirkTo avoid gullage, sir, by such a creature?"Leo Taxil was born at Marseilles on March 21, 1854, and was therefore thirty years of age when he entered upon this career ofintrigue and mystification. From his childhood he had been educated in strictly Roman Catholic schools, and everything was done by his pious parents and teachers to render him sound in the faith. Long before arriving at man's estate he had thrown off these influences and cast in his lot with unbelievers, although he continued to go to mass, confession, and communion. While a pupil in the Catholic College of St. Louis, at Marseilles, he was strongly attracted to the political views of the radical party as set forth in Rochefort'sLanterne, and soon began to write for the press; in 1871 he joined the editorial staff ofEgalité, and published for two years a humoristic journal—La Marotte(Fool's Bauble). It is not necessary to give a detailed sketch of this man's life. Suffice it to say that he was violently anticlerical, and was repeatedly fined and imprisoned for articles insulting to the Church and to ecclesiastical dignitaries. On December 29, 1881, at Montpellier, he was condemned to pay a fine of sixty-five thousand francs for publishing a book entitled The Secret Amours of Pius IX. He appealed from this decision, and, after repeated efforts, succeeded in having the indictment quashed. A new edition appeared in 1885, and was announced by large placards, in the center of which was a medallion of the Pope's head, encircled with the heads of a bevy of beautiful women, forming, according to the author, a fitting halo for his Holiness. We may add that the sensational revelations contained in this book, as well as in the Scandalous History of the Orléans and similar works, are for the most part mere figments of the imagination recorded as facts, for the purpose of mystifying a credulous public. In 1880 he founded a "Society of Freethinkers," which, with its numerous branches, numbered in a few years about seventeen thousand members. The remarkable success of this movement was due in a great measure to the energy with which he advocated it in the columns of theRépublique Anti-Clericale, of which he was the editor.Perhaps the most comical episode in his strange career is his pretended repentance, resulting in the return of this black sheep to the fold of the Catholic Church. In his Confessions the arrant renegade relates how, on April 3, 1885 (April 1st would have been a more appropriate date), while engaged in writing a book on Joan of Arc designed to excite animosity against the clergy, his fell purpose was suddenly shaken by strong compunctions, and soon a fearful agitation convulsed his whole being. His description of his contrition and self-reproaches is quite sensational and thrilling, and shows rare talent as an actor, if we only bear in mind that the whole thing was a farce. "I burst into sobs. 'Pardon me, O God!' I cried out in a voice choked with tears. 'Pardonmy many blasphemies! Pardon all the evil I have wrought!' I passed the night in prayer, and resolved on the next day to seek absolution for my sins." He retired from the editorship of theRépublique Anti-Clericale, and handed in his resignation at a meeting of the "Anti-Clerical League," of which he was the founder and hitherto the most active member, when he had the satisfaction of being denounced by the presiding officer as a comedian and scoundrel. No one of his former colleagues believed in his sincerity, and yet every one was puzzled to understand the strategic purpose of this retrograde movement. The general impression was that he had been bribed. "You can't fool us by your abjuration!" they exclaimed. "The fact is, you have received a large sum of money from the Vatican." He does not seem to have attempted to refute these charges, nor did he permit them to divert him from the execution of his deep-laid plot. With hypocritical humility, he made full confession to the papal nuncio in Paris, Monsignore Di Rende, who, after subjecting him to several days' penance, embraced him with joy and released him from all excommunications and ecclesiastical censures.Taxil now began to issue his Complete Revelations concerning Freemasonry, in four volumes, the ostensible object of which was to expose the secret and sacrilegious rites of this order as an organized system of devil-worship, thus confirming by the testimony of an eyewitness the assertions of the Popes, and proving that their decrees and decisions on this point had been bulls in the ecclesiastical and not in the Irish sense of the term. This work, although a mere tissue of fabrications, was greeted by the Catholic press and priesthood with exultation, as an authentic narration containing positive and irrefutable proofs of the diabolic character of the Masonic mysteries. The members of this fraternity, says Taxil, regard the God of the Catholics as an evil principle—a crafty, jealous, and cruel genius, a supernal tyrant, and archenemy of human happiness. Opposed to him is Lucifer, the good genius, the perennial source of virtue and wisdom, the spirit of freedom, and the friend of mankind. For this reason, in the high-grade lodges Lucifer, the reputed father of Cain, Canaan, and Hiram, is adored, under different names indicative of the Supreme Being, as the God of Nature, and the great architect of the universe. In short, while modern freethinking is atheistic and begets a skepticism which, even when not denying God, does not care for him, Freemasonry is essentially a Satanic cult. These words give the sum and substance of the supposititious disclosures which excited such intense joy in the clerical camp. In 1887, when Taxil was received in solemn audience by Leo XIII, "My son," asked the Pope, "what dost thoudesire?" "Holy Father, to die this moment at thy feet were for me the highest bliss," replied the kneeling penitent. "Not so," was the benignant response of the successor of St. Peter; "thy life is still very useful in combats for the faith." His Holiness then pointed to Taxil's writings on the shelves of his library, declaring that he had read them all through with extreme satisfaction, and encouraged him to continue his exposures of these satellites of Satan and their abominations. Taxil left the Vatican with the papal benediction and with the firm conviction that he could devise no better means of currying favor with the Apostolic See than by inventing tales about the homage paid by the Freemasons to the devil, and determined to work this rich vein to its utmost capacity. He also came to the conclusion that he could imagine nothing so absurd that it would not be received in Catholic circles as authentic and indorsed by infallible authority.His work had an immense pecuniary success, and thus attained the chief object which he had in view. More than one hundred thousand copies of the original French edition were sold, and it was translated into English, German, Italian, and Spanish. This result is not so surprising, if we remember that nearly all the bishops and other clergy of the Catholic Church acted as voluntary and extremely zealous agents for the diffusion of these Revelations, which they seemed to regard as a new apocalypse designed to unveil the mysteries of Babylon and disclose the present doings of Satan and dominion of antichrist. Of the utterly apocryphal character of the Revelations they do not appear to have entertained the slightest suspicion, although the hoax was clearly perceptible to every unprejudiced mind. The German translation by the Jesuit Father Gruber, which appeared at Freiburg, in Switzerland, and at Paderborn, in Westphalia, omitted the volume entitled The Masonic Sisters, on account of the indecency of its contents, although accepted as true and deemed especially damaging to the Masonic fraternity. However desirable it might be to tear away the mask of philanthropy from the face of Freemasonry and let the world see its devilish features, it was thought best not to outrage the moral sense of the community by uncovering "the filthiness of the hellish crew."In 1892 Taxil's coadjutor, Dr. Bataille (a pseudonym of Dr. Karl Hacks, a German from the Rhineland), began to issue a serial publication, entitled The Devil in the Nineteenth Century, purporting to embody the results of his observations as ship's surgeon during his travels in various countries, and especially in the Orient, where he had opportunities of studying Satanism in its diverse manifestations. He begins by referring to the encyclical letterHumanum genus, already cited, in which Leo XIII divides the human race into worshipers of God and worshipers of Satan, and then proceeds to adduce facts proving the correctness of this classification. It is, in reality, a bold burlesque of the papal circular, as, indeed, it was intended to be, and would doubtless have been laughed at for a time as a clever persiflage, if the dignitaries of the Church had not taken it seriously, as they were expected to do. Dr. Hacks confessed to an "interviewer," in 1897, that no sooner had he read the pontifical circular in question than he saw in it "a rare opportunity to coin money out of the crass credulity and boundless stupidity of the Catholics. It needed only a Jules Verne to clothe these extravagant fancies in an attractive garb. I resolved to play the part of this Jules Verne. Strangely enough, the same idea occurred to others. I therefore joined forces with Leo Taxil and a few friends, and began to publish The Devil in the Nineteenth Century, the success of which is well known.... I had traversed many lands and got up marvelous stories, the scenes of which were laid in remote regions, which I was sure no one would visit in order to test the truth of my assertions." Besides, he counted on the silliness of the persons with whom he had to deal, and felt certain that if he should tell them he had been fooling them they would not believe him, but would remain convinced that all his inventions were strictly true. He could not conceive of a body of ecclesiastics as ready to discard a belief which served their turn, however evident its absurdity might be to other minds. "Sometimes I fabricated the most incredible stories, as, for example, that of the serpent inditing prophecies with its tail on the back of Sophia Walder, or that of the demon, who, in order to marry a Freemason, transformed himself into a young lady, and played the piano evenings in the form of a crocodile. My colleagues were aghast, and exclaimed, 'You'll spoil the whole joke with your nonsense.' 'Bah!' I replied. 'Let me be, and you will see!'" And they did see how eagerly such gross falsehoods were accepted as positive facts. Protestants without exception are denounced as godless apostates. Every Lutheran is a Luciferian in disguise. Singapore, he says, like every British colony, is settled by knaves, footpads, and all sorts of criminals. The Protestant Englishman is, at the bottom, an embodiment of scoundrelism coupled with Satanism. There is a strangely infernal element in the social life at Singapore. "The British matrons and even the maidens are incarnations of vice and godlessness. The young English woman dedicates all her charms and intelligence to the service of Satan, whose apostle and agent she is; cursed by God, she is the dearly beloved paramour of Lucifer; a woman only in name,she is in fact absolutely infernal—an actual deviless." Hacks asserts that in a Presbyterian church at Singapore he discovered a secret tabernacle for the worship of Satan. The pastor opened the door, and there was a Baphomet, with all the Palladistic (Satanic) apparatus—goblet, host, and dagger—standing before his eyes.Albert Pike, Grand Master of the Freemasons in Charleston, S. C., is called the "Satanic Pope," and is said to have a telephone invented and operated by devils, whereby instantaneous communication is possible between the seven principal directorates at Charleston, Rome, Berlin, Washington, Montevideo, Naples, and Calcutta. He has also a magic bracelet, by means of which he can summon Lucifer at any moment. "One day Satan took Pike gently in his arms and made a trip with him to Sirius, traversing the whole distance in a few minutes. After exploring the fixed star, he was brought back safe and sound to his room in Washington." Whether he found the star as hot and scorching as its name implies is not stated. Hacks discovered, under the cliffs of Gibraltar, mysterious caverns with laboratories in which devils prepared microbes for generating and diffusing epidemics. He was politely received by Tubal-Cain, the director of the establishment, who addressed him in pure Parisian French, from which we may infer that this is the language of the lower regions. On his departure Hacks was presented with a small vial, the contents of which would suffice to produce a fearful epidemic of cholera. No less an authority than Professor Bautz, of the Prussian Academy at Münster, tells us that the volcanoes are the flues of hell, and it was probably this contribution to the topography of Tartarus that led Hacks to look for the devil's workshop in the cavities of mountains, which, however, being used for infernal purposes, would hardly be what Milton calls "umbrageous grots and caves of cool recess."[8]The following may be cited as a specimen of the manner in which historical events were perverted by Hacks to subserve his purpose: Before the capture of Rome by the Italian troops in 1870, a secret meeting of Freemasons was held in Milan, at which Riboli, Cucchi, and General Cadorna were present, and the revolutionarydeliberations were rendered piquant by dreadful blasphemies. Thus General Cadorna, a renegade priest, parodied the consecration of the host with a piece of bread, which he finally threw into the fire with the words, "In honor of Lucifer!" Thereupon Lucifer rose up in person through the floor, gazed benignantly for a moment on his faithful followers, and said, "The moment is come for firing the third salvo of cannon." A month later General Cadorna entered Rome through the breach of the Porta Via. In Luciferian lingo, the first salvo was the Reformation and the second the French Revolution, while the third victory of Satan was the overthrow of the Pope's temporal power.Hacks relates that in Freiburg, Switzerland, there was a Masonic temple of Satan hewn in a rock and provided with altars and all the paraphernalia of this cult. There men and women assembled in the costume worn by our first parents before the fall. Attached to the lodge was a brothel, the scene of the most disgusting debaucheries. One altar, in the form of a triangle with an image of the demon Baphomet, was used for stabbing the body of Christ, in the form of consecrated wafers, with a dagger. At this altar, too, was said the so-called "black mass," an invention of the Grand Master Holebrook and Albert Pike, of Charleston. During this service hymns were sung to Satan. The consecrated wafers were procured by Miss Lucia Claraz, of Freiburg, who stole them while pretending to partake of the communion, and passed the night before committing the theft in the wildest orgies. This incredibly foolish story was published in theMoniteur de Rome, against which Miss Claraz, a lady "piously inclined and morally irreproachable," according to the testimony of the Bishop of Freiburg, brought suit for defamation. The court sentenced the editor, Monsignore Vöglin, to a fine of twenty-five thousand lire and four years' imprisonment.These examples suffice to show the wretched stuff which Hacks hashed up for the edification of the clerical and the entertainment of the carnal-minded public. Even the silly statement that he saw a gigantic tree bow down before Sophia Walder, the predestined great-grandmother of antichrist, and present her with a bouquet, did not shake the faith of the true believers. The editor of theRevue Mensuelledeclared, in 1894, that Dr. Bataille had really made all these discoveries on his travels, and that his honesty and sincerity were beyond question. This was the attitude of the whole clerical press almost without exception, as well as of abbots, bishops, cardinals, and the highest dignitaries of the Church. Even as late as July, 1897, when the imposture had been exposed and confessed, a Parisian Catholic journal continued to regard "the mystificationas more apparent than actual, and the documents adduced as chiefly authentic"; so difficult is it for minds thus constituted, with the rational faculties dwarfed and stunted by being constantly kept in the leading strings of credulity, to recognize the falsity of what they wish or are told to believe.Another of Taxil's confederates was Domenico Margiotta, according to his own account a native of Palmi, in southern Italy, and professor of literature and philosophy. His principal work, Adriano Lemmi, Supreme Head of the Freemasons, published in French in 1894, gives a long list of his titles, designed to impress the public by indicating his high position in the Masonic order. Hacks calls him a "Member of the Sovereign Sanctuary of the Oriental Rite of Memphis and Mizraim," a purely fictitious designation. This cunning device was also crowned with complete success, and caused the fabricated disclosures to be hailed with enthusiasm. Here, exclaimed the clerical journals, we have "not an apprentice or novice like Taxil, but one of the highest dignitaries of universal Freemasonry and Luciferianism, who is initiated and instructed in all its mysteries and occult observances," being apparently ignorant of the fact that Taxil was in the main the real author of the book.One of the most common accusations brought against the Freemasons is that of desecrating the host by stabbing it with a dagger. A German Catholic journal, The Pelican,[9]affirms that not only Masonic devil worshipers, but also Jews, infidels, and heretics in general commit this sacrilege in order to show their deadly hatred of Christianity. In proof of this charge, the following "historical fact" is published in the number for July, 1897: Several consecrated wafers were once stolen by Jews from a church at Langenses, in Silesia, and, after being pierced through with knives, were hidden in the forest. They were discovered by a Polish nobleman, whose four horses, as he was driving by, suddenly kneeled down and refused to go on, although he beat themwith his whip. He then descended from the carriage, and soon found the wafers covered with blood. They were carried back with solemn ceremony to the church, which became a place of pilgrimage with a wonder-working pyx. What a hardened and hopeless skeptic a man must be, who is not convinced by conclusive evidence of this kind, when even horses bear witness to the truth by their genuflections!Still more sensational was the part played in this spicy comedy by Miss Diana Vaughan, whom Taxil introduced to the public as a descendant of the Rosicrucian alchemist and Oxford professor Thomas Vaughan, and who was said to have in her possession a copy of the written pact with Satan, signed by her ancestor on March 25, 1645. The young lady claimed to have been born in Paris on February 29, 1874. The fact that there was no February 29th in the year 1874 would make this date an impossible natal day for ordinary mortals, but a person with Luciferian blood in her veins would naturally take no note of the divisions of time as recorded in human calendars; for, according to Taxil, her forbear was the goddess Astarte, who appeared to Thomas Vaughan on a summer night in 1646, while he was sojourning among the American Indians, in all her marvelous beauty, bringing with her a bed surrounded with flames and attended by little demons bearing flowers. She approached Vaughan and put a wedding ring on his finger, and eleven days later gave birth to a daughter named Diana, from whom the Miss Diana Vaughan in question traced her descent. Several instances of similar commerce with incarnate demons are said to have occurred in the history of her family, so that she inherited a strong Satanic taint; even her own mother was guilty of the same criminal conduct. Her inherited qualities were carefully fostered by education, inasmuch as she was brought up by her father and uncle on strictly Luciferian principles. One day, when her instructors were praising Cain and Judas as ideals of excellence, she expressed some doubt of the superior worthiness of the fratricide and venal traitor. This dangerous unbelief was attributed to angelical possession, and it was soon ascertained that the archangel Raphael was the cause of the lapse from Luciferianism. Recourse was had to exorcism, the whole process of which, as described by Taxil, is a clever travesty of the ceremonial prescribed by the Romish Church for the expulsion of evil spirits. The dance performed by the father and uncle on this occasion consisted of the same saltatory movements that are executed by the "procession of jumpers" every year at the grave of St. Willibord, in Echternach, Luxemburg.[10]Devil's ointment took the place of holy oil, and theexorcism ended with the sacrifice of a black hen; thereupon "Raphael" went out of her, and simultaneously with his exit all the panes of glass in the house were broken into fragments and fell to the ground with a tremendous crash. The marvel is that bishops and priests accepted this ridiculous story as an authentic and edifying narration, instead of rejecting it with horror and disgust as a palpable burlesque of their own approved methods of casting out demons, and particularly of theExorcismus in Satanam et Angelos Apostatas, composed by Leo XIII and issued by him November 19, 1890. It is evident that Taxil had this document in his eye, and intended to hold it up to derision; to calm the fears of the simple-minded, who were puzzled and perplexed by the striking resemblance of diabolic orgies to divine ordinances, he explained it on the general principle that "Satan is the ape of God."After being freed from the influence of Raphael, Diana was placed under the tutelage of Asmodeus, who, as her guardian devil, watched over her, shielding her from bodily harm and helping her to resist the wiles of angels. One day when she was wandering in the woods she was attacked by negroes, but Asmodeus came to her rescue, and bore her safely to her home through the air. Another time he caught her mettlesome courser by the bridle as he was running away, and when the chief of Garibaldi's staff, Bordone, insulted her, Asmodeus twisted his neck so that his face looked backward. For three weeks he was obliged to take a retrospective view of life and of his own conduct, when Diana, in the kindness of her heart, set his head right again. On these occasions the tutelar demon usually appeared in the form of a fine young gentleman, and emitted an aroma of balsam, which seems to have been as inseparable from him as is the scent of musk from a modern dude or modish dame. He spoke of her as his bride, and often took her on pleasure trips to paradise, purgatory, and other remote regions; once when she was greatly depressed, because her Luciferian rival, Sophia Walder, had got the better of her, he consoled her by making an excursion with her to Mars, where they rode on Schiaparelli's canals, sailed on the Sea of the Sirens, and strolled like pygmies among the gigantic inhabitants of that planet.[To be concluded.]Contrary to the common supposition that the astronomy of the ancients was based exclusively on the geocentric hypothesis, Mr. G. H. Bryan says in Nature: "Schiaparelli has shown that Heraclitus Ponticus, a disciple of Plato, had already accepted the theory that the sun is the center of the orbit of the planets, while the earth is the center of the universe and of the lunar and solar rotations—a theory substantially that of Tycho."

By Professor E. P. EVANS.

One of the crassest and most impudent and yet most successful frauds of modern times is that recently practiced by Leo Taxil and his associates on the papal hierarchy in their pretended exposures of the Freemasons and the Satanic rites performed by this secret fraternity. On April 20, 1884, Leo XIII issued an encyclical letter in which he divides the human race "into two diverse and adverse classes" (in partes duas diversas adversasque): "the kingdom of God on earth—namely, the true Church of Jesus Christ"—and "the realm of Satan." All who are not members of the former belong to the latter, so that there is no alternative between being a good Catholic or a worshiper of the devil. His Holiness then proceeds to show that the headquarters of Satanism are the lodges of the Freemasons, a fact, he adds, fully recognized by his predecessors, who have never ceased to expose and denounce the diabolical character and flagitious aims of these archenemies of the Christian faith. The detailed description of the organization of this order, its devilish purposes, and the horrible crimes committed in order to accomplish them are very queer reading in an official document emanating from an infallible ecclesiastical authority at the close of the nineteenth century. On August 20, 1894, Leo XIII published a decree of the Inquisition putting under ban "Odd Fellows, Sons of Temperance, and Knights of Pythias" as "synagogues of Satan," and excluding them from the sacraments of the Church.

It is no wonder that such an exhibition of credulity, which excited the astonishment of many a Romanist and made all intelligent and unprejudiced persons smile and shrug their shoulders, should have suggested to an arrant wag and incorrigible player of practical jokes like Leo Taxil (pseudonym of Gabriel Jogand) the idea of appealing to this peculiar passion on a grand scale and seeing to what extent the "mother Church" could be led into fraud, as Milton says, like "Eve, our credulous mother." In tracing the development of this audacious plot through all its stages and perceiving by what silly tales and transparent deceptions the Holy Father permitted himself to be duped, one can hardly refrain from exclaiming, in the words of Ben Jonson:

"Had you no quirkTo avoid gullage, sir, by such a creature?"

Leo Taxil was born at Marseilles on March 21, 1854, and was therefore thirty years of age when he entered upon this career ofintrigue and mystification. From his childhood he had been educated in strictly Roman Catholic schools, and everything was done by his pious parents and teachers to render him sound in the faith. Long before arriving at man's estate he had thrown off these influences and cast in his lot with unbelievers, although he continued to go to mass, confession, and communion. While a pupil in the Catholic College of St. Louis, at Marseilles, he was strongly attracted to the political views of the radical party as set forth in Rochefort'sLanterne, and soon began to write for the press; in 1871 he joined the editorial staff ofEgalité, and published for two years a humoristic journal—La Marotte(Fool's Bauble). It is not necessary to give a detailed sketch of this man's life. Suffice it to say that he was violently anticlerical, and was repeatedly fined and imprisoned for articles insulting to the Church and to ecclesiastical dignitaries. On December 29, 1881, at Montpellier, he was condemned to pay a fine of sixty-five thousand francs for publishing a book entitled The Secret Amours of Pius IX. He appealed from this decision, and, after repeated efforts, succeeded in having the indictment quashed. A new edition appeared in 1885, and was announced by large placards, in the center of which was a medallion of the Pope's head, encircled with the heads of a bevy of beautiful women, forming, according to the author, a fitting halo for his Holiness. We may add that the sensational revelations contained in this book, as well as in the Scandalous History of the Orléans and similar works, are for the most part mere figments of the imagination recorded as facts, for the purpose of mystifying a credulous public. In 1880 he founded a "Society of Freethinkers," which, with its numerous branches, numbered in a few years about seventeen thousand members. The remarkable success of this movement was due in a great measure to the energy with which he advocated it in the columns of theRépublique Anti-Clericale, of which he was the editor.

Perhaps the most comical episode in his strange career is his pretended repentance, resulting in the return of this black sheep to the fold of the Catholic Church. In his Confessions the arrant renegade relates how, on April 3, 1885 (April 1st would have been a more appropriate date), while engaged in writing a book on Joan of Arc designed to excite animosity against the clergy, his fell purpose was suddenly shaken by strong compunctions, and soon a fearful agitation convulsed his whole being. His description of his contrition and self-reproaches is quite sensational and thrilling, and shows rare talent as an actor, if we only bear in mind that the whole thing was a farce. "I burst into sobs. 'Pardon me, O God!' I cried out in a voice choked with tears. 'Pardonmy many blasphemies! Pardon all the evil I have wrought!' I passed the night in prayer, and resolved on the next day to seek absolution for my sins." He retired from the editorship of theRépublique Anti-Clericale, and handed in his resignation at a meeting of the "Anti-Clerical League," of which he was the founder and hitherto the most active member, when he had the satisfaction of being denounced by the presiding officer as a comedian and scoundrel. No one of his former colleagues believed in his sincerity, and yet every one was puzzled to understand the strategic purpose of this retrograde movement. The general impression was that he had been bribed. "You can't fool us by your abjuration!" they exclaimed. "The fact is, you have received a large sum of money from the Vatican." He does not seem to have attempted to refute these charges, nor did he permit them to divert him from the execution of his deep-laid plot. With hypocritical humility, he made full confession to the papal nuncio in Paris, Monsignore Di Rende, who, after subjecting him to several days' penance, embraced him with joy and released him from all excommunications and ecclesiastical censures.

Taxil now began to issue his Complete Revelations concerning Freemasonry, in four volumes, the ostensible object of which was to expose the secret and sacrilegious rites of this order as an organized system of devil-worship, thus confirming by the testimony of an eyewitness the assertions of the Popes, and proving that their decrees and decisions on this point had been bulls in the ecclesiastical and not in the Irish sense of the term. This work, although a mere tissue of fabrications, was greeted by the Catholic press and priesthood with exultation, as an authentic narration containing positive and irrefutable proofs of the diabolic character of the Masonic mysteries. The members of this fraternity, says Taxil, regard the God of the Catholics as an evil principle—a crafty, jealous, and cruel genius, a supernal tyrant, and archenemy of human happiness. Opposed to him is Lucifer, the good genius, the perennial source of virtue and wisdom, the spirit of freedom, and the friend of mankind. For this reason, in the high-grade lodges Lucifer, the reputed father of Cain, Canaan, and Hiram, is adored, under different names indicative of the Supreme Being, as the God of Nature, and the great architect of the universe. In short, while modern freethinking is atheistic and begets a skepticism which, even when not denying God, does not care for him, Freemasonry is essentially a Satanic cult. These words give the sum and substance of the supposititious disclosures which excited such intense joy in the clerical camp. In 1887, when Taxil was received in solemn audience by Leo XIII, "My son," asked the Pope, "what dost thoudesire?" "Holy Father, to die this moment at thy feet were for me the highest bliss," replied the kneeling penitent. "Not so," was the benignant response of the successor of St. Peter; "thy life is still very useful in combats for the faith." His Holiness then pointed to Taxil's writings on the shelves of his library, declaring that he had read them all through with extreme satisfaction, and encouraged him to continue his exposures of these satellites of Satan and their abominations. Taxil left the Vatican with the papal benediction and with the firm conviction that he could devise no better means of currying favor with the Apostolic See than by inventing tales about the homage paid by the Freemasons to the devil, and determined to work this rich vein to its utmost capacity. He also came to the conclusion that he could imagine nothing so absurd that it would not be received in Catholic circles as authentic and indorsed by infallible authority.

His work had an immense pecuniary success, and thus attained the chief object which he had in view. More than one hundred thousand copies of the original French edition were sold, and it was translated into English, German, Italian, and Spanish. This result is not so surprising, if we remember that nearly all the bishops and other clergy of the Catholic Church acted as voluntary and extremely zealous agents for the diffusion of these Revelations, which they seemed to regard as a new apocalypse designed to unveil the mysteries of Babylon and disclose the present doings of Satan and dominion of antichrist. Of the utterly apocryphal character of the Revelations they do not appear to have entertained the slightest suspicion, although the hoax was clearly perceptible to every unprejudiced mind. The German translation by the Jesuit Father Gruber, which appeared at Freiburg, in Switzerland, and at Paderborn, in Westphalia, omitted the volume entitled The Masonic Sisters, on account of the indecency of its contents, although accepted as true and deemed especially damaging to the Masonic fraternity. However desirable it might be to tear away the mask of philanthropy from the face of Freemasonry and let the world see its devilish features, it was thought best not to outrage the moral sense of the community by uncovering "the filthiness of the hellish crew."

In 1892 Taxil's coadjutor, Dr. Bataille (a pseudonym of Dr. Karl Hacks, a German from the Rhineland), began to issue a serial publication, entitled The Devil in the Nineteenth Century, purporting to embody the results of his observations as ship's surgeon during his travels in various countries, and especially in the Orient, where he had opportunities of studying Satanism in its diverse manifestations. He begins by referring to the encyclical letterHumanum genus, already cited, in which Leo XIII divides the human race into worshipers of God and worshipers of Satan, and then proceeds to adduce facts proving the correctness of this classification. It is, in reality, a bold burlesque of the papal circular, as, indeed, it was intended to be, and would doubtless have been laughed at for a time as a clever persiflage, if the dignitaries of the Church had not taken it seriously, as they were expected to do. Dr. Hacks confessed to an "interviewer," in 1897, that no sooner had he read the pontifical circular in question than he saw in it "a rare opportunity to coin money out of the crass credulity and boundless stupidity of the Catholics. It needed only a Jules Verne to clothe these extravagant fancies in an attractive garb. I resolved to play the part of this Jules Verne. Strangely enough, the same idea occurred to others. I therefore joined forces with Leo Taxil and a few friends, and began to publish The Devil in the Nineteenth Century, the success of which is well known.... I had traversed many lands and got up marvelous stories, the scenes of which were laid in remote regions, which I was sure no one would visit in order to test the truth of my assertions." Besides, he counted on the silliness of the persons with whom he had to deal, and felt certain that if he should tell them he had been fooling them they would not believe him, but would remain convinced that all his inventions were strictly true. He could not conceive of a body of ecclesiastics as ready to discard a belief which served their turn, however evident its absurdity might be to other minds. "Sometimes I fabricated the most incredible stories, as, for example, that of the serpent inditing prophecies with its tail on the back of Sophia Walder, or that of the demon, who, in order to marry a Freemason, transformed himself into a young lady, and played the piano evenings in the form of a crocodile. My colleagues were aghast, and exclaimed, 'You'll spoil the whole joke with your nonsense.' 'Bah!' I replied. 'Let me be, and you will see!'" And they did see how eagerly such gross falsehoods were accepted as positive facts. Protestants without exception are denounced as godless apostates. Every Lutheran is a Luciferian in disguise. Singapore, he says, like every British colony, is settled by knaves, footpads, and all sorts of criminals. The Protestant Englishman is, at the bottom, an embodiment of scoundrelism coupled with Satanism. There is a strangely infernal element in the social life at Singapore. "The British matrons and even the maidens are incarnations of vice and godlessness. The young English woman dedicates all her charms and intelligence to the service of Satan, whose apostle and agent she is; cursed by God, she is the dearly beloved paramour of Lucifer; a woman only in name,she is in fact absolutely infernal—an actual deviless." Hacks asserts that in a Presbyterian church at Singapore he discovered a secret tabernacle for the worship of Satan. The pastor opened the door, and there was a Baphomet, with all the Palladistic (Satanic) apparatus—goblet, host, and dagger—standing before his eyes.

Albert Pike, Grand Master of the Freemasons in Charleston, S. C., is called the "Satanic Pope," and is said to have a telephone invented and operated by devils, whereby instantaneous communication is possible between the seven principal directorates at Charleston, Rome, Berlin, Washington, Montevideo, Naples, and Calcutta. He has also a magic bracelet, by means of which he can summon Lucifer at any moment. "One day Satan took Pike gently in his arms and made a trip with him to Sirius, traversing the whole distance in a few minutes. After exploring the fixed star, he was brought back safe and sound to his room in Washington." Whether he found the star as hot and scorching as its name implies is not stated. Hacks discovered, under the cliffs of Gibraltar, mysterious caverns with laboratories in which devils prepared microbes for generating and diffusing epidemics. He was politely received by Tubal-Cain, the director of the establishment, who addressed him in pure Parisian French, from which we may infer that this is the language of the lower regions. On his departure Hacks was presented with a small vial, the contents of which would suffice to produce a fearful epidemic of cholera. No less an authority than Professor Bautz, of the Prussian Academy at Münster, tells us that the volcanoes are the flues of hell, and it was probably this contribution to the topography of Tartarus that led Hacks to look for the devil's workshop in the cavities of mountains, which, however, being used for infernal purposes, would hardly be what Milton calls "umbrageous grots and caves of cool recess."[8]

The following may be cited as a specimen of the manner in which historical events were perverted by Hacks to subserve his purpose: Before the capture of Rome by the Italian troops in 1870, a secret meeting of Freemasons was held in Milan, at which Riboli, Cucchi, and General Cadorna were present, and the revolutionarydeliberations were rendered piquant by dreadful blasphemies. Thus General Cadorna, a renegade priest, parodied the consecration of the host with a piece of bread, which he finally threw into the fire with the words, "In honor of Lucifer!" Thereupon Lucifer rose up in person through the floor, gazed benignantly for a moment on his faithful followers, and said, "The moment is come for firing the third salvo of cannon." A month later General Cadorna entered Rome through the breach of the Porta Via. In Luciferian lingo, the first salvo was the Reformation and the second the French Revolution, while the third victory of Satan was the overthrow of the Pope's temporal power.

Hacks relates that in Freiburg, Switzerland, there was a Masonic temple of Satan hewn in a rock and provided with altars and all the paraphernalia of this cult. There men and women assembled in the costume worn by our first parents before the fall. Attached to the lodge was a brothel, the scene of the most disgusting debaucheries. One altar, in the form of a triangle with an image of the demon Baphomet, was used for stabbing the body of Christ, in the form of consecrated wafers, with a dagger. At this altar, too, was said the so-called "black mass," an invention of the Grand Master Holebrook and Albert Pike, of Charleston. During this service hymns were sung to Satan. The consecrated wafers were procured by Miss Lucia Claraz, of Freiburg, who stole them while pretending to partake of the communion, and passed the night before committing the theft in the wildest orgies. This incredibly foolish story was published in theMoniteur de Rome, against which Miss Claraz, a lady "piously inclined and morally irreproachable," according to the testimony of the Bishop of Freiburg, brought suit for defamation. The court sentenced the editor, Monsignore Vöglin, to a fine of twenty-five thousand lire and four years' imprisonment.

These examples suffice to show the wretched stuff which Hacks hashed up for the edification of the clerical and the entertainment of the carnal-minded public. Even the silly statement that he saw a gigantic tree bow down before Sophia Walder, the predestined great-grandmother of antichrist, and present her with a bouquet, did not shake the faith of the true believers. The editor of theRevue Mensuelledeclared, in 1894, that Dr. Bataille had really made all these discoveries on his travels, and that his honesty and sincerity were beyond question. This was the attitude of the whole clerical press almost without exception, as well as of abbots, bishops, cardinals, and the highest dignitaries of the Church. Even as late as July, 1897, when the imposture had been exposed and confessed, a Parisian Catholic journal continued to regard "the mystificationas more apparent than actual, and the documents adduced as chiefly authentic"; so difficult is it for minds thus constituted, with the rational faculties dwarfed and stunted by being constantly kept in the leading strings of credulity, to recognize the falsity of what they wish or are told to believe.

Another of Taxil's confederates was Domenico Margiotta, according to his own account a native of Palmi, in southern Italy, and professor of literature and philosophy. His principal work, Adriano Lemmi, Supreme Head of the Freemasons, published in French in 1894, gives a long list of his titles, designed to impress the public by indicating his high position in the Masonic order. Hacks calls him a "Member of the Sovereign Sanctuary of the Oriental Rite of Memphis and Mizraim," a purely fictitious designation. This cunning device was also crowned with complete success, and caused the fabricated disclosures to be hailed with enthusiasm. Here, exclaimed the clerical journals, we have "not an apprentice or novice like Taxil, but one of the highest dignitaries of universal Freemasonry and Luciferianism, who is initiated and instructed in all its mysteries and occult observances," being apparently ignorant of the fact that Taxil was in the main the real author of the book.

One of the most common accusations brought against the Freemasons is that of desecrating the host by stabbing it with a dagger. A German Catholic journal, The Pelican,[9]affirms that not only Masonic devil worshipers, but also Jews, infidels, and heretics in general commit this sacrilege in order to show their deadly hatred of Christianity. In proof of this charge, the following "historical fact" is published in the number for July, 1897: Several consecrated wafers were once stolen by Jews from a church at Langenses, in Silesia, and, after being pierced through with knives, were hidden in the forest. They were discovered by a Polish nobleman, whose four horses, as he was driving by, suddenly kneeled down and refused to go on, although he beat themwith his whip. He then descended from the carriage, and soon found the wafers covered with blood. They were carried back with solemn ceremony to the church, which became a place of pilgrimage with a wonder-working pyx. What a hardened and hopeless skeptic a man must be, who is not convinced by conclusive evidence of this kind, when even horses bear witness to the truth by their genuflections!

Still more sensational was the part played in this spicy comedy by Miss Diana Vaughan, whom Taxil introduced to the public as a descendant of the Rosicrucian alchemist and Oxford professor Thomas Vaughan, and who was said to have in her possession a copy of the written pact with Satan, signed by her ancestor on March 25, 1645. The young lady claimed to have been born in Paris on February 29, 1874. The fact that there was no February 29th in the year 1874 would make this date an impossible natal day for ordinary mortals, but a person with Luciferian blood in her veins would naturally take no note of the divisions of time as recorded in human calendars; for, according to Taxil, her forbear was the goddess Astarte, who appeared to Thomas Vaughan on a summer night in 1646, while he was sojourning among the American Indians, in all her marvelous beauty, bringing with her a bed surrounded with flames and attended by little demons bearing flowers. She approached Vaughan and put a wedding ring on his finger, and eleven days later gave birth to a daughter named Diana, from whom the Miss Diana Vaughan in question traced her descent. Several instances of similar commerce with incarnate demons are said to have occurred in the history of her family, so that she inherited a strong Satanic taint; even her own mother was guilty of the same criminal conduct. Her inherited qualities were carefully fostered by education, inasmuch as she was brought up by her father and uncle on strictly Luciferian principles. One day, when her instructors were praising Cain and Judas as ideals of excellence, she expressed some doubt of the superior worthiness of the fratricide and venal traitor. This dangerous unbelief was attributed to angelical possession, and it was soon ascertained that the archangel Raphael was the cause of the lapse from Luciferianism. Recourse was had to exorcism, the whole process of which, as described by Taxil, is a clever travesty of the ceremonial prescribed by the Romish Church for the expulsion of evil spirits. The dance performed by the father and uncle on this occasion consisted of the same saltatory movements that are executed by the "procession of jumpers" every year at the grave of St. Willibord, in Echternach, Luxemburg.[10]Devil's ointment took the place of holy oil, and theexorcism ended with the sacrifice of a black hen; thereupon "Raphael" went out of her, and simultaneously with his exit all the panes of glass in the house were broken into fragments and fell to the ground with a tremendous crash. The marvel is that bishops and priests accepted this ridiculous story as an authentic and edifying narration, instead of rejecting it with horror and disgust as a palpable burlesque of their own approved methods of casting out demons, and particularly of theExorcismus in Satanam et Angelos Apostatas, composed by Leo XIII and issued by him November 19, 1890. It is evident that Taxil had this document in his eye, and intended to hold it up to derision; to calm the fears of the simple-minded, who were puzzled and perplexed by the striking resemblance of diabolic orgies to divine ordinances, he explained it on the general principle that "Satan is the ape of God."

After being freed from the influence of Raphael, Diana was placed under the tutelage of Asmodeus, who, as her guardian devil, watched over her, shielding her from bodily harm and helping her to resist the wiles of angels. One day when she was wandering in the woods she was attacked by negroes, but Asmodeus came to her rescue, and bore her safely to her home through the air. Another time he caught her mettlesome courser by the bridle as he was running away, and when the chief of Garibaldi's staff, Bordone, insulted her, Asmodeus twisted his neck so that his face looked backward. For three weeks he was obliged to take a retrospective view of life and of his own conduct, when Diana, in the kindness of her heart, set his head right again. On these occasions the tutelar demon usually appeared in the form of a fine young gentleman, and emitted an aroma of balsam, which seems to have been as inseparable from him as is the scent of musk from a modern dude or modish dame. He spoke of her as his bride, and often took her on pleasure trips to paradise, purgatory, and other remote regions; once when she was greatly depressed, because her Luciferian rival, Sophia Walder, had got the better of her, he consoled her by making an excursion with her to Mars, where they rode on Schiaparelli's canals, sailed on the Sea of the Sirens, and strolled like pygmies among the gigantic inhabitants of that planet.

[To be concluded.]

Contrary to the common supposition that the astronomy of the ancients was based exclusively on the geocentric hypothesis, Mr. G. H. Bryan says in Nature: "Schiaparelli has shown that Heraclitus Ponticus, a disciple of Plato, had already accepted the theory that the sun is the center of the orbit of the planets, while the earth is the center of the universe and of the lunar and solar rotations—a theory substantially that of Tycho."

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