The streams are filled with trout, and the forest with game, so that the region affords many attractions for the sportsman.
Several hours’ travel by a good trail brings the party to Camp Ross, at the timber line, from which the ascent can easily be made in a day without danger.
BY ADA IDDINGS GALE.
Fear not, heart—though round thee plyBattle’s emblems—far and nigh.Though thy comrades round thee fall—Ensigns totter on the wall—Though the long battalions grimSeem to cloud thy future’s rim.If amidst the wild affrayThou grow sick, and turn away—Pause: that would be worst of all,If in fleeing, thou should’st fall.Stand fast, girt with sword and shield—If thou fall, fall in the field.What matters it if sad defeatMeet thy eager, hurrying feet;What, if when the banners waveThou should’st find a shallow grave.Foeward, bravely turn thy face,Seek no measure small of grace;And when loud the trumpets call,Bravely stand or bravely fall.Whether vict’ry or defeat,Laurel wreath or winding sheetBe thy meed—’twill differ not,Soon or late ’twill be forgot.Only thou, heart, e’er shalt knowThy deserved praise here below.Thou, and One that on his throneNe’er forgets to watch his own,One that marks where sparrows flee,Thee will guard with equity.Then be brave with all thy might—This thy guerdon—for the right.
Fear not, heart—though round thee plyBattle’s emblems—far and nigh.Though thy comrades round thee fall—Ensigns totter on the wall—Though the long battalions grimSeem to cloud thy future’s rim.If amidst the wild affrayThou grow sick, and turn away—Pause: that would be worst of all,If in fleeing, thou should’st fall.Stand fast, girt with sword and shield—If thou fall, fall in the field.What matters it if sad defeatMeet thy eager, hurrying feet;What, if when the banners waveThou should’st find a shallow grave.Foeward, bravely turn thy face,Seek no measure small of grace;And when loud the trumpets call,Bravely stand or bravely fall.Whether vict’ry or defeat,Laurel wreath or winding sheetBe thy meed—’twill differ not,Soon or late ’twill be forgot.Only thou, heart, e’er shalt knowThy deserved praise here below.Thou, and One that on his throneNe’er forgets to watch his own,One that marks where sparrows flee,Thee will guard with equity.Then be brave with all thy might—This thy guerdon—for the right.
Fear not, heart—though round thee plyBattle’s emblems—far and nigh.Though thy comrades round thee fall—Ensigns totter on the wall—Though the long battalions grimSeem to cloud thy future’s rim.If amidst the wild affrayThou grow sick, and turn away—Pause: that would be worst of all,If in fleeing, thou should’st fall.Stand fast, girt with sword and shield—If thou fall, fall in the field.What matters it if sad defeatMeet thy eager, hurrying feet;What, if when the banners waveThou should’st find a shallow grave.
Fear not, heart—though round thee ply
Battle’s emblems—far and nigh.
Though thy comrades round thee fall—
Ensigns totter on the wall—
Though the long battalions grim
Seem to cloud thy future’s rim.
If amidst the wild affray
Thou grow sick, and turn away—
Pause: that would be worst of all,
If in fleeing, thou should’st fall.
Stand fast, girt with sword and shield—
If thou fall, fall in the field.
What matters it if sad defeat
Meet thy eager, hurrying feet;
What, if when the banners wave
Thou should’st find a shallow grave.
Foeward, bravely turn thy face,Seek no measure small of grace;And when loud the trumpets call,Bravely stand or bravely fall.Whether vict’ry or defeat,Laurel wreath or winding sheetBe thy meed—’twill differ not,Soon or late ’twill be forgot.Only thou, heart, e’er shalt knowThy deserved praise here below.Thou, and One that on his throneNe’er forgets to watch his own,One that marks where sparrows flee,Thee will guard with equity.Then be brave with all thy might—This thy guerdon—for the right.
Foeward, bravely turn thy face,
Seek no measure small of grace;
And when loud the trumpets call,
Bravely stand or bravely fall.
Whether vict’ry or defeat,
Laurel wreath or winding sheet
Be thy meed—’twill differ not,
Soon or late ’twill be forgot.
Only thou, heart, e’er shalt know
Thy deserved praise here below.
Thou, and One that on his throne
Ne’er forgets to watch his own,
One that marks where sparrows flee,
Thee will guard with equity.
Then be brave with all thy might—
This thy guerdon—for the right.
BY CHARLES BARNARD.
There are some people who always ask this question. You may suggest anything, a book to read, a science to be studied, or some new work to be done, and, though they may not be so rude as to say so, they will wonder how it will pay. “Better not go into farming, my boy. It doesn’t pay.” “Better not do this or do that. It won’t pay you.” After a little more of this sort of thing you wonder if it pays to be born, or to live, or to do anything whatever. Now, what do they mean by this question? By far the larger part of those who ask it mean that the work, whatever it may be, does not pay a handsome return in money. A few mean something quite different. They know all about it, they have seen the world, and it is all a hollow show, and their favorite dolls are full of sawdust. These people are dead, but they have forgotten it.
Let us see about this. If there is any one business in the world about which the people in it are sure it does not pay, it is farming. “It does not pay.” So many people have said this that people who are not farmers have really come to think it must be so. Is it true? Here is an ear of field corn with twelve rows of grains, and twenty grains to a row. Fair average corn, with 240 grains to the ear. We can take off one grain and plant it in the ground, and within six months have two ears of the same corn, or 480 grains from one grain. How big a profit is that? One grain increases to 480 grains. Is there any manufacturing business, art or profession that pays such an enormous return? In spite of this they say it does not pay. Then there must be something the matter with the business. Nature has provided that the increase of plants shall be very great. One seed may increase a hundred fold, or five hundred fold, or a thousand fold. Clearly the work of raising plants with such advantages in its favor ought to pay, and if it does not, it is equally clear that something is wrong, some one to blame.
The city housekeeper finds at her store on the avenue a head of lettuce. Rather wilted and damaged by rough handling. Six cents. You can plant 43,560 heads of lettuce on one acre of ground. At six cents a head that is $2,613.60 taken out of one acre of land inside of eight weeks. And yet this person gravely tells us lettuce raising does not pay. What can the matter be, and where has all this money gone? A city like New York will calmly eat 40,000 heads of lettuce in a day or two, and pay out over $2,000 for it, and be ready to eat and pay as much more the next week. The money is certainly paid to somebody, and if the farmer still insists it does not pay to raise the lettuce, there must be a reason for it.
Ask the groceryman. He replies that he must live and must have a good slice out of the money to pay him for buying the lettuce down town and bringing it up to his store. It isn’t so evident that he must live as he fancies, because there was a time when there were no storekeepers and the world got along beautifully without them. However, he is convenient, and we will allow him his slice out of the profits. The teamster, the wholesale dealer, the freight handler, the railroad people all say that they too must live, and to please them we will admit that is so, though there is not much to prove it. They must share in the $2,000 paid for the acre of lettuce. Lastly, the farmer gets what the others decide he may have after they have had what they decide is their share. If we ask each one of this row of men, it is quite possible each one will say it does not pay, but, somehow, none except the farmer says anything about it. The last man, the actual producer of the lettuce, is the only one to complain. His business is the only one concerned that people say does not pay.
There was once a young man who started out bravely in life, resolved to reform the world. After trying for some time he gave it up and was ever after entirely contented if he paid his board regularly every week. It is useless to think we can reform this matter all in a day. The day will come when these things will be changed and equity and justice will take the place of the utter selfishness that now marks competition in business. Our best plan is to see what we can do to become producers ourselves. We want the lettuce ourselves. We must pay the retail price for it, and if at this price there is a big profit in raising it, we would like the entire profit placed in our hands. The people in these United States are divided into two great classes—the producers and the consumers—those who raise things to eat, and those who are in other trades and eat without producing. The producers are the farmers and fishermen. The consumers make all the rest of the people. The producers also eat, but their food costs them very much less than the food used by the non-producers. Of course we can see there must be non-producers or the trades and arts would perish, and the nation would become a mere agricultural community, content with sleeping and eating. At the same time, we must observe that a very large proportion of those who produce nothing live in small towns and villages and own land. We see everywhere in our smaller cities and towns hundreds of homes having gardens about the house. A little discouraged grass, a dyspeptic tree or two, a forlorn grape vine straggling over the fence, plenty of dusty gravel, and a mortgage on the house and lot. Within the house bitter complaints against the high price of food, much fretfulness and weariness at the scant, monotonous bill of fare. Boys and girls growing up with white hands and narrow chests (to say nothing of stomachs that they should be ashamed to own) and the storekeeper saving money on the next corner.
This is the reason it does not pay. We want to have white hands and be genteel and all that. We want to be consumers, and we unwittingly combine to get all we can out of the selling and handling of food and leave the producer as little as we think he can be forced to take. We must get rid of this imported nonsense about work. (It all came from Europe, and is wholly un-American.) We must make the land give us more food. Our boys and girls must go out of doors, must learn to be producers. They should be shown that it is disgraceful to live in a mortgaged house, that it is disgraceful to stand on any part of God’s ground and complain that food is scarce or high when that food might come out of the very ground under our ungrateful feet. The Chinese, the Japanese, the Dutch, the French, the Swiss cultivate every rod of ground they own. No barren yards about their houses, taxed and yet paying no return. Why, in England even the strips of waste land along the railway tracks are cultivated, and the trains move between rows of cabbages half a hundred miles long.
This is the way for thousands of families to make it pay. Produce your own food and sell it to yourselves. A head of lettuce grown on your own ground and eaten on your own table saves the retail price of a head of lettuce, and if there is a profit on it for all the people who touch it, clearly you have the entire profit for yourself. On reading this about five hundred people will calmly remark that this is not so. They have tried it and it cost more to raise their own vegetables than it did to buy them at the stores. The wages of the gardener come to more than all the things were worth. So much the worse for the gardener. You should be your own gardener. Where are your boys and girls? At the base ball grounds, or the rink,or at the foolish piano—doing nothing—earning nothing and trying to be genteel? Garden work is hard on the back and hurts the hands. Yes, because your hands are weak and your back is not strong, and of these things you should be ashamed.
The price of land in this country is steadily rising. All the best farm land is being taken up. The cost of food is advancing. It will never again be as cheap as it has been in the past. The time has come when we must economize. We can not longer afford to carry those neglected garden plots and waste spaces about our houses. They must produce food for the people who own them. We must be our own producers. We must study plants and animals. These represent food and wealth, and it is simply an untruth to say it will not pay to raise them. If your garden costs more than the retail price of food in your neighborhood the fault is your own. There is something the matter with your soil or your seeds, or your method of culture. Think of the profit of raising lettuce at $2,000 an acre, and yet that is the return that an acre will produce if paid for at the retail price. Moreover, the lettuce would be removed from the ground in ample time for another crop, likewise bringing a profit. Of course, if your land is worth five dollars a foot, the interest on one foot would be more than the value of the single lettuce plant you could raise upon it. In such a case you had better sell out and buy cheaper land. For the majority of homes where there is a garden the land is cheap enough to produce more or less of the food needed in the house, and there is no reason whatever why it may not be raised at a handsome profit.
The Chautauqua University recognizes the importance of this matter. Its aim is to help, to guide, and to instruct, and it is now, through the liberality of its friends, able to help, guide and instruct all who wish to learn something of the art of producing food and saving money. It sees hundreds of boys and girls totally ignorant of these common things. It sees young people wondering what they shall do, perplexed and worried over this question of earning a living, and discouraged at the high cost of living, when a part of their living is going to waste beneath their feet. The Chautauqua Town and Country Club was formed to help those who wish to help themselves. It aims to show by simple lessons how to raise plants of all kinds, how to care for animals, how to take care of your garden so that it will be a source of pleasure and profit. Half a thousand people have already joined the club and are now at work in good earnest. Should you wish to know more about it, write to Miss K. F. Kimball, Plainfield, N. J.
All this is meant for you.
What are you going to do about it?
BY PROF. M. B. GOFF,Western University of Pennsylvania.
Of which so much has been said in these pages, continues to be discussed with increasing interest by astronomers of both hemispheres, who every day supply their quota of new ideas as the result of their investigations. InThe Chautauquanfor March, 1884, the statement was made that “it has already been demonstrated that the colored prominences may be examined at any time when the sun can be seen; and it is believed that Mr. Huggins has accomplished the difficult feat of photographing the corona, so that it, too, may be scrutinizedat leisure.” In the April number of theNineteenth Century, we find a very interesting account by Mr. Huggins himself, of his operations in this line. As yet the experiments have not been in all respects satisfactory; but so much has been done as to leave no doubt of the final result. As Mr. H. tells us, the great obstacle to overcome is the immense curtain of air, which “hangs” between us and the sun, and absorbs some forty per cent. of the sun’s light (and heat). This absorption renders our atmosphere as light at least as the sun’s corona, and makes it as difficult of observation as a lesser light placed behind a greater. The same atmosphere being as bright, or brighter, than the stars, prevents our seeing the latter in daylight. During an eclipse of the sun, the shadow of the moon affords us a long, funnel shaped tube through this great air curtain (which may be forty, or one hundred, or more miles in thickness) and we are enabled through it to see the sun’s corona. But “on an average, once in two years this curtain of light is lifted for fromthreetosixminutes”—a very contracted period in which to obtain a knowledge of a phenomenon that we know is constantly changing. If we had a Joshua, who could command sun, moon and earth to stand still for the space of a few hours even, we might discover what we so much wish to know, what is this corona. Or, if we could go beyond this atmosphere of ours—place it between us and the earth, we might do without a Joshua. But we can not get outside. Then the next best thing is to get as nearly outside as possible. Dr. Copeland tried this by climbing an elevation of 12,400 feet. Prof. Langley ascended Mt. Etna, and on Mt. Whitney ascended to the height of 15,000 feet; but at these heights the curtain was still too heavy, and no view of the corona was obtained; or, as Prof. Langley expressed it, he “met with entire non-success.” From reports in regard to observations made in Egypt of the total eclipse of 1882, Mr. Huggins conceived the idea of making a photographic plate so sensitive that it would distinguish differences imperceptible to the eye, and on this plate take a picture of the corona, and then examine it as one would the “photo” of a friend, and mark its peculiarities. He made his first experiment in 1882, and as a result “there seemed to be good ground to hope that the corona had really been obtained upon the plates.” In 1883, a second attempt, under more favorable circumstances was made, and “images of the sun exquisitely defined, and free from all sensible trace of instrumental imperfection were obtained.” On the 6th of May of the same year (1883) a total eclipse of the sun occurred at Caroline Islands, and was there photographed by Messrs. Lawrence and Woods, photographers of the Royal Society; and on a comparison of these photographs of the sun’s corona during an eclipse with his own taken both before and after the time of the eclipse (which was not visible to Mr. H.), he had the satisfaction of seeing so strong a resemblance as to convince him that he had photographed the corona without an eclipse. Although having no doubt of the success of his experiment, yet, on account of the unfavorable conditions of the climate, it was determined to try a higher elevation; and the Riffel, near Zarmatt, Switzerland, was selected as a suitable place to make further trials. Mr. Ray Wood was selected as artist, and reached Riffel in July, 1884. But unfortunately, the “veil of finely divided matter of some sort,” “of which we have heard so much in the accounts from all parts of the earth of gorgeous sunsets and after-glows” seriously interfered with the work; nevertheless, a number of plates were obtained on which the corona showed itself with more or less distinctness. Not satisfied with these results, Mr. Woods was deputed to go to the Cape of Good Hope, where, under thedirection of Dr. Gill, he is to make, or is, perhaps, now making daily photographic representations of the corona, and laboring fully to realize the anticipations of the esteemed Mr. Huggins.
Meantime our sun makes his accustomed rounds, bringing with him the usual accompaniments, hot weather and the “dog days.” He will on the 1st rise at 4:34 a. m. and set at 7:33 p. m.; on the 16th, rise at 4:43 a. m., set at 7:28 p. m.; and on the 30th, rise at 4:56 a. m., and set at 7:17 p. m. During the month the length of the day will decrease from 15 h. 1 m. on the 1st to 14 h. 21 m. on the 30th. The declination will in the same time decrease four degrees and forty-three minutes.
Enters upon its last quarter on the 5th, at 7:18 a. m.; new moon occurs on the 12th, at 12:07 a. m.; first quarter on the 18th, at 7:11 p. m.; full moon on the 26th, at 9:14 p. m. In perigee, or nearest the earth, on the 11th, at 8:24 p. m.; in apogee, or farthest from the earth, on 25th, at 4:18 a. m. Reaches its greatest elevation above the horizon, 66° 55′, on the 11th; least elevation, 30° 7′, on the 23d. On the 1st, rises at 10:00 p. m.; on the 16th, sets at 10:26 p. m.; on the 30th, rises 9:05 p. m.
On the 13th, at 6:57 a. m., is 5° 39′ north of the moon; on the 17th, at 9:00 a. m., 11′ south of Venus; and on the 26th, at 2:00 a. m., 11′ south ofAlphain the constellationLeo, a very interesting conjunction, but not visible to the naked eye. Mercury has a direct motion during the month of 51° 51′; and his diameter increases from 5″ to 6.8″. On the 1st, he rises at 4:56 a. m., and sets at 7:56 p. m.; on the 16th, rises at 6:23 a. m., and sets at 8:31 p. m.; on the 30th, rises at 7:16 a. m., and sets at 8:22 p. m.
Makes but little show this month, being too near the “Source of Light.” She will be evening star throughout the month, growing brighter as the days pass by; her diameter increasing from 10.4″ on the 1st to 11.2″ on the 30th. She has a direct motion of 38° 8′ 45″. On the 1st, rises at 5:50 a. m., sets at 8:34 p. m.; on the 16th, rises at 6:25 a. m., sets at 8:33 p. m.; and on the 30th, rises at 6:57 a. m., sets at 8:23 p. m. On the 13th, at 10:21 p. m., 5° 22′ north of the moon; on 17th, at 9:00 a. m., 11′ north of Mercury.
Will be a morning star during this month. On the 1st rising at 2:30 a. m., and setting at 5:08 p. m.; on the 16th, rising at 2:11 a. m., setting at 5:01 p. m.; and on the 30th, rising at 1:54 a. m., setting at 4:50 p. m. His diameter increases one tenth of a second of arc, and he makes a direct motion of 22° 56′. On the 9th, at 3:44 p. m., he is 5° 1′ north of the moon.
Et tu, Jupiter, art on the wane. Each day he sets more nearly with the sun, and his diameter grows smaller, though monarch still of all the planets. He rises on the 1st, 16th and 30th, at 9:00, 8:14, and 7:33 a. m., respectively, and sets on the corresponding days at 10:19, 9:28, and 8:39 p. m. He makes a direct motion of 5° 25′ 42″. On the 15th, at 2:02 a. m., is 3° 7′ north of the moon.
Those who have not improved the past few months to obtain a view of the beauties of this planet can not blame the writer. Their attention has been called to the fact that his rings stand more widely open now than they will again for fifteen years. But they need not despair; for in the delightful coolness of a summer morning they may still improve their opportunities; for Saturn rises the latter part of this month nearly with the dawn, and those who care to leave their “downy couch” can catch him before the rising of the sun. 3:56, 3:05, and 2:18 a. m., on the 1st, 16th and 30th will find him “at home;” and in August an earlier hour will suit as well. During the month his diameter increases two tenths of a second. On the 10th, at 5:48 p. m., he may be found 4° 7′ north of the moon; and on the 20th, one minute south of the starEtain the constellationGemini.
This planet, on the 1st, rises at 11:14 a. m., and sets at 11:20 p. m.; on the 16th, rises at 10:17 a. m., sets at 10:23 p. m.; on the 30th, rises at 9:25 a. m., sets at 9:29 p. m. No change in diameter, which remains at 3.6″. On the 16th, at 6:37 p. m., 34′ north of the moon.
This slow motioned body, of which we know so little, and which not more than one person out of 10,000 ever saw, makes a direct motion during the month of 42′ 55″; its diameter is 2.6″; and on the 8th, at 6:59 a. m., its position is 2° 33′ directly north of the moon. It may be interesting to know that it will be a morning star which “willnotlight the traveler on his way,” during the entire month. Its times of rising are 1:52 a. m. on the 1st; 12:57 a. m. on the 16th, and at midnight on the 30th.
BY J. JAMIN,Of the French Academy.
In the interval between 1602 and 1626 four philosophers were born who seem to have been divinely appointed to teach men the mysteries of air. These were a German, Otto von Guericke (1602); two Frenchmen, Mariotte and Pascal (1620, 1623), and finally an Englishman, Boyle (1626). Pascal conceived the idea that air being material must have weight like other materials, and consequently that the earth must be pressed upon by its atmospheric envelope, and he proved this by the celebrated experiment at Puy de Dôme.
Soon after, Otto von Guericke, having invented the air pump, succeeded in exhausting the air from a vessel and confirmed Pascal’s idea that air was really heavy, while Mariotte and Boyle at the same time, each in his own country, and by almost identical experiments, proved that air is elastic, that its volume decreases by pressure, and generally in proportion to the weight to which it is subjected. Mariotte modestly called this discovery a rule of nature. We call it a physical law, and very suitably name it in France “Mariotte’s Law,” and in England “Boyle’s Law.”
It seemed necessary for science to collect her thoughts after this great achievement. She seemed to think there was nothing more to discover. Boyle and Mariotte would have been very much astonished if some one had told them that this air, whose properties they had been demonstrating, could be reduced to a liquid like water, and even to a solid like snow. Nearly two centuries passed before the world was prepared for this new discovery. We ourselves were ignorant of it until the month of April, 1883, when the Academy of Sciences received from Cracow these two dispatches:
“Oxygen completely liquefied; the liquid colorless as carbonic acid.” (April 9th.)“Nitrogen frozen, liquefied by expansion; the liquid colorless.” (April 16th.)Wroblewski.
“Oxygen completely liquefied; the liquid colorless as carbonic acid.” (April 9th.)
“Nitrogen frozen, liquefied by expansion; the liquid colorless.” (April 16th.)
Wroblewski.
Thus air has been reduced to a volume a thousand or fifteenhundred times less than under ordinary conditions. It ceased to be a gas and took the appearance of water. This astonishing result is only the last in a long list of experiments which for a long time were fruitless; it is the finishing touch to a building begun long ago, and on which many workmen have labored. What has been the work of each of them? It is a long story.
Van Marum, a philosopher and chemist of Harlem, is celebrated as the constructor of an electric machine, the largest known, but he is more justly celebrated for having been the first to liquefy a gas. Wishing to know if ammonia would obey Mariotte’s law, he compressed it. Under a pressure of six atmospheres it changed quickly to a transparent liquid. Van Marum did not foresee the consequences of his experiments, and is honored only as being the first successful performer of the experiment. But Lavoisier, whose keener mind grasped all that these results implied, did not hesitate to declare the general law that all substances were capable of existing in three different states, and he illustrated his belief most forcibly. “Let us consider for a moment what would happen to the different substances which form the earth, if the temperature should be quickly changed. Let us suppose that the earth were suddenly placed in a region where the temperature would be much above that of boiling water; soon the air, all liquids which can be vaporized at a temperature near that of boiling water, and many metallic substances even, would expand, be transformed into air-like fluids, and form part of the atmosphere.
“On the contrary, if the earth should be suddenly placed in a very cold temperature, for example, that of Jupiter or Saturn, the water of our rivers and seas, and, probably, the greatest number of liquids which we know would become solid.”
“Air,” according to this supposition, or at least a part of the air-like substances which compose it, “would doubtless cease to exist in its present form; it would be changed to a liquid state, and this change would produce new liquids of which we know nothing.”
Lavoisier was mistaken about the temperature of Jupiter and Saturn, but was right in his supposition that air would become a liquid; however, as experiment did not prove the theory, the prediction was forgotten and the question dropped. It slept a long time, for it was not until 1823 that it was revived by Faraday. The first experiments of this great philosopher were on this subject. He was but twenty-two when he made his first discovery, the liquefaction of chlorine. The details of this experiment have been told by Tyndall. It is well known that when chlorine gas and cold water are united, crystals are formed which contain to every molecule of chlorine ten molecules of water. Faraday put some of these into a closed tube and heated them until two separate liquids appeared; one was water, the other floated on the surface of the water, and a certain professor of Paris declared that it could be nothing but oil carelessly left in the vessel. Faraday having opened the tube, found that this substance began to boil, and then changed with an explosion into a green gas. It was chlorine. Faraday, who was quick-tempered, immediately took his revenge on the professor, to whom he wrote: “You will be pleased to know, sir, that the oil left by carelessness in my apparatus was nothing less than liquefied chlorine.”
This first success decided the career of the young chemist. He announced that all gases could be reduced to this state if subjected to a sufficient pressure, and he undertook a series of experiments, of which the success was doubtful, but the danger certain. He operated in this way: He took a thick glass tube in the form of an inverted U; one branch was left empty, in the other the materials for producing the gas to be studied were placed and the whole closed. Obliged to gather in the empty branch, the gas continually increased in pressure, and there were two possible results to the experiment; either the gas would not change its state, and the pressure would increase until the vessel broke, or when a certain limit of pressure was reached, then the liquid would appear and would continue to accumulate as long as the gas was disengaged. A dozen gases were reduced in this way; among them were the following, which we shall need: Ammonia, sulphurous acid, carbonic acid, and protoxide of nitrogen, which at a temperature of ten degrees required a pressure equal to sixty atmospheres.
This pressure leaves no doubt about the danger which one runs in carrying on such researches. If we remember that steam boilers generally support a pressure of no more than ten atmospheres, if we recall the number and the horror of their explosions we can hardly understand how a simple glass tube could resist a pressure five or six times as great. When a gas reaches the point of liquefaction, then the pressure ceases to increase, but if it does not change from that condition the pressure increases until an explosion necessarily occurs, and the debris of the vessel is scattered as powder scatters the fragments of a shell. In the course of Faraday’s researches he had thirty explosions. They did not stop him, but it is easy to see that they did not encourage others.
Happily there is a less dangerous method of reaching the same result, it is to freeze the gas. In the same way that the vapor of water is condensed when the temperature is lowered, so gases, which are really vapors, will yield to sufficient cold. In 1824, Bussy succeeded in condensing sulphurous acid gas. The gas was introduced into a balloon, which was plunged into a freezing mixture of ice and salt. The gas was liquefied and could be preserved indefinitely, if the balloon were enclosed in an enamel vessel. In heating, it gave off vapors which, by their pressure kept the remainder of the fluid, providing the glass was strong enough. Thus, in two ways, by cold and by pressure, and still better, by both combined, it is possible to liquefy a large number of gases.
When water is heated, it remains immovable up to 100 degrees Centigrade, but then it is changed into vapor, or boils. This boiling is characterized by a peculiar feature, the temperature remains fixed at 100 degrees. It must be concluded, therefore, that the heat produced by the furnace and absorbed by the liquid is simply used in transforming the water into vapor. This fact was first discovered by the English philosopher, Black, who, not being able to explain the phenomenon, was content to demonstrate it and to speak of the heat aslatent. He saw that it took five and a half times as long to change water into vapor as to heat it from zero to 100 degrees, and that consequently it must require five and a half times as much heat to work the change. Such is the law of boiling in the air, but let us see what it is in a vacuum.
It is clear that the pressure of the atmosphere on water is a hindrance to its expansion into vapor, and that this hindrance increases or diminishes with the pressure. In a vacuum, of course, the liquid is free from the pressure, so that boiling ought to take place at a lower temperature.
And experiment teaches that this is the case; water boils at a temperature of 82° or 65°, as the pressure is reduced to one half or a quarter of an atmosphere, it boils at zero, and even below, in a vacuum. And we reach this remarkable result, that the boiling and freezing points unite, and that ice is formed while vapor is set free. But, although the boiling is advanced, although it takes place at zero instead of at 100 degrees, although the vapor is cold instead of hot, and the change takes place in a vacuum instead of in the air, it is a general law that a large quantity of heat is used, becomes latent, and enters into the formation of vapor.
Supposing that we fill a bronze vessel of very thick sides with water, close it with a lid and fit into it a valve loaded with lead. Place this in a furnace whose temperature has been raised to, say, 230 degrees. The water will reach this temperature, and vapor will accumulate until it reaches a pressure equal to more than twenty-seven atmospheres.
Let us now open the valve, the vapor will escape, and as it carries with it the heat necessary for its expansion, the temperature of the water will gradually fall until it reaches 100 degrees, after which the boiling will continue slowly and regularly; thus the water has been cooled and is kept below the temperature of its surrounding wall because it must absorb the extra heat which is required to change it to vapor. This apparatus is called Papin’s digester.
There is a similar experiment, but performed in a vacuum at the ordinary temperature. Put some water into a closed decanter which is connected by a tube with an air pump. As soon as a vacuum is produced the water begins to boil and to freeze, for the vapor can only be formed by borrowing heat, and there is nothing to take it from but the water itself, which soon reaches zero and is frozen. This apparatus makes a very simple ice house, as useful as convenient, and it proves, first, that boiling takes place at the lowest temperatures providing the pressure is sufficiently diminished; secondly, that it is always accompanied by a loss of heat; and thirdly, that it lowers the temperature of the liquid below that of the surrounding envelope, and the more as the vacuum is more complete.
Just as opening the valve lets the vapor accumulated above the water in Papin’s digester escape, and causes a fall in the temperature, so, by opening the reservoirs in which one has confined a liquefied gas, one sees it fall back to the boiling point. For example, take the liquid obtained from the compression of sulphurous acid gas. As soon as the reservoir containing it is opened the liquid begins to boil, and a vapor is formed, it is the gas which re-forms. It absorbs the latent heat necessary, taking it from exterior objects by radiation from the liquid itself, from the vessel which holds it, and from the materials into which it has been placed. It cools these until the point at which sulphurous acid gas boils is reached, twelve degrees below zero; then the liquid remains balanced between the radiation which tends to heat it and vaporization, which cools it. The final result is that the temperature is lowered and remains fixed at twelve degrees below zero. This is not all: just as the boiling point of water is lowered below zero in a vacuum, in the same way that of sulphurous acid gas falls below twelve degrees. Bussy brought it down to sixty-eight, where it remained; not only water, but mercury may be frozen by this means.
Finally, the boiling of liquefied gases will freeze all neighboring substances, and the greatest cold which one could obtain is produced by their boiling in a vacuum. This property of sulphurous acid was discovered in a still greater degree in protoxide of nitrogen, which was changed into a liquid at a temperature of 0 degrees, and under a pressure of thirty atmospheres. If allowed to boil in a vacuum, a temperature of one hundred and ten degrees below zero was obtained. When science has sown trade reaps the harvest; since by allowing liquefied gases to boil, a temperature of one hundred and ten degrees below zero can be obtained, and since the vapors which they give off carry away an enormous amount of heat from the surrounding bodies, it is possible by means of this cold produced to freeze water, make cold drinks, solidify mercury, cool cellars, prevent food from decay, and to do many other things of similar nature. A new art became possible, that of making cold. To-day it is at the height of success. It is founded on this general principle: to liquefy the gas by means of pressure, taking care that it does not become heated, to introduce it into a freezer, where it is allowed to boil, and from which it absorbs the heat, to carry off the gas and introduce it again into the vessel, where it will by pressure be liquefied. The action is constant, the same gas acts indefinitely, and there is no other expense than that which is caused by running the pumps. In spite of these fine results and the extraordinary efforts put forth, the end was not attained. To be sure, some gases had yielded, but still there was a large number which resisted every effort. Was it necessary to give up the idea that the law of liquefaction of gases was general, or was it true that the exceptions were only the results of insufficient means? Faraday had never varied in his belief. One easily returns to the affections of his youth, and he believed that the time had come for making fresh efforts to prove his theory. After a rest of twenty-two years he determined to again take up the liquefaction of the rebellious gases. Means were not wanting. Thilorier had taught him how to solidify easily large masses of carbonic acid, and by mixing this solid with ether make a powerful freezing mixture; protoxide of nitrogen could be prepared with the same ease and abundance, and would boil regularly in a vacuum at a temperature of one hundred and twenty degrees below zero. Thus he was able to secure a degree of cold before unknown. For compression, he had a pump formed of two parts; one took the gas at its generation, and accumulated it in a reservoir under a pressure of fifteen atmospheres; the second part then received it; here it was subjected to a much greater pressure in a strong glass vessel which was plunged into carbonic acid or protoxide of nitrogen. Cold and pressure were thus combined. At that time nothing more could be done; fortunately this was enough to subdue most gases. Faraday had the satisfaction of liquefying nearly all gases, and of extending the law which he had announced, but still six, only six, refused to give up; among them were marsh gas, oxygen, nitrogen, and hydrogen. Science is a battle which must be continually renewed; the more the gases resisted, the greater the efforts made to conquer them. At first, new and energetic means of pressure were invented. Aimé, a professor in Algiers, secured a pressure of four hundred atmospheres, without result. M. Cailletet used a hydraulic press which exerted a force equal to seven hundred atmospheres, and afterward increased this to one thousand atmospheres, but still the gas resisted. At last it was found that pressure alone, however enormous it might be, could not liquefy the gases.
An English philosopher, called Andrews, put a new face on matters. He took carbonic acid gas at a temperature of about thirteen degrees and compressed it. The gas began to diminish in volume, and under a pressure of fifty atmospheres was suddenly liquefied, taking quickly a very great density, and falling to the bottom of the vessel, where it remained separated from its vapor by a surface as plainly marked as that which marks water and air. Andrews afterward tried the same experiment at a higher temperature, about twenty-one degrees. The same results were produced with but one difference: the liquefaction was less sudden. At a temperature of thirty-two degrees, instead of a separate and distinct liquid, undulating striæ appeared as the only signs of a change in condition which was not completed. Finally, at a temperature of above thirty-two degrees there was neither striæ nor liquefaction, but still it seemed as if a trace was preserved, for under certain pressure the density increased more quickly, and the volume diminished more rapidly. Thirty-two degrees is then the limit, a point between the degrees which permit and which prevent liquefaction. It is thecritical pointwhich marks the separation between two very different conditions of a substance; below, we have a liquid; above, there is no change in appearance, but there enters a new condition, whose characteristics I will describe.
Generally a liquid is more dense than its vapor; for this reason it falls to the bottom, and the two are separated by a level surface. But supposing that we heat the vessel which contains them. The liquid expands little by little, until it equals, or even surpasses, the expansion of the gas, so that an equal volume weighs less and less. On the other hand, a continually increasing quantity of vapor is formed, accumulates at the top of the vessel, and becomes constantly heavier. Now, if the density of the vapor increases, or if that of the liquid diminishes under the right temperature, the two densities become equal. Then there is no longer a reason for theliquid falling, the vapor rising, or for a surface of separation. The two are mingled. Neither are they any longer distinguished by their different degrees of heat. When this critical point is reached, it is impossible to tell whether it is liquid or gas, since in either state it has the same density, the same heat, the same appearance, the same properties. This is a new state, a gaseous liquid state. The discovery of these properties showed why all the attempts to liquefy air had been useless. At an ordinary temperature the gas is in a gaseous liquid condition. Liquefaction can take place only when the liquid is separated from the vapor by its own greater density. The next step was therefore to lower the temperature below that of the critical point. This was understood and carried out about the same time by MM. Cailletet and Raoul Pictet. On the 2nd of December, 1877, M. Cailletet subjected oxygen in a glass tube to a pressure of three hundred atmospheres, and reduced its temperature to twenty-nine degrees below zero. The gas did not change in appearance, and was in all probability in the gaseous liquid condition. Nothing but more cold was wanting to liquefy it. The valve was turned, the gas escaped, and the temperature fell two hundred degrees, and the characteristic whitish mist was seen. Oxygen had been liquefied, perhaps solidified. The same result was reached with nitrogen, but nothing was done with hydrogen. While M. Cailletet performed this decisive experiment at Paris, M. Raoul Pictet achieved the same at Geneva. He had at his command all necessary materials, so that he subjected the oxygen to a pressure of three hundred and twenty atmospheres, and to a temperature of one hundred and forty degrees below zero. In this condition the gas was probably below the critical point, and when the reservoir was opened suddenly it began to boil and was thrown in every direction. M. Pictet believed that he liquefied, and even more, had solidified hydrogen, but he was doubtless mistaken. These results, however, were not satisfactory. M. Cailletet was preparing a new experiment when the Academy received the two telegrams given at the beginning of this article.
Wroblewski and his colleague, Olszewski, had boiled ethylene, a gas similar to that used for heating purposes, in a vacuum. The temperature fell to one hundred and fifty degrees below zero. It was the greatest degree of cold yet obtained, and was sufficient. The success was complete. The oxygen, previously compressed in a glass tube, became a fixed liquid. It was like the others, in the form of a colorless and transparent liquid, like water, but of a little less density. Its critical point was at one hundred and thirteen degrees below zero, forming itself below, never above, this temperature, and boiling rapidly at a temperature of one hundred and eighty-six degrees below zero. A few days after this the two Polish professors succeeded, in the same way, in liquefying nitrogen.
But if the question was settled for air was it also for nitrogen? M. Pictet, in his experiment, had used a weight of three hundred and twenty atmospheres, and cold of one hundred and forty degrees below zero. When he opened the reservoir a jet of gas, mingled with mist of steel gray color, burst forth. At the beginning of the experiment, solid fragments accompanied the jet; these fell to the floor with a sound like that of grains of lead. Naturally, M. Pictet thought that he had not only liquefied, but even solidified hydrogen, but unfortunately the experiment was not wholly satisfactory. For perfect success still more acute cold was needed, and here was oxygen and nitrogen to get it from. Nitrogen, the most refractory, was taken, and a degree of cold undreamed of before, attained; in the open air it reached one hundred and ninety-four degrees below zero, and in a vacuum two hundred and thirteen degrees below. These temperatures were so low that it was necessary to invent new methods for measuring them. A mercury thermometer was useless, because it froze at forty degrees, and alcohol because it became a solid at one hundred and thirty degrees. No liquid is able to resist such temperatures, so electric, or hydrogen thermometers, were employed.
Wroblewski and Olszewski have but lately achieved success. Having compressed the hydrogen in the above named manner, they froze it by means of nitrogen boiling in a vacuum. Still it did not liquefy. It was yet in a gaseous liquid state, but when the tube was opened then there appeared a transparent and colorless liquid. At last the question of the liquefaction of gases, which has been discussed so long, has been settled. When we think of the simplicity of these final experiments, it seems strange that the problem was so difficult to solve. The trouble lay in the fact that at the start there was everything to find out; there was the critical point and the means of freezing to discover. It was necessary to proceed by steps, using each gas for the reduction of the one more stubborn than itself. Really, as Biot says, nothing is so easy as what was discovered yesterday, nothing so difficult as what must be discovered to-morrow. It might be asked whether the result is worth the trouble necessary to collect these liquids. The answer must be left to the future. The chemist will take up this new law of gases, and art will adapt it to its purposes. For the present, all that it amounts to is that the natural philosopher has proven that all kinds of materials may exist in three conditions, and obey the same common laws.—Abridged and Translated from “Révue des Deux Mondes” for “The Chautauquan.”
BY COLEMAN E. BISHOP.
Among the many so-called “booms” that followed the civil war, as the result of the wonderful intellectual, moral and material impulse that it gave the country, one of the most marked and promising of influence on the national character is the advancement in decorative art that this generation has seen and felt. Its presence and influence are observable in the general demand for more artistic interior finishing and furnishing: for better form and coloring in wall paper, frescoing, painting, floor-coverings, upholstery and drapery, and in that broader study of the harmonious wholes of which these are related parts.
It is not an art renaissance, so much as a new birth of popular art feeling; a creation, rather than a revival. Facts seem to indicate the beginning of the long-talked-of American school of art. It is a peculiar, and peculiarly-encouraging circumstance that this new development is native and popular instead of imported and select.
For, we may be very sure that any movement that is to abide and have much power over our people must be one that touches the average citizen. To reach him it must be American. It need not be divergent from, and it should not be antagonistic to established art principles; but, not the less, in its sympathies, subjects, and methods it must be national. An art that is to live with any people must beofthat people. With us this requirement of popularity is doubly strong, because we are so intensely national; because all institutions live and move and have their being in the commonalty, and because the citizen is the only source of living patronage ofart here, where the state does not foster art as foreign states do. The artist must eat, and the people must feed him. Before they will pay for art, they must have sufficient culture to care for it dollars’ worth, and it must be of a nature to reach their sympathies. Even in monarchial England, Ruskin perceives the necessity for beginning at the bottom to upbuild national taste, and he addresses volumes of letters upon art “To the Workmen and Laborers of Great Britain” (see “Fors Clavigera”).
We have not much to hope for in the way of education of American taste from imported art, for this can never reach or touch the people. A fewdilettantiin our cities can do very little toward creating, or even influencing a national taste. They have norapportwith true American culture; they offend national sensibilities by unreasoning rejection of everything undertaken here; and, above all, if they be brought to the test, it will be found that they generally have no fixed art principles back of their opinions and—prejudices. If the average American could not appreciate foreign works, he was not much helped to a better understanding of them by their admirers; and he came to think himself at least quite capable of correctly estimating devotees who could no more give good reasons for worshiping everything foreign than they could for scorning everything indigenous.
The most hopeful augury for this new interest is in the fact that it relates to that department of art which goes most directly into the lives and the homes of the people: and that it has been the first to take on marked American characteristics. Moreover, its commercial features will be potent influences for its spread and growth. It is capable of being at once the refiner, the educator and the almoner of thousands.
Confidence in the inherent genius of my countrymen, led me years ago to predict that all that was needed for the establishment of a school in any art was (1) the foundational training of mind or hand; (2) a belief that it can be done; (3) a market for it. The last most important of all, because demand inspires originality and creates supply, and because recompense is the great stimulus to inspiration. Genius in this age is pretty apt to have an eye to the main chance.
For all these reasons we are prepared for the conclusion that the impulse given to decorative art by the organizations known as the “Decorative Art Society,” and the “Associated Artists,” all of New York City, is the most valuable of anything that has been done since the nation’s new sense of the beautiful awoke. These are the parts of one movement possessing these characteristics:
It is distinctively American.
It has compelled recognition at home and abroad as well of its indigenous originality as of its artistic correctness and merit.
It has begun the production of exclusively American materials, designed and manufactured in this country, which are unequaled by anything foreign.
It is commercially successful.
By virtue of all these achievements, it is doing a missionary work for American art by encouraging similar efforts in other cities and other countries; by demonstrating that “goodcancome out of Nazareth;” by putting in the way of thousands of talented women, suffering under repression and lack of opportunity or for inspiration of hope, the opening for culture and compensation combined.
It is to celebrate what has been accomplished, and haply, to suggest the opportunities open to others, that this narration is essayed.
The movement was, indeed, patriotic in its birth. It was inspired by the Centennial Exposition at Philadelphia. The specimens of decorative art from the South Kensington School in the English exhibit impressed Mrs. Thomas M. Wheeler, of New York, by their lack of originality and freedom, insomuch that she declared, “We can do better than that in this country without any school!” and she set about doing it in genuine American spirit. The first organization, The Decorative Art Society, which she instituted, was composed of several hundred ladies of New York. The plan was national, philanthropic and commercial—to serve art, help women, beat the British, and make money. Ladies in a large number of cities were influenced by correspondence and other efforts to form auxiliary societies. The seed of the new art interest thus widely sown is still bearing crops.
From this nucleus there were before long offshoots in two directions—in a higher and in a more rudimentary line. The Woman’s Exchange was organized to provide a market for the large surplus of handiwork of all kinds that was pressed upon the society; and a less numerous, more compact organization was originated to attempt a higher development of the work—this being called the Associated Artists. Thus they had three efficient agencies occupying ground in this order, artistically considered—The Woman’s Exchange, The Decorative Art Society, The Associated Artists. Each of these is still doing its appointed work, but our present purpose has to do only with the most advanced—The Associated Artists.
It should be said, however, of the Woman’s Exchange, that it has spread the most widely; because it deals with the simple forms of ornamentation which require but little training, but it produces articles that are salable. Thus it has become a bread-and-butter enterprise to a large mass of women. Not only do all of our leading cities now boast of Exchanges, but Princess Louise, after her first visit to this country, caused one to be formed in Canada. This “Yankee notion” has also been transplanted to Germany and Sweden.
The Associated Artists, as first organized, was directed by Mrs. Wheeler and three gentlemen, artists like herself—Mrs. Wheeler having charge of the needlework department; one gentleman, of interior wood decoration; another, of glass painting, and the third, of the color scheme, painting, etc. They undertook the interior finish of rooms and houses upon entirely new decorative notions. Among their public undertakings, also, were the entire interior decoration of the Madison Square Theater, including the drop curtain; the finish of the “Veterans’ Room” in the Seventh Regiment Armory, and parts of the Union League Club House.
The business success of the Associated Artists grew on the managers. The educational and philanthropic aims were in danger of being overshadowed by the commercial consideration, and New York gave them abundant employment without their going into all the world and preaching the gospel of beauty and self-help to all women. Moreover, Mrs. Wheeler’s department in the work grew so rapidly and opened out possibilities of development and creation so great, that she decided to make it a special and separate enterprise. This she did three years ago, retaining the name, Associated Artists.
Success has vindicated the wisdom of the segregation, while the other members of the older organization have not suffered by the separation. From that time to the present the enterprise has been managed and worked by women only.
The gentlemen formerly of the Associated Artists are working on independent lines. The decoration of the new Lyceum Theater, New York, is the latest and greatest triumph of one of them.
The Associated Artists now have to do with decoration as using or applied to textile fabrics, including as well all upholstery as the hangings, draperies, tapestry and applied decoration of any part of a room. In the building which they occupy in East Twenty-third Street, there are large exhibition and salesrooms, the studios or designing rooms, the departments of embroidery, of tassels, fringes, etc., of tapestry, and the curtain department—an entire floor. There are about sixty employes.
This is an art school as well as a business house. Many women come to them with no other preparatory training thanthe drawing lessons of our public schools afford. The best talent is furnished by the Women’s Art School of Cooper Union. Aside from such preparation, the Associated Artists furnish the education of their own designers and workers. Unendowed, small, modest and young as it is, we shall see in what respects this American school has outstripped the great English institution.
One of the most serious obstacles that the effort to create American design has had to meet, is the lack of suitable materials to work with. All imported textiles were found to be, in color, texture and pattern, unsuited to the new uses and ideas; and American manufacturers were so much under tutelage to European tastes, that nothing different was to be had from them. It is a fact as lamentable as it is astonishing, that a carpet, wall paper or textile mill in this country rarely has an American designer of patterns and colors. The schemes of color made by the Associated Artists were out of harmony with French, English and American fabrics and embroidery materials. The colors of these were too sharp, strong and cardinal for the blending of tones that was sought.
To meet this case a Massachusetts silk mill was engaged to manufacture, first embroidery silks of the desired shades; and, that being accomplished, to undertake the coloring of fabrics. The greater step to the manufacture of special fabrics was next taken. Now the Associated Artists use only materials made for them in this country.
There are three different mills engaged on their work, one of which last year supplied them with $30,000 worth. The work is a great advertisement to a mill—such recognition have these fabrics gained, here and in Europe, for fineness, design and beauty. Several European decorators of first rate have sent for samples of them. Foreign artists and designers visiting this country regularly have in their note-book memoranda to see the wonderful new American fabrics at the Associated Artists. These goods have also been used for garments. Mrs. Langtry, Mrs. Cornwallis West and Ellen Terry bought largely of them for their wardrobes. Felix Moschelles, artist, and son of that Moschelles who was the biographer of Mendelssohn, declared that there was nothing in Europe to compare with these joint products of American artists and artisans. Truly, there is nothing on the shelves of dry goods men on either continent to match them; they revive the traditions of the wonderful products of Oriental looms.
Anotherchef d’œuvreof these artists is their tapestry work. It has the definiteness and freedom of drawing, and the delicacy and feeling of color of an oil painting; nay, deft fingers with a needle and thread can produce effects in colors that the painter’s brush can not, because colored threads reflect and complement each other. This work is done upon the surface of a canvas, the stitch being similar to that used upon “honey comb canvas,” all surface work. To make it more effective, a fabric has been woven with a double warp, the embroidery being run in under the upper thread, somewhat like darning. The process and fabrics were invented by Mrs. Wheeler and are protected by letters-patent in this country and Europe.
A portrait was woven in this way, thread by thread, so faithful as to be preferred by the family, to the best work they had of photographer or painter. A piece of this tapestry has been under the hands of from one to three embroiderers—or darners, if you please—every day for nearly a year. It is one of ten large needle-work pictures of American subjects now in preparation. One of them is a Zuni Indian girl, by Miss Rosina Emmett, and another, “Hiawatha,” a typical Indian girl of the North, by Miss Dora Wheeler. (These two artists are directors of the Association.) The pictures are life size, and are very characteristic studies. The remaining eight tapestries are mainly upon events of American history. Only close examination would convince any one that they were not oil paintings. After seeing this work I am inclined to think less of the famous Bayeux tapestry and all other pictorial needlework. William the Conqueror was unwise not to have deferred his exploits until Yankee girls could embroider them. The best we can now offer William is to invade and conquer England over again—with American tapestry.
These high-class works are mentioned simply to show the height that this line of decorative art has reached, in a short time, by the efforts of native genius and mechanical skill.
Nor is the story yet all told of the relation of design to manufactures. One of the largest manufacturers of paper hangings in this country not long since offered prizes amounting to $2,000 for the best four designs for wall paper. The competition was great, sixty designs being entered by European artists, and many times more by American. When the awards were opened the examining committee, as well as the donors, were astonished to learn that the Associated Artists had taken all the prizes, the European trained talent none. Now, the freshest, best-selling patterns for wall paper are of American design.
There is more still to tell that is gratifying to patriotism. These efforts have discovered to the world, as a fact, what was before the cherished theory of a few, viz.: that an American school of art already existed, dominant in brains and hands, waiting to be awakened to activity. There is a distinctive character in all that has been done in decoration, different from anything seen in other people’s work. It has a nationality in choice of subjects and materials, an originality in conception, a freedom and freshness in treatment, that fairly mark the beginning of a new school. More than that, when the work of native designers has come in comparison with that of the Kensington or other schools, it has justified the opinion that was expressed at the outset as to the ability of our women to surpass the latter.
When the Decorative Society was organized, it sent to Kensington for a teacher, and employed the one that was the most highly recommended by the management there. At the close of the very first lesson that was given by this instructor to the leading ladies of the society, she was overcome by the reception her teaching had met. “Why,” she said, ruefully, “these ladies have got from me, in a single lesson, all that I know.I have nothing more to teach them.” This incident reveals the reason for the contrast in work—gives the explanation of the stereotyped forms and stiff designs of the foreign school. The difference is in the human material that enters into the work in either case—the difference of development and general culture back of special art training. The English girl who is forced to earn a livelihood by needlework, and qualifies therefor at Kensington, represents a different order of preparatory training, general culture, social position and aims, from those leaders in art who engage in the workcon amorein this country. But there is, also, a race difference that runs through all society in both countries. The American woman is a thinker—the English an observer; the American woman is by nature an innovator, the English conventional; the one an originator, the other an imitator. The same climatic, dietary, social and political influences that make the American artisan the most inventive and free handicraftsman in the world; the American business man the most daring and rapid, have conspired to make their sisters, and their cousins, and their aunts the most original and apt pupils of art in the world. We may confidently look to them, and the sons that they shall give their country, to go on and create for it a school of art as free and as characteristic as are all our institutions.
The movement is but in the embryo stage. All this is the result of a single effort, and it is still young. Time is of the essence of art culture, and the United States offers ample verge and scope enough for a wonderful work in the future. The field for invention in decorative art is boundless, because genius may touch every item and phase of home and carry into the innermost life of the whole people the refining influence of Beauty.
Professor George Ebers, the distinguished Egyptologist, strange to say, is known in America more by his novels than by his scientific attainments. He had a severe attack of rheumatism, or something similar, which confined him to his bed for a long time, but did not prevent him from using his mind, and during this tedious suffering he undertook, as I think he himself relates, in the preface of his first novel, to put into story facts and history with which his mind was so richly stored. The work grew and fascinated him, and now I dare say it has not only become remunerative but beguiling. Since the death of Prof. Lepsius, the distinguished scholar of Egyptian history, George Ebers will doubtless stand in his stead as the next best informed man in Germany, on Egypt. The deceased Lepsius thought highly of one of our countrymen, Dr. Joseph P. Thompson, as a successful student under him, and here we pay a tribute of respect to this generous man who never failed to escort party after party of Americans through the Egyptian department of the Berlin Museum, explaining the tombs and reading the inscriptions. “The Egyptian King’s Daughter” is the title of Ebers’s most elaborate novel, and if one is disposed to read it carefully and observe all the foot-notes, there is quite a chance for the reader to feel delighted with himself for all he can acquire in this way about Egypt, and to have an inexpressible longing for more. And what a power of enchanting one these Egyptians have, with their gloomy and mystified learning, and their frequent contemplation of death. To give the reader an idea of Ebers’s style, in romance writing and subject matter, we quote what accurate pictures he gives of all the state of affairs in Egypt. Speaking of the schools or universities, in his novel entitled “Uarda,” he says: “The lower school was open to every son of a free citizen, and was often frequented by several hundred boys, who also found night quarters there. The parents were, of course, required either to pay for their maintenance or to send due supplies of provision for the keep of their children at school. This university, or school, was connected with the House of Seti, or one of the sanctuaries of the Necropolis, founded by Rameses I, and carried on by his son Seti. High festivals were held there in honor of the god of the gods of the under world. This extensive building was intended to be equal to the great original foundations of priestly learning at Heliopolis and Memphis; they were regulated on the same pattern, and with the object of raising the royal residence of Upper Egypt, namely, Thebes, above the capitals of Lower Egypt, in regard to philosophical distinction.” “Many proficient in the healing art,” he tells us, “were brought up in the house of Seti, but few need to remain after passing the examination of the degree of Scribe. The most gifted were sent to Heliopolis, where flourished in the great “Hall of the Ancients,” the most celebrated medical faculty of the whole country, whence they returned to Thebes, endowed with the highest honors in surgery, in ocular treatment, or in any other branch of their profession, and became physicians to the king, or made a living by imparting their learning, and by being called in to consult on serious cases.” From this short extract from Ebers any one can see that he treats his situations, although lying so remote in history, in the most simple and natural manner. Egypt, with her enormous architecture, her ponderous institutions, peculiar beliefs and somber, heated atmosphere, is not to him the dark “sorceress of the Nile,” but a real, breathing and tangible thing—he has so seriously studied her that he writes of her as he would of a familiar friend in whom he is intensely interested.
Ebers not alone excels in historical pictures and accurate descriptions, but he has, as a novelist, much feeling, and makes clear comments on human nature—for example, in writing of Nebsecht, the learned surgeon, in his novel “Uarda,” he says: “Nebsecht was of the silent, reserved nature of the learned man, who, free from all desire of external recognition, finds a rich satisfaction in the delights of investigation; and he regarded every demand on him to give proof of his capacity, as a vexatious but unavoidable intrusion on his unanswering but laborious and faithful investigations.” Then he remarks Nebsecht loved Pentaur, who possessed all the gifts he lacked, manly beauty, child-like lightness of heart, the frankest openness, artistic power, and the gift of expressing in word and song every emotion that stirred his soul.
Again, behold the picture or a glimpse into a feast of the best Egyptians. In an open court, surrounded by gaily painted wooden pillars, and lighted by many lamps, sat the feasting priests in two long rows, on comfortable arm chairs. Before each stood a little table, and servants were occupied in supplying them with the dishes and drinks which were laid out on a splendid table in the middle of the court. Joints of gazelle, roasted geese and ducks, meat pasties, artichokes, asparagus, and other vegetables and various cakes and sweet-meats were carried to the guests, and their beakers well filled with the choice wines of which there was never a lack in the lofts of the house of Seti. In the spaces between the guests stood servants with metal bowls, in which they might wash their hands, and towels of fine linen.
“Tante Therese,” a drama in four acts by Paul Lindau, is a cleverly conceived and brightly written thing, showing that the writer is full of pathos and wit. The audience cried and laughed and applauded the first night it was given in Berlin. In fact, Lindau is so sharp a critic and so talented a writer, that, as editor ofDie Gegenwart, a neat and pungent weekly, he was a great potentate in Berlin society. His pen spared no one—musician, artist, soldier—and even royalty fell under its point if he, Lindau, was not in sympathy with their productions or actions. He is the life of a dinner party, the most interested musician and art connoisseur, and among journalists and in the literary coterie he is the star which lights or exposes the objects around. His reviews inDie Gegenwart(The Present) are somewhat after the matter of the reviews inThe Nation—a little pessimistic or hypercritical, but always accomplishing their object, and whatever comes from his pen is looked for with eagerness. With a lovely home, and a beautiful young wife to do its honors, he attracts about him many brilliant companies. He was once thrown into prison for having written something which was not prudent in regard to government matters—the press being not so free in Germany, as the reader will observe, as in this country.
Dr. Julius Rodenburg, editor ofDie Rundschau, is of Jewish extraction, resembling Felix Mendelssohn so much that one must immediately remark it. As Mendelssohn was also a Jew, the association seems to grow more intimate in one’s mind, as an acquaintance with this light-hearted, spirited man progresses. He seems never to be weary—the world and his friend have a charm for him, and he and his intelligent wife know well how to attract them to their weekly receptions. They both speak English well, and have spent some time in England. He has published a little book entitled “Ferien in England”—Vacation in England.
Sometimes he comes out in his review, which corresponds to ourAtlantic Monthly, with learned and elaborate articles, but his time is, as editor, consumed with other people’s productions. Editors of papers and presidents of colleges have little time for anything but reflection upon the merits or demerits of others.
Ferdinand Gregorovius, half German and half Italian, haspublished four volumes of the “History of Rome,” also in 1874 a very attractive volume on “Lucrezia Borgia.” In the back of the book appears afac-simileletter from Pope Alexander IV. to Lucrezia, and one of hers to Isabella Gonzogo—most curious documents.
Dr. Friedrich Kapp, who came to America when Carl Schurz did, returned after a short residence and entered political life in his own country. Beyond his exertion in this direction he has found time for considerable literary work; has edited the “Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin,” which contains a preface by Berthold Auerbach. Dr. Kapp is better known, perhaps, through the press, than through his books.
Adolf Stahr, in his book on Goethe’s “Frauengestalten,” or female characters, gives a close analysis, and if the same theme has been written and rewritten upon as all Goethe’s productions have, Stahr maintains a dignified review, as if he were surveying the subjects for the first time. His wife, who is a novelist, is equally literary, and the two old people have grown beautiful in common sympathy in their winter work and summer resorts. She attracts more attention than he at a fashionable watering place, but one is the accompaniment of the other, and both have done honest, good work.